Sarah Bernhardt: Sleeping Beside Death

Sarah Bernhardt
(Credit: exectuiverealness.info)

Celebrity has drifted far from its golden Hollywood age. Instead, we have reality show stars and pop-up personalities whose talents remain nonexistent or ambiguous at best. But if ever there was an actress who rightfully captivated the public eye with both her talent and self-made persona, it would be Sarah Bernhardt. The original It Girl, Bernhardt’s charisma and intelligence shone through in every aspect of her life — and particularly in her relationship with death. Bernhardt intentionally made her everyday life a work of performance art, and it served as a platform for her to provoke interesting conversations in the media on the subjects of love, life and death. One of the most memorable among them remains what we’ll call “the episode of the coffin.”

Sarah Bernhardt, asleep in her coffin
(Credit: www.uh.edu)

Bernhardt was born in Paris in 1844 and died there in 1923. She was what one called an “odd” child, a ball of energy with an untamed mass of hair. She studied at the prestigious comédie française and later signed a contract with Paris’ Odéon Theatre, where her talents helped her rise to the top of her profession. Her role as Phèdre remains inimitable. She was said to perform so intensely that she would faint at the end of her shows. She strutted around Paris with a boa constrictor, and it’s rumored that her alligator, Ali-Gaga, died after consuming too much milk and champagne. Yet her goal was never to flaunt her status or wealth — on the contrary, Bernhardt had quite a few financial problems  — but to dazzle France and the world with the mystique of a lifestyle inspired by a unique mind. “Life begets life,” she said once, “Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”

“She strutted around Paris with a boa constrictor, and it’s rumored that her alligator, Ali-Gaga, died after consuming too much milk and champagne.”

Mucha often made posters for Bernhardt’s performances
(Credit: artsandfacts.blogspot.com)

Thus, in another act of eccentricity, Bernhardt decided to plan her funeral procession. The actress chose four young gentlemen (and a fifth as an “understudy”), whom she wanted to carry her coffin in the procession of her funeral. Then, Bernhardt had the very coffin delivered to her home, where she shocked the public by sleeping in it nightly. She even decorated it with flowers and letters from her many loves, saying, “[I] Found it quite natural to sleep every night in this little bed of white satin which was to be my last couch.”

Bernhardt would become the first worldwide superstar, having traveled to the Americas, Asia and even Australia at a time when such voyages were incredibly rare and exhausting. She was a powerful actress, and a strong woman who held fast to her convictions. When she died at the age of 78 to kidney failure in 1923, she was indeed placed in the very coffin she had selected so many years before — and one can imagine that the resulting atmosphere was curious at her procession. It was an image the public had seen many times, and it was as if Bernhardt hadn’t really left her admirers behind. She might as well have been sleeping peacefully, as she always had, hand-in-hand with death.