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?

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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 _________________________."

 

SUICIDE? DEPRESSION? HERE'S A NUMBER TO CALL IF YOU'RE FEELING THERE'S NO WAY OUT

 

988 is the designated number to go right to 

SUICIDE PREVENTION and CRISIS HOTLINE 

and you can SMS (text) with them too.

CARRIE STERLING and GEORGE STERLING : AN UNHAPPY MARRIAGE ENDED BUT THEY BOTH COMMIT SUICIDE BY CYANIDE

Caroline “Carrie” Rand Sterling was in a bad marriage and her way out of her unhappy life was suicide. Nora May French commit suicide while staying as a guest in her home. I sought out some information of Carrie and George aside this book which has been the primary reference for this month's posts. See the link below for a good explanation of their suicides!

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Nora May French commit suicide in 1907 by cyanide. She was unmarried.

Carrie Sterling commit suicide in 1918 by cyanide. 

George Sterling commit suicide in 1926 by cyanide. These two were husband and wife.

As I stated when I first began the review and selection of excerpts from this book, I felt the title implying a love triangle wasn't quite accurate. I stick by that. 

One of the problems of implying a Love Triangle is that all three persons are in love with each other, romantically and (usually) sexually involved as well, at the same time, which can also imply that one or all of them are bisexual. Rather it seems Carrie Sterling was a traditional wife with traditional expectations who was humiliated and disappointed in her husband. If she preferred not to be a divorced woman because she had to depend on George to support the two of them (no children!) well - He did try hard but his interest in being a poet and impressing his fellows at the Bohemian Club was more important as was what was likely alcoholism and sex addiction. George would turn down paying work to write a play instead. It got to where George had to go out hunting for wildlife to feed the two of them - and guests. Meanwhile his dream of turning Carmel into an artists and writers colony was never fulfilled by his attempts to market the town as such. He wanted the literary luminaries and got average people to buy or built or rent.

Excerpt pages 126-127: (Remarking on the Bohemian Club and other visitors to Carmel and the Sterlings where the emphasis was on nature.)

They could have just bought a can of abalone from the grocery store and saved themselves the trouble. The verses (of George's song about living on abalone) began to grate on Carrie's nerves. Midway through July she had seen one rich person too many sing about poverty while walloping a shellfish. She had always thought that her marriage had allowed her to escape her mother's fate of running a boardinghouse, but now, making up the spare room for every new guest, she realized how wrong she'd been. She was beginning to wonder if she couldn't kick them al out and take $50 for a decent, stable, nonartistic tenant.

Crass as charging rent for boarders might be, it would at least bring in some money Otherwise, what was she getting out of Carme's success? She had abandoned the notion that Carme would reform George. His halfhearted attempts at sobriety had all failed. At the age of forty, he was drinking as if he were still twenty years old. If anything, he was getting worse, while she scraped pots and pans till her knuckles were raw. Meanwhile, her sisters Mrs. Havens and Mrs. Maxwell, were wearing furs on their backs and diamonds around their wrists.

George went off to the Bohemian Club and spent two weeks camping with Jimmy Hopper and Harry Lafler.  All three of these men had some sort of affair with Nora May French. 

So, my readers, I cannot help but feel they passed her around.  

HATI and SKOLL GALLERY ; CARMEL and THE STERLINGS SUICIDES  This link has some photos. Portrait of Carrie Sterling! As well as some poetry George Sterling left.

Excerpt: 

But returning to Carrie, Carrie divorced George Sterling in 1914, after which she lived in Piedmont, California, her sister Lila Havens having found her a job as curator at the Piedmont Art Gallery, which contained Lila’s husband’s private art collection. It is said, that she and George Sterling regretted their separation and divorce. On November 17, 1918 in her Piedmont bedroom Carrie put on an elegant gown, put Chopin’s “Funeral March” on the Victrola, and drank a vial of cyanide.

Eight years later to the day, in the early morning hours of November 17, 1926, a despondent George Sterling locked himself in his room at the Bohemian Club and he too died by drinking potassium cyanide....

