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Practical Real Estate Law 7th Edition Hinkel Test Bank Instant Download

The document provides links to various test banks and solution manuals for real estate law and other subjects, encouraging users to download them from testbankdeal.com. It includes a section of true/false questions and answers related to financing sources in real estate transactions. Additionally, it features anecdotes about the early life and romantic proposals received by the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt.

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100% found this document useful (8 votes)
150 views35 pages

Practical Real Estate Law 7th Edition Hinkel Test Bank Instant Download

The document provides links to various test banks and solution manuals for real estate law and other subjects, encouraging users to download them from testbankdeal.com. It includes a section of true/false questions and answers related to financing sources in real estate transactions. Additionally, it features anecdotes about the early life and romantic proposals received by the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt.

Uploaded by

vqvpwageic824
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Test Bank Answer Key


Chapter 9 Financing Sources in Real Estate Transactions
TRUE/FALSE

1. A savings bank may make only residential loans.

ANS: F

2. A savings bank may make only commercial loans.

ANS: F

3. A loan made to fund construction of a bridge is known as a bridge loan.

ANS: F

4. A short-term loan made for acquisition of property is generally referred to as a bridge loan.

ANS: T

5. Government-guaranteed loans are called conventional loans.

ANS: F

6. The risk of repayment of a conventional loan depends upon the ability of the borrower to pay
and the value of the security provided by the mortgage.

ANS: T

7. The ratio of a borrower’s assets to their debts is known as the loan-to-value ratio.

ANS: F

8. The FHA makes direct loans to home buyers.

ANS: F

9. The FHA does not make direct loans to borrowers but instead guarantees loans made by
approved lenders.

ANS: T

Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank to Accompany Practical Real Estate Law 225
© 2015 Delmar, Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly
accessible website, in whole or in part.

10. The Veterans Administration makes direct loans to home buyers.

ANS: F

11. The Veterans Administration guarantees loans made by private lenders.

ANS: T

12. Private mortgage insurance guarantees that the borrower owns the property.

ANS: F

13. Fannie Mae is involved in the secondary mortgage market.

ANS: T

14. Mortgage loans are closed in the secondary market and are bought and sold in the
primary market.

ANS: F

15. Once a mortgage loan is closed in the primary market, the loan can be bought and sold in the
secondary market.

ANS: T

16. The term of repayment on a permanent loan is generally longer than that on a construction loan.

ANS: T

17. The term of repayment on a construction loan is generally longer than that on a permanent loan.

ANS: F

18. Construction loans are generally amortized loans.

ANS: F

19. One major underwriting concern for a permanent lender is the estimate of the cost
of construction.

ANS: F

20. One major concern for a construction lender is the market value of the real property given as
security for the loan.

ANS: F
Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank to Accompany Practical Real Estate Law 226
© 2015 Delmar, Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly
accessible website, in whole or in part.

21. Payment of principal and interest on a loan is called the “loan-to-value ratio.”

ANS: F

22. The payment of principal and interest on a loan is called “debt service.”

ANS: T

23. Interest payable at the beginning of each payment period is known as “payment in arrears.”

ANS: F

24. Interest due at the end of each payment period is known as “payment in arrears.”

ANS: T

25. Interest on most mortgage loans is paid in advance.

ANS: F

26. Interest on most mortgage loans is paid in arrears.

ANS: T

27. The payment under a fully amortized loan payment is constant and does not vary from
month to month.

ANS: T

28. Payments under a fully amortized loan payment plan decline each month.

ANS: F

29. Payments under a straight-line amortized plan become smaller each month.

ANS: T

30. A fully amortized loan will always have a balloon payment.

ANS: F

31. A fully amortized loan should never have a balloon payment.

ANS: T

Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank to Accompany Practical Real Estate Law 227
© 2015 Delmar, Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly
accessible website, in whole or in part.

32. The last payment on a partially amortized loan will always be a balloon payment.

ANS: T

33. A loan in which the borrower makes periodic payments of interest, and principal becomes
payable in full in one installment at the end of the loan, is known as a negative amortized loan.

