Customer Reviews

Pauline Cushman: Spy of the Cumberland

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

William Christen's book, Pauline Cushman: Spy of the Cumberland, is an amazing biography of an extraordinary woman. Christen spent thirteen years researching the Major (Pauline Cushman) and compiled his findings into a complete and accurate biography that looks at the woman behind the legends. The Major was a charming and intelligent woman whose story is one that kept me intrigued. At times I found myself disliking her, yet I felt sorry for her. And, all the while I admired her spunk, independence and fearlessness. It was probable the Major could out-shoot and out-drink many a man but she demanded the respect due a lady.

Christen is to be commended for undertaking the biography of a real and complex woman who experienced setbacks and financial struggles throughout her life. Leading a relatively nomadic life, the Major was an extremely unconventional woman for her time. Christen's book explores her obscure beginnings to her career on stage. He then takes his readers to the battlegrounds of the Civil War and to the dusty desolate territory of Arizona. The journey then continues from the wild frontier to her final days in San Francisco. In addition, Christen confronted the complicated task of exploring the relationships between the Major and those she left behind; and her unpleasant dependence on alcoholism and drug abuse.

Any reader interested in the historical roles of women will enjoy Christen's book Pauline Cushman as it chronicles the life of a unique lady whose spirit roams the stage by day and whose memory lingers like the crimson-tinted sky of an Arizona sunset.

Pauline Cushman, it turns out, was an unusually hard-to-document character. Intentionally and unintentionally, she accumulated layers of myth and legend around her like nobody else I know of.

It was very interesting to see Christen teasing the truth out of the legends. He supplies lots of detail about the process of finding documents, verifying claims, and so forth. It's a neat glimpse into the historian's art - gives you a clearer view of what the discipline of history itself is, neither revealed truth nor bunk, but the fruits of a painstaking and rational process. It's also a great look at the world around the 19th-century theater.