Her name was Sarah Bernhardt and she was like no other woman in Paris. She was the third child born to a Dutch Jewish courtesan who was descended from a line of wandering Jews, carnival acrobats and swindlers. Sarah’s grandfather the family patriarch, Moritz Bernard, was a small time criminal and chiseler who abandoned his six children. Sarah’s mother was a courtesan who had given birth to twins who died in infancy within a week of each other. A year later, her mother gave birth to Sarah and she spent the rest of her life reinventing herself to the point that most of her biographers were unaware about her family back ground as they were of her ten year on-again, off again affair with ‘the beautiful Pozzi”.

Pozzi was twenty-three-years old when he met Sarah Bernhardt. The year was 1869 and he was a medical student of modest means living in the Latin Quarter. Samuel’s medical career had not yet begun though he was already beginning his social ascent and was a frequenter of the salon of Princess Mathilde. His childhood friend, Gustave Schlumberger, had lodgings across the street from the Theatre Odèon where Sarah worked and the two students would watch the movements of a young actress from the lobby window. Pozzi fixed his gaze on twenty-five-year-old Sarah and was unable to turn away. She did not possess the dark, voluptuous looks that were the feminine ideal -she was slim and athletic with a delicate, heart-shaped face framed by a mane of curly, strawberry blond hair that had been lightened from her natural auburn. Her eyes were those of a seductress, an intense shade of blue and framed by heavy lashes, her face was powdered and rouged theatrically. Her sinewy body was a perfect fit for the bustle and for the first time in her life, her eccentric sense of fashion made her a style leader.

Samuel was part of the army of students who worshipped Bernhardt from upper balcony of the theatre but luckily, one of his friends made an introduction. His entry was another student, Paul Mounet. Paul had known Samuel since they chased each other through the cobbled streets of Bergerac as children and they met again in the Latin Quarter as medical students. Paul’s older brother was a bellicose young man with powerful body, booming voice and beautiful face, Jean-Sully Mounet. He was a member of the troop of actors at the Odèon and worked under the professional name of Mounet-Sully. Mounet-Sully was five years older then Samuel who had barely known the older boy in Bergerac. Mounet possessed a rough-hewn masculinity that contrasted greatly with Samuel’s elegant beauty but like Pozzi and Schlumberger, was a Protestant and devout in his beliefs. It was through Mounet-Sully that the young doctors were to meet Sarah Bernhardt.

According to Schlumberger, when Sarah finally met Samuel, their attraction was immediate and electric. By twenty-five, Sarah had already a woman of the world but we know nothing of Samuel’s sexual initiation; as a gentleman from the 19th century, he would have found it inappropriate to write about his introduction into erotic life and Schlumberger never mentioned his friend’s early peccadilloes if indeed he had any. Schlumberger frequented dined with Sarah and Samuel and noted that their attraction was red hot from their first meeting. They soon became the most beautiful couple in Paris.

At twenty-five Sarah was already experienced in love and was the single mother of an adored son. We know nothing of Samuel’s sexual initiation; as a gentleman from the 19th century, he would have found it inappropriate to write about his introduction into erotic life. Schlumberger never mentioned his friend’s early romantic peccadilloes and though Pozzi has been described as an early amour of both Judith Gautier and Genevieve Halevy, known to history as Madame Strauss, there is no documented evidence.

It was in Mes Souvenirs, Schlumberger’s rambling autobiography that their romance was first detailed. Schlumberger, ever the gentleman, waited until both were long dead to write about their electric affair with its frequent break-ups and passionate reconciliations. Mes Souvenirs documents their most passionate encounter, in December of 1873. Sarah’s younger sister Regine had died at the tender age of eighteen after fighting tuberculosis for years. Dr. Pozzi was preparing for an examination as prosector, a doctor who prepares cadavers for dissection, a move that would advance his career. He wrote her a note explaining that they could not meet that evening. Sarah was reeling from the death of her younger sister received his missive and rushed to his apartment where she waited for him. When he arrive she occupied him for sixteen hours. As Claude Vanderpooten noted, “the examiners waited in vain for Pozzi, who never would become a prosector in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, something he probably never regretted”.