ANS: F

34. Construction loans are generally straight or term loans.

ANS: T

35. The principal balance of the loan may increase as payments are made under a negative
amortization loan.

ANS: T

36. A subprime loan is a loan with very low interest rates (less than the bank’s prime lending rate).

ANS: F

37. Subprime loans generally involve residential loans made with high interest rates or high up-
front fees.

ANS: T

38. An interest-only loan means that so long as interest is being paid on the loan, the loan never has
to be repaid.

ANS: F

39. A subprime loan is a loan that requires the payment of interest only.

ANS: F

Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank to Accompany Practical Real Estate Law 228
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the start. Trudeau, however, laid determined siege to the young girl
for several months, during which he sent her, among other
expensive gifts, a brooch of the sort that was afterwards known as a
“la Vallière.” This brooch was among those recently sold by auction
in Paris.
To all his many proposals of marriage, however, Sarah turned a
deaf ear. She would taunt him about his figure, which was short and
broad, and above all she would jeer at his lack of a moustache.
“Never will I marry a man who cannot grow hair on his face!”
she once declared.
He persisted, until one day Sarah called him a “fat old pig” and
threw the contents of a glass of champagne in his face. Then he
accepted his congé, and went out of Sarah’s life for ever.
Following Trudeau came a chemist, who had a shop at the
corner of the Boulevard and the rue de la Michodière. He had been
captivated by the red-haired long-legged youngster who used to
come to him to have prescriptions filled. I do not recall the name of
this man, but I know that when Sarah refused him he consoled
himself less than a month later by marrying a widow. Years later
Sarah broke a parasol over his head, when he refused to promise
not to supply her sister Jeanne with morphine.
Sarah Bernhardt.
One of the best of the earliest pictures.

After that a succession of young men unsuccessfully petitioned


for her hand. In a space of two years she had nearly a dozen
proposals, all of which she refused with equal disdain. She was
becoming a noteworthy character in Paris herself, but she, the child,
was of course eclipsed by the brilliant beauty of her mother.
These suitors came from all classes and conditions of society. At
least one—the Vicomte de Larsan, a young fop whose father was a
frequenter of Julie’s house—was of noble birth and heir to a
considerable fortune. He was twenty-two years of age, and when he
asked her to marry him, Sarah slapped his face.
I had many long talks with Sarah about these early romantic
episodes. She loved to repeat reminiscences of her girlhood and she
had an astounding memory.
As far back as 1892, she told me that in her life she had received
more than a thousand proposals of marriage, and that she could
remember the name and the date of every one of them!
I was curious about these thousand proposals of marriage, and
often tried to get her to give me the names. But she said that to do
so might cause harm to some of the men concerned, many of whom
were then happily married, and had children. She told me of many
episodes, however, in which such secrecy was not necessary, and
these episodes will be found in detail later in this book.
“In my teens I cared nothing for men—they disgusted me!” she
said. “I was called a great little beauty, and men used to kneel at my
feet and swear that they would jump in the Seine if I refused them.
I invariably told them to go and do so!
“I was indifferent to all men. My mother’s flat at 22, rue de la
Michodière, which had been beautifully furnished by the Duc de
Morny, was full of men visitors from early afternoon until late at
night. I would keep out of their way as much as possible, and once I
ran away for three days, because one of my mother’s admirers
persisted in making revolting proposals to me.
“Finally I returned one day from the painting school and found
my mother and the servant out and P—— installed in the salon.
Before I could escape, he had seized me and covered me with
kisses. They were the first love-kisses I had ever received, and I was
not to give one for years afterwards.
“I struggled violently, bit him on the chin and scratched his face
frightfully, but I was a weak child and he would have overpowered
me eventually had not the door opened and my mother, followed by
the Duc de Morny, come in. Neighbours had heard my screams and
were congregated outside the door. My mother was white with
passion.
“The Duke challenged P—— to a duel in secret, his rank
preventing him from making the affair a public one. The duel was
never fought, however, for P—— left that night for his home near
Arcachon, and a few months later I heard he had been killed in a
coaching accident near Tours.
“The Vicomte de Larsan was the most persistent suitor, after P
——, and he was only a boy. I could not bear the sight of him, with
his rouged cheeks, his scented hands, his powdered hair and his
shirts covered with expensive lace. He used to wait outside the
house for hours until I came out, and would make fervent
declarations of love in the street. I grew to hate him, and I told him
so!
“But at that time I hated nearly all men, except the Duc de
Morny. That nobleman was my mother’s most faithful protector, and
he gave her large sums, which helped to pay for my education and
my art lessons. He used to predict a great future for me. Not only
did he stand sponsor for me for the Versailles convent but also
procured my entrance into the Conservatoire.
“Many people in those days thought that I was the Duke’s
natural daughter, and the legend has persisted. It was not true,
though, for when I was born my mother was in exceedingly humble
circumstances, and she did not meet the Duke—a meeting which
changed her fortunes—until several years later.”
CHAPTER VII
The first press notice that Sarah Bernhardt ever received was
published in the Mercure de Paris in October 1860, when she was
sixteen years old. Curiously enough it did not concern her histrionic
talent—then just beginning to develop—but related to a painting
entitled “Winter in the Champs Elysées,” with which Sarah had won
the first prize at the Colombier Art School in the Rue de Vaugirard.
Sarah gave me the clipping to copy—it was among her most
prized possessions—and, translated, it reads as follows:

“Among the remarkable candidates for admission to the


Beaux Arts should be mentioned a young Parisienne of
sixteen years, named Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, who is a
pupil at Mlle. Gaucher’s class in the Colombier School. Mlle.
Bernhardt exhibits an extraordinary talent for one so young
and her picture “Winter in the Champs Elysées,” with which
she has won the first prize for her class, is distinguished for
its technical perfection. Rarely have we had the pleasure of
welcoming into the Beaux Arts a young artist of similar
promise, and there can be no doubt that very soon Mlle.
Bernhardt will be classed as one of our greatest painters and
thus win glory for herself and her country.”

