Nohant, and is anxiously wondering how her poor Jules has passed this
wretched day, and how he will go back to the room from which she had
torn herself with such difficulty that morning. In her letter she gives
utterance to the gratitude she owes to the young man who has reconciled
her once more to life. "My soul," she says, "eager itself for
affection, needed to inspire this in a heart capable of understanding
me thoroughly, with all my faults and qualities. A fervent soul was
necessary for loving me in the way that I could love, and for consoling
me after all the ingratitude which had made my earlier life so desolate.
And although I am now old, I have found a heart as young as my own, a
lifelong affection which nothing can discourage and which grows stronger
every day. Jules has taught me to care once more for this existence,
of which I was so weary, and which I only endured for the sake of my
children. I was disgusted beforehand with the future, but it now seems
more beautiful to me, full as it appears to me of him, of his work, his
success, and of his upright, modest conduct. . . . Oh, if you only knew
how I love him! . . . ."(14)
(14) This quotation and those that follow are borrowed from
the unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault.
"When I first knew him I was disillusioned about everything, and I no
longer believed in those things which make us happy. He has warmed my
frozen heart and restored the life that was dying within me." She then
recalls their first meeting. It was in the country, at Coudray,
near Nohant. She fell in love with her dear Sandeau, thanks to his
youthfulness, his timidity and his awkwardness. He was just twenty, in
1831. On approaching the bench where she was awaiting him, "he concealed
himself in a neighbouring avenue--and I could see his hat and stick
on the bench," she writes. "Everything, even to the little red ribbon
threaded in the lining of his grey hat, thrilled me with joy. . . ."
It is difficult to say why, but everything connected with this young
Jules seems absurd. Later on we get the following statement: "Until the
day when I told him that I loved him, I had never acknowledged as much
to myself. I felt that I did, but I would not own it even to my own
heart. Jules therefore learnt it at the same time as I did myself."
People at La Chatre took the young man for her lover. The idea of
finding him again in Paris was probably one of her reasons for wishing
to establish herself there. Then came her life, as she describes it
herself, "in the little room looking on to the quay. I can see Jules
now in a shabby, dirty-looking artist's frock-coat, with his cravat
underneath him and his shirt open at the throat, stretched out over
three chairs, stamping with his feet or breaking the tongs in the heat
of the discussion. The Gaulois used to sit in a corner weaving great
plots, and you would be seated on a table."
All this must certainly have been charming. The room was too small,
though, and George Sand commissioned Emile Regnault to find her a flat,
the essential condition of which should be some way of egress for Jules
at any hour.
A little flat was discovered on the Quay St. Michel. There were three
rooms, one of which could be reserved. "This shall be the dark room,"
wrote George Sand, "the mysterious room, the ghost's retreat, the
monster's den, the cage of the performing animal, the hiding-place for
the treasure, the vampire's cave, or whatever you like to call
it. . . ."
In plainer language, it was Jules' room; and then follows some touching
eloquence about the dear boy she worshipped who loved her so dearly.
This is the beginning of things, but later on the tone of the
correspondence changes. The letters become less frequent, and are also
not so gay. George Sand speaks much less of Jules in them and much more
of little Solange, whom she intended to bring back to Paris with her.
She is beginning to weary of Jules and to esteem him at his true value.
He is lazy, and has fits of depression and all the capriciousness of
a spoilt child. She has had enough of him, and then, too, it is very
evident from the letters that there has been some division among
the lively friends who had sworn to be comrades for life. There are
explanations and justifications. George Sand discovers that there are
certain inconveniences connected with intimacies in which there is
such disproportion of age and of social position. Finally there are the
following desperate letters, written in fits of irritation: "My dear
friend, go to Jules and look after him. He is broken-hearted, and you
can do nothing for him in that respect. It is no use trying. I do not
ask you to come to me yet, as I do not need anything. I would rather be
alone to-day. Then, too, there is nothing left for me in life. It will
be horrible for him for a long time, but he is so young. The day will
come, perhaps, when he will not be sorry to have lived. . . .
Do not attempt to put matters right, as this time there is no remedy.
