Off Stage and On

VOLUME 155

NUMBER 6

JUNE 1935

BY SACHA GUITRY

I WAS born on February 21, 1885. There is nothing in this revelation to move the reader to tears, but it must be agreed that for me this is a date.

When I came into the world I was exceedingly red. My parents looked at me with fright and then at each other with sadness. Finally, my father said to my mother, ’It’s a monster, but no matter; we’ll love it just the same.’

But I ought to tell you why I came into the world.

René de Pont-Jest, onetime officer of the French navy, novelist, journalist, distinguished in appearance, subtle in mind, a skillful blade, a lover of women and of gambling, — a type of Parisian now vanished, with his white gaiters and checkered trousers, — used to give masked balls four times a season in his house in the rue Condorcet. Everybody who was anybody in Paris crowded to them. In the course of the evening Christine Nilsson would chant, Sarah Bernhardt would enchant, Serpette would be at the piano, Mounet-Sully would read verse, and Coquelin the younger would recite his first monologues. One evening Mounet-Sully provided a surprise for the guests. He brought with him a young man still doing his military service who was not immediately recognized and who conquered them all by the fashion in which he recited La Mort du Loup.

‘Who is that astonishing young man?‘

‘Why, that’s Guitry. You know, the chap who played the lead in Le Fils de Coralie.‘

‘So it is!’

He was welcomed, acclaimed, he stayed to supper, and he was urged to come again the next furlough. He promised, and indeed he was ready to swear he’d come back. He came back in January; he came again in February; but when he asked for a fourth furlough, he was refused. He went ‘absent without leave.’ The matter was serious, but René de Pont-Jest intervened in person. Several people bestirred themselves. Louise Abbéma knew Guitry’s commanding officer. Sarah Bernhardt knew the Minister of War. The thing was arranged.

Copyright 1935, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

But for him to have gone absent without leave, to have risked imprisonment, there must have been a reason. All the intimates of the household — though not, of course, Monsieur de Pont-Jest— knew that the reason was Mademoiselle de Pont-Jest. She was twenty years old; she was beauty itself; they adored each other. When his military service was ended, he asked for her hand and was categorically refused, three times over. Monsieur de Pont-Jest did not want his daughter to marry an actor; he did not want her to, but in 1882 my father and mother were married at St. Martin’s-in-theFields, in London.

Lucien Guitry had been on tour in England for four days with Sarah Bernhardt and her handsome husband, Damala, when Mademoiselle de PontJest joined him. In his memoirs he says: —

‘Oh, that trip to London, arriving on a Saturday night at six! Everything was shut, and the next day was Sunday! And the day after was Shrove Monday! Tuesday was the Queen’s birthday! Thank God, on Wednesday I found something to do!’

That Wednesday was his wedding day. His witness was Sarah Bernhardt. Thirty-seven years later, when I married Yvonne Printemps, my witness was Sarah Bernhardt.

I ought to say a word about my father’s situation at this time. Born in Paris in 1860, he matriculated at the Conservatoire at the age of fifteen years and emerged two years later with two prizes — neither of them a first. He won the second prize for tragedy and the second also for comedy. The firsts had been awarded that year to Théophile Barral, to that worthy Barral who played bits for years at the Comédie-Française and later character parts in the Boulevard theatres. He was a good enough actor, as a matter of fact, but still, we must agree that the Conservatoire is a rather comic place. No more comic than other schools, but not any less, really.

The Comédie-Française, having as a result the right to my father’s services, called for them. Even in those days he declined the honor. He thus became subject to a fine of 10,000 francs, a verdict he accepted in order to enter the Gymnase, where he was engaged straight out of school to play the leading part in a new play, Le Fils de Coralie, which afforded him a brilliant début. He was playing at the same time the rôle of Armand Duval in La Dame aux Camélias, and embarking upon a magnificent career, when suddenly Montigny, the director of the theatre, died. My father, who had the warmest affection for Montigny and considered him a great producer, within a few months was able to leave the Gymnase. He had signed a contract with the imperial theatres of Russia so advantageous as to permit him to buy himself out of a contract with the Gymnase which had bound him against his will to continue with Montigny’s antipathetic successor. Already in his twenties he displayed his characteristic inability to work with anybody he disliked.

