SARAH BERNHARDT AS DOÑA SOL IN “HERNANI.”
It was, therefore, with a rather heavy heart that I left Boston for New Haven, and to my great surprise on arriving at the hotel at New Haven, I found Henry Smith there, the famous whale man. “Oh, heavens!” I exclaimed, flinging myself into an armchair, “what does this man want now with me?”
I was not left in ignorance very long for the most infernal noise of brass instruments, drums, trumpets, and I should think saucepans, drew me to the window. I saw an immense carriage surrounded by an escort of negroes dressed as minstrels. On this carriage was an abominable, monstrous, colored advertisement representing me standing on the whale, tearing away its blade while it struggled to defend itself. Some sandwich men followed with posters on which were written the following words: “Come and see the enormous cetacea which Sarah Bernhardt killed by tearing out its whalebone for her corsets. These are made by Mme. Lily Noé who lives, etc.” Still other sandwich men carried posters with these words: “The whale is just as flourishing (sic) as when it was alive. It has five hundred dollars’ worth of salt in its stomach, and every day the ice upon which it was resting is renewed at a cost of one hundred dollars!”
My face turned more livid than that of a corpse and my teeth chattered with fury on seeing this. Henry Smith advanced toward me and I struck him in my anger, and then rushed away to my room, where I sobbed with vexation, disgust, and utter weariness. I wanted to start back to Europe at once, but Jarrett showed me my contract. I then wanted to take steps to have this odious exhibition stopped and in order to calm me, I was promised that this should be done, but in reality nothing was done at all. Two days later I was at Hartford and the same whale was there. It continued its tour as I continued mine. They gave it more salt, and renewed its ice, and it went on its way, so that I came across it everywhere. I took proceedings about it, but in every state I was obliged to begin all over again, as the law varied in the different states. And every time I arrived at a fresh hotel I found there an immense bouquet awaiting me with the horrible card of the showman of the whale. I threw his flowers on the ground and trampled on them, and much as I love flowers, I had a horror of these. Jarrett went to see the man and begged him not to send me any more bouquets, but it was all of no use as it was the man’s way of avenging the box on the ears I had given him. Then, too, he could not understand my anger. He was making any amount of money and had even proposed that I should accept a percentage of the receipts. Ah! I would willingly have killed that execrable Smith, for he was poisoning my life. I could see nothing else in all the different cities I visited, and I used to shut my eyes on the way from the hotel to the theater. When I heard the minstrels I used to fly into a rage and turn green with anger. Fortunately, I was able to rest when once I reached Montreal, where I was not followed by this show. I should certainly have been ill if it had continued, as I saw nothing but that, I could think of nothing else, and my very dreams were about it. It haunted me, it was an obsession and a perpetual nightmare. When I left Hartford, Jarrett swore to me that Smith would not be at Montreal as he had been taken suddenly ill. I strongly suspected that Jarrett had found a way of administering to him some violent kind of medicine which had stopped his journeying for the time. I felt sure of this, as the ferocious gentleman laughed so heartily en route, but anyhow I was infinitely grateful to him for ridding me of the man for the present.
For a long time, ever since my earliest childhood, I had dreamed about Canada. I had always heard my godfather regret, with considerable fury, the surrender of that territory by France to England.
I had heard him enumerate, without very clearly understanding them, the pecuniary advantages of Canada, the immense fortune that lay in its lands, etc. ... and that country had seemed to my imagination the far-off promised land.
Awakened some considerable time previous by the strident whistle of the engine, I asked what time it was. Eleven o’clock, I was informed. We were within fifteen minutes of the station. The sky was black and smooth, like a steel shield. Lanterns placed at distant intervals caught the whiteness of the snow heaped up there for how many days!... The train stopped suddenly and then started again with such a slow and timid movement that I fancied that there might be a possibility of its running off the rails. But a deadened sound, growing louder every second, fell upon my attentive ears. This sound soon resolved itself into music ... and it was in the midst of a formidable “Hurrah! Long live France!” shouted by ten thousand throats, strengthened by an orchestra playing the “Marseillaise” with a frenzied fury, that we made our entry into Montreal.
The place where the train stopped in those days was very narrow. A somewhat high bank served as a rampart for the slight platform of the station.
Standing on the small step of my carriage, I looked with emotion upon the strange spectacle I had before me. The bank was packed with bears holding lanterns. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. In the narrow space between the bank and the train which had come to a stop, there were more bears, large and small ... and I wondered with terror how I should manage to reach my sleigh.