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THE SUICIDE OF NORA MAY FRENCH AND MORE BLAMING HER : THE FRIENDS SHE LEFT BEHIND PROMOTED THE NOTION THAT SHE WAS DESTINED FOR SUICIDE

This passage in Catherine Prendergast's book is quite dramatic. A number of men had tried to have their way with Nora, and then she became engaged to Captain Hiley, who would eventually not follow through and marry her. Jimmy refers to Jimmy Hopper who was interested in Nora shortly before she commit suicide and was married but separated from his wife at the time. Jimmy regularly borrowed money from George Sterling, who then borrowed from Jack London. After her death, George Sterling revealed to Jimmy that Nora was pregnant before she died and that his wife, Carrie, knew about it. Who was the father?

Excerpts pages 203-205:

On the evening of November 13, Jimmy had been dancing with Nora at the Arts and Crafts Club and likely went to sleep that night with thoughts of her whirling though his mind. He was awakened by a loud banging on his cabin door. Carrie Sterling stood outside, her overcoat thrown over her nightdress, shaking and crying so violently he could barely make out her words. Once he understood that Nora's life was in danger, he grabbed his shoes and ran to their bungalow as fast as his athletic legs would carry him. Flying through their living room, he made for the bedroom. Nora lay on the sheets, as still as marble statue, though not white. Her freckled cheeks, which he had been gazing at over dinner only hours before, flushed as vividly as a painting - the tell tale of cyanide in the blood. When he reached for her hand, it was cold.  Remember, Jimmy had dug mangled women out of piles of rubble during the earthquake.  As he left the bungalow and ran for the doctor, he would have already known Nora was gone. ....

.....  Jimmy seemed to develop a conscience. He next wrote George that Nora had not toyed with men as much as they had toyed with her, all the while pretending to help her. "We thought we had the lifeboat out, but we were only hitting her on the head with our oars.".... But Jimmy felt strongly that Nora's friends had failed her most, including Carrie. He blamed Carrie for scuttling his nascent relationship with Nora. Carry could accept only a single path for love, one that followed the strict line of courtship, marriage, fidelity, and death - even though she herself was trapped in a marriage to a man who humiliated her at every turn. 

Apparently Jimmy thought he could have saved Nora by also arranging a surgical abortion for her. Implied is that she was pregnant by Jimmy Lafler. The American Medical Association was cracking down on doctors who performed abortions.  If Nora was pregnant at death, this would have been yet another pregnancy. There must have been some shared guilt though, for the author found letters discussing Nora and her suicide even though George Sterling was known for burning letters. Jimmy eventually could barely hide his upset with George and Carrie Sterling and wrote that he could barely stand the thought of ever seeing Jimmy Lafler again. Nora was not forgotten in Carmel and all that blaming implied guilt.

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NORA MAY FRENCH POETESS ENDS LIFE BY TAKING POISON

NEWSPAPERS.COM : San Francisco Chronicle Nora May French Poetess Ends Life

Nora had written a letter to her boyfriend after taking abortion pills... And this last poem was found in the pockets of some of  those who committed copycat suicides. Also discovered by the author, Catherine Prendergast, is that Nora once wrote a story about the inner feelings of a man who commit suicide, which was not published.

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GEORGE STERLING'S ROLE IN NORA MAY FRENCH'S UNHAPPINESS ? : GEORGE WAS NEVER A GOOD CANDIDATE FOR HUSBANDING

While reading this book, I thought about George Sterling, a man who made his living and supported his wife through selling land for building, you could say a real estate agent or maybe a developer, of Carmel-By-The-Sea. Carmel is in the Monterey Bay area south of San Francisco and after the historic San Francisco earthquake many unhoused people made their way to Monterey. 

George Sterling was torn because he had entered into a conventional marriage with his wife, Carrie, but was not capable of being a faithful husband. Rather he was a womanizer and alcoholic. I see him as a man out of control of himself. He was so torn up, especially after Nora May French commit suicide by cyanide poison while an ongoing guest in his marital home, that - eventually - years later - he too commit suicide. At least that's a notion. Maybe he was a bit tortured because they'd had an affair and he was not free to be with Nora, but somehow I don't think this man, who seems to have been ruled by his emotions, would have divorced Carrie and married Nora. There was, in my opinion, much more wrong with him and his life that he couldn't bear.