In point of fact, the marriage he contracted at the age of twenty-two had something to do with his decision, for, though that decision condemned the young couple to nine years of exile in Russia, at least it ensured them a livelihood — ensured all four a livelihood, for there were soon four of us. When I came into the world my brother was already there waiting for me. True, he had not been waiting long: he was born on March 5, 1884, I on the twenty-first of February following. You can calculate for yourself that we were twins for twelve days every year.

There you have it — why I was born, why I was born in St. Petersburg, and why, during the first five years of my life, I spent my winters in Russia and my summers in France.

II

It was in St. Petersburg, in 1890, that I made my first appearance. I could n’t say exactly that I played a part. The truth is that I took part in a pantomime in one act which my father had got up in collaboration with a great Russian actor named Davidoff. This pantomime was performed at the imperial palace in the presence of Alexander III. My father played Pierrot; I was Pierrot junior.

It had been arranged that we should stay to supper with the Tsar after the show. I was put on his right. Opposite me sat a young man in a white uniform who was later to become Nicholas II. My father had coached me carefully for the supper: ‘Do this. . . . Don’t do so-and-so. . . . And above all, you must n’t leave anything on your plate — therefore, don’t let them serve you much.’ But a terrible thing happened. When the cheese was passed, and it was my turn to help myself, I did it so awkwardly that there fell on my plate a lump of Gruyère as big as a box of dominoes. The servant was about to relieve me of this excessive portion when the Emperor nudged his elbow, and the cheese was left. I raised my eyes and met my father’s pitiless glance, which seemed to say, ‘ Remember what I told you: leave nothing on your plate.’ I attacked my Gruyère in the midst of a stubborn, frightening silence. At the fifth mouthful a great burst of laughter, led by the Emperor, put an end to my torture. I had learned my lesson.

When, after an interminable separation of thirteen years, my father came for the first time to see me act, I was playing in Deburau at the Vaudeville. Twenty-eight years had gone by since my début in St. Petersburg, and he had not seen me on the stage since that evening. Twenty-eight years — and here I was playing Pierrot again! But this time it was I who played the father.

If I were asked at what age I began to feel that my vocation lay in the theatre, I should answer that when I was five years old I was convinced that some day I would do what my father did — only, I did n’t know what my father did. It goes without saying that I could n’t guess what a profession was, nor could I know the exact meaning of the word ‘career’; but I could not doubt that whatever my father did must be passionately interesting, and I was absorbed by the thought of it. He had had made for me copies of certain of his theatre costumes, and I loved to rig myself out in them. I had Louis the Eleventh’s cloak and felt hat, Hamlet’s doublet and hose, Tabarin’s jacket, and a Punch as big — or as little — as myself. I would stand poor Punch up behind a towel rack and make him play Polonius, and I killed him so often that I ended by destroying him. I used to love to recite certain ranting monologues which my father had taught me out of Casimir Delavigne’s Louis XI.

Qu’il me revienne encore un murmure, une plainte,
Je mets la main sur vous, et mon doute élairci
Je vous envoie à Dicu pour obtenir merci.¹

Dressed up in one of these costumes, nothing seemed to me more fun than to burst into the drawing-room with a terrible scowl on my face. It was my ambition to provoke laughter by surprise. I may say that in this I have not changed.

Those who witnessed these apparitions always laughed with my father and often cried out, ‘How much like you he looks!’ The idea that I resembled my father obsessed me, and the desire I had to resemble him more and more led entirely naturally to the desire to do what he did when I grew up. But what did he do?

I used to watch him live with amazement. What was there about him that others lacked? It was simply that he was twenty years younger than anybody else. He was a very young man, and it is only now, thinking about it, that I realize it. But why did he seem so different from the others? What was there in him that was so precious? Obviously, his future!

