Her first attempt in this direction was a medallion bust of her aunt at Neuilly. This was finished in one night and when exhibited astonished the critics by its virility and resemblance to the model. Mathieu-Mesnier continued to instruct her, and she passed most of her nights in modelling.
Her next effort was a bust of her young sister, Régine—made a few days before the latter’s death. Others of her best sculptures (many of which were sold at the recent auction in Paris) were “After the Tempest,” a group in marble; busts of Victorien Sardou, Blanche Barretta, Busnach (the dramatist who prepared Zola for the theatre), Henry de la Pomoraye, Coquelin, junior; her son, Maurice; Louise Abbema and Edmond Rostand. The last was completed after the poet’s death, and was exhibited in the Rostand museum.
CHAPTER XVIII
“La Grande Sarah” had now become an extraordinary figure in the contemporary life of Paris. There were two camps, one composed of her friends, the other of her enemies, and at one time it was difficult to know which group was the more numerous.
The friends of Sarah were called the “Saradoteurs,” and cartoons of the great actress surrounded by her court became commonplaces in the metropolitan press. The weeklies were full of real or imagined escapades of the triumphant artiste of the Comédie Française.
It was said that she bathed in milk; that she had made the circuit of the Champs Elysées in the snow, with neither shoes nor stockings on; that she had entered the cage of a lion at the St. Cloud fête, and subsequently purchased the lion; that she had a regular menagerie chained up in her flat and that in consequence the neighbours had complained and that she was to be forced to move; that she had been twice seen on the boulevards with the young Prince Napoleon, who was supposed to be in exile; that she was at heart a Bonapartist, and was secretly working for the restoration of the monarchy; that she had an enormous appetite for strong drink; that she had ordered a coach-and-four in gold and ebony that was to cost two hundred thousand francs; that she had slapped the face of Perrin, the director of the Théâtre Français; that she was not a woman at all, but a boy masquerading in woman’s clothes (this was doubtless owing to Sarah’s startling success in young male parts); that Gambetta himself had called upon her, and had been received in the actress’s cabinet de toilette, where she happened to be washing herself; that she had given five hundred francs to a blind beggar, because she thought he resembled a former lover; that she dressed up as a man and frequented public balls in disguise, challenging men friends to duels and then revealing herself to them.
I have no way of verifying any of these tales. From what I myself know of Sarah and her way of living, I expect that parts of them, at any rate, were true.
It was a saying that there were three celebrated hours in Paris: One o’clock, Gambetta smokes his second cigar; four o’clock, prices fall at the Bourse; five o’clock, Sarah receives for tea.
Every afternoon her flat was filled with a motley assembly of the great and the nearly great. Sarah used to receive them in her sculptor’s clothes, a kind of pyjama costume, designed by herself and made of silk. She would stand at the entrance of her workroom, imperious as a queen receiving homage from her people.