The Tour That Never Happened
and the Broken Pataka:
Sarah Bernhardt’s Mysterious
Visit to New Zealand
[Unfortunately this and all other photographs,
drawings and other illustrations
cannot be reproduced at this time.]
Fig. 1 Chest made from pataka boards from Sarah Bernard
Collection of Maori Art[2]
Basing their reports on Press Association information printed in the
London Tribune, in January 1908
newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, reported that Sarah Bernhardt had
negotiated a contract for a tour the following year, in the summer of
1909. The New Zealand papers especially
were keen for her to visit as she had, they said, missed out being able to
cross the Tasman during her earlier 1891 tour of Australia. In the event, the contract fell through, and
Mlle. Bernhardt, “The Divine Sarah,” did not come Down Under again, choosing
rather to perform that year in Europe.
However, there is a problem with this explanation for her avoidance of
performing in New Zealand. At the time
of her death in 1923, her biographer and close friend Thérèse Berton claimed
that Sarah had made “fatiguing tours of America and Europe, and once she went
to Australia, North Africa and New Zealand.”[3] What does “went to” mean in the context of
this other “fatiguing tours”? While it is now clear that Bernhardt never appeared
on the stage in New Zealand during 1891, she did spend several days in
Auckland, and yet disappointed her potential audiences by her behaviour while
in the city—or at least the journalists who described her activities. Cities in Australia like Melbourne and Sydney
could offer large crowds and well-appointed theatres for her dramatic
performances, while the smaller colony across the Tasman Sea could not—the
problems of a smaller total population, a lack of easy transport from one main
centre to another, and less developed theatre culture in general in the early
years of the twentieth century, a decision to cut back on the second phase of
her tour is understandable. Or is it? During all her years of success, Sarah
Bernhardt felt she needed to make money to
keep up her enormous expenses and she commanded £100 (an enormous fee in those
days) a night in Sydney, Melbourne and other Australian cities; and as she
travelled with a rather large amount of baggage,[4] as
well as fellow actors, scenery and stage: does this explain why she would not
be likely to accept what was likely to be a financially dubious tour of Aotearoa (the Land of the Long White
Cloud). Though she herself was often not
averse to performing in smaller out-of-the-way places, as her North American
tour through many regional centres shows, there may be another reason—or other
reasons—why the tour in 1910 was called off, and that of 1891 never eventuated
though she did stop over on the way to Australia, as well as on the way back to
the United States. In other words, there was an intention to play in New
Zealand and there were two brief visits to Auckland which she seemed to
enjoy. The newspapers at first were
eager in their adulation and later their views turned sour, as though she had
insulted the New Zealand public by choosing not to perform. Did she
deliberately or inadvertently insult New Zealanders during her short stays in
Auckland?
The Intention to Perform in New
Zealand
[Unavailable]
Figure 2 Cartoon of Sarah
Bernhardt Seasick.[5]
Throughout her long life, Sarah Bernhardt suffered from nervous
disorders, was sensitive to criticism, and broke out into fits of rage at real
or perceived acts of injustice. She also
was prone to fainting fits, stomach upsets and seasickness, so that the long
tours she was forced to make by the exigencies of finances were often anything
but pleasant affairs, especially voyages across seas. When we attempt to understand the
misunderstandings and other difficulties that arose when she failed to make the
projected acting tours of New Zealand, we have to keep these factors in
mind. An example of the kind of issues
that arose may be seen in what happened on her first arrival in New York, when,
after a particularly stormy crossing of the Atlantic, she landed feeling weak
and upset and was confronted by a horde of newspaper reporters who jostled her
and bombarded her with what she took as stupid questions. In her own memoirs Sarah writes that one
young man asked if he could do a sketch of her.
When he took an inordinately long time, Sarah
…asked to see what he had
done, and, perfectly unabashed, he handed me his horrible drawing of a skeleton
with a curly wig. I tore the sketch up
and threw it at him, but the following day that horror appeared in the papers, with
a disagreeable inscription beneath it.[6]
In another instance, closely related to h tours in North America and the
Pacific, her one time colleague, travelling companion and arch rival, Marie
Colombier, who drew the satirical sketch of a seasick Sarah given above as
Figure 2, expanded her mockery in a long pamphlet she wrote along with her
lover called The Memoirs of Sarah Barnum. When the Sarah heard about this satire, she
became furious, tried to get the publisher to stop distribution, and, then
being told by the police any action would involve a lengthy court case, she
grabbed a horsewhip and marched into Marie’s flat, thrashing about wildly,
knocking Colombier down, as well as several of her guests and breaking a lot of
furniture—to the great delight of her son Maurice, various actors, and a
cluster of Parisian journalists who had followed her.
In other words, Sarah Bernhardt did not suffer fools lightly, and she
did not forget insults, or easily get over poor treatment. She remained highly suspicious of journalists
and what we would call the paparazzi.
Reporters in New Zealand unused to such dramatic displays of emotion
were in a state of shock after meeting the Divine Sarah.
One blog author called “Stage Whispers”, recently
recalling the hopes for an Australian
tour in he early 1890s, enthusiastically asserts:
James Cassius Williamson
persuaded reigning world stage superstar Sarah Bernhardt to tour here in 1891,
he pulled off a coup unequalled in Australian entertainment industry history
before or since—even bigger than The Beatles.[7]
But when he lists the different touring companies that crossed from
Australia to New Zealand, the unnamed blogger does not include Bernhardt or her
troupe from Paris. As in 1891, so in
1909 the plans to include New Zealand in the tour fell through.
There is clear enough evidence that she did come to New Zealand, however,
at least for two very brief stop-overs on her way to and from Australia:
At the end of a North American tour,
Sarah Bernhardt and her company sailed from San Francisco on 1 May 1891 for
Sydney viqa Honolulu and Auckland. The Monowai was off the Auckland pilot
station at 5:30 pm on Thursday 21 May, berthed shortly afterwards, and resumed
its journey to Sydney at midnight. On
her return journey, Bernhardt travelled on the Maraposa which left Port Jackson on 11 August, endured a very rough
crossing of the Tasman which saw several passengers injured and extensive
damage done to the ship, and was alongside the Auckland wharf at about 8:30 am
on the 17th. It sailed for
Honolulu and San Francisco at about on the evening of the same day.[8]
The main account, other than shipping lists and one-line notices of her
arrival, was printed in the New Zealand
Herald for 22 May 1891, which we shall examine closely soon, but there is also another in the Auckland Star for 22 April, a month
earlier. In this earlier account, the mail-boat Mariposa arrived with her New York based impressario Mr H.E. Abbey.
He announced that he had engaged Sarah and her troupe for “a dramatic
tour in the Australasian colonies,” that is, both in Australia and New Zealand.
He seems to believe at this point “that playgoers in these colonies are…to have
an opportunity of seeing and hearing for themselves the renowned actress, the
‘divine Sara’ Bernhardt.” He points out
that Sarah is at that moment in San Francisco performing La Tosca, a play she will bring to the stage in the colonies of
Australia and New Zealand, along with her “dramatic sensation ‘Cleopatra” and
“Camille”, that is, Our Lady of the
Camellias based on Alexandre Dumas fils’ novel of the same name. Then after saying the R.M.S. Monowai will go directly to Australia
when it leaves the USA, he hesitates on Sarah’s appearances in New Zealand:
They will probably visit New
Zealand, but this all depends on how well the pieces take in Australia. The whole Company returns to ‘Frisco by the
August steamer.
