On the Art and Necessity of Coffin Sleeping

Sarah Bernhardt (1880) and Toyah Willcox (1979)

demonstrate the art of coffin sleeping

I.

 

An anonymous reader writes with reference to a recent post which can be read here:

 

 

'I know you sometimes like to present yourself as a "thanatologist", but, really, to celebrate someone such as Sarah Bernhardt - the world's original ham actress - due to the fact they sleep in a coffin is a little pathetic. 

      There's nothing in the least amusing about her morbid behaviour and hysterical exhibitionism and one suspects that Shaw was quite right to identify Bernhardt as ultimately nothing more than an attention-seeking egotist who never explored or revealed anything of the characters she played on stage and film, but simply turned them all into manifestations of her self.'   

 

I have to say, I suspect that's a little unfair on Miss Bernhardt - and it also gives a false impression of the post I wrote in her memory. For whilst I do mention the coffin sleeping - alongside her love for a pet lizard whilst a child - what I actually celebrate is her stoicism, courage, and endurance; for the fact that she dared to live dangerously and love fate, as famously advocated by Nietzsche.     

 

And, whilst we're on the subject, let me further add that I admire Bernhardt for her defiant Jewishness in the face of violent antisemitism. For although she was raised as a Catholic (receiving her first communion in 1856), Bernhardt never denied her Jewish heritage; even when crowds threw stones at her whilst on tour in Russia, or when the right-wing French press attacked her for her passionate defence of Alfred Dreyfus.  

But, to return, briefly, to the subject of coffin sleeping ... 

 

When, in 1880, she allowed herself to be photographed stretched out in a coffin with her eyes closed and covered in flowers - a coffin in which she would also relax when learning her lines (perhaps fearful that she might one day die on stage) - Bernhardt undoubtedly knew this would add to her reputation [1]. 

 

And one suspects that - almost a hundred years later - the English singer and actress Toyah Willcox was also very aware that she'd be able to grab some headlines by claiming to sleep in a coffin, although, in her case, one suspects she genuinely did so in order to keep warm at a time when her restricted financial means meant she had no bed to sleep in at the South London warehouse she was squatting [2]. 

 

For sleeping in a coffin is certainly preferable to sleeping on a cold concrete floor and poverty, rather than a desire for publicity, is more often the reason why people resort to this practice. Indeed, one is reminded of the fact that the first homeless shelters which opened in 19th-century London were known as coffin houses ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Operated by the Salvation Army, these institutions were established primarily to provide food and assistance. But, uniquely, the poor and destitute would also be allowed to sleep in a coffin-shaped wooden box and generously provided with a tarpaulin with which to cover themselves. 

 

Although such places sound grim and, indeed, were grim - they proved to be very popular and remained in operation into the early 20th-century. Supporters of coffin houses argued that not only were the homeless able to find rest, but they were also afforded the chance to find God - provided they had the fourpence admission fee ...    

 

 

 Men preparing for another night's kip 

in a coffin house (c. 1900)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Having said that, however, Bernhardt did seem to have a taste for the morbid and macabre, even once visiting the Paris morgue in order to learn how better to feign the signs of death.  

 

[2] See the interview with Titbits (Nov 1981) in which Miss Willcox discusses why she slept in a coffin: click here.  

 

 

In Memory of Sarah Bernhardt (1844 - 1923)

Sarah Bernhardt (aged 21) 

Photo by Félix Nadar (1865)

 

"Mon vrai pays est le plein air et ma vocation est l'art sans contraintes."

 

 

I. 

 

It's strange, but there are some figures who, in theory, should hold a special interest to me, but about whom I know embarrassingly very little. And the French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who died on this day 100 years ago, is one such figure ...

