Sarah was now thirty-six years old. Her son, Maurice, had reached his seventeenth year, and was already causing her a good deal of trouble, due to her eccentric way of bringing him up.
She was original in her treatment of his childish faults. When he was six, he persisted in a habit of chewing the tips of his gloves, and no correction, apparently, could cure him of the habit. Exasperated, Sarah one day made him take a pair of gloves to the kitchen, fry them in butter, and eat them! The cure proved effective.
I do not intend to devote much of this biography to Maurice Bernhardt. He is still alive, and I understand he is writing his own memoirs. It is my opinion, however, that it was not he himself but Sarah’s own conception of the boon of motherhood which throughout her life was perhaps its outstanding influence.
Maurice was a wilful, headstrong, nervous child; strong for his size, and a handful for the various nurses who were engaged to look after him.
Sarah was stern with him at times, indulgent at others; and she educated him to rely upon her, and never once, even in her old age, did she rely upon him.
When he was twelve, Maurice was already quite a “man about town,” preferring adult companionship and evincing precocious likes and dislikes. When he was fifteen, Sarah settled a large sum on him and before he was twenty his income from her was 60,000 francs annually. She always told her friends that she did not mind what he did with the money, so long as he dressed himself properly.
Thus, almost from infancy, Maurice was accustomed to an amount of luxury that was far in advance of his mother’s real circumstances.
The sole thing on which she insisted was that he should learn the art of fencing, so as to defend his life in case of a duel. This art, when once learned, got the youngster into several scrapes, which cost Sarah a good deal of money.
As a small child Maurice appeared with Sarah on the stage on one or two occasions, but he evinced no great talent for the theatre. He also, when a young man, attempted the art of playwriting, assisted by his mother, but met with no greater success. In later years he tried to persuade his mother to make him general manager of the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, in her stead. It was the only thing she ever denied him.
Sarah’s various studios and flats were always filled with pictures of Maurice at all ages—many of them being sketches or paintings by Sarah herself.