Depot Street, Willis House, Melville Morton, Randall, Eugene F., 131 Depot Street, South Easton, MA, info, Easton Historical Society

October 8, 2020 by 4g3nd4

More information on this image is available at the Easton Historical Society in North Easton, MA.
www.flickr.com/photos/historicalimagesofeastonma/albums
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The development by Oliver Ames and Sons Corporation of the factory and village land use in a rather organic manner with a mix work-related classes created an integrated geographic network. The housing on perimeter edge with factories and business affairs in the center creating the village concept in North Easton. Other important concepts were the Furnace Village Cemetery, Furnace Village Grammar School and the Furnace Village Store, which explains Furnace Village and other sections of Easton.
source: Massachusetts Historical Commission
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South Easton Cemetery
This cemetery is situated above South Easton Village on the west side of Washington Street. It is a level tract of light sandy soil, has been planted with evergreen trees, and is neatly kept. The first interment here was that of Catherine Lothrop, wife of Thomas J. Johnson, who died at Newtonville, together with an infant son, on May 27, 1851, thirty-five years of age. In November of 1885, there can be counted two hundred and seventy-one graves, forty-four of which are unmarked, of these latter, however, many are new graves, to which headstones will probably be supplied. The following are names of most of those buried in these unmarked graves, Dean Ramsdell, Lizzie Ramsdell, and Emma, wife of Dean Ramsdell, Jr., Joseph Heath, a soldier, and Fred H. Greenleaf, a child of Fred Clapp, also one of Lucius Darling, of James Willis, of H. Y. Mitchell, of Fred C. Thayer, and of Warren Jones, two children of Eugene Willis and others of Martin Willis, Mrs. Carrie Kilburn and child, Rosanna, wife of Thomas James, Rebecca, wife of John Bailey, and the wife of John Bailey, Jr., Ella, wife of F. C. Thayer, Tyler F, Clapp, a soldier, Hattie Bosworth, Caleb S. Lothrop, Frank Nelson, and Asa Packard. There are a few others whose names are not easily ascertainable. Among the well-known citizens of other days whose graves are here may be mentioned those of E. J. W. Morse, Solomon W. Morse, Elijah Howard, Dr. Caleb Swan, Capt. Barzillai Dean, Lenard Williams, Capt. Milo Williams, Col. John Torrey, and John Bisbee, the latter well deserving the inscription upon his tombstone, – An honest man, the noblest work of God. –
source: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
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Description of Depot Street below
History of the South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District below
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131 Depot Street
By 1917, the Melville Morton Willis House at 131 Depot Street was owned and occupied by Melville Morton, and Ada Theresa Landers Willis. In the early 1880s, Nathaniel W., a carriage painter, and Sara B. Mitchell Perry owned and resided on a four acre parcel at 123 Depot Street, with a house, shop, and barn. In 1886, the map of South Easton shows the parcel at 131 Depot Street as noted with the name, – N. W. Perry. – In 1889, Nathaniel W., and Sara B. Mitchell Perry sold a half-acre of land west of their house to Francis J. Smith, a cotton mill worker for one hundred and seventy-five dollars. In 1889, the Easton Massachusetts City Directory listed Francis J. Smith as an employee of the E. J. W. Morse & Company at Seven Central Street. In 1893, Francis J. Smith sold the parcel at 131 Depot Street to Horace Dow, and Susan E. Purinton residing at 122 Depot Street for two hundred dollars. In 1900, owning and residing at 122 Depot Street were Horace Dow, a wooden heel factory Treasurer, and his wife, Susan E. Purinton, with their son, Charles Fessenden Purinton, and Horace’s sister, Annie M. Purinton, and a servant, Kerrie B. Johnson, and a boarder, Walter Lovejoy, a bookkeeper. On May 7, 1902, Horace Dow Purinton passed away in Easton at the age of sixty-five, with his burial in the South Easton Cemetery. In 1911, Horace Dow, and Susan E. Purinton’s son, Charles Fessenden Purinton sold the property at 131 Depot Street to Melville Morton, and Ada Theresa Landers Willis, who were renting on Central Street. In 1900, Melville Morton Willis, a shoe laster, was living on Depot Street, not this house, with his parents, James Warren, a iron moulder, and Wealthy Clorinda Leonard Willis, and his three brothers, Fred Leonard, John D., and Benjamin C. Willis, and his sister, Edna Gertrude Willis. On March 8, 1902, Melville Morton Willis married Ada Theresa Landers in Easton, daughter of Robert and Ellen O’Leary Landers. In 1910, renting and residing on Central Street were Melville Morton, a shoe shop laster, and his wife, Ada Theresa Landers Willis, with their daughter, Doris Ellen Willis, and their son, Harold E. Willis. In 1917, the Brockton Massachusetts City Directory listed Melville Morton Willis, a shoemaker, residing with his wife, Ada Theresa Landers Willis on Depot Street, opposite Church Street. In 1920, owning and residing at 131 Central Street were Melville Morton, a shoe shop laster, and his wife, Ada Theresa Landers Willis, with their daughter, Doris Ellen Willis, and their son, Harold E. Willis. On October 29, 1922, Melville Morton Willis’ wife, Ada Theresa Landers Willis passed away in Easton at the age of forty-eight. On September 1, 1923, Melville Morton, and Ada Theresa Landers Willis’ daughter, Doris Ellen Willis married Ernest John Garbitt II in West Roxbury, son of Ernest John, and Annie Louisa Gurner Garbitt. In 1926, widowed Melville Morton Willis sold the property at 131 Depot Street to his daughter, Doris Ellen Willis Garbitt II, and her husband, Ernest John Garbitt II. In 1930, Eugene Frederick Randall, a toy factory woodworker, was residing on Pine Street with his parents, Frank Martin, a railroad signal operator, and Lillian M. Randall. In 1930, Esther Emma Darling was residing in Wolcott, Vermont with her parents, Vern Marcus, a dairy farmer, and Cassie Lemyra Boyce Darling. On May 6, 1936, Eugene Frederick Randall married Esther Emma Darling Randall in Merrimack, New Hampshire, daughter of Vern Marcus, and Cassie Lemyra Boyce Darling. In 1940, owning and residing at 131 Depot Street were Eugene Frederick, a carpenter, and Esther Emma Darling Randall, and their two sons, Raymond Franklin, and Robert Darling Randall, and their daughter, Roberta Mae Randall.
source: Easton Historical Society
source; Massachusetts Historical Commission
source: Ancestry
source: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
source: Easton’s Neighborhoods, Edmund C. Hands, 1995
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Early School Days in Eastondale, Edwin H. White, 1950s
The following is part of a paper that Edwin H. White presented to the Easton Historical Society in the 1950s.
In 1818, Asa Howard sold land for a school house at the intersection of Turnpike and Washington Streets, upon which a school house was built. In 1869, the building was moved near what is now Joseph Dardeno’s House at 390 Turnpike Street. (1950s) This was where my father attended school. Also in 1869, a second building was erected on this site. It has recently been torn down, but it was a sore spot to our neighborhood for several years. It was set afire several times, but true to their duty, our firefighters saved a part of the building each time. I understand that during the last fire, the State Inspector appeared while it was still burning and ordered the firemen to extinguish the fire. This was the building in which I first attended school at the age of six. The following are the names of the teachers in their order while I attended school in this building: Miss Henrietta Gilmore, William Springer. Miss Cathell, Miss Jessie Bird and Miss Mary Young. The janitor was one of the older boys, and it became my job for two years, from 1882 to 1884. I had to be there early in the morning to sweep the floor three times a week, start the fire, and heat the school room where the pupils were taught, some of them walking a mile from either direction. There were no buses to carry us and our ears and toes many days seemed frozen even though we were dressed warmly with heavy woolen or red flannel underclothing, woolen stockings, and scarves or tippets as they were called, all of which our mothers had knitted in the long hours of the evening. I also had to fill the wooden pails with fresh water every morning, one for the girls ante room and one for the boys. These pails of water were kept on a shelf over an old iron sink, and a single long handled dipper hung on a nail nearby. I often wonder where the germs were in those days that two dippers were sufficient for all the children. There was no well on the school grounds, and I had to go a distance to a neighbor’s old well sweep to fill the pails and return them to their proper place. Sometimes I had to fill the pails more than once if the children were unusually thirsty. However, the last year I was there, the Town dug a well on the school, and installed a cucumber pump, which made the job easier. For fear some of you may not know about a cucumber pump, it was a six inch square box. extending down into the well and about five feet above the well. A long handle attached allowed long strokes for pumping the water. The schoolhouse was heated by a big oblong wood burning stove in the cellar. This stove, for safety from fire, was built upon a stone foundation and the upper part was enclosed with brick up to the floor and to the register which was in the front of the school room. The smoke pipe came up through the register to the the of room and extended the length of the room to a chimney in the north end of the building suspended by wires attached to the ceiling. Many a one and one-half foot log have I put into that stove. I received twenty-six dollars and fifty cents a for the school year. That was enough for a suit of clothes, a hat, and a ticket for Dickerman’s Sunday School Excursion during summer vacation, a big annual event in those days. The building was about thirty by forty feet. Doors on each side, one for the girls and one for the boys, opened into entries where our outer wraps were left. These entries opened into a vestibule and here the register was located. This vestibule could be separated from the classroom by two sliding gates which could be locked when occasion required. The classroom itself was occupied by four rows of double desks, not open tops. Two pupils sat at each desk. Boys were on one side of the room and the girls on the other, but notes could get across the line sometimes. Long seats were built on both sides of the room, and these seats were used for recitation purposes. As classes were called by the teacher, the pupils left their seats and went in order to these long seats. Then, as called upon, each pupil would rise and recite. The hours were from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., and I p.m. to 4 p.m., with fifteen minutes recess both morning and afternoon. On pleasant days, we were allowed to play in the rear. All grades were taught in this school, from the ABC’s to the fourth and fifth readers. Some of these books I have in my home. One is marked, Entered according to Act of Congress 1871. For the writing period, we were supplied with a lined blank book. Each page had a sample of writing at the top, and our lesson was to copy it. One day, hands were raised frantically. Teacher, there is something the matter with the ink. It was the janitor’s responsibility to keep the ink wells filled, and the teacher looked to him for an explanation, but he was as puzzled as the other children. The teacher boarded on Purchase Street at the home of Mr. Rankin who was on the school committee. He supplied the ink for this school, and after hearing the teacher’s story, he went to his cellar where the ink was stored, and found he had made a mistake and sent a bottle of boiled cider in place of the bottle of ink. The poor janitor had poured the cider in the ink wells, and as you can readily guess, the cider and the ink already in the ink wells did not mix well. And now about discipline. I do not remember that there were any very bad boys. Of course we had our fights and disagreements. A skunk sometimes found his way into the cellar and the school had to be closed. I would not care to tell you if the skunk got in there alone or if was aided by cellar windows being left open. I should like to speak again about the stove. As I think of it now, it was an interesting arrangement. The doors in front of the stove were lifted by chains. A tiny hole no larger than a screw hole was discovered, or made, in the floor near the desk of one of the boys, who attached a cord from this spot through the floor to the cellar, and far enough across to be attached to the outer housing doors, which were made of steel and had two handles. This boy could be studying apparently, and one of the most studious, when by pulling the rope under his desk, the doors which were hung on chains would drop down with a bang, and this noise would startle the teacher and children. She said, Janitor, I fear you did not close the stove doors properly. Please attend to it. But just as the janitor returned, the same thing happened again. But now the teacher caught glances from various parts of the room. This led her to the culprit and the rope. This school building was used until the new brick building of two rooms was erected on Pine Street and dedicated June, 1930. A third room-was later added. In our Eastondale building, we especially liked to watch the cattle being driven through the street, and the shepherd dog that accompanied the driver and helped to keep the drove in order. If they were going by at recess time, we forgot school and went along to help, only to return and find ourselves late. It was a common sight in those days to see cattle driven through the streets. They were being driven from the Brighton cattle mart and delivered to the respective buyers. In closing, I have a tale of how I was teased by some of the boys in the school. I took a pair of shoes one morning to the cobbler just below the school. They were to be retapped. Today we say resoled. That afternoon, the cobbler was seen trudging by with a side of sole leather on his back. A side was probably enough to sole twenty-five or thirty pairs of shoes. The boys said he had to get all that leather for my shoes. They really did razz me considerably as to the amount of leather required for my shoes.
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Edwin C. White, following in the tradition of his grandfather and father, was President of Simpson Spring Company in 1967 until his retirement in 1988. For decades, Ed and his wife Evelyn (Lyn) lived in the second oldest house in Easton, the Benjamin Williams home at 539 Bay Road, which they totally restored. Ed and Lyn have been extremely active in the Easton community. Ed was the first president of the restored Easton Historical Society (1967-69), and facilitated many Antique Auto Meets at the Station. He was also the first Ames Free Library president to come from outside the Ames family, and was a trustee of the North Easton Savings Bank for 46 years, retiring as Chairman of the Board in 20I0. Lyn was one of the major spokespeople for saving Wheaton Farm, and provided the leadership for the creation of the Natural Resources Trust of Easton. (See History of Easton, Massachusetts: Volume Two, page 271.) She was also Executive Director of the Neponset River Watershed Association. Both Ed and Lyn have been active in Unity Church for many years. In 2001, the Lions Club presented the Whites the Outstanding Service Award, the highest award given. In addition, several years ago the Natural Resources Trust of Easton dedicated a bench on the foundation of the mansion of – Sheep Pasture – to Lyn and Ed White –Stewards of the Land.
source: Reminiscences, Early School Days in Eastondale, Edwin H. White, 1950s, Easton Historical Society
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In the year 1915, a second district was established within the town of Easton known as the South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District. This district comprises a section of the town about 5 miles long and averaging a little over 1 mile in width lying along the easterly border of the town adjacent to Brockton and West Bridgewater. Its northerly limit is about 2 miles south of the boundary between Easton and Stoughton, and this limit extends from the boundary of the North Easton Village District to the boundary line of the city of Brockton. The North Easton Village District is supplied with water from wells situated in the valley of a tributary of the Coweeset River within the limits of the district. The South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District is supplied from separate works through an extension of the pipes of the city of Brockton. The arrangement of the two districts herein described leaves in the extreme northeasterly corner of the town of Easton an area about 2 miles long in a northerly and southerly direction and from miles in width which does not form a part of either district and is practically wholly cut off from the remaining portions of the town. This district, known as Unionville, is inhabited by about ninety families, and, in response to a petition of certain inhabitants thereof, the State Department of Health during the past year investigated the condition of the water supply in Unionville, as a result of which it was found that many of the wells in use were badly polluted, and the Department is informed also that many of them have failed during the dry seasons that have occurred in recent years.
source: Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, 1915
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South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District
At the turn of the century, this section of Easton consisted of the Civil War monument area, including the Town Hall, the Evangelical Congregational Church, the Almshouse, and the Center School, with the one-story Easton Center Depot a little to the east. There were a number of farms along accessory roads like Purchase Street. The village area along Washington Street, from Morse’s square stucco house near the southeastern corner of the intersection of Washington and Grove (now Belmont) Streets to the South Easton Depot south of the Green. Sequasset area, now called Eastondale, included the Eastondale Depot.
Those who were not self-employed or employed in the South Easton/Eastondale area were apt to be workers in one of the many Brockton shoe factories. Transportation to their place of employment was by train via West Bridgewater and Matfield to Campello and locations north. Lighting was by oil, or a reasonable facsimile, since electricity was not available until the first decades of the twentieth century. Police protection was on an informal level and there were no physicians in the South Easton-Eastondale area. At this time each home had its own well and pump. The South Easton-Eastondale Fire and Water District was not organized until 1916. Fire protection was either by neighborhood assistance or had to come from North Easton or Brockton. Such was the case when the Rankin house at the duck farm burned. The duck farm, located on Purchase Street, was owned by James Rankin and employed a number of people. A large wagon load of crated duck, would be shipped each morning from the Easton Center railroad station to destinations throughout the United States. The farmers sold their products by horse and wagon with daily milk routes being serviced. The milk was sold by the quart measure from eight-quart cans kept cool by ice. Seasonal products, such as apples and vegetables, were also sold. Another provision ordered and delivered to the home was meat. South Easton was serviced by Henry Heath and his son, Alfred Heath, who slaughtered their own beef. They delivered on a weekly basis and in the early 1900s two pounds of beef cost approximately twenty-four cents. A large part of their meat business was in smoked meats. Mr. Heath had a large smoke house, and people came from all over the area to have hams and bacon smoked. Many farmers did their own butchering, but had no smoke house, so they brought their meats to the Heath Smoke House. The same kind of services were provided by Cyrus Alger, who had meats and vegetables at his place on Turnpike Street.
The Washington Street area contained the thread mills of the E. J. Morse Company, the post office, the general store operated for many years by the Horace Mitchell family, and the Grammar School (both the old and the new, built in 1903). Further south, at the Easton Green, was the very busy J. 0. Dean grist mill. In back of the mill was the Ross Heel Company which was owned by Mr. Dean’s son-in-law, Edwin Kennedy. This was also where the Puritan rollaway screens were made in the early 1900s. Further south, along Washington Street, were the blacksmith shop, the depot on the left, and a new and thriving company on the right, the Simpson Spring Company. There were several paint and varnish shops in the area, and thermometers were made by the Poole’s on Foundry Street. In the Eastondale area, grain, lumber, and daily provisions were available at James E. Howard and Sons Store. Originally his father, James M. Howard, had operated a store as part of his home on Pine Street before buying the two-and-a-half story structure on Turnpike Street. It was burnt on the evening of October 5, 1930, and it was replaced by a smaller one-story store built on the site and ready for operation by March, 1931, by members of a third generation of the Howard family. Just as the South Easton Post Office was housed in or adjacent to the general store on Washington Street, so also was the Eastondale post office, operated by the Howard family for approximately fifty-five years. Other businesses on Turnpike Street were poultry farms and livery stables.
Many of the residents attended the Evangelical Congregational Church at the CenteL Those in the southern part of Easton who were Catholic would travel by horse and wagon or train to North Easton and the Immaculate Conception Church. In Eastondale. those who did not attend the Congregational Church organized a Unitarian Society. For about fourteen years, until 1904 when the church on Turnpike Street was built, religious services and meetings, including church school classes, were held at the Grand Army of the Republic Hall. This Hall had been built in 1886 and was the site of many social affairs. The Grand Army of the Republic was very active with its annual winter fair being the popular attraction for young and old. Many dramatic presentations and dances were held at the Hall which was not torn down until !946. Many South Easton residents were also active members of the Harmony Grange on Bay Road in Furnace Village.
source, History of Easton, Massachusetts, Vol. II, M. McEntee, Easton Historical Society, ET AL, 1886-1974
source: Easton Historical Society
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August 23, 1915. To the Board of Water Commissioners, South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District, Mr. William N. Howard, Chairman. Gentlemen: — The State Department of Health received from you on Aug. 14, 1915, the following application for the approval by this Department, under the provisions of chapter 232 of the Special Acts of the year 1915, of the taking and use of water from Silver Lake for the water supply of the South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District through a contract with the water commissioners of the city of Brockton made under the provisions of said act. In order to comply with the conditions of the special act of 1915, chapter 232 in relation to the South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District, it becomes necessary to secure a certificate of approval by the State Department of Health of the source of supply and location of dams, reservoir, wells, etc., in compliance with the section two of said act. The South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District is under contract with the city of Brockton, which city is furnishing the district with water from its regular supply which is Silver Lake, which source of supply has already been approved and is under constant inspection by the State Department of Health. The attorneys who are passing upon bonds require, however, that a certificate of approval from the State Department be furnished as the law states. The Department has considered the results of examinations of Silver Lake, the proposed source of supply, by the engineer of the Department and finds that the water is of good quality for domestic use and the supply adequate for the requirements of the South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District in addition to those of the city of Brockton and the towns now supplied by that city from Silver Lake. The State Department of Health hereby approves the use of water taken from Silver Lake and supplied through the works of the city of Brockton for the water supply of the South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District under the provisions of chapter 232 of the Special Acts of the year 1915.
source: Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, 1915
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(1915) A new water district was established during the year in the town of Easton to supply the villages of South Easton and Eastondale. The supply is obtained from the works of the city of Brockton.
source: Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, 1915
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In 1915, South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District connected to the Brockton water system, which pulled water from Silver Lake in Pembroke. A series of pipes were laid and connections made to houses on Washington, Depot, Turnpike, and Pine Streets. Maps of the district were drawn locating the water connections, identification of the resident’s properties. Illustrated plans of the homes and businesses that connected to the districts water supply. The fire equipment for the South Easton and Eastondale Fire and Water District was housed in a barn on the southeast corner of Depot and Washington Streets. In 1932, the Town of Easton appointed a fire chief to supervise all the town’s fire departments.
source: Massachusetts Historical Commission
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Depot Street
Depot Street extends from the Bay road at the Furnace Village through the Centre, past the railroad station, through the Green and to the turnpike. Sections of it were laid out at different times ; that near the Centre is alluded to as early as 1716, and that part just east of the Green, in 1703. It was laid out from the Furnace Village to Black Brook in 1752 ; from the Centre to Black Brook it appears to have been relaid in 1838, and in 1885 it was widened. The extreme eastern end was added in 1848.
source: History of Easton, William L. Chaffin, 1886
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Depot Street
The Eastondale section of Depot Street parallels the Queset River from Easton Green to the intersection with Turnpike Street, formerly a section of the Taunton and South Boston Turnpike. Although Depot Street was a section of the first road to be formally laid out in Eastondale in the last decade of the 17* century, very little residential development occurred along the road until the early 20th century.
source: Massachusetts Historical Commission

