first book. With her second one she became rich, or what she considered
rich. She tells us that she sold it for a hundred and sixty pounds! That
seemed to her the wealth of the world, and she did not hesitate to leave
her attic on the Quay St. Michel for a more comfortable flat on Quay
Malaquais, which de Latouche gave up to her.
There was, at that time, a personage in Paris who had begun to exercise
a sort of royal tyranny over authors. Francois Buloz had taken advantage
of the intellectual effervescence of 1831 to found the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_. He was venturesome, energetic, original, very shrewd, though
apparently rough, obliging, in spite of his surly manners. He is still
considered the typical and traditional review manager. He certainly
possessed the first quality necessary for this function. He discovered
talented writers, and he also knew how to draw from them and squeeze out
of them all the literature they contained. Tremendously headstrong,
he has been known to keep a contributor under lock and key until his
article was finished. Authors abused him, quarrelled with him, and
then came back to him again. A review which had, for its first numbers,
George Sand, Vigny, Musset, Merimee, among many others, as contributors,
may be said to have started well. George Sand tells us that after a
battle with the _Revue de Paris_ and the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, both
of which papers wanted her work, she bound herself to the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_, which was to pay her a hundred and sixty pounds a year for
thirty-two pages of writing every six weeks. In 1833 the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_ published Lelia, and on January 1, 1876, it finished publishing
the _Tour de Percemont_. This means an uninterrupted collaboration,
extending over a period of forty-three years.
The literary critic of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ at that time was
a man who was very much respected and very little liked, or, in other
words, he was universally detested. This critic was Gustave Planche.
He took his own _role_ too seriously, and endeavoured to put authors
on their guard about their faults. Authors did not appreciate this.
He endeavoured, too, to put the public on guard against its own
infatuations. The public did not care for this. He sowed strife and
reaped revenge. This did not stop him, though, for he went calmly on
continuing his executions. His impassibility was only feigned, and this
is the curious side of the story. He suffered keenly from the storms of
hostility which he provoked. He had a kindly disposition at bottom
and tender places in his heart. He was rather given to melancholy and
intensely pessimistic. To relieve his sadness, he gave himself up to
hard work, and he was thoroughly devoted to art. In order to comprehend
this portrait and to see its resemblance, we, who knew our great
Brunetiere, have only to think of him. He, too, was noble, fervent
and combative, and he sought in his exclusive devotion to literature a
diversion from his gloomy pessimism, underneath which was concealed such
kindliness. It seemed with him, too, as though he took a pride in making
a whole crowd of enemies, whilst in reality the discovery of every fresh
adversary caused him great suffering.
When _Lelia_ appeared, the novel was very badly treated in _L'Europe
litteraire_. Planche challenged the writer of the article, a certain
Capo de Feuillide, to a duel. So much for the impassibility of
severe critics. The duel took place, and afterwards there was a
misunderstanding between George Sand and Planche. From that time forth
critics have given up fighting duels for the sake of authors.
About the same time, George Sand made use of Sainte-Beuve as her
confessor. He seemed specially indicated for this function. In the first
place, he looked rather ecclesiastical, and then he had a taste for
secrets, and more particularly for whispered confessions. George Sand
had absolute confidence in him. She considered that he had an almost
angelic nature. In reality, just about that time, the angelic man was
endeavouring to get into the good graces of the wife of his best friend,
and was writing his _Livre d'Amour_, and divulging to the world a
weakness of which he had taken advantage. This certainly was the most
villainous thing a man could do. But then he, too, was in love and was
struggling and praying. George Sand declares her veneration for him, and
she constituted herself his penitent.
She begins her confession by an avowal that must have been difficult for
her. She tells of her intimacy with Merimee, an intimacy which was
of short duration and very unsatisfactory. She had been fascinated by
Merimee's art.
"For about a week," she says, "I thought he had the secret of
happiness." At the end of the week she was "weeping with disgust,
suffering and discouragement." She had hoped to find in him the devotion
of a consoler, but she found "nothing but cold and bitter jesting."(16)
This experiment had also proved a failure.
(16) Compare _Lettres a Sainte-Beuve_.
