When she returned to France, warships fired salutes, the entire city of Havre was beflagged and illuminated, and some of the most distinguished persons in France were on the quay to greet her.
She had departed an enfant terrible, to use the mot of Sarcey; she returned an idol, feverishly acclaimed. Enfin, France was once more to salute its Sarah!
Never before had any woman become such an entirely national character. Others had risen to similar artistic greatness—Rachel was probably as great a tragédienne as was Sarah at this epoch, and Sarah always declared that never in her life had she attained the sublime heights of Rachel’s art—but none had become at the same time a popular figure amongst the masses, to whom actresses until now had always seemed beings apart.
The theatre has always been a cult in France, much more so than in any other nation, but in the sixties and seventies it was a cult practised only by the few who possessed the requisite education to understand the difficult verse, the delightful satire, the delicate irony of the poets whose work then constituted nine-tenths of the plays performed. Or, on the other hand, there were the so-called popular theatres, but these were vulgar burlesques of what the popular theatre is to-day.
It was Sarah Bernhardt, more than anyone else, who transformed, with her magic touch, the theatre in France from the superior, intellectual toy of the cultured few to the amusement and recreation of the many. This she accomplished not only by her insistence on dramatic values, as much as on literary excellence—on scenic perfection as much as on the handling of phrases—but by her own personal genius in finding the “common touch.”
When she returned from the United States, it was to find preparations being made for her to play Théodora, the new play by Victorien Sardou, who was just then coming to the fore. But several other matters intervened.
First, she fell in love with Philippe Garnier, an actor of considerable talent; secondly, Garnier persuaded her to make a Grand Tour of Europe; thirdly, she was introduced to Jules Paul Damala, who took her away from Garnier and made her his wife; fourthly, Victorien Sardou, on the advice of Pierre Berton, withdrew his offer asking her to play Théodora and suggested that instead she should play Féodora, an older play by him and one well-tried by public favour.
These events tumbled one after another into the life of Sarah Bernhardt, and all had their influence on it.
She first became really intimate with Philippe Garnier at a banquet given to celebrate her return. I remember that Sarah gave a demonstration at this banquet of how the Americans ate with their knives and fingers, and kept us all convulsed by her description of American food.
“Mon ami,” she said to the actor Décori, who sat next me, “you would not believe it—the Americans never take more than a quarter of an hour to dine, and they eat in whichever order the cook has prepared the dishes. If the fruit is ready, then they eat that first! Ugh! It was terrible!” She shuddered.