The First Actress Read online

  I did not think it changed me. I was too absorbed by the revelation that after all my indignant condemnations, my strident refusal to ever be like my mother, in the end, the very act I’d disdained came down to a fleeting encounter of the flesh, not nearly the violation or indignity I had believed it to be. The only difference, I decided, was that afterwards, in her case, the man left suitable payment for the effort—which, if one discounted the social standing of being married, was probably more than most wives received.

  Yet it did change me. Although I was slow to notice, my awakened carnality seeped into my person, coloring my voice, my gestures, the very manner in which others perceived me, so that one day after delivering a recital from Zaïre, the very play that had earned me his prior disdain, Provost grunted. “That wasn’t bad. Not good, mind you, and not stage-worthy by any measure, but better. For you.”

  Coming from him, it was high praise. I could have hugged the brute.

  Only then did I notice the other boys in the Conservatoire—to me, they were still boys, though to everyone else they were young men—eyeing me as I flew down the halls with my overstuffed satchel, my lips stained brown from the cheap bonbons I ate to stave off my hunger and save my coin, my hair escaping the pin stabbed through my chignon.

  “What on earth are they looking at?” I asked Marie.

  I’d gone searching for her as soon as I could, coming upon her one afternoon after deportment class, which was taught by an effeminate remnant of the Second Empire, replete with the lace-trimmed sleeve cuffs and rouged lips. Marie had been delighted to see me, kissing my cheeks as though we’d left Grandchamp yesterday. When I bullied her about keeping her distance, she shrugged. “I didn’t want to be a nuisance. Everyone here seems so taken with you, while I’m…well, no one thinks I’ll ever be a great actress.”

  “No one thinks that about me, either. We’re friends. You never wrote to me, so the least you could have done was tell me you’d come to Paris, let alone were studying here.”

  “Flanders was a bore,” she replied. “My mother was so occupied proving herself the perfect wife, she seemed very willing to let me come here to try my luck.”

  She was succeeding, at least to my eyes. She had a winning air that everyone flocked to, even the competitive girls, and through her I’d made more friends—or so I’d thought until now.

  “They ogle me like wolves,” I grumbled. “Must I fling rocks to keep them at bay?”

  “Fling Paul Porel at them instead,” said Marie, sticking her tongue out as we passed. A few of the boys made bold kissing sounds at her; she arched her rump, made even more curvaceous by her bustle. “They’re mad with jealousy that you’re with him and not them.”

  “They know?” I came to a horrified halt.

  She glanced at me in amusement. “Sarah, surely you’re not that naïve. Honestly, who would think it, considering what our mothers—or yours, now that mine is a respectable matron—do? Men always know. They can smell it on us.”

  “They can? Dear God, what if…?”

  She laughed. “I said men. Not mothers. Don’t fret. I’m certain your chère maman has no inkling of your rendezvous with Porel. If she did, you’d have heard about it by now. Nothing enrages a courtesan more than a daughter who gives it away for free.”

  I wasn’t reassured. Nor was I pleased. I sent Paul a note canceling our engagement that evening and went home in trepidation. Julie hadn’t said anything to me; she barely acknowledged my presence these days. She was enlarging the flat, knocking down walls to make more space, as Rosine had engaged a new suitor—one evidently generous with his wealth. Half the flat was in chaos, scaffolds and tarps everywhere, Régine stomping around insulting the workers, while Jeanne complained that the wallpaper glue stuck to her shoes. Under the circumstances, my spending a few nights a week with “my fellow female pupils” had gone unquestioned.

  As soon as I entered my room and unpinned my hat, my back aching from the weight of my satchel, Julie appeared unexpectedly at the door.

  “May I ask where you have been?” she said, distinct frost in her tone.

  I started to unpack my satchel. “At deportment class—”

  “Liar.” She came at me so quickly I didn’t have time to duck before she delivered the blow. Reeling back from her, my temple throbbing, I heard her say, “I know exactly where you’ve been. After everything you put me through: the humiliation, the disparagement of me and Rosine before our suitors, our friends— Then Morny helps you into the most prestigious training academy for the dramatic arts, and what do you do? Play the whore.”

