SARAH BERNHARDT'S MEMOIR : MY DOUBLE LIFE : ON PROJECT GUTENBERG

GUTENBERG ORG : SARAH BERNHARDT : MY DOUBLE LIFE 

Ma Double Vie (My Double Life) was published in 1907.  However, scholars don't think it's the most accurate account of Sarah Bernhardt's life. Still, I always think it's important to consider what a person has to say about themselves because who knows a person better?

I think it's interesting the way the book is described in Project Gutenberg: "The book chronicles the extraordinary life and career of the renowned French actress, emphasizing her personal experiences, challenges, and the pivotal moments that shaped her into a theatrical legend. The memoir touches upon themes of childhood, resilience, and the performing arts, offering readers an intimate look at the woman behind the iconic performances. The opening of the memoir introduces Bernhardt's tumultuous early years, revealing the absence of parental care as her mother frequently traveled and left her in the care of a nurse. Bernhardt reflects on her childhood experiences in Brittany, her relationships with her family, and a serious incident during her infancy that required her mother’s hurried return. The narrative sets the tone for Bernhardt's later struggles and triumphs, detailing her feelings of abandonment and the longing for familial affection. As the opening progresses, it hints at her eventual journey towards becoming a prominent actress, interspersing her childhood memories with vivid descriptions of her environment and the care she received from her nurse."

SARAH BORE HER SON MAURICE AND NO DOUBT BECAME A COURTESAN FOR A WHILE

There were so many stories of Sarah's son's fatherhood, some from her, that overall, there is no way to know. Prince Henry de Ligne is said to be the love of her life. But it would be like a courtesan to claim a royal or aristocratic man as the father of her child. It would be like a royal or aristocratic man to be the patron of a courtesan. Or did she spin a story or have a fantasy?

Did she tell him right away? Did he find her? Did his rejection create such turmoil that she became a patient in a psychiatric hospital?  Apparently Sarah had a difficult birth of Maurice.

Page 43 Excerpt: Even so, her amorous life was proceeding far more successfully than her professional life. Beginning in April 1864 when she abandoned the Gymnase, she had no work in the theater for more than two years, expect for a short run as a replacement in a kind of fairy spectacle called La Biche au bois. So far she had made no impression at all as an actress. What was she doing?

 According to author Robert Gottlieb, having Maurice changed Sarah because she became determined she would support her son. (Page 43) "Every aim of her existence was to provide for him while he was young the shield of respectability she herself had never known." When she appealed to Prince de Lingne for support of Maurice, down to her last dollars, "The prince's reply was brutality itself: "I know a woman named Bernhardt, he wrote, 'but I do not know her child."

Excerpt: "This period of her life has been fudged over by her first biographers, starting with herself, but it's now clear that she was living by her wits -- and her body. Not of course, as a common prostitute of kept woman, but in an unique situation that she fashioned through her sexuality, her charm, and her common sense. In the white-satin salon of her new apartment in the rue Duphot she managed to establish a kind of court, made up of a group of distinguished men who were seemingly content to pay joint homage (and a fairly allocated tariff) to her while sharing her favors openly and with equanimity. "What's odd," she told Colombier -- if you can believe Colombier, and in this case I do --- "is how well they get along together.  They never quarrel and they seem to adore one another. I sometimes think that if I were to disappear, my menagerie would go on congregating in my apartment with the greatest of pleasure."  Apparently, among their joint ventures was chipping in to buy Saran the elaborate coffin she had always wanted, and which famously accompanied her thereafter wherever she went.

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CONTEMPLATION

By Alphonse Mucha

SARAH BERHARDT'S COURTESAN MOTHER - YOULE VAN HARD - TRIED TO MARRY HER OFF OR PUSH HER INTO THE DEMIMONDE : SARAH HAS A SON WHEN SHE'S TWENTY

When Sarah Bernhardt was starting her acting and singing career at the Conservatoire, she was living at "home," meaning the home her Courtesan mother kept in Paris. It's my notion that while at school she was spared the whole truth of her mother's life in the demimonde. But, once living there, her mother wanted her to support herself and tried to marry her off. Considering her talent but also her station in life, because of her Jewish ancestry and her mother's lifestyle, the men she was introduced were not illustrious. That said, Sarah determined that she would only marry for love.