A month later, the Daily Telegraph
(22 May 1891) made clear that there would be no tour at all, or at least “it
was improbable that she will play in New Zealand.”[9]
The First Visit to Auckland
The Herald nevertheless reports
on the brief lay-over Bernhardt made en
route to Australia and enumerates who was in her entourage:
She brings with her a dramatic
company of 41 members, all of whom played with her in France, and in her American
tour {which had taken place the previous month]. Mesdames Jane Mès, Bertha Hilbert, and
Fournier, and M.M. Darmont, Duquesne, Fleury, Angelo, and Hennié are the
principal members of the company supporting Madame Bernhardt.
Upon berthing in the port, Bernhardt and
“several” of her fellow actors[10]
went to the Albert Hotel[11]
where they dined.
The Herald continues its account of her one evening in Auckland:
The party was a very vivacious
one. They ate heartily, and cracked
merry jokes, chattering away volubly in French.
The report then offers a significant detail but whose specific nature
and import can only be discovered elsewhere.
After dinner, when Madame
Bernhardt was returning to the steamer, her attention having been attracted by
the display at a local curio shop, one of the few stores open at that hour, she
and the others went in and made some purchases.
The Broken Hill, NSW, Barrier
Miner on the same day (22 May) added in its version of the landing in
Auckland that Bernhardt “made extensive purchases” at the curio shop. A
columnist named Mercutio[12]
wrote in The Auckland Weekly News
much further details, but still leaving much in a shroud of mystery, a shroud
most evident in the tone of disapproval and misunderstanding and subdued
anti-Semitism:
Madame Bernhardt is a great
collector of curiosities; and, as she throws her money about like a princess,
she does not mind what she pays for anything that takes her fancy. With several others she went into the shop of
Mr. Danneford. Amongst other things, she
bought a Maori fishing net, which, with the floats and all the other
appurtenances, was carried down to the steamer.
What Sara [sic] means to do with a Maori fishing-net I can’t imagine.[13]
The disdain for Bernhardt’s ability to spend large amounts of money puts
this New Zealand columnist out of countenance, and he sees Sarah as an empty-headed
European tourist unaware of what she is purchasing at whatever the price. He has no understanding of her artistic
sensibility—she was, after all, a painter, sculptor and embroiderer whose works
were on display in the salons of Paris, as well as a well-read student of
learned magazines and books. He is also
taken in by her flamboyant mannerisms, stock-in-trade to the performer and
self-publicist. But Mercutio then goes
on:
She also possessed herself of
a nice little Maori-carved mere, and while Sara Bernhardt has that weapon
handy, I would not advise any man to venture on any impertinence or
rudeness. But a long-handled tomahawk
was the chief prize, and with that Sara made a display that quite convinced me
that Sara Bernhardt was a woman of sublime genius. Probably she never saw a Maori in her life,
and certainly she never saw a Maori war dance. But with, I suppose, the
instinct of dramatic inspiration, she struck an attitude and made a flourish
that quite amazed me. In one moment she
was the Maori virago, standing up to urge the tribe to vengeance against their
enemies.[14]
If there were any person displaying signs of racial superiority
vis-Ã -vis the Maori and their culture, as well as clear condescension towards a
mere female, albeit a celebrity actress, as well as an implicit view of a Jew,
it would be this character calling himself Mercutio. He trivializes the carved mere by designating it as “nice,”
lacking appreciation for both its sacred character within the indigenous
culture and its impressive skills of sculpted form—perhaps something most New
Zealanders would not come to understand until the great Te Maori Exhibition
sent overseas in 19xx. He then
ironically calls Bernhardt “a sublime genius,” without grasping the aptness of
the phrase for a woman of many distinguished parts and not a mere prima donna
showing off to her friends in the curio shop. While it is true that she never
met a Maori in the flesh nor witnessed one of their ceremonial dances (a haka), she would have been familiar with
the anthropological and aesthetic appreciations written up in many of the
magazines she subscribed to and books she read.
To be sure, these accounts are now dated and belong to a Euro-centric
perspective, but they were up-to-date and sensitive in their own time, much
more than Mercutio’s flippant comments.
It is further true, again ironically—unconsciously—that Bernhardt did
have occasional fits of rage and violence, qualities in her personality shaped
by the way she was brought up by neglectful, abandoning and perhaps abusive
care-givers, including her mother, but certainly the teachers in the boarding
school she was sent to and the convent where she was educated. In addition, Bernhardt was also
sensitive—touchy, we might say—about her Jewish identity and her lesbian
relationships, both of which would qualify her to project the character of a
virago ready to defend the integrity and rights of her “tribes.”
How much Mercutio says without understanding what he says, and so often
displacing his comments from the short-sighted patriarchal and francophobic
perceptions, to the more incisive insights familiarity with her life and career
make evident by implicit context, appears in the last paragraph to this
journalistic essay, written up on 30 May, eight days following the events
themselves:
Coming down the street a
little further, Madame Bernhardt noticed a shooting gallery open. In this place are figures, and when they are
struck in particular places they sound trumpets, or beat drums, or something of
the kind. Sara seized a rifle and in a
few seconds had a whole band going. She
was the best shot the keeper of the gallery had seen in many a day. What an endowment of power and genius has
been hers! Most ladies at her age would
have been glad to have been in bed at that hour instead of banging away in a
shooting gallery with a rifle.[15]
Here is more of the provincial wit’s prejudices showing through as he
mocks the cosmopolitan, sophisticated French actress for not being like the
ideal of the frumpy Auckland housewife tucked up in her bed at such a late
hour. That Bernhardt should like having
fun—she is, he said in the opening of his “Local Gossip” column, one of those
“voluble” French men and women who were laughing over their dinner at the
Albert Hotel a few hours earlier—and that she should have the maturity of her
nationality and profession to know how to shoot a rifle with accuracy is beyond
Mercutio’s ken. Nor does he know her
family background as the daughter of a band of circus performers, wandering players
and Jewish “rogues” who lived off their wit.
Another brief journalistic essay, combined by the National Library of
New Zealand recently into a piece entitled “Rare Maori Carvings, &c”
provides a lot more details, at the same time as it darkens the occlusions
already suggested above.
Further information on what she purchased in Auckland comes from a
surprising quarter. The basic facts are
given in newspaper reports of the day, but further information appears in an
alleged public controversy that erupted.
In addition to what she purchased in the “curio shop”—as we shall see
below, these consisted of several Maori carvings—there is a suggestion that the French star was given a present of a
Maori carving. If so, that would imply
she did more than have dinner at the Albert Hall, and that some local Maori
contingent came to greet her, performed a ceremony of welcome, and presented
her with one of their tribal treasures.
Instead of such a description, the Herald
flashes back to an account of her voyage across the Pacific, and
particularly of the ritual passage over the line, the crossing of the Equator:
a ceremony that involved practical jokes, deception and terrorizing the victim
of a conspiracy. This “piece of fun” is
narrated as follows:
Crossing the equator, it was
resolved to revive the ancient custom of “doing homage to Neptune” by making
all those who had never crossed the line to submit, unknowingly of course, to
be shaved with slush and enjoying an impromptu tubbing [sic][16]
on deck. Preparations for this piece of
fun were made, and a victim selected in the person of one of the minor members
of the dramatic troupe. Unhappily for
the success of the conspiracy entered into by the adherents of his aquatic majesty,
the intended butt heard of the affair and, promptly retired to his cabin. The others, however, were not to be baulked,
and determined to carry out their practical joke. By the promises of a substantial reward and
the payment of all damages that might be caused, several daring spirits were
prevailed upon to undertake to drag the unwilling victim to the place of
ridicule. Though he objected strongly in
French through the closed door of his room, his pursuers, not understanding his
remonstrances [sic] or threats, attempted to force an
entrance. The terrified, or furiously
angry man inside again called upon them to desist, but without avail. The ***[17]
pressure when a sudden and startling stop was put to the joke by the discharge
of a pistol through the panelling. The
missile from the weapon grazed the arm of one of the foremost baiters, and
caused a hasty retreat. It is needless
to say this was the means of the permanent postponement of the honours to
Neptune.
