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My Double Life by Sarah Bernhardt

S >> Sarah Bernhardt >> My Double Life




"Well, Monsieur," I said, "the only cattle in the train are the eight
French passengers, and I should be very much obliged if you would give
orders that the journey should be continued."

"Make your mind easy about that, Madame," he replied. "Will you come in
and rest? I am here just now on a round of inspection, and am staying
for a few days in this inn. You shall have a cup of tea, and that will
refresh you."

I told him that I had a friend waiting for me in the road and a lady in
the railway carriage.

"But that makes no difference," he said. "Let us go and fetch them."

A few minutes later we found poor Villaret seated on a milestone. His
head was on his knees, and he was asleep. I asked him to fetch Mlle.
Soubise.

"And if your other travelling companions will come and take a cup of tea
they will be welcome," said the officer. I went back with him, and we
entered by the little door through which I had seen him come out. It was
a fairly large room which we entered, on a level with the meadow; there
were some mats on the floor, a very low bed, and an enormous table, on
which were two large maps of France. One of these was studded over with
pins and small flags. There was also a portrait of the Emperor William,
mounted and fastened up with four pins. All this belonged to the
officer.

On the chimney-piece, under an enormous glass shade, were a bride's
wreath, a military medal, and a plait of white hair. On each side of the
glass shade was a china vase containing a branch of box. All this,
together with the table and the bed, belonged to the landlady, who had
given up her room to the officer.

There were five cane chairs round the table, a velvet arm-chair, and a
wooden bench covered with books against the wall. A sword and belt were
lying on the table, and two horse-pistols.

I was philosophising to myself on all these heterogeneous objects, when
the others arrived: Mlle. Soubise, Villaret, young Gerson, and that
unbearable Theodore Joussian. (I hope he will forgive me if he is living
now, poor man, but the thought of him still irritates me.)

The officer had some boiling hot tea made for us, and it was a veritable
treat, as we were exhausted with hunger and cold.

When the door was opened for the tea to be brought in Theodore Joussian
caught a glimpse of the throng of girls, soldiers, and other people.

"Ah, my friends," he exclaimed, with a burst of laughter, "we are at His
Majesty William's; there is a reception on, and it's _chic_--I can tell
you that!" With this he smacked his tongue twice. Villaret reminded him
that we were the guests of a German, and that it was preferable to be
quiet.

"That's enough, that's enough!" he replied, lighting a cigarette.

A frightful uproar of oaths and shouts now took the place of the
deafening sound of the orchestra, and the incorrigible Southerner half
opened the door.

I could see the officer giving orders to two sub-officers, who in their
turn separated the groups, seizing the stoker, the engine-driver, and
the other men belonging to the train, so roughly that I was sorry for
them. They were kicked in the back, they received blows with the flat of
the sword on the shoulder; a blow with the butt end of a gun knocked the
guard of the train down. He was the ugliest brute, though, that I have
ever seen. All these people were sobered in a few seconds, and went back
towards our carriage with a hang-dog look and a threatening mien.

We followed them, but I did not feel any too satisfied as to what might
happen to us on the way with this queer lot. The officer evidently had a
similar idea, for he ordered one of the sub-officers to accompany us as
far as Amiens. This sub-officer got into our carriage, and we set off
again. We arrived at Amiens at six in the morning. Daylight had not yet
succeeded in piercing through the night clouds. Light rain was falling,
which was hardened by the cold. There was not a carriage to be had, not
even a porter. I wanted to go to the Hotel du Cheval-Blanc, but a man
who happened to be there said to me: "It's no use, my little lady;
there's no room there, even for a lath like you. Go to the house over
there with a balcony; they can put some people up."

With these words he turned his back on me. Villaret had gone off without
saying a word. M. Gerson and his grandson had disappeared silently in a
covered country cart hermetically closed. A stout, ruddy, thick-set
matronly woman was waiting for them, but the coachman looked as though
he were in the service of well-to-do people. General Pelissier's son,
who had not uttered a word since we had left Gonesse, had disappeared
like a ball from the hands of a conjurer.

Theodore Joussian politely offered to accompany us, and I was so weary
that I accepted his offer. He picked up our bag and began to walk at
full speed, so that we had difficulty in keeping up with him. He was so
breathless with the walk that he could not talk, which was a great
relief to me.

