the bonds of marital fidelity, even had Sainte-Beuve never written his
abnormal poems; but certainly these poems hastened a result which may or
may not have been otherwise inevitable. Hugo no longer turned wholly
to the dark-haired, dark-eyed Adele as summing up for him the whole of
womanhood. A veil was drawn, as it were, from before his eyes, and he
looked on other women and found them beautiful.
It was in 1833, soon after Hugo's play "Lucrece Borgia" had been
accepted for production, that a lady called one morning at Hugo's house
in the Place Royale. She was then between twenty and thirty years of
age, slight of figure, winsome in her bearing, and one who knew the arts
which appeal to men. For she was no inexperienced ingenue. The name upon
her visiting-card was "Mme. Drouet"; and by this name she had been known
in Paris as a clever and somewhat gifted actress. Theophile Gautier,
whose cult was the worship of physical beauty, wrote in almost lyric
prose of her seductive charm.
At nineteen, after she had been cast upon the world, dowered with that
terrible combination, poverty and beauty, she had lived openly with a
sculptor named Pradier. This has a certain importance in the history
of French art. Pradier had received a commission to execute a statue
representing Strasburg--the statue which stands to-day in the Place
de la Concorde, and which patriotic Frenchmen and Frenchwomen drape in
mourning and half bury in immortelles, in memory of that city of Alsace
which so long was French, but which to-day is German--one of Germany's
great prizes taken in the war of 1870.
Five years before her meeting with Hugo, Pradier had rather brutally
severed his connection with her, and she had accepted the protection
of a Russian nobleman. At this time she was known by her real
name--Julienne Josephine Gauvin; but having gone upon the stage, she
assumed the appellation by which she was thereafter known, that of
Juliette Drouet.
Her visit to Hugo was for the purpose of asking him to secure for her
a part in his forth-coming play. The dramatist was willing, but
unfortunately all the major characters had been provided for, and he
was able to offer her only the minor one of the Princesse Negroni. The
charming deference with which she accepted the offered part attracted
Hugo's attention. Such amiability is very rare in actresses who have had
engagements at the best theaters. He resolved to see her again; and he
did so, time after time, until he was thoroughly captivated by her.
She knew her value, and as yet was by no means infatuated with him.
At first he was to her simply a means of getting on in her
profession--simply another influential acquaintance. Yet she brought to
bear upon him the arts at her command, her beauty and her sympathy, and,
last of all, her passionate abandonment.
Hugo was overwhelmed by her. He found that she was in debt, and
he managed to see that her debts were paid. He secured her other
engagements at the theater, though she was less successful as an actress
after she knew him. There came, for a time, a short break in their
relations; for, partly out of need, she returned to her Russian
nobleman, or at least admitted him to a menage a trois. Hugo underwent
for a second time a great disillusionment. Nevertheless, he was not too
proud to return to her and to beg her not to be unfaithful any more.
Touched by his tears, and perhaps foreseeing his future fame, she gave
her promise, and she kept it until her death, nearly half a century
later.
Perhaps because she had deceived him once, Hugo never completely lost
his prudence in his association with her. He was by no means lavish with
money, and he installed her in a rather simple apartment only a short
distance from his own home. He gave her an allowance that was relatively
small, though later he provided for her amply in his will. But it was
to her that he brought all his confidences, to her he entrusted all his
interests. She became to him, thenceforth, much more than she appeared
to the world at large; for she was his friend, and, as he said, his
inspiration.
The fact of their intimate connection became gradually known through
Paris. It was known even to Mme. Hugo; but she, remembering the affair
of Sainte-Beuve, or knowing how difficult it is to check the will of a
man like Hugo, made no sign, and even received Juliette Drouet in her
own house and visited her in turn. When the poet's sons grew up to
manhood, they, too, spent many hours with their father in the little
salon of the former actress. It was a strange and, to an Anglo-Saxon
mind, an almost impossible position; yet France forgives much to genius,
and in time no one thought of commenting on Hugo's manner of life.