But of fascination is that George had business connections that meant that he was one of the early members of the Bohemian Club, which is now the mysterious and controversial Bohemian Grove, a big boy's camp that has attracted world leaders and Presidents of the United States to its get-aways from the world. Rumors persist that Satanic rituals occur there but I personally have no idea if that's true. It seems to mainly be a men-only club for the very rich, some of whom probably were in secret society type fraternities when youth in college.

What George Sterling wanted was to be a literary person, a poet, to attract such persons to buying land and building homes in Carmel, to put that village on the map as an artists colony. Although his marketing and public relations had that effect, he actually wasn't successful selling property to people who had unsteady or inadequate income. How he hoped literary luminaries like writer Jack London would settle there.

Many of George's friends blamed Nora's death as his undoing. Or women in general. He and his friends attempted to pick up "Bohemian" women on the poetry scene in San Francisco and George was not the success at it. Further, Nora seems to have been given way too much credit for being a "femme fatale." While reading about these men and their ways, I couldn't help but think they were immature and how stuck the women at that time who married men like this were.

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NORA MAY FRENCH AND HARRY LAFLER : A WINDOW INTO HIS BOHEMIAN WORLD OF SAN FRANCISCO

Excerpt page 81: Then Harry Lafler entered her life. He seemed to offer a window into another world. He was one of the writers who frequented Coppa's, the restaurant at the center of San Francisco's thriving art scene. Poets and painters gathered at a table near the back, dining on sand dabs and green salads and drinking cheap red whine while talking into to the night. Everyone in California had heard of Coppa's. Every arist or writer who visited San Francisco stopped there. And Lafler was painted onto the very wall. .... Harry was at Coppa;s almost every night, writing and then reading his sonnets. He was most often in the company of George Sterling, whom they all called "The King Of Bohemia" because he had defined Bohemianism for the world.  

There are two elements, at least, that are essential to Bohemianism,"he decreed. "The first is devotion or addition to one or more of the Seven Arts, the other is poverty."

Nora realized she had never even seen what Harry Lafler looked like and that it was ridiculous to have developed such strong feelings for him because of a correspondence. However, they had an affair and after she commit suicide it was suggested she was pregnant by him.

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OH WHAT A WEB WE WEAVE

 

ABORTION IN THE TIME OF NORA MAY FRENCH : AMERICA AT THE EARLY 20th CENTURY

CRIME READS - NORA MAY FRENCH - GILDED EDGE   

This essay, entitled 'Reclaiming the Legacy of Nora May French, the Pioneering Poet Made Into A Femme Fatale By Mediocre Men and California Mythology, is by Catherine Prendergast, author of 'The Gilded Edge."

Nora's second abortion was by pill bought over the counter. Her boyfriend was the married Harry Lafler (Henry Anderson Lafler). She wrote him a letter as the abortion pill began to take effect. 

Excerpt : Her parcel of pills still unopened, Nora sat in the kitchen and read the letter from Harry. It was everything she had hoped it would be, sweet and passionate. She felt her will, so resolute earlier that evening, begin to falter. She tried to imagine a life with Harry and a child: Harry, walking their unfinished floor at 3:00 a.m., rocking their baby to sleep in his arms as she dozed. A beautiful baby perhaps with Harry’s dark wavy hair but her own spooky eyes. She and Harry could be like Dante and Elizabeth Rossetti, living for beauty and art, while their child rambled happily around the house.

It didn’t take long for this fantasy to collapse. Harry Lafler was still a married man, and despite his promises, Nora did not believe his separation from his wife would ever progress to divorce. In truth, she wasn’t even sure if she wanted it to. She and Harry were bound by passion and recklessness, not responsibility and reality. She was his carefree muse, something ethereal and magical, not an ordinary woman who could get in ordinary trouble. He would recoil from the sight of a swollen belly and bolt from the rigors of fatherhood. She would be left raising a baby on her own—a complete disaster. Even if in 1907 women worked outside the home, rode bicycles, and published poetry, nobody looked favorably on an unwed mother and her bastard. Her child would be seen not as the product of love but rather as the punishment for sin.