Luckily Samuel Pozzi kept the letters Sarah had written him and even the ones written towards the end of their relationship give us a glimpse of the fire that still consumed them. “My Sam, I love you, I love you, and I am yours. What a sad night you have made me pass. At last! Until this evening! Come and take me, if it can be done my joy will be great! Sarah Bernhardt, 1878.” In the same month she wrote, “My much desired Sam, my beloved master. I am yours to die of love for, I am yours unto madness. What is all this then? Anyway this evening I will see you….I slept but badly…my lips ring a wake-up kiss for you, your Sarah”.

Despite being separated by the Franco-Prussian War, the Siege of Paris, the carnage of the Paris Commune, Sarah’s peppery temper, other lovers, especially the volatile Mounet-Sully and their passion for their respective careers, their romance was to continue on again and off for almost ten years.

Their early letters are lost to us. Sarah had the habit of burning her correspondence and young Pozzi moved so often that the letters detailing their early romance have fallen into the black hole of history. Thankfully, Schlumberger detailed their early relationship. “A great history of love, as theatrical as one could wish, marvelously interpreted by two incomparable actors; one known throughout the world, the other, her Doctor God, resting in her shadow. Young but not too young – she was two years older than he was – beautiful, courageous, hard workers.”
Sarah was a woman of tremendous intensity who was very much a 19th Century prototype of Madonna; like the famed singer, Bernhardt defied the conventions of her time, choosing and discarding paramours at will. Legends adored her but she paid for her freedom dearly and was not greeted with open arms in all areas of Victorian society. She never listed Pozzi among her amazing pantheon of lovers, but he became her Doctor Dieu (Doctor God) or Doctor Cherie (Doctor Dear) after he saved her life when she turned to him for a gynecological issue. Pozzi discovered a huge ovarian cyst, removed it, earning her undying gratitude. On February 20, 1898, after successfully operating on the Divine Sarah, Pozzi dashed off a letter from the Senate to their mutual friend, Count Robert de Montesquiou.

Dear Friend, Sarah is convalescing well, cutting corners as usual. Decisive, courageous, firm and obedient…she will recover more quickly than most. Having played every other role, from Phaedra to Joan of Arc, she wished also to play the role of surgical patient, which she has done to perfection! Her cyst was no common one – elegant, deep-seated, with numerous extensions into the broad ligament, from where I had to dig them out (excuse the vocabulary!) – it was quite a struggle. The cyst was the size of the head of a fourteen-year-old child. What a relief to have it done. I felt as “delivered”, as operated upon, as my dear friend. In six weeks she will be on stage again….

While it is clear that the Divine Sarah and Pozzi continued an impassioned correspondence and maintained an ardent relationship that spanned decades, Bernhardt, like many of the women in Pozzi’s life, eventually joined a small but select coterie of women who became his surrogate mothers, sisters and wives.

Claude Bourdet, Pozzi’s beloved grandson related a charming story about the Bernhardt/Pozzi relationship, a childhood memory that took place right before W.W. I.

One day, just before the First World War, I was coming out of the apartment block where my grandfather lived and where he had his consulting rooms, on the Avenue d’Iéna. There was a carriage coming down the avenue and it seemed to me to be an electric carriage because I was, I remember, struck by the fact that I did not see a horse. I was four or five years old, so long ago that I can’t be sure of real impressions at that time. But what I am sure of is that my grandfather, whom we had not found at home, jumped out of the carriage and took me in his arms very tenderly, as he always did. My governess was watching on the footpath. Then my grandfather more or less threw me into the carriage where I disappeared into a mass of silk and feathers that covered me with kisses. My memories of this event are entirely agreeable, but there was more to come. My grandfather retrieved me, and returned me to my governess, and spoke words that I have never forgotten, probably because they have been repeated to me a hundred times since: “You have just been kissed by Madame Sarah Bernhardt!”

