SOURCE: "Sarah Bernhardt: A Postscript," in Alarums and Excursions, Grant Richards Ltd., 1922, pp. 34-61.

In the following essay, Agate reflects on Bernhardt's body of work and popular reaction to her.

Those who like myself have cherished a feeling for the actor's art akin to reverence must have rubbed their eyes on seeing a whole front page of a popular newspaper devoted to the personal affairs of little Miss Mary Pickford and a bare half-dozen lines to the announcement that Madame Sarah Bernhardt had appeared in Athalie: "The famous actress is in her seventy-sixth year. The rôle may be described as of the recumbent order." Shudder though one may at blithe enormity, it is useless to cavil at the editorial sense of news-values. To the whole uneducated world it really does matter what Miss Pickford eats, wears, and thinks. We were once mountebank-mad; we are now tied to...