Such were the conditions in which George Sand found herself at this
epoch. Her position was satisfactory; she might have been calm and
independent. Her inner life was once more desolate, and she was
thoroughly discouraged. She felt that she had lived centuries, that she
had undergone torture, that her heart had aged twenty years, and that
nothing was any pleasure to her now. Added to all this, public life
saddened her, for the horizon had clouded over. The boundless hopes and
the enthusiasm of 1831 were things of the past. "The Republic, as it was
dreamed of in July," she writes, "has ended in the massacres of Warsaw
and in the holocaust of the Saint-Merry cloister. The cholera has just
been raging. Saint Simonism has fallen through before it had settled the
great question of love."(17)
(17) _Histoire de ma vie_.
Depression had come after over-excitement. This is a phenomenon
frequently seen immediately after political convulsions. It might be
called the perpetual failure of revolutionary promises.
It was under all these influences that George Sand wrote _Lelia_. She
finished it in July, and it appeared in August, 1833.
It is absolutely impossible to give an analysis of _Lelia_. There really
is no subject. The personages are not beings of flesh and blood. They
are allegories strolling about in the garden of abstractions. Lelia is
a woman who has had her trials in life. She has loved and been
disappointed, so that she can no longer love at all. She reduces the
gentle poet Stenio to despair. He is much younger than she is, and he
has faith in life and in love. His ingenuous soul begins to wither
and to lose its freshness, thanks to the scepticism of the beautiful,
disdainful, ironical and world-weary Lelia. This strange person has a
sister Pulcherie, a celebrated courtesan, whose insolent sensuality is
a set-off to the other one's mournful complaints. We have here the
opposition of Intelligence and of the Flesh, of Mind and Matter. Then
comes Magnus, the priest, who has lost his faith, and for whom Lelia
is a temptation, and after him we have Trenmor, Lelia's great friend,
Trenmor, the sublime convict. As a young man he had been handsome. He
had loved and been young. He had known what it was to be only twenty
years of age. "The only thing was, he had known this at the age
of sixteen" (!!) He had then become a gambler, and here follows an
extraordinary panegyric on the fatal passion for gambling. Trenmor
ruins himself, borrows without paying back, and finally swindles "an old
millionaire who was himself a defrauder and a dissipated man" out of
a hundred francs. Apparently the bad conduct of the man Trenmor robs,
excuses the swindling. He is condemned to five years of hard labour. He
undergoes his punishment, and is thereby regenerated. "What if I were to
tell you," writes George Sand, "that such as he now is, crushed, with a
tarnished reputation, ruined, I consider him superior to all of us, as
regards the moral life. As he had deserved punishment, he was willing to
bear it. He bore it, living for five years bravely and patiently among
his abject companions. He has come back to us out of that abominable
sewer holding his head up, calm, purified, pale as you see him, but
handsome still, like a creature sent by God."
We all know how dear convicts are to the hearts of romantic people.
There is no need for me to remind you how they have come to us recently,
encircled with halos of suffering and of purity. We all remember
Dostoiewsky's _Crime and Punishment_ and Tolstoi's _Resurrection_. When
the virtue of expiation and the religion of human suffering came to
us from Russia, we should have greeted them as old acquaintances, if
certain essential works in our own literature, of which these books are
the issue, had not been unknown to us.
The last part of the novel is devoted to Stenio. Hurt by Lelia's
disdain, which has thrown him into the arms of her sister Pulcherie,
he gives himself up to debauch. We find him at a veritable orgy in
Pulcherie's house. Later on he is in a monastery at Camaldules, talking
to Trenmor and Magnus. In such books we must never be astonished. . . .
There is a long speech by Stenio, addressed to Don Juan, whom he
regrets to have taken as his model. The poor young man of course commits
suicide. He chooses drowning as the author evidently prefers that mode
of suicide. Lelia arrives in time to kneel down by the corpse of the
young man who has been her victim. Magnus then appears on the scene,
exactly at the right moment, to strangle Lelia. Pious hands prepare
Lelia and Stenio for their burial. They are united and yet separated up
to their very death.
The summing up we have given is the original version of _Lelia_.
