Sarah Bernhardt and Khalil Bey
Sarah Bernhardt, although already famous as an actress, was encouraged to moonlight by her own mother Youle, who, with her sister Tante Rosine were well-established courtesans. Below is an extract from my book, Sarah Bernhardt: My Erotic Life (available at Amazon’s, in both e and print forms)
Khalil Bey was a cousin of Ismael Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt. He had been sent to Paris as a sort of unofficial ambassador. He was probably one of the richest of Maman’s clients.
‘Come say hello to Uncle Khalil,’ she said to me once when I came home from Grand Champs on a rare visit. I was still at school in those days. I curtsied, but wondered why I, a Jewess, had an Arab uncle. None of the other children I knew had as many uncles as I had, either. This was something quite unusual for someone who had no visible father. I said nothing, though.
Even at that age, I was already beginning to ask myself how Maman and Tante Rosine could afford so much jewellery. The Egyptian was one of the few “uncles” who kept two pairs of slippers in the house, one in Tante Rosine’s bedroom, the other in Youle’s. When he stayed overnight, he loved to parade himself in a silk Chinese dressing gown in the mornings.
After my little spat with the Français*, I was now routinely earning my living by my assets. Funny that just months earlier I had been contemplating joining a convent. I remembered once telling Maman that my virginity was my treasure, and that I meant to hang on to it. She had laughed.
‘Ma p’tite chérie,’ she had said, ‘what’s the use of a treasure? Look at all those jewellers in Place Vendôme. What do they do? Do they look at their diamonds all day long? Where would that lead them? No, my girl, they sell them.’
I knew that I was fighting a losing battle after she put me in Parrain’s bed, and after being ejected from the Français, I was destitute with no resistance left in me. I did her bidding. Now I was agreeing to everything she put forward. With the connivance of Rosine and Popol, and perhaps Madame Aglaë, she arranged four or five visits for me, and I soon got used to it.
One day she told me that she had arranged for me to visit Uncle Khalil Bey. In the past he had come to our home when he wanted sex with Youle or my aunt, but he had recently been given a house in Auteuil, and he had begged Maman to arrange for me to come visit him there.
She explained to me that lately she and Tante Rosine were being neglected by him, when once he had been one of their most generous clients. That said, she no longer had sleepless nights wondering where the next meal was coming from. Since (sister) Jeanne and I were waiting in the wings, the future of the family was assured. If she had been slightly peeved about not being invited to Auteuil, the thought of the rich pickings coming her way must have reconciled her with this unintended slight.
Thus it was that one afternoon a cabriolet turned up at Rue de Quimper to take me to the gate of Khalil Bey’s luxurious mansion. A Sudanese butler in a fine red turban bade me to wait for the master, who was praying, in the parlour.
When he had finished his session with his Allah, he fairly hopped into the room to greet me. I had heard that he was a cultured man, a collector and an art patron. Wasn’t he the man who had commissioned Gustave Courbet’s Origine du Monde? Wasn’t he a friend of Théophile Gauthier?
He was in Paris as a personal adviser of Ismael Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt and, more to the point, Maman had told me I could expect two thousand francs from him.
He was in excellent spirits as he welcomed me to his “humble abode” in faultless French. I laughed at the irony of the description, and he explained that in Cairo he had a palace, which his father had built at the turn of the century, in which the servants’ quarters alone were considerably bigger and more luxurious than his entire home here.
I requested to see his art treasures, more specifically the Courbet, but he replied that we had more pressing matters to attend to.
‘So you are interested in art?’ I did not much like the intention that I thought I had read in his question and immediately regretted having made the request. All my life I have struggled to rein in my impulses- not always successfully.
‘Of course, you think that I’m just a courtesan, so am illiterate and uncultured?’ He blushed and assured me that it was not in the least what he meant.
‘I am an actress,’ I said. ‘At the moment I am resting, but I shall return to the theatre as soon as I am able to forgive them.’ You mean, as soon as they are able to forgive you. He had obviously heard of the spat with Nathalie.
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‘One day when I am famous, and I assure you that I will be,’ I continued. ‘I will get France’s best artist to paint a portrait of me in the same style.’ I felt stupid, but he laughed in a good-natured way and I decided not to hold a grudge against him.