The painting in question was bought by an American friend of


Sarah’s some forty years later. I do not know how much was paid,
but other early paintings of hers, which have sold privately during
the past twenty years, have brought very large prices indeed.
My mention of this first press criticism of Sarah’s work brings to
mind the day she brought me, a little girl, into the library at her
house 11, Boulevard Malsherbes, and showed me four fat volumes
each filled with newspaper clippings, and another one only just
begun. On a chair was stacked a collection of envelopes each dated,
containing other clippings, and these Sarah showed me how to paste
in the book. It was a great honour for me.
Later in the afternoon Maurice Bernhardt, then a small boy,
came in and helped me, but I remember that he was more of a
nuisance than a help, and he ended by tipping over the paste-pot
and making a mess which I had to clean up.
When she died Sarah possessed many of these fat volumes of
press-clippings, from every country in the world. It was said that if
all the newspaper notices she received during her career could have
been placed end to end, they would have reached around the world,
and that if all the photographs printed of her could have been
stacked in a pile, they would have reached higher than the Eiffel
Tower.
Somebody even calculated once that the name Sarah Bernhardt
alone had been printed so often in newspapers and magazines, and
on bills, programmes and the like, that the letters used would bridge
the Atlantic, while the ink would be sufficient to supply the needs of
The Times for two months!
I cannot vouch for this, but there can be no doubt whatever
that, if the number of times one’s name is printed is a criterion,
Sarah Bernhardt was by far the most famous person who has ever
lived. For nearly sixty years never a day went by without the words
“Sarah Bernhardt” being printed somewhere or other. When she
returned from her American tour in 1898, the press-clippings she
brought back with her filled a large trunk.
The interesting point in all this is that only a very few writers
concerned themselves with her painting and sculpture. Out of all the
millions of articles written about her, a bare sixty or seventy concern
her capabilities outside the theatre.
If little was known of Sarah the artist, still less was known of
Sarah the woman. That is why this book is written.
Thousands of people who loved her as an actress never knew
that she had been married! Those who knew that she was a Jewess
born were few indeed. Nothing was known of her intimate home life,
of her affaires du cœur, of her attempts at authorship, of the many
plays she either wrote or revised.
In all the multitudinous clippings in that wonderful collection of
hers, how many reveal the fact that Sarah Bernhardt was a
certificated nurse? How many persons know that she once studied
medicine and was highly proficient in anatomy? How many know
that she was a vegetarian, and often said that her long life was due
to her horror of meat? How many know that, for many long years,
until infirmity intervened, Sarah Bernhardt, the Jewess born, was a
practising Catholic, seldom missing her Sunday attendance at Mass?
Is it not extraordinary that so little should really have been
known of the most famous woman in the world? Is it not amazing
that Sarah was able to conceal her home life under the glorious
camouflage of her stage career?
Yet, looking back into history, how little is known of the great
men and women who decorate its pages!
We know where Jean d’Arc was born; we know she saved the
French armies from defeat; but never has it been written where she
went to school, and little or nothing is known of her family, of the
mother who produced her, of the father who brought her up a
heroine. Oliver Cromwell had a wife, yet what do we know of her?
George Washington was one of the greatest warriors of his day, yet
we know little of the private life of the Father of America.
I have always felt this lack of personal knowledge of our own
great ones. Only recently have biographers realised the true scope of
their task. Until the intimate story of Victor Hugo was published,
some few years ago, how little we knew of the man who wrote three
times as many words as there are in the Holy Bible!
This is somewhat of a digression, but one justified perhaps by
the considerations involved. If the great and successful deeds of
men of genius make entrancing reading, how much more absorbing
can be the tale of their spiritual struggles and “mental fights”?
And with her graduation from the art school—she was entitled to
enter the Beaux Arts but never did—the real struggles of the lonely,
temperamental child who was Sarah Bernhardt began. Though she
did not know it, a war of impulses was going on within her soul.
There was her great, her undoubted talent for painting and
sculpture, which her teachers were convinced would soon make her
a great personage. There was her budding dramatic talent which she
was only beginning to suspect. There was her fundamental
morbidity, that would plunge her into moods during which she
dreamed of and longed for death. There was the craving of her
turbulent nature for the peace and tranquillity investing the life of a
cloistered nun. There was her inherited unmorality—I know of no
other word with which to describe it—which was for ever tugging at
her and endeavouring to drag her down into the free-and-easy
