HEROINES OF THE MODERN STAGE

MODERN HEROINES SERIES EDITED BY WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER

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Heroines of Modern Progress Heroines of Modern Religion Heroines of the Modern Stage

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Illustrated $1.50

HEROINES OF THE MODERN STAGE

BY FORREST IZARD

ILLUSTRATED

New York STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 1915

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1915, by STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1915

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PREFACE

The following pages give some account of those actresses who stand out today as the most interesting to an English-speaking reader. The Continental actresses included are those who gained international reputations and belonged to the English and American stage almost as much as to their own.

All actresses have been modern, in a sense, for the acting of female rôles by women is distinctly a latter-day touch in that ancient institution, the theatre.1 Thus a book on modern actresses might range from Elizabeth Barry to Mrs. Fiske. But while many volumes already exist that serve well to keep alive the names of the dead-and-gone heroines,2 biographies of actresses whom we of today have seen, are, in general, insufficient or inaccessible. That is true even of such notable women as Sarah Bernhardt, Ada Rehan and Mrs. Fiske; while accounts in English of such Continental actressesvi as Duse and Réjane are altogether lacking. The author hopes that in these chapters he has done something toward making better known the careers of those actresses and of others who present themselves either in vivid recollection or in the light of present day achievement. The concluding chapter deals briefly with a number of American actresses of the present, who, although not rising in all cases to the eminence or popularity attained by those to whom separate chapters are given, yet have made some

distinct contribution to our stage.

The author’s thanks are due to Mr. Edwin F. Edgett for the loan of material; to Mr. John Bouvé Clapp and to Mr. Robert Gould Shaw for the use of the originals from which some of the illustrations were made; and, for assistance of many kinds, to the editor of the series.

Boston, Massachusetts, October, 1915.

F. I.

xi

ILLUSTRATIONS

3

SARAH BERNHARDT

“Sarah-Bernhardt, Officier d’Académie, artiste dramatique, directrice du théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, professeur au Conservatoire;” so run the rapid phrases of the French “Who’s Who.” And, it might have added: “personality extraordinary, and woman of mystery.”

“The impetuous feminine hand that wields scepter, thyrsus, dagger, fan, sword, bauble, banner, sculptor’s chisel and horsewhip—it is overwhelming.” Thus the poet Rostand epitomized “the divine Sarah.” Her career, he said, gives one the vertigo—it is one of the marvels of the nineteenth century. And he might have added, of the twentieth, for Bernhardt, who began her stage career at the time of our Civil War, was only recently, at an amazing age, to be seen on the stage of London and Paris. There are many who think, with William Winter,3 that she has been merely “an accomplished4 executant, an experienced, expert imitator, within somewhat narrow limits, of the operations of human passion and human suffering.” The fact remains, the woman has been a genius of work and achievement, “the Lady of Energy,” who has fairly earned the title of great actress. It is difficult to think of any woman the light of whose fame has carried to the ends of the earth in quite the same way. To be sure it has not always been from the lamp

of pure genius. There have been self-advertising, scandal, extravagant eccentricity, to swell the general effect, but back of all this has been the worker.4

5 She was born in Paris, at 265 Rue St. Honoré, October 23, 1844.5 Her blood is a mingling of French and Dutch-Jewish. Her real name is Rosine Bernard, and she was the eleventh of fourteen children. Of her father6 hardly anything can be learned. Sarah herself says that when she was still a mere baby he had gone to China, but why he went there she had no idea. Her mother was, by birth, a Dutch Jewess, by sympathy a Frenchwoman, by habit a cosmopolitan; “a wandering beauty of Israel,” forever traveling. As much because there was no home, therefore, as because the French have a custom of banishing infants from the household, Sarah spent her childhood in the care of a foster-mother, first in the Breton country, near Quimperlé (where she fell in the fireplace and was badly burned), then at Neuilly, near Paris. Her mother came seldom to see her, though there seems to have been affection, at least on the child’s side. It was a lonely childhood—made worse by the high-strung, sensitive nature that was Sarah’s from the beginning.6

