SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF GEORGE SAND.—The recent unveiling of
George Sand's statue at La Châtre has set people thinking about her
afresh. At no time since “Indiana” and “Lelia” first revealed the
existence of a new writer of transcendent power, has her place in
French literature, and her influence on the social problems of the
time, and the question whether her artistic creations will or will not
live, been canvassed with more energy than during the past few weeks.
Some personal recollections of George Sand given by Mrs. Ellis, the
authoress of “Sylvestra,” may therefore be of interest: “Above twenty
years ago,” writes Mrs. Ellis, “I spent three days in a French hotel
(at Tours) with George Sand, without knowing who she was. She puzzled
me all the time, and had in person something of the same effect on
me that her character—attractive and repulsive—has still. She sat
opposite me at a narrow _table d'hôte_—a tall, large, strongly-built
woman, with features in proportion to her size. Her eyes were fine,
but her force of appearance was rather physical than intellectual. It
must have been the brain beneath the strong features which teased me
as it did, to make out to myself who she could be. She was mature,
but in no decline of force, massive, grave, and restful, with nothing
Gallic about her. The dark hair, eyes, and tint might have belonged to
Italy or Spain, quite as well as to France, and the bearing, better.
Her dress might have been called 'dowdy.' It was of the type of the
travelling Englishwoman, as French eyes see it, rather than French. I
think her 'robe' was brown, which did not become her at all. Crimson
would have suited her. She wore an ugly, large-brimmed, straw hat,
with broad lace falling over the brim, at a time when Frenchwomen had
hardly begun to wear hats, and—if my memory does not err—she wore it
at dinner. Her companion was an elderly and feeble man, seemingly
more than seventy. There was nothing in the appearance of the couple
(viewing them as married folk) unlike that of many other French pairs,
when, as is so often the case, the man 'ranges' himself at forty by
the side of a young lady of half his years. My perplexing neighbor
understood what I said to my husband in English, and offered me some
little courteous attentions. There was no real speech between us. If I
had known it was George Sand, I believe that I should not have spoken
more, as I had not long before read some unpleasing remarks in her
autobiography on the way in which she was annoyed by '_les Anglaises_,'
and on the '_étranges sifflements_' which they introduced into the
fine French tongue! She and I were the only two women in the hotel
who ever went into a sort of reading-room adjoining the house to look
at the newspapers. I had nearly settled with myself that she was a
lady country squire, such as I used to see drive into Tours on market
days, when one morning, on going, as I used to do, to the Imperial
library, to draw from old illuminated MSS., my friend, the librarian,
M. d'Orange, said to me, 'Madame, do you know that you have George Sand
in your hotel?' When I went back, she had just gone with the gentleman
who had lent her his name to travel with, for she was entered as his
'Comtesse' in the book of the hotel. He was a Radical Deputy. I told my
lively landlady, who declared that M. d'Orange '_n'en savait rien_,'
and opened her book to show me the names of M. le Comte and Madame la
Comtesse So-and-So. Then she said, 'If it was George Sand,' her books,
'_ma foi_,' of which she had read one or two—instancing a couple of the
best—were not '_grande chose_.' When I got back to England, I looked
at a fine lithographed portrait of George Sand, and saw it was the
woman. Perhaps it was for the best that I had not known who she was,
as my impression, which is still vivid, remains of her as she seemed,
and not such as my fancy would at once have set to work to make her
out. Thinking of her afterward, I was reminded of that passage in her
autobiography in which she tells how, in a moment of misery, she tested
her own strength by lifting a large heavy stone, and said to herself in
despair, 'And I may have to live forty years!' Also I thought of Alfred
de Musset's taunting her—she never forgot it—with having no _esprit_.