In 1851, when Napoleon III seized upon the government, and when Hugo was
in danger of arrest, she assisted him to escape in disguise, and with a
forged passport, across the Belgian frontier. During his long exile
in Guernsey she lived in the same close relationship to him and to his
family. Mme. Hugo died in 1868, having known for thirty-three years that
she was only second in her husband's thoughts. Was she doing penance, or
was she merely accepting the inevitable? In any case, her position was
most pathetic, though she uttered no complaint.
A very curious and poignant picture of her just before her death has
been given by the pen of a visitor in Guernsey. He had met Hugo and his
sons; he had seen the great novelist eating enormous slices of roast
beef and drinking great goblets of red wine at dinner, and he had
also watched him early each morning, divested of all his clothing and
splashing about in a bath-tub on the top of his house, in view of
all the town. One evening he called and found only Mme. Hugo. She was
reclining on a couch, and was evidently suffering great pain. Surprised,
he asked where were her husband and her sons.
"Oh," she replied, "they've all gone to Mme. Drouet's to spend the
evening and enjoy themselves. Go also; you'll not find it amusing here."
One ponders over this sad scene with conflicting thoughts. Was there
really any truth in the story at which Sainte-Beuve more than hinted?
If so, Adele Hugo was more than punished. The other woman had sinned far
more; and yet she had never been Hugo's wife; and hence perhaps it
was right that she should suffer less. Suffer she did; for after her
devotion to Hugo had become sincere and deep, he betrayed her confidence
by an intrigue with a girl who is spoken of as "Claire." The knowledge
of it caused her infinite anguish, but it all came to an end; and she
lived past her eightieth year, long after the death of Mme. Hugo. She
died only a short time before the poet himself was laid to rest in Paris
with magnificent obsequies which an emperor might have envied. In her
old age, Juliette Drouet became very white and very wan; yet she never
quite lost the charm with which, as a girl, she had won the heart of
Hugo.
The story has many aspects. One may see in it a retribution, or one may
see in it only the cruelty of life. Perhaps it is best regarded simply
as a chapter in the strange life-histories of men of genius.
THE STORY OF GEORGE SAND
To the student of feminine psychology there is no more curious and
complex problem than the one that meets us in the life of the gifted
French writer best known to the world as George Sand.
To analyze this woman simply as a writer would in itself be a long,
difficult task. She wrote voluminously, with a fluid rather than a
fluent pen. She scandalized her contemporaries by her theories, and by
the way in which she applied them in her novels. Her fiction made her,
in the history of French literature, second only to Victor Hugo.
She might even challenge Hugo, because where he depicts strange and
monstrous figures, exaggerated beyond the limits of actual life, George
Sand portrays living men and women, whose instincts and desires she
understands, and whom she makes us see precisely as if we were admitted
to their intimacy.
But George Sand puzzles us most by peculiarities which it is difficult
for us to reconcile. She seemed to have no sense of chastity whatever;
yet, on the other hand, she was not grossly sensual. She possessed the
maternal instinct to a high degree, and liked better to be a mother
than a mistress to the men whose love she sought. For she did seek men's
love, frankly and shamelessly, only to tire of it. In many cases she
seems to have been swayed by vanity, and by a love of conquest, rather
than by passion. She had also a spiritual, imaginative side to her
nature, and she could be a far better comrade than anything more
intimate.
The name given to this strange genius at birth was Amantine Lucile
Aurore Dupin. The circumstances of her ancestry and birth were quite
unusual. Her father was a lieutenant in the French army. His grandmother
had been the natural daughter of Marshal Saxe, who was himself the
illegitimate son of Augustus the Strong of Poland and of the bewitching
Countess of Konigsmarck. This was a curious pedigree. It meant strength
of character, eroticism, stubbornness, imagination, courage, and
recklessness.
Her father complicated the matter by marrying suddenly a Parisian of the
lower classes, a bird-fancier named Sophie Delaborde. His daughter,
who was born in 1804, used afterward to boast that on one side she was
sprung from kings and nobles, while on the other she was a daughter
of the people, able, therefore, to understand the sentiments of the
aristocracy and of the children of the soil, or even of the gutter.