Finally we arrived at the house and entered, but my horror was great on
seeing that the hall of the hotel had been transformed into a dormitory.
We could scarcely walk between the mattresses laid down on the ground,
and the grumbling of the people was by no means promising.

When once we were in the office a young girl in mourning told us that
there was not a room vacant. I sank down on a chair, and Mlle. Soubise
leaned against the wall with her arms hanging down, looking most
dejected.

The odious Joussian then yelled out that they could not let two women as
young as we were be out in the street all night. He went to the
proprietress of the hotel and said something quietly about me. I do not
know what it was, but I heard my name distinctly. The young woman in
mourning then looked up with moist eyes.

"My brother was a poet," she said. "He wrote a very pretty sonnet about
you after seeing you play in _Le Passant_ more than ten times. He took
me, too, to see you, and I enjoyed myself so much that night. It is all
over, though." She lifted her hands towards her head and sobbed, trying
to stifle back her cries. "It's all over!" she repeated. "He is dead!
They have killed him! It is all over! All over!"

I got up, moved to the depth of my being by this terrible grief. I put
my arms round her and kissed her, crying myself, and whispering to her
words of comfort and hope.

Calmed by my words and touched by my sisterliness, she wiped her eyes,
and taking my hand, led me gently away. Soubise followed. I signed to
Joussian in an authoritative way to stay where he was, and we went up
the two flights of stairs of the hotel in silence. At the end of a
narrow corridor she opened a door. We found ourselves in rather a big
room, reeking with the smell of tobacco. A small night-lamp, placed on a
little table by the bed, was the only light in this large room. The
wheezing respiration of a human breast disturbed the silence. I looked
towards the bed, and by the faint light from the little lamp I saw a man
half seated, propped up by a heap of pillows. The man was aged-looking
rather than really old. His beard and hair were white, and his face bore
traces of suffering. Two large furrows were formed from the eyes to the
corners of the mouth. What tears must have rolled down that poor
emaciated face!

The girl went quietly towards the bed, signed to us to come inside the
room, and then shut the door. We walked across on tiptoes to the far end
of the room, our arms stretched out to maintain our equilibrium. I sat
down with precaution on a large Empire couch, and Soubise took a seat
beside me. The man in bed half opened his eyes.

"What is it, my child?" he asked.

"Nothing, father; nothing serious," she replied. "I wanted to tell you,
so that you should not be surprised when you woke up. I have just given
hospitality in our room to two ladies who are here."

He turned his head in an annoyed way, and tried to look at us at the end
of the room.

"The lady with fair hair," continued the girl, "is Sarah Bernhardt, whom
Lucien liked so much, you remember?"

The man sat up, and shading his eyes with his hand peered at us. I went
near to him. He gazed at me silently, and then made a gesture with his
hand. His daughter understood the gesture, and brought him an envelope
from a small bureau. The unhappy father's hands trembled as he took it.
He drew out slowly three sheets of paper and a photograph. He fixed his
gaze on me and then on the portrait.

"Yes, yes; it certainly is you, it certainly is you," he murmured.

I recognised my photograph, taken in _Le Passant_, smelling a rose.

"You see," said the poor man, his eyes veiled by tears, "you were this
child's idol. These are the lines he wrote about you."

He then read me, in his quavering voice, with a slight Picardian accent,
a very pretty sonnet, which he refused to give me. He then unfolded a
second paper, on which some verses to Sarah Bernhardt were scrawled. The
third paper was a sort of triumphant chant, celebrating all our
victories over the enemy.

"The poor fellow still hoped, until he was killed," said the father. "He
has only been dead five weeks. He had three shots in his head. The first
shattered his jaw, but he did not fall. He continued firing on the
scoundrels like a man possessed. The second took his ear off, and the
third struck him in his right eye. He fell then, never to rise again.
His comrade told us all this. He was twenty-two years old. And now--it's
all over!"

The unhappy man's head fell back on the heap of pillows. His two inert
hands had let the papers fall, and great tears rolled down his pale
cheeks, in the furrows formed by grief. A stifled groan burst from his
lips. The girl had fallen on her knees, and buried her head in the
bed-clothes, to deaden the sound of her sobs. Soubise and I were
completely upset. Ah! those stifled sobs, those deadened groans seemed
to buzz in my ears, and I felt everything giving way under me. I
stretched my hands out into space and closed my eyes.