The trick, it would seem, was organized by the French troupe to be
carried out, for payment, by the ship’s crew.
The butt of the joke was some junior actor or stagehand brought along
for the trip, but the person injured was a sailor. Now why the newspaper reporter saw fit to
expend so much time on this little scenario in mid-ocean rather to than to go
into more depth about the stay in Auckland by the great actress remains a
mystery—and especially if this ritual game played on the Monowai (or Mariposa)[18]
stands in the place of the Maori powhiri and
gifting to Sarah on the night of the 22 of May 1891.
What is controversial is specifically a pataka or small wooden storage house for root vegetables and other
foods and “originally consist[ed] of a
male figure standing upon the head of a female, and both figures were set
against a flat background of perforated and intertwining groundwork.”[19] David P. Becker of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University wrote in 1978:
The sculpture is said to have
been given to the French actress Sarah Bernhardt during her visit to New
Zealand in 1891. A hue and cry raised by
the local newspapers over the national loss of such a cultural heritage was of
no avail. She is then said to have had her gift cut in half to adorn two doors
of a cabinet.
Unfortunately, neither Becker’s incomplete passive voice gives no clue
as to who did the gifting of this taonga
or treasure to Bernhardt nor his note do more than deepen the mystery:
2.
Personal communication from Mr David Simmons, Auckland Museum,
1973. At the same time, moreover, Madame
Bernhardt purchased an entire pataka front for £125 (Phillipps 1952 180-2, fig.
108). A fragment from this carving was
sold at Sotheby’s. London, December 7, 1972, lot no. 120.
According to Simmons, who was for many years
curator at the Auckland Dominion Museum, not only did she receive one Maori
treasure but she purchased at least one other, and without understanding the
double insult she removed these pataka carvings
from their ancestral homes and, worse, had one cut in two and used as her own
decoration. Or so we are told. She herself does not give any explanations
nor do any of the commentators suggest reasons, although the local newspapers
were supposedly sensitive to the loss of national treasures. The closest
evidence from those papers on Sarah Bernhardt’s relations to Maori art and
artefacts appears in a report in the New
Zealand Herald for 14 August 1891[20]
concerning her second stay in Auckland as she returned to the United States
following her tour in Australia. This essay though unsigned appears in the paper’s Supplement, thus indicating it was more
analysis and commentary than a factual news report. The information provided tells us both about
the actress’s interests and knowledge of what was known as “primitive” design
and craftsmanship and how the local intelligentsia perceived her visit and
Maori treasures. It begins by focusing
on what had earlier been denominated as merely late-night curio/sity shop on
Queen Street but is now explicitly named as “Mr. Danneford’s premises” which
has on display “a fine collection of Maori carvings of the ancient class.” The term “fine”, rather than Mercutio’s
“nice”, lifts the tone considerably of approach to the collections, to Sarah’s
interests, and to the expected reader response to the essay: everything will be
more serious here. These are not mere
“curios” or souvenirs being touted for superficial tourist sale. The “fine collection of Maori carvings”
moreover is not for general public offer but, we are explicitly told, “have
been procured for Madame Sara [sic]
Bernhardt, and accompany her to Europe.”
The little gaps in the text reveal a great deal about what has
happened. In her first visit, Bernhardt
and her fellow actors did not roll through the shop in a somewhat tipsy state
and superficially and disrespectfully play with the items on display. Sarah must have shown genuine interest in and
indicate a serious knowledge of Maori culture, enough so—along with her ability
to pay top prices for works of aesthetic and anthropological value—that
Danneford “procured” the collection on her behalf. This leads to the provenance of the material
offered to her:
These ancient carvings are in
a magnificent state of preservation.
They were discovered in a swamp at Whakatwai, on the east bank of the
Thames River recently, at a depth of about six feet from the surface.
Clearly following a technical document
describing the find and what it consisted of, the Herald report continues to detail the objects being offered to
Bernhardt:
With the carved panels of the
Patiki [i.e., pataka][21]
house was found a Maori idol[22]
of most peculiarly finished structure.
It is much larger than the ordinary kumara figures. Although,[23]
defaced, the contour of the head and the form of the face is (sic)[24]
retained, and some of the tattooing is quite perfect. The stone is a hard gritty sandstone, not
uncommon in the colony. The head is
about 11 inches in length, and the remainder of the block, which appears to
have no particular character, is about six inches in length.
Though imprecise—and inaccurate when compared
to more modern scientific descriptions (as in Simmons’ own studies of these
objects in Whakairo, discussed
below)—this report clearly identifies the purchases of Bernhardt as geared
towards her artistic and intellectual interests.
In addition to the physical description of the
finding and nature of the objects themselves, the Herald adds to the provenance the “legend regarding this,” or, as
we would probably call it today, a myth, in other words, how and why it was
created, what it meant to the indigenous people and their relationship to the
whole world of their experiences, dreams and aspirations, and the reason why
these and other objects were deposited in the swamp and subsequently found by
the “remnants” of the tribe, since most were killed off during inter-tribal
warfare during which the wooden and stone objects were hidden from their
enemies. The children or grandchildren of
these survivors of the defeated people have been searching for their “treasure
trove” and “recently” (again that vague term) “they have been trenching to find
these cherished relics.” However, the
search does not take place because these are treasure hunters looking for
something to sell to the colonial Pakeha
(European settlers). Rather, the
“relics” are living beings imbued with the spirit (whairoa) of the ancestors,
and by regaining them the finders will regain access to their own living past,
important in a period of history when Maori realized the trauma of the loss of
their own spiritual and political integrity was taking place.
Almost aware of some aspects of this alternative mentality amongst the
native peoples of the colony, the Herald
continues, that the Maori “found them in a splendid state,” stating a few
sentences later this was because the murky waters contained a preservative for
the wooden panels and their being any erosion on the stone atua. The writer assumes
that his readers will recognize the technical terms used next: “…and having got
the tohunga to remove the tapu from them, the relics are now laid open for
inspection.” The tohunga or shaman is the specialist in traditional spiritual
matters, often already by the end of the nineteenth century also a Christian
priest. The lifting of tapu[25]
or spiritual ban on the objects through their association with the dead, as
well as their having themselves been hidden under the swamp as though they were
too in a state of suspended animation or social death, makes them proper for
viewing, handling and distribution as gifts. When comes to describing what is depicted in the
carvings, writer’s puritanical and Victorian squeamishness shines through, even
as he attempts confess his own admiration for the aesthetic character of the
object:
The designs are of the most
coarse description, but the execution is so artistic that it must prove beyond
doubt the existence of art principles in the primitive Maoris.
The term coarse
refers not to any slipshod workmanship or lack of appealing shape but to the
subject matter: the depiction of sexual acts, since for the Maori the storage
of food, like the ingestion of foods, was necessary for the preservation and
production of life in reproductive acts.
Ancestors, gods and contemporary persons were all integrated into a
cycle of life and rebirth. The pleasure in making the objects, like that of
looking at them, touching them, and sharing them as gifts are also
interconnected with concepts of physical intercourse and communion with the
spiritual beings who stream all through natural phenomena and cultural
achievements.