Of '_esprit Gallois_' she seems to have had little. The Northern races
had the uppermost in her making, I should say. I have a notion that
the Königsmarks were Pomeranian—of the Bismarck build—and had she not
the blood of the Counts Horn? I forget. However, Marshal Saxe spoke
for himself in her. Mr. Hamerton says that an intense desire to study
character had its strong share in her illicit liaisons with poets,
musicians, lawyers, novelists, etc., all being men above the common
run. But here, again, I cannot help thinking that race descent from
Augustus II. of Saxony and Aurore de Königsmark counted for much. Her
genuine feeling for the poor, and a sort of homely motherliness, seem
to have made her greatly loved by the Berry people.“—_Spectator._
* * * * *
THE AMERICAN SENATE.—It is amusing to see discussions on the possible
abolition of the American Senate, in which the disputants on one side
do not seem to see that what they are proposing is the abolition of
the federal system altogether. It has been explained over and over
again—yet, as long as some seem not to understand so plain a matter,
it must be explained once more—that a proposal to abolish the American
Senate is quite a different matter from a proposal to abolish the
French Senate. With regard to the French Senate the question is simply
whether the business of the nation is likely to be best done by one
House or by two. With regard to the American Senate we have to go much
deeper. The House of Representatives represents the nation formed
by the union of all the separate States; the Senate represents the
separate States themselves. The federal nation is formed by the union
of States differing widely in size and power, but equal in rights and
dignity, each of which still keeps all such attributes of independent
commonwealths as it has not formally given up to the federal power. To
hinder alike the federal nation from being swamped by the States and
the States from being swamped by the federal nation, it is needful to
have one assembly in which each State has only that amount of voice to
which it is entitled by its population, and another assembly in which
each State, great and small, has an equal voice. If any party in the
United States wishes altogether to get rid of the federal system, if
they wish to get rid of the independence of the several States, if they
wish the great names of Massachusetts and Virginia to mean no more than
an English county or a French department, then let them propose the
abolition of the Senate of the United States, and not otherwise. Yet
even under a system where the Second Chamber is absolutely necessary,
we see the comparative weakness of Second Chambers; its abolition can
be discussed. And herein comes the wonderful wisdom of the founders
of the American Constitution in strengthening the Senate with those
powers of other kinds which make it something more than a Second
Chamber or Upper House. And mark further that the Swiss _Ständerath_
or _Conseil des États_, formed after the model of the American Senate,
like it absolutely necessary if Switzerland is to remain a federal
commonwealth, is far from holding the same position in the country
which the American Senate holds. For it is a mere partner with the
_Nationalrath_, and has not those special powers in and by itself which
the American Senate has. But mark again that the great position of the
American Senate is something which cannot exist along with our form
of executive government. A President may be asked formally to submit
his acts to be confirmed by one branch of the Legislature; a King can
hardly be asked to do so.—_Contemporary Review._
* * * * *
SHAKESPEARE AND BALZAC.—Yacht life gives ample leisure. I had employed
part of mine in making sketches. One laughs at one's extraordinary
performances a day or two after one has completed them. Yet the attempt
is worth making. It teaches one to admire less grudgingly the work of
real artists who have conquered the difficulties. Books are less trying
to vanity, for one is producing nothing of one's own, and submitting
only to be interested or amused, if the author can succeed in either.
One's appetite is generally good on these occasions, and one can devour
anything; but in the pure primitive element of sea, and mountains,
and unprogressive peasantry, I had become somehow fastidious. I tried
a dozen novels one after the other without success; at last, perhaps
the morning we left Elversdale, I found on the library shelves ”_Le
Père Goriot_.” I had read a certain quantity of “Balzac” at other
times, in deference to the high opinion entertained of him. N——, a
fellow of Oriel, and once Member for Oxford, I remembered insisting
to me that there was more knowledge of human nature in “Balzac” than
in Shakespeare. I had myself observed in him a knowledge of a certain
kind of human nature which Shakespeare let alone—a nature in which
healthy vigor had been corrupted into a caricature by highly seasoned
artificial civilization. Hothouse plants, in which the flowers had
lost their grace of form and natural beauty, and had gained instead a
poison-loaded and perfumed luxuriance, did not exist in Shakespeare's
time, and if they had they would probably not have interested him.
