The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-12-21

heights of fame while dazed Madam Agar
died in obscure want. still keeps the char
acterfstics OF her youth.
A HOSPITAL NURSE.
II was the year after this first success
that she set her mind against Germany so
fast and hard that twenty-five years of
entreaty and the example of all French
acting celebrities have been needed to per-
suade her to act in Berlin. The war broke
out and the long siege of Paris began. The
Odeon Theater was turned into an am
bulance and Sarah did valiant work as an
improvised hospital nurse When the war
and the Commune, which was worse than
war-had passed and the theaters opened
again their doors she disappeared from
Paris for many months In what, IL / re-
member, was known as her "fugue" TO
Madrid. But her worth was now acknowl-
edged and she came back in 1872 TO be re-
ceived with open arms at the Coincide
Franchise.
She at once began career in which her
superb acting was not always that which
kept her sensationally before the public.
Her silvery voice was fitted for the French
classic drama, in which the Alexandrine
verse needs musical phrasing as much as
did the Greek plays, unlike the choppy ac-
cent adopted in society pieces, and her
more than sylphlike form was equally fitted
for decorative effects in movements of pas
sion and emotion. Sarah became as much
a part Of Parisianism as the boulevard or
the French Academy, and she has always
known how to make those appearances off
the stage which keep her Partisan insti-
tuition.
OF course. Sarah long ago Qn 1880 broke
the bonds of the state theater of the Com
edie Franchise, surrendering the valuable
stock TO which she was entitled as a socie-
taire, and paying 100000 francs fine for her
liberty. She has made four fruitful tours
in America, killed a puma in South Amer
lea, brought back 10 Paris from the East
the handsome black Abdullah, who rode
abort on her carriage until all Paris knew
him, iEaugurated Intellectual reforms in the
material service of the various theaters
which she has opened for herself, and given
besides exercising her activity, which is an
elemental force of nature, in countless
other ways.
1t was ungallant spite that prompts che
Berlin comic papers to represent her as a
new Joan of Arc in 1870, crying: lon to
Berlin!-and as a wrinkled bag donniDg
her armor again in this twentieth century
TO sing in Berlin itself-"Deutschland ueber
allesi"
In the reality of things, Sarah Bernhardt
Is now properly plump, and though her
passion to tatters, her defamation of the
noble passages Of the French drama Is
still melodious with the sonorities of high
art. A theatrical experiment of the pres
emit season has conclusvely shown that
such art Is as true and as necessary to
aestehtic completeness as is the use of the
music OF verse and many-colored imagery
In poetry. Madame Suzanne Despres, a
young actress of undoubted genius, spe-
cially formed to realism by the great An
tome himself, by a sudden and startling
decision was set to play Phedre at the
Coincide Franchise. The result was curl
Gus In the extreme-not the guilty STEP
/ mother of Greek legend with its memorable
fatality, not the heroine of Racine's purely
| artificial rendering of high tragic emo
ton, but just a modern Frenchwoman
| trained to imagine herself In the place OF
Phedre. The experiment will not be re-
peated, which Is another triumph for the
| art of the divine Sarah