Posted by Historical Images of Easton, Massachusetts, Bristo on 2019-06-14 18:13:07

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Beautiful Silk Road palace ceiling decoration – Isfahan, Iran

September 28, 2020 by 4g3nd4

ISFAHAN, Iran – Looking up into the mirror and wood carving decorations on the ceiling of the Silk Road era Chehel Sotun palace of Isfahan.

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Posted by German Vogel on 2019-12-03 20:21:11

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2017 – Road Trip – Moosomin – McNaughton Building

September 23, 2020 by 4g3nd4

Moosomin was the home of a famous Canadian military person – General Andrew McNaughton.

General Andrew McNaughton was born in Moosomin in 1887. In the Second World War, he commanded Canada’s overseas army and then became Minister of Defence.

In the interwar years he was Chairman of the National Research Council and following the Second World War was Chairman of the International Joint Commission which handled questions pertaining to the international waters along the Canada-United States border.

The McNaughton building is part of the family heritage in Moosomin.

One of a handful of pre-1890 commercial buildings in Saskatchewan, it was constructed in 1886 with a major addition in 1890. The oldest part of the building was constructed of field stone in the Second Empire style, signified by the mansard roof with inset dormer windows bordered by intricate woodwork.

The 1890 brick and fieldstone addition was designed in an elaborate rendition of boomtown commercial architecture. The original owners, the McNaughton family, were prominent in Moosomin from the time R.D. McNaughton established his original wholesale and retail store in 1882.

They were the main wholesale supplier for towns across south-eastern Saskatchewan. Although R.D. McNaughton sold the business in 1909, successive owners continued to use the McNaughton name until the closure of the store in 1956.

Designated in 2004, the McNaughton Building is a Municipal Heritage Property.

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NFL Playoff Picks, how to watch, stream: Seahawks upset Cowboys, Colts beat Texans on road in Wild-Card round

September 21, 2020 by 4g3nd4

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If you made a New Year’s resolution and you’ve kept it so far, then your year is already off to a better start than mine.

My New Year’s resolution was to not eat fast food in 2019, and that lasted for exactly 47 minutes. I got hungry after celebrating the new year and the only thing in my fridge was a Chick-Fil-A sandwich and there was no way I wasn’t going to eat it, so that’s now out the window.

Speaking of New Year’s resolutions, the Steelers should probably make one that involves not fighting each other.

The Bengals should also make a resolution not to hire Hue Jackson as head coach. Of course, you didn’t come here to hear about me talk about a bunch of sad non-playoff teams, you came here for wild-card picks, so let’s get to the picks.

Actually, before we get to the picks, I should mention that I’m adding one thing this week, which will be me trying to tell you why I may or may not know what I’m talking about in a certain game. Basically, I’ve tabulated all my picks from the season and now you’ll know how I did picking each team. For instance, I went 15-1 picking Seahawks games this year, but you already knew that since I mention it every week. However, any Cowboys fans who are here for the first time because they’re hate-reading due to the “Seahawks upset Cowboys” part of the headline might not have known that, which is why I’m repeating myself.

Also, if you need a new podcast for the new you in 2019, I highly suggest that you click here and subscribe to the Pick Six Podcast. I team up with Will Brinson, Ryan Wilson and Sean Wagner-McGough every week for an NFL recap show that you can download each and every Monday morning during the season. In our Week 17 recap, we spent an exorbitant amount of time talking about which quarterback the Eagles should dump if Nick Foles somehow leads Philadelphia to another Super Bowl.

Alright, now that we have that stuff out of the way, let’s get to the picks. Don’t forget, you can check out the wild-card picks from every CBSSports.com NFL expert by clicking here. Oh, and just because I know you were wondering, my other New Year’s resolution for 2019 is to get more picks right, so let’s hope this one doesn’t blow up in my face like that fast food thing.

Start a playoff picks pool today to compete against friends and coworkers or show off your football knowledge by playing against experts.

NFL Wild-Card Picks

Saturday, January 5

No. 6 Indianapolis (10-6) at No. 3 Houston (11-5)

4:35 p.m. ET (ESPN/ABC)

“Started from the bottom, now we’re here.”

I have no idea who’s in charge of organizing the halftime show for this game, but if the Texans don’t get Drake to perform “Started from the bottom,” then they’ve already lost in my book. I don’t think that song was written for the Colts or Texans, but it might have been, because this is basically the most improbable playoff game of all-time because both teams started the season at rock bottom (and now they’re here). On one hand, you have the Texans, who were 0-3 after three weeks and looked so bad that half the fan base wanted to see Bill O’Brien fired.

Fire Bill O’Brien. Fire everyone. Fire me.

— Ross Bolen (@WRBolen) September 16, 2018

Texans Monday to-do list:

– Fire Bill O’Brien– Sign Leveon Bell– Trade Clowney for OL

— The Astro Joker 🃏 (@theastrojoker) September 23, 2018

That’s solid to-do list, but the Texans didn’t listen to any of it. Instead, they kept O’Brien, went on a nine-game winning streak and ended up making the playoffs with an 11-5 record, becoming just the sixth-team in NFL history to make the postseason after starting 0-3. Of course, that’s not even that impressive when you compare it to what the Colts did this season. After getting off to a 1-5 start, everyone in Indy was ready to run Frank Reich out of town.

Fire Frank Reich….why wasn’t he this dumb in the 90’s???

— Matt Jackson (@MJ4Sports) September 30, 2018

Can you dump a head coach after 4 games? That decision by Frank Reich is a fire able offense. Cost the Colts the game

— Matt McCoy (@MattMcCoyZone) September 30, 2018

Although Colts owner Jim Irsay is on Twitter, he somehow managed to ignore the tweets calling for his coach to be fired, which is impressive, because ignoring people on Twitter isn’t easy. Also, firing someone because some people on Twitter told you to probably isn’t the best way to run a business. Anyway, the Colts held on to Reich and all he did was help Indy become just the third team in NFL history to make the postseason after a 1-5 start.

As for the actual game, the biggest thing I need to know is if the Texans are even going to try and stop T.Y. Hilton this week, because they don’t ever really seem to try and stop him when he’s in town. Hilton has four games in his career where he’s gone over 175 yards and three of those have come in Houston, including back in Week 14, when he had nine catches for 199 yards in a 24-21 Colts win. Hilton also had four catches for 115 yards the first time these two teams met in Week 4. Not guarding the other team’s best receiver is definitely a strategy that hasn’t been working out for the Texans.

Even if Hilton goes off though, I don’t expect this to turn into a Colts blowout. As a matter of fact, I fully expect this game to come down to the right foot of the guy below who kind of looks like Santa Claus’ brother.

Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri, who is now the third oldest player in NFL history, taking pictures before tonight’s game. He turned 46 this week. Only Morten Andersen (47) & George Blanda (48) were older. pic.twitter.com/OjHrAT9ACT

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 31, 2018

Adam Vinatieri might be older than everyone on the Texans’ roster combined.

The pick: Colts 27-24 over Texans

Record picking Colts games this season: 12-4 Record picking Texans games this season: 11-5

Stream Seattle at Dallas and Sunday’s games on fuboTV, try it for free, and stream the CBS games on CBS All Access.

No. 5 Seattle (10-6) at No. 4 Dallas (10-6)

8:15 p.m. ET (Fox)

The end of the regular season is usually an interesting time for me because that’s generally when everyone on the internet comes out of the woodwork and throws my preseason predictions in my face. For instance, Andrew here was kind enough to remind me that I blew it with my Bears prediction this year.

You had the Bears 5-11 this year didn’t you??

— AW (@WestAndrew75) December 31, 2018

Ouch. That’s pretty bad. In my defense, I made the prediction before the Khalil Mack trade. If I had known Mack was going to be on the team, I would’ve predicted 6-10.

Of course, the only reason I’m bringing up my predictions is because I think I’m the only person in the country who predicted that both the Cowboys and the Seahawks would finish exactly 10-6.

Everybody is ripping everybody nationally for having no faith in the Seahawks heading into the season. And then I see what my man John Breech said about them in September: pic.twitter.com/y76ZuekSC8

— Bob Condotta (@bcondotta) December 12, 2018

I think what I’m trying to say here is that if my preseason predictions are any indication, then there’s a 100 percent chance that I’m going to pick this game correctly.

Here’s what I like about the Seahawks: They never lose in the opening round of the playoffs. Since Pete Carroll took over in 2010, the Seahawks have gone 6-0 in their opening round playoff game and it doesn’t matter if that game was played in the Wild-Card Round (4-0) or the Divisional Round (2-0). You know how Andy Reid is basically unbeatable after a bye week? That’s Carroll, except in opening round playoff games.

The thing about the playoffs is that it’s the first time all season where you don’t know your opponent until a week before you play them. In the regular season, it’s easy to prepare for everyone, because you know exactly who you’re playing every week. In the playoffs, the best coaches generally survive (SEE: Belichick, Bill) because they adapt the quickest to this situation and Carroll is one of the NFL’s best coaches. On the other hand, you have Jason Garrett, who I’m 99 percent sure will make at least one completely befuddling decision late in the game on Saturday, which will probably cost the Cowboys the game.

The pick: Seahawks 23-20 over Cowboys

Record picking Seahawks games this season: 15-1Record picking Cowboys games this season: 8-8

Sunday, January 6

No. 5 L.A. Chargers (12-4) at Baltimore (10-6)

1:05 p.m. ET (CBS, stream the game here)

Someone at NFL headquarters must really hate the Chargers because no playoff team got hit with a worse kickoff time than them. There are a total of four time slots in the wild-card round and the Chargers basically ended up in the one where west coast teams go to die: The dreaded 10 a.m. PT slot.

No, the game isn’t kicking off at 10 a.m. in Baltimore, but that’s what it’s going to feel like for the Chargers, who probably would have been happy playing on Saturday afternoon, Saturday night or Sunday afternoon or ANY TIME SLOT EXCEPT FOR THE ONE THEY’RE IN.

The Chargers went 12-4 and have to travel across the country to Baltimore to play at 10am PST.

— Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) December 31, 2018

Is this a conspiracy by the NFL to make sure the Chargers don’t win so they can’t host any playoff games at their tiny soccer stadium? I’m not going to rule that out, but the one thing I will say is that they’re at a definite disadvantage and I even have some research to prove it thanks to my crack research team, which is actually just me.

Here’s how ugly things get when a western team has to play in an early game during the playoffs: Since 2002, Pacific and Mountain time zone teams have been outscored 202-56 in the first half of all 1 p.m. ET playoff games. If you’re thinking, “Now I know why China only has one time zone for the entire country,” I was also thinking that. It’s so every sports team is on an even playing field when they meet in the postseason.

As much as I clearly want to pick against the Chargers, the problem is that I’m not exactly sold on the Ravens and that’s because they’re starting a rookie quarterback. I mean, have you ever watched a rookie quarterback in the playoffs? They always look lost, they always make mistakes and the ending is usually predictable. It’s basically like watching Matthew McConaughey in any romantic comedy.

Not only have rookie quarterbacks lost five straight playoff games, but the last win by a rookie quarterback only happened because he was playing another rookie quarterback, so a rookie quarterback had to win (Russell Wilson vs. RG3 in January 2013). The advantage for the Ravens is that when a rookie struggles in the postseason, it’s usually throwing the ball and the Ravens might not have to worry about that against the Chargers. If I’m the Ravens, I take football back to 1937 on Sunday and I don’t throw a forward pass the entire game.

After picking against the Ravens for the past three weeks, Ravens fans don’t want me anywhere near their bandwagon…

Love how @johnbreech (still cant go simple math-national writer) who hasnt given the Ravens any credit since the bye week is picking the Browns…#notshocked ITS FINE we seem to win when you pick against us recently… #RavensFlock

— Brad Gunther (@BradGunther13) December 26, 2018

… but I’ve now decided to hijack the bandwagon and I think I might end up riding this thing all the way to the Super Bowl. I hope I don’t jinx your team.

The pick: Ravens 19-16 over Chargers

Record picking Chargers games this season: 12-4Record picking Ravens games this season: 8-8

No. 6 Philadelphia (9-7) at No. 3 Chicago (12-4)

4:40 p.m. ET (NBC)

This game kind of reminds me of David vs. Goliath, except David never actually loses because he’s Nick Foles. On paper, this is a total mismatch. The Bears defense should be able to suffocate the Eagles offense, but I’m not entirely convinced that Foles even breathes oxygen, so I’m not sure that would work. I think what I’m trying to say here is that I’m not sure how you stop Foles.

The scary thing for the Bears is that Foles clearly didn’t use all of his magic during last year’s run to the Super Bowl. As a matter of fact, I think he might actually have more magic now than he had last year. I mean, just look at what he’s done over the past three weeks: He beat the 11-2 Rams, he broke the Eagles franchise-record for passing yards in a win over the Texans AND he tied the NFL-record for most consecutive completions in a win over the Redskins. He also might be the best third down quarterback on the planet.

My final stat of the year:

Nick Foles threw 90 third-down passes in calendar year 2018.

Eighteen of them were incomplete.

Foles on 3D in 2018: 72-for-90 [80%], 874 yards, 9 TDs, 1 INT, 135.8 passer rating.

Insane.

— Reuben Frank (@RoobNBCS) January 1, 2019

Apparently, the only thing Foles can’t do right is earn his bonuses.

Oh, this is brutal. #Eagles QB Nick Foles needed to play 33% of the snaps on the season to get a $1M bonus for making the playoffs. He played 61 of 71 today, thanks to his injury. He falls 4 snaps short! He had 357 of 1,092 and he needed 361.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 31, 2018

If I’m the Eagles, I cut him a check for $5 million this week and tell him there’s $10 million more where that came from if he beats the Bears. Although I just spent 200 words talking about Foles, this game is probably going to come down to whether or not Mitchell Trubisky can handle the spotlight. The Eagles have one of the worst pass defenses in the NFL — it’s ranked 30th overall — but the fact that they’re bad won’t matter if Trubusky can’t take advantage of them, and based on what I’ve seen from him this season, there’s a 50-50 chance he won’t be able to take advantage of them.