He would rush to table, lunch in twelve minutes, and rush off, saying, ‘By God, I’m going to be late again!’ He was always afraid of being late;yet I knew it was to his work he was going. When he came home in the evening he would sometimes say, ‘It’s all right; I ’m satisfied. I believe it’s going to go very well.’

Then we would dine, and at table he would speak of his friends. I knew them very well, had seen them often in our house; from time to time they had brought me toys. But the way he spoke of them bewildered me.

‘I nearly died laughing at Hittemans in two. . . . Lina Munte is doing well now, but she was laying it on for a few days. . . . Lorteur’s afraid he’ll go up in his lines next Tuesday.’

I had finally learned that there was something special about Tuesday. Later I discovered that it was the opening night at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. On those nights my father would dine even more hurriedly than usual. He was always nervous, but never depressed. Every now and again his face would change. His thick eyebrows would contract in a frown and he would cry out, ‘My lord, you are a nobleman and I am but a commoner, yet I dare tell you that any man who insults a woman is a coward!’ A moment later he would be accusing himself aloud of abominable crimes, there before the servants; and the only thing that consoled me a little was that it did not seem to astonish them at all. Of a sudden his glance, which had been concentrated, terrifying, threatening, would become unbelievably gentle. He would look at me tenderly and say in a sweet voice, ‘Clementine, I would give my life for a kiss from your lips!’

Obviously, I could not understand that he was going over his lines, I had no notion that the most magnificent career the stage can offer was opening before this fortunate and enchanting man who had just kissed me and left; but how I loved him, how handsome I thought him, how much I liked him, this young man who was my father!

Once, as I was being put to bed, I said to my nurse, ‘Where is Papa going this evening?’

She answered, ‘He’s going to work, and earn some money for you.’ Seeing my astonishment, she added, ‘Well, he’s going to play this evening.’

I fell asleep with the idea that a man could earn money by playing; and I grew up with the idea that ‘play’ was a synonym for the word ‘work.’ I have n’t changed my idea.

III

The time came when I had to leave my birthplace, which I was to see again only when on tour twenty years later, and go back to Paris. I don’t remember that later Petersburg of 1910, but I see very clearly the city of my childhood. I see our apartment, my father’s study, an ivory paper cutter I was afraid of because one day, in jest, I had been threatened with it. (I’ve just used it to open a letter with.) I see the dining room; I see newspapers printed on pink paper, lying folded on the drawingroom table. I see again the swift and silent sleighs, the coachmen who seemed to have enormous bottoms because of the fur-lined coats they wore belted in tight about the waist. I see the skaters on the River Neva, their light silhouettes which the wind seemed to bend first to the left, then to the right, then to the left again, like so many pendulums. And I remember best of all the astounding silence of the streets, a silence only troubled momentarily by the muffled hoofs of passing horses and grown even deeper when the horses had passed.

I see the Nevsky Prospekt and the passers-by with their fur collars raised to their ears, their fur hats down over their eyes, their hands deep in their pockets, their mouths shut and noses red, their feet in boots. I see the Emperor’s Palace, the Kazan Cathedral, the Alexander Bridge. I see a city all white, pavements hidden under a snow falling so slowly that it seemed to come from just overhead, and falling for hours and hours until it rounded every angle; falling like light itself on bronze statues just where the light falls when it is perpendicular, so that all the statues look as if lighted from above.

My brother Jean was in Paris and already in school. I remember perfectly my arrival. I wore a green velvet suit and a wide beret with a long feather in it. My brother, like all schoolboys, was wearing a black pinafore strapped in at the waist by a leather belt. We looked at each other with some surprise. He had already that bright look of intelligence and humor that later charmed people so; and I can see, in a photograph taken then, that I had already that look of slightly arrested development which I was so long to retain — and probably retain to this day, since people say my childhood portraits are so like me. I remember that our mother pushed us into each other’s arms, and that as Jean kissed me sheepishly he whispered in my ear, ‘Why do they dress you up like a monkey?’