However, more than one writer suggested that Sarah's mother, Youle Van Hard, pushed her to become sexual with older men, to kiss them and allow them to caress - molest her. Here is an excerpt from page 32 of Robert Gottlieb's book, which an actress, Marie Colombier, said to be  Sarah's 'mortal enemy,' wrote, and where Sarah is called Sarah Barnum. (Yes Barnum like the circus; readers knew who she was writing about.)

The Jewess (Youle) kept nudging Sarah's elbow. Having for a long while pretended not to take the hint, the young girl at last, influenced by a kick under the table, backed by a no less persuasive glance, was obliged to leave her seat and kiss their "good friend." Instantly the old man's eye glowed like a live coal played upon by a jet of oxygen. The young actress, absolutely transfixed by the maternal glares that never for an instant left her, suffered herself to be caressed while concealing her disgust, through she was powerless to subdue the shudder that passed over her each time the cold lips of M. Riges touched her throat or glued themselves to her delicate chin.  her docility was rewarded by the gift of a banknote... Then the countenance of Mms Barnum lighted up. ....  (M. Riges is identified elsewhere as Sarah's godfather.)

Although it was possible that this was written to defame Sarah and her mother, there are other accounts of Youle's attempts to turn her daughters into 'whores.' Youle had three daughters, Sarah, Jeanne, and Regina, and the rumors where that she had started them out as prostitutes at age thirteen. Of course this is also refuted and impossible when it comes to Sarah who was at school. Jeanne, for whatever reason, was always the favorite, and so Regina, as loveless as Sarah, became the beloved little sister who looked up to Sarah.

Marie Colombier's telling of how Sarah met the first man who was very likely her lover, Emile de Keratry, a Comte, a hussar, and man about town who was 'jaded 'when it came to women, is also suspected to come from hatred. Was he her choice or was this also about her mother's machinations? Author Gottlieb reports that once the relationship became sexual, her mother rented a larger apartment with a separate entrance for Sarah.  (Page 34) And so at least for a brief time Sarah became a Courtesan herself. However, Sarah and her mother were never destined to get along well enough to live together, both with temperaments. And here is where the shadowy figure of a grandmother who provides comes in, for Sarah is given money to set up her own apartment.  Little sister Regina went to live with Sarah.

As an actress, after eight months on contract with the Comedie-Francaise, Sarah tore up her contract but was offered another at Gymnase, another theater. She performed in several productions for these theaters with no hint of eternal fame. 

She may have also continued in the demimonde. In Sarah's memoirs she may have created a story about travels in Spain to avoid telling the truth of her pregnancy. She had a son she named Maurice when she was twenty at the end of 1864 and had also quit the Gymnase by that time.

The question of who Maurice Bernhardt's father is answered as Prince Henry de Ligne, however she joked about who else it might be including the poet Victor Hugo, a General Boulander, and some impossible or unlikely candidates were named by Sarah herself or others. She claimed Prince de Ligne to be the love of her life and so he is presumed to be the father of Maurice Bernhardt.

The story of how Sarah Bernhardt met de Ligne and what their relationship was, like much about her, is confused by story telling and myth making. Was theirs really a passionate love match? Did he really want to marry her? Did his family prevent that from happening?

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THE EDUCATION OF SARAH BERNHARDT : HER COURTESAN MOTHER YOULE VAN HARD WANTED HER OUT OF THE WAY - OR DID SHE?

This is the kind of book report-review that I like to do in order to get the information I think my readers are most information into this blog:

Sarah, at the age of seven, couldn't read, write, or do arithmetic and so it was decided that she would go to Mme. Fressard's boarding school.  It was fashionable and in a suburb of Paris called Auteuil. She was there for two years learning these basics as well as singing and the lady-like art of embroidery. She made friends and Mme. Fressard was a kindly person, so this experience was a good one. However, she was also bullied by the mean girls at the school and she fought back physically as well as having "fits of temper."  (page 12-13)

This school experience is said to influence her interest in the theatre due to an actress that came once a week to recite poetry and because she made her first appearance as an actress in a school play.

Sarah would soon realize that her mother didn't love her or loved her new baby sister more. This would effect her emotionally for the rest of her life.

Her mother only came to see her twice at school and her father only once, but that means that her father was aware of her and took some interest in her. Or was it that her father identified himself to her and came to visit her several times, deciding that her religious education required that Sarah be moved to a different school where she would be raised as a Roman Catholic.

Page 13 Excerpt:  ..."Alas! This was not the last time that my mother's chilly behavior toward me threw me into a paroxysm of misery resulting in illness. I never grew callous to her disapproval of me; her cutting criticisms always had the power to would me to the heart."  (according to biographer Therese Berton, who was a contemporary of Sarah's on page 13.)

