Table of Contents for this Episode
568 Sarah Bernhard with Elyse (Oct 19)
[00:00:15] Introduction to Sarah Bernhard
Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 568, cinq cent soixante-huit.
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
[00:00:31] Today on the podcast
Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about the legendary actress, Sarah Bernhard.
Annie Sargent: Discover why this trailblazing actress, artist, and eccentric became the world’s first superstar, revolutionized theater, and lived a life full of drama, adventure, and controversy, of course.
Annie Sargent: Tune in to learn what made Sarah Bernhard unforgettable and why her legacy still fascinates today.
[00:01:05] Podcast supporters
Annie Sargent: This podcast is fueled by chocolatine, coffee, and the generosity of listeners like you. You book itinerary consults, take my VoiceMap tours, join the bootcamp, hop in my electric car for a day trip, or chip in on Patreon, and I’m so grateful for that.
Annie Sargent: If you want to keep me going and skip the ads, there’s a link for that as well in the show notes, and you’ll find all of my products and services at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Annie Sargent: And merci to you.
[00:01:37] Bootcamp 2026
Annie Sargent: If you would like to find out more about the bootcamp 2026 and actually join us in France, browse to joinusinfrance.com/bootcamp2026. The dates are October 3rd until October 10th 2026, and I hope you can join us in France for seven days of hanging out with fellow francophiles, visits of wonderful sites around Toulouse, and optional language classes.
Annie Sargent: I have 11 spots for the bootcamp as I record this and it’s, you know, a year away. So, I’m sure it’ll sell out in the next few weeks. And the weather has been absolutely perfect this early October in Toulouse. If we have weather even that close to good like that next year, you are going to have a fantastic time.
Annie Sargent: Of course, it’s not all about the weather, but it helps, right?
[00:02:29] Magazine part of the Podcast
Annie Sargent: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss tipping at restaurants in France again, because it’s changing, and also about the renaissance of bouillon restaurants in France. Lots to discuss on both topics.
Annie Sargent: If you want all the links and the full episode transcript, go to joinusinfrance.com/episodes. That’s where you find all of the episodes we’ve ever done, all listed.
[00:03:02] Newsletter
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[00:04:36] Annie and Elyse about Sarah Bernhard
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse Rivin: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie Sargent: We have a fun topic today, I’m sure you’ll make it fun, but I know absolutely nothing about this. We’re going to talk about the actress, and author, and singer…
Elyse Rivin: And artist.
Annie Sargent: … and artist, Sarah Bernhard.
Elyse Rivin: That’s right.
Annie Sargent: Or Sarah Bernard in French. And she’s very, very famous. I’ve heard her name my whole life, but I know very little about her. But you make it sound like she’s a lot of fun, so I want to hear this.
Elyse Rivin: I am sure she was a lot of fun. I have a feeling that, for women, she may not have been as much fun to be around as for men, because I don’t think she liked women particularly very much. I mean, there’s nothing specific that I can say that makes me think that, it’s just that if you read all of the details of what her life was like, it’s certainly male-centered, let’s put it that way, you know?
Annie Sargent: Sure, sure.
Elyse Rivin: But one of the things that, I guess one of the reasons I really wanted to do this is because she is really the first superstar. Really.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Elyse Rivin: She was extremely famous all during her career as an actress on the stage in Paris, and then at the end of her life when she was already a really, especially for the time, but an old lady, she ventured into cinema when it was still, of course, silent. But she loved the idea of taking on new things, new technology.
Elyse Rivin: I mean, she would be someone today who would be testing all the new technologies, all the new ways of showing things visually and everything else. And so she was adventurous. She was also very creative. And she was apparently a handful you know, or two or three, you know?
Elyse Rivin: Very excessive in her way of being, in her way of acting. And she attracted enormous numbers of people to hang out with her. She was someone who everybody wanted to meet.
Annie Sargent: How interesting. And her name has survived all these years.
[00:06:36] Early Life and Family Background
Elyse Rivin: Yes, her name has survived all these years, and it’s actually, it’s a slight variation of her real birth name, which was Rosine Hélène Sara Bernard, that became Bernhard. Why, I’m not even sure, but it was her mother… First of all, she was born in 1844, okay? And she died in 1923. She was just almost, just about to be 79 when she died, so she lived a really, really long life.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: But from the beginning, she was destined to not be ordinary, let’s put it that way.
Elyse Rivin: I mean, it was just everything about the environment and the conditions of who and where she was and how she was born, everything. Her mother was a young Dutch woman, who apparently went to Paris from Holland, I don’t know where she was from, actually, in Holland, at first to be a stylist. That was apparently her dream. I know nothing about her mother’s family originally, but she went by herself to Paris, and apparently she was very beautiful, her mother.
Elyse Rivin: And her mother had a sister who was already living in Paris, and they joined up and both of them being very beautiful, they attracted men. And so what happened was that very soon after arriving in Paris, her mom, now I’m still talking about Sarah’s mom, and her sister, that is her aunt, became what is called demimondaine, which is a very interesting expression, which means that they were high-class women who were kept.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Elyse Rivin: … as opposed to prostitutes who were out on the street.
Annie Sargent: Right, right, so they had men…
Elyse Rivin: They had men who were lovers, but this was on the A-list style.
Annie Sargent: Right, right, so classy kind of thing.
Elyse Rivin: Classy, classy.
Annie Sargent: Like the, I don’t know, the escort people that are highly paid.
Elyse Rivin: Right. And then what happens is with these demimondaine, which was a whole world apart because a lot of them, in fact, were connected to the theater, is that they very often had a… a lover who became the person who took care of them, so who paid for their very luxurious apartment and who was basically acknowledged as the person in their life, even if that was not a husband or anything like that. So it’s very interesting.
Elyse Rivin: And so, Sarah Bernhard’s mom was one of these women who apparently had a great deal of success andin fact, during a good part of her life, the man who was her, I don’t even know what we would call it, protector?
Annie Sargent: Patron?
Elyse Rivin: Patron, yes, patron, long-term lover was one of the half-brothers of Napoleon III.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Elyse Rivin: Duc de Morny.
Annie Sargent: All righty.
Elyse Rivin: Le Duc de Morny, who was a man of great influence and great wealth and had a huge influence on what actually happened to Sarah Bernhard later on in her life.