Sarah
Bernhardt’s Second Visit in Auckland
[Unavailable]
Fig. 3 Sarah Bernhardt and an attendant young girl.[26]
There is a second report on this longer stay in
Auckland given in the New Zealand Herald
(18 August) and the Auckland Weekly News
(22 August) that is less objective and certainly less sympathetic to Sarah
Bernhardt. The journey from Australia to
New Zealand was a stormy one, most uncomfortable for the passengers, with one
even being injured during the trip. At
first, the newspaper reporter seems to understand the actress’s reluctance to
meet her public, as it were:
Madame Bernhardt suffered so
much from the roughness of the voyage that while in this city she professed
herself almost prostrated, and declined to see any of the numerous persons who
wished to do themselves the honour of waiting upon her. She was “too sick to talk” she said, and
positively declined anything like an interview, but somehow or another she was
well enough to do hearty justice to the excellent fare of the Albert Hotel, and
to sally forth on a shooting expedition in the afternoon.[27]
Not willing to accept that after a long tedious
tour in Australia and a troubled passage across the Tasman, Bernhardt might
wish to keep away from solicitous provincial admirers—“numerous persons who
wished to do themselves the honour of waiting upon her”—the writer interprets
her refusal to meet with them as an insult and a transparent one at that. The “hearty” meal and the “shooting party”
would be considered elsewhere necessary resting up after the ordeal.
She also found the time, which the journalist
resents, to devote herself for “two hours” to “curio hunting.” This would be an inordinate length of time if
it were merely a frivolous occasion buying souvenirs to bring home to Paris for
her family and friends. It is not too
long if the occasion was precisely implied in the previous account of her looking
at the collection procured on her behalf and which she chose several very
expensive and rare items: the time necessary to discuss the artefacts seriously
with Mr Danneford and his assistants.[28] In this report there is a further list of
what she purchased:
Besides these primitive and
artistic specimens of native carving, Madam secured a number of weapons and
implements, and has now a collection of New Zealand mementos which fills a
large packing case.
In this context, “artistic” is as much a
trivializing term as “primitive” to designate the Maori artefacts. Calling her “Madam” also shows the
journalist’s contempt for what he considers a foolish thing for a woman to do
with her money, and like her jaunt into the country, it is a few hours of
entertainment for herself she should have rather devoted to her New Zealand
fans. He goes on with his account of
where they went, what they did and what game they shot, calling Bernhardt now
“the great one,” and seeing her and her lady attendants as blatantly accepting
the hospitality of important people at St John’s College and at Orakei.
And, by the by, the unnamed journalist mentions
in passing—the kind of aside that always marks for us the most significant
details in the whole piece—“The party had some communication with the natives
at Orakei…” Here in this undeveloped
little remark is the one time that Sarah Bernhardt spent time with the creators
of the works of art and useful tools she was most interested in and which form
the greater part what is now known as the Sarah Bernhardt Collection of Maori
Art. It is also the moment when she was
“gifted with” other items, an event that would entail ceremonial speeches and
mutual interaction of respect and honour.
Would Sarah Bernhardt have spent
time among the local Maori, not in order to pass the time, but to engage with
them in some ceremonial occasion and receive their gifts? We know that during her North American tour
several months prior to her visit to New Zealand, she did go out of her way to
meet with Indians. What she experienced
there seems a mere passing episode on her tour and it is only when we consider
the tone of her remembered encounter and can compare that with her travelling
companion, arch-rival and nemesis, Marie Colombier in her Le Voyage de Sarah Bernhardt en Amérique,[29]
that we can begin to grasp her views on the exotic and the primitive, so
important if we are to try to draw from the extremely spare or even completely
missing details of her meeting with the Maori in New Zealand.
Ce voyage pour se rendre chez les Iroquois fut délicieusement enchanteur.
On me présenta le chef, père et maire des tribus iroquoises. Hélas! Ce chef de jadis —
fils du «Grand Aigle blanc», — surnommé dans son enfance Soleil des Nuits, vendait
à cette heure, sous de tristes bardes européennes, des liqueurs, du fil, des aiguilles,
du chanvre, de la graisse de porc, du chocolat, etc., etc..
This trip to get to the Iroquois was deliciously enchanting. I was introduced to the chief, father
and mayor of the Iroquois tribes. Alas! The former chief—son of “The Great White Eagle” –
surnamed in his childhood Sun of the Nights, sold at this time under the sad protection of the
Europeans, liquors, thread, needles, cloth, pork fat, chocolate, etc, etc.[30]
Il n'a gardé de ses courses folles dans les forêts sauvages d'antan — quand il courait nu
sur la terre libre encore de tout servage — il n'a gardé que la stupeur du taureau
encloué par les cornes. Il est vrai de dire qu'il vend aussi de l'eau-de-vie et qu'il
s'abreuve comme eux tous, Ã cette source d'oubli.
He retained nothing of his mad races through the forests of the past—when he ran naked
over the ground free of all encumbrances—he only retains the stupor of a bull taken by the horns.
I have to admit that he also sold cheap whisky and that he swilled like all of them from this source of oblivion.
Le Soleil des Nuits me présenta sa fille, une enfant de dix-huit à vingt ans,
sans beauté, sans saveur et sans grâce. Elle se mit au piano et joua je ne sais plus quel air à la mode.
Sun of the Nights presented me to his daughter, a child of eighteen, without beauty,
without knowledge or grace. She sat down at the piano and played I don’t know what popular tune.
J'avais hâte de quitter cette boutique, abri de ces deux victimes de la civilisation.
I hastened to get out of this shop, a shelter for these two victims of civilization.
In Ma double vie, she writes of this North American tour, that during
that frigid winter in Canada, when it was -22o F., she undertook “a
dangerous excursion” through ice and snow, by rail five kilometres from
Montreal to the little Indian village of Caughnanwaga. Her own account can be filled out somewhat by
details supplied by Marie Colombier in although one must be careful to avoid
the nasty comments she often makes about her rival and one-time friend whom she
accompanied on this North American tour.
The carter who drives Sarah and her party is not sure where to find the
Indian chief and when he sees “une sorte de mendicant déguenillé” (a raggedy
kind of a beggar) asks this “bohemian”: “La maison du chef, mon frère?” (Is
this the chief’s house, my brother?). At
first the fellow does not move or speak, then turns his head and pulls
back. The narrator, Miss Colombier,
explains with the benefit of hindsight that it an Iroquois, “un Peau-Rouge” (a
Redskin) and stereotypically these people are impassive and
uncommunicative.
Luckily, however, the young guide
and poetic admirer Fréchette knows the way, and soon enough the visitors arrive
at what is not named in Sarah’s memoirs until the very end as “a shop.” Colombier clearly states that they arrived at
“une petite maison triste et sale. Nous
sommes chez le grand chef” (a little said and filthy house. We were at the home of the great chief). More fully, the description denigrates the
dwelling but does not have the sense of sympathy and disappointment we find in
Bernhardt’s own account. For
Colombier:
Oh! par exemple, pas de couleur locale. Ce sauvage dont le nom se traduit Grand aigle
blanc, tient une boutique d’épicerie, où l’on trouve du chocolat Menier qui
blanchit en vieillissant, un magasin garni d’un assortiment complet de bibelots
indiens, fabriques rue Quicampolix. J’en
choisis quelques-uns destinés à prouver à mes amis de Paris que j’ai été les
Iroquois.[31]
Oh, for example,
no local colour. This savage whose name
translates as Big White Eagle runs a grocery where you can find Menier
chocolate that has turned white with age, a shop completely stocked with Indian
knick-knacks manufactured on the Rue Quicampolic. I chose a few for my friends in Paris to
prove that I had been among the Iroquois.