We do not blame each other at all, and for some time we have been
struggling against this horrible necessity. We have had trouble enough.
There seemed to be nothing left but to put an end to our lives, and if
it had not been for my children, we should have done this."
The question is, Was George Sand blameless in the matter? It appears
that she had discovered that her dear Jules was faithless to her, and
that, during her absence, he had deceived her. She would not forgive
him, but sent him off to Italy, and refused to see him again. The last
of these letters is dated June 15, 1833.
"I shall make a parcel of a few of Jules' things that he left in
the wardrobe," she says, "and I will send them to you. I do not want
anything to do with him when he comes back, and, according to the last
words of the letter you showed me, his return may be soon. For a long
time I have been very much hurt by the discoveries I made with regard
to his conduct, and I could not feel anything else for him now but
affectionate compassion. His pride, I hope, would refuse this. Make him
clearly understand, if necessary, that there can never be anything more
between us. If this hard task should not be necessary, that is, if Jules
should himself understand that it could not be otherwise, spare him the
sorrow of hearing that he has lost everything, even my respect. He
must undoubtedly have lost his own self-esteem, so that he is punished
enough."
Thus ended this great passion. This was the first of George Sand's
errors, and it certainly was an immense one. She had imagined that
happiness reigns in students' rooms. She had counted on the passing
fancy of a young man of good family, who had come to Paris to sow his
wild oats, for giving her fresh zest and for carving out for herself a
fresh future. It was a most commonplace adventure, utterly destitute of
psychology, and by its very bitterness it contrasted strangely with
her elevated sentimental romance with Aurelien de Seze. That was the
quintessence of refinement. All that is interesting about this second
adventure is the proof that it gives us of George Sand's wonderful
illusions, of the intensity of the mirage of which she was a dupe, and
of which we have so many instances in her life.
Baronne Dudevant had tried conjugal life, and she had now tried free
love. She had been unsuccessful in both instances. It is to these
adventures though, to these trials, errors and disappointments that
we owe the writer we are about to study. George Sand was now born to
literature.
III
A FEMINIST OF 1832
THE FIRST NOVELS AND THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE
When Baronne Dudevant arrived in Paris, in 1831, her intention was to
earn her living with her pen. She never really counted seriously on the
income she might make by her talent for painting flowers on snuff-boxes
and ornamenting cigar-cases with water-colours. She arrived from her
province with the intention of becoming a writer. Like most authors who
commence, she first tried journalism. On the 4th of March, she wrote as
follows to the faithful Boucoiran: "In the meantime I must live, and
for the sake of that, I have taken up the worst of trades: I am writing
articles for the _Figaro_. If only you knew what that means! They are
paid for, though, at the rate of seven francs a column."
She evidently found it worth while to write for the _Figaro_, which at
that time was quite a small newspaper, managed by Henri de Latouche, who
also came from Berry. He was a very second-rate writer himself, and
a poet with very little talent but, at any rate, he appreciated
and discovered talent in others. He published Andre Chenier's first
writings, and he introduced George Sand to the public. His new
apprentice was placed at one of the little tables at which the various
parts of the paper were manufactured. Unfortunately she had not the
vocation for this work. The first principle with regard to newspaper
articles is to make them short. When Aurore had come to the end of her
paper, she had not yet commenced her subject. It was no use attempting
to continue, so she gave up "the worst of trades," lucrative though it
might be.
She could not help knowing, though, that she had the gift of writing.
She had inherited it from her ancestors, and this is the blest part of
her atavism. No matter how far back we go, and in every branch of her
genealogical tree, there is artistic heredity to be found. Maurice de
Saxe wrote his _Reveries_. This was a fine book for a soldier to write,
and for that alone he would deserve praise, even if he had not beaten
the English so gloriously. Mademoiselle Verrieres was an actress and
Dupin de Francueil a dilettante. Aurore's grandmother, Marie-Aurore, was
very musical, she sang operatic songs, and collected extracts from the
philosophers. Maurice Dupin was devoted to music and to the theatre.
Even Sophie-Victoire had an innate appreciation of beauty. She not only
wept, like Margot, at melodrama, but she noticed the pink of a cloud,
the mauve of a flower, and, what was more important, she called her
little daughter's attention to such things. This illiterate mother had
therefore had some influence on Aurore and on her taste for literature.