existence led by her mother. There was her maiden heart, starving
for affection. There was her delicate health, which made prolonged
effort impossible. And lastly there was her iron will, inherited
probably from her father.
A phrase in one of the pathetic writings of Marie Bashkirtseff
comes to my mind: “At the age of fourteen I was the only person
remaining in the world; for it was a world of my own that could be
penetrated only by understanding, and no one, not even my mother,
understood.”
How could the frivolous nature of Julie Van Hard have
comprehended the deep waters that ran within the soul of her
unwanted child?
Julie would be enormously vexed at Sarah’s seeming dullness.
When she had said something particularly witty—and Julie was witty
according to the humorous standards of the period—and Sarah did
not smile, Julie would cry: “Oh, you stupid child! To think that you
are mine...!”
Not even Sarah’s achievements in the school of painting could
convince Julie that she had not given birth to a child of inferior
mentality. For what success Sarah had with her pictures, Julie took
credit to herself.
She was exasperated by Sarah’s attitude towards the life she
herself loved so well. Julie would remain for hours at table,
surrounded by wits and half-wits, dandies and hangers-on at court,
proud in the assumption that she was an uncrowned queen. At such
parties Sarah would sit speechless, unable or unwilling to join in the
coarse sallies of her mother’s guests. Her mother used constantly to
refer to her in the presence of others as “That stupid child,” or “That
queer little creature.”
When she had an exceptionally important personage to
entertain, Julie would forbid Sarah to show herself, fearful that her
daughter’s “stupidity” would injure her own chances.
As constantly as she blamed Sarah, she praised and lavished
affection on Jeanne, her “little Jeannot.” Jeanne seemed to take
naturally after her mother in all things, and when she grew older she
even surpassed her mother by the frivolous way in which she lived.
The sad story of Jeanne will be told later, but it may be said that
she had none of Sarah’s vast intelligence, none of her good taste,
none of her tremendous capacity for affection. Jeanne was without
talent—a pretty but vapid shell. Her father was not, of course,
Edouard Bernhardt.
Régine, on the other hand, took after Sarah, who practically
brought her up. But Régine had Sarah’s temper and wild, erratic
temperament without Sarah’s talent and Sarah’s stubborn will.
Where Sarah was firm and unyielding, Régine was merely obstinate.
Where Sarah was clever, Régine was only “smart.” She was a “pocket
edition of Sarah,” as her mother once remarked, without Sarah’s
depth of character.
Two months after Sarah attained her sixteenth birthday, her
mother moved to No. 265, rue St. Honoré, not far from the Théâtre
Français—better known as the Comédie Française—and Sarah
delighted in loitering about the stage entrance and making friends
with the actors and actresses who passed in and out.
Sometimes she passed whole afternoons and evenings thus
employed. Occasionally she would run errands for her idols, to be
recompensed by a free ticket to the balcony. On one never-to-be-
forgotten occasion Jules Bondy, one of the actors, took the eager
little red-head into the theatre itself and installed her on a case in
the wings, from which she could see the play without herself being
seen. It was Molière’s Le Médecin Malgré Lui, and from that time
dated Sarah’s love for the works of the actor-playwright to whom the
Comédie Française is dedicated.
In later years Sarah played Molière several times, but she made
no notable success in this author’s works.
Sarah always longed to be a comédienne; she might have been
a great one, in fact, but for her greater gifts for tragedy, which
prevented managers from risking her appearance in lighter drama.
Great comédiennes of merit are less rare than great tragediennes. In
fact, I doubt whether there is living to-day an actress who will ever
be called Sarah Bernhardt’s equal in tragedy.
Shortly after the household moved, Sarah fell down the stairs
and broke her leg. An infection developed and it was two months
before she was able to walk. When she finally recovered she was
thinner than ever—a veritable skeleton. Her face maintained its eerie
beauty, the large blue eyes retained their occasional fire, but the
flush of fever relieved her habitual pallor and beneath her neck her
body was little more than a bag of bones.
She ceased wearing short dresses and took to long ones, for
very shame of her thin limbs. She wore thick clothes and corsets to
pad herself out. She grew introspective, spending long hours alone
or playing silently with her infant sister Régine, or reading books.
Once Mlle. de Brabender discovered her on her knees and, on
inquiry, obtained the confession that she had been praying steadily
for nearly three hours.
The religious habit again grew on her. The subjects for her brush
were mostly saints, surrounded with the conventional halo. She
hung her room with religious pictures, some done by herself and
some bought cheaply at a shop near the Church of St. Germain
l’Auxerrois. Over her bed was a crucifix, modelled by herself from
wax.
She was confirmed at the age of sixteen years and five months,
and wore the virginal white for days afterwards—until it grew so
dirty, indeed, that her exasperated mother made her throw it away.
