George Sand

GEORGE SAND is a name which the English-speaking world still pronounces with something less than respect. She was not of our race, nor of our manners, and her immediate ancestors were extreme types of every-thing in human character most remote from ourselves and our sense of the right and becoming.

To begin with, she was the great-granddaughter of that brilliant, dissolute Maurice de Saxe, Marshal of France, who in 1745 won for Louis XV and in his presence the battle of Fontenoy. Her great-grandmother, a scarcely less remarkable personage, was Aurora, the beautiful Countess von Koenigsmark. Her grandmother, the child of this famous, disorderly pair, a lady deeply imbued with aristocratic feeling, was proud of her illustrious, irregular descent, and preserved in her demeanor the formality of a past period. In her youth she experienced strange vicissitudes. Withdrawn at an early age from a convent in order to marry Count de Horn, of whom she knew nothing, she was left a widow while fetes were in progress in honor of the newly married couple. She lived for some time upon a modest pension allowed her by the Dauphiness; then, that Princess dying, she was left destitute. It was a fashion then in Europe for persons who had no other resource to apply for aid to Voltaire, and to him the young Countess appealed. Madame Sand always preserved among her treasures her grandmother's letter to the chief of the " philosophers," and his reply.

"It is to the singer of Fontenoy that the daughter of Marshal (1e Saxe addresses herself in order to obtain bread," wrote the Countess. ". . . I have thought that he who has immortalized the victories of the father would be interested in the misfortunes of the daughter. To him it belongs to adopt the children of heroes, and to be my support, as he is that of the daughter of the great Corneille."

"Madame," the aged poet replied, "I shall go very soon to rejoin the hero your father, and I shall inform him with indignation of the condition in which his daughter now is." He then advised her to appeal to his particular friend, the Duchess de Choiseul, wife of the prime minister, "whose soul is just, noble, and beneficent."

"Doubtless," he concluded, " you did me too much honor when you thought a sick old man, persecuted and withdrawn from the world, could be so happy as to serve the daughter of Marshal de Saxe. But you have done me justice in not doubting the lively interest I take in the daughter of so great a man."

This letter, which she hastened to show to the Duchess de Choiseul, procured her the relief of which she stood iii need, and shortly afterward she married again. Her second husband, M. Dupin, died after ten years of wedded life, leaving to his widow the care of their only child, Maurice. Madame Dupin, with what the Revolution had left to her of her husband's property, then purchased the country estate of Nohant, in Berri, since made famous through the genius of George Sand, and went there to live with her son. He, when twenty-six years of age, contracted a secret marriage with Sophie Victorie Delaborde, a Swiss milliner, the daughter of a dealer in song birds.

July 5, 1804, the last year of the Republic and the first of the Empire, a daughter was born to this oddly-assorted couple, who bestowed upon her the name of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore. The infancy of this child was passed in Paris with her mother, her father residing with them whenever his military duties did not require his presence elsewhere. Captain Dupin, however, as aide-de-camp to Prince Murat, was so much away from home that in 1808 his wife, unable to bear a longer separation, went to join him in Madrid. Little Aurore, four years of age, accompanied her, and was presented to Murat attired for the occasion in a miniature copy of her father's uniform, including spurs, high boots, and tiny sword. The Prince was pleased with the jest, and took a fancy to his little aide-de-camp, as he called her.
Captain Dupin, shortly after his return to France, was killed by a fall from his horse. This sad event doomed his little daughter to live for many years in an atmosphere of discord, the object of continual contention between her plebeian mother and her patrician grand-mother, each of whom claimed her duty and affection. Obedience she rendered to both when their commands, too frequently contradictory, permitted; but her heart was her mother's. Within the walls of the chateau she passed unhappy hours, for the domestic warfare was to her a constant source of misery; but, once out of doors playing with her village companions, exploring every nook and corner of the fields and woods, and listening half creduously to the legends and fairy tales of the neighbor-hood, her vivid imagination and her admirable health made her one of the gayest and happiest of children. After a time, too, a separation was gradually effected between her mother and herself, and this, although grievous in itself, rendered her life more peaceful. Madame Maurice Dupin, who was poor, in consideration of the benefits such an arrangement would confer upon the child, consented to leave her in the care of her grandmother, and herself removed permanently to Paris. Aurore slowly learned to love the old lady whose formal manners long repelled and chilled her. For years it was her dearest hope to effect a reconciliation, and she resented with more than childish indignation the scornful remarks of the servants, who used to taunt her with wishing to go to her mother and eat beans in a garret, rather than stay at the chateau and learn to be a lady.