My head says pick the Bears, my heart says pick the Eagles and although Foles does everything with his heart, I’m going with my head here. Man, now my heart hurts, but that might just be acid reflux caused by all the cheap champagne I drank on New Year’s Eve.

The pick: Bears 20-17 over Eagles

Record picking Eagles games this season: 8-8Record picking Bears games this season: 11-5

Last Week

Best pick: Last week, I predicted the Dolphins would score 17 points in a loss to the Bills, and then the Dolphins went out and scored 17 points in a loss to the Bills. Now, did I know they were going to get beaten so badly that it was going to cause owner Stephen Ross to have a meltdown and fire Adam Gase? Of course, I did. I’ve seen Ryan Tannehill play enough football this year to know that it was only a matter of time before he played so badly that it would cost his coach his job. Tannehill threw two interceptions and I’m pretty sure Gase knew he was getting fired as soon as the second one happened. The best thing about this game is that some fans were kind of enough to put together a video that basically serves as the perfect metaphor for the Dolphins’ season.

The guy in the Tannehill jersey represents Tannehill. The broken table symbolizes Gase’s career in Miami. The fire is Ross and the Bills fans are just Bills fans who are only there because they like watching things burn.

Worst pick: Last week, I assumed the Bears were going to rest their starters against the Vikings, and let me just say, that was the most incorrect assumption I’ve ever made in my life. Instead of resting their starters, the Bears decided to destroy the Vikings and completely wipe them off the face off the planet. No one wearing purple was safe.

Kirk Cousins? He got massacred.

Adam Thielen? Annihilated.

The Bears showed no mercy. I mean, they almost sent a cheerleader to concussion protocol.

The Vikings had everything to play for on Sunday against the Bears and they couldn’t even come up with a win. I think the moral of the story here is don’t spend $84 million in fully guaranteed money on a quarterback, especially if your receivers don’t seem to really like that quarterback.

I hope all your important conversations in 2019 go better than that.

Happy New Year everyone! Let’s do this again next week for Divisional Round picks.

Picks record

Straight up in Week 17: 10-6Final 2018 regular season record SU: 166-88-2 (Ranked 22nd overall on Pickwatch)Against the spread in Week 17: 10-6Final 2018 regular season record ATS: 123-126-7Exact score predictions: 2

Wild-card record last yearStraight-up: 3-1Against the spread: 1-3

You can find John Breech on Facebook or Twitter and if he’s not doing one of those things, he’s probably writing down his 2020 New Year’s resolution, which is not to make New Year’s resolutions.

News

Posted by smashdownsportsnews on 2019-01-05 17:26:14

Tagged: , Featured , Football , News

24200

September 19, 2020 by 4g3nd4

The Grade II Listed The Little House which was built in the early 19th Century as a Dower House for Hackthorn Hall. In Hackthorn, West Lindsey, Lincolnshire.

The population of the civil parish (including Cold Hanworth) at the 2011 census was 207. It is situated approximately 6 miles (10 km) north from the city and county town of Lincoln, and 1 mile (1.6 km) east from the A15.

The village dates back to Roman times. Its most prominent building is its hall, a large square brick house, built in the late 18th century in a landscaped park of around 100 acres (0.40 km2).

Situated among the trees of the park overlooking the lake is the parish church, dedicated to St Michael and All Angels. A village church is mentioned in the Domesday Book, although the present church is a Victorian gothic building. It contains carved woodwork in the reredos screen and gallery, and an 1869 Nicholson Organ, fully restored in 2006.

There is also a primary school, post office, shop and village hall.

Posted by benbobjr on 2016-09-06 17:43:47

Tagged: , Lincoln , Lincolnshire , Midlands , East Midlands , England , English , UK , United Kingdom , GB , Great Britain , Britain , British , Hackthorn , West Lindsey , Beck Lane , street , road , lane , terrace , house , home , The Little House , Dower House , Hackthorn Hall

R.M.S. Queen Mary – a Nautical Money Pit

September 13, 2020 by 4g3nd4

The Postcard

A postcard that was printed and published by J. Salmon Ltd. of Sevenoaks.

The card was posted in Surrey on Thursday the 26th. April 1951 to:

Mrs. Elliott,
St. Margaret’s,
254, Carshalton Road,
Sutton,
Surrey.

The message on the divided back was as follows:

"This is a complete contrast
to the usual P.C., but I thought
it would interest you.
What a mighty vessel!
Hope you are enjoying this
lovely weather.
I am so glad that Mr. Elliott is
so much better.
Much love,
J & W".

RMS Queen Mary

The RMS Queen Mary is a retired British ocean liner that sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line (known as Cunard-White Star Line when the vessel entered service) and built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland.

The Queen Mary, along with RMS Queen Elizabeth, were built as part of Cunard’s planned two-ship weekly express service between Southampton, Cherbourg and New York. The two ships were a British response to the express superliners built by German, Italian and French companies in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s.

The Queen Mary sailed on her maiden voyage on the 27th. May 1936 and won the Blue Riband that August; she lost the title to SS Normandie in 1937 and recaptured it in 1938, holding it until 1952 when it was taken by the new SS United States.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, she was converted into a troopship and ferried Allied soldiers during the conflict.

Following the war, the Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service, and along with the Queen Elizabeth commenced the two-ship transatlantic passenger service for which they were originally built. The two ships dominated the transatlantic passenger market until the dawn of the jet age in the late 1950’s. By the mid-1960’s, Queen Mary was ageing and was operating at a loss.

After several years of decreased profits for Cunard Line, the Queen Mary was officially retired from service in 1967. She left Southampton for the last time on the 31st. October 1967 and sailed to the port of Long Beach, California, United States, where she remains permanently moored.

The ship serves as a tourist attraction featuring restaurants, a museum and a hotel. The ship is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Queen Mary was featured in the film ‘Assault on a Queen’ (1966) starring Frank Sinatra.

The Construction and Naming of RMS Queen Mary

With Germany launching Bremen and Europa into service, Britain did not want to be left behind in the shipbuilding race. White Star Line began construction of their 80,000-ton Oceanic in 1928, while Cunard planned a 75,000-ton unnamed ship of their own.

Construction of the Queen Mary, then known only as ‘Hull Number 534’, began in December 1930 on the River Clyde by John Brown & Company. Work was halted in December 1931 due to the Great Depression, and Cunard applied to the British Government for a loan to complete 534. The loan was granted, with enough money to complete the unfinished ship, and also to build a running mate, with the intention to provide a two ship weekly service to New York.

One condition of the loan was that Cunard merge with the White Star Line, another struggling British shipping company, which was Cunard’s chief British rival at the time and which had already been forced by the depression to cancel construction of its Oceanic.

Both lines agreed, and the merger was completed on the 10th. May 1934. Work on the Queen Mary resumed immediately and she was launched on the 26th. September 1934. Completion ultimately took 3 1⁄2 years and cost £3,500,000, then equal to 17.5 million US dollars, and equivalent to $334,459,000 in 2019.

Prior to the ship’s launch, the River Clyde had to be specially deepened to cope with her size.

The ship was named after Mary of Teck, consort of King George V. Until her launch, the name was kept a closely guarded secret. Legend has it that Cunard intended to name the ship Victoria, in keeping with company tradition of giving its ships names ending in "ia". However when company representatives asked the king’s permission to name the ocean liner after Britain’s ‘Greatest Queen’, he said his wife, Mary of Teck, would be delighted. And, so the legend goes, the delegation had no other choice but call the ship the Queen Mary.

Support for the story was provided by Washington Post editor Felix Morley, who sailed as a guest of the Cunard Line on Queen Mary’s 1936 maiden voyage. In his 1979 autobiography, ‘For the Record’, Morley wrote that he was placed at table with Sir Percy Bates, chairman of the Cunard Line. Bates told him the story of the naming of the ship "On condition you won’t print it during my lifetime."

The name had already been given to the Clyde turbine steamer TS Queen Mary, so Cunard made an arrangement with its owners, and this older ship was renamed Queen Mary II.

Queen Mary was fitted with 24 Yarrow boilers in four boiler rooms and four Parsons turbines in two engine rooms. There were four propellers, each turning at 200 RPM. The Queen Mary achieved 32.84 knots on her acceptance trials in early 1936.

From Launching to World War II

In 1934 the new liner was launched by Queen Mary as RMS Queen Mary. On her way down the slipway, Queen Mary was slowed by eighteen drag chains, which checked the liner’s progress into the River Clyde.

When she sailed on her maiden voyage from Southampton on the 27th. May 1936, she was commanded by Sir Edgar Britten, who had been the master-designate for Cunard White Star whilst the ship was under construction at the John Brown shipyard.

The Queen Mary measured 80,774 gross register tons (GRT). Her rival Normandie, which originally grossed 79,280 tonnes, had been modified the preceding winter to increase her size to 83,243 GRT (an enclosed tourist lounge was built on the aft boat deck on the area where the game court was), and therefore reclaimed the title of the world’s largest ocean liner from the Queen Mary, who had only held it for a few weeks.

The Queen Mary sailed at high speed for most of her maiden voyage to New York, until heavy fog forced a reduction of speed on the final day of the crossing, arriving in New York Harbor on the 1st. June 1936.

Queen Mary’s design was criticised for being too traditional, especially when Normandie’s hull was revolutionary with a clipper-shaped, streamlined bow. Except for her cruiser stern, the Queen Mary seemed to be an enlarged version of her Cunard predecessors from the pre–First World War era.

Furthermore, her interior design, while mostly Art Deco, seemed restrained and conservative when compared to the ultramodern French liner. Nevertheless the Queen Mary proved to be more popular than her rival, in terms of passengers carried.

In August 1936, the Queen Mary captured the Blue Riband from Normandie, with average speeds of 30.14 knots (55.82 km/h; 34.68 mph) westbound and 30.63 knots (56.73 km/h; 35.25 mph) eastbound. Normandie was refitted with a new set of propellers in 1937 and reclaimed the honour, but in 1938 Queen Mary took back the Blue Riband in both directions with average speeds of 30.99 knots (57.39 km/h; 35.66 mph) westbound and 31.69 knots (58.69 km/h; 36.47 mph) eastbound, records which stood until lost to the United States in 1952.

The Interior of RMS Queen Mary

Among facilities available on board the Queen Mary, the liner featured two indoor swimming pools, beauty salons, libraries and children’s nurseries for all three classes, a music studio and lecture hall, telephone connectivity to anywhere in the world, outdoor paddle tennis courts and dog kennels.

The largest room onboard was the cabin class (first class) main dining room (grand salon), spanning three stories in height and anchored by wide columns. The ship had many air-conditioned public rooms onboard. The cabin-class swimming pool facility spanned over two decks in height.

The Queen Mary was the first ocean liner to be equipped with her own Jewish prayer room – part of a policy to show that British shipping lines avoided the antisemitism evident at that time in Nazi Germany.

The cabin-class main dining room featured a large map of the transatlantic crossing, with twin tracks symbolising the winter/spring route (further south to avoid icebergs) and the summer/autumn route. During each crossing, a motorised model of Queen Mary would indicate the vessel’s progress en route.

As an alternative to the main dining room, Queen Mary featured a separate cabin-class Verandah Grill on the Sun Deck at the upper aft of the ship. The Verandah Grill was an exclusive à la carte restaurant with a capacity of approximately eighty passengers, and was converted to the Starlight Club at night. Also on board was the Observation Bar, an Art Deco-styled lounge with wide ocean views.

Woods from different regions of the British Empire were used in her public rooms and staterooms. Accommodation ranged from fully equipped, luxurious first class staterooms to modest and cramped third-class cabins.

The Queen Mary And World War II

In late August 1939, the Queen Mary was on a return run from New York to Southampton. The international situation led to her being escorted by the battlecruiser HMS Hood. She arrived safely, and set out again for New York on the 1st. September. By the time she arrived, the Second World War had started and she was ordered to remain in port alongside Normandie until further notice.

In March 1940, Queen Mary and Normandie were joined in New York by Queen Mary’s new sister ship the Queen Elizabeth, fresh from her secret dash from Clydebank. The three largest liners in the world sat idle for some time until the Allied commanders decided that all three ships could be used as troopships.

Normandie was destroyed by fire during her troopship conversion. Queen Mary left New York for Sydney, Australia, where she, along with several other liners, was converted into a troopship to carry Australian and New Zealand soldiers to the United Kingdom.

In the Second World War conversion, the Queen Mary’s hull, superstructure, and funnels were painted navy grey. As a result of her new colour, and in combination with her great speed, she became known as the ‘Grey Ghost’.

To protect against magnetic mines, a degaussing coil was fitted around the outside of the hull. Inside, stateroom furniture and decoration were removed and replaced with triple-tiered (fixed) wooden bunks, which were later replaced by ‘standee’ (fold-up) bunks.

A total of 6 miles (10 km) of carpet, 220 cases of china, crystal and silver services, tapestries, and paintings were removed and stored in warehouses for the duration of the war. The woodwork in the staterooms, the cabin-class dining room, and other public areas was covered with leather.

The Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were the largest and fastest troopships involved in the war, often carrying as many as 15,000 men in a single voyage, and often travelling out of convoy and without escort. Their high speed and zigzag courses made it virtually impossible for U-boats to catch them.

On the 2nd. October 1942, the Queen Mary accidentally sank one of her escort ships, slicing through the light cruiser HMS Curacoa off the Irish coast with a loss of 239 lives. The Queen Mary was carrying thousands of Americans of the 29th. Infantry Division to join the Allied forces in Europe. Due to the risk of U-boat attacks, Queen Mary was under orders not to stop under any circumstances and steamed onward with a fractured stem.

Some sources claim that hours later, the convoy’s lead escort returned to rescue 99 survivors of Curacoa’s crew of 338, including her captain John W. Boutwood. This claim is refuted by the liner’s then-Staff Captain Harry Grattidge, who records that the Queen Mary’s Captain, Gordon Illingsworth, immediately ordered the accompanying destroyers to look for survivors within moments of the Curacoa’s sinking.

From the 25th.–30th. July 1943, Queen Mary carried 15,740 soldiers and 943 crew (total 16,683), a standing record for the most passengers ever transported on one vessel. During this trip, while 700 miles (1,100 km) from Scotland during a gale, she was suddenly hit broadside by a rogue wave that might have reached a height of 28 metres (92 ft).

Dr. Norval Carter, part of the 110th. Station Hospital on board at the time, wrote in a letter that at one point:

‘The Queen Mary damned near capsized.
One moment the top deck was at its usual
height and then, swoom! Down, over, and
forward she would pitch.’

It was calculated later that the ship had rolled 52 degrees, and would have capsized had she rolled another 3 degrees.

During the war the Queen Mary carried British Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic for meetings with fellow Allied forces officials on several occasions. He was listed on the passenger manifest as ‘Colonel Warden’.

The Queen Mary After World War II

After delivering a load of war brides to Canada, Queen Mary made her fastest ever crossing, returning to Southampton in only three days, 22 hours and 42 minutes at an average speed of just under 32 knots (59 km/h).

From September 1946 to July 1947, Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service, adding air conditioning and upgrading her berth configuration to 711 first class (formerly called cabin class), 707 cabin class (formerly tourist class) and 577 tourist class (formerly third class) passengers.

Following refit, the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth dominated the transatlantic passenger trade as Cunard White Star’s two-ship weekly express service through the latter half of the 1940’s and well into the 1950’s. They proved highly profitable for Cunard (as the company was renamed in 1947).

On the 1st. January 1949, the Queen Mary ran aground off Cherbourg, France. She was refloated the next day, and returned to service.

In 1958 the first transatlantic flight by a jet began a completely new era of competition for the Cunard Queens. On some voyages, winters especially, Queen Mary sailed into harbour with more crew than passengers, though both she and Queen Elizabeth still averaged over 1,000 passengers per crossing into the middle 1960’s. By 1965, the entire Cunard fleet was operating at a loss.

Hoping to continue financing the Queen Elizabeth 2 which was under construction at Brown’s shipyard, Cunard mortgaged the majority of the fleet. Due to a combination of age, lack of public interest, inefficiency in a new market and the damaging after-effects of the national seamen’s strike, Cunard announced that both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth would be retired from service and sold off.

Many offers were submitted, and the bid of $3.45m/£1.2m from Long Beach, California beat the Japanese scrap merchants.

Queen Mary was retired from service in 1967. On the 27th. September, she completed her 1,000th. and last crossing of the North Atlantic, having carried 2,112,000 passengers over 3,792,227 miles (6,102,998 km). Under the command of Captain John Treasure Jones, who had been her captain since 1965, she sailed from Southampton for the last time on the 31st. October with 1,093 passengers and 806 crew.

After a voyage around Cape Horn, she arrived in Long Beach on the 9th. December. The Queen Elizabeth was withdrawn in 1968, and Queen Elizabeth 2 took over the transatlantic route in 1969.

The Queen Mary at Long Beach

The Queen Mary is permanently moored as a tourist attraction, hotel, museum and event facility in Long Beach. From 1983 to 1993, Howard Hughes’ plane H-4 Hercules was located in a large dome nearby. The dome was later repurposed as a sound stage for film and television. The structure is now used by Carnival Cruise Lines as a ship terminal, as a venue for the Long Beach Derby Gals roller derby team and as an event venue.

Conversion of the Queen Mary

When the Queen Mary was bought by Long Beach, the new owners decided not to preserve her as an ocean liner. It was decided to clear almost every area of the ship below C deck (called R deck after 1950, to lessen passenger confusion, as the restaurants were located on R deck). The clearance was to make way for Jacques Cousteau’s new Living Sea Museum. This increased museum space to 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2).