Elyse Rivin: And he was not her father. Apparently, for many, many years nobody really knew who Sarah Bernhard’s father was. Her mother gave birth to her when she was in her early 20s, but it was apparently not until after her death that some DNA testing was done, and it turns out that her father was actually a prince.
Annie Sargent: Hmm. Do you know the name of the prince?
Elyse Rivin: It was a Belgian prince, I don’t remember what his name was. He was from Belgium.
Annie Sargent: All right.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. And apparently, it’s a world that neither you nor I would have any understanding of as far as I’m concerned. It’s another world completely, it’s not a world of degradation, it’s not a world of respectability. It’s a world of something somewhere in between, really.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah. I think it, I mean, when you read novels, it seems like it was common for wealthy people to keep women, maybe more than one. I don’t know, but yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, yeah. And the higher up you go in class, the more it’s kind of elegance that surrounds all of this, even if the women themselves did not come from that kind of a background, you know?
Annie Sargent: Right. So they could be noticed because they were particularly beautiful or interesting or funny or something, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Exactly, exactly. And of course, that comes from the salon de Louis XIV and all of that.
Elyse Rivin: And in any event, so Sarah Bernhard was born in 1844 to this mom who was a demimondaine, and she was born in Paris. But her mom, like her aunt, were busy being demimondaines, and so she was sent to a nourrice. And I’m not even sure how you translate that into English, she was given a, what we would call a nurse, someone to…
Annie Sargent: Somebody to raise her, really, the big job was to have milk and to be able to… So probably, this woman either produced a lot of milk, had had just had a kid herself, or her kid died or something?
Elyse Rivin: And she was probably a professional because it turns out that Sarah, who had a couple of younger sisters, her mom had several children, they were all shipped off to this nourrice who was in Brittany.
Elyse Rivin: And so, Sarah Bernhard’s first language was Breton. Gaelic, yeah.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Elyse Rivin: And it made her have this affection and attachment to Brittany that she kept her entire life. It’s really interesting.
Annie Sargent: Interesting. Yeah, I think it used to be really common. My father was a very big baby. He was like 10 kilos when he was born, and he’s a very, very large baby.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And he was nursed by his mother plus another woman.
Elyse Rivin: Plus another woman?
Annie Sargent: Who did this for income, you know?
Elyse Rivin: Right, for an income. Right, exactly.
[00:12:22] Education and Early Career
Elyse Rivin: So Sarah was sent off to this woman and stayed with her for a few years until she was of age to go to school, and then she was sent to a convent.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. She was sent to a convent. I find all of this so strangely ironic and interesting because here is her mother who is, of course, in this very strange, sort of world of decadence and luxury.
Elyse Rivin: But no, no, no, no, the children had to have a very proper upbringing. So she and her sisters were sent to this convent school in Versailles.
Annie Sargent: So do we know if she had any brothers, or was it…
Elyse Rivin: She had just sisters.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Elyse Rivin: She just had sisters. I guess that was just the luck of the draw. You know, it’s just…
Annie Sargent: Well, yeah, that’s just how what happens, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: … Just what happened, you know?
Elyse Rivin: It was a very strict Catholic convent school. And she became very mystical. She became very interested in mysticism as a child, even at the age of eight or nine.
Elyse Rivin: And actually, somewhere along this way, I would say probably at the age of about 10 or so, she announced to her mother that she wanted to enter the convent and be a nun. And this apparently did not sit well with her mother at all, you know?
Annie Sargent: How about that?
[00:13:26] Joining the Conservatory of Dramatic Art
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. And so what happened was that she stayed in school, I guess until about the age of 12 or 13, and then her mother’s long-term lover, this Duc de Morny, who basically really, not onlyprovided for them, but really helped give advice and everything, and who had paid for her education, he suggested to Sarah’s mother, and I don’t know if it was because of her personality, because it was something about her, he suggested that they send her to the Conservatory of Dramatic Art.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Elyse Rivin: So she entered this conservatory as a young teenager. And she spent several years there. At first, it was not even something that interested her. She resented the fact that they weren’t going to let her stay in the convent and be a nun, which is kind of ironic when you see what happened to her the rest of her life. And then she just got into it, basically.
Elyse Rivin: And then knowing the kind of personality she had, she is quoted as saying in her own- in her memoirs, then she decided if she’s going to do it, she was going to be the best.
Annie Sargent: Well, okay. Well done, ma’am. Yep.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: Yep.
Elyse Rivin: So there you go. Okay? So she stayed in the conservatory until at some point, she was asked to leave because she got into a fight with somebody else.
Annie Sargent: Hmm.
Elyse Rivin: She apparently was rather headstrong from the beginning, and then they told her that she was, it was possible she would be an actress, but that as far as they were concerned that she was not going to be the best, which she didn’t take very, very well. So she left the conservatory, and she entered the Comedie-Francaise.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Directly from the …
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: From the school.
Annie Sargent: So she was classically trained. I mean…
Elyse Rivin: She was classically trained, yeah. She really had, and they said in spite of the recordings that we have now today, that she had this deep voice that carried very far, you see?And she clearly had no stage fright whatsoever, you know? She was really able to take it on, whatever it was.
Elyse Rivin: So she stayed with the Comedie-Francaise and then got into an altercation with another young actress who had insulted her probably because of her origins. So she was asked to leave the Comedie-Francaise.
Annie Sargent: Uh-oh.
Elyse Rivin: And what did she do? Well, she entered the Odéon, the National Theatre of Le Odéon.
Annie Sargent: In the Saint-Germain-des-Pres area.
Elyse Rivin: Right across from Luxembourg Gardens.The theater, it was the theater created by Louis XIV. And she stayed at the Odéon for years, and years, and years, and became the star of the Odéon Theatre, yeah.
Annie Sargent: Interesting.
[00:16:04] Her Only Child
Elyse Rivin: It’s really fascinating. At the age of 20, she had a child.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Elyse Rivin: Nobody knew who the father was.
Annie Sargent: Maybe she didn’t either.
Elyse Rivin: She might not have. It was a son, his name was Maurice.
Annie Sargent: Nice name. I like that.
