The Divine Sarah's Menagerie

Sarah Bernhardt was the most famous actress alive. Between 1,000 performances of La Dame aux Camelias and management of two Paris theatres, she made time for a domestic arrangement that would have unnerved a zookeeper.

Her bedroom was upholstered floor-to-ceiling in black velvet embroidered with silver flowers, a full human skeleton dangling in front of the mirror. On the desk sat a hinged skull named Sophie, a gift from Victor Hugo, its jaw propped open to receive her mail. She slept, when she slept, in a satin-lined rosewood coffin heaped with roses, which travelled with her among sixty-odd suitcases on tour.

The animals were the logical next step. A chameleon on a gold chain worn at the lapel, a puma, two jaguars, a boa constrictor she shot dead in the drawing room after it swallowed a sofa cushion. And an alligator called Ali-Gaga.

She fed Ali-Gaga milk and champagne. She kept feeding him milk and champagne. What an alligator makes of champagne is a question Paris veterinary science had not yet formalized, and Bernhardt was not inclined to wait for the paper.

He died of liver failure.

She outlived him by decades and toured America on one leg after gangrene took the other, still sleeping, when she slept, on satin.