A priest had given her a rosary that had been dipped in the holy
waters of Lourdes, and this she wore continually. In the quarter she
became known as “la petite religieuse.” Doctors shook their heads,
and predicted that she was falling into a decline, from which she
would never recover. Her suitors fell off, one by one, until only a
retired miller, Jacques Boujon, a man of fifty, remained.
To English readers it may seem incredible that a girl of sixteen
should have had actual suitors, and among them men of position
and wealth. This was nevertheless common in France in the middle
of the last century, and it is by no means rare in the France of to-
day. Added to this was Julie Van Hard’s intense desire to rid herself,
once and for all, of this strange child she had brought into being,
whose sombre presence in her house of gaiety seemed to be a
perpetual mockery.
One day Sarah was visited in her bedroom, where she was
studying, by her mother and Mlle. de Brabender.
“I want you to put on this new dress I have bought you, and
then come down to the salon. There is something particularly
important we have to say to you,” said Julie.
Sarah shivered. There seemed something extraordinarily
portentous in her mother’s manner. Who were “we”? The child felt,
as she told me years later, that that moment represented a cross-
roads in her life.
Overwhelmed with a dread she could not define, Sarah put her
new dress on with trembling fingers and descended to the salon.
There she found quite a company awaiting her. Foremost in the
party was the Duc de Morny. Next to him was her mother. Across the
table was Jean Meyedieu, her father’s notary-public. Next to him was
Aunt Rosine. Madame Guérard, wearing an anxious look, occupied a
seat near the fireplace. Mlle. de Brabender, accompanied by Jeanne,
followed Sarah in.
The door was closed. Then Julie turned to her daughter. “Some
months ago,” she said, “you refused to consider a proposal of
marriage from an honorable gentleman.”
Sarah remained mute.
“To-day another honorable gentleman asks you to marry him.”
Storm signals flashed from the girl’s eyes. “I will marry no one
except God!” she declared. “I wish to return to the Convent!”
“To enter a convent,” put in Meyedieu, “one must have money,
or else be a servant. You have not a sou!”
“I have the money my father left me!”
“No, you have not! You have only the interest until you are
twenty-one. If, at that age, you have not married, the terms of your
father’s will stipulate that you shall lose the principal.”
The Duc de Morny intervened.
“Do you think that you are right, dear, in thus going against the
wishes of your mother?”
Sarah began to sob. “My mother is not married, yet she wants
me to be a wife! My mother is a Jewess, and she does not want her
daughter to become a nun!”
“Leave the room!” ordered Julie, angrily.
Thus ended the second family council over the future of Sarah,
and the problem was not yet solved.
After this Sarah’s existence in her mother’s house became a
torment. She seldom saw her parent; and when she did, the latter
hardly looked at her. She took her meals with Régine and Mlle. de
Brabender in the nursery. She abandoned art, and spent her days
looking after her baby sister in the Champs Elysées and on the quais
of the Seine.
She still attended the theatre as often as she could, and became
a faithful devotee of the Comédie. Often she would venture as far
afield as the Châtelet, or the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, to witness
plays at the Gymnase.
One evening she returned, after a solitary evening at the theatre
and, finding the salon empty, began to recite one of the parts she
had seen. She had seen the play so often that the rôle of the
heroine was practically graven on her memory. Believing herself
entirely alone, she went right through with the piece, finishing with a
dramatic flourish at the place where the heroine—I forget the play—
was supposed to stab herself to death.
There was a hearty “Bravo, bravo!” and the Duc de Morny rose
from a chair in which he had been sitting behind a screen.
The Duke went out and called to Julie and Rosine, and, when
the two sisters entered, he asked the child to play the part again. At
first bashful, Sarah eventually plucked up courage and finally did as
she was asked. The Duke was much affected.
“That memory and that voice must not be lost!” he cried. “Sarah
shall enter the Conservatoire!”
“She has no sense, but she is not bad at reciting,” agreed Julie,
scenting a happy compromise.
The Conservatoire? Sarah began to worry. What was this new
horror to which they were so easily condemning her?
“What is it, the Conservatoire?” she asked, hesitating.
“It is a school, my dear,” said the Duke; “a school for great
actresses.”
“To the Conservatoire, by all means!” cried Aunt Rosine. “She is
too stupid to be a good actress, but it will keep her out of mischief!”
The Duke was quite excited.
“We have solved the problem!” he cried. “Our Sarah is to
become an actress!”
“But I don’t want to be an actress!” cried poor Sarah.
Her objections were overridden, and that very night the Duke
wrote to his friends at the Conservatoire, demanding that Sarah
should be inscribed on the lists for admission.
Sarah was now within a month of seventeen.
CHAPTER VIII
When application had been made to Auber, then director of the
Conservatoire—who, on the Duc de Morny’s recommendation, had
agreed to inscribe Sarah on his lists—it was found that only nine