Elyse Rivin: Only child she ever had. His descendants are still alive today. He took care of her, and became her aide and worked with her entire life. She was very, very close to him. And he got married and he had children, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It’s very interesting because it’s like an… it’s like a… it’s a side note in her life that she had this child at the age of 20, and then just went on with becoming the superstar that she became, you know?
Annie Sargent: So did she also send him to a nurse?
Elyse Rivin: No.
Annie Sargent: Ah, no.
Elyse Rivin: Well, she probably had somebody nursing him, but she didn’t send him away.
Annie Sargent: Uh-huh.
Elyse Rivin: She kept him with her. And he’s basically, was at her side almost through her entire life. I mean, right up until her death. He was her aide, he was one of her counselors. He was somebody who gave her, you know, all kinds of advice about things. He took care of her finances for a while. I mean, she really relied on him a lot.
Annie Sargent: Interesting.
Elyse Rivin: It’s really interesting.
Annie Sargent: So she had a good relationship with him, clearly.
Elyse Rivin: She had a very good relationship with him, yeah.
[00:17:19] Rise to Stardom
Elyse Rivin: And by 1869, so in 1869 she’s 23 going on 24, she becomes the star of the Odéon National Theatre.
Annie Sargent: All right.
Elyse Rivin: And people start talking about her everywhere in Paris. And about the influence she has because what she has, and it’s of course very kitsch today, but she had what they called a style that was circular, which is… I looked this up, I spent a lot of time trying to understand all of this.
Elyse Rivin: Basically before that, from the time of Louis XIV on, you stood up and you sort of just talked out to the public in the theater. You didn’t really move around a lot. She moved all the time. She turned her arms in every direction, she circulated around the stage, she moved… she was extremely dynamic, and that was new at the time. It was very expressive, it was kind of like dancing practically on the stage.
Elyse Rivin: So people found this enthralling and, of course, this became the thing to do, was to see Sarah Bernhard do her thing on stage.
Elyse Rivin: But she was fascinating as a person. She was a star in ’69, in the war with Prussia, in 1870-1871.
Annie Sargent: How so?
Elyse Rivin: She used the Odéon Theatre. She had so much influence that she turned the Odéon Theatre into a hospital for the wounded French soldiers.
Annie Sargent: Oh, wow.
Elyse Rivin: She said, "We have to make sure that there’s space here for the soldiers," and she made them evacuate the theater, and put in beds everywhere. She was extremely nationalistic, she was extremely proud of being French, and when they said there was no more room for the soldiers in the theater, she actually went out and bought an apartment right nearby, in this very chic neighborhood, just so that she could use it as a convalescence home for the wounded soldiers in this war that lasted just a little bit more than a year, with the Prussians.
Annie Sargent: Right, right. But has had a big impact on the French culture and life. So it’s interesting that she was right in the middle of it.
Elyse Rivin: Right in the middle of it, you know?
Elyse Rivin: One of the soldiers that she nursed personally was a man named Ferdinand Foch. We have Avenue Foch in the 16th Arrondissement.
Annie Sargent: We sure do, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Because he was Le Maréchal of World War I.
Annie Sargent: Aha!
Elyse Rivin: And he gave an eulogy for her when she died because he remembered her as this woman, not as the great actress, but as this very attractive woman who was not even that old, she was in her 20s, who nursed all of these soldiers and nursed him when he was wounded in this war in 1870-1871.
Annie Sargent: So she, I mean, she didn’t know him because he wasn’t famous yet?
Elyse Rivin: No, he was just a soldier that was wounded.
Annie Sargent: Right.
[00:20:05] Sarah the Eccentric
Elyse Rivin: So this is when she became known as Sarah the Eccentric. Sarah the ‘La Divine’.
Annie Sargent: Haha.
Elyse Rivin: La Divine. She was strange. She was extremely eccentric, she was extremely dynamic, she had still this… I can’t even think of the word in English, au fond d’elle, she was still a mystic.
Annie Sargent: Deep down.
Elyse Rivin: Deep down. And she had this morbid fascination with death, okay?
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Elyse Rivin: So she had… and you’re going to laugh, but I’ve seen pictures of it actually, she had this very big, beautiful, special coffin built that she used as a bed.
Annie Sargent: Oh. Oh, that’s…
Elyse Rivin: It’s a little bit like Dracula, you know? It’s kind of funny. In one of the rooms in her fancy apartment in Paris, you know?
Annie Sargent: That’s awful.
Elyse Rivin: She didn’t use it all the time, just when she felt like it.
Annie Sargent: Oh, geez, that’s just horrifying.
Elyse Rivin: I think… I… she was very strange, you know?
Annie Sargent: She was. Okay. Yes, you’re correct, she was very, very strange. Mm-hmm.
Elyse Rivin: She was very strange. She also kept wild animals.
Annie Sargent: Okay. Not sure what they thought about that but okay.
Elyse Rivin: I don’t know anything. I’m not sure what Freud would say about any of this. She drank, whatever she was drinking, and she was addicted practically to champagne, but she would drink out of these very strange recipients, you know.
Elyse Rivin: She would like take a chalice from a church or something like that, you know.
Elyse Rivin: I mean, she was an actress.
[00:21:32] Supporting Playwrights and Writers
Elyse Rivin: She was on all the time, and what is fascinating to me is that she attracted serious writers and she also was a mécène.
Elyse Rivin: She was also someone who sponsored people. So when you get a young Edmond Rostand…
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. So the author of Cyrano, yeah?
Elyse Rivin: Cyrano de Bergerac, right. She encourages his writing. She gives money to a lot of these young writers so that they will continue work and if she has to, she will produce their plays.
Elyse Rivin: She had a theater troupe of her own eventually. She hired all these young actors and actresses, and eventually all of these famous writers started writing plays for her.
Elyse Rivin: So Victor Hugo wrote for her, several plays actually. He was a very close friend of hers. He spent a lot of time, as much as he could considering how busy he was between his writing and his other activities.
Elyse Rivin: But he spent a lot of time with her at her salon in her house. Rostand was there too. She knew Marcel Proust a little bit, who apparently made one of the characters in one of his books, literally kind of a copy conform of who she was, you know… I mean she was eccentric enough that it was perfect to put into a book about the decadence of the end of the 19th century, of the upper classes in Paris. She lived a life that was basically like that. She revolutionized the style of acting in the theater. She really did.