In 1836, George Sand touched up this work, altering much of it and
spoiling, what she altered. It is a pity that her new version, which
is longer, heavier and more obscure, should have taken the place of the
former one. In its first form _Lelia_ is a work of rare beauty, but with
the beauty of a poem or an oratorio. It is made of the stuff of which
dreams are composed. It is a series of reveries, adapted to the soul
of 1830. At every different epoch there is a certain frame of mind, and
certain ideas are diffused in the air which we find alike in the works
of the writers of that time, although they did not borrow them from each
other. _Lelia_ is a sort of summing up of the themes then in vogue in
the personal novel and in lyrical poetry. The theme of that suffering
which is beneficent and inspiring is contained in the following words:
"Come back to me, Sorrow! Why have you left me? It is by grief alone
that man is great." This is worthy of Chateaubriand. The theme of
melancholy is as follows: "The moon appeared. . . . What is the moon,
and what is its nocturnal magic to me? One hour more or less is nothing
to me." This might very well be Lamartine. We then have the malediction
pronounced in face of impassible Nature: "Yes, I detested that radiant
and magnificent Nature, for it was there before me in all its stupid
beauty, silent and proud, for us to gaze on, believing that it was
enough to merely show itself." This reminds us of Vigny in his _Maison
du berger_. Then we have the religion of love: "Doubt God, doubt men,
doubt me if you like, but do not doubt love." This is Musset.
But the theme which predominates, and, as we have compared all this to
music, we might say the _leit-motiv_ of all, is that of desolation, of
universal despair, of the woe of life. It is the same lamentation which,
ever since Werther, was to be heard throughout all literature. It is the
identical suffering which Rene, Obermann and Lara had been repeating to
all the echoes. The elements of it were the same: pride which prevents
us from adapting ourselves to the conditions of universal life, an abuse
of self-analysis which opens up our wounds again and makes them bleed,
the wild imagination which presents to our eyes the deceptive mirage of
Promised Lands from which we are ever exiles. Lelia personifies, in her
turn, the "_mal du siecle_." Stenio reproaches her with only singing
grief and doubt. "How many, times," he says, "have you appeared to me
as typical of the indescribable suffering in which mankind is plunged
by the spirit of inquiry! With your beauty and your sadness, your
world-weariness and your scepticism, do you not personify the excess of
grief produced by the abuse of thought?" He then adds: "There is a great
deal of pride in this grief, Lelia!" It was undoubtedly a malady, for
Lelia had no reason to complain of life any more than her brothers in
despair. It is simply that the general conditions of life which all
people have to accept seem painful to them. When we are well the play of
our muscles is a joy to us, but when we are ill we feel the very weight
of the atmosphere, and our eyes are hurt by the pleasant daylight.
When _Lelia_ appeared George Sand's old friends were stupefied. "What,
in Heaven's name, is this?" wrote Jules Neraud, the _Malgache._ "Where
have you been in search of this? Why have you written such a book?
Where has it sprung from, and what is it for? . . . This woman is a
fantastical creature. She is not at all like you. You are lively and can
dance a jig; you can appreciate butterflies and you do not despise puns.
You sew and can make jam very well."(18)
(18) _Histoire de ma vie_.
It certainly was not her portrait. She was healthy and believed in life,
in the goodness of things and in the future of humanity, just as Victor
Hugo and Dumas _pere_, those other forces of Nature, did, at about the
same time. A soul foreign to her own had entered into her, and it was
the romantic soul. With the magnificent power of receptivity which she
possessed, George Sand welcomed all the winds which came to her from
the four quarters of romanticism. She sent them back with unheard-of
fulness, sonorous depth and wealth of orchestration. From that time
forth a woman's voice could be heard, added to all the masculine voices
which railed against life, and the woman's voice dominated them all!
In George Sand's psychological evolution, _Lelia_ is just this: the
beginning of the invasion of her soul by romanticism. It was a borrowed
individuality, undoubtedly, but it was not something to be put on and
off at will like a mask. It adhered to the skin. It was all very fine
for George Sand to say to Sainte-Beuve: "Do not confuse the man himself
with the suffering. . . . And do not believe in all my satanical airs.
. . . This is simply a style that I have taken on, I assure you. . . ."
Sainte-Beuve had every reason to be alarmed, and the confessor was quite
right in his surmises. The crisis of romanticism had commenced. It
was to take an acute form and to reach its paroxysm during the Venice
escapade. It is from this point of view that we will study the famous
episode, which has already been studied by so many other writers.