When Sarah was seven she was sent away to boarding school at Auteuil, where she says she spent two comparatively happy years. Her mysterious father then sent orders that she was to be transferred to a convent. “The idea that7 I was to be ordered about without any regard to my own wishes or inclinations put me into an indescribable rage. I rolled about on the ground, uttering the most heartrending cries. I yelled out all kinds of reproaches, blaming mamma, my aunts, and Mme. Fressard for not finding some way to keep me with her. The struggle lasted two hours, and while I was being dressed I escaped twice into the garden and attempted to climb the trees and throw myself into the pond, in which there was more mud than water. Finally, when I was completely exhausted and subdued, I was taken off sobbing in my aunt’s carriage.”7

At the Augustinian convent at Grandchamp, Versailles, she was baptized and confirmed a Christian. She became extravagantly pious and conceived a passionate adoration of the Virgin. Nevertheless, she was fractious and was more than once expelled.8

8 When she left the convent Sarah was a capricious, sensitive, religious girl, who must indeed have constituted a problem for her mother. Sarah, strangely enough, was herself strongly inclined to be a nun. But her mother, who was a woman of the world and of means, had other plans and provided as “finishing governess” for Sarah a Mlle. de Brabander. One day, when she was fifteen, her fate was decided for her. At a family council her own ambition to be a nun was voted down and the decision was: “Send her to the Conservatoire.” Sarah had never even heard of the famous school for actors of the government theatres. That same evening she was taken to the theatre for the first time—the Théâtre Français. Brittanicus and Amphitrion moved her profoundly, and she left the theatre weeping, as much for the sudden shattering of her cherished plan as from the effects of the plays.

Thus she began her studies at the Conservatoire (1860) with no love for the career chosen for her.9 She was no beauty;—she was decidedly9 thin, had kinky hair, and a pale face. But she worked hard. Her extraordinary nervous energy and her intelligence had their effect and when she left the Conservatoire she had won two second prizes.10 The discernment of some of the judges11 saw in her something of the artist she was to be, and she immediately had a call to the company of the Comédie Française. With the signing of her contract came her resolve, that if the stage were to be her working place, she would throw herself into her task with all her soul. “Quand-même,”—in spite of all,—was already her motto,—she would, in the face of any obstacle, win a place for herself.12

Though with wonderful success she has been busily pursuing that object from that day to10 this, the beginnings of her career were not promising. Her début (1862) in Racine’s Iphigénie created no particular comment. She remembers, however, that on that occasion, when she lifted her long and extraordinarily thin arms, for the sacrifice, the audience laughed.13 Other parts fell to her, but she did not long remain at the House of Molière. As other managers were later to learn, Sarah cared little for agreements and contracts.

The occasion of her first desertion of the Comédie was trivial enough. Here at the great national theatre she expected to remain always, but one day her sister trod on the gown of Mme. Nathalie, another actress of the company, “old, spiteful and surly,” who in petty anger shoved the girl aside. Sarah promptly responded by boxing the ears of her elder colleague. Neither would apologize, and the quickly achieved result was that the younger actress retired.

She remained away from the Comédie Française for ten years, and it was during this time that she laid the foundation of her fame. Brief engagements at the Gymnase14 and the Porte11 St. Martin were followed by an opportunity to join the company at the Odéon. MM. Chilly and Duquesnel were the managers. The latter was young, kind to Sarah, and discerning of her talents. As for Chilly, he was less enthusiastic: “M. Duquesnel is responsible for you. I should not upon any account have engaged you.”

“And if you had been alone, monsieur,” she answered, “I should not have signed, so we are quits.”

Mlle. Bernhardt’s career—once she had launched herself upon it—divides naturally into three periods: the six years (1866–1872) at the Odéon, the playhouse of the Latin Quarter, “the theatre,” she says, “that I have loved most”; another term (1872–1880) at the Française; and her long career since, during which she has been her own mistress, accepting engagements where it pleased her, managing theatres of her own, and traveling over all the world.