When the Queen Mary came to Long Beach, the Sun Deck windows were enlarged, and an anti-aircraft gun was placed on display astride the foremast to represent the Second World War days of the liner.

The conversion at Long Beach required removal of all the boiler rooms, the forward engine room, both turbo generator rooms, the ship stabilisers and the water softening plant. The ship’s empty fuel tanks were filled with local mud to keep the ship’s centre of gravity and draft at the correct levels, as these critical factors had been affected by the removal of the various components and structure. Only the aft engine room and ‘shaft alley’, at the stern of the ship, was spared.

During the conversion the funnels were removed, as this area was needed to lift out the scrap materials from the engine and boiler rooms. Workers found that the funnels were significantly degraded, and they were replaced with replicas.

With all of the lower decks nearly gutted, Diners Club, the initial lessee of the ship, converted the remainder of the vessel into a hotel. Diners Club Queen Mary dissolved and vacated the ship in 1970 after their parent company, Diners Club International, was sold, and a change in direction was mandated during the conversion process. Specialty Restaurants, a Los Angeles-based company that focused on theme-based restaurants, took over as master lessee the following year.

This second plan was based on converting most of her first- and second-class cabins on A and B decks into hotel rooms, and converting the main lounges and dining rooms into banquet spaces. On Promenade Deck, the starboard promenade was enclosed to feature an upscale restaurant and café named Lord Nelson’s and Lady Hamilton’s; it was themed in the fashion of early-19th century sailing ships. The famed and elegant Observation Bar was redecorated as a western-themed bar.

The smaller first-class public rooms, such as the Drawing Room, Library, Lecture Room and the Music Studio, were stripped of most of their fittings and converted to commercial use. This markedly expanded retail space on the ship. Two more shopping malls were built on the Sun Deck in separate spaces previously used for first-class cabins and engineers’ quarters.

A post-war feature of the ship, the first-class cinema, was removed for kitchen space for the new Promenade Deck dining venues. The first-class lounge and smoking room were reconfigured and converted into banquet space. The second-class smoking room was subdivided into a wedding chapel and office space.

On the Sun Deck, the elegant Verandah Grill was gutted and converted into a fast-food eatery, while a new upscale dining venue was created directly above it on Sports Deck, in space once used for crew quarters.

The second-class lounges were expanded to the sides of the ship and used for banqueting. On R deck, the first-class dining room was reconfigured and subdivided into two banquet venues, the Royal Salon and the Windsor Room. The second-class dining room was subdivided into kitchen storage and a crew mess hall, while the third-class dining room was initially used as storage and crew space.

Also on R deck, the first-class Turkish bath complex, the 1930’s equivalent to a spa, was removed. The second-class pool was removed and its space initially used for office space, while the first-class swimming pool was open for viewing by hotel guests and visitors.

Because of modern safety codes and the compromised structural soundness of the area directly below, the swimming pool could not be used for swimming after the conversion, although it was filled with water until the late 1980’s. Today the pool can only be seen on guided tours and is in a derelict condition, having never been maintained by the hotel operators. No second-class, third-class or crew cabins remain intact aboard the ship today.

The Queen Mary as a Tourist Attraction

On the 8th. May 1971 the Queen Mary opened her doors to tourists. Initially, only portions of the ship were open to the public as Specialty Restaurants had yet to open its dining venues and PSA had not completed work converting the ship’s original First Class staterooms into the hotel.

As a result, the ship was open only on weekends. On the 11th. December 1971 Jacques Cousteau’s Museum of the Sea opened, with a quarter of the planned exhibits completed. Within the decade, Cousteau’s museum closed due to low ticket sales and the deaths of many of the fish that were housed in the museum.

On 2 November 1972 the PSA Hotel Queen Mary opened its initial 150 guest rooms. Two years later, with all 400 rooms finished, PSA brought in Hyatt Hotels to manage the hotel, which operated from 1974 to 1980 as the Queen Mary Hyatt Hotel.

By 1980, it had become apparent that the existing system was not working. The ship was losing millions each year for the city because the hotel, restaurants and museum were run by three separate concessionaires, while the city owned the vessel and operated guided tours. It was decided that a single operator with more experience in attractions was needed.

Jack Wrather, a local millionaire, had fallen in love with the ship because he and his wife, Bonita Granville, had fond memories of sailing on it numerous times. Wrather signed a 66-year lease with the city of Long Beach to operate the entire property. He oversaw the display of the Spruce Goose, on long-term loan. The immense plane, which had been sitting in a hangar in Long Beach for decades unseen by the public, was installed in a huge geodesic dome adjacent to the liner in 1983, attracting increased attendance.

Jack’s Wrather Port Properties operated the entire attraction after his death in 1984 until 1988, when his holdings were bought by the Walt Disney Company. Wrather had built the Disneyland Hotel in 1955, when Walt Disney had insufficient funds to construct the hotel himself. Disney had been trying to buy the hotel for 30 years. When they finally succeeded, they also acquired the Queen Mary. This was never marketed as a Disney property.

Through the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the Queen Mary struggled financially. Disney pinned their hopes for turning the attraction around on Port Disney, a huge planned resort on the adjacent docks. It was to include an attraction known as DisneySea, a theme park celebrating the world’s oceans. The plans eventually fell through; in 1992 Disney gave up the lease on the ship to focus on building what would become Disney California Adventure Park.

With Disney gone, the Hotel Queen Mary closed on the 30th. September 1992. The owners of the Spruce Goose, the Aero Club of Southern California, sold the plane to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in Oregon. The plane departed on barges on the 2nd. October 1992, leaving the huge dome empty. The Queen Mary tourist attraction remained open for another two months, but on the 31st. December 1992, the Queen Mary closed her doors to tourists and visitors.

On the 5th. February 1993, RMS Foundation Inc. signed a five-year lease with the city of Long Beach to act as the operators of the property. The foundation was run by Joseph F. Prevratil, who had managed the attraction for Wrather. On the 26th. February 1993 the tourist attraction re-opened, while the hotel reopened partially on the 5th. March with 125 rooms and the banquet facilities, with the remainder of the rooms coming online on the 30th. April.

In 1995, RMS’s lease was extended to twenty years, while the scope of the lease was reduced to operation of the ship. A new company, Queen’s Seaport Development, Inc. (QSDI), was established in 1995 to control the real estate adjacent to the vessel. In 1998, the city of Long Beach extended the QSDI lease to 66 years.

In 2004, Queen Mary and Stargazer Productions added Tibbies Great American Cabaret to the space previously occupied by the ship’s bank and wireless telegraph room. Stargazer Productions and Queen Mary transformed the space into a working dinner theatre complete with stage, lights, sound and scullery.

In 2005, QSDI sought Chapter 11 protection due to a rent credit dispute with the city. In 2006, the bankruptcy court requested bids from parties interested in taking over the lease from QSDI. The minimum required opening bid was $41M. The operation of the ship, by RMS Foundation, remained independent of the bankruptcy. In summer 2007, Queen Mary’s lease was sold to a group named ‘Save the Queen’, managed by Hostmark Hospitality Group.

They planned to develop the land adjacent to the Queen Mary, and upgrade, renovate and restore the ship. During their management, staterooms were updated with iPod docking stations and flatscreen TVs and the ship’s three funnels and waterline area were repainted their original Cunard Red colour. The portside Promenade Deck’s planking was restored and refinished. Many lifeboats were repaired and patched, and the ship’s kitchens were renovated with new equipment.

In late September 2009, management of Queen Mary was taken over by Delaware North Companies, who planned to continue restoration and renovation of the ship and its property. They were determined to revitalise and enhance the ship as an attraction. But in April 2011, the city of Long Beach was informed that Delaware North was no longer managing Queen Mary.

In 2016 Urban Commons, a real estate company, assumed the lease of the Queen Mary. They revealed plans to extensively renovate the liner over the next year, and to redevelop the adjacent 45 acres of parking with a boutique hotel, restaurants, a marina, an amphitheatre, jogging trails, bike paths and possibly a huge Ferris wheel, all at a cost of up to $250 million.

In July 2017, while making repairs to a bathroom, workers rediscovered the ship’s forward gear room which had once controlled the ships 16-ton anchors. The room was apparently sealed up during the 1960’s conversion and was forgotten for decades.

The Condition of the Queen Mary

In 2017 a report on the ship’s condition was issued. The report noted that not only the hull but also the supports for a raised exhibition area within the ship were corroding, and that the ship’s deteriorating condition left areas such as the engine room vulnerable to flooding. Repairs were estimated at close to $300 million.

In November 2016 the City of Long Beach had put $23 million toward addressing the Queen Mary’s most vital repairs. John Keisler, economic and property development director for Long Beach, said:

"We have a timeline in which the
engineers believe they can complete
those immediate projects. These are
major challenges we can only address
over time; it can’t all be done at once."

Political leaders in Scotland, birthplace of the Queen Mary, called for the then-UK Prime Minister Theresa May to pressure the American government to fund a full repair of the liner in 2017, but this did not happen.

In August 2019, Edward Pribonic, the engineer responsible for inspecting the Queen Mary on behalf of the City of Long Beach, issued a report stating that the ship was in the worst condition he had seen in his 25 years on the job. Pribonic stated that the neglect of the Queen Mary had grown worse under the management of Urban Commons, and concluded that:

"Without an immediate and very significant
infusion of manpower and money, the
condition of the ship will likely soon be
unsalvageable.”

Incidents of recent neglect included the flooding of the Grand Ballroom with sewage after a pipe which was flimsily patched with duct tape burst, significant amounts of standing water in the ship’s bilge, and the peeling of recently applied paint on the ship’s funnels because of the poor way in which it had been applied. The pessimistic conclusion of Pribonic was disputed by city officials, who called the warnings ‘hyperbolic’ and pointed to the "significant" work that has already been undertaken towards repairing the Queen Mary.

The $23 million apportioned for repairs ran out in 2018, with 19 out of the 27 urgent projects identified by a 2015 marine survey completed as of September 2019.

There were significant cost overruns overall, with the cost of fire safety repairs skyrocketing from the original estimate of $200,000, to $5.29 million. Two of the remaining 8 issues identified in 2015 were considered "critical" – this included the removal of the ship’s lifeboats, which had rotted and were in danger of collapsing.

In October 2019, the City of Long Beach warned Urban Commons that the company was failing to uphold its commitment to maintain and repair the Queen Mary, and that it was accordingly in danger of defaulting on its 66-year lease agreement. Urban Commons responded with an updated plan for repairs, including the removal of the lifeboats at a cost of between $5 and $7 million, and new paint work. In December it was announced that the City was reviewing the finances of Urban Commons to determine whether the City of Long Beach had ‘received all revenues owed.’

Queen Mary’s original, professionally manned wireless radio room was removed when the ship was moored in Long Beach. In its place, an amateur radio room was created one deck above the original radio reception room, with some of the discarded original radio equipment used for display purposes. The amateur radio station, with the call sign W6RO (‘Whiskey Six Romeo Oscar’), relies on volunteers from a local amateur radio club. They staff the radio room during most public hours. The radios can also be used by other licensed amateur radio operators.

In honour of his over forty years of dedication to W6RO and Queen Mary, in November 2007 the Queen Mary Wireless Room was renamed as the Nate Brightman Radio Room. This was announced on 28 October 2007, at Brightman’s 90th. birthday party by Joseph Prevratil, former President and CEO of the Queen Mary.

The Ghosts of the Queen Mary

Following Queen Mary’s permanent docking in California, claims were made that the ship was haunted. In 2008, Time magazine included The Queen Mary among its ‘Top 10 Haunted Places’. One of the staterooms is alleged to be haunted by the spirit of a person supposedly murdered there. The Queen Mary Hotel promotes suite room B-340, a former third class cabin, as ‘notoriously haunted’.

The Queen Mary also operates a number of commercial tours that include haunted attraction experiences, such as Dark Harbour, which operates during the Halloween season, the ‘Haunted Encounters Tour’ and ‘Ghosts and Legends’ tour, promoted as featuring ‘terrifying original stories and characters based the ship’s well-known paranormal tales’.

Sceptical Inquirer writer John Champion has criticized the haunted tours, calling them:

‘A cynical exploitation of the space. Much effort
is put into promoting the ship as a ‘haunted
attraction’, while efforts to explain or preserve
the factual history of the ship are somehow
pushed to the wayside".

‘Day of the Fight’

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?

Well, on the 26th. April 1951, the film ‘Day of the Fight’ premiered at New York’s Paramount Theatre, on the same program as the film ‘My Forbidden Past’. Frank Sinatra headlined the live stage show that day.

‘Day of the Fight’ is a short American documentary film financed and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Shot in black-and-white, the film is based on an earlier photo feature he shot for Look magazine in 1949.

‘Day of the Fight’ shows Irish-American middleweight boxer Walter Cartier during the height of his career, on the 17th. April 1950, the day of a fight with middleweight Bobby James.

The film opens with a short section on boxing’s history and then follows Cartier through his day as he prepares for the 10 P.M. bout. Cartier eats breakfast in his West 12th. Street apartment in Greenwich Village, goes to early mass, and eats lunch at his favourite restaurant.

At 4 P.M., he starts preparations for the fight. By 8 P.M., he is waiting in his dressing room at Laurel Gardens in Newark, New Jersey, for the fight to begin. We then see the fight itself, which he wins in a short match.

A year after the fight, Walter Cartier made boxing history by knocking out Joe Rindone in the first forty-seven seconds of a match on the 16th. October 1951. Cartier had played some bit parts in movies before he appeared in ‘Day of the Fight’, and afterwards continued to appear occasionally in movies up until 1971, but he was most successful playing mild-mannered Private Claude Dillingham in the sitcom ‘The Phil Silvers Show’ for the 1955-1956 season.

Alexander Singer was a high school friend of Stanley Kubrick’s (they went to William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx), who acted as assistant director and a cameraman for this film.

Douglas Edwards, who narrated ‘Day of the Fight’ was a veteran radio and television newscaster. At this time, he was the anchor for the first daily television news program, on CBS, which would later be called Douglas Edwards with the News, and then The CBS Evening News. Edwards was replaced by Walter Cronkite in 1962, but remained a noted voice on CBS Radio news programs until he retired in 1988.

Kubrick and Singer used daylight-loading Eyemo cameras that take 100-foot spools of 35mm black-and-white film to shoot the fight, with Kubrick shooting hand-held (often from below) and Singer’s camera on a tripod. The 100-foot reels required constant reloading, and Kubrick did not catch the knock-out punch which ended the bout because he was reloading at the time. Singer did, however.

‘Day of the Fight’ is the first credit on composer Gerald Fried’s resumé. Kubrick did not pay him for his work on the film. Fried told the Guardian in 2018:

"He thought the very fact that my
doing the music for the film got me
into the profession was enough
payment’.

Fried, a childhood friend of Kubrick, later wrote the score for the director’s ‘Paths of Glory’ (1957) and three other films.

Although the original planned buyer of the picture went out of business, Kubrick was able to sell ‘Day of the Fight’ to RKO Pictures for $4,000, making a small profit of $100 above the $3,900 cost of making the film.

Posted by pepandtim on 2020-06-28 07:07:45

Tagged: , postcard , old , early , nostalgia , nostalgic , RMS , Queen , Mary , Salmon , Sevenoaks , 26/04/1951 , 1951 , Elliott , St. , Margaret’s , Carshalton , Road , Sutton , Surrey , vessel , 1936 , 1967 , Cunard , Line , John , Brown , 27QMA43 , Day , Fight , Stanley , Kubrick , Walter , Cartier , Long , Beach , California

take the track past the tree and into the mist-shrouded hills near Fortingall, Glen Lyon, Perthshire, Perth & Kinross, Scotland.

September 12, 2020 by 4g3nd4

Fortingall, Glen Lyon, Perthshire, Perth & Kinross, Scotland. Fortingall is a small village in highland Perthshire, Scotland, in Glen Lyon. Its nearest sizable neighbours are Aberfeldy and Kenmore. Its Gaelicname is Fartairchill, which may be translated as something like: "Escarpment Church", i.e. "church at the foot of an escarpment or steep slope". According to a fabricated legend it was the birthplace of Pontius Pilate, but he was born well before the Roman conquest and became famous in the biblical account of Jesus’s death thirty years before the Romans first reached this part of Scotland. A number of other locations, including villages in Spain and Germany, make similar claims. It is also famous for its churchyard yew tree that is said to be the oldest living thing in Europe, over 5,000 years old. The parish church is on an early Christian site, dedicated to Coeddi, bishop of Iona (died 712), probably founded about 700 AD from Iona itself as a daughter monastery. Though undocumented, crop-marks of surrounding ditched enclosures have been identified from the air, and the church’s unusual dedication and fragments of several finely carved cross-slabs preserved in the church all point to an early origin as a major church site. Also preserved in an alcove in the church was an early hand-bell in Irish style (iron with bronze coating), dating from the 7th or 8th century, one of several to have survived in Highland Perthshire; the bell was stolen in 2017. Several slabs with simple incised crosses (best paralleled at Iona and other west of Scotland sites) and a massive early font are to be seen in the churchyard. The attractive white-harled parish church (built 1901-02), notable for its fine woodwork, is open in summer. Its Arts and Crafts style was designed to harmonise with the rest of the village. A permanent display on the cross-slabs and the early church was recently installed in the building. Fortingall has one of the largest collections of early medieval sculpture in Scotland. The Fortingall Yew is an ancient tree in its own walled enclosure within the village churchyard. Its age is estimated to be between 3000 and 9000 years, and it may be the oldest living tree – perhaps even the oldest living thing – in Europe. Place-name and archaeological evidence hint at an Iron Age cult centre at Fortingall, which may have had this tree as its focus. The site was Christianised during the Dark Ages, perhaps because it was already a sacred place. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortingall

Posted by grumpybaldprof on 2019-12-03 22:14:27

Tagged: , Fortingall , “Glen Lyon” , Perthshire , “Perth & Kinross” , Coeddi , “Bishop of Iona” , “Fortingall Yew” , “River Lyon” , “fine art” , ethereal , striking , artistic , interpretation , impressionist , stylistic , style , mood , moody , atmosphere , atmospheric , Landscape , scenery , vista , Trees , wood , forest , branches , leaves , “Canon 80D” , “Tamron , SP 35mm F/1.8 , Di VC USD” , mud , autumn , fall , track , road , path , vanishing point

Madame Sarah Bernhardt. And Her Remarkable Life.