At the time, this made no impression upon me. But later, when I heard of the relationship between Sarah and my grandfather, and even later, when I read the astonishing letters in which she called him “Doctor God,” I would say to my companions, with a certain satisfaction, that I, too, had known Sarah Bernhardt.

I visited my grandfather relatively often, for he always liked me to come to see him at the Avenue d’Iéna. He was separated from my grandmother, who shared an apartment on the Avenue Hoche with my great-grandmother until the beginning of the War. My father, Edouard Bourdet, and my mother, Catherine Pozzi, lived on the other side of the Arc de Triomphe, on Avenue MacMahon. This meant that I did not have far to go to visit either my grandmother or my grandfather. His apartment was filled with a fantastic collection of antiques, paintings and Persian miniatures. I still have some of these miniatures in my own apartment, where I have lived for fifty years, on the other side of the ground floor where I came to visit him.

I still have very clear memories of him, of occasions outside Paris especially at the family house at La Graulet near Bergerac, where he came from time to time to see us, in particular during the War. I also remember a visit he made to us in the forest of Arcachon (the forest of the Abatilles) where my mother rented a house in 1915 or 1916. He was in the uniform of a surgeon-colonel and he wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, something that impressed me enormously. I was very proud of him, I must have been about six years old, and my mother always spoke of him with great admiration. She loved him deeply, but saw herself obliged to take the side of my grandmother after they separated. The relationship between him and Theresa Pozzi wasn’t bad despite their separation, which explains the visits to La Graulet during the War.

But the most moving memory, heartrending really, is that of his murder in 1918. My grandmother and my mother were at the time at Montpellier (they only returned to Paris after the Armistice.) I remember as if I am there the tremendous upset of the whole family, the whole household, when the telegram brought us the terrible news. A former student of his, the surgeon De Martel, operated on my grandfather. He had several bullets in the abdomen and I remember the word “laparotomy” which I heard for the first time. He died on the operating table, my mother and grandmother did not return to Paris, where my uncles were already organizing the details of the funeral. But I remember the newspaper articles that I read with great attention and amazement: decidedly, Samuel Pozzi had been an important person.

My grandmother lived on until 1932, my mother until 1935. Photos of my grandfather were everywhere in the apartments where they lived together. I believe that my grandmother regretted not having been more tolerant of my grandfather’s numerous indiscretions. As for my mother, she had an enormous admiration for him that shows up clearly in certain parts of her diaries.
He was a difficult man to live with, as they say, but certainly his extraordinary charm and his profession of gynaecologist spread temptations on his path. Dear Samuel, if I were to meet you in another world, I would be happy to talk of many things, including my childhood memories... While waiting, I am very pleased by the important work which Dr Vanderpooten has just finished, which while it recalls the philanderer, also paints a portrait of a great doctor devoted to his work and his patients.

Claude Bourdet

Sarah Bernhardt's Missing Leg

In 1915, Samuel Pozi, then a surgeon major in the French Army, arranged for Bernhardt to have her right leg amputated above the knee. This was done for an extraordinarily painful arthritis of the knee joint that had bothered Bernhardt for at least ten years, but which had become much worse in the latter part of 1914. At the insistence of Georges Clemenceau and Pozzi himself, Bernhardt had moved from Paris to a small town outside Bordeaux as it was feared that if the Germans took Paris they would take Bernhardt, a 'national treasure', hostage in Germany. Pozzi arranged with Dr Denucé, a former intern of his, to take over Bernhardt's care. Pozzi had hoped he could get to Bordeaux in time for the operation but eventually arrived more than a week later, when Bernhardt had already arrived home. She made a stunning recovery and went on to play to French troops almost at the front and to travel to the United States, where she was at the time of Pozzi's death. Read the article 'Sarah Bernhardt's Misisng Leg' by Caroline de Costa and Francesca Miller, published in The Lancet on 25 July 2009.