Her first taste of success came when she played Zacharie in Athalie, soon after she went to the Odéon. It fell to her to recite the choruses, and the “voix d’or” won its first triumph. She was now twenty-two. For four years, with plentiful interludes of temper and temperament, she had been striving for success. Now, at the Odéon, she worked and worked hard. “I was always ready to take any one’s place at a moment’s notice, for I knew all the rôles.” Chilly, who at first could see only her12 thinness15 and not her ability, was brought round to Duquesnel’s view of her. “I used to think,” she says again, “of my few months at the Comédie Française. The little world I had known there had been stiff, scandal-mongering, and jealous. At the Odéon I was very happy. We thought of nothing but putting on plays, and we rehearsed morning, afternoon, and at all hours, and I liked that very much.”16

At the Odéon Sarah soon became the favorite of the students of the Quartier. Rather to the disgust of the older patrons of the house, the students were indiscriminate in their appreciation of the young actress, and applauded her indifferent work equally with her successes.

For successes she now began to have. With difficulty M. Chilly was induced to consent to the production of Coppée’s one-act play Le Passant. But so successful was it that it not13 only ran for a hundred nights, but Bernhardt and the beautiful Mlle. Agar played it for Napoleon and Eugénie at the Tuileries. In Kean, by Dumas, she was, by all accounts, admirable.17

George Sand came to the Odéon for the rehearsals of her play L’Autre. Of her Bernhardt says: “Mme. George Sand was a sweet charming creature, extremely timid. She did not talk much but smoked all the time.”

In the midst of her term at the Odéon came an astonishing episode in Bernhardt’s career—her activities during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. The theatres were of course closed, but it was not in her nature to sit still and do nothing. Therefore she sent her young son18 out of the city, and in the fall of 1870, after her own severe illness, proceeded to establish an army hospital in the foyers of the Odéon, with herself as its working head. With an executive ability and a zeal characteristic but none the less remarkable, she not only organized its14 commissariat, and kept all the records and accounts, but herself acted as one of the nurses. The section of her autobiography that deals with the siege of Paris and with her journey through the enemy’s country to Hombourg and back that she might bring home her family, will afford some future historian a graphic impression of one of the saddest days in the history of Paris.

When the Odéon reopened, in the fall of 1871, Sarcey, the great critic, said of Sarah, who played (in Jean-Marie) a young Breton girl: “No one could be more innocently poetic than this young lady. She will become a great comédienne, and she is already an admirable artist. Everything she does has a special savor of its own. It is impossible to say whether she is pretty. She is thin, and her expression is sad, but she has queenly grace, charm, and the inexpressible je ne sais quoi. She is an artist by nature, and an incomparable one. There is no one like her at the Comédie Française.”

At the end of 1871 Victor Hugo, who had been practically an exile during the Empire, came back to France. His return, as it proved, meant another turning point in Sarah’s life, for when the Odéon decided to produce his Ruy Blas, she was selected, after a good deal of bickering, as the Queen. Hugo she found, despite her strong previous prejudice against him, “charming, so witty and refined, and so gallant.”19

15 The play was produced on January 26, 1872. That night, in Bernhardt’s own words, “rent asunder the thin veil which still made my future hazy, and I felt that I was destined for celebrity. Until that day I had remained the students’ little Fairy. I became then the elect of the Public.” Hugo himself, on his knee, kissed her hands and thanked her. M. Sarcey, who from the beginning was Bernhardt’s staunchest admirer among the critics, praised her warmly: “No rôle was ever better adapted to Mlle. Bernhardt’s talents. She possesses the gift of resigned and patient dignity. Her diction is so wonderfully clear and distinct that not a syllable is missed.”

The Comédie Française now made overtures for her return to its fold. Bernhardt at once16 accepted, which was wretchedly unfair to the Odéon, for she owed much to Duquesnel. When in 1866 he persuaded Chilly to take her on, she was comparatively unknown; now, in 1872, she was rapidly becoming the talk of Paris. Her contract with the Odéon had yet a year to run, but Sarah demanded, as the condition of her remaining, an advance in the stipulated salary.20 Chilly indignantly refused; so Mlle. Bernhardt hurried away to the Comédie and forthwith signed her new contract. The Odéon brought an action against her and she had to pay a forfeit of six thousand francs.