ABORTION and the BOHEMIANS

 Did turn of the century men expect women to "get rid of it quietly?"

Nora May French was unmarried and twenty-six when she commit suicide. She had some expectation that she would marry but, if she was in an engagement, it was ended shortly before. She had two known abortions by that time.  I thought this video was on topic and would be of interest to my readers. - Missy 

READING THE POETRY OF NORA MAY FRENCH on PROJECT GUTENBERG

 Here's the link! PROJECT GUTENBERG : POETRY OF NORA MAY FRENCH

FROM forest paths we turned us, nymphs, new-made,

And, lifting eyes abashed with great desire

Before high Jove, the gift of souls we prayed.

Whereat he said: “O perfect as new leaves

New glossed and veined with blood of perfect days

And stirred to murmured speech in fragrant eves,

“Still ask ye souls? Behold, I give instead

Into each breast a bird with fettered wings,

A bird fast holden with a silken thread: ........

( read the whole poem at the link!)

OBSERVATION

 

NORA MAY FRENCH : THE SPINSTER POET IN CALIFORNIA : RETIRED BRITISH ARMY CAPTAIN HILEY AND NORA HAVE AN AFFAIR AND SHE BECOMES PREGNANT

Excerpt page 57: (After Nora called off her engagement in 1904)

At the age of twenty-three, Nora embraced spinsterhood with enthusiasm. Freedom from marriage was freedom to live one's own life. She would devote herself to her writing. No more light ditties like the "Ode on Aunt E.'s Bloomer Bathing Costume," which had made Helen (her sister) laugh for hours. No more stories to distract the readers of the Sunday Los Angeles Times. She would focus only on poetry and set goals to challenge herself. That year she published four poems in Lummis's journal but decided to shoot for journals with more national reach. In March, her poem "In Empty Courts" appeared in The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness. A new publication out of New York, The Smart Set's circulation had shot up to well over one hundred thousand in four short years buy printing national names like Jack London.

About a man's inconsistent attention, in "Empty Courts" has been inspired buy a muse of sorts who had recently entered her life. Captain Alan Hiley had two main qualities that recommended him. He was already married, and he lived far away, in Santa Cruz. A tall, handsome timber magnate and retired British Army captain, Hiley considered himself an established author who had published his memoir of distinguished service in the War. They had met at a poetry ready (Hileys wife was also a poet( and started an on-and-off affair.

On the weekends, Hiley sailed down the coast on a yacht to take Nora to dinner in fine restaurants.  He asked her about poetry though she noticed he rarely listened to her answers....

Nora decided that she could not give in to Hiley's charms and fought her attraction to him.

Excerpt page 59: (As Nora became pregnant)

They debated too long what to do. He would leave his wife. Of course he would. Then, no, a divorce would take too long and be too public. In her distress, she made the dreadful mistake of telling Helen everything. Helen, scandalized, was even more distraught than Nora. She must get Hiley to marry her, Helen counseled, or the whole family would be ruined.

But marriage was not in the cards. Instead, the eminently respectable Captain Alan Richard Hiley secured a doctor and money enough to pay him. What at first had seemed to Nora like a vexing process - coming to the decision, finding the willing physician - turned out to be the easy part compared to what came next. She experienced the procedure itself as a surreal horror, the doctor's cold, pointed, metal tolls contrasting with the soft warm of her flesh mingled with that of the fetus. Only partially sedated during it all, she glanced down and saw the aftermath.

This was Nora's first known abortion and, because she did not take the pills or potions advertised, I have this feeling she might have been further along in the pregnancy than a woman could consider to be "delayed menses." Additionally, it seems to me that, after such a horror, a woman would seek to use contraception. Maybe she did. And it failed.

Excerpt page 80 : (The aftermath of the abortion)

She couldn't exactly say when Harry Lafler became so much a part of her emotional life. Right after her mother died in July, she had sent a poem to The Argonaut, where Harry was serving as editor. He accepted her poem, and their correspondence quickly became romantic. They fell in love through words.