Elyse Rivin: And one of the things that is also very strange about her is that she liked to play the parts of men in some of the plays, and they say that she was able… although the recording of course we listened to would really not be able to give us an idea, but she would deepen her voice and she liked wearing men’s clothes and playing a part of men.
Elyse Rivin: So sometimes they wrote parts that were just specifically for her.
Elyse Rivin: Alexandre Dumas wrote a play for her on top of everybody else. I mean, she had all of these men who were the famous writers of the time, playwrights and writers, who wanted to create something for her.
[00:23:31] The Eccentric Life of Sarah Bernhard
Annie Sargent: That’s just crazy. You mentioned in passing that she had wild animals. Do you know which wild animals?
Elyse Rivin: She had a cheetah.
Annie Sargent: A cheetah?
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Elyse Rivin: I know she had a cheetah. I’ve actually seen photographs of her with a cheetah.
Annie Sargent: Those things can eat you.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. I know.
Annie Sargent: I mean I know you like cats but I don’t think you’d do with a cheetah.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. Well, cheetahs are pretty but I don’t think I’d want one at home, you know. I mean, they don’t eat just croquettes, you know. They don’t eat little kibble. But some of these animals she kept in this summer home that she eventually bought on the island of Belle Île.
Annie Sargent: And if any of you out there have never been to Belle Île, if you go to Brittany, it is a fabulously gorgeous place to visit. It’s an island that is off the coast of… Southern Brittany, right?
Elyse Rivin: The Gulf of Morbihan. And it is famous for being very, very beautiful.
Elyse Rivin: It has one side of it that’s just these very steep cliffs with very rustic looking and very wild looking. And she having had this childhood in Brittany, I don’t know exactly in what town but clearly not that far from this part, she bought herself an old abandoned fort that was built onto the edge of this cliff. And had a house built.
Elyse Rivin: And that I visited. Now it is a museum and it’s open six months out of the year. And she lived there and she had some of these animals there. She basically created a little zoo, kind of thing, so that she had these animals. I don’t think she kept them wild all, you know, free all the time but it was known that this was one of the attractions of going to her very eccentric house. And everything about her was eccentric.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, over the top. Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Over the top.
[00:25:06] Defending Zola and Dreyfus
Elyse Rivin: She was very close friends with Émile Zola.
Annie Sargent: Oh, okay.
Elyse Rivin: Very interesting. And this is why, among other things, I guess I’m sort of smitten with her if you want to say that. She defended Zola when he wrote J’accuse!
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Elyse Rivin: And she publicly took sides with Zola and Dreyfus, at a time when even among those people who were her friends, there were many who definitely did not agree either with Zola or with Dreyfus as being a victim, you know, it was a big deal.
Elyse Rivin: And apparently even her son… It was one of the few times when she was in disagreement, real disagreement with her son who was relatively conservative and who didn’t approve of her siding publicly with Zola and Dreyfus.
[00:25:52] A Feminist and Advocate
Elyse Rivin: And she helped defend a woman named Louise Michel who was one of the first feminists in France and who had been on the barricades of the Commune in 1890 and who was brought to trial, and she publicly defended her cause.
Elyse Rivin: This is a woman who was very interesting. We should probably find out more about her, to maybe even do a podcast about her because she was against the death penalty. She was a real early feminist. And Sarah Bernhard considered her to be a passionara, that it was somebody that had to be defended because she was defending the right things, you know.
Elyse Rivin: She had really interesting politics on top of everything else, at least from a certain point of view. I mean, I feel like she had good politics. She was very much independent. She had lovers who obviously gave her gifts, but she supported herself.
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. She obviously made a lot of money.
Elyse Rivin: She made a lot of money.
[00:26:45] Triumphant Tours in the United States
Elyse Rivin: (Mid-roll ad spot) She decided in the 1880s, so she’s basically in her early 40s. She is so well-known that somebody in the entourage convinces her that not only should she do a tour of other cities in Europe, but that she should go to the United States.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Elyse Rivin: And in the beginning of the 1980s, she takes one of the first of her nine trips to the United States with her entire theater company.
Elyse Rivin: She is sold out everywhere she performs in the United States. I mean, this is before the time of advertising on a major level. How the people even knew?
Elyse Rivin: Everybody knew about her. Everybody thought that she was the best thing that could possibly happen in theater, and something about her appealed to the American style, something, you know, because she sold out absolutely everywhere.
Elyse Rivin: And because she was so generous with her money, sometimes the reason she did these tours was because she made a packet of money going to the United States. And she needed it because she had debts back in France.
Elyse Rivin: And so she had an apartment, she had a house, she paid for other people, she paid for all these things, she was taking care of a lot of people, and so she kept going, and going, and going and so she did altogether, until the last couple of years of her life, nine tours.
Elyse Rivin: Each tour was 18 months.
Annie Sargent: Well, yeah, you didn’t go to the US for a week then.
Elyse Rivin: You didn’t go for your week. First of all, you have to sail across, which of course, you know about, you know, and then you had to…
Annie Sargent: Well, I did it once, but it was on a fast ship.
Elyse Rivin: I don’t even know at the time, I mean, we’re talking the 1880s, 1890s.
Elyse Rivin: I guess it was steamships, but I don’t even know if there were steamships at that time, to be honest. Never thought about it.
Annie Sargent: I don’t know. I was just in Copenhagen and I took a VoiceMap tour of Copenhagen, and on this VoiceMap tour, the very good tour guide talked about Hans Christian Andersen.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: He had, one of his best friends died on a ship on her way to the United States because the ship caught on fire.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: … and everybody on board died.
Elyse Rivin: Everybody on board died.
Annie Sargent: So it was dangerous going to the United States on these ships. It was not always … it didn’t always go well. Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: That’s right.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: So that makes it even more adventurous when you think about it.
[00:29:13] Adventures and Performances Abroad
Elyse Rivin: She went out to the Wild West in the 1880s and 1890s. This is amazing stuff, you know?
Annie Sargent: Performed in huge tents in Texas and places like that. She went to South America three times and did tours of South America, all the time performing in French.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Elyse Rivin: So she didn’t perform in Spanish, she didn’t perform in English. People applauded her standing up for minutes at a time when she got done with her performances.She was a phenomenon. She was absolutely a phenomenon, you know?
