My Double Life: The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt Part 59

I only just escaped breaking my neck at least a dozen times. He pushed me along, made me stumble down the ten steps of the basin, and I next found myself on the back of the whale. They a.s.sured me that it still breathed, but I should not like to affirm that it really did; but the splashing of the water breaking its eddy against the poor creature caused it to oscillate slightly. Then, too, it was covered with glazed frost, and twice I fell down full length on its spine. I laugh about it now, but I was furious then.

Every one around me insisted, however, on my pulling a piece of whalebone from the blade of the poor captured creature, one of those little bones which are used for women's corsets. I did not like to do this, as I feared to cause it suffering, and I was sorry for the poor thing, as three of us--Henry, the little Gordon girl, and I--had been skating about on its back for the last ten minutes. Finally I decided to do it. I pulled out the little whale bone, and went up the steps again, holding my poor trophy in my hand. I felt nervous and fl.u.s.tered, and every one surrounded me.

I was annoyed with this Henry Smith. I did not want to return to the coach, as I thought I could hide bad temper better in one of the huge, gloomy-looking landaus which followed, but the charming Miss Gordon asked me so sweetly why I would not ride with them that I felt my anger melt away before the child's smiling face.

"Would you like to drive?" her father asked me, and I accepted with pleasure.

Jarrett immediately proceeded to get down from the coach as quickly as his age and corpulence would allow him.

"If you are going to drive I prefer getting down," he said, and he took a seat in another carriage. I changed places boldly with Mr. Gordon in order to drive, and we had not gone a hundred yards before I had let the horses make for a chemist's shop along the quay and got the coach itself up on to the footpath, so that if it had not been for the quickness and energy of Mr. Gordon we should all have been killed. On arriving at the hotel I went to bed, and stayed there until it was time for the theatre in the evening. We played _Hernani_ that night to a full house.

The seats had been sold to the highest bidders, and considerable prices were obtained for them. We gave fifteen performances at Boston, at an average of nineteen thousand francs for each performance. I was sorry to leave that city, as I had spent two charming weeks there, my mind all the time on the alert when holding conversations with the Boston women.

They are Puritans from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, but they are indulgent, and there is no bitterness about their Puritanism. What struck me most about the women of Boston was the harmony of their gestures and the softness of their voices. Brought up among the severest and harshest of traditions, the Bostonian race seems to me to be the most refined and the most mysterious of all the American races.

As the women are in the majority in Boston, many of the young girls remain unmarried. All their vital forces which they cannot expend in love and in maternity they employ in fortifying and making supple the beauty of their body by means of exercise and sports, without losing any of their grace. All the reserves of heart are expended in intellectuality. They adore music, the stage, literature, painting, and poetry. They know everything and understand everything, are chaste and reserved, and neither laugh nor talk very loud.

They are as far removed from the Latin race as the North Pole is from the South Pole, but they are interesting, delightful, and captivating.

It was therefore with a rather heavy heart that I left Boston for New Haven, and to my great surprise, on arriving at the hotel there I found Henry Smith the famous whale man.

"Oh, Heavens!" I exclaimed, flinging myself into an armchair, "what does this man want now with me?"

I was not left in ignorance very long, for the most infernal noise of bra.s.s instruments, drums, trumpets, and, I should think, saucepans, drew me to the window. I saw an immense carriage surrounded by an escort of negroes dressed as minstrels. On this carriage was an abominable, monstrous coloured advertis.e.m.e.nt representing me standing on the whale, tearing away its blade while it struggled to defend itself.

Some sandwich-men followed with posters on which were written the following words:

"COME AND SEE THE ENORMOUS CETACEAN WHICH SARAH BERNHARDT KILLED BY TEARING OUT ITS WHALEBONE FOR HER CORSETS.

THESE ARE MADE BY MADAME LILY NOE, WHO LIVES," ETC. ETC.

Some of the other sandwich-men carried posters with these words:

"THE WHALE IS JUST AS FLOURISHING (_sic_) AS WHEN IT WAS ALIVE!

It has five hundred dollars' worth of salt in its stomach, and every day the ice upon which it is resting is renewed at a cost of one hundred dollars!"

My face turned more livid than that of a corpse, and my teeth chattered with fury on seeing this.

Henry Smith advanced towards me, and I struck him in my anger, and then rushed away to my room, where I sobbed with vexation, disgust, and utter weariness.

I wanted to start back to Europe at once, but Jarrett showed me my contract. I then wanted to take steps to have this odious exhibition stopped, and in order to calm me I was promised that this should be done, but in reality nothing was done at all.

Two days later I was at Hartford, and the same whale was there. It continued its tour as I continued mine.

They gave it more salt and renewed its ice, and it went on its way, so that I came across it everywhere. I took proceedings about it, but in every State I was obliged to begin all over again, as the law varied in the different States. And every time I arrived at a fresh hotel I found there an immense bouquet awaiting me, with the horrible card of the showman of the whale. I threw his flowers on the ground and trampled on them, and much as I love flowers, I had a horror of these. Jarrett went to see the man and begged him not to send me any more bouquets, but it was all of no use, as it was the man's way of avenging the box on the ears I had given him. Then too he could not understand my anger. He was making any amount of money, and had even proposed that I should accept a percentage of the receipts. Ah, I would willingly have killed that execrable Smith, for he was poisoning my life. I could see nothing else in all the different cities I visited, and I used to shut my eyes to go from the hotel to the theatre. When I heard the minstrels I used to fly into a rage and turn green with anger. Fortunately I was able to rest when once I reached Montreal, where I was not followed by this show. I should certainly have been ill if it had continued, as I saw nothing but that, I could think of nothing else, and my very dreams were about it.

