“When the others saw me rehearsing for the part, there was a sensation. The end of it was that I kept the part and played it with very, very great success. A well-known incident happened at the première. Dumas came into his box accompanied by Oceana, and for three-quarters of an hour the students shouted ‘A la porte!’ to such purpose that Dumas was obliged to take the woman out, put her in a cab, and return to his box, wildly cheered by the students. Their hostility was solely against the woman who had forced this great man to make such a scandalous exhibition of himself.
“Next came Le Bâtard by Alphonse Touroude, and L’Autre by George Sand (September 1869), neither of which has any interesting souvenirs connected with it.”
The war broke out, and ambulances were soon being established everywhere. Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt decided to fit one up at the Odéon at her own expense, and on September 30 she set to work. Twenty-two beds were erected, long white curtains were hung at the windows and portières over the doors, linen was neatly piled in cupboards, the dispensary was provided with bottles and drugs, and the cellars were filled with wood and coal. All the arrangements having been planned beforehand and carried out without delay, everything was completed in forty-eight hours, and there was nothing more to do but wait for the patients. They came soon enough! Day and night Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt and her aides-de-camp were kept at work. One of her first patients was M. Porel (now the manager of the Vaudeville theatre, and the husband of Mme. Réjane), who was slightly wounded by a fragment of shell. Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt busied herself not only with the infirmary but with the office. The ambulance being a military one, and having to supply daily reports to the central establishment at the Val-de-Grâce hospital, Mlle. Bernhardt carefully noted all particulars of the patients admitted and discharged, and kept all her accounts with remarkable exactitude.
The war and the Commune over, the theatres re-opened their doors, and M. André Theuriet entrusted Mlle. Bernhardt with the principal rôle in Jean Marie, which had just been accepted at the Odéon. Her success was striking, and she has kept this little piece in her répertoire, reviving it time after time in her tours, just as she has done with Phèdre.
Nothing is more curious and instructive than to note the opinions of the theatrical critics on Sarah Bernhardt from this period onward. Sometimes she was lauded to the skies; at other times attempts were made to crush her by severe and often unjust condemnation. To begin with, let us take this expression of opinion given by the late M. Francisque Sarcey on October 14, 1871—
If I experienced great pleasure in seeing Jean Marie, it was because the principal part was taken by Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt. No one could be more innocently poetic than this young lady. She will become a great comedienne, and she is already an admirable artiste. Everything she does has a special savour of its own. It is impossible to say whether she is pretty. She is thin, and her expression is sad, but she has queenly grace, charm, and the inexpressible je ne sais quoi. She is an artiste by nature, and an incomparable one. There is no one like her at the Comédie Française.
As Cordelia in King Lear.
Ten days afterwards came the first performance of Fais ce que dois, a one-act piece in verse, by M. François Coppée. The same critic dismissed the matter by saying—“The two sisters Bernhardt, Sarah and Jeanne, have two such insignificant parts that they can make nothing out of them.” On November 4, M. Sarcey wrote, in reference to the impending departure of Mlle. Favart from the Comédie Française—“Her place should most certainly be taken by Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt. Any other choice would be a monstrous injustice.” In spite of this impassioned declaration, the Odéon kept its prey. In the same month she appeared in La Baronne, by MM. Charles Edmond and Edouard Foussier. By this time it was generally recognized that the antique peplum suited her better than modern dress. Two months afterwards (January 1872) the indefatigable young actress created the part of Mlle. Aïssé in Louis Bouilhet’s four-act play of that name. The critic Paul de Saint-Victor treated her with considerable severity.