Sarah Bernhardt. By Jules Huret. With a Preface by Edmond
Rostand. Translated from the French by G. A. Raper. With 55 Illustrations. (Chapman and Hall. 6s.)—The beat things in this book are the illustrations and two pages and a half of the preface. M. Eostand, who writes his introduction in the form of a familiar letter to his friend the author, sketches the bizarre and brilliant energy and activity of Madame Sarah Bernhardt, in a passage that is a capital example of racy description. This is how be remembers her coming to rehearsals :—" A brougham stops at the door ; a woman, enveloped in furs, jumps out, threads her way with a smile through the crowd attended by the jingling of the bell on the harness, and mounts a winding stair ; plunges into a room crowded with flowers and heated like a hothouse; throws her little beribboned handbag with its apparently inexhaustible contents into one corner, and her besvinged hat into another ; takes off her furs and instantaneously dwindles into a mere scabbard of white silk ; rushes on to a dimly-lighted stage and im- mediately puts life into a whole crowd of listless, yawning, loiter- ing folk ; dashes backwards and forwards, inspiring every one with her own feverish energy ; goes into the prompter's box, arranges her scenes, points out the proper gesture and intonation, rises up in wrath and insists on everything being done over again ; shouts with fury; sits down, smiles, drinks tea, and begins to rehearse her own part; draws tears from case-hardened actors who thrust their enraptured heads out of the wings to watch her ; returns to her room, where the decorators are waiting, demolishes their plans and reconstructs them ; collapses, wipes her brow with a lace handkerchief, and thinks of fainting; suddenly rushes up to the fifth floor, invades the premises of the astonished costumier, rummages in the wardrobes, makes up a costume, pleats and adjusts it ; returns to her room, and teaches the figurantes how to dress their hair; &c." This is word-portrait-painting with a vengeance. But the rest of the volume is mere bookmaking expensively got up. It passes in review Madame Bernhardt's principal impersonations, records her triumphs and ovations, and also those persecutions she is understood to have suffered, and the slaps and horsewhippings with which she avenged them. It is interesting to learn how in the beginning her success was rendered doubtful by a trick, inherited from her
mother, of speaking with her teeth clenched. One fails to understand how any one could speak audibly in such a
fashion ; but the statement is made in her own words and endorsed by M. Huret, of whom M. Rostand tells us that what he says "is history." We are glad that this book gives
again, in Madame Bernhardt's own words, a denial of the horrid stories about burning kittens and decapitating dogs. It was silly to kill an alligator by feeding it with champagne, but silliness, even when its consequences are fatal, is not so heinous as cruelty.
Previous page