My father and mother were by then divorced, and it was she, naturally, who had been awarded the custody of the children. It goes without saying that my memory of all this is pretty vague. We could n’t realize then, my brother and I, how abnormal our existence was. We felt that something serious in the life of our parents had taken place, but we had no notion of our own misfortune. Not to be able to say to oneself that one remembered one’s mother and father at the same table; not to have seen both their faces bent over the bed in which one lay ill — there comes a time when this is a frightful thought. For it is only later that one realizes, and says to oneself, ‘I had two parents; I adored them both — but separately. As for a family, what people call a family — I have never known what that was.’

I know a little boy whose parents were divorced while he was still in the cradle. He is being brought up by his father, but is taken to see his mother twice a week. He is growing up in ignorance, understanding nothing. The other day his mother looked him deep in the eyes and said suddenly to him, ‘How like your father you are already!’ The poor child cried out, ‘Do you know Papa?’

Sunday evenings, when I came back to my mother, she would ask now and then whom I had met at Papa’s. I see myself one evening, kneeling on my bed, saying my prayers, and my mother questioning me. And I remember this curious dialogue between us: —

I: Our Father, Who art in heaven . . .
MOTHER: Who was dining at your papa’s?
I: There was a nobleman. . . . Hallowed
be Thy name . . .
MOTHER: A nobleman?
I: Yes, mama. . . . Thy kingdom come.
MOTHER: A nobleman? Jean de Reszke?
I: No. . . . Thy will be done . . . MOTHER: Georges de Porto-Riche?
I: No. . . . On earth, as it is in heaven.
MOTHER: De Najac?
And my mother pronounced a dozen
names of my father’s friends, all bearing the nobiliary particle. My answer
was no to all of them.
MOTHER: What did he look like?
I: He had no hair, and moustaches.
MOTHER: But he’s no nobleman! You
mean Noblet.
I: That’s right, Noblet. . . . Give us
this day our daily bread. . . .

IV

For us who were the children of actors, Sunday was a quite different thing from what it is for others. Did we find our parents ready to take us to the public gardens, the zoo, the circus? Not at all. In France, at least, our parents had two shows on Sunday — the matinée and the evening performance; and if we saw a play at all, we saw it usually from the wings.

Following her divorce, my mother went on the stage, under a name composed in part of her own maiden name and in part of my father’s — Madame de Pontry. This is the way we spent our Sundays, my brother and I. Either on Saturday evening or on Sunday morning, we would go to our mother’s from school. On Sunday morning we were dressed and taken toward noon to go ‘kiss Madame Sarah.’ For ten years we went to ‘kiss Madame Sarah’ as others go to Mass — piously. She was for us a being at once familiar and magical, and we would walk into her drawing-room with a bouquet of roses or violets in our hands. We knew, of course, that she was not a queen; but we understood that she was a sovereign.

From Madame Sarah’s we would go off to lunch at Father’s. Directly after lunch we would be taken to see our mother play — from the wings — in whatever theatre she was performing. I know that she played in a number of theatres, but I actually remember only seeing her play in Michael Strogoff, at the Châtelet. I saw that play so often that it seems to me she must have played it constantly for more than ten years. And as a matter of fact, I am not sure she did n’t play it ten years. It was revived year after year, every Christmas. This being so, I ought to be able to tell the story of Michael Strogoff in every detail; but I cannot, for I never understood exactly what took place. The reason was this: Marie Laurent, who was a great and beautiful actress, always played Marfa Strogoff, while my mother played Sangar, the wicked woman who was the infamous adviser of Emir Feophard. Now and then Marie Laurent, who was already eighty years old, would step out and be ‘doubled’ by my mother. Naturally, someone else played my mother’s part, and this was quite enough to make the whole play incomprehensible to me.

We dined Sundays at my paternal grandmother’s, and spent the evening in the wings of the Renaissance, where my father was playing. The first thing we did on reaching that theatre was to go ‘kiss Madame Sarah.’ Madame Sarah played a great part in our lives. After our father and our mother, she was certainly, in our eyes, the most important person in the world. We always went to her house first on our round of calls on Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and Easter Sunday.