Anyway, we were soon in the bedroom, and what happened there would be one of my more exotic experiences. Khalil Bey undressed me in all of three minutes. Even with his podgy fingers, he set about his work like a master craftsman, and the buttons of my blouse slid out of their eyeholes as if by magic. I then set about removing his jacket and his shirt. What I saw next quite stunned me. He was like those mummies I had seen when I visited the Egyptian Section of the Louvre.
‘I didn’t know they began the mummification process before you die,’ I said, opening my eyes wide as though I were an empty-headed young girl who really believed such a thing.
‘Mummification?’ he asked, quite perplexed, not getting my joke. Then he burst out laughing. ‘You mean all this bandaging? Come to think of it, it does make me look like a Pharaoh. But no, I am not being preserved for posterity.’ He explained that as he ate a lot, he was putting on weight at an alarming rate. The bandages were to disguise his burgeoning belly.
‘Makes me look a bit more elegant, don’t you think?’
I did not. If anything, I thought, the cloth gave him added girth. But if he believed it helped maintain his figure, I was not about to disillusion him.
‘It does rather, but I think a fat belly makes people like you look distinguished,’ I lied with a straight face.
I took fifteen minutes to unwrap him, after which we hopped into bed and we did the beast with two backs. He did so hurriedly. The moment he had fulfilled his lust he pulled out and rolled on his back. Looking at the ceiling he began explaining to me the intricacies of building a canal across Egypt which would connect the Mediterranean with the Red sea. It had been him, he claimed, who had convinced Ismael Pasha to agree to Ferdinand de Lesseps’ proposition. He then moved on to describing for me the various paintings that he had commissioned or bought and his unique collection of erotica.
‘Uncle Khalil,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to show them to me?’
‘Yes of course,’ he said. ‘I meant to do just that. But after I make love, I always need a smoke,’
He lit a Turkish cigarette which he immediately passed on to me. We inhaled the cigarette in turns and then I followed him into a large room where he kept his masterpieces. His collection was very impressive, like a miniature Louvre. I thought about when Porel had taken me to the real gallery for the first time. Besides L’Origine, there was Les Dormeuses also by Courbet. Khalil proudly showed me his Ingres, his Rousseau, his Corot and many others. Then, with a mischievous smile he led me to a small badly lit room and showed me his collection of erotica. In a glass case there were, according to what he told me, his second most treasured toys. He opened the case, took the six items out one
by one and passed them to me. They were figurines, each the size of an orange and weighing about two kilograms. The highly polished silver of the figurines depicted a man and a woman copulating, each in one of his favourite positions. To add interest, the couple, joined at their genitalia, could be pulled apart to reveal the sculptor’s loving attention to detail. There were also life-sized erect penises and alabaster carvings in all possible size and shapes of mammaries. He had commissioned those from the best sculptor in Paris.
But his most beloved treasure was a life-sized representation in gold of the female genitalia, reminiscent of Courbet’s.
‘Just look at the delicacy of the pubic hairs,’ he said
It was as though the very sight of them had enchanted him, for now, in a great state of excitement, he grabbed my hand and rushed me into the bedroom where he gently threw me onto the bed. This time his performance was much more creditable, and he gave me one pleasurable jouissance.
For a brief moment I caught myself thinking that perhaps I would enjoy this line of work after all. Youle had said that the best way to cope with this life was not to think that one was committing a sin. ‘Forget this “your body is your temple” nonsense and enjoy it,’ she had told me. ‘Close your eyes and think of the benefits. You win on all counts.’
I left with two and a half thousands francs in my hand and an irrepressible urge for a new Courbet to use me as his muse.
From that day, I decided that I might as well enjoy what I was doing and stop asking questions. Many clients, or callers, visitors, lovers, patrons, call them what you will, paid me more than I expected. A few also brought me presents, albeit often gold-plated trinkets. The money was not unwelcome but I gave most of it to Youle. I kept most of the jewellery although I gave a piece here, a piece there to my sisters. Poor Jeanne had also made her debut appearance in the family profession, but sadly for her she was never in great demand from the richer clients. Instead she ended up making a humdrum living working in the rather better maisons de tolérance.
*Sarah slapped a well-established actress of the Theatre français and got expelled