weeks remained before the examinations!
Even to-day, a conservative estimate of the time required for
preparation for the Conservatoire is eighteen months. Many children
start studying for it when they are ten or eleven. Rarely has any
pupil succeeded in entering without at least nine months’ preliminary
study. And Sarah had only nine weeks!
Aunt Rosine was sceptical of Sarah’s ability to pass the
examinations. The Duc de Morny was consoling.
“You will not pass this time,” he said, “but there are other
examinations next year.”
As to Julie Van Hard, she was inexorable with her daughter.
“You are my daughter. You shall not disgrace me by failing!” she
said to Sarah.
Julie took the child out, and bought her books by the dozen.
They consulted Hugo Waldo, an actor acquaintance, and on his
advice chose the plays of Corneille, Molière and Racine. Julie wanted
the child to select a part in Phédre for her examination, but Mlle. de
Brabender, the probationer nun, said that this could not be
permitted, as Phédre was too shocking a rôle to place on the lips of
a jeune fille.
In the end, Sarah learned the part of Agnes in Molière’s Ecole
des Femmes, but never used it in the examination. She passed most
of her time learning to pronounce her “o’s” and “r’s” and “p’s,” and in
practising the art of pronouncing each syllable separately and in
putting the accent in the tone, rather than on the syllabic divisions.
Nowhere is French spoken entirely purely, except on the stage of the
better Paris theatres.
The day of the examinations came, and Sarah was by now word-
perfect. To enable her to say her part, however, it was necessary for
someone to give the cues. This had not been thought of.
Julie, whose taste in dress was exquisite but a trifle exotic, had
out-done herself in her purchases of things for Sarah to wear on the
great day. The gown was black, deeply décolleté about the
shoulders; a corset accentuated the extreme slenderness of her
waist; the skirt was short, but lacy drawers, beautifully embroidered,
descended to the beaded slippers.
Around her neck, Sarah wore a white silk scarf. Her hair, after an
hour’s tussle with the hairdresser, had been combed and tugged into
some sort of order and was bound tightly back from the forehead
with a wide black ribbon. The effect was bizarre. One of George
Clairin’s best-known sketches of Sarah showed her in the hands of
the hairdresser on this occasion, her mother standing near.
After what seemed an interminable wait in the hot, stifling
auditorium of the Conservatoire, Sarah’s name was called.
Trembling, she ascended to the stage. On the way she tried to
loosen the painful ribbon about her head, with the result that it
came unpinned and her glorious mass of red-gold hair tumbled
forthwith about her face. Indeed when she mounted to the stage
where the jury sat in uncompromising attitudes, her face could
hardly be seen.
“And what will you recite?” asked the chairman, a man named
Léataud.
“I have learned the part of Agnes, but I have no one to give me
my cues,” said Sarah.
“Then what will you do?”
Sarah was at a loss, but she regained courage suddenly on
seeing two of the jury smiling at her encouragingly.
“I will recite to you a fable: ‘The Two Pigeons,’” she said.
When she had finished, Professor Provost, one of the jury, asked
that she should be accepted. “I will put her in my class,” he said.
“The child has a voice of gold!”
This was the first occasion on which Sarah’s “golden voice” was
thus referred to.
Sarah, who was eighth on the list at the Conservatoire, took no
prize, but she was admitted! She was mad with joy. Her mother
condescended to praise her a little. Mlle. de Brabender and Madame
Guérard overwhelmed her with caresses. Little Sarah was a member
of the Conservatoire! Her career had begun.
Sarah had no conspicuous success at the Conservatoire. She
obtained indeed one second prize for comedy, but her great talent
for the drama had not yet developed. With the exception of Camille
Doucet—the jury voted unanimously that she could not be included
among those to be given certificates of merit. Sarah, despite her
second prize, returned home in tragic mood.
“It was the second great disappointment of my life,” she said,
when she related it to me years later. “I crept up to my bedroom and
locked the door. Had there been any poison at hand I would have
taken it. I was seized with a great desire to end my life. I thought of
the Convent, of Mère Sainte-Sophie. Oh, if they had only let me
become a nun, instead of entering this vast, unkind world of the
theatre! I cried my eyes out and finally went to sleep.
“When I awoke, it was late at night. There was not a sound in
the house. My fury had spent itself, and only a great despair
remained. The thought that I would have to face my mother the
next day seared my soul. How could I stand her sarcasm, that
cutting phrase I knew so well: ‘Thou art so stupid, child!’
“I determined I would end it all for ever. I would die. I would
creep out of the house while no one watched, run down to the quai
and throw myself in the Seine....
“I approached the door, unlocked it, opened it cautiously. As I
did so a piece of paper, that had been thrust into the jamb, fluttered
to the ground. I took it nervously. It was a letter from Madame
Guérard, my faithful old nurse. I retraced my steps into the room
and held the letter to the candle as I incredulously read the message
it contained:

“‘While you were asleep the Duc de Morny sent a note to


your mother saying that Camille Doucet has confirmed that
your engagement at the Comédie Française is arranged for....’

“My mood changed miraculously. I shouted with joy. I ran to the


door, flung it open, ready to cry out my news to anyone who heard
me. But the household slept. I went back to bed and cried myself to
sleep for very happiness.”
The next day Sarah received a formal letter summoning her to
the Comédie. The day following she was engaged, and signed her
contract. Almost immediately she began rehearsing in the play
Iphigénie.
About two months before her eighteenth birthday Sarah made
her début at the Comédie, in a minor part. As a débutante from the
Conservatoire, she was naturally fair prey for the critics. The
greatest of these was Francisque Sarcey, who was credited with the
power to make or break an actress. Managers hung on his verdicts.
This is what that powerful critic had to say about Sarah on the
occasion of her début:

“Mlle. Bernhardt is tall and pretty and enunciates well,


which is all that can be said for the moment.”
Another critic, James Berbier, wrote:

“A young woman named Sarah Bernhardt made her début


at the Comédie on September 1. She has a pretty voice and a
not-unpleasing face, but her body is ugly and she has no
stage presence.”

Still another, Pierre Mirabeau, declared:

“Sarah Bernhardt has no personality; she possesses only


a voice.”

After Sarah’s second début, in Valérie, this same Mirabeau


wrote:

“We had the pleasure of seeing in the cast at the


Comédie the young woman Sarah Bernhardt, who made her
début recently in Iphigénie. She has improved, but she still
has much to learn before she can properly be considered
worthy of the House of Molière.”

When Sarah appeared in Les Femmes Savantes, Francisque


Sarcey, who had ignored her in Valérie, devoted several lines to her:

“Mlle. Bernhardt took the rôle of Henriette. She was just


as pretty and insignificant as in Iphigénie and in Valérie. No
reflections on her performance can be extremely gay.
However, it is doubtless natural that among all the débutantes
we are asked to see there should be some who do not
succeed.”

