Playing to the Gods

by Peter Rader

  Sarah’s departure for school was a grand affair, with two splendid carriages, one for the ladies and a second for their gentlemen escorts—on this occasion, a general, a painter, and a banker. The carriages belonged to Aunt Rosine, even more successful as a courtesan than her sister. When it came little Sarah’s turn to climb aboard the sumptuous vehicle, the seven-year-old “gave herself airs,” she would later write, “because the concierge and some shopkeepers were staring.” As the carriages rolled, Sarah felt hopeful, even eager, for what was to come—“my face pressed against the window and my eyes wide open.”

  In the hopes of it taming her unruly daughter, Youle had chosen Madame Fressard’s School for Girls just outside of Auteuil, an upscale suburb to the west of Paris, which would one day be incorporated into the capital as its elegant 16th arrondissement. Auteuil had been home to Molière and Victor Hugo, and was the birthplace of Marcel Proust—writers who would all feature in Bernhardt’s career decades hence. Sarah gazed up at the tall and ancient trees that lined the meandering lane. Officially, the tuition would be covered by Sarah’s “father,” but it was actually one of Youle’s regulars who ended up footing the bill. Sarah was a handful, a newborn was on the way, they wanted her gone. This time, Sarah was ready to oblige them.

  Head of school Madame Fressard, a plump woman with a slight mustache, greeted the new arrival with a warm embrace. Youle delivered a series of instructions to the matron: Sarah’s unruly hair was to be brushed thoroughly as to be knot-free before any attempt was made to comb it. She handed over twelve pots of jam and six pounds of chocolate, to be given alternately as special treats every afternoon. And there was the cold cream—a special formula made by Youle herself—to be applied nightly to Sarah’s delicate skin. The goods handed over, the courtesans and their escorts headed off to a trendy cabaret, where, as Sarah chose to remember it, “these gentlemen were to make arrangements for a little dinner . . . to console mamma for her great trouble in being separated from me.”

  Sarah was left to settle into her new life. “Reading, writing, and reckoning,” is what they taught her. Complementing the basic academics were lessons in singing and embroidery, the talents of a dutiful wife. This was what the courtesans may have hoped for Sarah. But Sarah had her own plans—and ambition like her mother.

  • • •

  The girls at Sarah’s boarding school could hardly contain their excitement. Madame Fressard had told them that Mademoiselle Colas, an ingénue from the Comédie-Française, was coming to perform for them. Stella Colas had a younger sister enrolled in Madame Fressard’s school, so Sarah and the other girls felt a special connection to this up-and-coming starlet. Mesmerized by her performance, Sarah wrote: “I would thrill in every fiber when this frail, blonde, pale girl tackled the dream of Athalie.”

  “Tremble! fille digne de moi,” the actress wailed.

  Athalie, written in 1691 and the final tragedy of Jean Racine, was viewed by many as a masterpiece. Voltaire considered the play the greatest triumph of the human mind. Whether Stella Colas’s delivery on that particular morning did justice to the flowing, poetic text cannot be known; it’s more than likely that she followed the Comédie-Française style of the time, which was melodramatic, overemotive, and pushed, meaning the emotions were forced rather than felt. Nevertheless, young Sarah was enchanted.

  “Tremble . . . trem . . . ble . . . trem-em-em-eble,” the child recited later that night from her cot, drawing out the syllables, allowing herself to be swept up in a fantasy of fame and stardom. Then, upon hearing cackles from the nearby bunks, she lashed out right and left with kicks and slaps, starting a catfight in the dormitory—a fairly regular affair, one would imagine, with increasing consequences. With her Jewish roots and wild hair—African in texture and bright red—Sarah would never quite fit in, nor did she care to. Bourgeois life was boring. Sarah imagined a far loftier trajectory.

  When she landed a key role some months later in the school play, Sarah felt vindicated. She had been cast in Clotilde, a popular fantasy for children, which had had a successful run at the Comédie-Française, starring her idol, Stella Colas.

  Sarah was to play the Fairy Queen, a smaller but important role; the eight-year-old strutted through rehearsals with purpose, immensely proud of her fairy wings.