Author Gottlieb says that Sarah was enrolled in convent school in Versailles. According to Wikipedia, "Bernhardt was admitted to Grandchamps, an exclusive Augustine convent school near Versailles."

It was Duc de Morny who paid for Sarah's education there, according to Wikipedia, which could indicate that he was her father, or it could simply indicate that he was involved with her mother. Gottlieb writes that it was her mother who took her to the school, where she was a student for six years with Mother Saint Sophie as her mother substitute. She loved it there but she was a prankster and always close to being expelled. Here again she was drawn to be a stage actress. 

Her Jewishness, born of a Jewish mother, became a situation. She was baptized             - along with her baby sister. 

Page 17 Excerpt: "The years at the convent accomplished what they had been meant to accomplish "The Little Jewish girl" had learned the manners and speech of upper-class Paris, and now not only was officially a Catholic but had thrown herself, with her typical dramatic intensity, into her new religion. (Sarah considered becoming a nun.) ... Her passionate desire to stay on permanently in the convent was something not to be considered by Youle, nor - unsurprisingly - did Mother Saint Sophia detect much of a true calling in the unruly Sarah.... .... It was 1859, and Sarah was almost fifteen - more or less a grown woman.

And, Gottlieb writes, marriage was out of the question despite her Catholic education because she was the daughter of a Jewish courtesan.  But Youle did get her a chaperone and governess who was good to Sarah. Mme Guerard turned out to be a close, reliable, life-long friend (Mme died in 1900) who was also a mother figure to Sarah... and a witness to her life, including the birth of her son, Maurice...

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YOULE VAN HARD : CRUEL COURTESAN MOTHER OF SARAH BERNHARDT? : DID SHE KNOW WHO SARAH'S ABSENT FATHER WAS? OR TELL MORE THAN ONE MAN HE WAS THE FATHER?

While reading Sarah by Robert Gottlieb I found myself speculating quite a bit and I realized something. The story of Sarah Bernhardt's childhood as the daughter of a Courtesan who was sent away to be raised by others or put into a convent, reminds me of other women I've featured here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO who were sent away... Do you know who I mean?

***

Not one of the 'Grand Horizontals', but a woman with a "protector" or a few, according to author Robert Gottlieb, Sarah's mother, Youle Van Hard - also called Judith or Julie Van Hard - was a pretty blond with some lazy charm but surprising strong willpower... And seems to have been too busy elsewhere to give a damn about Sarah. Though the story is not straight and there are varying accounts.

Excerpt page 3: "Youle conducted a relaxed salon to which a group of distinguished men gravitated, among them her lover Baron Larrey, who was the Emperor Louis-Napoleon's doctor and composer Rossini, the novelist and playwright Dumas's father, and the Duc de Morny, known as the most powerful man in France, who was Louis-Napoleon's illegitimate half-brother. It was Rosine, Youle's younger, prettier, livelier sister, who was Morny's mistress except when Youle herself was; in these circumstances it hardly mattered..."

.

"Youle (Sarah's mother) and Rosine (Sarah's aunt) had come a long way. Their mother, Julie (or Jeanette) Van Hard, a Jewish girl of either German or Dutch in origin, had married Maurice Bernard, a Jewish oculist in Amsterdam. When their mother died and their father remarried, Youle and Rosine struck out on their own, first to Basel, then on to London and le Havre, where in 1843 Youle - perhaps fifteen years old - gave birth to illegitimate twin girls, both of whom died within days... 

Undeterred, the ambitions Youle quickly set out for Paris, her daytime occupation seamstress, her nighttime career a quick ascent into the demimonde."

It seems to me that a mother's remarriage would not necessarily be the whole story on why two teenagers left home knowing they'd have to support themselves and found that way by becoming courtesans.

Rosine became a courtesan in Paris, while sister Henriette made a decent and respectable marriage. And then Youle was pregnant again, this time with Sarah. It is understood that Youle simply was never much interested in Sarah, while she did take interest in the next child she gave birth to, another girl, who was also illegitimate. (Youle would eventually have three daughters and it is understood that she tried to introduce Sarah into her world.)

Youle's disinterest in Sarah might have had something to do with who the father was. The best candidate?

It's implied that the Duc de Morny might have been Sarah's father.

There was a young navy officer, surname Morel. There was some money intended for Sarah from Morel or his family - eventually.

