The better to see the performance, he shifted his chair until it partly blocked one of the exits. Sarah Bernhardt, going off the stage backwards, tripped over the legs of the critic’s chair and nearly fell. On recovering herself, she seized the chair by its legs and pitched the critic to the floor. Then she turned on her heel with a fiery admonition to “keep your legs to yourself.”
Horrified actresses told the angry girl that the man she had insulted was Prioleau, the great critic. Returning to where the choleric old gentleman was picking himself up, Sarah set herself squarely in front of him, her eyes glinting fire.
“If you dare to say or write a word about me,” she warned him, “I will scratch your eyes out!”
The next day she sent him a written apology and a bunch of flowers, following this with a personal visit, in which she pleaded with the old man to forgive an act of which she would certainly not have been capable had she been in her right senses. Prioleau never forgave her, but he never used his heavy weapon of sarcasm against her. Perhaps he always secretly believed in her threat. He died not long afterwards.
Sarah was an extraordinary mixture of pugnacity and sentiment. One day she found a dog investigating her overturned bottle of smelling-salts. Infuriated she dropped the poor little creature out of the dressing-room window on to a small ledge from which, if it had moved, it would have fallen four or five stories to the ground.
Five minutes later shouts attracted a crowd to the dressing-room, where they found a maid desperately hanging on to Sarah’s feet, while the young actress hung head downwards outside the window, in order to rescue the dog. Having got the animal up safely, she took it home and smothered it with kindness, never permitting it to leave her until it died of old age fourteen years later.
Sarah’s love for animals—particularly ferocious ones—was one of the abiding passions of her life. At different times she owned a pink monkey given her by an African explorer, a wildcat which was presented to her during one of her American tours, and two lion cubs, baptised “Justinian” and “Scarpia.” All four were tame and often accompanied her to the theatre, remaining in her dressing-room while she played.
She also once brought back with her from Mexico a tiger cub, which terrorised her household and, when she took it to the theatre one day, nearly broke up the performance by eating and tearing the curtains. The cub was finally poisoned by somebody in Sarah’s entourage. On one occasion I saw Sarah feeding live quails to this tiger cub in her dressing-room. The same day it bit Madame Joliet, the prompter.
Another savage creature Sarah once owned was a dog. She had only to say to him “Allez!” (Go!) and he would spring at anyone’s throat. One day when we were at the Hotel Avenida, Lisbon, Sarah asked me to go to my room to fetch something for her. As I went out I heard her say “Allez!” and the dog sprang at me. Fortunately my husband arrived just in time, and tore the dog away. White with fury, Pierre said to Sarah: “If that happens again, I’ll kill the brute!”
But I never believed Sarah did the thing deliberately. She was very apologetic.