Sarah was furious at these critiques, but not as furious as her


mother, who bitterly exclaimed:
“See! All the world calls you stupid, and all the world knows that
you are my child!”
Her mother did not perhaps realise that her words cut the young
actress straight to the heart. Above all things Sarah had wanted to
please Julie; above all things Sarah had feared her mother’s harsh
criticisms.
That night she was found moaning in her dressing-room. A
doctor, hurriedly called, declared she had taken poison, and she was
rushed off to the hospital.
For five days Sarah hovered between life and death, finally
rallying after four of the best doctors in Paris had been called in to
aid in the fight.
In response to questioning by her old friend, Madame Guérard,
Sarah confessed that she had swallowed the contents of a bottle of
liquid rouge. Asked the reason for this strange and terrible act she
answered:
“Life was useless; I wanted to see what death was like!”
I have always believed that it was her mother’s want of
sympathy for her which caused Sarah’s desperate act, and if there
was another reason the world never knew it. Newspapers of the day
attributed it to a love affair, but this Sarah denied when she related
the episode to me—an episode, by the way, which is not included in
her Memoirs.
“I was wrapped up in my art, and had no serious love affairs at
that time,” she said. “I was simply despondent because I did not
succeed fast enough. Why! not a single critic praised me!”
It was the famous authoress Georges Sand who took Sarah in
hand afterwards, preached love of life to her and persuaded her that
a great future lay ahead. To Georges Sand Sarah one day confided:
“Madame Sand, I would rather die than not be the greatest
actress in the world!”
“You are the greatest, my child!” said Madame Sand with
conviction, and added: “One day soon the world will lie at your feet!”
Sarah’s morbidity continued to be one of her chief characteristics
however. She delighted in going to funerals; and visiting the Morgue,
that grim stone building with its fearful rows of corpses exposed on
marble slabs, was one of her favourite diversions.
Death had a weird fascination for her. Shortly after she entered
the Comédie she had a love affair with an undertaker’s assistant, but
she broke off her engagement to him when he refused to allow her
to be present at an embalming.
She used to describe the robe she wished to be buried in: “Pure
white, with a crimson edging, and with yellow lilies embroidered
about the girdle.”
The crimson edging and the embroidery were absent when she
was finally laid to rest.
Later on we shall hear again of this morbid streak in the divine
actress—how she designed and even slept in the very coffin in which
she was buried; how once she shammed dead in her dressing-room
at the Odéon to such purpose that a hearse was sent for and the
curtain rung down, while a tearful director announced her demise!
Her notorious temper had not left her. If anything, it was more
violent than ever. The stage door-keeper at the Comédie on one
occasion called her “Young Bernhardt,” omitting the honorary prefix
of “Mademoiselle.” Without a word she broke her parasol across the
man’s head. Seeing him bleeding, she hurried for water, tore her silk
petticoat into pieces, and bathed and bound his wound.
Twenty years later, when her name was beginning to echo round
the world, this same door-keeper came to her house and told her
that he had lost his position through infirmity and was now at the
end of his resources.
With one of those gestures of munificence which mark the
tragédienne’s career like flashes of light, Bernhardt turned to her
secretary and instructed him to buy the old man a cottage in his
native Normandy, and to place a sufficient sum in trust to keep him
for the remainder of his life.
Bernhardt made many enemies during her first years on the
stage, and some of them remained her adversaries until their
deaths. She outlived almost all of them.
The afternoon of her début at the Comédie was a matinée
exclusively for professional folk and critics. One of the latter, an old
and embittered man named Prioleau, was credited with being almost
as powerful as Sarcey. He was the doyen of the critics, and as such
occupied a privileged position in the wings.
The better to see the performance, he shifted his chair until it
partly blocked one of the exits. Sarah Bernhardt, going off the stage
backwards, tripped over the legs of the critic’s chair and nearly fell.
On recovering herself, she seized the chair by its legs and pitched
the critic to the floor. Then she turned on her heel with a fiery
admonition to “keep your legs to yourself.”
Horrified actresses told the angry girl that the man she had
insulted was Prioleau, the great critic. Returning to where the
choleric old gentleman was picking himself up, Sarah set herself
squarely in front of him, her eyes glinting fire.
“If you dare to say or write a word about me,” she warned him,
“I will scratch your eyes out!”
The next day she sent him a written apology and a bunch of
flowers, following this with a personal visit, in which she pleaded
with the old man to forgive an act of which she would certainly not
have been capable had she been in her right senses. Prioleau never
forgave her, but he never used his heavy weapon of sarcasm against
her. Perhaps he always secretly believed in her threat. He died not
long afterwards.
Sarah was an extraordinary mixture of pugnacity and sentiment.
One day she found a dog investigating her overturned bottle of
smelling-salts. Infuriated she dropped the poor little creature out of
the dressing-room window on to a small ledge from which, if it had
moved, it would have fallen four or five stories to the ground.
Five minutes later shouts attracted a crowd to the dressing-
room, where they found a maid desperately hanging on to Sarah’s
feet, while the young actress hung head downwards outside the
window, in order to rescue the dog. Having got the animal up safely,
she took it home and smothered it with kindness, never permitting it
to leave her until it died of old age fourteen years later.
Sarah’s love for animals—particularly ferocious ones—was one of
the abiding passions of her life. At different times she owned a pink
monkey given her by an African explorer, a wildcat which was
presented to her during one of her American tours, and two lion
cubs, baptised “Justinian” and “Scarpia.” All four were tame and
often accompanied her to the theatre, remaining in her dressing-
room while she played.
She also once brought back with her from Mexico a tiger cub,
which terrorised her household and, when she took it to the theatre
one day, nearly broke up the performance by eating and tearing the
curtains. The cub was finally poisoned by somebody in Sarah’s
entourage. On one occasion I saw Sarah feeding live quails to this
tiger cub in her dressing-room. The same day it bit Madame Joliet,
the prompter.
Another savage creature Sarah once owned was a dog. She had
only to say to him “Allez!” (Go!) and he would spring at anyone’s
throat. One day when we were at the Hotel Avenida, Lisbon, Sarah
asked me to go to my room to fetch something for her. As I went
out I heard her say “Allez!” and the dog sprang at me. Fortunately
my husband arrived just in time, and tore the dog away. White with
fury, Pierre said to Sarah: “If that happens again, I’ll kill the brute!”
But I never believed Sarah did the thing deliberately. She was
very apologetic.
But this is digressing from our story. We left Sarah as a
débutante at the Comédie Française. Her début, as we have seen,
was not very brilliant. But if her entrance into France’s most famous
theatre was not particularly exciting, her exit was the reverse.
CHAPTER IX
In the Comédie Française stands a statue: the bust of Molière, the
great actor-playwright to whom the theatre is dedicated. Each year,
on the anniversary of his death, every actor and actress belonging to
the company attached to the playhouse must file past the statue and
salute.
It was due to an incident occurring during this annual ceremony
that Sarah Bernhardt left the Comédie for the first time.
The actresses were assembled in a corridor giving access to the
statue—the sociétaires (actresses who had completed their period of
apprenticeship) naturally taking precedence over the débutantes. All
were in costume, and over the costumes they wore the long mantle,
showing their badge of membership of the Comédie. These mantles
had long trains and, in endeavouring to avoid treading on one of
them, little Régine Bernhardt, who held Sarah’s hand, inadvertently
stepped on that worn by Madame Nathalie, one of the oldest
actresses of the theatre, whom Sarah described as “old and wicked.”
Madame Nathalie turned and, roughly seizing the child, pushed
her so violently that she was flung against a stone pillar bruising her
side and cutting her face.
Sarah Bernhardt forgot the solemnity of the occasion, forgot the
distinction of the company, forgot everything except that her little
sister had been wantonly struck.
“Beast!” she cried, and, running to the old actress, slapped first
one side of her face and then the other, as hard as she could strike.
The blows resounded throughout the corridor.
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