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The Idol of Paris by Sarah Bernhardt

S >> Sarah Bernhardt >> The Idol of Paris




Almost every day Maurice received a letter or telegram giving him news
of his cousin. The advice of Doctor Potain seemed to be justifying
itself. Every day Esperance began to recover her health and spirits.
She was rehearsing at the Comedie, and her debut in _On ne badine
pas avec l'amour_ was announced for the next month.

The travellers had intended to spend another ten days in Italy. But a
letter to Genevieve alarmed them. She read it aloud.

"My darling, I am just now the happiest girl in the world. First
because my dear cousin is seeing so many beautiful things that shine
through her letters and show her so enchanted with life that I feel
the stimulus myself, and long to live to go myself to breathe the
divine air of Italy, and admire the masterpieces there. Tell the Duke
de Morlay that no day passes without my thoughts flying to him. Only
one thing worries me. I can confide it to you, Genevieve, you who are
so perfectly happy. Why does the theatre draw me so that I am willing
to sacrifice for it even those I love? I see the Countess Styvens
every day. She seems a light ready to flicker out. Sometimes she looks
at me as if she saw me far, very far away, and murmurs, 'Poor little
thing, it is not her fault!' Then I shiver. What is not my fault?
Albert's death. Dear Albert, who frightened me so much sometimes, that
I felt my teeth chattering! Do you know how he died? Nobody seems to
know! Genevieve dear, the pearl collar strangles me sometimes. I
promised not to take it off, but I must take it off to play
'_Camille_' in Musset's play. Mustn't I? She cannot wear pearls
at the convent? When I promised that, I did not expect ever to appear
on the stage any more; but now! Besides, when I am on the stage I am
not myself at all. Esperance stays behind in the dressing-room and
'_Camille_' comes forth. Then the collar? Ask the Duke, without
telling him that I asked you, what I should do. This collar seems to
me such a heavy chain, so heavy and sometimes so cold. I must stop
this letter, for you see the confusion is coming back again. I am a
little frightened! I must be trembling, does it not show in my
writing? It is little Mademoiselle's pen. I embrace you with all the
strength of my joy in your happiness.--Esperance."

The writing changed.

"I must make Esperance stop. She has been wandering again as she
writes. Her pulse is very quick. I must tell her father. _Au
revoir,_ dear girl, and come back soon; for you are the brightness
and peace she longs for. My regards to your husband.--Eleanore
Frahender."

This letter made Maurice, his wife and the Duke very anxious.

"She must in some way be prevented from seeing the Countess Styvens,"
said Genevieve, "but how are we to manage that?"

They decided to shorten their stay in Italy by five days.

Esperance was to appear on the twentieth of December, about fifteen
days after her letter reached them. All the elegant world of Paris,
artistic, sensation-hunting, was waiting with delight for the
appearance of the little heroine, the idol of the public. Count
Styvens's death in a duel, slain by a well-known admirer of Esperance,
had caused a great deal of ink to be spilled. But the devotion of the
Countess towards the girl who would have been her daughter, the
denials of the witnesses to the most intimate friends, asking if ...
really ... between ourselves ... was not there something? ... deceived
the most suspicious. All these "fors" and "againsts" had kindled the
curiosity of the public, and the general sympathy was strongly in
favour of the unconscious cause of the great modern mystery. The
notice, announcing the first appearance of Esperance Darbois in _On
ne badine pas avec l'amour_ drew an enormous crowd. The house was
entirely sold out several days in advance. Many who could not get
admission waited outside the theatre to get news during the intervals.
The corridors were full of French and foreign reporters.

Behind the scenes Esperance stood looking at herself in the mirror. It
was almost time for the curtain to go up. Dressed in the convent robe,
the strings of pearls was still about her neck. Should she unclasp it,
should she not? If they went with her on the stage would she not be
betraying her art; would they not clutch and strangle her, strangle
"_Camille_," until Esperance had to come back in her place? And
if she cast it aside, her loyalty, her promise? Must she wear fetters
to keep faith? Oh, Albert, Albert! Oh, these dark shadows, these
groping dark confusions where she so often strayed. Where was rest? Or
peace? And joy, the joy of the theatre, would that, too, be taken
away? She swayed a little and longed with all her strength for a force
not her own to enter in. She was too weak to fight against her own
Destiny.

She found it. A hint of it came first in the scent of gardenia
flowers, sweet and strong and penetrating, compelling and agreeable to
the senses. Then the Duke's strong arms were about her, and she sank
gladly back as if she were falling into a flood of light.

But his swift words brought her back.

"Esperance, my darling, we have no time to lose. Come with me. The
Countess Styvens is dying. She would not send for you, she would not
spoil your triumph. But she can absolve you. She can loose the pearls.
You can remember the other request Albert made you then, his dying
wish, my living one. Come with me, be her daughter to the last, and
then, my love, to Italy, where we will find you health and strength,
and give you new life for your future as my wife."