Yet, instead of the scorn
revealed in Marie Colombier’s paragraph, for Sarah, while it was exciting to be
in the wild and to meet native peoples, she is disappointed by how much the
contemporary Indian culture has been spoiled by civilization.
The visit to the Iroquois was
deliciously enchanting. I was introduced
to the chief, father and mayor of the Iroquois tribes. Alas! this former chief, son of “Big White Eagle,” surnamed
during his childhood “Sun of the Nights,” now clothed in sorry European rags,
was selling liquor, thread, needles, flax, pork fart, chocolate, &c. All that remained of his mad rovings through
the old wild forests—when he roamed naked over a land free of all allegiance—was
the stupor of the bull held prisoner by the horns. It is true he also sold brandy, and thus he
quenched his thirst, as did all of them, at that source of forgetfulness.[32]
Unlike Bernhardt, Colombier continues with a
report on a visit to the local church, again emphasizing the shoddiness of the
building and the furnishings within, as well as of the worshippers:
On nous fait visiter l’église. Les Iroquois sont catholiques. Le catéchisme vient de finir. Sur le maitre-autel, de branches de sapin. Le long des murs, le chemin de la croix,
grossièrement colorie.
They made us visit the church.
The Iroquois are Catholics. The catechism had just finished. On the main altar were pine branches. Along
the walls were the Stations of the Cross in gaudy colours.
And then adds ;
Au, milieu du chœur, un énorme fourneau de cuisine pour chauffer la nef.
In the middle of the choir, there was
an enormous kitchen stove to heat the nave,
A little later, as she is departing from the
town, she sums up her feelings about the conditions and circumstances of the
Iroquois:
Le même enserrement du gosier, la même angoisse rétrospective me
laissaient révoltée contre la lâcheté des hommes, qui cachent sous le nom de
civilisation le plus injuste et le plus protégé des crimes. [33]
The same tightening in the throat,
the same retrospective anguish left me revolted
against the dastardliness of
men which hides under the name of civilization
the most unjust and the most
patronizing of crimes.
But while it is one thing to recognize that
tribal peoples do not live in a museum of their pre-contact culture and
therefore that they develop within the modernizing society of the colonial
nation around them, it is another to feel disappointed and disgusted by their quick
slide into exploitation and anomie. Even
more, the Iroquois, like the Maori and other Pacific peoples, were not
“primitive” in the sense that Enlightenment or Romantic philosophes imagined, a state where they remained innocent of
social violence and living in healthy, harmonious proximity to nature, so that
their arts represented a purity and beauty contemporary European painters could
emulate to their own advantage; instead, these New World peoples were normal
within the context of their own material and religious cultures, as distant in
time and mentality from some idealized nature as anyone else in the world, and
striving to better themselves as the circumstances allowed. The value of their material culture—the words
art, aesthetics, even religion seem inappropriate in a non-western setting—lies
not in its purity or idealness, but rather in its difference, a difference that
proves that western classical and avant-garde models of creativity do not
occupy the top of some evolutionary tree or mark out the boundaries of what is
natural, normal or even desirable.
Sarah’s mixed reactions to the Iroquois
continues when she is introduced to the eighteen year-old daughter of Sun of
the Nights, a girl who is “insipid, and devoid of beauty and grace.” This Indian Princess then plays some popular
tune on the piano: “I do not remember what” for she was “in a hurry to leave
the store, the home of these two victims of civilization.” Removed from her historical setting, the
Indian girl does not have the skills or understanding to measure up as a
European performer and thus is of no interest to Bernhardt. She and her father have made no attempt to
transform their own heritage in a dynamic way; they merely
imitate—parody—second-rate music hall acts.
Sarah would like to bring home memories, objects and ideas which she can
integrate into her own more sophisticated and cosmopolitan sense of
culture. Otherwise, like Marie
Colombier, she would only take back geegaws and superficial pictures to prove
that she was there among the Canadian Indians.
From what the newspaper reporters say about the
excursion Bernhardt made to the Miranda Maori, she was much less disappointed
with them than she was with the Iroquois, and was able to come away with
treasures that were for her both genuine examples of Primitive art and exotic
examples of beautiful design.[34] How much she was impressed by these natives
of New Zealand may be suggested in the photograph (undated and uncaptioned) in
which Sarah is shown being attended to by a young girl wearing a Maori-like
headband and flaxen skirt (see Figure 3).
Not only did Queen Marie of Romania also meet with Indians during her
somewhat later tour of America and allow herself to be photographed receiving
and wearing a chief’s feather headdress, but at about the same time as Sarah’s
encounter with the Iroquois Aby Warburg made his famous visit to a Hopi pueblo
in New Mexico where he was photographed wearing an Indian bonnet. Though modern anthropologists have mocked
Warburg for allowing himself to be seen in this grotesque way with the headdress
perched on his head while he wears a formal European suit, for the art
historian—as for the actress and the queen—these pictures demonstrate their
wish to be part of a view of indigenous culture that was considered closer to
the real, pre-civilized nature of the human race.
[Unavailable]
Fig. 4 Paul Gauguin
In a similar way, Paul Gauguin’s attempt to
live amongst the Polynesian inhabitants of Tahiti and the Marquesas should be
taken as something more serious than a lecherous sexual holiday amongst the colonized
peoples of the Pacific, although to some extent that is what it was—in the
style of Pierre Loti’s various pseudo-marriages to various exotic Asian and
Polynesian “maidens.” It is also more
and other than just a return to nature à la Rousseau, insofar as Gauguin was
seeking out both the life of the native people and a return to their sense of
design, colour and form. In his
paintings and his carvings, the French artist tried to integrate ancient
Egyptian, folkloric European, Polynesian styles and subjects with the insights
of post-Impressionism and other modernist theories.
To rub in what he feels as a colonial admirer
who has been snubbed by the Divine Sarah, he closes his account by stating
that, when the French acting troupe returned to the docks to board the Mariposa,
When the steamer sailed there
was no demonstration; a few gentlemen who claim France as their country were
around the gangway to wish their compatriots farewell, but that was all.
Bernhardt who never suffered fools lightly and
had the temperamental character of the celebrity who has no time for
lickspittles and autograph hunters, did what she had done many times before
when confronted by attitudes such as revealed in the writings of Mercutio and
the other local journalists: she treated them with the contempt they
deserved. What she did have time for, of
course, was a meeting with the Orakei Maori whose culture she appreciated.
In Australia, the tour was a resounding
success, though exhausting for the players.
Audiences listened enthusiastically to the actors who spoke their parts
completely in French, those patrons who did not know French in their seats
having translated scripts with them to aid in understanding, but all
comprehending the art of the drama through the intensity of the performances.[35] It is not likely that a similar reception—on
the whole-would have been found in New Zealand, a smaller and more provincial
colony.
The pataka,
atua and “recently” (again that vague term) found artefacts she was offered
in the shop would have appealed to Sarah Bernhardt for a number of
reasons. First, as a sculptor herself,
she would have appreciated the intricate and delicate carving work. Second, the sexually explicit figures on the
piece may have appealed to her late nineteenth-century decadent tastes. She herself has been called “the diminutive
tragic actress who exemplified the Art Nouveau.”[36]
In Paris, she was a regular client of René Lalique’s avant garde jewellery at Sigmund Bing’s shop, L’Art nouveau. Next to a photograph
of Sarah wearing a baydère chain made
by Lalique, Fallon lee Miler remarks:]
One of [Lalique’s] most
noteworthy clients was the actress Sarah Bernhardt, for whom Lalique designed
jewellery for her to ear on stage.
