George Sand who first made literature of their common recollections.
Some of these recollections were very recent ones and were impregnated
with tears. The two lovers had only just separated when George Sand made
the excursion described in the first _Lettre d'un voyageur_. She goes
along the Brenta. It is the month of May, and the meadows are in flower.
In the horizon she sees the snowy peaks of the Tyrolese Alps standing
out. The remembrance of the long hours spent at the invalid's bedside
comes back to her, with all the anguish of the sacred passion in which
she thinks she sees God's anger. She then pays a visit to the Oliero
grottoes, and once more her wounded love makes her heart ache. She
returns through Possagno, whose beautiful women served as models for
Canova. She then goes back to Venice, and the doctor gives her a letter
from the man she has given up, the man she has sent away. These poetical
descriptions, alternating with lyrical effusions, this kind of dialogue
with two voices, one of which is that of nature and the other that of
the heart, remind us of one of Musset's _Nuits_.
The second of these _Lettres d'un voyageur_ is entirely descriptive. It
is spring-time in Venice. The old balconies are gay with flowers; the
nightingales stop singing to listen to the serenades. There are songs
to be heard at every street corner, music in the wake of every gondola.
There are sweet perfumes and love-sighs in the air. The delights of the
Venetian nights had never been described like this. The harmony of "the
three elements, water, sky and marble," had never been better expressed,
and the charm of Venice had never been suggested in so subtle and,
penetrating a manner. The second letter treats too of the gondoliers,
and of their habits and customs.
The third letter, telling us about the nobility and the women of Venice,
completes the impression. Just as the Pyrenees had moved George Sand, so
Italy now moved her. This was a fresh acquisition for her palette. More
than once from henceforth Venice was to serve her for the wonderful
scenery of her stories. This is by no means a fresh note, though, in
George Sand's work. There is no essential difference, then, in her
inspiration. She had always been impressionable, but her taste was
now getting purer. Musset, the most romantic of French poets, had an
eminently classical taste. In the _Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet_, he
defined romanticism as an abuse of adjectives. He was of Madame de
Lafayette's opinion, that a word taken out was worth twenty pennies, and
a phrase taken out twenty shillings. In a copy of _Indiana_ he crossed
out all the useless epithets. This must have made a considerable
difference to the length of the book. George Sand was too broad-minded
to be hurt by such criticism, and she was intelligent enough to learn a
lesson from it.
Musset's transformation was singularly deeper. When he started for
Venice, he was the youngest and most charming of poets, fanciful and
full of fun. "Monsieur mon gamin d'Alfred," George Sand called him at
that time. When he returned from there, he was the saddest of poets. For
some time he was, as it were, stunned. His very soul seemed to be bowed
down with his grief. He was astonished at the change he felt in himself,
and he did not by any means court any fresh inspiration.
_J'ai vu, le temps ou ma jeunesse_
_Sur mes levres etait sans cesse_
_Prete a chanter comme un oiseau;_
_Mais j'ai souffert un dur martyre_
_Et le moins que j'en pourrais dire_,
_Si je lessayais sur a lyre_,
_La briserait comme un roseau_,
he writes.
In the _Nuit de Mai_, the earliest of these songs of despair, we have
the poet's symbol of the pelican giving its entrails as food to its
starving young. The only symbols that we get in this poetry are symbols
of sadness, and these are at times given in magnificent fulness of
detail. We have solitude in the _Nuit de decembre_, and the labourer
whose house has been burnt in the _Lettre a Lamartine_. The _Nuit
d'aout_ gives proof of a wild effort to give life another trial, but in
the _Auit d'octobre_ anger gets the better of him once more.
_Honte a toi, qui la premiere
M'as appris la trahison . . . !_
The question has often been asked whether the poet refers here to the
woman he loved in Venice but it matters little whether he did or not.
He only saw her through the personage who from henceforth symbolized
"woman" to him and the suffering which she may cause a man. And yet, as
this suffering became less intense, softened as it was by time, he began
to discover the benefit of it. His soul had expanded, so that he was now
in communion with all that is great in Nature and in Art. The harmony
of the sky, the silence of night, the murmur of flowing water, Petrarch,
Michel Angelo, Shakespeare, all appealed to him. The day came when he
could write:
_Un souvenir heureux est peut-etre sur terre
Plus vrai que le bonheur_.