It is not enough to say that George Sand was a born writer. She was a
born novelist, and she belonged to a certain category of novelists.
She had been created by a special decree of Providence to write her
own romances, and not others. It is this which makes the history of
the far-back origins of her literary vocation so interesting. It is
extremely curious to see, from her earliest childhood, the promises of
those faculties which were to become the very essence of her talent.
When she was only three years old, her mother used to put her between
four chairs in order to keep her still. By way of enlivening her
captivity, she tells us what she did.
"I used to make up endless stories, which my mother styled my novels.
. . . I told these stories aloud, and my mother declared that they were
most tiresome on account of their length and of the development I gave
to my digressions. . . . There were very few bad people in them,
and never any serious troubles. Everything was always arranged
satisfactorily, thanks to my lively, optimistic ideas. . . ."
She had already commenced, then, at the age of three, and these early
stories are the precursors of the novels of her maturity. They are
optimistic, drawn out, and with long digressions. Something similar is
told about Walter Scott. There is evidently a primordial instinct in
those who are born story-tellers, and this urges them on to invent fine
stories for amusing themselves.
A little later on we have another phenomenon, almost as curious, with
regard to Aurore. We are apt to wonder how certain descriptive writers
proceed in order to give us pictures, the various features of which
stand out in such intense relief that they appear absolutely real to us.
George Sand tells us that when Berquin's stories were being read to
her at Nohant, she used to sit in front of the fire, from which she was
protected by an old green silk screen. She used gradually to lose the
sense of the phrases, but pictures began to form themselves in front of
her on the green screen.
"I saw woods, meadows, rivers, towns of strange and gigantic
architecture. . . . One day these apparitions were so real that I was
startled by them, and I asked my mother whether she could see them."
With hallucinations like these a writer can be picturesque. He has
in front of him, although it may be between four walls, a complete
landscape. He has only to follow the lines of it and to reproduce the
colours, so that in painting imaginary landscapes he can paint them from
nature, from this model that appears to him, as though by enchantment.
He can, if he likes, count the leaves of the trees and listen to the
sound of the growing grass.
Still later on, vague religious or philosophical conceptions began
to mingle with the fiction that Aurore always had in her mind. To her
poetical life, was added a moral life. She always had a romance going
on, to which she was constantly adding another chapter, like so many
links in a never-ending chain. She now gave a hero to her romance, a
hero whose name was Corambe. He was her ideal, a man whom she had made
her god. Whilst blood was flowing freely on the altars of barbarous
gods, on Corambe's altar life and liberty were given to a whole crowd
of captive creatures, to a swallow, to a robin-redbreast, and even to a
sparrow. We see already in all this her tendency to put moral intentions
into her romantic stories, to arrange her adventures in such a way that
they should serve as examples for making mankind better. These were the
novels, with a purpose, of her twelfth year.
Let us now study a striking contrast, by way of observing the first
signs of vocation in two totally different novelists. In the beginning
of _Facino Cane_, Balzac tells us an incident of the time when, as an
aspiring writer, he lived in his attic in the Rue Lesdiguieres. One
evening, on coming out of the theatre, he amused himself with following
a working-man and his wife from the Boulevard du Pontaux-Choux to the
Boulevard Beaumarchais. He listened to them as they talked of the piece
they had just seen. They then discussed their business matters, and
afterwards house and family affairs. "While listening to this couple,"
says Balzac, "I entered into their life. I could feel their clothes on
my back and, I was walking in their shabby boots."
This is the novelist of the objective school, the one who comes out of
himself, who ceases to be himself and becomes another person.
Instead of this exterior world, to which Balzac adapts himself, Aurore
talks to us of an inner world, emanating from her own fancy, the
reflection of her own imagination, the echo of her own heart, which is
really herself. This explains the difference between Balzac's impersonal
novel and George Sand's personal novel. It is just the difference
between realistic art, which gives way to the object, and idealistic
art, which transforms this according to its own will and pleasure.