No subject, perhaps, has excited the curiosity of readers like this one,
and always without satisfying that curiosity. A library could be formed
of the books devoted to this subject, written within the last ten years.
Monsieur Rocheblave, Monsieur Maurice Clouard, Dr. Cabanes, Monsieur
Marieton, the enthusiastic collector, Spoelberch de Lovenjoul and
Monsieur Decori have all given us their contributions to the debate.(19)
Thanks to them, we have the complete correspondence of George Sand and
Musset, the diary of George Sand and Pagello's diary.
(19) Consult: Rocheblave, _La fin dune Legende;_ Maurice
Clouard, _Documents inedits sur A. de Musset;_ Dr. Cabanes,
_Musset et le Dr. Pagello_; Paul Marieton, _Une histoire
d'amour;_ Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, _La vrai histoire
d'Elle et Lui;_ Decori, _Lettres de George Sand et Musset._
With the aid of all these documents Monsieur Charles Maurras has written
a book entitled _Les Amants de Venise_. It is the work of a psychologist
and of an artist. The only fault I have to find with it is that the
author of it seems to see calculation and artifice everywhere, and not
to believe sufficiently in sincerity. We must not forget, either, that
as early as the year 1893, all that is essential had been told us by
that shrewd writer and admirable woman, Arvede Barine. The chapter which
she devotes to the Venice episode, in her biography of Alfred de Musset,
is more clear and simple, and at the same time deeper than anything that
had yet been written.
It is a subject that has been given up to the curiosity of people and
to their disputes. The strange part is the zeal which at once animates
every one who takes part in this controversy. The very atmosphere seems
to be impregnated with strife, and those interested become, at once,
the partisans of George Sand or the partisans of Musset. The two parties
only agree on one point, and that is, to throw all the blame on the
client favoured by their adversary. I must confess that I cannot take
a passionate interest in a discussion, the subject of which we cannot
properly judge. According to _Mussetistes_, it was thanks to George
Sand that the young poet was reduced to the despair which drove him to
debauchery. On the other hand, if we are to believe the _Sandistes_,
George Sand's one idea in interesting herself in Musset was to rescue
him from debauchery and convert him to a better life. I listen to all
such pious interpretations, but I prefer others for myself. I prefer
seeing the physiognomy of each of the two lovers standing out, as it
does, in powerful relief.
It is the custom, too, to pity these two unfortunates, who suffered so
much. At the risk of being taken for a very heartless man, I must own
that I do not pity them much. The two lovers wished for this suffering,
they wanted to experience the incomparable sensations of it, and they
got enjoyment and profit from this. They knew that they were working for
posterity. "Posterity will repeat our names like those of the immortal
lovers whose two names are only one at present, like Romeo and Juliette,
like Heloise and Abelard. People will never speak of one of us without
speaking of the other."
Juliette died at the age of fifteen and Heloise entered a convent. The
Venice lovers did not have to pay for their celebrity as dearly as
that. They wanted to give an example, to light a torch on the road of
humanity. "People shall know my story," writes George Sand. "I will
write it. . . . Those who follow along the path I trod will see where it
leads." _Et nunc erudimini_. Let us see for ourselves, and learn.
Their _liaison_ dates from August, 1833.
George Sand was twenty-nine years of age. It was the time of her
greatest charm. We must try to imagine the enchantress as she then
was. She was not tall and she was delightfully slender, with an
extraordinary-looking face of dark, warm colouring. Her thick hair was
very dark, and her eyes, her large eyes, haunted Musset for years after.
"_Ote-moi, memoire importune_,
_Ote-moi ces yeux que je vois toujours!_"
he writes.
And this woman, who could have been loved passionately, merely for her
charm as a woman, was a celebrity! She was a woman of genius! Alfred de
Musset was twenty-three years old. He was elegant, witty, a flirt, and
when he liked he could be irresistible. He had won his reputation by
that explosion of gaiety and imagination, _Les Contes d'Espagne el
d'Italle_. He had written some fine poetry, dreamy, disturbing and
daring. He had also given _Les Caprices de Marianne_, in which he
figures twice over himself, for he was both Octave the sceptic, the
disillusioned man, and Coelio, the affectionate, candid Coelio. He
imagined himself Rolla. It was he, and he alone, who should have been
styled the sublime boy.