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. She would be the Britney Spears or I don’t know, who’s the phenomenon these days?
Elyse Rivin: Well, I don’t know.
[00:29:49] Artistic Patronage and Personal Pursuits
Elyse Rivin: And she gave money to artists, not just actors. The Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, who was famous for hisposters and for creating Art Nouveau. He’s one of the inventors of Art Nouveau. She supported him for a while. She gave money to René Lalique, who is one of the founders of Art Nouveau in France.
Elyse Rivin: She decided at some point in her life that she was interested in doing some artwork. She did a whole bunch of sculpture. If you go online, you can see some of it. It’s just really beautiful work. She painted a little bit. I don’t even think she slept, to be honest, you know? I mean… and then, and this is part of the legend of Sarah Bernhard.
[00:30:26] A Legend on Stage and Screen
Elyse Rivin: So we’re already at a point where she is an older lady.
Elyse Rivin: 1915, so in 1915, she is just about 71. She’s still performing on stage, she’s still performing in roles that make it sound weird because she’s performing roles of young people. I don’t know how she did that, but she was vain enough to do it. And then at her own request, she had her leg, her right leg amputated above the knee.
Annie Sargent: What?
Elyse Rivin: She had had terrible problems with arthritis, and I was just reading something again yesterday where it said that today, they would have simply replaced the knee and that would have been the end of it.
Elyse Rivin: But she used to do a lot of very athletic things on stage like jumping off of walls and things like that. She tried to be a guy, you know, when she was doing all this stuff on stage, and she proceeded to break her leg and her knee, and for six months was in a cast. And she was still performing. I mean, this is…
Elyse Rivin: And then what happened was when they took the cast off, the doctor told her that it was about to become gangrene.
Annie Sargent: Oh.
Elyse Rivin: And she said to them, "I don’t want to die. Cut my leg off."
Annie Sargent: Oh my God.
Elyse Rivin: And she had them literally operate and cut her leg off above the knee, of course, with a certain amount of anesthetic. They had ether at the time. Within a few months, she was back on stage.
Annie Sargent: Okay. That is … Wow.
Elyse Rivin: She was back on stage and they said to her, "We’ll give you a fake leg." And she said, "Not a chance. I will perform in a wheelchair." And she put on these long dresses and had this wheelchair that was not very big, so that basically she could almost cover the bottom of it with her, the skirt of her dress, and she continued to perform until she died, with one leg.
Annie Sargent: Oh, wow. But besides this horrible thing, was she overall healthy?
Elyse Rivin: Apparently, she was. I mean, she didn’t, she was not an excessive drinker, she apparently was not known for being someone who took drugs or anything.
Elyse Rivin: She had the stamina to recover very quickly from this operation, really.
Annie Sargent: Oh, wow.
Elyse Rivin: And at the age of 72, she starred in the La Dame aux Camélias .
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: … playing a much younger person. My guess is, to be honest, that by this point it was a bit too much to see her playing these younger parts, you know?
Elyse Rivin: It was like she couldn’t give up. She couldn’t stop being a performer, she couldn’t stop being on the stage.
Elyse Rivin: And she played, she was in theater until literally, just a few months before she died.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Elyse Rivin: And she died of kidney failure, but that was, I mean, she was almost 79 when she died, and she was still performing towards the end of her life.
Annie Sargent: Victor Hugo said she had a voice of gold, and that she was considered to be the greatest tragic actress of the French stage of the second half of the 19th century. Okay, I have to disagree with Victor Hugo a little bit on this one.
Annie Sargent: But from today’s viewpoint, she’s so over the top as an actress. And she sounds like she has vibrato, like she was screaming. This is not how we act anymore.
Elyse Rivin: No, it’s not how we act anymore. But of course, you know, that is the whole point, I guess, that it’s, we’re talking about a really 120 years ago, really, when you think about it.
Elyse Rivin: But she was incredible. She knew that cinema was beginning. Of course, at the time, we’re talking about silent film anyway. And of course, it did begin in France, and so she decided she wanted to make some films. And so you can still see three of her films. One of them is Camille, that she did in 1911 at the age of 67.One that apparently is the best one to watch because it’s perfect for her, she did Queen Elisabeth.
Elyse Rivin: Ah-ha-ha.Ha ha, in 1912. And then she did a propaganda movie for the French soldiers in World War I called Mothers of France.
Annie Sargent: Oh, wow.
Elyse Rivin: And she did a home movie that would be perfect for téléréalité today.
Annie Sargent: Téléréalité being…what do we call it?
Elyse Rivin: Like the Kardashians, you know? I mean, what do you call it? What do you call it in English?
Annie Sargent: Like, reality TV.
Elyse Rivin: Reality TV. She did a documentary called Bernhard at Home where she was filmed at her house in Belle-Île, and she was into the new technology.
[00:34:59] Remembering Sarah Bernhard
Elyse Rivin: She was just some sort of… she was probably horrible to be around in a lot of ways, but she was so fascinating, absolutely fascinating. She helped so many people as artists. She helped theater owners.
Elyse Rivin: She created her own theater, she bought a theater and made it the Sarah Bernhard Theatre, which still exists in Paris.
Elyse Rivin: It’s still the Sarah Bernhard Theatre, even though she’s not there anymore.
Annie Sargent: It’s probably small? because I haven’t heard of it.
Elyse Rivin: I’m sure, because, you know, there are lots of small theaters in Paris, yeah.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, Paris has a ton of small theaters, especially in the 11th and along that edge.
Elyse Rivin: Exactly. 10th and 11th right there. The poet and writer Jean Cocteau, who knew her only basically at the end of her life, he coined the phrase "monstre sacré" talking about her. And it’s interesting because I tried to figure…
Annie Sargent: Sacred monster.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. It doesn’t translate well, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, no. A monstre sacré is a, the star, the one everybody looks to.
Elyse Rivin: Everybody looks to, ‘The One’, you know? There’s that kind of thing.
Elyse Rivin: I mean, I’d say that, there are certain of actors and actresses today that could maybe fill that role. And there you are, she did all of this and she worked up until the very end.