  I lifted my eyes to her. “He doesn’t pay me.”

  “Then you’re a fool. You’ll wish for payment soon enough when he gets you with child. Those who do not pay leave. They always do.”

  I elected not to inform her that we’d seen to that potential complication; by mutual agreement, Paul never spent himself inside me. As she spun away, I said instead, “Maybe they leave you. Not me.”

  Her shoulders went rigid. “You’d best pray you earn such high marks that your instructors declare you the second incarnation of Rachel herself. Because I’ll not give you another sou once you complete your training, regardless of whether the company hires you. Once you’re done with your studies, you are on your own. Then we shall see who pays whom.”

  She stormed out, slamming the door so hard that a ladder toppled somewhere in the flat.

  With a snarl of fury, I flung my satchel across the room, scattering my books. As they upended on the floor, underlined pages fluttering, I dropped onto my cot and sank my face in my hands. High marks, indeed. I must achieve more than that.

  Only a contract at the Comédie-Française would save me now.

  III

  I told Paul we had to end our liaison. He was devastated, blubbering that he loved me, he would do anything for me.

  I refused. “I only earned second prize in comedy and an honorable mention in tragedy last year. This is our final year. I must earn first prize in both to gain a contract at the Comédie. I’ve much studying to do and little time to accomplish it.”

  “Won’t Morny see to your contract?” he said tearfully. “Why must you forsake me?”

  I bit back a surge of anger. “Paul, please. We are not Romeo and Juliet. I don’t want Morny to ‘see to it.’ I want to earn a contract by my own merits.”

  He was very unhappy and avoided me for weeks, while the other boys turned aggressive. I had so many invitations for coffee and pastries at the brasserie, I might have lived off their largesse. I turned down every one. If I wasn’t studying, I was sleeping. I was punctual for every class; I even tolerated the deportment fop with his crop, which he flicked across my shoulders—“Upright, mademoiselle. Glide. You’re a queen at court, not a nag dragging the milk cart.”

  The month before my final exams, I prepared without cease. Provost had assigned me two challenging scenes selected to display my versatility, but all of a sudden, he fell gravely ill. Samson was appointed to assume his place, and he informed me that my monologues from Zaïre and Molière’s Les Femmes savantes were ill-suited, replacing them with Delavigne’s La Fille du Cid and L’École des vieillards. Neither suited me better, with their long-winded verse, but Samson insisted, despite my objections. As he was one of the appointed judges for my exams, I couldn’t disobey him.

  Then Rosine declared that I must have a new hairstyle for “Prize Day,” the euphemism for that grueling week of exams, on the very morning of my appearance. The coiffeur proceeded to fuss over my unruly mop—“She looks like a harem slave”—and employed an arsenal of hot irons and combs to wrangle my hair into fat coiled ringlets. The oily pomade used to set the froth in place stained my new dress; when I arrived at the exam hall, sweating and disheveled, I resembled a harem slave nearly drowned by a flood.

  Standing before the judges—Samson, Beauvallet,
the lorgnette-wielding Madame Nathalie, and two others from the Comédie—I recited my scene from La Fille du Cid with a sob breaking in the back of my throat. It didn’t enhance the drama. My comedy scene was indeed comedic, but not because of my delivery. The pomade had dried and cracked, my hair springing up from its imprisonment as if I’d been electrified.

  Only pride kept me upright. Madame Nathalie compressed her lips, while Beauvallet looked outraged. Samson gave a malign grin of contentment.

  As luck would have it, Julie had decided to accompany me to my exams, and her knowing smile undid me on the carriage ride home. “That certainly did not go as planned. I must tell Rosine we can never employ that hairdresser again.”

  Madame G. waited for me with her ubiquitous pot of hot chocolate. For once, I couldn’t bear her sympathy. I went into my room and shut the door, crawling into bed to plunge my head under my pillow. If I’d had a vial of poison, I would have swallowed it.