  “My part,” she explained to an early biographer, “involved some pretty realistic acting in the second act, when the Queen of the Fairies dies of mortification on hearing Clotilde affirm that the fairies do not really exist.” This was to be her first big death scene.

  But the Fairy Queen’s fatal mortification was nothing compared to that which Bernhardt herself was about to endure. On the night of the play’s debut, she glanced at the audience to see “six beautifully gowned ladies and two gentlemen”: her mother, aunt, and several other courtesans, along with their gentlemen escorts. Sarah was stunned. While Sarah still craved Youle’s attention, she was by now well aware of the nature of her mother’s profession—and she was embarrassed by it. Would the other girls recognize them as courtesans? Would it make Sarah even more of an outcast? She froze up in mounting panic.

  Sarah caught a stern look from Madame Fressard, urging her to deliver her line, but the poor girl remained immobilized. She stammered for a few seconds, then, unable to continue, ran sobbing from the stage.

  Sarah was discovered later in the dormitories, her “head in the bedclothes, like an ostrich . . . weeping violently.” Youle shook her head in bitter disappointment. “And to think,” she said icily, “that this is a child of mine.”

  • • •

  When Sarah turned nine, it was decided that Madame Fressard’s little école had outlived its usefulness; Sarah would be sent to a convent instead. But as the courtesans appeared in Aunt Rosine’s carriages to pick up the child, Sarah balked. She had paid her dues at Madame Fressard’s; she was finding her place there, no longer feeling like a pariah.

  “The idea that my wishes and mode of life were once again being violated without my consent threw me into an unspeakable rage,” remembered Sarah. “I rolled on the floor, shrieked, and hurled reproaches against Mama, my aunts, and Madame Fressard.” But after two hours of struggling—escaping into the trees and diving into the mud—she gave in.

  Whether Sarah was truly this melodramatic as a young child or these myths were embellished as she aged, the underlying truth remains: Sarah was desperate to gain control of her own life. But how?

  The convent school in Versailles looked grim from the exterior, like a prison. Yet when Mother Sainte-Sophie emerged to greet them with a beatific smile, Sarah felt strangely at home—for the first time in her life. The Reverend Mother radiated the unconditional love that Sarah so craved, with “the most gentle and smiling face possible. Big blue childlike eyes . . . a full smiling mouth, fine strong white teeth. Her air of kindness, strength, and gaiety made me throw myself at once into [her] arms.”

  Thus began Sarah’s tenure at the Couvent de Grand-Champs. As a nun-in-training, Sarah would be receiving an annual salary of exactly one sou, symbolic of their poverty vow. Every child was given her own garden to tend, along with lessons in botany and other studies, none of which were of much interest to Sarah. Yet during her free time, she roamed the nearby woods, with its swings and hammocks. It was here that Sarah first developed a passion for animals, collecting insects and reptiles: adders, spiders, lizards, and crickets, which she kept in little boxes that she carried everywhere—both appalling and oddly appealing to the other girls.

  Though still a renegade, Sarah was less of an outcast here. While the girls at Madame Fressard’s were strictly bourgeois, the Couvent’s more diverse population included a pair of twins from Jamaica—“both as dusky as two young moles,” Sarah described them in her memoir.

  She continued to get into trouble at the Couvent and even throw the occasional tantrum, which the sisters met with rapid signs of the cross and a nervous sprinkling of holy water to exorcise the evil spirits that had apparently taken poss
ession of Sarah’s little body. Whether the remedy worked or not is unknown, but Sarah would spend six happy years, all told, at the Couvent.

  The most important event in these years was a visit by a person of fame, not an actress this time but a cleric. Monseigneur Sibour, the archbishop of Paris, was to be entertained by the girls, who would perform a play written by the Reverend Mother herself. When she cast the six speaking roles, however, Mother Sainte-Sophie passed over Sarah—offering the most coveted role, the Archangel Raphael, to her newfound “favorite playmate,” Louise Buguet, instead.

  “We certainly thought about you, dear,” Mother Superior told Sarah, gently stroking her cheek, “but you are always so timid when you are asked anything.” Sarah fumed. Her so-called timidity was limited to the classroom, particularly history and math.

