SOURCE: "'Sarah's' Memoirs," in Around Theatres, Rupert Hart-Davis, December 7, 1907, pp. 485-8.

In the following essay, originally published in 1907, Beerbohm praises the skill with which Bernhardt wrote her Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt, noting, however, that it was typical of Bernhardt to practice all her endeavors with unusual skill and knowledge.

I wish I had read this book [Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt] before I left London. In a very small and simple village on the coast of Italy I find it over-exciting. Gray and gentle are the olive-trees around me; and the Mediterranean mildly laps the shore, with never a puff of wind for the fishermen, whose mothers and wives and daughters sit plying their bobbins all day long in the shade of the piazza. In mellow undertones they are gossiping, these women at their work, all day long, and day after day. Gossiping of what, in this place where...