Identifier: memoriesofmylife00bern (find matches)
Title: Memories of my life : being my personal, professional, and social recollections as woman and artist
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Bernhardt, Sarah, 1844-1923
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : D. Appleton
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ste for a secondhearse. I was at that moment with my mother, who had lostconsciousness, and I got back just in time to prevent the black-clothed men taking away my coffin. The second hearse was sentback, but the papers got hold of this incident. I was blamed,criticised, etc. After the death of my sister I fell seriously ill. I had tendedher day and night, and this, in addition to the grief I was suf-fering, made me ana?mic. I was ordered to the South for twomonths. I promised to go to Mentone and I turned immediatelytoward Bretagne, the country of my dreams. I had with memy little boy, my butler and his wife. My poor Guerard, whohad helped me to tend my sister, was in bed ill with phlebitis.I would have much liked to have had her with me. Oh, the lovely holiday that we had there! Thirty-five yearsago Bretagne was wild, inhospitable, but as beautiful—perhapsmore beautiful than at present, for it was not furrowed withroads, its green slopes were not dotted with small white villas, 270
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SARAH BERNHARDT IN HER COFFIN. A HOLIDAY AND NEW SUCCESSES its inhabitants—the men—were not dressed in the abominablemodern trousers, nor the women in the miserable little hat andfeathers. No, the Bretons proudly displayed their well-shapedlegs in gaiters or rough stockings, their feet shod with buckledshoes, their long hair was brought down on the temples, hidingany awkward ears, and giving to the face a nobility which themodern style does not admit of. The women, with their shortskirts, which showed their slender ankles in black stockings, andwith their small heads under the wings of the headdress, re-sembled seagulls. I am not speaking, of course, of the inhabi-tants of Pont IAbbe or of Bourg de Batz, who have entirelydifferent aspects. I visited nearly the whole of Bretagne and stayed especiallyat Finistere. The Pointe du Raz enchanted me. I remainedtwelve days at Audierne, in the house of the Pere Batifoule, sobig and so fat that they had been obliged to cut a piece out ofthe

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