And so here they both are. We might call them Lelia and Stenio, but
_Lelia_ was written before the Venice adventure. She was not the
reflection of it, but rather the presentiment. This is worthy of notice,
but not at all surprising. Literature sometimes imitates reality, but
how much more often reality is modelled on literature!
It was as though George Sand had foreseen her destiny, for she had
feared to meet Musset. On the 11th of March, she writes as follows to
Sainte-Beuve: "On second thoughts, I do not want you to bring Alfred de
Musset. He is a great dandy. We should not suit each other, and I was
really more curious to see him than interested in him." A little later
on, though, at a dinner at the _Freres provencaux_, to which Buloz
invited his collaborators, George Sand found herself next Alfred de
Musset. She invited him to call on her, and when _Lelia_ was published
she sent him a copy, with the following dedication written in the first
volume: _A Monsieur mon gamin d'Allred_; and in the second volume: _A
Monsieur le vicomte Allred de Musset, hommage respectueux de son devoue
serviteur George Sand_. Musset replied by giving his opinion of the new
book. Among the letters which followed, there is one that begins with
these words: "My dear George, I have something silly and ridiculous to
tell you. I am foolishly writing, instead of telling you, as I ought to
have done, after our walk. I am heartbroken to-night that I did not tell
you. You will laugh at me, and you will take me for a man who simply
talks nonsense. You will show me the door, and fancy that I am not
speaking the truth. . . . I am in love with you. . . ."
She did not laugh at him, though, and she did not show him the door.
Things did not drag on long, evidently, as she writes to her confessor,
Sainte-Beuve, on the 25th of August: "I have fallen in love, and very
seriously this time, with Alfred de Musset." How long was this to
last? She had no idea, but for the time being she declared that she was
absolutely happy.
"I have found a candour, a loyalty and an affection which delight me. It
is the love of a young man and the friendship of a comrade." There was
a honeymoon in the little flat looking on the Quay Malaquals. Their
friends shared the joy of the happy couple, as we see by Musset's
frolicsome lines:
_George est dans sa chambrette,
Entre deux pots de fleurs,
Fumiant sa cigarette,
Les yeux baignes de pleurs._
_Buloz assis par terre
Lui fait de doux serments,
Solange par derriere
Gribouille ses romans._
_Plante commme une borne_,
_Boucoiran tout crott_,
_Contemple d'un oeil morne_
_Musset tout debraille, etc._
It is evident that, as poetry, this does not equal the _Nuits._
In the autumn they went for a honeymoon trip to Fontainebleau. It was
there that the strange scene took place which is mentioned in _Elle
et Lui_. One evening when they were in the forest, Musset had an
extraordinary hallucination, which he has himself described:
_Dans tin bois, sur une bruyere,
Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir
Un jeune homme vetu de noir
Qui me ressemblail comme un frere._
_Le lui demandais mon chemin,
Il tenait un luth d'ue main,
De l'autre un bouquet d'eglantine.
Il me fit tin salut d'ami
Et, se detournant a demu,
Me montra du doigt la colline._
He really saw this "double," dressed in black, which was to visit him
again later on. His _Nuit de decembre_ was written from it.
They now wanted to see Italy together. Musset had already written on
Venice; he now wanted to go there. Madame de Musset objected to this,
but George Sand promised so sincerely that she would be a mother to the
young man that finally his own mother gave her consent. On the evening
of December 12, 1833, Paul de Musset accompanied the two travellers to
the mail-coach. On the boat from Lyons to Avignon they met with a big,
intelligent-looking man. This was Beyle-Stendhal, who was then Consul at
Civita-Vecchia. He was on his way to his post. They enjoyed his lively
conversation, although he made fun of their illusions about Italy and
the Italian character. He made fun, though, of everything and of every
one, and they felt that he was only being witty and trying to appear
unkind. At dinner he drank too much, and finished by dancing round the
table in his great fur-lined boots. Later on he gave them some specimens
of his obscene conversation, so that they were glad to continue their
journey without him.