  Hours later, after my sisters went to bed and Julie and Rosine departed for their evening engagement, a knock at my door preceded Madame G.’s voice: “Sarah, are you awake?”

  I moaned. “I wish I wasn’t. I wish I was dead.”

  She stepped inside. “Surely it’s not as terrible as all that.”

  “It’s worse.” I sat up. Her mouth drooped as she took in the greasy mess of my hair. “No one will ever hire me. I was dreadful. I—” I choked back another onslaught of tears. “I have no choice but to marry that horrid merchant from Lyons. Julie will see to it.”

  “Then she’ll be very disappointed to hear you received this.” From her skirt pocket, she removed an envelope. “It came for you this afternoon; I retrieved it from the courier before your mother saw it. Knowing how she feels, she might have burned it and claimed it never arrived.” She smiled as I sat still, afraid to take the envelope from her.

  “What…what does it say?” I whispered.

  She set it in my hands. “Read it for yourself. It’s from the Comédie.”

  Trembling, I unfolded the envelope:

  We request the presence of Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, graduate of the Conservatoire and second-year prize honoree in comedy, to sign her six-month contract as a pensionnaire at the Française tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.

  “Signed by Édouard Thierry, administrator-in-chief of the Comédie-Française.” I looked up in disbelief. “They’re offering me a contract. I won first prize today in comedy.” The irony did not escape me. Given my performance, it was precisely what I deserved.

  She nodded. “You see? Not as terrible as that.”

  I lunged across the bed to hug her, laughing and crying at the same time. I didn’t know how it had happened, how I’d managed to survive what surely must have been the most disastrous exam in the Conservatoire’s history, yet somehow I had.

  Tenuous as it might be, I had a future to look forward to.

  I

  My dress was puce satin, like boiled cabbage. Rosine had it adjusted for me, another of her castaways, the suitor who financed the remodeling of our flat having also provided her with a plethora of new frocks. To add distinction, she loaned me a matching bonnet and parasol, as well as her new luxury eight-spring barouche with its coachman.

  Julie made no comment upon hearing of my good fortune, but as I prepared to depart, she did something unexpected. Slipping a turquoise ring from her finger, she handed it to me with the cryptic words “Miracles can happen.” Too overjoyed to spoil the moment, I accepted the ring and rode in my aunt’s barouche to the Comédie-Française like an empress.

  Upon my arrival at the entrance, I pranced up the steps twirling my parasol and nearly collided with a man leaving the building.

  Samson gave me a sour smile. “Mademoiselle Bernhardt. What an unexpected surprise.” He lifted his eyes to the barouche. “And such splendid equipage. I’m pleased to see you’ve not suffered too much from your unfortunate exams. Indeed, you appear to have recovered with remarkable resiliency. To what do we owe this pleasure?”

  “I’m here to sign as a pensionnaire,” I replied.

  His supercilious regard faltered. “You are to…perform here?”

  I waved the note. “By invitation of Monsieur Thierry.”

  His voice darkened. “My, my. His lordship de Morny certainly has a long reach. Shall we expect one of your sisters to be studying at the Conservatoire next year?” Before I could respond to this, he added, “I wish you bonne chance. You’ll certainly need it,” and he stalked down the stairs.

  My joy crumbled into cinders.

  Morny. He was responsible. Again. He had arranged this contract for me, and I couldn’t claim I’d had to audition to earn it, unless I counted my horrid performance at my exams as an audition—which I did not. First prize or not, I’d been catastrophic.

  As I hurried into the theater, my mother’s turquoise ring loose on my finger, I had the unsettling thought that my acceptance couldn’t have been a spontaneous act of generosity on Morny’s part. As impossible as it seemed, Julie must have informed him of my debacle at my exams and had him put in a word for me. If so, her rare kindness held a hidden barb. Was her ring her way of reminding me that whatever I achieved, I owed to her?