Her education was varied and peculiar. While on the one hand her grandmother and her grandmother's friends tried their best to teach her the elaborate accomplishments and submissive demeanor which they considered desirable in a young girl, on the other she was dabbling in Latin. history, literature, and classic mythology, playing practical jokes upon her tutor, and inventing new games and dances for herself and the village children. Of religious instruction she had none. In the course of time she invented for herself a Being half hero, half deity, whom she named Corambe, a Greek god possessed of the Christian virtues, to whom she erected shrines in the woods, before which, as an acceptable sacrifice, she 'would lay flowers and set free the birds and butterflies that she had taken captive.

When she was thirteen, all this came to an end. She was sent to the English convent of Augustine nuns in Paris. The pupils iii this convent were divided into two bands—the diables or mischievous girls, and the sages or good girls. Aurore was promptly enrolled among the diables, and so distinguished herself by pranks of many kinds, and especially by her earnestness in an enterprise called mysteriously "the Deliverance of the Victim" (the search, partly serious and partly frolicsome, for an erring nun supposed to be imprisoned somewhere within the building), that she soon earned the appellation of Madcap from her admiring friends. But, in the second year of her stay, this heroic undertaking suddenly lost its charm. She was converted, became a devoted Catholic, and desired fervently to become a nun. By her companions she was now renamed, Saint Aurore.

The sisters were too wise to encourage her excessive devotion, and her confessor, disapproving sudden asceticism, ordered her as a penance to continue the games and amusements from which she wished to withdraw. Her taste for them quickly returned, and she became again a leader among her companions, although scrupulously avoiding anything like mischief or insubordination. Her desire for the cloister was not finally dispelled until a year or two later, when a fever of reading came upon her, and she devoured in turn the pages of Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Bossuet, Pascal Montaigne, Montesquieu, Leibnitz, and others.

"Reading Leibnitz," she afterward remarked, " I became a Protestant without knowing it."

A little later she found in Jean Jacques Rousseau a writer whose poetic treatment of religious subjects impressed her still more strongly. She passed through many phases of religious feeling in her life, but she was enabled to say in later years:

"As to my religion, the ground of it has never varied.

The forms of the past have vanished for me as for my century before the light of study and reflection. But the eternal doctrine of believers, of God and His goodness, the immortal soul and the hopes of another life, this is what, in myself, has been proof against all examination, all discussion, and even intervals of despairing doubt."

Aurore Dupin left the convent and returned to Nohant, in 1820, when she was fifteen years of age. At the chateau she now passed the midnight hours in study, and in considering the most difficult problems of existence; but her days were spent in a very different manner. Within doors she exerted herself to keep on peaceable terms with her grandmother, whose temper had not improved with age, in practicing the harp, in drawing, in studying philosophy and anatomy, and in getting up little comedies to amuse her elders; out-of-doors, attired for greater convenience in a suit of boy's clothes, with blouse and gaiters, she pursued botany or hunted quails with her eccentric tutor, M. Deschatrcs. She was a fearless rider, as well as a good shot ; both these last accomplishments being due to the instruction of her half-brother Hippolyte, who had taught her during a brief visit home, while on leave of absence from his regiment. Her daring feats astonished and shocked the neighbors ; but M. Deschatrcs, who cared for nothing but quails and anatomy, did not trouble himself to restrain her, and oid Madame Dupin was fast falling into her dotage. The young girl was free from restraint.

A year later the old lady died, leaving all her property to Aurore. She now returned to her mother in Paris, hoping for a happiness which she did not find. Time and absence had loosened the bond between them, and Madame Maurice Dupin was not blessed with an equable disposition. Aurore obeyed her in everything without question, but this excess of submission only exasperated the mother, and it was a relief to both when the girl went to visit some friends at their country house near Melun. Here she met M. Casimir Dudevant, a young man of twenty-seven, who was pleased with her from the first. In a short time he offered her his hand, and she accepted him.