Up to this time George Sand's ideas had not been put on to paper. Both
_Corambe_ and the stories composed between four chairs were merely
fancies of a child's mind. Aurore soon began to write, though. She had
composed two novels while in the convent, one of which was religious and
the other a pastoral story. She was wise enough to tear them both up. On
leaving the convent she wrote another novel for Rene' de Villeneuve, and
this shared the same fate. In 1827, she wrote her _Voyage en Auvergne_,
and in 1829, another novel. In her _Histoire de ma vie_ she says of
this: "After reading it, I was convinced that it was of no value, but at
the same time I was sure I could write a better one. . . . I saw that
I could write quickly and easily, and without feeling any fatigue.
The ideas that were lying dormant in my mind were quickened and became
connected, by my deductions, as I wrote. With my meditative life, I had
observed a great deal, and had understood the various characters which
Fate had put in my way, so that I really knew enough of human nature
to be able to depict it." She now had that facility, that abundance of
matter and that nonchalance which were such characteristic features of
her writing.
When George Sand began to publish, she had already written a great deal.
Her literary formation was complete. We notice this same thing whenever
we study the early work of a writer. Genius is revealed to us, perhaps,
with a sudden flash, but it has been making its way for a long time
underground, so that what we take for a spontaneous burst of genius is
nothing but the final effort of a sap which has been slowly accumulating
and which from henceforth is all-powerful.
George Sand had to go through the inevitable period of feeling her way.
We are glad to think that the first book she published was not written
by herself alone, so that the responsibility of that execrable novel
does not lie solely with her.
On the 9th of March, 1831, George Sand wrote to Boucoiran as follows:
"Monstrosities are in vogue, so we must invent monstrosities. I am
bringing forth a very pleasant one just at present. . . ." This was the
novel written in collaboration with Sandeau which appeared under the
signature of Jules Sand towards the end of 1831. It was entitled, _Rose
et Blanche, ou la Comedienne et la Religieuse_.
It begins by a scene in a coach, rather like certain novels by Balzac,
but accompanied by insignificant details in the worst taste imaginable.
Two girls are travelling in the same coach. Rose is a young comedian,
and Sister Blanche is about to become a nun. They separate at Tarbes,
and the scene of the story is laid in the region of the Pyrenees, in
Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and finishes with the return to Paris.
Rose, after an entertainment which is a veritable orgy, is handed over
by her mother to a licentious young man. He is ashamed of himself,
and, instead of leading Rose astray, he takes her to the Convent of the
Augustines, where she finds Sister Blanche once more. Sister Blanche has
not yet pronounced her vows, and the proof of this is that she marries
Horace. But what a wedding! As a matter of fact, Sister Blanche was
formerly named Denise. She was the daughter of a seafaring man of
Bordeaux, and was both pretty and foolish. She had been dishonoured by
the young libertine whom she is now to marry. The memory of the past
comes back to Blanche, and makes her live over again her life as Denise.
In the mean time Rose had become a great singer. She now arrives, just
in time to be present at her friend's deathbed. She enters the convent
herself, and takes the place left vacant by Sister Blanche. The whole of
this is absurd and frequently very disagreeable.
It is quite easy to distinguish the parts due to the two collaborators,
and to see that George Sand wrote nearly all the book. There are
the landscapes, Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and a number of
recollections of the famous journey to the Pyrenees and of her stay
at Guillery with the Dudevant family. The Convent of the Augustines
in Paris, with its English nuns and its boarders belonging to the best
families, is the one in which Aurore spent three years. The cloister can
be recognized, the garden planted with chestnut trees, and the cell
from which there was a view over the city. All her dreams seemed so near
Heaven there, for the rich, cloudy sky was so near--"that most beautiful
and ever-changing sky, perhaps the most beautiful in the world," of
which we read in _Rose et Blanche_. But together with this romance of
religious life is a libertine novel with stories of orgies, of a certain
private house, and of very risky and unpleasant episodes. This is the
collaborator's share in the work. The risky parts are Sandeau's.
Such, then, is this hybrid composition. It was, in reality, the
monstrosity announced by George Sand.
