[32] Huret.
[33] A dispatch from Moscow represents the feeling there: “Sarah Bernhardt is extremely hoarse and cannot appear this evening. General consternation prevails.” She finally did act in Berlin, in 1902.
[34] Sarah Bernhardt’s son Maurice was born in 1865 and was, therefore, seventeen at the time of his mother’s marriage.
[35] The Argentinos, in enthusiastic but ill-advised generosity, presented Sarah with an estate of thirteen thousand acres. As if Sarah could feel at home so far from Paris!
[36] Mme. Bernhardt’s more important productions, since she became a manager in her own right, have been as follows: Fédora, 1882; Nana Sahib, 1883; Macbeth, Théodora, 1884; Marion Delorme, 1885; Hamlet (Ophelia), Le Maître des Forges, 1886; La Tosca, 1887; Francillon, 1888; Lena, 1889; Jeanne d’Arc, Cléopâtre, 1890; Pauline Blanchard, La Dame de Chalant, 1891; Les Rois, 1893; Izeïl, Gismonda, 1894; Magda, La Princesse Lointaine, 1895; Lorenzaccio, 1896; Spiritisme, La Samaritaine, Les Mauvais Bergers, 1897; La Ville Morte, Lysiane, Médée, 1898; Hamlet, 1899; L’Aiglon, 1900; Francesca da Rimini, 1902; Andromache, 1903; La Sorcière, 1904; Tisbe, Angelo, 1905; La Vierge d’Avila, 1906; Les Bouffons, 1907; La Belle au Bois Dormant, La Courtisane de Corinthe, 1908; Le Proces de Jeanne d’Arc, 1909; La Femme X, Judas, Le Coeur d’Homme (written by herself), La Beffa, 1910; La Reine Élisabeth, Une Nuit de Noel, 1912; Jeanne Doré, 1913.
To the plays she had acted during the first American tour, 1880–81, (see page [28], note) she added, on her subsequent visits: 1887, Fédora, Le Maître des Forges, Théodora; 1891, La Tosca, Cléopatra; 1891–92, Jeanne d’Arc, La Dame de Chalant, Pauline Blanchard Leah; 1896, Izeïl, Magda, Gismonda, La Femme de Claude; 1900–01, (with Coquelin) L’Aiglon, Hamlet, Cyrano de Bergerac; 1905–06, La Sorcière, Angelo, Sapho, Tisbé. (During the tour of 1905–06, while acting in Texas she was forced on two or three occasions to appear in a circus tent in lieu of a theatre. The “theatrical trust” had for some reason denied her the privilege of acting in its theatres.) In 1910–11 she appeared, for the first time in America, in La Femme X, La Samaritaine, Jean-Marie, Sœur Beatrice, and Judas.
[37] It was really written, gossip said, by M. Paul Bonnetain. Sarah replied with an equally abusive book about Mlle. Colombier, which was entitled La Vie de Marie Pigeonnier, and which was probably written by M. Richepin.
[38] It carries her story down to her return from the first American tour, in 1881. A second volume was vaguely promised.
[39] But to Mr. Winter her Hamlet was a “dreadful desecration”! When she produced the play in Paris, the late M. Catulle Mendes and another journalist fought a duel, having disputed as to whether Hamlet was fat or not.
[40] John Corbin in the New York Sun, Dec. 17, 1905. A quarter of a century earlier, Matthew Arnold had written of Bernhardt, then in the midst of her first visit to London: “One remark I will make, a remark suggested by the inevitable comparison of Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt with Rachel. One talks vaguely of genius, but I had never till now comprehended how much of Rachel’s superiority was purely in intellectual power, how eminently this power counts in the actor’s art as in all art, how just is the instinct which led the Greeks to mark with a high and severe stamp the Muses. Temperament and quick intelligence, passion, nervous mobility, grace, smile, voice, charm, poetry—Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt has them all; one watches her with pleasure, with admiration, and yet not without a secret disquietude. Something is wanting, or, at least, not present in sufficient force; something which alone can secure and fix her administration of all the charming gifts which she has, can alone keep them fresh, keep them sincere, save them from perils by caprice, perils by mannerism; that something is high intellectual power. It was here that Rachel was so great; she began, one says to oneself, as one recalls her image and dwells upon it—she began almost where Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt ends.”