Oon Criteek de Bernhardt.

The re-appearance of Sara Bernhardt in the midst of us has, of course, set our best society circles into a flutter of excitement; and we have been highly edified by the various criticisms which we have heard passed upon that gifted woman’s performance of “Fedora” night before last. All these criticisms have flavored of that directness, that frankness, and that rugged discrimination, which are so characteristic of true Western culture. Col. J. M. Hill, the esteemed lessee of the Columbia Theatre, told us some weeks ago that his object in securing a season of Bernhardt was to give a series of entertainments which would appeal for appreciation and for patronage to the intellectuality of our crême de la crême, and which would be several degrees above the comprehension of the hoi polloi. We noticed last Monday evening that the hoi polloi were not on hand to welcome the eminent French artiste; and we were ineffably pained to notice, too, that the crême de la crême was very meagrely represented. This amazed as well as pained us: if Sara Bernhardt cannot pack the Columbia at Col. Hill’s popular prices, who, by the memory of Racine and Molière! who—we ask in all solemnity—who can? And what amazed us, furthermore,—perhaps we should say what shocked us,—was the exceeding frigidity with 267which the select few of our crême de la crême received the superb bits of art which Sara Bernhardt threw out, much as an emery-wheel emits beauteous vari-colored sparks.

“Zis eez awful!” exclaimed Sara to her stage-manager, as she came off the stage after the first act of “Fedora.” “Ze play eez in Russia, but ze audiongce eez in ze circle polaire!”

It strikes us that Sara was pretty nearly correct; but for the date on the play-bill, we might have surmised that our French friends were performing amid surroundings of the glacial period.

“Ze play eez ‘Fedora,’” said Sara to M. le General Carson, entre acte, “ze artiste eez Bernhardt, and ze audiongce eez ‘Les Miserables!’”

M. le General came right out, and told this to distinguished friends in the lobby. He said it was a bong mo; but young Horace McVicker, who once conducted a Paris-green manufactory in California, and therefore is an accomplished French scholar, corrected M. le General by alleging that Sara’s witticism was not a bong mo, but a judy spree.

The Markeesy di Pullman applauded the famous actress a great deal after he had once located her. In order to make sure of doing the proper thing, he applauded every woman that appeared on the stage; and by the time the second act was fairly under way, he was able to identify the “cantatreese” (as he called her) by the color of her hair. “But,” 268he remarked to his friend, M. le Colonnel Potter Palmer, later in the evening, “I don’t mind telling you that I don’t like her as well as I do Patti; and as for this man Sardoo”—

“Sardoo? Who’s he?” interrupted M. le Colonnel Palmer.

“Why, he’s the man who wrote this piece,” said the markeesy; “and he doesn’t hold a candle to our Italian poets, Danty and Bockashyo.”

“I don’t know any thing about such things,” said M. le Colonnel Palmer meekly. “As for myself, I like to be amused when I go to a show; and I presume I’d like this woman very much if I could see her in one of the fine old English comedies, such as the ‘Bunch of Keys,’ or the ‘Rag Baby.’”

Now, while these two distinguished personages were aware that the play was “Fedora,” there were many in the auditorium who had not very clear convictions on this point. M. Thomas J. Hooper, the prominent linseed-oil manufacturer (whose palatial residence on Prairie Avenue is the Mecca of our most cultured society),—M. Hooper, we say, sat through three acts without dreaming that the play was “Fedora.”

“I like Clara Morris better in this rôle,” said he to M. T. Desplaines Wiggins, one of the vice-presidents of the Chicago Literary Club.

“But, my dear fellow,” said M. Wiggins, in a tone of expostulation, “Clara Morris never played the part.”

269“Never played Cameel?” cried M. Hooper. “Why, bless you, man, I seen her do it right here in this theatre!”

“But this isn’t Cameel,” said M. Wiggins: “it’s Feedorer.”

“Well, now, I’ll bet you fifty it’s Cameel,” said M. Hooper, calmly but firmly.

M. Wiggins covered the wager, and M. Billy Lyon decided in favor of Wiggins and Fedora.

“I knew I was right,” exclaimed M. Wiggins triumphantly, “for I saw it on the programme.”

M. Hooper was very much put out. “You don’t pronounce that word right, anyway,” he muttered sulkily.

“What word?” demanded M. Wiggins hotly.

“That word programmay,” said M. Hooper. “It’s French; and it isn’t program, but programmay.”

They wagered fifty dollars on it between them, and referred it to M. Jean McConnell.

“At popular prices, it’s program,” said M. McConnell; “but during this engagement, it’s programmay, sure.”

So M. Hooper squared himself financially; and M. Wiggins went down to his seat in the parquettay, muttering something that sounded very like a profane and inexcusable rhyme for program.

But, as we have hinted above, M. Hooper was not the only one in the audience who was unsettled as to what the play was, and what it was 270all about. Throughout the auditorium, messieurs, mesdames, and mademoiselles were sadly bothered to know whether it was Cameel, or Faydorah, or Tayodorah, or Fru-Fru, or some other morso from the Bernhardt repertevoi. M. James M. Billings, the prominent restaurateur, told his family that the bill had been changed, and that the piece was “Jennie Saper.”

“Why, no, ’taint, pa,” protested Mdlle. Billings: “it’s ‘Faydorah.’”