It haunted me; it was an obsession and a perpetual nightmare. When I left Hartford, Jarrett swore to me that Smith would not be at Montreal, as he had been taken suddenly ill. I strongly suspected that Jarrett had found a way of administering to him some violent kind of medicine which had stopped his journeying for the time. I felt sure of this, as the ferocious gentleman laughed so heartily _en route_, but anyhow I was infinitely grateful to him for ridding me of the man for the present.

x.x.xV

MONTREAL'S GRAND RECEPTION--THE POET FRECHETTE--AN ESCAPADE ON THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER

At last we arrived at Montreal.

For a long time, ever since my earliest childhood, I had dreamed about Canada. I had always heard my G.o.dfather regret, with considerable fury, the surrender of that territory by France to England.

I had heard him enumerate, without very clearly understanding them, the pecuniary advantages of Canada, the immense fortune that lay in its lands, &c., and that country had seemed to my imagination the far-off promised land.

Awakened some considerable time before by the strident whistle of the engine, I asked what time it was. Eleven o'clock in the evening, I was informed. We were within fifteen minutes of the station. The sky was black and smooth, like a steel shield. Lanterns placed at distant intervals caught the whiteness of the snow heaped up there for how many days? The train stopped suddenly, and then started again with such a slow and timid movement that I fancied that there might be a possibility of its running off the rails. But a deadened sound, growing louder every second, fell upon my attentive ears. This sound soon resolved itself into music--and it was in the midst of a formidable "Hurrah! long live France!" shouted by ten thousand throats, strengthened by an orchestra playing the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" with a frenzied fury, that we made our entry into Montreal.

The place where the train stopped in those days was very narrow. A somewhat high bank served as a rampart for the slight platform of the station.

Standing on the small step of my carriage, I looked with emotion upon the strange spectacle I had before me. The bank was packed with bears holding lanterns. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. In the narrow s.p.a.ce between the bank and the train, which had come to a stop, there were more bears, large and small, and I wondered with terror how I should manage to reach my sleigh.

Jarrett and Abbey caused the crowd to make way, and I got out. But a deputy, whose name I cannot make out on my notes (what commendation for my writing!)--a deputy advanced towards me and handed me an address signed by the notabilities of the city. I returned thanks as best I could, and took the magnificent bouquet of flowers that was tendered in the name of the signatories to the address. When I lifted the flowers to my face in order to smell them I hurt myself slightly with their pretty petals, which were frozen by the cold.

However, I began myself to feel both arms and legs were getting benumbed. The cold crept over my whole body. That night, it appears, was one of the coldest that had been experienced for many years past.

The women who had come to be present at the arrival of the French company had been compelled to withdraw into the interior of the station, with the exception of Mrs. Jos. Doutre, who handed me a bouquet of rare flowers and gave me a kiss. The temperature was twenty-two degrees below zero. I whispered low to Jarrett, "Let us continue our journey; I am turning into ice. In ten minutes I shall not be able to move a step."

Jarrett repeated my words to Abbey, who applied to the Chief of Police.

The latter gave orders in English, and another police officer repeated them in French. And we were able to proceed for a few yards. But the main station was still some way off. The crowd grew bigger, and at one time I felt as though I were about to faint. I took courage, however, holding or rather hanging on to the arms of Jarrett and Abbey. Every minute I thought I should fall, for the platform was like a mirror.

We were obliged, however, to stay further progress. A hundred lanterns, held aloft by a hundred students' hands, suddenly lit up the place.

A tall young man separated himself from the group and came straight towards me, holding a wide unrolled piece of paper, and in a loud voice declaimed:

A SARAH BERNHARDT.

Salut, Sarah! salut, charmante dona Sol!

Lorsque ton pied mignon vient fouler notre sol, Notre sol tout couvert de givre, Est-ce frisson d'orgueil ou d'amour? je ne sais; Mais nous sentons courir dans notre sang francais Quelque chose qui nous enivre!

Femme vaillante au coeur sature d'ideal, Puisque tu n'as pas craint notre ciel boreal, Ni redoute nos froids severes.

Merci! De l'apre hiver pour longtemps prisonniers, Nous revons a ta vue aux rayons printaniers Qui font fleurir les primeveres!

Oui, c'est au doux printemps que tu nous fais rever!

Oiseau des pays bleus, lorsque tu viens braver L'horreur de nos saisons perfides, Aux clairs rayonnements d'un chaud soleil de mai, Nous croyons voir, du fond d'un bosquet parfume, Surgir la reine des sylphides.

Mais non: de floreal ni du blond messidor, Tu n'es pas, O Sarah, la fee aux ailes d'or Qui vient repandre l'ambroisie; Nous saluons en toi l'artiste radieux Qui sut cueillir d'a.s.saut dans le jardin des dieux Toutes les fleurs de poesie!

Que sous ta main la toile anime son reseau; Que le paros brilliant vive sous ton ciseau, Ou l'argile sous ton doigt rose; Que sur la scene, au bruit delirant des bravos, En types toujours vrais, quoique toujours nouveaux, Ton talent se metamorphose;

Soit que, peintre admirable ou sculpteur souverain, Toi-meme oses ravir la muse au front serein, A ta sourire toujours prete; Soit qu'aux mille vivats de la foule a genoux, Des grands maitres anciens ou modernes, pour nous Ta voix se fa.s.se l'interprete;

Des bords de la Tamise aux bords du Saint-Laurent, Qu'il soit enfant du peuple ou brille au premier rang, Laissant glapir la calomnie, Tour a tour par ton oeuvre et ta grace enchante Chacun courbe le front devant la majeste De ton universel genie!