Note 40 — SARAH BERNHARDT

John Corbin in the New York Sun, Dec. 17, 1905. A quarter of a century earlier, Matthew Arnold had written of Bernhardt, then in the midst of her first visit to London: “One remark I will make, a remark suggested by the inevitable comparison of Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt with Rachel. One talks vaguely of genius, but I had never till now comprehended how much of Rachel’s superiority was purely in intellectual power, how eminently this power counts in the actor’s art as in all art, how just is the instinct which led the Greeks to mark with a high and severe stamp the Muses. Temperament and quick intelligence, passion, nervous mobility, grace, smile, voice, charm, poetry—Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt has them all; one watches her with pleasure, with admiration, and yet not without a secret disquietude. Something is wanting, or, at least, not present in sufficient force; something which alone can secure and fix her administration of all the charming gifts which she has, can alone keep them fresh, keep them sincere, save them from perils by caprice, perils by mannerism; that something is high intellectual power. It was here that Rachel was so great; she began, one says to oneself, as one recalls her image and dwells upon it—she began almost where Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt ends.”