This is the only philosophy for a conception of life which treats love
as everything for man. He not only pardons now, but he is grateful:
_Je ne veux rien savoir, ni si les champs fleurissent,
Nice quil adviendra di., simulacre humain,
Ni si ces vastes cieux eclaireront demain
Ce qu' ils ensevelissent heure, en ce lieu,
Je me dis seulement: a cette
Un jour, je fus aime, j'aimais, elle etait belle,
Jenfouis ce tresor dans mon ame immortelle
Et je l'em porte a Dieu._
This love poem, running through all he wrote from the _Nuit de Mai_
to the _Souvenir_, is undoubtedly the most beautiful and the most
profoundly human of anything in the French language. The charming poet
had become a great poet. That shock had occurred within him which is
felt by the human being to the very depths of his soul, and makes of him
a new creature. It is in this sense that the theory of the romanticists,
with regard to the educative virtues of suffering, is true. But it is
not only suffering in connection with our love affairs which has this
special privilege. After some misfortune which uproots, as it were, our
life, after some disappointment which destroys our moral edifice, the
world appears changed to us. The whole network of accepted ideas and
of conventional opinions is broken asunder. We find ourselves in direct
contact with reality, and the shock makes our true nature come to the
front. . . . Such was the crisis through which Musset had just passed.
The man came out of it crushed and bruised, but the poet came through it
triumphant.
It has been insisted on too much that George Sand was only the
reflection of the men who had approached her. In the case of Musset
it was the contrary. Musset owed her more than she owed to him. She
transformed him by the force of her strong individuality. She, on the
contrary, only found in Musset a child, and what she was seeking was a
dominator.
She thought she had discovered him this very year 1835.
The sixth _Lettre d'un voyageur_ was addressed to Everard. This Everard
was considered by her to be a superior man. He was so much above the
average height that George Sand advised him to sit down when he was with
other men, as when standing he was too much above them. She compares him
to Atlas carrying the world, and to Hercules in a lion's skin. But among
all her comparisons, when she is seeking to give the measure of his
superiority, without ever really succeeding in this, it is evident
that the comparison she prefers is that of Marius at Minturnae. He
personifies virtue a _l'antique:_ he is the Roman.
Let us now consider to whom all this flattery was addressed, and who
this man, worthy of Plutarch's pen, was. His name was Michel, and he was
an advocate at Bourges. He was only thirty-seven years of age, but he
looked sixty. After Sandeau and Musset, George Sand had had enough of
"adolescents." She was very much struck with Michel, as he looked like
an old man. The size of his cranium was remarkable, or, as she said of
his craniums: "It seemed as though he had two craniums, one joined to
the other." She wrote: "The signs of the superior faculties of his mind
were as prominent at the prow of this strong vessel as those of his
generous instincts at the stern."(21) In order to understand this
definition of the "fine physique" by George Sand, we must remember that
she was very much taken up with phrenology at this time. One of her
_Lettres d'un voyageur_ was entitled Sur _Lavater et sur une Maison
deserte_. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, George Sand tells that her
gardener gave notice to leave, and, on asking him his reason, the
simple-minded man replied: "Madame has such an ugly head that my wife,
who is expecting, might die of fright." The head in question was a
skull, an anatomical one with compartments all marked and numbered,
according to the system of Gall and Spurzheim. In 1837, phrenology was
very much in favour. In 1910, it is hypnotism, so we have no right to
judge the infatuation of another epoch.
(21) _Histoire de ma vie_.
Michel's cranium was bald. He was short, slight, he stooped, was
short-sighted and wore glasses. It is George Sand who gives these
details for his portrait. He was born of peasant parents, and was of
Jacobin simplicity. He wore a thick, shapeless inverness and sabots. He
felt the cold very much, and used to ask permission to put on a muffler
indoors. He would then take three or four out of his pockets and put
them on his head, one over the other. In the _Lettre d'un voyageur_
George Sand mentions this crown on Everard's head. Such are the
illusions of love.