It had a certain success, but the person who was most severe in her
judgment of it was Sophie-Victoire, George Sand's mother, who had very
prudish tastes in literature. This woman is perfectly delightful,
and every time we come across her it is a fresh joy. Her daughter was
obliged to make some excuse for herself, and this she did by stating
that the work was not entirely her own.
"I do not approve of a great deal of the nonsense," she writes, "and
I only let certain things pass to please my publisher, who wanted
something rather lively. . . . I do not like the risky parts
myself. . . ." Later on in the same letter, she adds: "There is nothing
of the kind in the book I am writing now, and I am using nothing of my
collaborator's in this, except his name."(15)
(15) _Correspondance_: To her mother, February 22, 1832.
This was true. Jules Sand had had his day, and the book of which she now
speaks was _Indiana_. She signed this "George Sand."
The unpublished correspondence with Emile Regnault, some fragments of
which we have just read, contains a most interesting letter concerning
the composition of _Indiana_. It is dated February 28, 1832. George Sand
first insists on the severity of the subject and on its resemblance to
life. "It is as simple, as natural and as positive as you could wish,"
she says. "It is neither romantic, mosaic, nor frantic. It is just
ordinary life of the most _bourgeois_ kind, but unfortunately this is
much more difficult than exaggerated literature. . . . There is not the
least word put in for nothing, not a single description, not a
vestige of poetry. There are no unexpected, extraordinary, or amazing
situations, but merely four volumes on four characters. With only just
these characters, that is, with hidden feelings, everyday thoughts,
with friendship, love, selfishness, devotion, self-respect, persistency,
melancholy, sorrow, ingratitude, disappointment, hope, and all the
mixed-up medley of the human mind, is it possible to write four volumes
which will not bore people? I am afraid of boring people, of boring them
as life itself does. And yet what is more interesting than the history
of the heart, when it is a true history? The main thing is to write true
history, and it is just that which is so difficult. . . ."
This declaration is rather surprising to any one who reads it to-day.
We might ask whether what was natural in 1832 would be natural in 1910?
That is not the question which concerns us, though. The important fact
to note is that George Sand was no longer attempting to manufacture
monstrosities. She was endeavouring to be true, and she wanted above
everything else to present a character of woman who would be the typical
modern woman.
"Noemi (this name was afterwards left to Sandeau, who had used it in
_Marianna_. George Sand changed it to that of _Indiana_) is a typical
woman, strong and weak, tired even by the weight of the air, but capable
of holding up the sky; timid in everyday life, but daring in days of
battle; shrewd and clever in seizing the loose threads of ordinary life,
but silly and stupid in distinguishing her own interests when it is a
question of her happiness; caring little for the world at large, but
allowing herself to be duped by one man; not troubling much about
her own dignity, but watching over that of the object of her choice;
despising the vanities of the times as far as she is concerned, but
allowing herself to be fascinated by the man who is full of these
vanities. This, I believe," she says, "is the usual woman, an
extraordinary mixture of weakness and energy, of grandeur and of
littleness, a being ever composed of two opposite natures, at times
sublime and at times despicable, clever in deceiving and easily deceived
herself."
This novel, intended to present to us the modern woman, ought to be
styled a "feminist novel." It was also, as regards other points of view.
_Indiana_ appeared in May, 1832, _Valentine_ in 1833, and _Jacques_ in
1834. In these three books I should like to show our present feminism,
already armed, and introduced to us according to George Sand's early
ideas.
_Indiana_ is the story of a woman who had made an unfortunate marriage.
At the age of nineteen she had married Colonel Delmare. Colonels were
very much in vogue in those days, and the fact that he had attained that
rank proves that he was much older than she was. Colonel Delmare was an
honest, straightforward man in the Pharisaical sense of the word. This
simply means that he had never robbed or killed any one. He had no
delicacy and no charm, and, fond as he was of his own authority, he
was a domestic tyrant. Indiana was very unhappy between this execrable
husband and a cousin of hers, Ralph, a man who is twice over English,
in the first place because his name is Brown, and then because he is
phlegmatic. Ralph is delightful and most excellent, and it is on his
account that she is insensible to the charms of Raymon de Ramieres an
elegant and distinguished young man who is a veritable lady-killer.