Soon there was a distant rumbling noise, which increased and came
nearer; then yells of pain, bones knocking against each other, the dull
sound of horses' feet dashing out human brains; armed men passed by like
a destructive whirlwind, shouting, "_Vive la guerre!_" And women on
their knees, with outstretched arms, crying out, "War is infamous! In
the name of our wombs which bore you, of our breasts which suckled you,
in the name of our pain in childbirth, in the name of our anguish over
your cradles, let this cease!"

But the savage whirlwind passed by, riding over the women. I stretched
my arms out in a supreme effort which woke me suddenly. I was lying in
the girl's bed. Mlle. Soubise, who was near me, was holding my hand. A
man whom I did not know, but whom some one called doctor, laid me gently
down again on the bed. I had some difficulty in collecting my thoughts.

"How long have I been here?" I asked.

"Since last night," replied the gentle voice of Soubise. "You fainted,
and the doctor told us that you had an attack of fever. Oh, I have been
very frightened!"

I turned my face to the doctor.

"Yes, dear lady," he said. "You must be very prudent now for the next
forty-eight hours, and then you may set out again. But you have had a
great many shocks for one with such delicate health. You must take
care."

I took the draught that he was holding out to me, apologised to the
owner of the house, who had just come in, and then turned round with my
face to the wall. I needed rest so very, very much.

Two days later I left our sad but kindly hosts. My travelling companions
had all disappeared. When I went downstairs I kept meeting Prussians,
for the unfortunate proprietor had been invaded compulsorily by the
German army. He looked at each soldier and at every officer, trying to
find out whether he were not in presence of the one who had killed his
poor boy. He did not tell me this, but it was my idea. It seemed to me
that such was his thought and such the meaning of his gaze.

In the vehicle in which I drove to the station the kind man had put a
basket of food. He also gave me a copy of the sonnet and a tracing of
his son's photograph.

I left the desolate couple with the deepest emotion, and I kissed the
girl on taking our departure. Soubise and I did not exchange a word on
our journey to the railway station, but we were both preoccupied with
the same distressing thoughts.

At the station we found that the Germans were masters there too. I asked
for a first-class compartment to ourselves, or for a _coupe_, whatever
they liked, provided we were alone.

I could not make myself understood.

I saw a man, oiling the wheels of the carriages, who looked to me like a
Frenchman. I was not mistaken. He was an old man who had been kept on,
partly out of charity and partly because he knew every nook and corner,
and, being Alsatian, spoke German. This good man took me to the booking
office, and explained my wish to have a first-class compartment to
myself. The man who had charge of the ticket office burst out laughing.
There was neither first nor second class, he said. It was a German
train, and I should have to travel like every one else. The wheel-oiler
turned purple with rage, which he quickly suppressed. (He had to keep
his place. His consumptive wife was nursing their son, who had just been
sent home from the hospital with his leg cut off and the wound not yet
healed up. There were so many in the hospital.) All this he told me as
he took me to the station-master. The latter spoke French very well, but
he was not at all like the other German officers I had met.

He scarcely saluted me, and when I expressed my desire he replied
curtly:

"It is impossible. Two places shall be reserved for you in the officers'
carriage."

"But that is what I want to avoid," I exclaimed. "I do not want to
travel with German officers."

"Well then, you shall be put with German soldiers," he growled angrily,
and, putting on his hat, he went out slamming the door. I remained
there, amazed and confused by the insolence of this ignoble brute. I
turned so pale, it appears, and the blue of my eyes became so clear,
that Soubise, who was acquainted with my fits of anger, was very much
alarmed.

"Do be calm, Madame, I implore!" she said. "We are two women alone in
the midst of hostile people. If they liked to harm us they could, and we
must accomplish the aim and object of our journey; we must see little
Maurice again."

She was very clever, this charming Mlle. Soubise, and her little speech
had the desired effect. To see the child again was my aim and object. I
calmed down, and vowed that I would not allow myself to get angry during
this journey, which promised to be fertile in incidents, and I almost
kept my word. I left the station-master's office, and found the poor
Alsatian waiting at the door. I gave him a couple of louis, which he hid
away quickly, and then shook my hand as though he would shake it off.
"You ought not to have that so visible, Madame," he said, pointing to
the little bag I had hanging at my side, "it is very dangerous."

