Naughty Bertie and La Divine Sarah
An extract from Sarah Bernhardt: My Erotic Life
Sophie Croizette and I shared many lovers, sometimes engaging in the partouze. We were ideal for this as we genuinely loved each other’s body. The most memorable episode was the tryst we had with the Prince of Wales, Naughty Bertie, who was later to be King Edward VII. Well-known for his bad boy image, he seemed to live for two things, food and fucking. As Victorian England seemed to exult in austerity, tasteless food and cold baths, the Prince chose to do the obvious: spend as much time in Paris as he could. He had a château near Vincennes where he hosted orgies to which his English and French friends were invited. Everybody knew of his affairs and his predilection for spending afternoons at the Salon in the rue de Chabanais, where he kept a specially designed love-making chair, a chaise pour baiser.
It seems that the first time he saw me on stage, he had made up his mind he wanted me. As he had also taken a shine to Sophie, what could be better than to have both of us at the same time?
After the curtain had fallen on the last scene of L’Etrangère he was waiting for us in his flamboyant coach in the rue de Richelieu. Gallantly he stepped down, kissed our hands and helped us inside, and we made our way to Vincennes.
It struck us that he was already in a fairly advanced state of inebriation, and to judge by his burps, he must have had more than a copious collation, but the moment he ushered us in his palace, he led us directly to the dining room where a veritable banquet awaited us. Sophie delights in food, but for my part, I eat only to survive. I enjoy things like caviar and lobster but in small quantities only. I don’t much care for champagne and a single cup can last me
the whole evening. Bertie stuffed himself like a condemned man awaiting execution. At the same time he tried to entertain us with stories in his bad French. He would punctuate his two activities by approaching us and putting his hands under our skirt rather inelegantly and fondling our derrières with his greasy hands. I must own to not much liking this. I fully understand men who want to fuck women, I want to fuck men too, but far too many treat us as things. They’re paying, so they feel they can do anything they like with us. When men pinch your bottom egged on by their lust, that’s fine in my book, but many do it as to assert their seigneurial rights over you. King or sailor, that’s intolerable to me. Besides, the dining hall is for eating. Carnality ought to be confined to the bedroom.
I watched him with a mixture of alarm and amusement as he grabbed a leg of turkey or goose and committed it to his mouth whole. He said something to Sophie which made her giggle, but I heard nothing but a garble of syllables. I noticed a speck of meat or spittle had landed on her cheek and this made me laugh too. He then took a clean plate and spat the crushed bones out.
Sophie and I exchanged meaningful glances. All this time, he had kept his immaculate gabardine suit and silk cravat on and had freed himself only of his hat, which he had flung on an armchair the moment we had entered the palace. He then took two steps towards me, grabbed me by the waist with his greasy hands and squeezed. Remembering (mother)Youle’s lessons, I forced a little laugh.
‘You are a real seductress ma petite Say-ra,’ he said. I am rather fond of our Anglo-Saxon friends from across the Channel, as long as they don’t call me Say-ra. My name is Sarah for Christ’s sake. I began to feel disenchantment with the whole process and I had to concentrate on the gifts we were going to receive at the end of this ordeal. It might well be my inherent republicanism.
That said, it’s funny that in spite of my beliefs, I admire people like Napoleon III, the Duc de Morny, the Prince de Ligne. I will not deny what many people have said or written: Sarah Bernhardt is full of contradictions.
He opened a bottle of champagne and forced and guzzled bout half of it in one go. Burping in my face, he tried to unbutton my blouse. His podgy fingers were feeling the effects of the alcohol and there was no way they would have managed, so I had to do it myself.
‘Mon dieu,’ he said, ‘you do have them small, eh,your titties,’ he said.
I was well aware of this, but it was the first time any man had had the temerity to say such a thing to my face. I smiled and curtsied to him. I don’t know why.
‘Let’s see if Croizette has them bigger. I love them big massive mammaries,’ he said gruffly. ‘They remind me of Mama’s, Ha! Ha! Ha!’ I thought that was gross. He lunged at Sophie who had already unbuttoned her garment. All he had to do was to open it and expose my friend’s ample breasts. Sophie had very large pink aureoles and hard ochre nipples. Bertie stared at them in wonder.
‘They remind me of Nellie Clifton’s. I’ve never met a woman with a finer pair of babaloos.’
‘Who’s Nellie Clifton?’ I asked. This was followed by another bout of raucous laughter. He raised a finger, unable to talk while he spluttered out bits of food. When he had calmed down he began: ‘She was an actress.’ Once more choking with laughter, he could not continue.