  Although crushed, Sarah learned Louise’s lines alongside her friend. And so, when Louise faced a debilitating attack of stage fright on the day of the performance, Sarah stepped in as an understudy. While the memoir does not specify what caused Louise’s opening night jitters, one wonders if Sarah had anything to do with it.

  Despite her abysmal debut at Madame Fressard’s or perhaps because of it, Sarah remained taken by the idea of being an actress. Bernhardt would battle stage fright—quite common among actors—her entire career. She was haunted by the image of her mother’s cold, judging eyes, ogling her from the third row. But Sarah, with her formidable willpower, intended to conquer that demon. What better way to subjugate it than in the role of an archangel?

  Ignoring her mother entirely this time, Sarah performed magnificently, according to her account of the evening. She adored the Catholic Church’s rituals and pageantry, and acted her part with gusto, culminating in an ecstatic finale in which Sarah ascended to heaven in an “apotheosis.” So impressed was Monseigneur Sibour that he agreed to officiate at Sarah’s baptism. It was the monseigneur’s idea to baptize the Jewess; Youle leaped at it. She even arranged to have Sarah’s sisters baptized at the same time. They would be Jews no longer. Youle actually cried at the ceremony; Sarah saw it and was secretly elated. She dreamed, in fact, of becoming a nun.

  • • •

  After Sarah’s impulsive conversion to Christianity, Youle decided it was time to plan for her daughter’s future. So she convened a family council consisting of her courtesan sister along with some of their influential patrons, including the Duc de Morny, the illegitimate half brother of Emperor Napoleon III.

  It was 1859. Sarah had just turned fifteen, the legal age for marriage—and that possibility was much discussed. It was why she had been sent to the convent to begin with. But despite her baptism and recent refinements, there were significant impediments to bourgeois matchmaking. Sarah remained the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish courtesan; the obvious choice for Sarah was to enter the family business.

  While Youle may have secretly preferred a respectable betrothal for her daughter, there are rumors from several sources that she sold Sarah and her sisters to patrons as early as age thirteen. The most explicit of these accounts came from Sarah’s former friend Marie Colombier. The two began together as young actresses, but Sarah’s rise would leave the less talented Marie resentful. Twenty-five years on, as Sarah gained worldwide acclaim, Colombier would publish a mean-spirited unauthorized biography entitled Les Mémoires de Sarah Barnum, a mocking parody of her former friend’s surname. Colombier’s bias is obvious, but she remains one of the few eyewitnesses to this period of Sarah’s young life.

  When both girls were sixteen, Marie spent time in Youle’s lively apartment, where courtesans mingled with clients amid drink and debauchery. Colombier recounts one night in 1860 when Youle (whom she renamed Esther in the book) forced her daughter to kiss the girl’s elderly “godfather,” Monsieur Régis, and allow him to caress her as she sat on his lap. Her illegitimate sisters each had their own “godfathers”—whether this is code for biological father or patron is unclear.

  But Sarah wanted to distance herself at all costs from her mother’s salon, which is why she announced one day that she had found herself a reliable husband—a man who would never abandon her. The courtesans glanced with sudden curiosity. The teenager told them she planned to wed the Lord Savior—she wanted to be a nun. This elicited titters of amusement.

  The nunnery was not a good match for spirited Sarah, and finding a spouse would be a challenge, too. So the Duc de Morny proposed a third option: “Why not send the child to the Conservatoire?” It was an instinct, something he saw in her. (Morny may have been present the night Sarah performed as Raphael for the archbishop of Paris.)

  Founded in 1795, the Conservatoire de Paris was a well-regarded college of music and drama. The courtesans thought Morny’s idea was not so far-fetched, so they decided to persuade Sarah by taking her to her first performance at an actual theater. The teenager was delighted because, as she later explained, “it was now felt necessary to pamper and spoil me to get my consent. I could no longer be forced to do what others wanted. My consent had to be sought. I felt so joyful and proud . . . that I almost inclined to give it. But, I said to myself, I would make them beg for it all the same.”

  Not much begging was needed. Sarah was whisked into a private box belonging to another patron of Youle’s salon: Dumas père, author of The Count of Monte Cristo. “When the curtain slowly rose,” Sarah would write in her memoir, “I thought I was going to faint. It was, in fact, the curtain of my life that was rising. Those columns . . . would be my palace. That backdrop would be my sky.”