Famously described by Oscar Wilde as divine, a 63-year-old Bernhardt even managed to capture the heart of a young D. H. Lawrence in 1908, when appearing on the English stage as part of a twenty day, sixteen city tour of Great Britain and Ireland:

 

"Sarah Bernhardt was wonderful and terrible. [...] Oh, to see her, and to hear her, a wild creature, a gazelle with a beautiful panther's fascination and fury, laughing in musical French, screaming with true panther cry, sobbing and sighing like a deer sobs, wounded to death, and all the time with the sheen of silk, the glitter of diamonds, the moving of men's handsomely groomed figures about her! She is not pretty - her voice is not sweet - but there she is, the incarnation of wild emotion which we share with all live things, but which is gathered in us in all complexity and inscrutable fury. She represents the primeval passions of woman, and she is fascinating to an extraordinary degree. I could love such a woman myself, love her to madness; all for the pure, wild passion of it." [1]

 

 

II. 

 

Clearly, then, Bernhardt - the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish courtesan who had numerous lovers amongst the wealthy Parisian elite - was one of those wonder-women who seem to seduce, bewitch, or scandalise everyone they encounter. 

 

And, the more I read about her - or the more I look at beautiful old photos of Miss Bernhardt, particularly those taken when she was still very young and with a mass of curly black hair  - the more I start to understand and appreciate why that would be. 

 

I love the fact, for example, that as a child being educated at a convent, she outraged the nuns by performing a Christian burial, with full procession and ceremony, for her pet lizard. And I love the fact also that a century before the world had ever heard of Toyah Willcox, Miss Bernhardt chose to sometimes sleep in a satin-lined coffin.   

 

Arguably, Bernhardt even has something free spirited about her that Nietzsche (who was born in the same month and year) would admire, as this quotation demonstrates:

 

'I passionately love this life of adventures. I detest knowing in advance what they are going to serve at dinner, and I detest a hundred thousand times more knowing what will happen to me, for better or worse. I adore the unexpected.' [2]

 

That's pretty much the philosophy of amor fati and living dangerously in a nutshell, is it not? 

 

She also had that most Nietzschean of virtues: endurance ... For here was an actress who didn't just break a leg, she actually lost a leg due to gangrene in 1915 (when aged 70), but still returned to the stage at the first opportunity and performed for French soldiers fighting on the Western Front.

 

Right until the very end, she also continued to entertain guests at home, - including Colette, who described being served coffee by a living legend:

 

"'The delicate and withered hand offering the brimming cup, the flowery azure of the eyes, so young still in their network of fine lines, the questioning and mocking coquetry of the tilted head, and that indescribable desire to charm, to charm still, to charm right up to the gates of death itself.'" [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Blanche Jennings (25 June 1908), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 59. 

      It is interesting to note that Lawrence was forty-years younger than Sarah Bernhardt when he wrote this letter. Later, he issues a warning to his new friend Miss Jennings: 

      "Take care about going to see Bernhardt. Unless you are very sound, do not go. When I think of her now I can still feel the weight hanging in my chest as it hung there for days after I saw her. Her winsome, sweet, playful ways; her sad, plaintive little murmurs; her terrible panther cries; and then the awful, inarticulate sounds, the little sobs that fairly sear one, and the despair of death; it is too much in one evening." 

      It is also interesting to note that a 28-year-old Sigmund Freud was also smitten by Sarah. After seeing her perform the title role in Victorien Sardou's melodrama Théodora (1884), he sent his long-suffering fiancée, Martha Bernays, a scene-by-scene account of Bernhardt's performance, concluding that she was a remarkable creature: "Her caressing and pleading, the postures she assumes, the way she wraps herself around a man, the way she acts with every limb, every joint - it's incredible!" 

      See the Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, ed. Ernst L. Freud, trans. Tania and James Stern, (Hogarth Press, 1961), pp. 178-82.  

      But of course, Bernhardt also had her critics, including Shaw, Turgenev, and Chekov - but I'm writing here to praise Sarah, not to bury her. 

[2] Quoted in Hélène Tierchant, Sarah Bernhardt: Madame 'quand même', (Éditions Télémaque, 2009), pp. 210-211. Unknown translator.

 

[3] Quoted by Cornelia Otis Skinner in Madame Sarah, (Houghton, 1967), p. 330. 

 

 

Special (from beyond the grave) bonus - Sarah Bernhardt reciting a poem by Victor Hugo (Paris, 1903): click here. 

 

For a follow up post to this one on the art and necessity of coffin sleeping, click here.

 

Merci à Sophie pour la suggestion de cet article.