Madame Sarah (Sarah Bernhardt)

Cornelia Otis Skinner's marvelous biography of "The Divine Sarah" held a prominent place on my mother's shelves as a child, and many were the times that I took it down and rifled through it, looking at the photographs and admiring the cover art. Finally, the summer I was eight years old, I decided

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to read it, spurred on partly by my admiration for its physical beauty (a book with so lovely a cover could not fail to be interesting, I reasoned), and partly by the fact that my mother liked to call me her "Little Sarah Bernhardt." To the best of my knowledge, it was the first adult book I ever read...

The life story of Sarah Bernhardt, a French actress who first gained acclaim in the 1870s, and whose long, varied career and scandalous personal life made her the celebrity par excellence of her day, makes for fascinating reading, and Skinner does justice to her subject. For a minister's daughter who grew up without the benefit of television, this was heady material, and I tore through Madame Sarah as if it had been a romance, or an adventure story.

This book introduced me, not only to an extraordinary woman, but to the wonders of biography, and for that I am most grateful. I have never read any other books devoted to Bernhardt, and cannot therefore comment on the accuracy of Skinner's portrayal; but having read Madame Sarah many time over, I can say that I always find it well-written and compelling. In this age of celebrity gossip, I sometimes think a little wistfully of "Madame Sarah," who could teach today's superstars to be scandalous with style.

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