Bernhardt developed a reputation as a serious dramatic stage actress and
is considered by many to be the greatest actress of the nineteenth century.[37]
Third, like Paul Gauguin before and other
European visitors thereafter, she would have enjoyed the curiosity and exotic
value of Polynesian art. Still
relatively unknown and certainly unrecognized when he arrived in Auckland in August,
1895 on his second journey to Tahiti, Gauguin was forced to spend ten days in
new Zealand as the weather delayed the departure of his vessel. During this
visit the painter stayed in a small hotel and was able to visit both the
Auckland Museum and the Auckland Art Gallery, where he studied Maori artefacts and design, making numerous
sketches and notes that served him well over the next few years, as he
discovered that French colonial officials and settlers not only had little
interest in indigenous traditions but made no effort to preserve the culture
either as a living entity or as an exotic otherness to be kept in museums, so
that much of what he painted as a kind of generalized “primitive” Polynesian
art was based on the particular Maori objects he saw—and also purchased—in
Auckland at this time.[38]
But the gossips and snide critics saw something
sinister in Sarah’s propensity to pursue other arts than drama, and to be
successful at them, partly because they did not think this was a proper domain
for women to show themselves, and because they resented her ambition to have
adventures, enjoy herself, and excel in many fields at the same time. Responding to such an attack by a critic in Le Figaro not against her, but in a backhanded
compliment, which provoked
Bernhardt to write, mixing her usual sarcasm with understatement and witty
self-mockery:
Your kind references to the artists induce me to write in defence of the
woman. Those who persist in dinning me into the ears of the public are clever
enemies of mine. It is excessively annoying not to be able to do anything
without being accused of eccentricity. I love balloon ascents,[39]
but now I dare not indulge in them. I have never skinned dogs or burnt cats
alive. My hair is not dyed, and my face has a sufficiently corpse-like pallor
to absolve me from the suspicion of painting. I am told that my thinness is
eccentric, but what am I to do? I should much prefer to be one of those happy
people who are neither too fat nor too thin. My illnesses are said to attract
too much attention, but they come without warning and strike me down wherever I
may happen to be, and if people are there, so much the worse. I am reproached
with trying to do everything: acting, sculpture, and painting; but these things
amuse me, and bring me money to spend as best pleases me. Such are my crimes.
You have taken my part, perhaps without intending to do so, but none the less I
thank you heartily. As you applauded the artiste, I did not like to think that
the woman might seem so unpleasant a contrast; and then it is such a pleasure
to complain!
Thanks for your kindness, Monsieur Millaud.
Twelve years after Simmons’ article, he
published a few further details which again, allow us to put together the
pieces of the puzzle of where and how and what Sarah bought in Auckland. After stating that the pataka was sold to her
(without saying where),[41]
he remarks that the section she took called an epa or flat decorated board “was cut into two and mounted in a
sideboard” and that after Sarah’s death “it was sold and is now in the Musée
Barbier-Muller in Geneva.”[42] Simmons does record that Bernhardt obtained
the piece through an art dealer S. Danneford who had a shop on Queen Street
trading under the name of Danneford & Co. in Auckland[43]
and who himself had “obtained” it before 1890, but where and how he came into
its possession is not disclosed.[44]
Queen
Marie of Romania’s Maori Hut
[Unavailable]
Fig. 4 Carved faces at apex of bargeboards
of the Sinaia ‘Maori’ hut[45]
Though she never visited New Zealand, Marie
Queen of Romania[46]
had constructed on her estate an imitation Maori whare decorated with designs she had her local carvers copy from
photographs and drawings of the kind seen by Paul Gauguin and purchased by
Sarah Bernhardt. Marie was the eldest
daughter of Prince Albert, the Duke of Edinburgh (1875-1938) and Marie
Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess of Russia and grew up in Britain, Malta and
Coburg. Because of her cosmopolitan
upbringing and education, and a child of the modern age, according to Shona
Kallestrup,
She developed a conscious opposition to the
artistic tastes of the [newly-founded Romanian] royal court, to which [her
predecessors] King Carol and Queen Elisabeth had brought all the trappings of
German “high” culture.[47]
Marie not only followed the lead of the former
queen, Carmen Sylva, who was in sympathy towards the rural peasant and folk
culture of the twin Danubian Principalities (Wallachia and Moldavia) that
gained autonomy from the Ottoman Empire and were granted a Hohenzollern monarch
under the protection of a Western alliance, but she understood much of the new
theoretical underpinnings of nascent Romanian culture and sensibility in poets
like Mihai Eminescu and philosophers like Lucian Blaga. This new stylistic identity was created in a
parallel turning of focus away from the Greek Phanariot-Turkish influence and the
Germanic imposition of taste and towards a more cosmopolitan and rebellious
French civilization of the late nineteenth century—not least in its modernist
arts—and an exploration and development of indigenous arts and crafts. Though
she still seemed alien to most of her people in Romania, to the world Queen
Marie of Romania was a beautiful embodiment of a new urbane sensibility, and
where she could she manifest that art
nouveau style in her choice of clothing, furniture and works of art filling
her palaces, as well as in the design of new buildings and gardens. Marie never went to the extremes of Tristam
Tzara and the Dadaists, to be sure.
Nevertheless his sense of wit and fun, his folkloric love of intricate
design and mockery of the elite culture that made him a collector and imitator
of Oceanic objects was not all that distant from the Queen’s “follies.” Both were highly eclectic.
Kallestrup points to several other connections
that lead from Queen Marie to Sarah Bernhardt and their mutual fascination with
Maori art. One is in the visit Paul
Gauguin made to Auckland in 1895, four years after Sarah’s two brief lay-overs
discussed above. Gauguin, on his way to
Tahiti for the second time, and aware of the paucity of genuine Polynesian
artefacts remaining on a spoiled
colonial society, spent much time examining and sketching the material on show
in New Zealand, not last “a Maori war canoe that had been restored for a
regatta organised in honour of a visit by Marie’s father, the Duke of
Edinburgh…in 1869.” More importantly,
Gauguin’s taste for the South Pacific had been whetted by his readings of
romantic novels by Pierre Loti, a good friend of Sarah’s.[48]
Loti’s influence ran deep at
the Romanian court: Carmen Sylva had translated two of his novels into German
and the French writer visited her in temporary exile in Venice in 1891
following her romantic but ill-conceived attempt to engage Crown Prince
Ferdinand to one of her ladies-in-waiting.
He wrote a soulful book, L’Exilée,
based on her experiences which caused no small sensation and was banned by King
Carol.[49]
Bernhardt, invited by Carmen Sylva, visited
with the then Crown Princess Marie on her estate in Sinai and discussed the
so-called “Mauri huts.”[50] In this meeting between two intelligent,
creative women there was a joining together of the two dominant points of view
about so-called Primitive Art, particularly the case of Polynesian cultures, in
which the New Zealand examples were dominant in that period between the early
treasure-hunting and curio phase and the scientific understanding of Pacific
civilizations. When read that Bernhardt
would dismantle or split the boards of a pataka
in order to use them as doors in a closet or integrate a tiki into her bedposts, it should be seen not as a mindless or
wanton destruction of traditional art forms but an attempt to see in them a
universalized sense of design and decoration.
Similarly, Queen Marie’s building of a Maori
hut on her royal estate represents the view of Primitivist art that saw its
exotic and pre-historical character as interesting in itself as a cultural
artefact interesting in itself, with the errors of conception she made and the
inaccuracies in construction made by her local craftsmen as attempts to provide
beautiful objects for the contemplation of her guests.
