SOURCE: "Sarah," in Still More Prejudice, Alfred A. Knopf, 1925, pp. 7-10.

In the following essay, Walkley contrasts the Bernhardt he knew with the "legend" of Bernhardt.

We say Sarah as our forefathers said Rachel. It is a tribute to greatness, as you call a pope Innocent or a king George. There have been greater actresses, but Sarah was without peer as a great institution. Her prestige was world-wide and, as her countrymen say, legendary. Too much of it was bluff and claptrap—pet panthers, coffins to sleep in, and the rest of the Sarah caprices—but these things the legend exaggerated; they were the touch of romance which popular imagination expects from great institutions. Doubtless, however, she was capricious by nature. There is corroboration of this in Daudet's sketch of her girlhood in one of his novels. There is further evidence in her behaviour during the visit of...