This sudden change of scene is but one instance of the directness, not to say unscrupulousness, of Bernhardt’s methods in advancing herself. “Quand-même” it was to be, at any cost. If she had merely followed her inclinations, however, she would probably have remained at the Odéon, for she has often protested the attraction for her of the scene of her first triumphs. The Comédie, on the other hand, had never this appeal to her. As is easily understood, her imperiousness and willfulness made her feel less at home at the more staid Comédie. The other members of her company, with a few exceptions, were unfriendly and jealous. Moreover she made almost a failure in her début (in Mlle. de Belle-Isle), but this was due not to stage-fright, as Sarcey guessed, but to her anxiety on seeing her mother, suddenly17 taken ill, leave the theatre. Sarcey loyally championed her early efforts, though he was often keenly critical also: “I fear,” he wrote (apropos of Dalila), “that the management has made a mistake in already giving Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt leading parts. I do not know

whether she will ever be able to fill them, but she certainly cannot do so at present. She is wanting in power and breadth of conception. She impersonates soft and gentle characters admirably, but her failings become manifest when the whole burden of the piece rests on her fair shoulders.” Other critics, particularly Paul de Saint-Victor, were consistently hostile. She had in the company envious rivals who inspired attacks on her, and she clashed frequently with M. Perrin, the director of the theatre. With that indomitable persistence that is her finest trait, however, she kept right on, and won her way to genuine achievement. As Aricie in Phèdre she made a secondary part notable. Thus Sarcey: “There can be no doubt about it now. All the opposition to Mlle. Bernhardt must yield to facts. She simply delighted the public. The beautiful verses allotted to Aricie were never better delivered. Her voice is genuine music. There was a continuous thrill of pleasure among the entire audience.”

That she had thoroughly arrived was soon to be proved and re-proved. Zaïre21 was followed18 by Phèdre herself, Berthe in La Fille de Roland, Doña Sol in Hernani, Monime in Mithridate, and revivals of Ruy Blas and Le Sphinx, each a personal triumph for the actress who was so rapidly filling the eye of Paris.22

For Sarah Bernhardt had by now succeeded in making herself, if not a universally acknowledged artist, at least a real Parisian celebrity.19 It was not a reputation confined to the actress per se. Designedly or not, Sarah set the tongues of Paris (and shortly of all Europe) wagging by a continuous exhibition of eccentricity that amounts to a tradition. To mention only what seem to be well authenticated manifestations of her caprice: She kept a pearwood coffin at the foot of her bed, slept in it and learned her parts in it. It is to be the veritable coffin of her last resting place.23 She kept as a further reminder of her mortality a complete human skeleton in her bedroom. Years before she had a tortoise as a household pet. She named it Chrysogère and had a shell of gold, set with topazes, fitted to its back. Now she was keeping two Russian greyhounds, a poodle, a bulldog, a terrier, a leveret, a monkey, three cats, a parrot, and several other birds. Later she had lions, and an alligator! She made ascents in a captive balloon at the Exhibition

and once in a balloon that was not captive.24 Perrin was outraged by this caprice and tried to fine her for “traveling without leave.” She wrote for the newspapers. She scorned the fashions. She dabbled in painting and sculpture, and, particularly with her chisel, her efforts were, if not noteworthy, at least respectable. Indeed, a group sculpture won an honorable mention in the Salon of 1876, though20 there were plenty to deny that it was really her work. Her studiolike apartment was the rendezvous of all artistic Paris.

In 1879 her poetic, restrained, and generally admirable impersonation of Doña Sol in Hernani brought her general homage. On the night of the one-hundredth performance Victor Hugo presided at a banquet in her honor, and M. Sarcey, in behalf of her “many admiring friends,” presented to her a necklace of diamonds.

When it was proposed, in 1879, that the Comédie Française company go to London, Sarah refused to go along unless she be made Associate “à parte entière.”25 Her proposal was rejected, and at a meeting of the Committee M. Got represented the feeling that prevailed among the directors of the theatre by crying: “Well, let her stay away! She is a regular nuisance!” Sarah finally gave in, however, and in reward was made “Sociétaire à parte entière.”26