She was fond of telling, also, of the omen which attended on her birth.
Her father and mother were at a country dance in the house of a fellow
officer of Dupin's. Suddenly Mme. Dupin left the room. Nothing was
thought of this, and the dance went on. In less than an hour, Dupin was
called aside and told that his wife had just given birth to a child. It
was the child's aunt who brought the news, with the joyous comment:
"She will be lucky, for she was born among the roses and to the sound of
music."
This was at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Lieutenant Dupin was on the
staff of Prince Murat, and little Aurore, as she was called, at the age
of three accompanied the army, as did her mother. The child was
adopted by one of those hard-fighting, veteran regiments. The rough old
sergeants nursed her and petted her. Even the prince took notice of her;
and to please him she wore the green uniform of a hussar.
But all this soon passed, and she was presently sent to live with
her grandmother at the estate now intimately associated with her
name--Nohant, in the valley of the Indre, in the midst of a rich
country, a love for which she then drank in so deeply that nothing in
her later life could lessen it. She was always the friend of the peasant
and of the country-folk in general.
At Nohant she was given over to her grand-mother, to be reared in a
strangely desultory sort of fashion, doing and reading and studying
those things which could best develop her native gifts. Her father had
great influence over her, teaching her a thousand things without seeming
to teach her anything. Of him George Sand herself has written:
Character is a matter of heredity. If any one desires to know me, he
must know my father.
Her father, however, was killed by a fall from a horse; and then the
child grew up almost without any formal education. A tutor, who also
managed the estate; believed with Rousseau that the young should be
reared according to their own preferences. Therefore, Aurore read poems
and childish stories; she gained a smattering of Latin, and she was
devoted to music and the elements of natural science. For the rest of
the time she rambled with the country children, learned their games, and
became a sort of leader in everything they did.
Her only sorrow was the fact that her mother was excluded from Nohant.
The aristocratic old grandmother would not allow under her roof her
son's low-born wife; but she was devoted to her little grandchild. The
girl showed a wonderful degree of sensibility.
This life was adapted to her nature. She fed her imagination in a
perfectly healthy fashion; and, living so much out of doors, she
acquired that sound physique which she retained all through her life.
When she was thirteen, her grandmother sent the girl to a convent school
in Paris. One might suppose that the sudden change from the open woods
and fields to the primness of a religious home would have been a great
shock to her, and that with her disposition she might have broken
out into wild ways that would have shocked the nuns. But, here, as
elsewhere, she showed her wonderful adaptability. It even seemed as
if she were likely to become what the French call a devote. She gave
herself up to mythical thoughts, and expressed a desire of taking the
veil. Her confessor, however, was a keen student of human nature, and
he perceived that she was too young to decide upon the renunciation of
earthly things. Moreover, her grandmother, who had no intention that
Aurore should become a nun, hastened to Paris and carried her back to
Nohant.
The girl was now sixteen, and her complicated nature began to
make itself apparent. There was no one to control her, because her
grandmother was confined to her own room. And so Aurore Dupin, now in
superb health, rushed into every sort of diversion with all the zest of
youth. She read voraciously--religion, poetry, philosophy. She was an
excellent musician, playing the piano and the harp. Once, in a spirit of
unconscious egotism, she wrote to her confessor:
Do you think that my philosophical studies are compatible with Christian
humility?
The shrewd ecclesiastic answered, with a touch of wholesome irony:
I doubt, my daughter, whether your philosophical studies are profound
enough to warrant intellectual pride.
This stung the girl, and led her to think a little less of her own
abilities; but perhaps it made her books distasteful to her. For a while
she seems to have almost forgotten her sex. She began to dress as a boy,
and took to smoking large quantities of tobacco. Her natural brother,
who was an officer in the army, came down to Nohant and taught her to
ride--to ride like a boy, seated astride. She went about without any
chaperon, and flirted with the young men of the neighborhood. The prim
manners of the place made her subject to a certain amount of scandal,
and the village priest chided her in language that was far from tactful.
