“My mother was angrier than I had ever seen her. ‘Very well, then, you shall do as you like! I wash my hands of you!’ she exclaimed, and left me.
“I burst into a storm of tears and cried half the night. What a lonely child I was! My only friends were Madame Guérard, who was under the domination of my mother, and Mlle. de Brabender, a timid soul, who would fondle and talk to me affectionately when we were alone, but who was afraid to open her mouth in the presence of my lovely mother.”
The tanners—father and son—ceased to frequent the Van Hard house, and for a long while Julie did not speak to her daughter except formally. To make up for it, she was tremendously and ostentatiously affectionate with her two other daughters, Jeanne and Régine, who had been born four years previously.
Régine had a childhood somewhat similar to that of Sarah; that is to say, she was bundled from here to there, never nursed by her mother, alternately the recipient of cuffs and kisses, and from the age of three left pretty much to her own sweet devices. It is not to be wondered at that she grew into a perfect terror of a child.
At the time of which we are writing now, Régine was forbidden the reception rooms of the house, and spent most of her time in Sarah’s room. Sarah became her nurse and teacher, and this relationship continued until, fourteen years later, Régine died.
Julie Van Hard had become a fashionable personage in Paris, owing to her relationship with the Duc de Morny, who was then one of the most powerful men in France. The Duke kept her plentifully supplied with money, and her gowns were the rage of Paris.
Beautiful, of commanding stature, her glossy reddish-gold hair without a streak of grey in it, Julie was an idol to be worshipped by the youthful dilettantes of the gay city. No reception, no first night at a theatre, was complete without the presence of Julie Van Hard.
Dressmakers besieged her to wear their gowns for nothing, in return for the advertisement she gave them. It was Julie Van Hard, mother of Sarah Bernhardt, who launched the famous Second Empire style of tightly-wound sleeves, with lace cuffs, square décolleté and draped gowns with long trains. She was a great coquette, and almost certainly the Duc de Morny was not the only recipient of her favours.
Julie Van Hard’s home was spacious, and was invariably filled with visitors. There was a dinner or an entertainment of some kind every night. Gathered in the two gorgeously-decorated salons one would see such people as Sarah’s two aunts, Rosine Berendt and Henriette Faure; Paul Régis, who stood as her godfather at Sarah’s baptism; General Polhés, an old friend of Julie’s and godfather of Régine; Madame de Guérard, Count de Larry, Duc de Morny, Count de Castelnau, Albert Prudhomme, Viscomte de Noué, Comte de Larsan, Comte de Charaix, General de la Thurmelière, Augustus Lévy the playwright, Vicomte de Gueyneveau, and many others.
Sarah seldom appeared at the parties in which these people figured. Their activities did not interest her. She had refused to continue with her piano studies, to the great disappointment of her mother, who was an accomplished pianiste.