September 3, 2020 by 4g3nd4

The Postcard

A Valentine’s Series postcard with photography by Lafayette of Dublin. The date of posting is not legible, but it was posted prior to the 3rd. June 1918, because the card only bears a half-penny stamp, and on the 3rd. June 1918, the UK inland postal rate for postcards was raised to one penny in order to help pay for the Great War.

The card was posted to:

Mr. E. King,
83, Winchelsea Road,
Tottenham,
London N.W.

The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

"Dear Dad,
I hope you got back
alright on Sunday night.
I have been to school
today.
Aunt Mabel has not
been up today.
I went on the pond this
afternoon.
I wish you were with me.
Love from Violet & Mum
xx"

Madame Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt was born Henriette-Rosine Bernard on the 22nd. or 23rd. October 1844. The exact date is not known.

Sarah was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th. and early 20th. centuries, including ‘La Dame Aux Camelias’ by Alexandre Dumas, ‘Ruy Blas’ by Victor Hugo; ‘Fédora’ and ‘La Tosca’ by Victorien Sardou; and ‘L’Aiglon’ by Edmond Rostand.

Sarah also played male roles, including Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’.

Rostand called her "The Queen of the Pose and the Princess of the Gesture", while Hugo praised her "Golden Voice".

Sarah made several theatrical tours around the world, and was one of the first prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures.

Sarah Bernhardt – The Early Years

Henriette-Rosine Bernard was born at 5 Rue de L’École-de-Médecine in the Latin Quarter of Paris. She was the illegitimate daughter of Judith Bernard, a Dutch-Jewish courtesan with a wealthy clientele.

The name of Sarah’s father is not recorded. Bernhardt later wrote that her father’s family paid for her education, insisted she be baptised as a Catholic, and left a large sum to be paid when she came of age. Her mother travelled frequently, and saw little of her daughter. She placed Sarah with a nurse in Brittany, then in a cottage in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.

When Sarah was seven, her mother sent her to a boarding school for young ladies in the Paris suburb of Auteuil, paid with funds from her father’s family. There, she acted in her first theatrical performance in the play ‘Clothilde’, where she held the role of the Queen of the Fairies, and performed the first of many dramatic death scenes.

While she was at the boarding school, Sarah’s mother rose to the top ranks of Parisian courtesans, consorting with politicians, bankers, generals, and writers. Her patrons and friends included Charles, Duke of Morny, the half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III and President of the French legislature.

At the age of 10, with the sponsorship of Morny, Bernhardt was admitted to Grandchamp, an exclusive Augustine convent school near Versailles. At the convent, she performed the part of the Archangel Raphael in ‘Tobias and the Angel’.

Sarah declared her intention to become a nun, but did not always follow convent rules; she was accused of sacrilege when she arranged a Christian burial, with a procession and ceremony, for her pet lizard.

She received her first communion as a Roman Catholic in 1856, and thereafter she was fervently religious. However, she never forgot her Jewish heritage. When asked years later by a reporter if she were a Christian, she replied:

"No, I’m a Roman Catholic, and a
member of the great Jewish race.
I’m waiting until Christians become
better."

Sarah accepted the last rites shortly before her death.

In 1859, Bernhardt learned that her father had died overseas. Her mother summoned a family council, including Morny, to decide what to do with her. Morny proposed that Bernhardt should become an actress, an idea that horrified Sarah, as she had never been inside a theatre.

Morny arranged for her to attend her first theatre performance at the Comédie Française in a party which included her mother, Morny, and his friend Alexandre Dumas Père. The play they attended was ‘Brittanicus’, by Jean Racine, followed by the classical comedy ‘Amphitryon’ by Plautus.

Bernhardt was so moved by the emotion of the play, she began to sob loudly, disturbing the rest of the audience. Morny and others in their party were angry with her and left, but Dumas comforted her, and later told Morny that he believed that she was destined for the stage. After the performance, Dumas called her "My little star".

Sarah Bernhardt and the Paris Conservatory

Morny used his influence with the composer Daniel Auber, the head of the Paris Conservatory, to arrange for Bernhardt to audition. She began preparing, as she described it in her memoirs:

"With that vivid exaggeration with
which I embrace any new enterprise."

Dumas coached her. The jury comprised Auber and five leading actors and actresses from the Comédie Française. Sarah was supposed to recite verses from Racine, but no one had told her that she needed someone to give her cues as she recited.

Sarah told the jury she would instead recite the fable of the Two Pigeons by La Fontaine. The jurors were sceptical, but the fervour and pathos of her recitation won them over, and she was invited to become a student.

Bernhardt studied acting at the Conservatory from January 1860 until 1862 under two prominent actors of the Comédie Française, Joseph-Isidore Samson and Jean-Baptiste Provost. She wrote in her memoirs that Provost taught her diction and grand gestures, while Samson taught her the power of simplicity.

For the stage, Sarah changed her name from ‘Bernard’ to ‘Bernhardt’. While studying, she also received her first marriage proposal, from a wealthy businessman who offered her 500 thousand francs. He wept when she refused. Bernhardt later wrote:

"I was confused, sorry, and delighted –
because he loved me the way people
love in plays at the theatre".

Before the first examination for her tragedy class, she tried to straighten her abundance of frizzy hair, which made it even more uncontrollable, and came down with a bad cold, which made her voice so nasal that she hardly recognized it.

Furthermore, the parts assigned for her performance were classical and required carefully stylized emotions, while she preferred romanticism and fully and naturally expressing her emotions. The teachers ranked her 14th. in tragedy, and 2nd. in comedy.

Sarah Bernhardt and The Théâtre Français

Once again, Morny came to her rescue. He put in a good word for her with the National Minister of the Arts, Camille Doucet. Doucet recommended her to Edouard Thierry, the chief administrator of the Théâtre Français, who offered Bernhardt a place as a pensionnaire at the theatre, at a minimum salary.

Bernhardt made her debut with the company on the 31st. August 1862 in the title role of Racine’s ‘Iphigénie’. Her premiere was not a success. She experienced stage fright and rushed her lines. Furthermore some audience members made fun of her thin figure.

When the performance ended, Provost was waiting in the wings, and she asked his forgiveness. He told her:

"I can forgive you, and you’ll
eventually forgive yourself,
but Racine in his grave never
will."

Francisque Sarcey, the influential theatre critic of ‘L’Opinion Nationale’ and ‘Le Temps’, wrote:

‘She carries herself well and pronounces
with perfect precision. That is all that can
be said about her at the moment.’

Bernhardt did not remain long with the Comédie-Française. She played Henrietta in Molière’s ‘Les Femmes Savantes’ and Hippolyte in ‘L’Étourdi’, and the title role in Scribe’s ‘Valérie’, but did not impress the critics, or the other members of the company, who had resented her rapid rise.

The weeks passed, but she was given no further roles. Her hot temper also got her into trouble; when a theatre doorkeeper addressed her as "Little Bernhardt", she broke her umbrella over his head. She apologised profusely, and when the doorkeeper retired 20 years later, she bought him a cottage in Normandy.

At a ceremony honouring the birthday of Molière on the 15th. January 1863, Bernhardt invited her younger sister, Regina, to accompany her. Regina accidentally stood on the train of the gown of a leading actress of the company, Zaire-Nathalie Martel (1816–1885). Madame Nathalie pushed Regina off the gown, causing her to strike a stone column and gash her forehead.

Regina and Madame Nathalie began shouting at one another, and Bernhardt stepped forward and slapped Madame Nathalie on the cheek. The older actress fell onto another actor. Thierry asked that Bernhardt apologise to Madame Nathalie. Bernhardt refused to do so until Madame Nathalie apologised to Regina.

Bernhardt had already been scheduled for a new role with the theatre, and had begun rehearsals. Madame Nathalie demanded that Bernhardt be dropped from the role unless she apologised. Since neither would yield, and Madame Nathalie was the more senior member of the company, Thierry was forced to ask Bernhardt to leave.

The Gymnase and Brussels (1864–1866)

Sarah’s family could not understand her departure from the theatre; it was inconceivable to them that anyone would walk away from the most prestigious theatre in Paris at the age of 18.

Instead, Sarah went to a popular theatre, the Gymnase, where she became an understudy to two of the leading actresses. She almost immediately caused another offstage scandal, when she was invited to recite poetry at a reception at the Tuileries Palace hosted by Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie, along with other actors from the Gymnase.

Sarah chose to recite two romantic poems by Victor Hugo, unaware that Hugo was a bitter critic of the Emperor. Following the first poem, the Emperor and Empress rose and walked out, followed by the court and all the other guests.

Her next role at the Gymnase, as a foolish Russian princess, was entirely unsuited for her; her mother told her that her performance was "ridiculous". She decided abruptly to quit the theatre to travel, and like her mother, to take on lovers. She went briefly to Spain, then, at the suggestion of Alexandre Dumas, to Belgium.

She carried to Brussels letters of introduction from Dumas, and was admitted to the highest levels of society. She attended a masked ball in Brussels where she met the Belgian aristocrat Henri, Prince de Ligne, and had an affair with him. However the affair was cut short when she learned that her mother had suffered a heart attack. She returned to Paris, where she found that her mother was better, but that she herself was pregnant from her affair with the Prince.

She did not notify the Prince. Her mother did not want the fatherless child born under her roof, so Sarah moved to a small apartment on Rue Duphot, and on the 22nd. December 1864, the 20-year-old actress gave birth to her only child, Maurice Bernhardt.

Sarah never discussed Maurice’s parentage with anyone. When asked who his father was, she sometimes answered:

"I could never make up my mind
whether his father was Gambetta,
Victor Hugo, or General Boulanger."

Many years later, in January 1885, when Bernhardt was famous, the Prince came to Paris and offered to formally recognise Maurice as his son, but Maurice politely declined, explaining he was entirely satisfied to be the son of Sarah Bernhardt.

Sarah Bernhardt and the Théâtre de l’Odéon (1866–1872)

To support herself after the birth of Maurice, Bernhardt played minor roles and understudies at the Porte-Saint-Martin, a popular melodrama theatre.

In early 1866, she obtained a reading with Felix Duquesnel, director of the Théâtre de L’Odéon on the Left Bank. Duquesnel described the reading years later, saying:

"I had before me a creature who
was marvellously gifted, intelligent
to the point of genius, with enormous
energy under an appearance frail and
delicate, and a savage will."

The co-director of the theatre, Charles de Chilly, wanted to reject Sarah as unreliable and too thin, but Duquesnel was enchanted; he hired her for the theatre at a modest salary of 150 francs a month, which he paid out of his own pocket.

The Odéon was second in prestige only to the Comédie Française, and unlike that very traditional theatre, specialised in more modern productions. The Odéon was popular with the students of the Left Bank.

Sarah’s first performances at the Odéon were not successful. She was cast in highly stylised and frivolous 18th.-century comedies, whereas her strong point on stage was her complete sincerity.

Sarah’s thin figure also made her look ridiculous in the ornate costumes. Dumas, her strongest supporter, commented after one performance:

"She has the head of a virgin
and the body of a broomstick."

Soon, however, with different plays and more experience, her performances improved; Sarah was praised for her performance of Cordelia in ‘King Lear’. In June 1867, she played two roles in ‘Athalie’ by Jean Racine: the part of a young woman and a young boy, Zacharie, the first of many male parts she played in her career. The influential critic Sarcey wrote

‘She charmed her audience
like a little Orpheus.’

Sarah’s breakthrough performance was in the 1868 revival of ‘Kean’ by Alexandre Dumas, in which she played the female lead part of Anna Danby. The play was interrupted in the beginning by disturbances in the audience by young spectators who called out:

"Down with Dumas!
Give us Hugo!"

Bernhardt addressed the audience directly:

"Friends, you wish to defend the
cause of justice. Are you doing it
by making Monsieur Dumas
responsible for the banishment of
Monsieur Hugo?"

With this, the audience laughed and applauded, and then fell silent. At the final curtain, she received an enormous ovation, and Dumas hurried backstage to congratulate her. When she exited the theatre, a crowd had gathered at the stage door and tossed flowers at her. Her salary was immediately raised to 250 francs a month.

Sarah’s next success was her performance in François Coppée’s ‘Le Passant’, which premiered at the Odéon on the 14th. January 1868, playing the part of the boy troubadour, Zanetto, in a romantic renaissance tale. Critic Theophile Gautier described the ‘delicate and tender charm’ of her performance.

‘Le Passant’ played for 150 performances, plus a command performance at the Tuileries Palace for Napoleon III and his court. Afterwards, the Emperor sent her a brooch with his initials written in diamonds.

In her memoirs, Sarah wrote of her time at the Odéon:

"It was the theatre that I loved the most,
and that I only left with regret. We all
loved each other. Everyone was gay.
The theatre was a like a continuation of
school. All the young came there…
I remember my few months at the
Comédie Française. That little world was
stiff, gossipy, jealous.
I remember my few months at the Gymnase.
There they talked only about dresses and
hats, and chattered about a hundred things
that had nothing to do with art.
At the Odéon, I was happy. We thought only
of putting on plays. We rehearsed mornings,
afternoons, all the time. I adored that."

Bernhardt lived with her longtime friend and assistant Madame Guerard and her son in a small cottage in the suburb of Auteuil, and drove herself to the theatre in a small carriage. She developed a close friendship with the writer George Sand, and performed in two plays that she had written.

Sarah received celebrities in her dressing room, including Gustave Flaubert and Leon Gambetta. In 1869, as she became more prosperous, she moved to a larger seven-room apartment at 16 Rue Auber in the centre of Paris. Her mother began to visit her for the first time in years, and her Orthodox Jewish grandmother moved into the apartment to take care of Maurice.

Bernhardt added a maid and a cook to her household, as well as the beginning of a collection of animals; she had one or two dogs with her at all times, and two turtles moved freely around the apartment.

In 1868, a fire completely destroyed Sarah’s apartment, along with all of her belongings. She had neglected to purchase insurance. The brooch presented to her by the Emperor and her pearls melted, as did the tiara presented by one of her lovers, Khalid Bey. She found the diamonds in the ashes.

The managers of the Odéon organized a benefit performance for Sarah. The most famous soprano of the time, Adelina Patti, performed for free. In addition, the grandmother of her father donated 120,000 francs. Bernhardt was able to buy an even larger residence, with two salons and a large dining room, at 4 Rue de Rome.

Sarah Bernhardt’s Wartime service at the Odéon (1870–1871)

The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War abruptly interrupted Sarah’s theatrical career. The news of the defeat of the French Army, the surrender of Napoleon III at Sedan, and the proclamation of the Third French Republic on the 4th. September 1870 was followed by a siege of the city of Paris by the Prussian Army.

Paris was cut off from news and from its food supply, and the theatres were closed. Bernhardt took charge of converting the Odéon into a hospital for soldiers wounded in the battles outside the city. She organized the placement of 32 beds in the lobby and in the foyers, brought in her personal chef to prepare soup for the patients, and persuaded her wealthy friends and admirers to donate supplies to the hospital.

Besides organising the hospital, Sarah worked as a nurse, assisting the chief surgeon with amputations and operations. When the coal supply of the city ran out, Bernhardt used old scenery, benches, and stage props for fuel to heat the theatre. In early January 1871, after 16 weeks of siege, the Germans began to bombard the city with long-range artillery. The patients had to be moved to the cellar, and before long, the hospital was forced to close.

Bernhardt arranged for serious cases to be transferred to another military hospital, and she rented an apartment on Rue de Provence to house the remaining 20 patients. By the end of the siege, Bernhardt’s hospital had cared for more than 150 wounded soldiers, including a young undergraduate from the École Polytechnique, Ferdinand Foch, who later commanded the Allied armies in the First World War.

The French government signed an armistice on the 19th. January 1871, and Bernhardt learned that her son and family had been moved to Hamburg. She went to the new chief executive of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, and obtained a pass to go to Germany to bring them back.

When she returned to Paris several weeks later, the city was under the rule of the Paris Commune. She moved again, taking her family to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. She later returned to her apartment on the Rue de Rome in May, after the Commune was defeated by the French Army.

The Tuileries Palace, the City Hall of Paris, and many other public buildings had been burned by the Commune or damaged in the fighting, but the Odéon was still intact.

Charles-Marie Chilly, the co-director of the Odéon, came to her apartment, where Bernhardt received him reclining on a sofa. He announced that the theatre would re-open in October 1871, and he asked her to play the lead in a new play, ‘Jean-Marie’ by André Theuriet. Bernhardt replied that she was finished with the theatre, and was going to move to Brittany in order to start a farm.

Chilly, who knew Bernhardt’s moods well, told her that he understood and accepted her decision, and would give the role to Jane Essler, a rival actress. According to Chilly, Bernhardt immediately jumped up from the sofa and asked:

"When are the rehearsals beginning?"

‘Jean-Marie’, featuring a young Breton woman forced by her father to marry an old man she did not love, was another critical and popular success for Bernhardt. The critic Sarcey wrote:

‘She has the sovereign grace, the
penetrating charm, the I don’t
know what. She is a natural artist,
an incomparable artist.’