I thanked him, but did not pay any attention to his advice. As the train
was about to start we entered the only first-class compartment there
was; in it were two young German officers. They saluted, and I took this
as a good omen. The train whistled, and I thought what good luck we had,
as no one else would get in! Well, the wheels had not turned round ten
times when the door opened violently and five German officers leaped
into our carriage.

We were nine then, and what torture it was! The station-master waved a
farewell to one of the officers, and both of them burst out laughing as
they looked at us. I glanced at the station-master's friend. He was a
surgeon-major, and was wearing the ambulance badge on his sleeve. His
wide face was congested, and a ring of sandy bushy beard surrounded the
lower part of it. Two little bright, light-coloured eyes in perpetual
movement lit up this ruddy face and gave him a sly look. He was
broad-shouldered and thick-set, and gave one the idea of having strength
without nerves. The horrid man was still laughing when the station and
its master were far away from us, but what the other one had said was
evidently very droll.

I was in a corner seat, with Soubise opposite me. A young German officer
sat beside me, and the other young officer was next to my friend. They
were both very gentle and polite, and one of them was quite delightful
in his youthful charm.

The surgeon-major took off his helmet. He was very bald, and had a very
small, stubborn-looking forehead. He began to talk in a loud voice to
the other officers.

Our two young bodyguards took very little part in the conversation.
Among the others was a tall, affected young man, whom they addressed as
baron. He was slender, very elegant, and very strong. When he saw that
we did not understand German he spoke to us in English. But Soubise was
too timid to answer, and I speak English very badly. He therefore
resigned himself regretfully to talking French.

He was agreeable, too agreeable; he certainly had not bad manners, but
he was deficient in tact. I made him understand this by turning my face
towards the scenery we were passing.

We were very much absorbed in our thoughts, and had been travelling for
a long time, when I suddenly felt suffocated by smoke which was filling
the carriage. I looked round, and saw that the surgeon-major had lighted
his pipe, and, with his eyes half closed, was sending up puffs of smoke
to the ceiling.

My eyes were smarting, and I was choking with indignation, so much so
that I was seized with a fit of coughing, which I exaggerated in order
to attract the attention of the impolite man. The baron, however,
slapped him on the knee and endeavoured to make him comprehend that the
smoke inconvenienced me. He answered by an insult which I did not
understand, shrugged his shoulders, and continued to smoke. Exasperated
by this, I lowered the window on my side. The intense cold made itself
felt in the carriage, but I preferred that to the nauseous smoke of the
pipe. Suddenly the surgeon-major got up, putting his hand to his ear,
which I then saw was filled with cotton-wool. He swore like an
ox-driver, and, pushing past every one and stepping on my feet and on
Soubise's, he shut the window violently, cursing and swearing all the
time quite uselessly, for I did not understand him. He went back to his
seat, continued his pipe, and sent out enormous clouds of smoke in the
most insolent way. The baron and the two young Germans who had been the
first in the carriage appeared to ask him something and then to
remonstrate with him, but he evidently told them to mind their own
business and began to abuse them. Very much calmer myself on seeing the
increasing anger of the disagreeable man, and very much amused by his
earache, I again opened the window. He got up again, furious, showed me
his ear and his swollen cheek, and I caught the word "periostitis" in
the explanation he gave me on shutting the window again and threatening
me. I then made him understand that I had a weak chest, and that the
smoke made me cough.

The baron acted as my interpreter, and explained this to him; but it was
easy to see that he did not care a bit about that, and he once more took
up his favourite attitude and his pipe. I left him in peace for five
minutes, during which time he was able to imagine himself triumphant,
and then with a sudden jerk of my elbow I broke the pane of glass.
Stupefaction was depicted on the major's face, and he became livid. He
got straight up, but the two young men rose at the same time, whilst the
baron burst out laughing in the most brutal manner.