“Now, look here, Birdie,” said M. Billings sternly. “I know what I’m talking about. As we were comin’ in, I asked one of the men in the entry what the piece was, and he said ‘Jennie Saper;’ and he knew, for he was a Frenchman.”

“Our seats,” said M. T. Frelinghuysen Boothby, “were so far back, that we had difficulty in making out what Burnhart said; but from what I did hear, I would judge that she spoke better English than Rhea: at any rate, I could understand her better than I ever could Rhea.”

M. le Colonnel Fitzgerald confessed to being disappointed. “It may be my fault, however,” said he: “for I am very rusty in my French, having paid no attention to it since I visited Montreal in the summer of 1880. I brought my ‘French Conversations’ along with me to-night, but it was of no assistance to me. I hadn’t got half through the first scene in the first act, when Fedora was dying in the last act. This was slow business. 271Of course, there were a good many words and phrases that were familiar, such as, ‘voyla,’ ‘toot sweet,’ ‘tray be-yen,’ ‘mercee,’ ‘pardong,’ ‘bong zhour,’ and ‘wee wee.’ You can depend upon it, that, whenever I heard these old friends, I applauded with the nicest and the heartiest discrimination.”

Now, all these criticisms and features (and there were many, many more such) interested us—or, at least, they entertained us. But we were grieved to discover a disposition (shall we say a pongshong?) on the part of the audience to compare Bernhardt’s Fedora with Fanny Davenport’s. To institute any such comparison would be a sore injustice to both ladies. Bernhardt and Davenport represent two very different dramatic schools: one is the school of avoirdupois, and the other is essentially so different that it must be estimated only under the accepted rules of troy weight. To be more explicit, we will say, that, while you would properly weigh Miss Davenport’s art on a hayscales, you must use a more delicate machine if you would seek to learn the true magnitude and concinnity of Bernhardt’s art. It is quite true that to both Fedoras the same amount of practical appreciation is paid here in Chicago. When Miss Davenport played Fedora at the Columbia Theatre last January, she was applauded rapturously by 2,000 delighted tradesfolk at 50 cents apiece: now Bernhardt comes along with her subtile impersonation, 272and does business to 333⅓ of the crême de la crême of our pork-packers at $3 per head. You see that the box-office receipts are the same in both instances: it would be impossible, therefore, to compare the merits of each actress by the amount of money derived from the performance of each.

It is far from our purpose to institute any invidious comparisons between these two gifted women: each excels in her way; and the way of the one is as far from the way of the other as the beauties of a fat-stock show are removed from the beauties of a floral display. If there is in Fanny’s art a breadth and a weight that remind us of the ponderous thud of a meat-axe, there is (it must also be confessed) in Sara’s art a daintiness and an insinuation that remind us of the covert swish of a Japanese paper-knife. Horace has explained this very difference in that charming ode wherein he tells of Næera, who, “with ruddy, glowing arm, holds out an earthen cup of goat’s milk,” while, on the other hand, Lydia extends to the parched poet a silver flagon, “filled to the brim with old Falernian chilled with snow.” Now, there is no doubt in our mind that Horace chose the Falernian; but we are not all Horaces; and we presume to say, that, as between goat’s milk at popular prices, and Falernian at war-rates, a vast majority of Chicagoans would choose the former.

“The last act was a great disappointment,” said 273one of our most cultured beef-canners. “It is there that Davenport gets away with this French woman. Why, Davenport’s tussle with that young Rooshan is the grandest piece of art I ever saw! she just tears around and horns the furniture like a Texas steer in a box-car.”

George Bowron, leader of the orchestra at the Columbia, says that he knew, just as soon as he saw the score of the incidental music, that Bernhardt’s Fedora was very unlike Davenport’s.

“Bernhardt’s score,” says he, “is interspersed throughout with ‘pianissimo,’ ‘con moto,’ and ‘andante.’ On the other hand, the music of Davenport’s Fedora is in big black type, and every other bar is labelled ‘forte’ or ‘fortissimo;’ and our trombone-player blew himself into a hemorrhage last January, trying to keep up with the rest of the orchestra in the death-struggle in the last act.”

We can see that Bernhardt labors under one serious disadvantage, and that is the fact that her plays are couched in a foreign language. We asked Col. J. M. Hill why Sardoo did not write his plays in English, and he said he supposed it was because Sardoo was a Frenchman. This may be all very well for Paris, but we opine that it will not do in Chicago. What protection has a Chicago audience in a case of this kind? What assurance have we, that, while we are admiring this woman’s art, the woman herself is not brazenly 274guying and blackguarding us in her absurd foreign language?

Now, we would not seek to create the impression that Sardoo’s work is not meritorious: on the contrary, we are free to say, and we say it boldly, that we recognize considerable merit in it. We fancy, however, that Sardoo is not always original: we find him making use of a good many lines that certainly were not born of his creative genius. As we remember now, Sardoo introduces into his dialogue the very “pardonnez-moy,” the very “mong-du,” and the very “too zhoors,” which we hear every day in our best society; and will he have the effrontery to deny that he has stolen from us—ay, brazenly stolen from us—the very “wee-wee” which is the grand commercial basis upon which Chicago culture stands and defies all competition?

Oh, how glad—how proud—Chicago is that Bronson Howard and William Shakespeare and Charley Hoyt, and her other favorite dramatists, have been content to put their plays in honest but ennobling Anglo-Saxon!