The first time she met Michel was at Bourges. She went with her two
friends, Papet and Fleury, to call on him at the hotel. From seven
o'clock until midnight he never ceased talking. It was a magnificent
night, and he proposed a walk in the town at midnight. When they came
back to his door he insisted on taking them home, and so they continued
walking backwards and forwards until four in the morning. He must have
been an inveterate chatterer to have clung to this public of three
persons at an hour when the great buildings, with the moon throwing its
white light over them and everything around, must have suggested the
majesty of silence. To people who were amazed at this irrepressible
eloquence, Michel answered ingenuously: "Talking is thinking aloud.
By thinking aloud in this way I advance more quickly than if I thought
quietly by myself." This was Numa Roumestan's idea. "As for me," he
said, "when I am not talking, I am not thinking." As a matter of fact,
Michel, like Numa, was a native of Provence. In Paris there was a
repetition of this nocturnal and roving scene. Michel and his friends
had come to a standstill on the Saints-Peres bridge. They caught sight
of the Tuileries lighted up for a ball. Michel became excited, and,
striking the innocent bridge and its parapet with his stick, he
exclaimed: "I tell you that if you are to freshen and renew your corrupt
society, this beautiful river will first have to be red with blood, that
accursed palace will have to be reduced to ashes, and the huge city you
are now looking at will have to be a bare strand where the family of the
poor man can use the plough and build a cottage home."
This was a fine phrase for a public meeting, but perhaps too fine for a
conversation between friends on the Saints-Peres bridge.
This was in 1835, at the most brilliant moment of Michel's career. It
was when he was taking part in the trial of the accused men of April.
After the insurrections of the preceding year at Lyons and Paris, a
great trial had commenced before the Chamber of Peers. We are told
that: "The Republican party was determined to make use of the
cross-questioning of the prisoners for accusing the Government and for
preaching Republicanism and Socialism. The idea was to invite a hundred
and fifty noted Republicans to Paris from all parts of France. In
their quality of defenders, they would be the orators of this great
manifestation." Barb'es, Blanqui, Flocon, Marie, Raspail, Trelat and
Michel of Bourges were among these Republicans. "On the 11th of May, the
revolutionary newspapers published a manifesto in which the committee
for the defence congratulated and encouraged the accused men. One
hundred and ten signatures were affixed to this document, which was a
forgery. It had been drawn up by a few of the upholders of the scheme,
and, in order to make it appear more important, they had affixed the
names of their colleagues without their authorization. Those who had
done this then took fright, and attempted to get out of the dangerous
adventure by a public avowal. In order to save the situation, two of the
guilty party, Trelat and Michel of Bourges, took the responsibility of
the drawing up of the manifesto and the apposition of the signatures
upon themselves. They were sentenced by the Court of Peers, Trelat
to four years of prison and Michel to a month."(22) This was the most
shocking inequality, and Michel could not forgive Trelat for getting
such a fine sentence.
(22) Thureau Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet_,
II. 297.
What good was one month of prison? Michel's career certainly had been a
very ordinary one. He hesitated and tacked about. In a word, he was just
a politician. George Sand tells us that he was obliged "to accept,
in theory, what he called the necessities of pure politics, ruse,
charlatanism and even untruth, concessions that were not sincere,
alliances in which he did not believe, and vain promises." We should say
that he was a radical opportunist. To be merely an opportunist, though,
is not enough for ensuring success. There are different ways of being an
opportunist. Michel had been elected a Deputy, but he had no _role_ to
play. In 1848, he could not compete with the brilliancy of Raspail, nor
had he the prestige of Flocon. He went into the shade completely after
the _coup d'etat_. For a long time he had really preferred business
to politics, and a choice must be made when one is not a member of the
Government.
It is easy to see what charmed George Sand in Michel. He was a
sectarian, and she took him for an apostle. He was brutal, and she
thought him energetic. He had been badly brought up, but she thought him
simply austere. He was a tyrant, but she only saw in him a master. He
had told her that he would have her guillotined at the first possible
opportunity. This was an incontestable proof of superiority. She was
sincere herself, and was consequently not on her guard against vain
boasting. He had alarmed her, and she admired him for this, and at once
incarnated in him that stoical ideal of which she had been dreaming for
years and had not yet been able to attribute to any one else.