THE END

Fidel and Che: a revolutionary friendship

After last week's fairly open theme, I thought I'd go with something a bit more structured this time. As I type this, I'm listening to Steeleye Span and thinking about the great ballad traditions of Britain and Ireland. What is a ballad? I suppose the most inclusive definition would be that it's a singable narrative poem: that covers a multitude but will do for the moment.

Ballads in English stretch back to the middle ages, with fine examples to be found among the Scottish border ballads and the English Robin Hood poems. These early ballads are among the best-known poems and stories in the language, and form part of the common heritage of English speakers everywhere. They gave rise to a tradition of ballad-making that endures down to the present day.

In fact, most poets since have tried their hand at the ballad at one time or another, and the result has been to deny any definition more specific than the one I ventured in my first paragraph. If you look around the internet, you'll come up with a wide selection of poems that are called ballads but have little in common formally. Stanza length varies from two to 10 or more lines, and all sorts of metrical and rhyming patterns are used. A good number will be singable in only the loosest possible sense, and at times the narrative tends to get lost in a mesh of more-or-less successful verbal embroidery.

So, what should a ballad be? Well, "proper" ballad stanzas are quatrains in which the first and third lines have four stresses and the second and third have three. The lines will rhyme A-B-C-B or A-B-A-B. It's as simple, and as difficult, as that. Here's an example, from Robert Burns's extremely singable Comin Thro' the Rye:

Gin a body meet a body
          Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body –
          Need a body cry.

Burns wrote a good number of ballads, and his lead was followed by many 19th-century poets. Two examples that I particularly like are Robert Browning's Confessions and Christina Rossetti's Up-Hill, but you can find ballads by just about any Romantic or Victorian poet if you look for them.

There is a long, strong tradition of ballads and ballad singers in Ireland, too. It is hardly surprising, then, that the great appropriator of tradition, WB Yeats, tried his hand at the form. At least four of his poems have the word "ballad" in the title; the pick of the bunch, for my money, is The Ballad of Father Gilligan, which may have benefited from having been written with a specific tune in mind.

Ballads continued to be written in the 20th century; perhaps the most unexpected exponents were Ezra Pound, with his Ballad of the Goodly Fere, and WH Auden. In fact, the ballad The Quarry is probably my favourite Auden poem.

And so, this week I invite a chorus of balladeering. You may choose to go the whole hog and write in ballad stanzas or you might prefer to take a more liberal view of the formal requirements. Either way, sing up and – as they say at all the best Irish sessions when calling for a bit of hush for the singer – one voice please.

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Obituary: Donald Westlake

The disputed Holocaust memoir, written by Herman Rosenblat, which was dropped from Penguin Group's publication schedule at the end of December is now set to appear as a work of fiction.

Rosenblat's memoir - which Oprah Winfrey called "the single greatest love story" she had heard in two decades in television - recounted how as a teenage boy in a Nazi concentration camp, he was kept alive by the food which was thrown to him by a young girl, Roma Radzicky. Penguin's US imprint Berkley Books had planned to publish the story, which sees Rosenblat reunited with Radzicky on a blind date years later, as Angel at the Fence: the True Story of a Love That Survived, next month.

But a Holocaust historian said it would have been impossible to approach the fence in the Schlieben concentration camp to throw food over it, concluding that this part of the story was made-up. Berkley initially defended the book, saying it was a work of memory, but then decided to cancel its planned publication, and demanded the return of the advance it had made to Rosenblat. A $25m film based on the book, to be called The Flower of the Fence, is still going ahead, with production due to start this year.

Publisher York House Press based in White Plains, New York, has entered into a tentative agreement with the film production company to publish a novel based on the film script early this spring. It said the book would be "grounded in fact", and would rise "to the proper levels of artistic value, ethical conduct and social responsibility".

A spokesperson for York House Press condemned the attacks which were made on the 80-year-old Rosenblat after the veracity of his story was questioned, describing them as a "savage" response to what was otherwise "a credible, heart-wrenching, and verifiable account" of his time in the concentration camp.

"No deliberate untruth is permissible, but beneath any fabrication is motivation and intent. We believe Mr. Rosenblat's motivations were very human, understandable and forgivable," the spokesperson said. "It is beyond our expertise to know how Holocaust survivors cope with their trauma. Do they deny, try to forget, rationalise or fantasise and promote fiction along with truth? Perhaps the coping mechanisms are as individual as the survivors themselves."

The president of the company producing the film, Harris Salomon from Atlantic Overseas Productions, said the book, "regardless of its shortcomings", would "challenge, educate and enlighten" readers about the horrors of the Holocaust. "The documented fact, acknowledged by his critics, is that Herman is a survivor of concentration camps," he said.

But Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst, said that neither she nor Rosenblat were involved with this version of his story. "Usually book rights from films come out after the movie is released," she told guardian.co.uk. "I think the timing on this is very insensitive."

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Theatre review: Three Women / Jermyn Street, London
Obituary: Prolific crime novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter and man of many pseudonyms