In return she refused any longer to attend his church.
Thus she was living when her grandmother died, in 1821, leaving to
Aurore her entire fortune of five hundred thousand francs. As the girl
was still but seventeen, she was placed under the guardianship of the
nearest relative on her father's side--a gentleman of rank. When the
will was read, Aurore's mother made a violent protest, and caused a most
unpleasant scene.
"I am the natural guardian of my child," she cried. "No one can take
away my rights!"
The young girl well understood that this was really the parting of the
ways. If she turned toward her uncle, she would be forever classed
among the aristocracy. If she chose her mother, who, though married, was
essentially a grisette, then she must live with grisettes, and find her
friends among the friends who visited her mother. She could not belong
to both worlds. She must decide once for all whether she would be a
woman of rank or a woman entirely separated from the circle that had
been her father's.
One must respect the girl for making the choice she did. Understanding
the situation absolutely, she chose her mother; and perhaps one would
not have had her do otherwise. Yet in the long run it was bound to be a
mistake. Aurore was clever, refined, well read, and had had the training
of a fashionable convent school. The mother was ignorant and coarse, as
was inevitable, with one who before her marriage had been half shop-girl
and half courtesan. The two could not live long together, and hence it
was not unnatural that Aurore Dupin should marry, to enter upon a new
career.
Her fortune was a fairly large one for the times, and yet not large
enough to attract men who were quite her equals. Presently, however, it
brought to her a sort of country squire, named Casimir Dudevant. He was
the illegitimate son of the Baron Dudevant. He had been in the army,
and had studied law; but he possessed no intellectual tastes. He was
outwardly eligible; but he was of a coarse type--a man who, with passing
years, would be likely to take to drink and vicious amusements, and in
serious life cared only for his cattle, his horses, and his hunting. He
had, however, a sort of jollity about him which appealed to this girl of
eighteen; and so a marriage was arranged. Aurore Dupin became his wife
in 1822, and he secured the control of her fortune.
The first few years after her marriage were not unhappy. She had a son,
Maurice Dudevant, and a daughter, Solange, and she loved them both. But
it was impossible that she should continue vegetating mentally upon
a farm with a husband who was a fool, a drunkard, and a miser. He
deteriorated; his wife grew more and more clever. Dudevant resented
this. It made him uncomfortable. Other persons spoke of her talk as
brilliant. He bluntly told her that it was silly, and that she must stop
it. When she did not stop it, he boxed her ears. This caused a breach
between the pair which was never healed. Dudevant drank more and more
heavily, and jeered at his wife because she was "always looking for noon
at fourteen o'clock." He had always flirted with the country girls; but
now he openly consorted with his wife's chambermaid.
Mme. Dudevant, on her side, would have nothing more to do with this
rustic rake. She formed what she called a platonic friendship--and it
was really so--with a certain M. de Seze, who was advocate-general at
Bordeaux. With him this clever woman could talk without being called
silly, and he took sincere pleasure in her company. He might, in fact,
have gone much further, had not both of them been in an impossible
situation.
Aurore Dudevant really believed that she was swayed by a pure and mystic
passion. De Seze, on the other hand, believed this mystic passion to
be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the
clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to
see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back
from her, and in time their relation faded into nothingness.
It happened, soon after, that she found a packet in her husband's desk,
marked "Not to be opened until after my death." She wrote of this in her
correspondence:
I had not the patience to wait till widowhood. No one can be sure of
surviving anybody. I assumed that my husband had died, and I was very
glad to learn what he thought of me while he was alive. Since the
package was addressed to me, it was not dishonorable for me to open it.
And so she opened it. It proved to be his will, but containing, as a
preamble, his curses on her, expressions of contempt, and all the vulgar
outpouring of an evil temper and angry passion. She went to her husband
as he was opening a bottle, and flung the document upon the table.
He cowered at her glance, at her firmness, and at her cold hatred. He
grumbled and argued and entreated; but all that his wife would say in
answer was:
"I must have an allowance. I am going to Paris, and my children are to
remain here."