Sarah's father might have been a college student. 

The father's name on her birth certificate, Edouard Bernhardt, is also a confusion. One wonders if Youle just made up the name. (It is awfully close to the name Bernard.)

Sarah had memories of being a young child who was sent away to a small village in Brittany where a nurse substituted for her mother as a kind of foster parent. (Eventually she and the nurse were moved closer to Paris.) Sarah would write that her father had been in China for a couple years, which sounds to be something Youle - or Sarah - made up to explain the absence of a father to Sarah. Her mother was only nineteen when Sarah was three, and her youth and circumstances might be partly to blame for being uninvolved in her daughter's life. But, be it that an Edouard Bernhardt was the name given on her birth certificate as her father, or not, there was no consistent presence of a father figure as she grew up. At best she might have had a few visits from him at school or understood him as interested in her education and religion. In her memoir, 'A Double Life,' Sarah gave credit to her father for her attendance at an elite convent - ie. boarding school.

It is just as likely, in my opinion, that Youle may have told more than one man he was the father of her child, or come up with the money for Sarah's boarding through her own efforts. (Which could include investing money she'd been given or paid.)

Though author Gottlieb doesn't suggest this, it comes to me that perhaps Youle's rejection of Sarah, which caused her so much emotional pain throughout her life, while being clearly capable of loving her next born daughter, might have been due to something more horrible than not knowing which patron was Sarah's father. For Youle, according to Sarah, was, in my word choice, abusive. It was reported by the wife-author of one of Sarah's lovers that Sarah said her mother was not just distant but disapproving and cruel and had the power to wound her. 

However, Sarah herself reported that during her childhood, both her Aunt Rosine and her Aunt Harriet were somewhat in her life and it occurs to me that, however judicious in his reportage author Robert Gottlieb has, we may not get too close to the whole story.

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SARAH BERNHARDT : DAUGHTER OF COURTESAN YOULE VAN HARD : TRANSFORMED HERSELF INTO A WORLD FAMOUS ACTRESS AND A NATIONAL ICON OF FRANCE KNOWN FOR HER OWN "SCANDALOUS" LIFE

SARAH BERNHARDT  

(1844-1923) 

Baptized Sarah Marie Henriette Bernard but born Jewish

Eventually Called The Girl With The Golden Voice

I've had Sarah Bernhardt, who was considered the best actress of her generation, on my list of future subjects for some time. My search for books in English that are well regarded lead me to this one by author Robert Gottlieb, which is primary reference for this month's posts, along with some interesting web sites and YouTube videos. Gottlieb states that Sarah herself spun stories and that some of the people who wrote about her had agendas and so, perhaps, it's not possible to know the true or whole story. But he does try.

I think Sarah Berhardt had a hard life but like many of the people profiled here, she made the best of what she had to deal with.

What surprised me was learning that Sarah's mother, Youle Van Hard, was a courtesan in Paris and that she was born illegitimate and unloved. I was also surprised to learn that after Youle took Sarah out of school, she encouraged her to become a teenage courtesan. Youle had three illegitimate daughters over the years. You could say she set her daughters up to be courtesans, and, though youthful Sarah did have patrons for at least some of the time in her youth, her younger sister reportedly became a prostitute and had an even harder life. 

Sarah's eventual successes may have begun because it seems that her mother, a patron, or most likely her birth father, were willing to provide an education for the girl. This was a time when women often went without an education. She took an early interest in acting and the theater and was educated at a good convent school and then a school for acting, but she was also born into a world where her gender - her family's situation - her class at birth - and her Jewishness came with limits. If you've been reading Mistress Manifesto, then you know that many a courtesan in previous centuries was also an entertainer. It was beauty, talent, and fame that attracted patrons and who knows what came first. Acting has become a respectable profession but it wasn't always. It was long assumed that any actor, any theater person, was living a scandalous life.

Sarah Bernhardt eventually became world famous - a celebrity - while also known for her 'love life.' I think that Sarah was expert at marketing and promoting herself, kind of like the way the singer-dancer Madonna, an expert at reinvention, has been. As an example, in her youthful days, Sarah posed with a hat that had a bat on top rather than a bird and took a coffin with her on her travels, and may have slept in it, which is sort of "ghoul school." Or was that just for a photo? I suspect that, if she took her coffin seriously, it was to remind herself to live life to the fullest rather than any darker reason such as thinking of herself as a Parisian vampire.