[Unavailable]
Fig. 6 Queen Marie of Romania reading.
However, actual laws were not passed until a
decade later to regulate the sale of antiquities to foreigners following the
royal tour of 1901 when the Duke and Duchess of York left with what the local
newspapers called “great heaps” of traditional Maori artefacts given as gifts.[51] By 1908, when Theodore Roosevelt’s visiting
fleet of American ships paid a visit to New Zealand, it was difficult to depart
with Maori treasures.[52]
[1] I would like to thank my long-time friend and colleague Peter Gibbons for
many hours of warm conversation over several years at various cafes in downtown
Hamilton during which we discussed and argued happily over aspects of this
essay. In time, this essay may expand
into a full-length book on Sarah Bernhardt’s brief visit to New Zealand and a few
other famous artists, novelists and travellers who came to Auckland or passed
through the neighbourhood at about the same time. Pending updates and expansions, this sketch is
sent out into the small world of my Blog readers, whose comments will are hoped
for.
[2] Illustration in Bernard Dulon, “The Puss in
Boots Complex” Rand African Art
(2004) online at http://www.randafricanart.com/Puss_in_Boots_Complex. It is important to note that while the cabinet
at the centre which once belonged to Sarah Bernhardt and is the object often
discussed as having been constructed with the barge panels she purchased in
Auckland from the dealer and which she then had sawed in two—thus upsetting
both modern archeologists and the former Maori owners who still see her act as
a desecration—the entire jumble of materials is not how Bernhardt displayed her
possession. This picture was taken in
the storeroom of a dealer in Paris and collector, Antony Innocent Moris
(1866-1951), known as “père Moris”.
[3] Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her:
The Memoirs of Madame Pierre Berton as told to Basil Woon (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1923; New York:
Boni and Liveright, 1924) p. 310.
Whatever the expression “went to” means it comes to us at several
removes from Thérèse (née Meilhan) Berton: (a) through her oral testimony (b)
written down and probably edited, even revised
by Basil Woon, and then (c) via an English translation by Woon. Basil Dillon Woon (1893-1974) was a British
playwright and then an American journalist, eventually best known for his film
scripts in the 1930s and 1940s. Pierre Berton (in full Pierre François Samuel
Montan Berton, 1842-1912) was a well-known actor and dramatist, had an affair
with Sarah Bernhardt, before marrying Thérèse Meilhan.
[4] Asked about this by a
reporter she reacted: "How much baggage do you take? " "About eighty
trunks." "Eighty?" She laughed at my astonishment.
"Yes," she added, "there are at least forty-five cases of
theatrical costumes. We take nearly two hundred and fifty pairs of shoes, and
they fill one entire trunk. There is one for linen, one for flowers, and one
for perfumery, and others for my dresses, hats, etc. I really don't know how my
maid manages to find what she wants!"
(Heuret, )
[5] Satirical sketch by Marie Colombier in
her Le Voyage de Sarah Bernhardt en
Amérique (Paris: Maurice Dreyfous, 1879) p. 25.
[6] Sarah Bernhardt, My Double Life,
p. 208.
[7] “Stage Whispers” (2013) online at
www.stagewhispers.com.au/history/bigger-beatles
[8] New Zealand National Library, Wellington, anonymous headnotes to a
collection of newspaper reports from the New
Zealand Herald and the Auckland
Weekly News of May and August 1891, under the title “A Goddess in Queen
Street: Sarah Bernhardt in New Zealand in 1891”; posted by voyager@natlib@ govt.nz with ISSN 1173-3446. Other sources om New Zealand and Australian
newspapers and magazines will be cited separately; otherwise as “A Goddess in
Queen Street.”
[9] Other dramatic actors and troupes did cross the Tasman during this same
period and they performed in many towns and cities, ranging from Auckland,
Wanganui, Palmerston North, Wellington, Dunedin, Oamaru, Invercargill, Timaru,
Christchurch, Masterton, Dannevirke, Hastings, Napier, Gisborne, Hamilton,
Hastings, Waihi, Paeroa, and Rotorua, places that now as then include very
small villages, provincial cities, and bustling cities. See the account given
by The Limelight Man for a group performing “The Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage
Patch”, “Mimes and Mummers” Auckland Star
(1908).
[10] The Barrier Miner says it was
only one person, “a leading member of her company.”
[11] Most likely the Prince Albert Hotel at 289 Queen Street on Onehunga
Mall, under the proprietorship of John Lloyd, esq.
[12] The most apt candidate for this writer is William Berry (1834/5-1903),
an editor of the Herald, who “had an
extensive knowledge of local and national politics, and his occasionally
waspish sense of humour found an outlet in the weekly ‘Local gossip’
column.” Surprisingly, he is also
credited with ”a sound knowledge of Maori history, and showed a sympathy with
Maori and an understanding of issues affecting them.” See Ian Thwaites “Berry, William” entry in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography,
te Ara-The Encyclopedia of New Zealand,
updated 30-Oct-2012 URL: http//www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ biographes/2b19/berry-william.
[13] “A Goddess on Queen Street” p. 23.
[14] “A Goddess on Queen Street” p. 23.
[15] “A Goddess on Queen Street” pp. 23-24.
[16] Should this be “drubbing”?
[17] The scanned text is defective here.
[18] It would now seem that the difference in the designation of which
steamer or mail-boat she arrived on has significance as to where the
Equator-Crossing ritual took place.
[19] David P. Becker, “A Rediscovered and Reunited Maori Pataka Fragment,” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 87
(1978) p. 243.
[20] “A Goddess on Queen Street,” p 24.
[21] The insertions in square brackets that are placed in the National
Library’s transcription of the Herald’s
1891 account have been added to update the description to proper museum
standards.
[22] Oddly, this politically incorrect term is used rather than atua, a representation of a divinity.
[23] The comma here confuses the syntax of the sentence and probably should
be deleted. But it is left because, like
gaps, these little errors and peculiarities, allow us to see (thanks to hindsight)
the resistances and prejudices of the newspaper reporter, the editors and the
Supplement’s probable readership.
[24] The notice of sic appears in
curved parenthesis, probably given on the original newspaper page, and
signalling some kind of editorial confusion even at the time the text was
published. The non-specialist writer
fumbles over the technical language he is paraphrasing for his more general
though presumably educated audience.
Terms like “recent”, “most peculiarly,” “much larger,” and “some” are
vague and imprecise.
[25] While related to the northern Polynesian (especially Hawaiian taboo), this Maori word has not absorbed
the European anthropological associations, and especially psychological
attributes, it now has as something forbidden because of extreme powers of
pollution. It remained one of the associative terms with noa (profane), so that not only whatever is tapu is not noa and vice
versa, but the categories may be applied or received through circumstances and
conditions of ownership. One thing may
be tapu in regard to another but noa
in regard to another, such as a woman’s body in regard to a male but otherwise
in regard to her children.
[26] Photograph from the online Reynaldo
Hahn Album. Though there is no caption to this picture, the young girl
dressing Sarah Bernhardt looks as though she were wearing a Maori-themed
headband and skirt. While only a guess,
it may be that Bernhardt brought back along with fishnets, tikis, and other objects, examples of Maori flax weaving. Like Queen Marie of Romania, she may also
have seen drawings and photographs of Maori clothing, studied of typical tribal
designs, and thus, as she was known as a clothing designer, either sewed the
skirt and headdress herself or asked some local seamstress.
[27] “A Goddess on Queen Street” p. 25.