At last he yielded, and she went at once to Paris, taking her daughter
with her, and having the promise of fifteen hundred francs a year out of
the half-million that was hers by right.
In Paris she developed into a thorough-paced Bohemian. She tried to make
a living in sundry hopeless ways, and at last she took to literature.
She was living in a garret, with little to eat, and sometimes without
a fire in winter. She had some friends who helped her as well as they
could, but though she was attached to the Figaro, her earnings for the
first month amounted to only fifteen francs.
Nevertheless, she would not despair. The editors and publishers might
turn the cold shoulder to her, but she would not give up her ambitions.
She went down into the Latin Quarter, and there shook off the
proprieties of life. She assumed the garb of a man, and with her quick
perception she came to know the left bank of the Seine just as she had
known the country-side at Nohant or the little world at her convent
school. She never expected again to see any woman of her own rank in
life. Her mother's influence became strong in her. She wrote:
The proprieties are the guiding principle of people without soul and
virtue. The good opinion of the world is a prostitute who gives herself
to the highest bidder.
She still pursued her trade of journalism, calling herself a "newspaper
mechanic," sitting all day in the office of the Figaro and writing
whatever was demanded, while at night she would prowl in the streets
haunting the cafes, continuing to dress like a man, drinking sour wine,
and smoking cheap cigars.
One of her companions in this sort of hand-to-mouth journalism was a
young student and writer named Jules Sandeau, a man seven years younger
than his comrade. He was at that time as indigent as she, and their
hardships, shared in common, brought them very close together. He was
clever, boyish, and sensitive, and it was not long before he had fallen
at her feet and kissed her knees, begging that she would requite the
love he felt for her. According to herself, she resisted him for six
months, and then at last she yielded. The two made their home together,
and for a while were wonderfully happy. Their work and their diversions
they enjoyed in common, and now for the first time she experienced
emotions which in all probability she had never known before.
Probably not very much importance is to be given to the earlier
flirtations of George Sand, though she herself never tried to stop the
mouth of scandal. Even before she left her husband, she was credited
with having four lovers; but all she said, when the report was brought
to her, was this: "Four lovers are none too many for one with such
lively passions as mine."
This very frankness makes it likely that she enjoyed shocking her prim
neighbors at Nohant. But if she only played at love-making then, she now
gave herself up to it with entire abandonment, intoxicated, fascinated,
satisfied. She herself wrote:
How I wish I could impart to you this sense of the intensity and
joyousness of life that I have in my veins. To live! How sweet it
is, and how good, in spite of annoyances, husbands, debts, relations,
scandal-mongers, sufferings, and irritations! To live! It is
intoxicating! To love, and to be loved! It is happiness! It is heaven!
In collaboration with Jules Sandeau, she wrote a novel called Rose
et Blanche. The two lovers were uncertain what name to place upon the
title-page, but finally they hit upon the pseudonym of Jules Sand. The
book succeeded; but thereafter each of them wrote separately, Jules
Sandeau using his own name, and Mme. Dudevant styling herself George
Sand, a name by which she was to be illustrious ever after.
As a novelist, she had found her real vocation. She was not yet well
known, but she was on the verge of fame. As soon as she had written
Indiana and Valentine, George Sand had secured a place in the world of
letters. The magazine which still exists as the Revue des Deux Mondes
gave her a retaining fee of four thousand francs a year, and many other
publications begged her to write serial stories for them.
The vein which ran through all her stories was new and piquant. As was
said of her:
In George Sand, whenever a lady wishes to change her lover, God is
always there to make the transfer easy.
In other words, she preached free love in the name of religion. This was
not a new doctrine with her. After the first break with her husband, she
had made up her mind about certain matters, and wrote:
One is no more justified in claiming the ownership of a soul than in
claiming the ownership of a slave.
According to her, the ties between a man and a woman are sacred only
when they are sanctified by love; and she distinguished between love and
passion in this epigram:
Love seeks to give, while passion seeks to take.