Sarah Bernhardt may have been known to love her independence. Was she a feminist? We can't say that just becoming an unmarried mother who has to support a child makes a woman a feminist. What went on in Paris, where courtesans had their place in society was one thing. Her behavior and attitudes were even thought to be part of an exaggerated or unstable personality. And maybe she did have some sort of breakdown at one point or another. 

Sarah Bernhardt was Jewish by birth but her father was Catholic. She, and her sisters, were baptized eventually. She was placed in a Catholic orphanage. But who really was her father? 

It wasn't common for a discarded orphan to leave a convent at thirteen years old and begin school at the Conservatoire de Musique et Declamation in Paris. Someone was interested in her education and her religion and wanted to give her a chance at success. Was that person her mother, who she believed - with good reason - didn't love her but who might have set aside some money? A father?

Excerpts from EBSCO.com: "Although she won second prize for tragedy in 1861 and second prize for comedy in 1862, she regarded the conservatory’s methods as antiquated. She left the conservatory in 1862 and accepted a contract with the national theater of France, the famed Comedie Francaise....In 1867, when Bernhardt was twenty-two years old, she became a member of the company at the Odeon, where she found definite successes in roles such as Cordelia in a French translation of William Shakespeaer's play King Lear (pr. c. 1605-1606), as Zanetto in François Coppée’s verse play, La Passant (1869), and as the queen in Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas (1838). Indeed, it was Hugo himself who called Bernhardt the girl with the Golden Voice (vox d’or)—a name that stayed with her throughout her life. Meanwhile, Bernhardt’s success was so immediate that she even gave a command performance for France’s Emperor Napoleon III. However, the Franco-Prussian War interrupted her rising career with the closing of the Paris theaters in 1870."

Like several of the women I've featured here, Sarah was a woman who inspired artists to portray her. Alphonse Mucha, whose posters are rather well known to this day, was a collaborator with Sarah. She posed for him and he also designed costumes, sets and jewelry for her. He even enjoyed a seven year contract with Sarah. Their professional relationship began when Mucha designed this poster for her, as she starred in the play 'Gismonda.'

These posters were all over Paris the first of January, 1895.

Also, like several of the women I've featured here, a flower was created and named for Sarah, which is a peony.

In Robert Gottlieb's book we learn early that Sarah was not exactly the most truthful person, though her lies, as I see it, were out of concern for her reputation, her career, and ultimately her ability to support herself and her son. He says on page one that she was "a complete realist when dealing with her life but a relentless fabulist when recounting it." One of the questions was what year she was born and where. The 1844 above is the earliest year. One page 2 he says, "There are three basic components to her experience of childhood, two of them enough to derail an ordinary mortal: Her mother didn't love her and she had no father. What she did have was her extraordinary will: to survive, to achieve, -and - most of all - to have her way."

Sarah Bernhardt's son, Maurice Bernhardt was well loved. Never loved by her own mother, Sarah was determined to love him. She had been sent away to be raised by others and then introduced to the world in which men gave money to women for sexual favors, although that's not to say that there was always the possibility that the relationships her mother had - or she had - entailed far more. For at least a couple years after the birth of her son, someone supported her. And she took lovers, even when someone might be considered to be far too old for her.

She was bisexual, had romantic affairs with both men and women and played both male and female parts on stage. She was creative. Besides her talent for acting and singing, she became an accomplished painter and sculptor. She was also a woman of business.

Sarah married one time, to a Greek military officer and actor ,Aristides, also called Jacques, Damala. They married in 1882 when she was in her late 30's He was a decade or so younger than her, they separated, but stayed married until his death in 1889. Damala was an opium and morphine addict and a womanizer who died of an overdose.

Perhaps she proved her strength of spirit and courage most during World War I. In 1915 she had a leg amputated but soon after she volunteered to perform for the troops, to improve moral, and insisted on being carried to the front lines. She appeared in propaganda films and patriotic plays.

Gottlieb's book is short but sweet. I'm challenged to post what would be most interesting to my readers about this fascinating woman! Read on!

Missy

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*** She was photographed sleeping in a coffin.

The following web sites and articles are reference or this post

MUCHA FOUNDATION ORG See other posters that featured Sarah Bernhardt and read about the artist.

EBSCO RESEARCH : SARAH BERNHARDT

NOVEMBER'S MISTRESS MANIFESTO POSTS BEGIN TOMORROW!

This poster by Alphonse Mucha is a clue ...

"Alfons Maria Mucha, known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist. Living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, he was widely known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of _________________________."