However, I had not read “_Le Père Goriot_,” and as I had been assured
that it was the finest of Balzac's works, I sat down to it and
deliberately read it through. My first impulse after it was over was
to plunge into the sea to wash myself. As we were going ten knots,
there were objections to this method of ablution, but I felt that
I had been in abominable company. The book seemed to be the very
worst ever written by a clever man. But it, and N——'s reference to
Shakespeare, led me into a train of reflections. Le Père Goriot, like
King Lear, has two daughters. Like Lear, he strips himself of his own
fortune to provide for them in a distinguished manner. He is left to
poverty and misery while his daughters live in splendor. Why is Lear
so grand? Why is Le Père Goriot detestable? In the first place, all
the company in Balzac are bad. Le Père Goriot is so wrapped up in
his delightful children, that their very vices charm him, and their
scented boudoirs seem a kind of Paradise. Lear, in the first scene
of the play, acts and talks like an idiot, but still an idiot with a
moral soul in him. Take Lear's own noble nature from him, take Kent
away, and Edgar, and the fool, and Cordelia—and the actors in the play,
it must be admitted, are abominable specimens of humanity—yet even
so, leaving the story as it might have been if Marlowe had written
it instead of Shakespeare, Goneril and Regan would still have been
terrible, while the Paris dames of fashion are merely loathsome. What
is the explanation of the difference? Partly, I suppose, it arises from
the comparative intellectual stature of the two sets of women. Strong
natures and weak may be equally wicked. The strong are interesting,
because they have daring and force. You fear them as you fear panthers
and tigers. You hate, but you admire. M. Balzac's heroines have no
intellectual nature at all. They are female swine out of Circe's sty;
as selfish, as unscrupulous as any daughter of Adam could conveniently
be, but soft, and corrupt, and cowardly, and sensual; so base and low
that it would be a compliment to call them devils. I object to being
brought into the society of people in a book whom I would shut my eyes
rather than see in real life. Goneril and Regan would be worth looking
at in a cage in the Zoological Gardens. One would have no curiosity
to stare at a couple of dames caught out of Coventry Street or the
Quadrant. From Shakespeare to Balzac, from the sixteenth century to the
nineteenth, we have been progressing to considerable purpose. If the
state of literature remains as it has hitherto been, the measure of
our moral condition, Europe has been going ahead with a vengeance. I
put out the taste of “_Le Père Goriot_” with “Persuasion.” Afterwards
I found a book really worth reading, with the uninviting title of
“Adventures in Sport and War,” the author of it a young Marquis de
Compiègne, a ruined representative of the old French _noblesse_, who
appears first as a penniless adventurer seeking his fortune in America
as a birdstuffer, and tempted by an advertisement into the swamps of
Florida in search of specimens, a beggarly experience, yet told with
_naïveté_ and simplicity, truth and honor surviving by the side of
absolute helplessness. Afterwards we find him in France again, fighting
as a private in the war with Germany, and taken prisoner at Sedan; and
again in the campaign against the Commune, at the taking of Paris, and
the burning of the Tuileries—a tragic picture, drawn, too, with entire
unconsciousness of the condition to which Balzac, Madame Sand, and the
rest of the fraternity had dragged down the French nation.—_Longman's
Magazine._
* * * * *
THE DREAD OF OLD AGE.—We all of us, or at least all of us who are
slipping past fifty, secretly dread old age, and regard with aversion
its usual, or traditionally usual, conditions; and the sight of a
man about whose years there can be no question, who has passed by
thirty years the average limit of human life, and by ten years an
extreme limit, and yet talks well, hears fairly well, sees perfectly
well and could walk like another but for weakness, is pleasantly
reassuring. If the man of a century can be like Sir Moses Montefiore,
the man of ninety may be only a little indolent, the man of eighty
hale and hearty, and the man of seventy retain “the fullest vigor of
his faculties.” That is one secret, we are convinced, of the decided
popularity of very old statesmen, and especially old statesmen of great
vigor, a sense among the middle-aged that if they who are so visible
can be so strong and active and full brilliancy, old age cannot be so
dreadful after all. An apprehension has been removed or lessened, and a
very keen one. Some of the dread no doubt is traditional, founded upon
boyish recollections, and even upon books, Shakespeare in particular
having expressed, in lines which have stuck in the national memory,
an unusually strong sense of the infirmities of age. His celebrated
lines were probably accurate at the time, for they are accurate now
when applied to certain classes of the very poor; but they no longer
describe the majority of the aged well-to-do. Whatever the cause,
whether improved sanitary appliances, or greater temperance, or, as
