A word about Madame Berton. She is the widow of Pierre Berton, the actor and playwright, who, before his marriage to her, was the adored intimate of Bernhardt. Their liaison, which is recounted hereafter, lasted two years, and even after they separated their friendship continued.
It was Berton who convinced Duquesnel, the director of the Odéon, of Sarah’s genius as a tragedienne; it was Berton who encouraged her and taught her and who, more than any other man, was responsible for her early triumphs. It was Berton who stood beside her when all Paris sneered at and mocked her, and it was Berton who defended her when the co-directors of the Odéon wished to cancel her contract because of what they termed her “incorrigibility.”
No living person, then, can be so fitted to tell Sarah’s true history as the widow of the man who, himself, lived a part of it.
Madame Berton, after her marriage to Berton, accompanied her husband on many of Sarah’s famous tours about Europe. Even after her marriage, Thérèse Berton remained Sarah’s confidante and friend, though there were intervals of coldness that were natural enough in a temperament as self-centred, and as jealous as was Sarah’s.
From now on the story will be as Madame Berton related it to me. I shall let her tell it here just as she told it me in Paris, in the same simple convincing language, without the addition of literary flourishes or anything that could detract from the dramatic power of the narrative itself.
BASIL WOON.
Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her
CHAPTER I
For all my intimacy with Sarah Bernhardt (said Madame Berton), I find it difficult to believe that she loved me. I think that, on the contrary, she distrusted me, and I even believe that at times she hated me, because it was I, and not she, who had married Pierre Berton.