How perfect, she thought, that the body was not there to intervene. Since the abortion she had a nickname for herself : the "Hands Off" girl. Except for a date here and there, she kept men at arm's length - especially Alan Hiley, who in an irritating reversal now wanted to marry her...

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POETRY READING: TWO POEMS BY NORA MAY FRENCH

BOHEMIAN POET NORA MAY FRENCH : AN EARLY 20th CENTURY LOVE GONE WRONG STORY OF MONTEREY CALIFORNIA : THE CYANIDE LOVE TRIANGLE

NORA MAY FRENCH

 1881-1907

photo from Wikipedia

identified as Nora May French as photographed by Arnold Genthe

The Gilded Edge by Catherine Prendergast is a primary reference for this month's posts.

Was it actually a LOVE TRIANGLE? 

I think the subtitle of 'The Gilded Edge' which is 'Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America' is a bit unfair. 

The three persons were: Nora May French, a turn-of-the-century poet who was talented and esteemed, but who seems to have disappeared from American Literature, and a young woman though she had emerged as a brilliant poet before her death. Carrie Sterling, married to George Sterling, whose own ambitions were not literary but who, through her husband, met and tangled with some of those, such as writer Jack London, who the Literary Canon well knows, as well as their women. Carrie often played hostess and was the wife who would stick with a bad marriage for a long time since there was social status to be mindful of. George Sterling, who was instrumental in the establishment of Carmel as an artists colony through his role as real estate agent, but who would much rather have made his living as a poet himself; My take on George is that he was alcoholic and a womanizer and not all that well psychologically. But was Nora May French to blame? 

George went out of his way to try to convince people to move to Carmel, a small town in the Monterey Bay, south of San Francisco. He encouraged group photos that made some of these artists and writers look cozy and implied they were moving there or buying real estate as a marketing strategy but not the whole truth. The big names never bought in and he struggled for acceptance by them in part because his talent as a poet never equaled theirs. History may be a bit more fair to the struggling George than this author, for he was a founder of the Bohemian Club, which is now the notorious Bohemian Grove.

These three people were not in a triad and they did not commit suicide together, but I bet because of the title of the book you thought so. Although it's complicated, I wasn't convinced that the suicide of Nora or that of George's wife, Carrie, or the eventual suicide of George was entirely motivated by relationship frustration or loss of love. Rather it was also about money - the natural need for it in this material world - and especially so for women at a time when few could support themselves; imagine any poet at any time thinking their poetry would bring in money enough. George Sterling was a founder of the Bohemian Club which endures to this day as the Bohemian Grove, but he eventually went broke.

To her credit, author Catherine Prendergast, did some difficult investigative research to bring us Nora May French, who did indeed commit suicide by cyanide in 1907, and whose poetry - and very mood - inspired copycat suicides! We know that because some of those who commit suicide did so with copies of her poetic verses on them!

Nora's end at the age of twenty-six made her infamous. Headlines remarked on her talent and beauty, calling her witty, spirited, and talented. So the media as it existed decades ago implied there was not just a shame but a mystery. There was a lot of blaming among the men who had affairs with her and it seems Nora was pregnancy prone too.

Why is so little about Nora May French preserved?  Was it because of her sad end or because she was a woman? Prendergast sees the difficulty in this research a problem of sexism. 

As I read this book from cover to cover, I couldn't help but think about the way marriage was about the only way a woman could survive back in the day. Nora May French was not the first or last woman to ever have sex before marriage or an affair with a married man/men, but she needed marriage. Society was not set up for most women to be independent of men or to earn their own money and support themselves and Nora's experience with paid employment was unfulfilling and exhausting. What any woman with creative talent, such as a writer who needed to write, was a patron or a husband rich enough to support her so she would not have to work for income herself and could keep writing. He had to be the type who didn't want a conventional wife and be someone who loved the arts and might find some prestige in having a poet as a wife..

Was Nora so foolish to have sex without marriage and also not have used contraception?  Was that "Bohemian" of her? We don't know if she had access to contraception or not. This story includes abortion. At this time in the United States when abortion rights have been cut in some states, I think about how hard it is was to be a woman with no financial support when a having and raising a child born outside of marriage. The child would be as socially unacceptable as its mother.