This is how she explained to Michel her reasons for loving him. "I love
you," she says, "because whenever I figure to myself grandeur, wisdom,
strength and beauty, your image rises up before me. No other man has
ever exercised any moral influence over me. My mind, which has always
been wild and unfettered, has never accepted any guidance. . . . You
came, and you have taught me." Then again she says: "It is you whom
I love, whom I have loved ever since I was born, and through all
the phantoms in whom I thought, for a moment, that I had found you."
According to this, it was Michel she loved through Musset. Let us hope
that she was mistaken.
A whole correspondence exists between George Sand and Michel of Bourges.
Part of it was published not long ago in the _Revue illustree_ under
the title of _Lettres de lemmze_. None of George Sand's letters surpass
these epistles to Michel for fervent passion, beauty of form, and a
kind of superb _impudeur_. Let us take, for instance, this call to
her beloved. George Sand, after a night of work, complains of fatigue,
hunger and cold: "Oh, my lover," she cries, "appear, and, like the earth
on the return of the May sunshine, I should be reanimated, and would
fling off my shroud of ice and thrill with love. The wrinkles of
suffering would disappear from my brow, and I should seem beautiful and
young to you, for I should leap with joy into your iron strong arms.
Come, come, and I shall have strength, health, youth, gaiety, hope.
. . . I will go forth to meet you like the bride of the song, 'to her
well-beloved.'" The Well-beloved to whom this Shulamite would hasten was
a bald-headed provincial lawyer who wore spectacles and three mufflers.
But it appears that his "beauty, veiled and unintelligible to the
vulgar, revealed itself, like that of Jupiter hidden under human form,
to the women whom he loved."
We must not smile at these mythological comparisons. George Sand had,
as it were, restored for herself that condition of soul to which the
ancient myths are due. A great current of naturalist poetry circulates
through these pages. In Theocritus and in Rousard there are certain
descriptive passages. There is an analogy between them and that image of
the horse which carries George Sand along on her impetuous course.
"As soon as he catches sight of me, he begins to paw the ground and rear
impatiently. I have trained him to clear a hundred fathoms a second.
The sky and the ground disappear when he bears me along under those long
vaults formed by the apple-trees in blossom. . . . The least sound of my
voice makes him bound like a ball; the smallest bird makes him shudder
and hurry along like a child with no experience. He is scarcely five
years old, and he is timid and restive. His black crupper shines in the
sunshine like a raven's wing." This description has all the relief of an
antique figure. Another time, George Sand tells how she has seen Phoebus
throw off her robe of clouds and rush along radiant into the pure sky.
The following day she writes: "She was eaten by the evil spirits.
The dark sprites from Erebus, riding on sombre-looking clouds, threw
themselves on her, and it was in vain that she struggled." We might
compare these passages with a letter of July 10, 1836, in which she
tells how she throws herself, all dressed as she is, into the Indre,
and then continues her course through the sunny meadows, and with
what voluptuousness she revels in all the joys of primitive life, and
imagines herself living in the beautiful times of ancient Greece. There
are days and pages when George Sand, under the afflux of physical life,
is pagan. Her genius then is that of the greenwood divinities, who, at
certain times of the year, were intoxicated by the odour of the meadows
and the sap of the woods. If some day we were to have her complete
correspondence given to us, I should not be surprised if many people
preferred it to her letters to Musset. In the first place, it is not
spoiled by that preoccupation which the Venice lovers had, of writing
literature. Mingled with the accents of sincere passion, we do not find
extraordinary conceptions of paradoxical metaphysics. It is Nature which
speaks in these letters, and for that very reason they are none the less
sorrowful. They, too, tell us of a veritable martyrdom. We can easily
imagine from them that Michel was coarse, despotic, faithless and
jealous. We know, too, that more than once George Sand came very near
losing all patience with him, so that we can sympathize with her when
she wrote to Madame d'Agoult in July, 1836:
"I have had, my fill of great men (excuse the expression). . . . I
prefer to see them all in Plutarch, as they would not then cause me any
suffering on the human side. May they all be carved in marble or cast in
bronze, but may I hear no more about them!" _Amen_.