The surgeon moved a step in our direction, but he found a rampart before
him; another officer had joined the two young men, and he was a strong,
hardy-looking fellow, just cut out for an obstacle. I do not know what
he said to the surgeon-major, but it was something clear and decisive.
The latter, not knowing how to expend his anger, turned on the baron,
who was still laughing, and abused him so violently that the latter
calmed down suddenly and answered in such a way that I quite understood
the two men were calling each other out. That affected me but little,
anyhow. They might very well kill each other, these two men, for they
were equally ill-mannered.

The carriage was now quiet and icy-cold, for the wind blew in wildly
through the broken pane. The sun had set. The sky was getting cloudy. It
was about half-past five, and we were approaching Tergnier. The major
had changed seats with his friend, in order to shelter his ear as much
as possible. He kept moaning like a half-dead cow.

Suddenly the repeated whistling of a distant locomotive made us listen
attentively. We then heard two, three, and four crackers bursting under
our wheels. We could perfectly well feel the efforts the engine-driver
was making to slacken speed, but before he could succeed we were thrown
against each other by a frightful shock. There were cracks and creaks,
the hiccoughs of the locomotive spitting out its smoke in irregular
fits, desperate cries, shouts, oaths, sudden downfalls, a lull, then a
thick smoke, broken by the flames of a fire. Our carriage was standing
up, like a horse kicking up its hind legs. It was impossible to get our
balance again.

Who was wounded and who was not wounded? We were nine in the
compartment. For my part, I fancied that all my bones were broken. I
moved one leg and then I tried the other. Then, delighted at finding
them unbroken, I tried my arms in the same way. I had nothing broken,
and neither had Soubise. She had bitten her tongue, and it was bleeding,
and this had frightened me. She did not seem to understand anything. The
tremendous shaking had made her dizzy, and she lost her memory for some
days. I had a rather deep scratch between my eyes. I had not had time to
stretch out my arms, and my forehead had knocked against the hilt of the
sword which the officer seated by Soubise had been holding upright.

Assistance arrived from all sides.

For some time the door of our compartment could not be opened.

Darkness had come on when it finally yielded, and a lantern shone feebly
on our poor broken-up carriage.

I looked round for our one bag, but on finding it I let it go
immediately, for my hand was red with blood. Whose blood was it?

Three men did not move, and one of them was the major. His face looked
to me livid. I closed my eyes, in order not to know, and I let the man
who had come to our aid pull me out of the compartment. One of the young
officers got out after me. He took Soubise, who was almost in a fainting
condition, from his friend. The imbecile baron then got out; his
shoulder was out of joint. A doctor came forward among the rescuers. The
baron held his arm out to him, telling him at the same time to pull it,
which he did at once. The French doctor took off the officer's cloak,
told two of the railway-men to hold him, and then, pushing against him
himself, pulled at the poor arm. The baron was very pale, and gave a low
whistle. When the arm was back in its place, the doctor shook the
baron's other hand. "Cristi!" he said, "I must have hurt you very much.
You are most courageous." The German saluted, and I helped him on again
with his cloak.

The doctor was then fetched away, and I saw that he was taken back to
our compartment. I shuddered in spite of myself. We were now able to
find out what had been the cause of our accident. A locomotive attached
to two vans of coal had been shunting on to a side line in order to let
us pass, when one of the vans got off the rails, and the locomotive
tired its lungs with whistling the alarm, whilst men ran to meet us,
scattering crackers. Everything had been in vain, and we had run against
the overturned van.

What were we to do? The roads, softened by the recent wet weather, were
all broken up by the cannons. We were about four miles from Tergnier,
and a thin penetrating rain was making our clothes stick to our bodies.

There were four carriages, but they were for the wounded. Other
carriages would come, but there were the dead to be carried away. An
improvised litter was just being borne along by two workmen. The major
was lying on it, so livid that I clenched my hands until my nails
entered the flesh. One of the officers wanted to question the doctor who
was following.

"Oh no!" I exclaimed. "Please, please do not. I do not want to know. The
poor fellow!"

I stopped my ears, as though some one was about to shout out something
horrible to me, and I never knew his fate.

We were obliged to resign ourselves to setting out on foot. We went
about two kilometres as bravely as possible, and then I stopped, quite
exhausted. The mud which clung to our shoes made these very heavy. The
effort we had to make at every step to get our feet out of the mire
tired us out. I sat down on a milestone, and declared that I would not
go any farther.

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We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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