Nora had two abortions unmarried, at a time when a woman might, with the right connections to the right doctor, have a "therapeutic" abortion at a hospital, or brew an herbal potion that would cause miscarriage, or understand that some over-the-counter women's remedies sold at the pharmacy were intended to do the same. One was a surgical horror and the other by pills. In both cases she risked not only the ruin of her reputation but that of her family. It seems she very well may have been pregnant again when she suicided.

Nora May French came from a "good" family with ties to some historical persons such as a founder of the Wells Fargo Bank on her mother's side. However, it seems that her father, the son of an Illinois governor, experienced some failures, possibly embezzling money while at a job at a college and, with drought and a stock market crash in 1893, the family fell into poverty quickly. Nora was sent to live with a relative (ironically named Uncle Cash) who might have led her to a good marriage. She lived with him in New York and he sent her to the Art Students League but she had a indiscretion with a man and was sent home. She became the black sheep of her family.

Though she might be on the marriage market without a dowry or any expectation of an inheritance, while working as a seamstress - a lowly profession - in a leather factory, she did promise to marry a young man. 

Excerpt page 54: " ... Working in a leather factory had taken its toll on her body and spirit, Her fingers had grown dull from working the needle into the leather, her eyes strained in the low light, and she found herself too tired at night to think of lifting a pen. Her mind began to slow down, sitting among women who had nothing better to talk about than when they would get married and leave. One morning she woke up and realized that she had become one of them. She couldn't wait to get married and leave.  (Note that she was sewing leather gloves.)

Then Lee proposed. At first, she hesitated She told him everything about herself, how she was happiest wandering in the woods, how she lived to write poems, and how she would never be just an ordinary girl, if that was what he wanted..."

The engagement brought her back into approval of Uncle Cash who sent a money present and her parents relaxed that she would have a husband. However, Lee soon complained of how much time she spent writing and reminded her to prepare to be a wife and mother such as learning to cook. Female relatives of his also pressured her to conform.

In 1904, a month before the wedding, she broke the engagement. At the age of twenty-three she decided she may as well be a spinster. She sent her work out and her poetry was published in newspapers and literary journals. Nora gained a literary reputation. 

Once on the West Coast, a little older but still in her twenties, and already a published poet, Nora was involved in the Bohemian lifestyle, perhaps an experimental lifestyle at best, in which artists, writers sought a break from convention. That said, she got involved with married men and doing so did not prevent her from having sex or heartbreaks.

There was also another man who was interested in marriage with her for a while - or so it was discussed when she became pregnant - retired British Army Captain Alan Hiley of Santa Cruz, California, who was married, and a muse.

She had to live with someone, if not her sister who did not like San Francisco, then a couple such as Carrie and George Sterling. George was connected to the Bohemian lifestyle of San Francisco and also the founding of the Bohemian Club, now called The Bohemian Grove. Instead of just staying  as a house guest of the Sterlings until she married, the end of another opportunity for marriage turned her into more of a permanent guest. It was there at their house that she took the poison.

While Nora did have an affair with George, and he mourned her, he was not her only man.  And while she did use pills to miscarry, she did not take her life immediately after that. Nor was Nora the womanizing George's only affair while married. Carrie Sterling had lost any expectation that her husband would be entirely devoted or satisfied with her. Carrie had thought her marriage to George was advantageous and had to have been disappointed in his character.

Nora commit suicide in 1907 by cyanide.

Carrie commit suicide in 1918 by cyanide.

George commit suicide in 1926 by cyanide.

These suicides were years apart. I just can't call this a love triangle and am not convinced Nora was the reason for the suicides of Carrie or George.

For me, the story of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, when estimates are that up to 80% of that city was destroyed, and the resulting influx of refugees into Monterey, and how that influenced the real estate sales was of interest too. People were, like today's homeless, living in tents with their families, sometimes in the backyards of relatives or friends. 

Which brings up my question about Carmel-By-The-Sea and just how "Bohemian" and unconventional it was. You don't have to be artistic or "Bohemian" to be unhappily married or to commit adultery or to have affairs these days. Rather I think the people in this book were stuck in their circumstances including class and status expectations that they be married. Then, there is always the issue of money.

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