As Lady Macbeth.
After thirteen months’ absence Sarah at length returned to Europe. The total receipts during her American tour were a million dollars, of which her own share was £60,000. She landed in England on May 6th, not, as might be supposed, to rest, but to start off again on another tour, under the management of Mr. Mayer, through England, Scotland, and Ireland. On August 10th she started for Cauterets, and begun to prepare for her return to Paris. She re-opened with La Tosca on November 24, 1887, and long and loud was the applause that greeted her. M. Sarcey alone withheld unstinted praise, and took exception, not to the artiste’s talents but to her use of them, and indulged in criticisms of the play itself. M. Sardou responded in a letter addressed to a third person, in which he took advantage of the opportunity to make a hit at the critics of his work—
Monsieur,
You ask for my opinion on Sarah Bernhardt. It is simply that she is an admirable artiste, and that, in La Tosca, she has far exceeded anything that has been done in our generation by Georges, Dorval, or Rachel. As for Sarcey, who knows nothing about painting, music, architecture, or sculpture, and to whom Nature has harshly denied all sense of the artistic, it is not surprising that he should be not merely indifferent but even hostile to any attempt to reproduce the past by means of scenery, costume, and the representation of former customs. He showed this feature by his treatment of La Haine, but it would be unjust to blame him for this defect in his intellect. If he likes to play the part of the fox who lost his tail, by all means let him do it.
Cordially yours,
V. Sardou.
This time M. Sardou was on the right side. La Tosca was performed one hundred and twenty-nine times, and was not taken off the boards until March 25, 1888. Ten days later, Sarah was playing La Dame aux Camélias and La Tosca at Bordeaux. Thence she went on to Lisbon and Madrid. Next the indefatigable traveller began a French tour, under the management of M. Emile Simon, at Caen. In July she was in London playing Francillon, at the Lyceum, with indifferent success. She was soon off again, her life being now one incessant round of travel with brief stoppages in Paris. M. Maurice Grau was once more her manager, and she opened in October at Antwerp, after which she visited Liège, Amsterdam, the Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Arnheim, Brussels, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Constantinople, Cairo, and Alexandria. La Tosca was as great a favourite as it had been in Paris, but at the Hague the Huguenot scruples of the Dutch bourgeois led to the performance of the play being forbidden, on the ground that it contained attacks on Roman Catholicism which might prove offensive to persons of that religion. At Bucharest Sarah was received by Queen Natalie, who, living as she was in strict retirement, had been unable to attend any public performance in spite of her great desire to see the artiste. Sarah accordingly performed a scene from La Dame aux Camélias for her at the palace. When the actress uttered the words, “Shall fallen greatness never rise again?” Queen Natalie, who applied them to her own case, burst into tears. Every one present, including Sarah Bernhardt, shared the poor Queen’s emotion, and the performance had to be interrupted.
From Bucharest Sarah went on to Italy, Russia, and Scandinavia, returning to Paris on the 21st March. Three weeks afterwards, without taking time for rest, she appeared at the Variétés in Léna, a piece adapted from the English by M. Pierre Berton, and in which she added another to the numerous kinds of death already on her list. The piece, however, was merely an ephemeral success, and was not a great triumph for its principal interpreter. M. Jules Lemaître says—
Mme. Sarah Bernhardt played the earlier acts in a rather offhand style. Her delivery was sometimes childish and lisping, and sometimes hard and guttural.
As Jeanne d’Arc.
