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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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."