Elyse Rivin: She died in 1923, and the announcement of her death in the Figaro newspaper, said, "The greatest artist of our time, she…" And I’m translating because the configuration of this sentence is strange. "The greatest artist of our times, she who cannot be compared to any other, has just ended her existence in a blaze of glory."
Annie Sargent: Wow. Wow.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: And there she was, and so you haveMaréchal Foch, who was one of the young soldiers that she took care of, who gave one of the eulogies, and thousands of people came out in the streets for her funeral in Paris in 1923.
Elyse Rivin: What I love about it is that, the legend has still, it’s still there. The existence is still… She’s buried in Père-Lachaise, by the way, if people want to… Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Oh, okay. I don’t remember seeing her grave.
Annie Sargent: Is it a ostentatious grave?
Elyse Rivin: I don’t know, I don’t know.
Annie Sargent: Because she was definitely ostentatious.
Elyse Rivin: She was definitely, but I mean, I’m not going back to Paris probably untilafter the summer, but I’m going to Père-Lachaise. I’m going to have to pay my respects.
Annie Sargent: I’ll look it up. I’ll look it up, seeing her.
Elyse Rivin: And so her house inBelle-Île, which she bought in 1894,and she stayed there every single summer until her death, is now a museum. I was online yesterday.
Annie Sargent: Is it a museum dedicated to her?
Elyse Rivin: Yes, it’s a museum dedicated to her. So you have the furniture and the furnishings of her house, and there’s a part of it that has photos of her in her various costumes for the various pieces of theater. And it was closed for a while, and then it was reopened, and it is actually open from April through October every year, you know? So those who are interested in going to Belle-Île, it’s a perfect place to go and that’s a perfect place to visit, you know?
Annie Sargent: Right, and I should say thatthe two of us recorded an episode about the Morbihan.
Elyse Rivin: Yes.
Annie Sargent: It was probably a few years ago.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, a few years ago.
Annie Sargent: Because you go there a lot, every summer, you end up.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, every summer, right.
Annie Sargent: So you know the area particularly well.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, and Belle-Île is really, it’s day trip on, by boat from various different places from the north or the south side of the Gulf de Morbihan, and it’s really worth a day trip there.
Elyse Rivin: And there are two movies that I just want to mention, because one of them is from this past year, 2024, called La Divine, which is really about her, at the last 20, let’s say the last 15, 20 years of her life. But you get a real idea of how extravagant she was.
Annie Sargent: Was it a French movie?
Elyse Rivin: It’s a French movie, yeah, with Sondra Kilbur-Lane as Sarah Bernhard. And then there was a movie made a long time ago, in 1976, an English movie with a very good English actress named Glenda Jackson, called The Incredible Sarah.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Annie Sargent: Which apparently, I don’t remember if, I don’t know if I ever saw it, but… You can probably find it on YouTube.
Elyse Rivin: Probably find it on YouTube and streaming, you know.
Elyse Rivin: I’ve seen pictures of her. She was very beautiful at first, but then what happened was, I think that… I don’t know if it was the excessive use of makeup, because she used to use an enormous amount of makeup, but it,I don’t think it was because of alcohol or drugs or anything like that. But as she got older, of course, her face kind of got dried up. But when she was younger, she was really quite beautiful, and she had this big head of very curly hair. And she was lovely, and she was very small. She was about 5’1". That makes it even more impressive that she had this overwhelming personality, because she was not big at all, you know?
Annie Sargent: So I’m looking on YouTube, and you can watch something called The Incredible Sarah 1976, so there’s the full version, but there’s also a clip with Glenda Jackson.
Elyse Rivin: And then La Divine, which is just for this past year.
Annie Sargent: Well, that’s probably not on YouTube yet.
Elyse Rivin: I don’t think it… No, YouTube, no. It’s probably on streaming, because it was out about nine months ago.
Elyse Rivin: So, there we are. This is Sarah Bernhard, who basically… a lot of people who are connected to the theater world, and I did spend some years working in the theater world, they will tell you that she was one of those people who helped changed what theater was, that there was just something about her, the dynamic of it.
Elyse Rivin: It wasn’t static anymore. As much as it seems histrionic and over the top today, what she did do is break this kind of codified way of just sort of standing up there and reciting things out to the audience.
Elyse Rivin: She was very dynamic. Everything about her was very dynamic, and she moved across… I mean, just imagine how much she had to have been interesting for people to come out in the middle of Texas in the 1880s and 1890s to see her perform when they didn’t understand a word that she was saying.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, and you know, for me, I mean, I’m not a theater person at all, but you wonder what is her legacy, and probably it’s that she changed her art form, because nobody acts like that anymore.
Elyse Rivin: No.
Annie Sargent: It’s gone. It’s long gone, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, it’s gone. She was… Okay, as I read one comment that I thought was really interesting. She was for theater what the Art Nouveau was for visual arts.
Elyse Rivin: That is, instead of being straight lines, it was all curves. Instead of being static, it was all dynamic. And so yes, because Art Nouveau can be really over the top with the decoration, you know?
Elyse Rivin: So much foliage and so much this and that.
Elyse Rivin: But I think that’s a really interesting comparison, and I agree with you. We would not, we would laugh at her performance today, but she did something to change the world of theater forever, basically, in the Western world. And it’s really interesting because, it was neither the supernaturalism that you get coming out of Russia, which was at the same time, Chekhov and all these people were doing very naturalistic theater. And it wasn’t this recital-type theater that was going on, you know, in France, where you just sort of stand there very statically and you talk out to the people in the public, you know?
Annie Sargent: And they do say that it’s only ridiculous if you do it halfway.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Well, she didn’t do anything halfway, did she?
Elyse Rivin: No, she did not. She did not. She didn’t do anything halfway.
Elyse Rivin: So, thank you, Sarah, for changing things in the theater world, which is a place that I really appreciate a lot, and the next time I go up to Paris, I’m going to go and say hi to you.
Annie Sargent: Wonderful.
Annie Sargent: Well, thank you again, Elyse. I’ve learned a lot.
Annie Sargent: Again, I’ve gained a new appreciation for somebody… I mean, the few things that I looked up about her, I was like, "Oh, this is just bizarre."
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: You know?
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: So it’s good that you put it into context for me, because I needed that. So I was like, "Mm- Who is this chick? Oh my God."
Elyse Rivin: Who is she?