She was then a beautiful girl of eighteen. Her hair, dark and curly, fell in profusion upon her shoulders ; her features were good, her complexion of a pale, clear olive tint, her eyes dark, soft, and full of expression. If her figure was somewhat too short, she possessed small and beautifully shaped hands and feet. Her manners were simple, her voice gentle and low. With strangers and acquaintances she was reserved, and did not shine in conversation ; but among friends she was animated, frank, and charming. It is little wonder that M. Dudevant was attracted by her, but it is somewhat surprising that he was not in love with her. The marriage was admitted by both to be one founded upon friendship only. Doubtless it was by Aurore regarded as an escape from her difficult relations with her mother. It proved a sad mistake.
The young couple, fatally ignorant of each other's character, proved to have few tastes in common ; their dispositions were wholly uncongenial ; and, to make matters worse, M. Dudevant after a time fell into habits of dissipation. For the sake of her two children, Maurice and Solange, Madame Dudevant made no attempt to release herself, until at the end of eight years, she found that the situation had become intolerable. She was totally indifferent to her husband, and he regarded her with feelings of positive dislike.

She then made a curious proposition to him. For some time she had been conscious of her literary talent, and she now proposed to her husband that he should permit her to spend every alternate three months in Paris, there to try her fortune with her pen.' Her youngest child, the little Solange, was to join her as soon as she was comfortably established ; her son, whom she did not wish to remove from his excellent tutor, if indeed his father would have let him go, was to remain at Nohant, where she would herself reside (luring six months of the year.

She was to be allowed six hundred dollars per annum from her own fortune, on condition that she never exceeded that sum, and the rest of her property was to remain in the hands of M. Dudevant. To this singular compromise lie at once assented, and she set out for the capital in 1831.

She carried introductions to one or two literary people, but they gave her small encouragement. A novelist to whom she first applied told her that women ought not to write at all. Another tried to cheer her with the information that if she persevered she might some day make as much as three hundred dollars a year by writing, although he condemned as valueless such specimens as she showed him of her fiction. He took her, however, upon the staff of Figaro, of which paper he was the editor, and paid her for her labor at the rate of seven francs ($1.35) a column. Here talents were not suited to journalism ; but she worked hard and faithfully for Figaro. In those days she was excluded by her sex from places to which, in her profession, it was desirable she should have access. She therefore assumed once more the masculine disguise to which she had become accustomed in her girlhood, and was enabled to pass anywhere as a student of sixteen. After she had become famous, much odium was cast upon her on account of this habit of hers by the scandal-mongers.

She soon made friends among the literary Bohemians of Paris, and many of her earlier and briefer works were written in collaboration with one of them, M. Jules Bandeau, afterwards the author of several successful novels and plays. These joint performances included a novelette entitled La Prima Donna, and a complete novel, called Rose et Blanche, which was published under M. Sandeau's nom de-plume of Jules Sand. It was a book of no importance, and is now omitted from the works of both its authors, but it attracted the notice of a publisher, who requested another volume from the same pen. A new novel written entirely by Madame Dudevant was then lying in her desk, and she at once gave this into his hands. M. Sandeau, unwilling to claim any credit for a work in which he had no share, refused to permit her to use their usual pseudonym. To oblige the publisher, who wished to connect the work with its predecessor, it was decided that only the prefix should be changed, and George, a favorite name among husbandmen, was selected as representative of her native province of Berri. In April, 1832, the book appeared. It was entitled, " Indiana, by George Sand."

Its success with the public was so immediate and so great that the author was alarmed.

"The success of Indiana has thrown me into dismay," she wrote to an old friend. "Till now, I thought my writing was without consequence and would not merit the slightest attention. Fate has decreed otherwise. The unmerited admiration of which I have become the object must be justified."

Many, even of those who praised her most, predicted that she would never equal this first venture ; but Valentine, which appeared a few months later, convinced them of their error. Both these books are stories of unhappy marriage. Indiana is a romantic, high-spirited girl, bound for life to a dull, imperious, but not bad-hearted man much older than herself. The other chief characters are a graceful, heartless scoundrel who makes love to her, and a cousin, a sort of guardian angel, who, after long loving her in silence, at last succeeds in rescuing her from her miserable situation. Valentine, like Indiana, is the victim of a marriage de convenance. The highly-wrought scenes of passion, and the exaggerated language of many passages which now repel the reader, were then admired. In the simple portions we can already recognize that simple, forcible, and picturesque style which so delights us in her tales of humble life—in La Petite-Fadette, and La Mare au Diable.

