Born in Belgium as Clara Lardinois the youngest of 17 children Blanche Arral was destined for a life wilder than fiction. During her travels Arral befriended such legendary figures as Sarah Bernhardt Mata Hari Harry Houdini Victor Hugo Franz Liszt Camille SaintSans and Jack London who based a character on her in his book Smoke Bellew. In Russia she met Rasputin and in Turkey the sultan Abdlhamid II. She describes her recording sessions with Thomas Edison and her runins with the difficult Nellie Melba. Writer and opera fan Ira Glackens discovered her living in a small New Jersey apartment and persuaded her to record her extraordinary stories. More than 60 years later editor William R. Moran has confirmed the veracity of Arrals account and annotated this extraordinary memoir. show more