Annie Sargent: Thank you very much, Elyse.
Elyse Rivin: You are welcome, Annie.
Annie Sargent: Au revoir.
Elyse Rivin: Au revoir.
[00:43:14] Thank you Patrons
Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus. And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Delilah Evans and Bob Soltis.
Annie Sargent: And thank you, Craig Lankford, for editing your pledge up. Craig wrote, "Bonjour, Annie. I have loved listening to your conversations since being told about it in 2022 and want to continue honoring your work.
Annie Sargent: I listen while on walks or during my work commute. Your podcast never seems repetitive, which is a testament to both you and the rich country you live in. I believe your personality and conversational style of production sets the standard in travel podcasts. Merci beaucoup."
Annie Sargent: Well, thank you, thank you very much, Craig, for saying all those nice things. You know, I keep it real, and I think that’s what people appreciate, because there’s a lot of travel content that is so, like, overdone, and overblown, and whatever, you know? It just… Yeah.
Annie Sargent: I would love for you to join Delilah, and Bob, and Craig as well. You can do that for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more, so you have access to more of the rewards.
Annie Sargent: And to support Elyse, who is a very important part of this podcast as well, go to patreon.com/elysart.
Annie Sargent: This week, I published the link for my Zoom meetings for patrons for October. I do a Sunday morning Zoom and a Sunday night Zoom. The morning time usually suits patrons in the Pacific, and early risers in Europe. And the Sunday night one suits patrons in the Americas and Europe as well. I always come up with a theme, but I also answer questions.
Annie Sargent: I have the feeling that there are going to be some questions about French politics this time, and I will be prepared. I love to talk about French politics, but not on the podcast so much, because, you know, it’s a travel podcast. Let’s keep it light, okay?
[00:45:30] VoiceMap Tour Review
Annie Sargent: Somebody left this review of my VoiceMap tour this week.
Annie Sargent: It’s about the Île de la Cité tour, and this is obviously somebody who listens to the podcast because they called me by name. "Annie, I loved this VoiceMap. You covered everything, and it was so easy to follow. Loved all the information about Notre-Dame, and just want to thank everyone who participated in bringing it back from the fire. It’s just stunning, and I was able to go to Mass. Thanks, Annie."
Annie Sargent: Well, thank you very much, whoever you are. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I have two VoiceMap tours that includeNotre-Dame, the Île de la Cité one that she took, and also I have one called Gothic Paris, where I go inside of Notre-Dame and discuss the inside as well.
Annie Sargent: VoiceMap is like having your own private tour guide, but in your pocket. You can pause whenever you want, grab a coffee, explore a side street, and the tour picks right back up when you’re ready. No rushing, no schedule to follow.
Annie Sargent: Podcast listeners get an exclusive discount when you buy these tours directly from my website.
Annie Sargent: That’s also one of the best ways to support the show, because it means more of what you pay comes straight to me instead of going to Apple or Google.
Annie Sargent: To use your code, open VoiceMap, tap Tour Codes at the bottom right, enter the code, and download the tour. You don’t have to use your tour credit immediately. It just sits in your account until you’re ready. And you can also listen in virtual playback from anywhere in the world, which is perfect if Paris is not in your immediate plans.
Annie Sargent: And if you’re planning a trip to France and you want expert help, you can hire me as your itinerary consultant. I will improve your plan, if you already have one, or suggest one if you’re at a loss.
Annie Sargent: And you can book that at the boutique, joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
[00:47:21] Tipping in France
Annie Sargent: All right, let’s clear up some confusion about tipping in France, because I’ve been seeing threads online about scams and American style practices creeping into France.
Annie Sargent: First, tipping is a longstanding tradition here, but it’s not what you might expect if you’re coming from the US or Canada.
Annie Sargent: In France, you tip when the service is good and the product is good, whether at a restaurant or at a café. Usually, that means leaving a few coins, often just the change. And if you’ve had an especially wonderful experience, you might leave a couple of extra euros, and that’s it.
Annie Sargent: Now, the big points. Tipping is never obligatory, not socially, not culturally, not legally.
Annie Sargent: If you don’t leave anything, nobody should make you feel guilty. If anyone does, well, the shame is on that establishment, not you. The server should always offer you your change. If you want to tip, you simply smile and say, "Merci, gardez la monnaie," which means, "Thank you, keep the change." Leaving money on the table is still done, but… you know, perhaps be a bit careful.
Annie Sargent: It depends on where you are, you know, if the table is right outside where anybody might be walking by, be careful of that but…
Annie Sargent: Tips in France are not calculated in percentages. Forget about 10%, 15% or 20%. In France, you tip in euros, not math, okay? You don’t need any math.
Annie Sargent: And here’s a big cultural difference, servers in France are salaried employees.
Annie Sargent: They earn at least minimum wage, which is about 1,426 euros per month, so they’re not depending on tips to survive. Is 1,526 per month enough in a city like Paris? No, it’s not. So I understand that they try to ask for tips, everybody is strapped for cash and if you can afford it, again, it’s nice of you to tip but just leave a few coins, okay?
Annie Sargent: Traditionally, we don’t tip with a card. We tip in cash and if you don’t have any cash, the polite thing to do is to find an ATM. Now, yes, some places are installing those little American style tipping prompts on their credit card machines. Personally, I ignore them and I encourage you to do the same.
Annie Sargent: If you want to tip, give coins. I’ve asked waiters to add three euros to the bill before because I didn’t have any coins and I really wanted to tip, and they always thank me profusely for it, but it’s me who asked to add three euros to the bill, and I’m not even sure if they keep that money or not, but since they thanked me, I assume they do.
Annie Sargent: At any rate, it is best to have a little bit of cash and tip in coins. This is pretty much standard across Europe.
Annie Sargent: And finally, one last reminder, in France, if you order just a coffee,even if you just go and order a coffee, you are entitled to free tap water (un verre d’eau)..
Annie Sargent: And if you eat a meal, the cutlery, the tap water, and the bread are included, okay?
[00:50:36] Bouillon Parisien
Annie Sargent: And now let’s talk about bouillon. I just want to take a bit of a deep dive into the revival of a unique Parisian institution, the bouillon. I’m basing this report on a YouTube report, I guess, called Le Bouillon Parisien, and I’ll link to it in the episode page, which is joinusinfrance.com/568. That’s the number, 568.