The next work of Madame Sand—for her friends as well as the public now learned to call her by that name —was that Lelia, of which almost every one has heard, although it has now, at least in England and America, few readers. Lelia is a novel of impossible characters and incidents, written in a declamatory manner. Its only interest is as a psychological study of the author, for into this work she was wont to say she had put more of her-self than into any other. She nevertheless pronounced it in later years absurd as a work of art. Lelia surprised her friends at the time—although it pleased most of them —and was highly successful with the public. One of her friends, a naturalist, wrote to her: 

"Lelia is a fancy type. It is not like you—you who are merry, who dance the bourree, who appreciate lepidoptera, who do not despise puns, who are not a bad needle-woman, and make very good preserves. Is it possible that you should have thought so much, felt so much, with-out any one having any idea of it ? "

It was a book written in a period of mental depression, at a time when her faith appeared to be forsaking her. Although it is by no means typical of her ordinary fiction, it was destined to produce an impression of her as a writer opposed to marriage and morality, and to create a prejudice which in England and our country has but recently begun to give way. Some critics had already accused her of propounding revolutionary doctrines in Indiana and Valentine. It is true she declared herself against commercial marriages, and taught that every union should be based upon love ; but this, at least in our fortunate land and century, does not strike us as either shocking or novel.

From this time the life of George Sand was that of an indefatigable literary worker, and no year passed unmarked by the issue of new works under her name. Yet, notwithstanding these labors, her iron constitution permitted her to take Iong journeys, to enjoy society, and often to abandon herself to the delights of her country home. She wrote chiefly at night : in the day time she walked, climbed, and rode horseback as freely and frequently as in her girlhood, and her letters to her friends dwell continually upon these simple, exhilarating pleasures. She had, during her whole life, three unfailing sources of delight—her children, nature, and music.

The strange compromise which she had made with her husband was evidently one which could not continue. In 1833 she applied for a divorce, which, after some difficulties with regard to the children, was granted her. While it was still doubtful whether their guardianship should be entrusted to her or to their father, she seriously considered the idea, in case of a decision adverse to her claim, of leaving France and escaping with them to America. The judgment of the court finally placed her in possession both of them and of the estate of Nohant. To Maurice and Solange she was ever a devoted mother. She attended personally to their education and shared their amusements. Their affection and their happiness fully rewarded her ; and, as both on attaining maturity made fortunate marriages, she was enabled to show herself as an excellent grandmother also.

Of Nohant and the neighboring region she never tired. " Never a cockchafer passes but I run after it," she says, describing her country walks ; and she confesses how, onone occasion, the sight of the cooling stream of the Indre proved an irresistible temptation to her, and she walked into the water fully dressed—proceeding afterwards untroubled upon her twelve-mile walk, while her clothes dried upon her in the sun. Nor did her interest in the villagers ever flag, and the little peasant children who had been her playmates in youth found her a friend in their Old 'age.

Her life from middle age onward was often saddened by the troubles of her country. In her political feelings she was republican, and she was accused of being a socialist. Many of her dear friends were ardent politicians, and when, after the flight of Louis Philippe in 1848, a provisional government was formed with Lamartine at its head, she was irresistibly drawn to take a part in the struggle.

"My heart is full and my head on fire," she wrote to a fellow-laborer. " All my physical ailments, all my personal sorrows are_ forgotten. I live, I am strong, active; I am not more than twenty years old."

She worked hard to strengthen and uphold the new government. She wrote many fiery articles, and more than one ministerial manifesto was attributed, with good reason, to her pen. She never relaxed in her efforts until leader after leader proved unfitted for his position, and to persist was manifestly useless. Returning from Paris, where she had been staying that she might be upon the field of action, to rest quietly in her country home, she found herself regarded with horror by the peas-ants, who called her a communist.

"A pack of idiots," she wrote indignantly to a friend, " who threaten to come and set fire to Nohant! . . When they come this way and I walk through the midst of them they take off their hats; but when they have gone by, they summon courage to shout, ' Down with the communists ! "

After the overthrow of the Provisional Government, she had no desire to enter politics again. Her theory of government remained unshaken, but she had little hope of seeing it successfully realized in France during her life-time. She mingled no more in public affairs except so far as after the coup d'etat to ask of Louis Napoleon, with whom she had at one time corresponded, a pardon for some of her old friends who had been condemned to transportation. Her petition was granted at once.