  I wouldn’t dwell on it. I was here now, an ingénue in France’s most prestigious acting company. I must prove myself worthy of it. Entering the famed greenroom of the Comédie’s main theater, its foyer des acteurs, with its curved upholstered velvet sofas and cushioned armchairs under the lavish crystal chandelier, a gift from King Louis-Philippe himself, I took a moment to linger before the portraits of all the acclaimed actors who had graced the Comédie’s stage. Rachel hung there in her pride of place, her slim, dark-eyed splendor immortalized in her regal costume as Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle, a role written for her by my own patron, Dumas.

  “I’m going to be like you,” I whispered. “Dumas told me I could be a sensation, as you were.” I crossed myself and said a quick prayer, for Rachel had died of consumption three years past, her tragic loss convulsing Paris.

  “Mademoiselle Bernhardt, may I ask why are you dallying?”

  Whirling around, I saw Provost limping toward me, leaning on a cane as he’d once relied on his pole in class. He looked emaciated. “After the considerable effort expended on your behalf, it’s most ill-advised to keep our administrator waiting.”

  “Oh, monsieur.” I couldn’t hide my relief. “I’m so happy to see you. I’d feared…”

  “Not dead yet,” he said dryly. “Come. Marvelous as she was, Rachel isn’t going to sign your contract for you.” He glanced past me into the empty room. “Are you alone?”

  I nodded, seeing his bloodless lips purse.

  “You’re not yet nineteen. We require your mother’s signature. No matter.” He motioned to me. “You can sign now and Madame Bernhardt can witness it later.” As he led me into Thierry’s office, he said, “I regret that my illness came upon me so precipitously. The scenes Samson selected for your exams were very unsuitable.”

  “I did tell him. I begged him to let me perform your selections, but he didn’t listen.”

  “Why would he? He saw an advantage and he seized on it.” He paused, taking in my bewilderment. “He hoped to ruin your chances. He knew that had you performed my selections, you would have won first prize in both categories, despite the incident with your coiffure. He had his own student to promote. She performed your scenes instead.”

  I was aghast. “But that’s a terrible betrayal. You are colleagues.”

  He chuckled. “And you still have much to learn. There is no such thing as collegiality in the theater. You will find actors are capable of anything in order to succeed.”

  His words dampened my elation.

  Monsieur Thierry was an efficient, obviously very busy man who made short shrift of having me sign my contract, at a salary of fifty francs a m
onth, which was indeed, as my mother had warned, barely enough to cover my meals.

  Provost escorted me back to the barouche. “As I must take a leave from my teaching obligations due to my illness, Thierry has agreed to let me prepare you for your debut. I will select your roles and supply your expenses for costumes and such. You will need a makeup box, as well, which I shall provide.”

  I almost embraced him, my eyes swelling with grateful tears.

  He shook a finger at me. “Don’t thank me yet. I expect you to work harder than you ever did at the Conservatoire. The theater is not the classroom. You cannot forget your lines or cues onstage. The entire cast depends on you; they’ll expect professionalism at every performance. The Comédie has an illustrious history,” he said, reverting to his familiar harangue. “If you fail here, there are no second chances. Music halls or back-alley cabarets are all you can look forward to—if that.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I promise to work as hard as I can.”

  “Harder. There must be nothing else in your life henceforth. No friends or family, no outside distractions. Performing must be your entire life.” To ease the impact of his words, he gave me one of his infrequent smiles. “You can be great. You have it in you. But—”

  “Talent alone doesn’t make a career,” I said quietly. “Training and focus do.”

  He harrumphed. “See that you do not forget it.” He stood in the doorway as I mounted the carriage. I restrained the urge to wave goodbye as he watched me depart.

  Not since Mère Sophie had I been so willing to sacrifice myself to please someone.

  II

  As was customary, the announcement appeared in the newspapers and on playbills in the arcade of the Française: The Debut of Sarah Bernhardt as Iphigénie by Racine. Seeing my name in print thrilled me, even if the role itself was daunting, laden with all the challenges Provost had highlighted. Though I wasn’t expected to give a defining performance in my debut, as he assured me to my relief, and would perform several other roles besides Iphigénie in succession, all chosen by him, I must still prove my worthiness to be on the Comédie’s stage if I hoped to have my contract renewed.