Sarah Bernhardt also entertained the troops on the Western
Front in the ‘Theatre aux Armees’. She
gave a matinee performance at a Liverpool Theatre, in front of “everyone of
eminence in the city”, in ‘Mort au Champ d’Honneur’, which Roberts described in
detail. She played “the part of a young (French)
officer, dying, who was carried wounded from the battlefield and deposited
beneath a tree. At his request they
brought a French flag to him and holding it in his hands he apostrophised the
survival and glory of France”. After
many curtain calls, the stage had become ‘a flower garden’, such was the
appreciation of the British public. After the performance, Roberts was able
briefly to meet the great actress backstage, an honour he never forgot.
‘The Years of Promise’, Cecil Roberts (Hodder &
Stoughton Ltd., London, 1978), pp. 127 - 128
Photo: Sarah Bernhardt on the Western Front during WW1 with two companions and some French officers.