The Christmas tree at Madame Sarah’s was marvelous. It rose up very high in the middle of her studio, lighted by a thousand candles and hung with fifty gifts for the children — for on that day there were about fifty children round the tree. Each toy was numbered, and when the time came to distribute them Madame Sarah would stand with a large velvet bag out of which each child drew a number, by chance. But somehow chance always saw that the handsomest toy fell to the little daughter of her son. Dressed like a princess in a fairy tale, adored and caressed, Simone Bernhardt was to the rest of us a very rare creature not altogether like ourselves, and it seemed to us natural that she should draw a much finer gift than ours. We even had the feeling that there were fifty of us there only in order that fifty children should attend her good fortune and bear witness that she was the happiest of all children in the world.

I loved Madame Sarah so much as a child, I felt for her such veneration and respect and tenderness, that any criticism of her has always been extremely disagreeable to me. I have no particular objection to anyone’s writing in jest of her life, as Reynaldo Hahn did recently. I am the first to laugh when, as Jules Renard did in his Diaries, someone describes accurately and amusingly her house, her meals, her astounding way of welcoming people, her whims, oddities, injustices, and the extraordinary lies she would tell. And I quite like it when I hear stories like those my father used to tell with so much wit and delicacy, of Madame Sarah in the theatre, stories proving the eccentricity of her character and the constancy of her genius. But when I hear anyone attempting to compare her with other actresses, criticizing or condemning her, it is not merely odious to me, it is something I simply cannot bear.

Jules Renard wrote that ‘those who do not love Victor Hugo are a bore to read, even when they are not writing about him.’ I like that remark, and I feel that way about certain young actors who enjoy wondering idiotically ‘what would happen’ if Sarah Bernhardt came back. They think Sarah Bernhardt was an actress of her time! How stupid of them! Cannot they see that if she came back she would be of their time?

There is in Art a category of superior joy so deep and so lofty that one is forever indebted to the artist who creates it.

V

On his return from Petersburg, Lucien Guitry had gone to play at the Odéon. There he did several of his old plays — Kean, Macbeth, Sapho — and played opposite Réjane in Amoureuse. After they had done Lysistrata, he was unable to get on with Porel, the director of the Odéon, and Sarah Bernhardt welcomed him with open arms into her theatre. For thirty years Sarah Bernhardt had known to whom to speak: she had finally found someone who could answer her.

Rehearsals were called daily at onefifteen for one-thirty. At any rate, that was the hour to be read on the call board, though only the supernumeraries were punctual. The cast would arrive in their good time, one after the other, my father strolling in at twothirty or later. For L’Aiglon Edmond Rostand would turn up at three o’clock, and at about ten minutes to four Madame Sarah Bernhardt would make her entrance. Everybody would get up; the men would take off their hats and move forward to kiss her hand. As there were not less than sixty people on the stage, the kissing of her hand took a good half hour. Then Madame Sarah Bernhardt would withdraw to her dressing room and change — for she rehearsed L’Aiglon in the costume of Lorenzaccio, this male costume helping to establish the mood. As soon as she had changed, the rehearsal would begin. However, at five o’clock it was interrupted by ‘Madame Sarah’s tea.’ The entire cast would watch with patience, with affection, with respect, while she took her tea. Everything the woman did was extraordinary; but to those about her it was perfectly natural that she should do extraordinary things.

You see why L‘Aiglon was rehearsed for five or six months.

For a number of weeks, in the Wagram scene, when my father — Flambeau — spoke the line,

Madame Sarah would answer,

One day she asked what was meant by the words, ‘ J’empoigne la crinière.’ She thought they might be an allusion to the tail of a comet. To show that she was in the know, she asked Rostand the question.

‘Not at all, madame. It means what it says. You are standing beside your horse and you grab the mane in order to mount astride.’

‘What do you mean, my horse! Have I a horse?’

‘Naturally, madame. You are leaving for France. You can’t go on foot.’

Thereupon she called out to the stage manager that he was to bring on a horse the next day. Next day the horse was led in. It was a great devil of a bay, and leading it in by the bridle was one of those little stableboys all of whom look alike and whom one can’t mistake even when they are not leading in a horse by the bridle. You can tell them easily by their parenthetical legs that always indicate where the horse fits; but the best way to tell them is by their eyes. People who look after horses always have something angelic in their glance.

