Produced by Dianna Adair, Jonathan Ingram, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. [Illustration: SARAH BERNHARDT, AT THE AGE OF TWELVE, AND HER MOTHER. _From an Unpublished Photograph by C. Robert, Paris._] THE STRAND MAGAZINE. Vol. xxvii. APRIL, 1904. No. 160. _The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt._ Copyright, 1904, by George Newnes, Limited. [These Memoirs, written by the greatest actress of our time, will give not only the story of her career in the theatrical world, but also in social life, in which she has, of course, met nearly all the celebrated people of the day, from Royalties downwards, and will be found throughout of the most striking interest to all classes of readers.] CHAPTER I.--CHILDHOOD. My mother was fond of travelling: she would go from Spain to England, from London to Paris, from Paris to Berlin, and from there to Christiania; then she would come back, embrace me, and set out again for Holland, her native country. She used to send my nurse clothing for herself and cakes for me. To one of my aunts she would write: "Look after little Sarah; I shall return in a month's time." A month later she would write to another of her sisters: "Go and see the child at her nurse's; I shall be back in a couple of weeks." [Illustration: MME. SARAH BERNHARDT'S DEDICATORY LETTER. SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THIS MAGAZINE. "Je suis heureux de dédier le premier chapitre de mes Mémoires au peuple anglais, qui, le premier de tous les peuples étrangers, m'a accueillie avec une si grande bienveillance qu'il m'a fait croire en moi.--SARAH BERNHARDT, Paris, 1904." TRANSLATION.--"I am pleased to dedicate the first chapter of my Memoirs to the English people, who, first among all foreign nations, welcomed me with such great kindness that they made me believe in myself."] My mother's age was nineteen; I was three years old, and my two aunts were seventeen and twenty years of age; another aunt was fifteen, and the eldest was twenty-eight, but the last one lived at Martinique, and was the mother of six children. My grandmother was blind, my grandfather dead, and my father had been in China for the last two years. I have no idea why he had gone there. My youthful aunts always promised to come to see me, but rarely kept their word. My nurse hailed from Brittany and lived near Quimperlé, in a little white house with a low thatched roof, on which wild gillyflowers grew. That was the first flower which charmed my eyes as a child, and I have loved it ever since. Its leaves are heavy and sad-looking, and its petals are made of the setting sun. Brittany is a long way off, even in our present epoch of velocity. In those days it was the end of the world. Fortunately my nurse was, it appears, a good, kind woman, and, as her own child had died, she had only me to love. But she loved after the manner of poor people, when she had time.