The Fredonia Shakespeare Club recently heard a presentation on Divine Madam Sarah.

Little Sarah Bernhardt was a frail and sickly child. She was dangerously thin, and prone to outbursts of temper and rage. And yet, she became “The Divine Madam Sarah,” hailed as the greatest actress of her generation, perhaps of all time.

As a teenager, Sarah announced that she had decided to take the veil and live life from a convent. But a family friend asked: “Why not make an actress of the child?” Sarah’s first trip to the theater was a life-changing event.

The play which put Sarah on the map was called “Le Passant.” Throughout her career, portrayals of men, such as Hamlet, would bring her success, and some scandal as well.

The curtain came down on Sarah’s burgeoning career when on July 19, 1870, Napoleon III declared war on Prussia.

Throughout the war, Sarah was heroic. She found the strength to participate in war-effort benefit performances, to spend sleepless nights with the wounded, and to comfort the dying on the frozen battlefields.

After the war, it was no easy matter for her to return to her former brilliance. Victor Hugo helped revive her career when he gave her the lead in his play.

Her success was matched only by her phenomenal extravagance. The more money she earned, the more debt she created.

In 1905, in her early sixties, Sarah set out on a long tour of the Americas. It was a courageous undertaking, as her right knee had bothered her for some time, and she found it painful to walk.

Soon after arrival she had an accident in Rio de Janeiro. Stagehands failed to place thick mattresses behind a set, and Sarah landed on bare boards when her character threw herself to death from a parapet. The leg gave her trouble for years, becoming immobile and eventually it turned to gangrene, and had to be cut off.

Sarah tried wooden legs, none of which suited her. Finally, she had the wooden leg thrown out and she designed a sedan chair in which she could be carried about by two men. Never had her compatriots loved her more. She performed until her last strength gave out.

On March 26, 1923, she died in the arms of her doting son Maurice, who – as Sarah had vowed – never worked a day in his life. Impressive in death as she was in life, Sarah lay in her famous coffin, dressed in white, her head resting on a pillow of violets, a silver cross in her hand.

The ribbon of the Legion of Honor was displayed on her breast, a distinction hitherto reserved only for men.

Some 30,000 people attended her funeral to pay their respects, and an enormous crowd followed her casket from the Church to Pere Lachaise Cemetery, pausing for a moment of silence outside her theatre. Her final words had been “Be a good boy. … Maurice.”