Madame Sarah Bernhardt looked from a distance at the horse as she might have looked at an enemy. Then she went bravely toward him. I mean by this that she was scared blue and was trying vainly to hide the fact.

When she was within three feet of ‘the noblest conquest of man’ the latter, doubtless by way of expressing his deference, struck the ground noisily with his hoof. Madame Sarah leapt back and cried out, ‘Take that horse away this instant! He is vicious and horribly wicked! I don’t want ever to see him again! Ever, ever, ever!’

Then she added, ‘And try to find me another, I don’t care what color he is, or what age, but he will have to be the mildest horse there is in the world.’

Two days later the lad came back with another horse. He was fat; he was gray; he was enormous; and his head was bound round in an old pair of woolen drawers. You will see why. The lad took off the drawers, disclosing a face, if I may say so, whose extreme mildness bordered on stupidity. Madame Sarah got up and took two cautious steps in the direction of the horse.

‘Is this one gentle?’

‘Oh, madame, just give him your hand. You’ll see.’

‘My hand! Not on your life! Leave me alone . . . and see that you have a good grip of him.’

She looked the horse straight in the face and went, ‘Boo! ’

The horse might have been a little surprised, but he did n’t show it.

Madame Sarah said, ‘We’ll try another experiment. Bring me the thunder.’

The sheet iron that serves for thunder in the theatre was brought forward. She ordered two men to shake it as violently as possible. The noise was deafening, but the horse never stirred. Then, happy, her fears dissipated, Madame Sarah had an idea. Holding out her right hand to Rostand and her left hand to my father, she said, ‘Let us take hands.’ Like children about to dance, we all took hands. She drew us back step by step as far upstage as we could go, and there she said in a low voice, in order not to be overheard by the horse, ‘We’ll all rush on him together and shout, “ Vive l’Empereur!” . . . Ready? One, two, three!’

Dragged by her, we rushed upon the poor horse, screaming at the top of our voices, ‘ Vive l’Empereur!’

Something happened then which is rather difficult to tell. Help me. Guess. Ask yourself what an animal would do that was afraid and had no command of words. You agree that he would make a noise? You’ve guessed it. He did. He made a noise. A noise that was like a tardy and resonant echo of the recent thunder. I don’t believe it could be called the vulgar expression of a republican opinion of what we had shouted: nevertheless, Madame Sarah Bernhardt was deeply wounded. She said, ‘We’ll keep him, because he is not wicked. But he’s a pig just the same.’

Then, turning to Rostand, she said to him as if he were nine years old and she fifteen, ‘There! You have your horse. Are you happy now?’

And he said timidly, ‘Yes, but . . . You see, madame . . . We’ll want two.’

‘Two what?’

‘Two horses.’

‘And why two horses?’

‘We’ll need one for Guitry. Flambeau leaves with you.’

She thought he was going rather far, but said quickly enough, ‘Very well, very well.’

Having made up her mind to refuse Rostand nothing, she turned to the stableboy and said, ‘We shall keep this horse. Please bring this same one back to-morrow, and bring another. But he must be just as gentle as this one.’

Said the stableboy, ‘Then I’ll bring two others.’

‘No, not two others. This one, and another one.’

‘Can’t be done. I’ll have to bring two others.’

‘But why? Why? Tell me why?’

She was becoming irritated and was jabbing him with ‘whys’ like a boxer’s gloves as he stood rolling the drawers about the horse’s head.

Finally he explained. ‘Because, madame, I’m going to tell you. This horse is n’t afraid of anything else in the world, but he’s afraid of other horses. That’s why I have to put these drawers over his head, because he’s afraid of other horses.’

Thereupon Madame Sarah Bernhardt made up her mind that there would be no horses in the Wagram scene. And every evening, for seven or eight hundred triumphant performances of the play, Madame Sarah Bernhardt raised her arms to heaven and cried, —

‘J’empoigne la crinière! Alea jacta est!’

(To be continued)