The directors of the Odéon next decided to stage ‘Ruy Blas’, a play written by Victor Hugo in 1838, with Bernhardt playing the role of the Queen of Spain. Hugo himself attended all the rehearsals. At first, Bernhardt pretended to be indifferent to him, but he gradually won her over, and she became a fervent admirer.

The play premiered on the 16th. January 1872. The opening night was attended by the Prince of Wales and by Hugo himself; after the performance, Hugo approached Bernhardt, dropped to one knee, and kissed her hand. After the 100th. performance of ‘Ruy Blas’, Hugo gave a dinner for Bernhardt and her friends, toasting:

"My adorable Queen
and her Golden Voice."

‘Ruy Blas’ played to packed houses. A few months after it opened, Bernhardt received an invitation from Emile Perrin, Director of the Comédie Française, asking if she would return, and offering her 12,000 francs a year, compared with less than 10,000 at the Odéon. Bernhardt asked Chilly if he would match the offer, but he refused.

Always pressed by her growing expenses and growing household to earn more money, she announced her departure from the Odéon when she finished the run of ‘Ruy Blas’. Chilly responded with a lawsuit, and she was forced to pay 6,000 francs in damages.

Sarah Bernhardt and the Comédie Française

Sarah returned to the Comédie Française on the 1st. October 1872, and quickly took on some of the most famous and demanding roles in French theatre. She played Junie in ‘Britannicus’ by Jean Racine, the male role of Cherubin in ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ by Pierre Beaumarchais, and the lead in Voltaire’s five-act tragedy ‘Zaïre’.

In 1873, with just 74 hours to learn the lines and practise the part, Sarah played the lead in Racine’s ‘Phédre’, playing opposite the celebrated tragedian, Jean Mounet-Sully, who soon became her lover. The leading French critic Sarcey wrote:

‘This is nature itself served by marvellous
intelligence, by a soul of fire, by the most
melodious voice that ever enchanted
human ears. This woman plays with her
heart, with her entrails.’

Phédre became her most famous classical role, performed over the years around the world, often for audiences who knew little or no French; she made them understand by her voice and gestures.

In 1877, Sarah had another success as Dona Sol in ‘Hernani’, a tragedy written 47 years earlier by Victor Hugo. Her lover in the play was her lover off-stage, as well, Mounet-Sully. Hugo himself was in the audience. The next day, he sent her a note:

"Madame, you were great and charming;
you moved me, me the old warrior, and,
at a certain moment when the public,
touched and enchanted by you, applauded,
I wept. The tear which you caused me to
shed is yours. I place it at your feet."

The note was accompanied by a tear-shaped pearl on a gold bracelet.

Sarah maintained a highly theatrical lifestyle in her house on the Rue de Rome. She kept a satin-lined coffin in her bedroom, and occasionally slept in it, or lay in it to study her roles, though, contrary to popular belief, she never took it with her on her travels.

Sarah cared for her younger sister who was ill with tuberculosis, and allowed her to sleep in her own bed, while she slept in the coffin. She posed in it for photographs, adding to the legends she created about herself.

Bernhardt repaired her old relationships with the other members of the Comédie Française; she participated in a benefit for Madame Nathalie, the actress she had once slapped. However, she was frequently in conflict with Perrin, the director of the theater.

In 1878, during the Paris Universal Exposition, she took a flight over Paris with balloonist Pierre Giffard, in a balloon decorated with the name of her current character, Dona Sol. However, an unexpected storm carried the balloon far outside of Paris to a small town.

When she returned by train to the city, Perrin was furious; he fined Bernhardt a thousand francs, citing a theatre rule which required actors to request permission before they left Paris. Bernhardt refused to pay, and threatened to resign from the Comédie. Perrin recognised that he could not afford to let her go. Perrin and the Minister of Fine Arts arranged a compromise; she withdrew her resignation, and in return was raised to a Societaire, the highest rank of the theatre.

Triumph in London and Departure from the Comédie Française (1879–1880)

Bernhardt was earning a substantial amount at the theatre, but her expenses were even greater. By this time she had eight servants, and she built her first house, an imposing mansion on rue Fortuny, not far from the Parc Monceau. She looked for additional ways to earn money.

In June 1879, while the theatre of the Comédie Française in Paris was being remodelled, Perrin took the company on tour to London. Shortly before the tour began, a British theatre impresario named Edward Jarrett travelled to Paris and proposed that she give private performances in the homes of wealthy Londoners; the fee she would receive for each performance was greater than her monthly salary with the Comédie.

When Perrin read in the press about the private performances, he was furious. Furthermore, the Gaiety Theatre in London demanded that Bernhardt star in the opening performance, contrary to the traditions of Comédie Française, where roles were assigned by seniority, and the idea of stardom was scorned.

When Perrin protested, saying that Bernhardt was only 10th. or 11th. in seniority, the Gaiety manager threatened to cancel the performance; Perrin had to give in. He scheduled Bernhardt to perform one act of ‘Phèdre’ on the opening night, between two traditional French comedies, ‘Le Misanthrope’ and ‘Les Précieuses’.

On the 4th. June 1879, just before the opening curtain of her premiere in ‘Phèdre’, she suffered an attack of stage fright. She wrote later that she also pitched her voice too high, and was unable to lower it. Nonetheless, the performance was a triumph. Though most of the audience could not understand Racine’s classical French, she captivated them with her voice and gestures; one member of the audience, Sir George Arthur, wrote that:

"She set every nerve and fibre in
their bodies throbbing, and held
them spellbound."

In addition to her performances of ‘Zaire’, ‘Phèdre’, ‘Hernani’, and other plays with her troupe, she gave the private recitals in the homes of British aristocrats arranged by Jarrett, who also arranged an exhibition of her sculptures and paintings in Piccadilly. This was attended by both the Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Gladstone.

While in London, Sarah added to her personal menagerie of animals by buying three dogs, a parrot, and a monkey. She also made a side trip to Liverpool, where she purchased a cheetah, a parrot, and a wolfhound, as well as receiving a gift of six chameleons, which she kept in her rented house on Chester Square, before taking them all back to Paris.

Having returned to Paris, Sarah was increasingly discontented with Perrin and the management of the Comédie Française. He insisted that she perform the lead in a new play, ‘L’Aventurière’ by Emile Augier, a play which she thought was mediocre. When she rehearsed the play without enthusiasm, and frequently forgot her lines, she was criticised by the playwright.

She responded:

"I know I’m bad, but not
as bad as your lines."

The play went ahead, but was a failure. She wrote immediately to Perrin:

"You forced me to play when I
was not ready… what I foresaw
came to pass… this is my first
failure at the Comédie and my
last."

Sarah sent a resignation letter to Perrin, made copies, and sent them to all the major newspapers. Perrin sued her for breach of contract; the court ordered her to pay 100,000 francs, plus interest, and she lost her accrued pension of 43,000 francs. She did not settle the debt until 1900.

Later, however, when the Comédie Française theatre was nearly destroyed by fire, she allowed her old troupe to use her own theatre.

‘La Dame aux Camélias’ and the first American tour (1880–1881)

In April 1880, as soon as he learned Bernhardt had resigned from the Comédie Française, the impresario Edward Jarrett hurried to Paris and proposed that she make a theatrical tour of England and then the United States. She could select her repertoire and the cast. She would receive 5,000 francs per performance, plus 15% of any earnings over 150,000 francs, plus all of her expenses, plus an account in her name for 100,000 francs, the amount she owed to the Comédie Française. Sarah accepted immediately.

Now on her own, Bernhardt first assembled and tried out her new troupe at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique in Paris. She performed for the first time ‘La Dame aux Camélias’, by Alexandre Dumas. She did not create the role; the play had first been performed by Eugénie Dochein in 1852, but it quickly became Sarah’s most performed and most famous role. She eventually played the role more than a thousand times, and acted regularly and successfully in it until the end of her life. Audiences were often in tears during her famous death scene at the end.

Sarah could not perform ‘La Dame aux Camélias’ on a London stage because of British censorship laws; instead, she put on four of her proven successes, including ‘Hernani’ and ‘Phèdre’, plus four new roles, including ‘Adrienne Lecouvreur’ by Eugène Scribe and the drawing-room comedy ‘Frou-Frou’ by Meilhac-Halévy, both of which were highly successful in London.

In six of the eight plays in her repertoire, Sarah died dramatically in the final act. When she returned to Paris from London, the Comédie Française asked her to come back, but she refused their offer, explaining that she was making far more money on her own. Instead, she took her new company and new plays on tour to Brussels and Copenhagen, and then on a tour of French provincial cities.

Sarah and her troupe departed from Le Havre for America on the 15th. October 1880, arriving in New York on the 27th. October. On the 8th. November, she performed Scribe’s ‘Adrienne Lecouvreur’ at Booth’s Theatre before an audience which had paid a top price of $40 for a ticket, an enormous sum at the time.

Few in the audience understood French, but it was not necessary; her gestures and voice captivated the audience, and she received a thunderous ovation. She thanked the audience with her distinctive curtain call; she did not bow, but stood perfectly still, with her hands clasped under her chin, or with her palms on her cheeks, and then suddenly stretched them out to the audience.

After her first performance in New York, she made 27 curtain calls. However, although she was welcomed by theatre-goers, she was entirely ignored by New York high society, who considered her personal life scandalous.

Bernhardt’s first American tour carried her to 157 performances in 51 cities. She travelled on a special train with her own luxurious palace car, which carried her two maids, two cooks, a waiter, her maitre d’hôtel, and her personal assistant, Madame Guérard. It also carried an actor named Édouard Angelo whom she had selected to serve as her leading man, and, according to most accounts, her lover during the tour.

From New York, Sarah made a side trip to Menlo Park, where she met Thomas Edison, who made a brief recording of her reciting a verse from Phèdre, which has not survived. She crisscrossed the United States and Canada from Montreal and Toronto to Saint Louis and New Orleans, usually performing each evening, and departing immediately after the performance.

Sarah gave countless press interviews, and in Boston posed for photos on the back of a dead whale. She was condemned as immoral by the Bishop of Montreal and by the Methodist press, which only increased ticket sales.

Sarah performed ‘Phèdre’ six times and ‘La Dame aux Camélias’ 65 times (which Jarrett had renamed ‘Camille’ to make it easier for Americans to pronounce, despite the fact that no character in the play has that name).

On the 3rd. May 1881, Sarah gave her final performance of ‘La Dame aux Camélias’ in New York. Throughout her life, she always insisted on being paid in cash. When Bernhardt returned to France, she brought with her a chest filled with $194,000 in gold coins. She described the result of her trip to her friends:

"I crossed the oceans, carrying my dream
of art in myself, and the genius of my nation
triumphed.
I planted the French verb in the heart of a
foreign literature, and it is that of which I am
most proud."

Return to Paris, European tour, Fédora to Theodora (1881–1886)

No crowd greeted Bernhardt when she returned to Paris on the 5th. May 1881, and theatre managers offered no new roles; the Paris press ignored her tour, and much of the Paris theatre world resented her leaving the most prestigious national theatre to earn a fortune abroad.

When no new plays or offers appeared, she went to London for a successful three-week run at the Gaiety Theatre. This London tour included the first British performance of ‘La Dame aux Camelias’ at the Shaftesbury Theatre; her friend, the Prince of Wales, had persuaded Queen Victoria to authorise the performance. Many years later, Sarah gave a private performance of the play for the Queen while she was on holiday in Nice.

When she returned to Paris, Bernhardt contrived to make a surprise performance at the annual 14th. July patriotic spectacle at the Paris Opera, which was attended by the President of France, and a houseful of dignitaries and celebrities.

Sarah recited the Marseillaise, dressed in a white robe with a tricolor banner, and at the end dramatically waved the French flag. The audience gave her a standing ovation, showered her with flowers, and demanded that she recite the song two more times.

With her place in the French theatre world restored, Bernhardt negotiated a contract to perform at the Vaudeville Theatre in Paris for 1,500 francs per performance, as well as 25 percent of the net profit. She also announced that she would not be available to begin until 1882.

She departed on a tour of theatres in the French provinces, and then on to Italy, Greece, Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Austria, and Russia. In Kiev and Odessa, she encountered anti-Semitic crowds who threw stones at her; pogroms were being conducted, forcing the Jewish population to leave.

However, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, she performed before Czar Alexander III, who broke court protocol and bowed to her. During her tour, she also gave performances for King Alfonso XII of Spain, and the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.

The only European country where she refused to play was Germany, due to the German annexation of French territory after the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War.

When she returned to Paris, she was offered a new role in ‘Fédora’, a melodrama written for her by Victorien Sardou. It opened on the 12th. December 1882, with her husband Damala as the male lead. The play received good reviews. Critic Maurice Baring wrote:

‘A secret atmosphere emanated from her,
an aroma, an attraction, which was at once
exotic and cerebral. She literally hypnotised
her audience.’

Another journalist wrote,

‘She is incomparable … The extreme love,
the extreme agony, the extreme suffering.’

However, the abrupt end of her marriage shortly after the premiere put her back into financial distress. She had leased and refurbished a theatre, the ‘Ambigu’, specifically to give her husband Damala leading roles, and made her 18-year-old son Maurice, who had no business experience, the manager.

‘Fédora’ ran for just 50 performances and lost 400,000 francs. She was forced to give up the Ambigu, and then, in February 1883, to sell her jewellery, her carriages, and her horses at an auction.

When Damala left, she took on a new leading man and lover, the poet and playwright Jean Richepin, who accompanied her on a quick tour of European cities to help pay off her debts. She renewed her relationship with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII.

When they returned to Paris, Bernhardt leased the theatre of Porte-Saint-Martin and starred in a new play by Richepin, ‘Nana-Sahib’, a costume drama about love in British India in 1857. The play and Richepin’s acting were poor, and it quickly closed. Richepin then wrote an adaptation of ‘Macbeth’ in French, with Bernhardt as Lady Macbeth, but it was also a failure.

The only person who praised the play was Oscar Wilde, who was then living in Paris. He began writing a play, ‘Salomé’, in French, especially for Bernhardt, though it was quickly banned by British censors, and Sarah never performed it.

Bernhardt then performed a new play by Sardou, ‘Theodora’ (1884), a melodrama set in sixth-century Byzantium. Sardou wrote a non-historic but dramatic new death scene for Bernhardt; in his version, the empress was publicly strangled, whereas the historical empress died of cancer.

Bernhardt travelled to Ravenna, Italy, to study and sketch the costumes seen in Byzantine mosaic murals, and had them reproduced for her own costumes. The play opened on the 26th. December 1884 and ran for 300 performances in Paris, and 100 in London, and was a financial success.

Sarah was able to pay off most of her debts, and bought a lion cub, which she named Justinian, for her home menagerie. She also renewed her love affair with her former lead actor, Philippe Garnier.

World tours (1886–1892)

Theodora was followed by two failures. In 1885, in homage to Victor Hugo, who had died a few months earlier, she staged one of his older plays, ‘Marion Delorme’, written in 1831, but the play was outdated, and her role did not give her a chance to show her talents. She next put on ‘Hamlet’, with Philippe Garnier in the leading role and Bernhardt in the relatively minor role of Ophelia. The critics and audiences were not impressed, and the play was unsuccessful.

Bernhardt had built up large expenses, which included a 10,000 francs a month allowance paid to her son Maurice, a passionate gambler. Bernhardt was forced to sell her chalet in Sainte-Addresse and her mansion on Rue Fortuny, and part of her collection of animals.

Her impresario, Edouard Jarrett, immediately proposed she make another world tour, this time to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Panama, Cuba, and Mexico, then on to Texas, New York, England, Ireland, and Scotland.

Sarah was on tour for 15 months, from early 1886 until late 1887. On the eve of departure, she told a French reporter:

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

In every city she visited, she was feted and cheered by audiences. Emperor Pedro II of Brazil attended all of her performances in Rio de Janeiro, and presented her with a gold bracelet with diamonds, which was almost immediately stolen from her hotel.

The two leading actors both fell ill with yellow fever, and her long-time manager, Edward Jarrett, died of a heart attack. Bernhardt was undaunted, however, and went crocodile hunting at Guayaquil, and also bought more animals for her menagerie.

Her performances in every city were sold out, and by the end of the tour, she had earned more than a million francs. The tour allowed her to purchase her final home, which she filled with her paintings, plants, souvenirs, and animals.

From then on, whenever she ran short of money (which generally happened every three or four years), she went on tour, performing both her classics and new plays. In 1888, she toured Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, and Russia. She returned to Paris in early 1889 with an enormous owl given to her by the Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovich, the brother of the Czar.

Sarah’s 1891–92 tour was her most extensive, including much of Europe, Russia, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Samoa. Her personal luggage consisted of 45 costume crates for her 15 different productions, and 75 crates for her off-stage clothing, including her 250 pairs of shoes. She carried a trunk for her perfumes, cosmetics and makeup, and another for her sheets and tablecloths and her five pillows.

After the tour, she brought back a trunk filled with 3,500,000 francs, but she had also suffered a painful injury to her knee when she leaped off the parapet of the Castello Sant’ Angelo in ‘La Tosca’. The mattress on which she was supposed to land was misplaced, and she landed on the boards.

La Tosca to Cleopatra (1887–1893)

When Bernhardt returned from her 1886–87 tour, she received a new invitation to return to the Comédie Française. The theatre management was willing to forget the conflict of her two previous periods there, and offered a payment of 150,000 francs a year.

The money appealed to her, and she began negotiations. However, the senior members of the company protested the high salary offered, and conservative defenders of the more traditional theatre also complained; one anti-Bernhardt critic, Albert Delpit of ‘Le Gaulois’, wrote:

‘Madame Sarah Bernhardt is forty-three;
she can no longer be useful to the Comédie.
Moreover, what roles could she have?
I can only imagine that she could play mothers’.

Bernhardt was deeply offended, and immediately broke off negotiations. She turned once again to Sardou, who had written a new play for her, ‘La Tosca’, which featured a prolonged and extremely dramatic death scene at the end.