  Tears rolled down the young girl’s cheeks.

  • • •

  Bernhardt was infamous from the moment she entered the Conservatoire. She had had the temerity to recite a common folk fable at her audition, something that should have dashed her chances immediately. But the Duc de Morny pulled strings and a spot was hers.

  Turbulent, always late, she did not win many friends. Indeed, her fellow students quickly grew to resent her. Their lessons included deportment, enunciation, vocal technique, and rote recitation of classical scenes. Certain instructors would demonstrate precisely how a particular speech was meant to be delivered, and the students were expected to mimic every inflection and every pose. Sarah tried things her own way—speaking tenderly on a line that was meant to be violent, for example. The behavior was met with disapproval, though some in the faculty noticed that Sarah was simply trying to make a more interesting choice. After two semesters of study, Bernhardt hoped to graduate at the top of her class, but the coveted prizes went to others.

  “Well, you have completely failed,” said her godfather Monsieur Régis, a bourgeois businessman and salon regular. “Why are you so set on acting? You are thin . . . your face is ugly at a distance, and your voice doesn’t carry.”

  Defiant, Sarah vowed to become famous one day simply to spite him. Her motto, which she repeated like a mantra and would one day engrave on her dinner plates, was Quand même (meaning “in spite of it all”). But later, in the privacy of her room, she felt nothing but shame. Sarah had her heart set on joining the national theater company, the Comédie-Française. Now that felt unattainable.

  Later that evening came a note. Morny had intervened again: Sarah’s position at the Comédie-Française had been arranged.

  • • •

  It did not matter to Sarah that this was the oldest and most renowned acting company in the world; the rebel would push back at will. She recalls how she was lectured like a marionette on “the positions that I should take up, the moves we should make.” She was told never to turn her back on the audience, but she tried it anyway. Like Eleonora, she chafed at the established rules. But instead of overturning them, Sarah stretched and bent them to her whims. If Sarah Bernhardt was going to use poses, they would be Sarah Bernhardt poses—things of beauty and grace . . . and power, not those ridiculous marionette gestures in the manuals. Sarah would one day take her signature poses to ecstatic heights. No one did them better.

  But Sara
h’s first few outings on the boards showed little of that promise. In her 1862 Comédie debut, she was overcome by stage fright that left her frozen in the footlights. Fancisque Sarcey, the most influential critic in Paris, summed it up as follows: “Mlle. Bernhardt is tall and pretty and enunciates well, which is all that can be said for the moment.”

  “No stage presence,” wrote another. “Sarah Bernhardt has no personality; she possesses only a voice,” wrote a third. With notices like that, the Comédie-Française had little choice: they benched her. Quand même.

  Far from being discouraged by this inauspicious start, Sarah remained determined “to become the best, most famous, and most envied of actresses.” She counted off the qualities she would need: grace, charm, distinction, beauty, mystery, piquancy. “Oh everything! . . . I had them all,” she wrote in her memoir, mocking her own youthful narcissism. But whether she possessed all the requisite qualities or not, she would advance no further at the Comédie-Française.

  It didn’t take long for Sarah to engineer the perfect out. The occasion: the birthday of playwright Molière on January 15, 1863, when the entire company honored the memory of its founder by forming a solemn procession to lay palm fronds before his bust. Sarah had taken her younger sister Régine to the ceremony and they found themselves behind “the very fat and very solemn Madame Nathalie,” the terror of the company. When Régine accidently stepped on the train of her ostentatious dress, the woman pushed the child to the ground. “Nasty bitch!” shouted Sarah, and proceeded to slap the aging diva across her plump cheeks. Twice.

  Whether the episode was planned, impulsive, or entirely fabricated, the message was clear: no one messes with a Bernhardt. But the slaps caused a scandal. Madame Nathalie was a Sociétaire, meaning she had tenure as a senior member of the company. Shocked by Sarah’s insolence, the dowager fainted, followed by “tumult, brouhaha, indignation,” wrote Sarah in her memoir. Her own feelings were “suppressed laughter” and “a sense of satisfied vengeance.”