“More, more,” she often exclaimed. “You have not reimbursed yourself sufficiently—you have only taken working-pay and allowed nothing for your talent. It is the talent I wish to pay for.”
On one occasion a gorgeous cloak he had designed for her came home; a most expensive production. She tried it on.
“Hateful, hateful!” she cried. “The bottom is too heavy, bring me the scissors,” and in a moment she had ripped off all the lower trimmings. The artist looked aghast, and while he stood—
“Black,” she went on—“it wants black”; and thereupon she pinned a great black scarf her dresser brought her over the mantle. The effect was magical. That became one of her most successful garments for many a day.
“Ah!” said the artist afterwards, “she has a great and generous heart—she adores talent, worships the artistic, and her taste is unfailing.”
Wonderful effects can be gained on the stage by the aid of the make-up box—and the wig-maker.
Madame Sarah Bernhardt declares Clarkson, of London, to be the “king of wig-makers,” and he has made every wig she has worn in her various parts for many years.
“She is a wonderful woman,” Mr. Clarkson said, “she knows exactly what she wants, and if she has not time to write and enclose a sketch—which, by the way, she does admirably—she sends a long telegram from Paris, and expects the wig to be despatched almost as quickly as if it went over by a ‘reply-paid process.’”
“But surely you get more time than that usually?”
[Illustration: DRAWING OF COSTUME FOR JULIET, BY PERCY ANDERSON.]
“Oh yes, of course; but twice I have made wigs in a few hours. Once for Miss Ellen Terry. I think it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of _The Bells_—at any rate she was to appear in a small first piece for one night. At three o’clock that afternoon the order came. I set six people to work on six different pieces, and at seven o’clock took them down to the theatre and pinned them on Miss Terry’s head. The other wig I had to make so quickly was for Madame Eleonora Duse. She arrived in London October, 1903, and somehow the wigs went astray. She wired to Paris to inquire who made the one in _La Ville Morte_ with which Madame Bernhardt strangled her victim. When the reply came she sent for me, and the same night Madame Duse wore the new wig in _La Gioconda_.”