The play was staged at the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, opening on the 24th. November 1887. It was extremely popular, and critically acclaimed. Bernhardt played the role for 29 consecutive sold-out performances.

The success of ‘La Tosca’ allowed Bernhardt to buy a new pet lion for her household menagerie. She named him Scarpia, after the villain of ‘La Tosca’. The play inspired Giacomo Puccini to write one of his most famous operas, ‘Tosca’ (1900).

Following this success, Sarah acted in several revivals and classics, and many French writers offered her new plays. In 1887, she acted in a stage version of the controversial drama ‘Thérèse Raquin’ by Emile Zola. Zola had previously been attacked due to the book’s confronting content. Asked why she chose this play, she declared to reporters:

"My true country is the free air,
and my vocation is art without
constraints."

The play was unsuccessful; it ran for just 38 performances. She then performed another traditional melodrama, ‘Francillon’ by Alexandre Dumas in 1888. A short drama Sarah wrote herself, ‘l’Aveu’, disappointed both critics and the audience, and lasted only 12 performances.

Sarah had considerably more success with ‘Jeanne d’Arc’ by the poet Jules Barbier, in which the 45-year-old actress played Joan of Arc, a 19-year-old martyr.

Sarah’s next success was another melodrama by Sardou and Moreau, ‘Cleopatra’, which allowed her to wear elaborate costumes and finished with a memorable death scene. For this scene, she kept two live garter snakes, which played the role of the poisonous asp which bites Cleopatra. For realism, she painted the palms of her hands red, though they could hardly be seen from the audience. Sarah explained:

"I shall see them. If I catch sight
of my hand, it will be the hand
of Cleopatra."

Bernhardt’s violent portrayal of Cleopatra led to the theatrical story of a matron in the audience exclaiming to her companion:

"How unlike, how very unlike, the
home life of our own dear Queen!"

Théâtre de la Renaissance (1893–1899)

Bernhardt made a two-year world tour (1891–1893) to replenish her finances. Upon returning to Paris, she paid 700,000 francs for the Théâtre de la Renaissance, and from 1893 until 1899, was its artistic director and lead actress.

She managed every aspect of the theatre, from the finances to the lighting, sets, and costumes, as well as appearing in eight performances a week.

Sarah imposed a rule that women in the audience, no matter how wealthy or famous, had to take off their hats during performances, so the rest of the audience could see, and eliminated the prompter’s box from the stage, declaring that actors should know their lines.

She abolished in her theatre the common practice of hiring claqueurs in the audience to applaud stars. She used the new technology of lithography to produce vivid colour posters, and in 1894, she hired Czech artist Alphonse Mucha to design the first of a series of posters for her play ‘Gismonda’. He continued to make posters for her for six years.

In five years, Bernhardt produced nine plays, three of which were financially successful. The first was a revival of her performance as ‘Phédre’, which she took on tour around the world. In 1898, she had another success, in the play ‘Lorenzaccio’, playing the male lead role in a Renaissance revenge drama written in 1834 by Alfred de Musset, but never before actually staged.

As her biographer Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote, she did not try to be overly masculine when she performed male roles:

‘Her male impersonations had the
sexless grace of the voices of
choirboys, or the not quite real
pathos of Pierrot.’

Anatole France wrote of her performance in ‘Lorenzaccio’:

‘She formed out of her own self
a young man melancholic, full of
poetry and of truth.’

This was followed by another successful melodrama by Sardou, ‘Gismonda’, one of Bernhardt’s few plays not finishing with a dramatic death scene. Her co-star was Lucien Guitry, who also acted as her leading man until the end of her career. Besides Guitry, she shared the stage with Edouard de Max, her leading man in 20 productions, and Constant Coquelin, who frequently toured with her.

In April 1895, she played the lead role in a romantic and poetic fantasy, ‘Princess Lointaine’, by the little-known 27-year-old poet Edmond Rostand. It was not a monetary success and lost 200,000 francs, but it began a long theatrical relationship between Bernhardt and Rostand. Rostand went on to write ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ and became one of the most popular French playwrights of the period.

In 1898, she performed the female lead in the controversial play ‘La Ville Morte’ by the Italian poet and playwright Gabriele D’Annunzio; the play was fiercely attacked by critics because of its theme of incest between brother and sister.

Along with Emile Zola and Victorien Sardou, Bernhardt also became an outspoken defender of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer falsely accused of betraying France. The issue divided Parisian society; a conservative newspaper ran the headline:

‘Sarah Bernhardt has joined
the Jews against the Army’.

Even Bernhardt’s own son Maurice condemned Dreyfus; he refused to speak to her for a year.

At the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Bernhardt staged and performed in several modern plays, but she was not a follower of the more natural school of acting that was coming into fashion at the end of the 19th. century, preferring a more dramatic expression of emotions. She declared:

"In the theatre the natural is good,
but the sublime is even better."

Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt (1899–1900)

Despite her successes, Sarah’s debts continued to mount, reaching two million gold francs by the end of 1898. Bernhardt was forced to give up the Renaissance, and was preparing to go on another world tour when she learned that a much larger Paris theatre, the Théâtre des Nations on the Place du Châtelet, was for lease. The theatre had 1,700 seats, twice the size of the Renaissance, enabling her to pay off the cost of performances more quickly; it had an enormous stage and backstage, allowing her to present several different plays a week; and since it was originally designed as a concert hall, it had excellent acoustics. On the 1st. January 1899, she signed a 25-year lease with the City of Paris, though she was already 55 years old.

She renamed it the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, and began to renovate it to suit her needs. The facade was lit by 5,700 electric bulbs, 17 arc lights, and 11 projectors. She completely redecorated the interior, replacing the red plush and gilt with yellow velvet, brocade, and white woodwork. The lobby was decorated with life-sized portraits of her in her most famous roles.

Her dressing room was a five-room suite, which, after the success of her Napoleonic play ‘l’Aiglon’, was decorated in Empire Style, featuring a marble fireplace with a fire Bernhardt kept burning all year round, a huge bathtub that was filled with the flowers she received after each performance, and a dining room seating 12 people, where she entertained guests after the final curtain.

Bernhardt opened the theatre on the 21st. January 1899 with a revival of Sardou’s ‘La Tosca’, which she had first performed in 1887. This was followed by revivals of her other major successes, including ‘Phédre’, ‘Theodora’, ‘Gismonda’, and ‘La Dame aux Camélias’, plus Octave Feuillet’s ‘Dalila’, Gaston de Wailly’s ‘Patron Bénic’, and Rostand’s ‘La Samaritaine’.

On the 20th. May, Sarah premiered one of her most famous roles, playing the titular character of Hamlet in a prose adaptation. She played Hamlet in a manner which was direct, natural, and very feminine. Her performance received largely positive reviews in Paris, but mixed reviews in London. The British critic Max Beerbohm wrote:

‘The only compliment one can
conscientiously pay her is that
her Hamlet was, from first to last,
a truly grand dame.’

In 1900, Bernhardt presented ‘l’Aiglon’, a new play by Rostand. She played the Duc de Reichstadt, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte, imprisoned by his unloving mother and family until his melancholy death in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. ‘l’Aiglon’ was a verse drama, six acts long.

The 56-year-old actress studied the walk and posture of young cavalry officers, and had her hair cut short to impersonate the young Duke. The Duke’s stage mother, Marie-Louise of Austria, was played by Maria Legault, an actress 14 years younger than Bernhardt. The play ended with a memorable death scene; according to one critic:

‘She died as dying angels would
die if they were allowed to."

The play was extremely successful; it was especially popular with visitors to the 1900 Paris International Exposition, and ran for nearly a year, with standing-room places selling for as much as 600 gold francs.

The play inspired the creation of Bernhardt souvenirs, including statuettes, medallions, fans, perfumes, postcards of her in the role, uniforms and cardboard swords for children, and pastries and cakes; the famed chef Escoffier added Peach Aiglon with Chantilly Cream to his repertoire of desserts.

Bernhardt continued to employ Mucha to design her posters, and expanded his work to include theatrical sets, programs, costumes, and jewellery props. His posters became icons of the Art Nouveau style. To earn more money, Bernhardt set aside a certain number of printed posters of each play to sell to collectors.

Farewell tours (1901–1913)

After her season in Paris, Bernhardt performed ‘l’Aiglon’ in London, and then made her sixth tour of the United States. On this tour, she travelled with Constant Coquelin, then the most popular leading man in France.

Bernhardt played the secondary role of Roxanne to his Cyrano de Bergerac, a role which he had premiered, and he co-starred with her as Flambeau in ‘l’Aiglon’ and as the first grave-digger in ‘Hamlet’.

Sarah also changed, for the first time, her resolution not to perform in Germany or the "occupied territories" of Alsace and Lorraine. In 1902, at the invitation of the French Ministry of Culture, she took part in the first cultural exchange between Germany and France since the 1870 war. She performed ‘l’Aiglon’ 14 times in Germany; Kaiser William II of Germany attended two performances and hosted a dinner in her honour in Potsdam.

During her German tour, she began to suffer agonising pain in her right knee, probably connected with the fall she had suffered on stage during her tour in South America. She was forced to reduce her movements in l’Aiglon.

A German doctor recommended that she halt the tour immediately and have surgery, followed by six months of complete immobilisation of her leg. Bernhardt promised to see a doctor when she returned to Paris, but continued the tour.

In 1903, she had another unsuccessful role playing another masculine character in the opera ‘Werther’, a gloomy adaptation of the story by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

However, Sarah quickly came back with another hit, ‘La Sorcière’ by Sardou. She played a Moorish sorceress in love with a Christian Spaniard, leading to her persecution by the church. This story of tolerance, coming soon after the Dreyfus affair, was financially successful, with Bernhardt often giving both a matinee and evening performance.

Between 1904 and 1906, Sarah appeared in a wide range of parts, including in ‘Francesca di Rimini’ by Francis Marion Crawford, the role of Fanny in ‘Sappho’ by Alphonse Daudet, the magician Circe in a play by Charles Richet, and the part of Marie Antoinette in the historical drama ‘Varennes’ by Lavedan and Lenôtre.

Sarah also played the part of the prince-poet Landry in a version of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by Richepin and Henri Cain, and a new version of the play ‘Pelléas and Mélissande’ by Maurice Maeterlinck, in which she played the male role of Pelléas with the British actress Mrs Patrick Campbell as Mélissande.

Sarah also starred in a new version of ‘Adrienne Lecouvreur’, which she wrote herself, departing from the earlier version which had been written for her by Scribe.

During this time, she wrote a drama, ‘Un Coeur d’Homme’, in which she had no part, which was performed at the Théâtre des Arts, but lasted only three performances. She also taught acting briefly at the Conservatory, but found the system there too rigid and traditional. Instead, she took aspiring actresses and actors into her company, trained them, and used them as unpaid extras and bit players.

Bernhardt made her first American Farewell Tour in 1905–1906, the first of four farewell tours she made to the US, Canada, and Latin America, with her new managers, the Shubert brothers.

Sarah attracted controversy and press attention when, during her 1905 visit to Montreal, the Roman Catholic bishop encouraged his followers to throw eggs at Bernhardt, because she portrayed prostitutes as sympathetic characters.

The US portion of the tour was complicated due to the Shuberts’ competition with the powerful syndicate of theatre owners who controlled nearly all the major theatres and opera houses in the United States. The syndicate did not allow outside producers to use their stages.

As a result, in Texas and Kansas City, Bernhardt and her company performed under an enormous circus tent, seating 4,500 spectators, and in skating rinks in Atlanta, Savannah, Tampa, and other cities.

Her private train took her to Knoxville, Dallas, Denver, Tampa, Chattanooga, and Salt Lake City, then on to the West Coast. She could not play in San Francisco because of the recent 1906 earthquake, but she performed across the bay in the Hearst Greek Theatre at the University of California at Berkeley.

Sarah also gave a recital, entitled ‘A Christmas Night during the Terror’, for inmates at San Quentin penitentiary. (Johnny Cash – Sarah did it first!)

In April 1906 Bernhardt toured the ruins of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire, escorted by the critic Ashton Stevens.

Sarah’s tour continued into South America, where it was marred by a more serious event: at the conclusion of ‘La Tosca’ in Rio de Janeiro, she leaped, as always, from the wall of the fortress to plunge to her death in the Tiber. This time, however, the mattress on which she was supposed to land had been positioned incorrectly.

She landed on her right knee, which had already been damaged in earlier tours. She fainted, and was taken from the theatre on a stretcher, but refused to be treated in a local hospital. She later sailed by ship from Rio to New York. When she arrived, her leg had swollen, and she was immobilised in her hotel for 15 days before returning to France.

In 1906–1907, the French government finally awarded Bernhardt the Legion of Honour, but only in her role as a theatre director, not as an actress. The award at that time required a review of the recipient’s moral standards, and Bernhardt’s behaviour was still considered scandalous.

Bernhardt ignored the snub, and continued to play both inoffensive and controversial characters. In November 1906, she starred in ‘La Vierge d’Avila, ou La Courtisan de Dieu’, by Catulle Mendes, playing Saint Theresa, followed on the 27th. January 1907 by ‘Les Bouffons’, by Miguel Zamocois, in which she played a young and amorous medieval lord.

In 1909, she again played the 19-year-old Joan of Arc in ‘Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc’ by Émile Moreau. French newspapers encouraged schoolchildren to view her personification of French patriotism.

Despite the injury to her leg, Sarah continued to go on tour every summer, when her own theatre in Paris was closed. In June 1908, she made a 20-day tour of Great Britain and Ireland, performing in 16 different cities.

In 1908–1909, she toured Russia and Poland. Her second American farewell tour (her eighth tour in America) began in late 1910. She took along a new leading man, the Dutch-born Lou Tellegen, a very handsome actor who had served as a model for the sculpture ‘Eternal Springtime’ by Auguste Rodin, and who became her co-star for the next two years, as well as her escort to all events, functions, and parties.

Lou was not a particularly good actor, and had a strong Dutch accent, but he was successful in roles such as Hippolyte in ‘Phédre’, where he could take off his shirt and show off his physique.

In New York, Sarah created yet another scandal when she appeared in the role of Judas Iscariot in ‘Judas’ by the American playwright John Wesley De Kay. It was performed in New York’s Globe Theatre for only one night in December 1910 before it was banned by local authorities. It was also banned in Boston and Philadelphia.

In April 1912, Bernhardt presented a new production in her theatre, ‘Les Amours de la Reine Élisabeth’, a romantic costume drama by Émile Moreau about Queen Elizabeth’s romances with Robert Dudley and Robert Devereux.

It was lavish and expensive, but was a financial failure, lasting only 12 performances. Fortunately for Bernhardt, she was able to pay off her debt with the money she received from the American producer Adolph Zukor for a film version of the play.

Sarah departed on her third farewell tour of the United States in 1913–1914, when she was 69. Her leg had not yet fully healed, and she was unable to perform an entire play, only selected acts. She also separated from her co-star and lover of the time, Lou Tellegen. When the tour ended, he remained in the United States, where he briefly became a silent movie star, while she returned to France in May 1913.

Amputation of Sarah’s Leg and Wartime Performances (1914–1918)

In December 1913, Bernhardt achieved another success with the drama ‘Jeanne Doré’. On the 16th. March, she was made a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur. Despite her successes, she was still short of money. She had made her son Maurice the director of her new theatre, and permitted him to use the receipts of the theatre to pay his gambling debts, eventually forcing her to pawn some of her jewels to pay her bills.

In 1914, she went as usual to her holiday home on Belle-Île with her family and close friends. There, she received the news of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the beginning of the Great War.

Sarah hurried back to Paris, which was threatened by an approaching German army. In September, Bernhardt was asked by the Minister of War to move to a safer place. She departed for a villa on the Bay of Arcachon, where her physician discovered that gangrene had developed on her injured leg.

She was transported to Bordeaux, where on the 22nd. February 1915, a surgeon amputated her leg almost to the hip. She refused the idea of an artificial leg, crutches, or a wheelchair, and instead was usually carried in a palanquin she had designed, supported by two long shafts and carried by two men. She had the chair decorated in the Louis XV style, with white sides and gilded trim.

She returned to Paris on the 15th. October, and, despite the loss of her leg, continued to go on stage at her theatre; scenes were arranged so she could be seated, or supported by a prop with her leg hidden. She took part in a patriotic ‘scenic poem’ by Eugène Morand, ‘Les Cathédrales’, playing the part of Strasbourg Cathedral; first, while seated, she recited a poem; then she hoisted herself up on her one leg, leaned against the arm of the chair, and declared:

"Weep, weep, Germany! The German
eagle has fallen into the Rhine!"

Bernhardt joined a troupe of famous French actors and travelled to the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Argonne, where she performed for soldiers who had just returned or were about to go into battle.

Propped on pillows in an armchair, she recited her patriotic speech at Strasbourg Cathedral. Another actress present at the event, Beatrix Dussanne, described her performance:

"The miracle again took place; Sarah,
old, mutilated, once more illuminated
a crowd by the rays of her genius.
This fragile creature, ill, wounded and
immobile, could still, through the magic
of the spoken word, re-instil heroism in
those soldiers weary from battle."

Sarah returned to Paris in 1916 and made two short films on patriotic themes, one based on the story of Joan of Arc, the other called ‘Mothers of France’.

Sarah then embarked on her final American farewell tour. Despite the threat of German submarines, she crossed the Atlantic and toured the United States, performing in major cities including New York and San Francisco.

Bernhardt was diagnosed with uremia, and had to have an emergency kidney operation. She recuperated in Long Beach, California, for several months, writing short stories and novellas for publication in French magazines. In 1918, she returned to New York and boarded a ship to France, landing in Bordeaux on the 11th. November 1918, the day that the Armistice was signed ending the First World War.