What disgusted George Sand with her Michel was his vanity and his
craving for adulation. In July, 1837, she had come to the end of her
patience, as she wrote to Girerd. It was one of her peculiarities to
always take a third person into her confidence. At the time of
Sandeau, this third person was Emile Regnault; at the time of Musset,
Sainte-Beuve, and now it was Girerd. "I am tired out with my own
devotion, and I have fought against my pride with all the strength of my
love. I have had nothing but ingratitude and hardness as my recompense.
I have felt my love dying away and my soul being crushed, but I am cured
at last. . . ." If only she had had all this suffering for the sake of a
great man, but this time it was only in imaginary great man.
The influence, though, that he had had over her thought was real, and in
a certain way beneficial.
At the beginning she was far from sharing Michel's ideas, and for some
of them she felt an aversion which amounted to horror. The dogma of
absolute equality seemed an absurdity to her. The Republic, or rather
the various republics then in gestation, appeared to her a sort of
Utopia, and as she saw each of her friends making "his own little
Republic" for himself, she had not much faith in the virtue of that form
of government for uniting all French people. One point shocked her above
all others in Michel's theories. This politician did not like artists.
Just as the Revolution did not find chemists necessary, he considered
that the Republic did not need writers, painters and musicians. These
were all useless individuals, and the Republic would give them a little
surprise by putting a labourer's spade or a shoemaker's awl into their
hands. George Sand considered this idea not only barbarous, but silly.
Time works wonders, for we have an indisputable proof that certain of
his opinions soon became hers. This proof is the Republican catechism
contained in her letters to her son Maurice, who was then twelve years
of age. He was at the Lycee Henri IV, in the same class as the princes
of Orleans. It is interesting to read what his mother says to him
concerning the father of his young school friends. In a letter, written
in December, 1835, she says: "It is certainly true that Louis-Philippe
is the enemy of humanity. . . ." Nothing less than that! A little later,
the enemy of humanity invites the young friends of his son Montpensier
to his _chateau_ for the carnival holiday. Maurice is allowed to
accept the invitation, as he wishes to, but he is to avoid showing
that gratitude which destroys independence. "The entertainments that
Montpensier offers you are favours," writes this mother of the Gracchi
quite gravely. If he is asked about his opinions, the child is to reply
that he is rather too young to have opinions yet, but not too young to
know what opinions he will have when he is free to have them. "You
can reply," says his mother, "that you are Republican by race and
by nature." She then adds a few aphorisms. "Princes are our natural
enemies," she says; and then again: "However good-hearted the child of
a king may be, he is destined to be a tyrant." All this is certainly a
great commotion to make about her little son accepting a glass of fruit
syrup and a few cakes at the house of a schoolfellow. But George Sand
was then under the domination of "Robespierre in person."
Michel had brought George Sand over to republicanism. Without wishing
to exaggerate the service he had rendered her by this, it appears to
me that it certainly was one, if we look at it in one way. Rightly or
wrongly, George Sand had seen in Michel the man who devotes himself
entirely to a cause of general interest. She had learnt something in
his school, and perhaps all the more thoroughly because it was in his
school. She had learnt that love is in any case a selfish passion. She
had learnt that another object must be given to the forces of sympathy
of a generous heart, and that such an object may be the service of
humanity, devotion to an idea.
This was a turn in the road, and led the writer on to leave the personal
style for the impersonal style.
There was another service, too, which Michel had rendered to George
Sand. He had pleaded for her in her petition for separation from her
husband, and she had won her case.
Ever since George Sand had taken back her independence in 1831, her
intercourse with Dudevant had not been disagreeable. She and her husband
exchanged cordial letters. When he came to Paris, he made no attempt to
stay with his wife, lest he should inconvenience her. "I shall put up
at Hippolyte's," he says in his letter to her. "I do not want to
inconvenience you in the least, nor to be inconvenienced myself, which
is quite natural." He certainly was a most discreet husband. When
she started for Italy, he begs her to take advantage of so good an
opportunity for seeing such a beautiful country. He was also a husband
ready to give good advice. Later on, he invited Pagello to spend a
little time at Nohant. This was certainly the climax in this strange
story.