Annie Sargent: For those unfamiliar, if you look up the word bouillon in a dictionary, the primary definition refers to a liquid obtained by prolonged cooking of bones usually and vegetables, in boiling salted water.
Annie Sargent: But less commonly before, but more and more now, the term also designate a specific type of inexpensive restaurant.
Annie Sargent: For Parisians today, and other cities as well, I get more into that at in a minute, a modern bouillon is a promise of accessibility in terms of price housed within, often, a nice historical setting.
Annie Sargent:
[00:51:41] What is bouillon cuisine?
Annie Sargent: What is bouillon cuisine? The food offered is simple, traditional, and often evokes a sense of nostalgia, like La Madeleine de Proust.
Annie Sargent: Think of classic dishes like poireaux vinaigrette, which are leeks with vinaigrette, and eggs mayonnaise, and œufs mayonnaise, which are deviled egg in the US.
Annie Sargent: Crucially, bouillons especially specialize in cuisine canaille, which is cooking based on cheaper cuts of meat. For example, you might find dishes like tete de veau sauce gribiche, that’s calf’s head, on the menu.
Annie Sargent: The popularity of the modern bouillon concept, which had nearly disappeared, is a direct reaction against the standardization of global cuisine from burgers and kebabs and sushi that we find in France everywhere. It represents a return to trustworthy traditional French food.
Annie Sargent: Let’s talk a little bit about the business of bouillon today. The recent renaissance of the bouillon concept, starting with establishments like Bouillon Pigalle in 2017, is a commercial triumph based on extreme efficiency. Their success rests on a highly specific economic model, generating profit through products with relatively low margins, multiplied by a vastly increased customer frequency and high turnover.
Annie Sargent: This is completely the opposite to all the other restaurants in France where they leave you alone, you stay as long as you want. At a bouillon, they want you to get the heck out so they can serve somebody else. So this high volume model allows them to offer incredibly low prices. A full three-course meal with a coffee can total just around 20 euros, 25 euros.
Annie Sargent: Sometimes if you come alone, they will ask you to sit, to fill up,you know, sit with another person that you don’t know from Adam. Efficiency is the name of the game. And to achieve these prices while handling massive traffic, bouillon operate with meticulous organization. They have military-like efficiency, which is not unknown in the restaurant world, but the internal organization is described as military and 100% optimized. The goal is to ensure that the life expectancy of one empty chair is less than two or three minutes. They want bodies in chairs. Number two is high volume and speed. Large bouillon handle enormous volumes, serving around 1,500 covers per day during the week and up to 2,500 covers on busy weekend days.
Annie Sargent: Servers are highly efficient with specialized roles ensuring everything runs smoothly from placing you at the table, to table dressing and clearing.
Annie Sargent: Number three is cost control. Chefs rely on excellent organization, including preparing for the next shift and the next day called mise en place.
Annie Sargent: Constantly, they minimize waste using nearly every part of the ingredient. For instance, leek ends, the green stuff that doesn’t taste so good, it’s used, it’s chopped really finely and they use it in fillings like haddock brandade, brandade de morue, or to make a bouillon. They make sure they don’t throw much away, okay?
Annie Sargent: The high volume also gives them leverage to negotiate seasonal fixed prices with suppliers, which helps maintain competitive pricing.
Annie Sargent: Number four is modern adaptations. Some bouillon groups have branched out into bouillon service focusing purely on takeaway and delivery, producing between 800 and 1,000 meals daily, though they must adapt dishes unsuitable for reheating. So, you know, no red meat, no fries, things like that.
Annie Sargent: Now, let me emphasize, this is not gourmet food, not even a little bit. It is widely popular and not gourmet. I know this might confuse some of you who perhaps automatically equate price with desirability. We’ve been trained that way for a very long time.
Annie Sargent: But French people are very price sensitive. We think it’s pretty cool that you can get a good full meal for under 25 euros. We know it’s not gourmet. Heck, I can cook this stuff at home and make it just as good, if not better actually. Sometimes I’m like, "I could have improved on that," but it’ll take me a few hours of work and it may cost me more because I don’t have economies of scale on my side. I’m just cooking for two, perhaps four, you know.
Annie Sargent: That’s why bouillon are popular despite the fact that they are not haute cuisine. As a regular French person from a blue collar background, I love bouillon, okay?
Annie Sargent: They’re my friend. It’s home cooking on a large scale. Do you remember what I called my cookbook? It was called Join Us at The Table: Easy French Recipes Anyone Can Make at Home. It came out in November 2022 during the pandemic because I was going stir crazy staying at home all the time. So I cooked and I practiced a lot of recipes to perfection.
Annie Sargent: Now historically, bouillons were strongly associated with Paris. The initial rise of bouillon in the mid-19th century was centered in the capital. Early bouillon enterprises such as La Compagnie Hollandaise, that was in 1828, and the successful Bouillon Duval, which started in 1855, were chains of restaurants specifically in Paris.
Annie Sargent: At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, there were more than 250 and possibly up to 400 bouillon restaurants located in Paris. They were everywhere. The source in this documentary also notes a comparison that highlights the Parisian nature of bouillon saying that until recently, no one knew what a bouillon was, in the way that everybody knows, well French people anyway, they know what a bouchon is in Lyon.
Annie Sargent: This same source says that following the revival of the concept in Paris, the trend has spread to cities outside the capital, and it’s popular everywhere, you know, there’s some in Versailles, in Lyon, in Le Touquet, Marseille, Toulouse, Grenoble, Metz, Orleans, Clermont-Ferrand, Rennes, La Rochelle, Nice, Bordeaux, Tours, Dijon, Limoges, and Avignon.
Annie Sargent: I might have missed a few. So let me just say again, it’s not gourmet food, but it’s fun. It’s a very friendly place to sit down and have a good time.
Annie Sargent: And if you’re interested in getting my cookbook, you can find it at the boutique, of course.
Annie Sargent: My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan who produced the transcripts and the audio.
[00:59:04] Next week on the podcast
Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode I called An Unexpected Life: A Widow’s Journey to Rural France with Abigail Carter. She is such a great guest. You really don’t want to miss this one.
Annie Sargent: Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.
[00:59:26] Copyright
Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.