[28] It may be that this shopkeeper was Sigvard Jacob Danneford who married
Eliza Watson, a woman who arrived on the Zelandia
from Ireland in 1874 and who lived together in Ponsonby. In any event, it an S. Danneford who is
listed several items as the source of many items in the Sarah Bernard
collection of Maori antiquities, as well as of artefacts from Fiji now housed
in the Melbourne Museum, the Fiji Museum and other institutions. An alternative
spelling is given in “Gipsy” (FBL = Frances Brewer Lysnar) New Zealand: The Dear Old Maori Land, 2nd ed. (Auckland: The Brett Printing and Publishing
Co., Ltd, 1924) in the attribution to a photograph showing “This piece of Maori
carving was bought by the famous actress, Madame Sarah Bernhardt, for one
hundred and twenty-five pounds”: “Sigvard J. Dannefaerd, Rotorua” (p. 58). S. J. Danneford or Dannefaerd
(1853-1920) in the late 1890s moved from Auckland to Rotorua where he became
known as a photographer of Maori aretfacts and ife and natural history. Colon Miskelly, “Who Wrote That? Forensic
Analysis of Museum Specimen Labels”
Museum of New Zealand/Te Papa Tongarewa (1 November 2011) online at
http://blog.te[apa.govt.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/dannefaerd.-label1.png. For
more on the New Zealand antiquities sold by his Auckland shop, see “Histoire
d’Objets/Magali Melandri-Video Dailymotion” Inv. 72. 1968 (17 January 2013) http://www. dailymotion.com/video/ xwtw3n_
histoire-d’objets-magaili_creation; and on the Fijian items, see “Fiji’s
Treasured Culture” Museum Victoria.
[29]Colombier, Voyage en Amérique, Chapter VII, pp. 165-178.
[30] This is my literal translation, to be compared to the nearly
contemporary English version given below.
[31] Colombier, Voyage en Amérique, p. 174,
[32]Bernhardt, My Double Life, pp. 516-517.
[33] Bernhardt, My Double Life, p.
517-518.
[34] Gypsy, The Dear Old Maori Land,
p. 59.
[35] One reporter asked Sarah
about those in the audience who did not know French, and she replied: "They buy books
containing the French text with the translation opposite. This has a curious
effect ; everybody turns over at the same time, and it sounds like a shower of
rain a second long." (Saurcy, p.
135)
[36] James (?Jimbobs ) “James’ Art
Nouveau Section: A Brief Overview” online at http:// http://www. jimbobs.mistral.co.uk/ culture/nouveau.htm
[37] Fallon Lee Miller, Master Artist
and Jeweler Rene Lalique (2003),
Senior Honors Theses, Eastern Wellington University, Paper 115, p.
8. available at
http://commons.emich.edu/honors
[38] Bronwen Nicholson and Roger Neich, Gauguin
and Maori Art (Auckland: Godwit, 1995).
This catalogue analyses the exhibition of materials pertinent to
Gauguin’s visit, as well as reproducing his notebooks. They also discuss how Gauguin melded these South
Pacific images with Egyptian and other ancient cultural typologies.
[39] An allusion to Sarah Bernhardt’s little book, Dans les nuages, impressions d’une chaise, illustrated by Georges
Clairin (Paris: G. Charpentier 1878).
[40] Cited in Jules Huret, Sarah Burnhardt, trans. G.A. Raper (London: Chapman & Hall, 1899) p. 58.
[41] Some of the Bernhardt Maori artefacts
were sold in Paris during 2008 by Tribal Mania Gallery, identified as 18th
century Maori panels but without further details; see ”Interview with Lance
Entwistle, Premier European Art Dealer,” Tribalmania
Gallery (November 2008) online at http://www.tribalmania. com/interbiew.entwistle.
[42] David Simmons, Whakairo: Maori Tribal Art (Auckland: Oxford University Press,
1985) p. 31, n. 20. He mentions this
same piece again on p. 159, n. 129.
[43] The Melbourne Star of 19 January 1889 reports that S. Danneford
and Co., Auckland was one of those exhibitors at the Melbourne Exhibition
winning an award in the section for silversmiths and jewellers.
[44] Simmons, Whakairo, p. 75, n.
66.
[45] Shona Kallestrup, “ Echoes of Maoriland: The 'Maori' Huts of Queen Marie
of Romania” New Zealand Art online at
http://www.art-newzealand.com/Issue114/huts.
[46] In August 1935 when Marie
visited New York City she held a tea for ladies of some importance to her
homeland and my grandmother, then Mrs. Molly (Malka) Herman was invited to
attend. Molly was the daughter of the late
Grand Rabbi in Dorohoi who, along with his wife and the rest of his household—except
my grandmother who was on a world tour at the time in 1909—was killed during a
pogrom. Moilly always remembered this
visit, as it fed her nostalgia for the Old Country and her somewhat
aristocratic upbringing, which was, of course, why the Queen asked her to
attend the afternoon party. Molly had had
a governess and was taught French and other refined subjects proper for a lady. On the Queen’s visit, see Stanley Walker,
“Welcome to the City,” a chapter from his Mrs.
Astor’s Horse (Mew York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1935). On my grandmother, see Laura Simms ”An Amulet
of Blessing (6 July 2012) on her blog site www.laurasimms.com/2012/01/06/an-amulet-of-blessings. My sister Laura retells a Roma (Romanian
Gypsy) tale told by the Queen to my grandmother, and all this is combined with
our family’s Jewish heritage. This kind
of mystical mix of primitive, archaic and traditional explains too why the
“Mauri hut” was built on Marie’s estate and why both she and Sarah Bernhardt
could be enthusiastic about the anti-rational and spiritual they discovered.
[47] Kellestrup, “The ‘Maori’ Huts of Queen Marie.”
[48] Pierre Loti is the pen name of Julien Marie Vitaud. His mildly erotic romances, like Le Mariage de Loti (1880), transfers the
kind of idylls of love between a European and an American Indian to the exotic
East or the primitive Pacific.
[49] Kellestrup, “The ‘Maori’ Huts of Queen Marie.”
[50] Shona Kallestrup describes this hut, another somewhat similar but no longer
extant, as ”fanciful, pseudo-Maori garden follies” covered by “loose
approximations of the type of carvings made by the Maori” in”Echoes of
Maoriland: The ‘Maori’ Huts of Queen Marie of Romania” in Art New Zealand 14 (1999) online at http://www.art-newzaland.com/issue14/huts
[51]“The ‘Maori Antiquities Act, 1901’ is cited and
explained in the Journal of the
Polynesian Society Vol. 11 (1902) pp. 42-43. Its full title was “An Act to prevent the
Removal from the Colony of Maori Antiquities.”
Amendments in 1904 attempted to provide clearer definitions, outline
policies for control, and enforcement.
But by 1908 a wholly revised law to consolidate these revisions and new
sensitivities was passed by the New Zealand parliament; it was to promote the
formation of a national treasure in museums and other local collections. This subsequent piece of legislation is
explained with its implications by Moira White, “The Trouble about your Combs
Arose this Way…Changing Interpretations of the Maori Antiquities Act 1908” in
the Bulletin of Te Papa Museum, Wellington, Tuinga
18 (2007) 1-10. This 1908 Act dealt with
the export of Maori artefacts from its date of passing to to 1962.
[52] In an official report of the New Zealand Waitangi Tribunal called The Huaraki Report, the removal of the taonga overseas and the breaking up of
the pataka by Sarah Bernhardt is used
as a specific example of abuse to be corrected (Vol. III, p. 945, n. 46).