Born in the last year of the First Empire, George Sand lived through the Franco-Prussian War, and saw the return of peace and prosperity. She was always sure that the good time would come, although during the dark days of that long struggle she was in deep sorrow for her unhappy country, and painfully anxious for the safety of her own home. At one time the Prussians approached near, and she wrote to a friend that she worked "expecting her scrawls to light the pipes of the Prussians." But, in another letter, written to M. Flaubert, she says cheerily:

"Mustn't be ill, mustn't be cross, my old troubadour ! Bay that France is mad, humanity stupid, and that we are unfinished animals every one of us ; you must love on all the same, yourself, your race, above all, your friends. I have my sad hours. I look at my blossoms, those two little girls, smiling as ever, their charming mother, and my good, hard-working son, whom the end of the world will find hunting, cataloguing, doing his daily task, and yet as merry as Punch in his rare leisure moments."

Again, less lightly, but quite as hopefully, she wrote:

"I do not say that humanity is on the road to the heights; I believe it in spite of all, but I do not argue about it, which is useless, for every one judges according to his own eyesight, and the general outlook at the present moment is ugly and poor. Besides, I do not needto be assured of the salvation of our planet and its inhabitants, in order to believe in the necessity of the good and the beautiful ; if our planet departs from this law it will perish ; if its inhabitants discard it they will be destroyed. As for me I wish to hold firm till my last breath, not with the certainty or the claim to find a 'good place' elsewhere, but because my sole pleasure is to maintain myself and mine in the upward way."

George Said died at Nohant in 1876, nearly seventy-two years of age, having neglected all illness which she deemed unimportant until it was too late.

"It is death," she said to those about her ; " I did not ask for it, but neither do I regret it."
For a week she lingered in great suffering, but conscious and courageous to the last. Her thoughts turned to the quiet village cemetery where she was soon to rest, and almost her last words referred to the trees growing there. She desired that none of them should be disturbed, or so her children interpreted the words :

"Ne touchez pas a la verdure."

At her funeral, which took place in a pouring rain, the country people, who had long ago ceased to call her communist, flocked in from miles around. There, too, were men of letters, scientists, and artists, for she had made friends and kept them in all ranks of life. Her bier was borne by six peasants, preceded by three chorister boys and the ancient clerk of the parish, and she was buried close by the graves of her father, her grand-mother, and two little grandchildren whom she had lost. A plain granite monument now marks her resting place.

The works of George Sand, including novels, stories, and plays, are so numerous that only a very few of them can find mention here. Among the most famous are the "Letters of a Traveler," the unfortunate "She and Ile " (Elle et Lui), "Lucrezia Floriani," " Consuelo," and the three delightful tales of peasant life, entitled respectively, " La Petite Fadette "—upon which the familiar play of Fanchon the Cricket, is founded —"The Devil's Pond" (La Mare du Diable), and " Francois le Champi," from which she afterwards made a play.

The " Letters of a Traveler" are a very striking series written after a journey through Switzerland and Italy, in company with the poet Alfred de Mussel, her further relations with whom are depicted in the story " She and He," published after his death. This work was regarded by the public as ungenerous, if not unjustifiable; but it must be remembered that after the breach between them, De Musset had not spared her in his verse. Her book was intended as a defence of herself; but it had the force of a judgment upon him. It was soon replied to by the poet's brother in another tale, entitled "He and She," in which Madame Sand was represented in a light even more unfavorable than that in which she had placed the hero of her story. It is probable that each version of the affair contained truth. Doubtless de Musset and Madame Band were both in fault, for two such pronounced personalities could not long have accommodated themselves to each other. Their difficulties, however, should never have been submitted to the public.

In "Lucrezia Florian" she was believed to have committed a similar error, since the unpleasing character of Karol was by many supposed to represent her old friend and companion, Chopin the composer. She denied that such was the case, and it is evident that she did not intend a portrait, although there were points of resemblance. Through the interference of unwise acquaintances, however, the book caused a breach between Chopin and herself. In many of her other works too curiouscritics have claimed to discover pictures of eminent per-sons with whom she was acquainted : some have even believed that in the ideal heroine "Consuelo " they could perceive a representation of the famous Madame Viardot.

"Consuelo," although one of the most diffuse, is by many considered the best among George Sand's novels. There is power in it; but its incidents seem to us extravagant and its personages unreal. At present we care less for ideal characters and improbable adventures, and more for delineations of men and women, with their weaknesses and their strength, such as may be found among ourselves. Those of George Sand's works which will longest be read are narratives like "Andre," "La Marquise," and the pleasant tales to which we have referred. In them her heroes and heroines are studied from the life, and the scenery amid which they are placed is such as she had herself visited in her travels, or—and this far oftener—that which lay close around her own home, in her fair and fertile native province.
  

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