Sarah Bernhardt – The Final years (1919–1923)

In 1920, Sarah resumed acting in her theatre, usually performing single acts of classics such as Racine’s ‘Athelée’, which did not require much movement. For her curtain calls, she stood, balancing on one leg and gesturing with one arm.

She also starred in a new play, ‘Daniel’, written by her grandson-in-law, playwright Louis Verneuil. She played the male lead role, but appeared in just two acts. She took the play and other famous scenes from her repertory on a European tour and then for her last tour of England, where she gave a special performance for Queen Mary.

In 1921, Bernhardt made her last tour of the French provinces, lecturing about the theatre and reciting the poetry of Rostand. Later that year, she produced a new play by Rostand, ‘La Gloire’, and another play by Verneuil, ‘Régine Arnaud’ in 1922. She continued to entertain guests at her home. One such guest, French author Colette, described being served coffee by Bernhardt:

"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."

In 1922, Sarah began rehearsing a new play by Sacha Guitry, called ‘Un Sujet de Roman’. On the night of the dress rehearsal she collapsed into a coma for an hour, then awakened with the words, "When do I go on?"

She recuperated for several months, before preparing for a new role as Cleopatra in ‘Rodogune’ by Corneille, and agreed to make a new film called ‘La Voyante’, for a payment of 10,000 francs a day.

The Death of Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah was too weak to travel, so a room in her house on Boulevard Pereire was set up as a film studio, with scenery, lights, and cameras. However, on the 21st. March 1923, Sarah collapsed again, and never recovered. She died at the age of 78 from uremia on the 26th. March 1923.

Sarah died peacefully in the arms of her son. At her request, her Funeral Mass was celebrated at the church of Saint-François-de-Sales, which she attended when she was in Paris.

The following day, 30,000 people attended her funeral to pay their respects, and an enormous crowd followed her casket from the church to Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Posted by pepandtim on 2020-06-12 21:58:49

Tagged: , postcard , old , early , nostalgia , nostalgic , Madame , Sarah , Bernhardt , Valentine , Lafayette , Dublin , King , Winchelsea , Road , Tottenham , London , Violet , 1844 , 45MSB89

White-Latham House, Carmen Elizabeth Lake House, Heritage Burlington (Individual Recognition of Property-Municipal), 2358 Lakeshore Road, Burlington, ON

September 2, 2020 by 4g3nd4

Excerpt from heritageburlington.ca:

Built in 1905 / 1907 by W. D. Flatt as a summer cottage in the Craftsman Style most favoured by him, the one-storey house has a high truncated hipped roof, with overhanging eaves displaying rafter tails (comparable to the eaves and rafter tails at the Burlington West train station, built in 1909). The central chimney is built of the same large brick as the fireplace. The front elevation, facing the lake, has a large offset projecting gable. The verandah thus created has a continuous band of eighteen-paned windows, some of which slide open on brass rollers. The corners of the verandah window frame are supported by very substantial arched brackets. The double entrance has been narrowed from its original width, which is indicated by the characteristic Craftsman Style entrance steps.

The unusually wide rough-sawn clapboard siding (8 inch exposure) is protected by a natural dark brown stain, and the trim is painted white. This is the earliest known example in Burlington of this treatment, which is also seen in the illustration of the house of Mr Charles Loosley, at Pine Cove, in Flatt’s Lake Shore Surveys booklet in 1912; and in the cottages of the Cedar Springs Community, built by Flatt in the mid-1920s. The white paint enhances the effect of the strong triangle brackets supporting the overhanging eaves of the front gable, and emphasizes the well-proportioned trim of the windows. The double-hung windows have six over one panes in the usual Craftsman style. They are grouped in pairs on the west-side bedrooms and occur singly on the east and north elevations. All the original windows except for the verandah windows and the bathroom window have solid shutters with large metal hinge brackets and crescent moon cutouts.

The Craftsman Style interior is exceptionally well maintained and authentic. The double entrance doors open onto interior double doors leading from the verandah to the sitting room, where a massive brick fireplace with a bracketed wooden mantelpiece aligns with the doors. A bookcase with drawers beneath is built in alongside the fireplace. The dining room contains a built-in cabinet with leaded glass doors not dissimilar to the stained-glass work that was to be featured in Flatt’s own house, Lakehurst Villa, built a few years later. A narrow staircase leads up from the dining room to what was originally an attic over the verandah. All of this interior woodwork, including the window trim and plate rails in the dining room and sitting room and the floors, is completely unspoiled and has its original dark walnut-stained finish. The plaster walls and coved ceilings are in excellent condition. The pantry contains original cupboards.

The house is secluded from the Lakeshore Road by its extensive garden, which contains many old trees, shrubs, and perennials. This seclusion from the road is a strong reminder of the earliest landscaping practices along this stretch of the Lakeshore. The vegetable and perennial beds are in the original locations, where they are placed for the best views from the windows of the house. Some roses remain from the garden of Mr Latham, who grew many prize-winning blooms. The rise of the lake level in recent years has caused the loss of the beach and the original dock.

This is an exceptional example of the Burlington summer house in the Edwardian period. Its first owner was a Mr White, of Hamilton. It was bought circa 1910 by Richard L. Latham, Chief Engineer for the T H & B Railway in Hamilton, and has remained in the family for some 80 years.

Posted by Snuffy on 2020-02-17 12:53:24

Tagged: , Heritage Burlington , Heritage Burlington (Individual Recognition of Property-Municipal) , White-Latham House , Carmen Elizabeth Lake House , 2358 Lakeshore Road , Burlington , Ontario , Canada

Mr. Lewis Waller Prior to 1908. And the Greenwich Yacht Club.

September 1, 2020 by 4g3nd4

The Postcard

A Glosso-graph Series postcard published by Misch & Co. of London E.C. The photography was by the Dover Street Studios of London W. The image is a glossy real photograph.

Why Lewis has three fluffy toy mice running down the sash on his toga I can’t even begin to speculate.

The card was posted in Brighton on Tuesday the 10th. March 1908 to:

Miss E. Isaacs,
3, Western Road,
Hove,
Brighton.

The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

"How do you like
this P.C.?
Love to all,
From Trickster".

Mr. Lewis Waller

William Waller Lewis (3rd. November 1860 – 1st. November 1915), known on stage as Lewis Waller, was an English actor and theatre manager, well known on the London stage and in the English provinces.

After early stage experience with J. L. Toole’s and Helena Modjeska’s companies from 1883, Waller became known, by the late 1880’s, for romantic leads, both in Shakespeare and in popular costume dramas of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

He attracted a large number of female admirers, who formed themselves into a vocal and conspicuous fan club. He also tried his hand at management of tours in 1885 and 1893, and then became an actor-manager at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in the mid-1890’s.

Waller remained an actor-manager for the rest of his career, both in London and on tour.

Despite his commercial success in Booth Tarkington’s ‘Monsieur Beaucaire’ and Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘Brigadier Gerard’, Waller greatly preferred acting in Shakespeare, in which his roles ranged from Romeo to Othello.

Among the roles he created was Sir Robert Chiltern in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 comedy ‘An Ideal Husband’.

Lewis Waller – The Early Years

Waller was born in Bilbao, Spain, the eldest son of an English civil engineer, William James Lewis, and his wife, Carlotta née Vyse. He was educated at King’s College School in south west London, after which, intending to pursue a commercial career, he studied languages on the Continent. From 1879 to 1883 he was a clerk in a London firm owned by his uncle.

After acting in amateur performances, Waller decided to make a career on the stage, and was engaged by J. L. Toole in 1883. His first role was the Hon. Claude Lorrimer in H. J. Byron’s ‘Uncle Dick’s Darling’, in which he was billed as "Waller Lewis".

By May of the same year, he had adopted the stage name Lewis Waller. In that month he appeared at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in a charity matinee for the Actors’ Benevolent Fund with Toole’s company and such contemporary stars as Rutland Barrington, Lionel Brough, Arthur Cecil, Nellie Farren, George Grossmith, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.

He remained in Toole’s company for a year, playing light comedy and juvenile parts. During this year, he married a young actress, Florence West (1862–1912).

He joined a touring company, playing the central role, the blind Gilbert Vaughan, in ‘Called Back’ by Hugh Conway.

Waller returned to London in March 1885 to play at the Lyceum Theatre in Helena Modjeska’s company, as the Abbé in ‘Adrienne Lecouvreur’, and then toured with her, playing such roles as Mortimer in ‘Mary Stuart’, and Orlando in ‘As You Like It’.

The Manchester Guardian said of the latter:

"He kept Orlando properly ingenuous,
and made him a taking and gallant
young wooer."

Towards the end of 1885, Waller ventured into management for the first time, touring a production of ‘Called Back’, taking the role of Dr. Basil North, in which The Manchester Guardian thought him:

"A trifle too melodramatic".

The tour was modestly successful, but not such as to lead Waller to mount further productions for some time.

Waller returned to the West End, working for a succession of managements. At the Strand Theatre in early 1887, he played Roy Carlton in ‘Jack-in-the-Box’, which his biographer describes as his first substantial success in London.

At the Opera Comique he played Ernest Vane in ‘Masks and Faces’, and Captain Absolute in ‘The Rivals’. At the Gaiety Theatre he played Jacques Rosney in ‘Civil War’.

Waller then joined William Hunter Kendal and John Hare at the St. James’s Theatre, where he played the Duc de Bligny in ‘The Ironmaster’, Sir George Barclay in ‘Lady Clancarty’, and Lord Arden in ‘The Wife’s Secret’.

When Rutland Barrington took over the management of the St. James’s in 1888, Waller played George Sabine in ‘The Dean’s Daughter’, and Ralph Crampton in ‘Brantinghame Hall’.

Rudolph de Cordova, in a 1909 biographical sketch noted:

"During this period, few theatres
played regular afternoon performances,
so that the actors were, for the most part,
engaged only in the evening. Many
matinees were, however, given to introduce
new plays and new players; and in this way
Mr. Waller acted a large number of new parts,
all of an ephemeral character."

In particular he played several Ibsen roles in these matinees in the early 1890’s, bringing him to the attention of people of influence in the theatre such as William Archer, Jacob Grein and Bernard Shaw.

Waller played Oswald in ‘Ghosts’, Lovborg in ‘Hedda Gabler’, Rosmer in ‘Rosmersholm’ and Solness in ‘The Master Builder’. The ODNB commented that:

"Archer was delighted that an established
West End actor had contributed to the Ibsen
revival, but was aware that Waller could
overcome neither the play’s inadequate
rehearsal period nor his background of
florid West End performances."

Lewis Waller – The Later Years

In October 1893, Waller returned to management, mounting a tour of Wilde’s ‘A Woman of No Importance’, in which he played Lord Illingworth. The Manchester Guardian called it:

"A tolerable travelling company in
which nobody gains great distinction."

Returning to London, Waller, in partnership with H. H. Morrell, leased the Theatre Royal, Haymarket while its regular tenant, Herbert Beerbohm Tree was on tour in the US. He began with the premiere of Wilde’s ‘An Ideal Husband’, playing Sir Robert Chiltern in a cast that included his wife as Mrs. Cheveley, Julia Neilson as Lady Chiltern and Charles Hawtrey as Lord Goring.

Waller and Morrell remained in management until 1897, when Tree invited Waller to join his company at the newly rebuilt Her Majesty’s Theatre.

Waller remained with Tree for three years, playing a wide range of roles, including romantic leads in popular costume dramas and, in Tree’s lavish Shakespeare productions, Laertes in ‘Hamlet’, Brutus in ‘Julius Caesar’, Faulconbridge in ‘King John’ and Lysander in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

After leaving Tree’s company, Waller returned to management. Although he loved playing Shakespeare, adding the roles of Romeo, Othello and Henry V to his repertoire, for commercial reasons he was best known as the star of swashbuckling romances. He was particularly identified with the title roles in the stage versions of Booth Tarkington’s ‘Monsieur Beaucaire’ and Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘Brigadier Gerard’. He starred in a film of the latter in 1915.

The critic Hesketh Pearson praised Waller for:

"His good looks and virile acting,
and his vibrant voice which rang
through the theatre like a bell and
stirred like a trumpet".

Waller had a large following of enthusiastic women fans, who formed a club known as the K.O.W. [Keen On Waller] Brigade. Pearson lamented:

"The puerile nature of the plays he
usually put on, and the adolescent
behaviour of his female admirers,
prevented many people from
appreciating his superb gift as a
declaimer of Shakespeare’s rhetoric,
and frequently exposed him to ridicule."

In 1911 and 1912, Waller made a tour of the US, Canada and Australia. In his absence his wife died. His last play was May Martindale’s ‘Gamblers All’, which opened at Wyndham’s Theatre, London in June 1915, with Gerald du Maurier and Madge Titheradge co-starring.

The Manchester Guardian called the production:

"A personal acting triumph
for Lewis Waller".

The Death of Lewis Waller

After the West End run, Waller took the play on tour, during which he contracted pneumonia, from which he died in Nottingham two days short of his 55th. birthday.

The Greenwich Yacht Club

So what else happened on the day that Trickster posted the card?

Well, on the 10th. March 1908, Thames watermen and river workers founded the Greenwich Yacht Club in the Yacht Tavern in Greenwich. For many years the club met at the tavern.

Later the Clubhouse was situated on the beach adjacent to the current clubhouse. Originally, it was a beached Thames Sailing Barge named "Iverna", then later a hut on the Mudlarks beach.

In more recent times the club was based in what is known as the "Old Clubhouse" at the end of Riverway. That site was acquired by English Partnerships, as part of the preparation for construction of the Millennium Dome, and in exchange English Partnerships provided the club with new facilities on the previously redundant Peartree Wharf.

The New Clubhouse

Greenwich Yacht Club took occupation of the site early in November 1999 with a temporary clubroom in what is now the Wedding Venue. The new clubhouse was opened in June 2000.

The residential building directly behind the club has been named Iverna Quay, as a reference to the beached Thames sailing barge ‘Iverna’.

The new clubhouse is the only building built in the Thames itself which is raised upon stilts above the waters below, and is open to the public each year as part of the London Open House.

The complex includes an engineering/machining facility, sail loft, woodworking facility, an indoor work area with a capacity for two or more boats, and a wedding and conference venue.

There is also a three storey clubhouse situated on a dolphin in the tidal Thames reached by a bridge from landside. A dolphin in this context is a man-made marine structure that extends above the water level.

The complex is disabled access friendly. The club has more than 400 members, and caters for cruiser sailors, dinghy sailors, motor-boaters and rowers.

Posted by pepandtim on 2019-06-09 00:13:32

Tagged: , postcard , old , early , nostalgia , nostalgic , Lewis , Waller , William , 1860 , 1915 , actor , theatre , manager , Toole , 1883 , romantic , leads , Shakespeare , costume , dramas , Victorian , Edwardian , eras , 1885 , 1893 , Royal , Haymarket , Ideal , Husband , Oscar , Wilde , Bilbao , Florence , West , Tree , Greenwich , Yacht , Club , Glosso , graph , Series , Misch , London , Dover , Street , Studios , glossy , real , photograph , fluffy , toy , mice , sash , 23MLW92 , Brighton , 10/03/1908 , 1908 , Isaacs , Western , Road , Hove , Trickster , Iverna

2019 – Road Trip – 164 – Nelson – 2 – Courthouse 1909

August 30, 2020 by 4g3nd4

Nelson’s 1909 built courthouse is one of the most photographed building in town. It stands on the corner of Vernon and Ward Streets – kinda hidden behind the ivy,

The building was designed by F.M. Rattenbury, famous for the British Columbia Parliament Buildings and the Empress Hotel in Victoria.

Rattenbury used a composite of Romanesque and Chateau styles to create a structure of stately beauty combined with an imposing strength appropriate to its judiciary nature.

Contractor W.C. Gillett, who was mayor of Nelson from 1906 to 1907, used Kootenay Marble quarried from his own Kaslo site for the construction.

Gillet employed British Columbia Douglas fir for the interior woodwork and the roof was constructed of slate taken from the west coast.

A building long admired for its fine design, the Nelson Court House stands as a testament to beauty and strength in a community that takes pride in its own living history.

ABOUT NELSON:
With 206 identified heritage sites, the city of Nelson has the highest number of heritage structures of any BC community outside of Vancouver and Victoria.

Nelson was one of the first communities in the pilot project for the Main Street Canada Program, with 70 heritage buildings in the downtown core restored between 1980 and 1985.

69 of the sites are on the Canadian Register of Historic Places – sites with a Statement of Significance that identifies the important heritage elements of the site.

Posted by Ted’s photos – For Me For You on 2019-10-08 13:59:34

Tagged: , 2019 , BC , British Columbia , Canada , Cropped , NIKON , NIKON D750 , NIKON FX , Ted McGrath , Ted’s photos , Vignetting , Nelson Courthouse , Street Scene , Street , Building , Ivy , Nelson BC , Courthouse , Dormer , Street Light , Street Lamp , Old Building , Canadian Register of Historic Places , Nelson Canadian Register of Historic Places , Canadian Register of Historic Places Nelson , CHimney , CANS2S

Old Dirt Road

August 29, 2020 by 4g3nd4

A truly magnificent weekend in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California. The weather was warm and perfect, Not much color change yet, but the sage and grasses are all turning that wonderful golden hue that ushers in the cold dark days of Winter.

We signed up for a wonderful outing, THE LOST SIERRA RANCH TOUR, which featured tours of working cattle ranches in the high Sierra Valley, about an hour north of Reno and Lake Tahoe. There were tours of ranches, and at each venue were vendors of woodworking, boat builders, jewelry makers, potters, knitters and quilters. All wonderful country stuff.

Food was good, company was great, and as you will see in this next group of pics, some very scenic country.

Posted by The VIKINGS are Coming! on 2017-10-03 04:15:29

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