we should ourselves believe, an increase of the habit of persistently
using the mind, and consistently taking interest in events, it is
certain that the disease called senility is among the fully-fed
much rarer than it used to be. The old lose their hearing, and their
activity, and part of the keenness of their sight, and are supposed to
be grown duller alike to pleasure and to pain; but they much seldomer
become totally blind, or fatuous, or unable to control their features,
or incapable of guiding themselves about. Men of eighty-four or
five, who, in the early part of the century, would have fallen into
second childhood—then a disease recognized not only by doctors, but
by all men, and regarded as a sort of idiotcy—now talk easily, and
glide over little deficiencies of memory, and are, apart from a not
ungraceful physical weakness, truly men. The younger generation has,
however, scarcely realised the change in its full extent, and fears
age, therefore, unconsciously a little more acutely than it should,
though it has reason for some of its fear. The lot of the old is not
the happiest, even if they are fortunately placed. They suffer from
the certainty that such physical ills as they have cannot be cured,
and a fear that they will become worse, from a deficiency, not so much
of occupation as of imperative occupation, the business occupation of
middle-age and from that unconscious insolence of the babbling youth
around them, which is, perhaps, most felt by the aged when youth is
most loving and considerate. One does not want to be “considered” by a
baby. They suffer from a jar between their own impression of their own
wisdom, as a necessary product of their long experience, and a secret
doubt whether the young, who evidently think so differently, can be
all wrong, not to mention that actual disrespect which the peculiar
conceit of the young always appears to indicate even when it is not
intended. They suffer from their keen memory for disappointments, which
sometimes in the reflections of the old exaggerate their bulk till life
seems made up of little else—a phenomenon constantly observable in the
monologues of the uneducated and ill-restrained. And they suffer most
of all from the loss, ever-increasing as time slips along, not only
of those dearest to them, but of accustomed intimates, and especially
of friends who grow fewer not only from deaths, but from departures,
alienations, and changes of condition and feeling. The very old, as
far as our experience serves, are fortunate if, outside the circle of
blood relations, they retain even one or two close friends: and this to
some men and women, especially to those much dependent on conversation
to stimulate their natures and “put them in spirits,” is the most
irremediable of losses. They feel as if life had altered, and the very
sunlight were less inspiring. Add that all the indulgences of hope,
including day dreaming, become vapid—reason showing the unreality—and
gradually cease, and we may admit that even under favorable
circumstances old age is not an enviable condition, more especially
among Englishmen and Americans, who feel little of that instinctive
reverence for age, and belief in its nearness to the divine, which
characterises all Asia and a large portion of Southern Europe. The
Teutons think allusions to gray hairs, which Southerners regard as
solemn, and will accept even in a theatre with applause, a little
rhetorical or artificial. The respect for the old is not gone, but a
certain reverence is, if it ever existed among us, which, remembering
Shakespeare's lines and our own workhouse arrangements, we half incline
to doubt.—_Spectator._
A TRUE CRITIC.—He who has the genuine pictorial sense, of which not
even the idea can be given to those who have not got it, is quickly
discovered by those who have the same gift. They will detect him in
the gallery by many signs. He is guided by instinct to stand at the
right distance from the picture, which is not a mere matter of taste
as most folk think, but the distance at which the picture has the same
expanse to the eye as the real object replaced by it would have. A
little nearer or a little farther he feels the picture bearing falsely.
Falsely when things are represented which in the real view would alter
(as the picture objects cannot) in their mutual effects by advancing
towards or retreating from them. His eye goes right to the heart of
the picture; the spot made to be such by the artifice of the painter.
He is in no hurry to look elsewhere. He looks towards one point, but
he sees the rest sufficiently without peeping about. His consciousness
takes in the whole simultaneously, and for a while he examines nothing;
forgets that he sees a picture, and feels the quickening within of the
thoughts which such a scene might stir up. He can presently put aside
all this and criticise if he cares to do so, just as the musician can
cease from his tune and look to the strings or stops. For he is curious
about the mechanism of the delightful delusion as the musician or the
most enraptured of his audience may care to look into the arrangement
of a musical instrument. But the picture like the violin, is not in
operation at all while it is being examined.—_Art Journal._
* * * * *