BERNHARDT THE WOMAN.

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 20

BERNHARDT THE WOMAN.

fAND THE ARTIST

}', [WHERE SHE OUTSHONE DURE

- r S&KIN TO GBEAT CONQUERORS M • AND CAPTAINS,

There have been greater actresses in flhei world than Sarah Bernhardt, but few-more extraordinary women, declares (William Archer in the "Manchester Guardian." In accomplishment she has been rivalled, in genius outstripped, but in physical and mental energy it is hard to find,her parallel. She.-was akin to the great captains and conquerors who have been compared to elemental forces. For more than a quarter ,of a century, (when she was 1 not perambulating the habitable, globe, carrying her theatre on her back, as it wore, and acting eight or nine times a week ths most exhausting characters known to the " modern stage, she was absorbed in the toils of actor-management in Paris, still, in a very real sense, carrying a theatre on her back, since but for her inexhaust-. ibla vitality it would utterly have collapsed and had no being. It is no hyperbole, to /'compare the energy required for such a career to the energy of a Napoleon or a B.'smarck. Their labours were concerned with infinitely greater objects, but it does not follow, that they were therefore niore exhausting. The manager of an Empire can, and' must, entrust more to deputies than can the manager of a great modern theatre— more, at any rate, than Sarah Bernhardt ever did. "Le theatre, Vest moi" was her motto; the whole organisation, from poet to call-boy, centred in her: she was "the very pulse of the machine." !An English actor-manager was once complaining to a friend of the intolerable, and crushing toil involved in his position. "No doubt, my dear fellow," replied the other, "but think of the splendid rest you have when you're on the stage?" The gibe would, have been meaningless in the case of Sarah-Bern-hardt. She threw herself with every ■nerve of her body into her acting, and her.,parts were, as a rule, far heavier even : than those which fall to th a lot .of an English actor-manager. She was 'a Napoleon who fought personally aight^ after night, and often twice a 'day, in the_ forefront of her battles. "Ou the first night of 'L'Aiglon,' " says an English dramatist who was present/ "the curtain did not fall till nearly two in the morning. She had gone through the jwhole enormous part without a single rcut.' For weeks before she had been | immersed, day and night, in the intev■jminable details of a great spectacular 'production. , Everyone else in the theatre "^as dropping with fatigue; but Sarah •was as fresh as paint. She game before the curtain to make the customary announcement of the author's name, and 'she put such elasticity into the commonrplace formula that.even if the piece had (been a failure that one phrase would I have brought the whole audience to their Ifeet in. a. tumult: of .enthusiasm." This indefatigable.energy was the more '^remarkable <as her physique, during her 1 youth,.had been noted for its fragility. Down., to.'.the age of 35 she was always ;ihought.to be at death's door, and it fjwas fully expected .that she. would imii.tate her "great -predecessor liachel in jfcoing to an early,grave.. Perhaps there may havo'been a certain amount of reclame in her fainting fits and her hemorrhages, as there was in her fancy for ! deeping in a coffin and other lugubrious caprices. But unquestionably ishe was very slim and willowy in person. Her thinness was the favourite jest |of the-.facetious paragraphist3 of Paris. j "An empty carriage drove up to the •^Theatre'Francaise," wrote one of ..them, "and -out; stepped Sarah Bernhardt." 'A .well-known caricature, . "Sarah-Cra-.vache,"..represents her transmuted into the semblance of one of those horsewhips' jwhich-ehe used, with such'freedom. It cannot~be~ denied that she was always rather cabbtine in her'instincts. Publicity had; not the slightest terrors for her. At the same time it would.be un- , just to attribute to mere love of notoriety her dabblings in painting and sculpture. They were merely an outlet,, in her , pre-managerial days, for those irrepressible • energies for which the routine of the Comedie Francaise provided no adequate employment. Moreover, she had real artistic and even literary talent. She was not only extraordinarily gifted, but intelligent to her finger-tips. H^er finest period as an actress lay between the'years 1875 and 1885. She had-then attained full artistic maturity, and. had not yet coarsened her talent by the reckless overwork of her European and American tours. .During her last years : at the Theatre Francaise she was certainly.an exquisite.creature. In such part 3as Dona Sol in "Hernani," the Queen in "Ruy Bias,"' Berthe in "La Kile de Roland," Mrs. Clarkson in "L 1Etrangere," and another Berthe in :"Le Sphinx," her, lithe and slender..figure and her insinuating, caressing,voice.pro-, duced an unforgetable effect/ 'Her" dic-tion-was always consummate, and though she lacked the physical-resources to carry her'to the utmost heights of such a char-. 1 acter as Bacine's Phedre," her. rendering of most of: the scenes, arid especially of the opening passages of languorous and hectic despair, was the perfection of purely poetic acting. Here, and in all characters demanding tragic elevation, ehe was: far superior to her great rival Eleanora Buse; but in modern parts the Italian's sincerity and depth of passion, produced, effects unattainable- by the more factitious art of the Frenchwoman. !At the same time there can be ho doubt that Sarah Bernhardt's range was much .wider than Duse's. If Duse carried the palm, (as in my judgment she certainly did) in such parts as "La Dame aux Camelias," Magda, and "La Femme de Claude,"," she was distinctly, inferior to Sarah Bernhardt not only in tragic part 3 but in those characters of frenzied, nervous excitability,-such as. Fedora, which Sardou-manufactured for world-wide ex-, portation... .Those: .who, hav.e seen Sarah Bernhardt only during the years when her inordinate ambition and energy carried her beyond the limits of her sex and led her to attempt Hamlet, Lorenzaccio, and L'Aiglon,i can form no conception, of what she\ was in the heydey of her ■■■■/.'■'■'■ .'. ':