‘I am laughing,’ he pursued when he was able to, ‘because I use “actress” as a euphemism for a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession.’ He paused, drew breath and continued, ‘Her best roles she played in bed, faking romance, pretend orgasms, you know.’ He must have noticed that the two actresses weren’t much flattered, although we knew how many of our colleagues supplemented the meagre wages theatres paid us. ‘No, of course I didn’t mean you,’ he said, ‘Otto used to say that I had a great genius for putting my feet in the wrong shoes, or both feet in one shoe, a German simile, I don’t doubt. Good old Otto.’ Delighted with this joke, he burst out into raucous laughter, spluttering more food in all directions.
‘Who is Otto?’ Sophie asked, and he burst out laughing again. He certainly found everything funny.
‘Otto is vater, mein geliebt vater, Mama’s consort.’
‘But I thought he was called Albert?’
‘He was, he is,’ he laughed again, ‘but because he was a stick-in-the-mud old German fart I gave him that nickname.’
‘You were telling us about Nellie, eh, Cliff_’ I reminded him.
‘Oh yes, Nellie Clifton. Otto thought that my excessive energy, if you know what I mean…’ At this point he half closed his eyes and winked twice, ‘should be curbed, so he sent me to a boot camp in Ireland for six weeks. You’ll never guess what I did?’
‘You came back reformed?’ I asked with a wink.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! You’re a sharp one, Say-ra. I arranged for Nellie to disguise herself as a young cadet and smuggled her into my tent. We did it three times every night,’ he said. We looked at him our tongues pushing our cheeks out.
‘On average,’ he added grudgingly.
‘How did Otto take this?’ I asked. His tone suddenly changed at this point.
‘You mean His Highness the Prince Consort?’ He looked at me sternly. ‘I am sorry, but you must show due respect when talking about the English monarchy. I am allowed to make fun of the dear man, but I can’t permit eh … actresses… the same liberty.’ He had to have another large glass of Armagnac before regaining his erstwhile jollity.
‘Anyway, my stratagem was discovered and the Prince sent for me. He gave me a right bollocking. He said he was heartbroken by my impossible behaviour. He took to his bed, and died within the month.’
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ we both said.
‘Victo- I mean Her Majesty must have been very upset,’ I said.
‘Her Majesty was convinced that I was responsible for sending the old chap to an early grave.’
‘He was probably ill without knowing,’ said Sophie, ‘I am sure your mother will forgive you one day.’
‘No, never. She’s made up her mind to outlive me just so I never become king. She says I’m not fit to wear the English crown.’
It took a lot of eating and drinking before Bertie decided to show us how fit he was in other departments. By that time we were all almost entirely disrobed, and he invited Sophie to jump on his back, grabbed me in his left arm, and thus burdened he walked to the bedroom. I was surprised that he was able to walk straight and I must say I was impressed by his strength. It was then that I saw his notorious Chaise d’Amour, which he claimed to have designed himself, for the sole purpose of fucking two women at the same time. He had commissioned the best menuisier Paris to make it for him. He kept it permanently in a maison de tolérance, Le Chabanais, in the street of the same name. It had been designed with his bulk in mind, along with the requirement that it support two partners. The one in Vincennes was a copy he had ordered at the same time.
It looked like no other furniture that I had ever seen before. A frame resting on the floor had a sort of upholstered surface which could conceivably be used as a bed, but a similar slightly shorter mattress was fixed at a height of half a man above.
‘How does it work?’ I asked.
‘I’ll show you,’ he said, ‘don’t be so impatient, the night is yet young.’ Then, without warning, he collapsed on the lower bunker and began snoring and dribbling like a baby mumbling something incoherently.
We looked at his royal portliness snoring like a locomotive, and found our way into the bedroom. Drinking does not make me inebriated, but enhances my libido. Sophie reacts in the same manner. So guess how we the rest of the night, rocked by royal snoring.
Next morning we found a sobered up and much more serious man. He gave us each two gems.
‘One’s for your trouble in coming over here, and the other one to implore you not to reveal that you spent a night under the same roof as Bertie and nothing happened to you.’
‘But that’s not true, Your Highness. Lots happened.’
‘You don’t say? I have no recollection.’
‘You wouldn’t. You slept like a baby all night long. It was Sophie and I who had a great time.’
I have never contradicted the many stories that claim Bertie was one of my one thousand and three lovers. But now after so many years, I suppose it cannot hurt to reveal the truth about what really happened.
