the kaddosh, the Rose Croix and the Sublime Scotchman. The result of all
this will be a mysterious novel." The mysterious novel was the _Comtesse
de Rudolstadt_. Consuelo, who through her marriage with Albert is now
Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin,
and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire,
La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the
occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears
to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she
must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great
interest in Consuelo, and transport her to a strange dwelling, where
she has a whole series of surprises. It is, in fact, a sort of Palace
of Illusions. She is first in a dark room, and she then finds herself
suddenly in a room of dazzling light. "At the far end of this room,
the whole aspect of which is very forbidding, she distinguishes seven
personages, wrapped in red cloaks and wearing masks of such livid
whiteness that they looked like corpses. They were all seated behind a
table of black marble. Just in front of the table, and on a lower seat,
was an eighth spectre. He was dressed in black, and he, too, wore a
white mask. By the wall, on each side of the room, were about twenty men
in black cloaks and masks. There was the most profound silence. Consuelo
turned round and saw that there were also black phantoms behind her.
At each door there were two of them standing up, each holding a huge,
bright sword."(37)
(37) _Comtesse de Rudolstadt._
She wondered whether she had reached the infernal regions, but she
discovered that she was in the midst of a secret society, styled the
Invisibles. Consuelo is to go through all the various stages of the
initiation. She first puts on the bridal dress, and after this the
widow's weeds. She undergoes all the various trials, and has to witness
the different spectacles provided for her edification, including
coffins, funeral palls, spectres and simulated tortures. The description
of all the various ceremonies takes up about half of the book. George
Sand's object was to show up this movement of secret societies, which
was such a feature of the eighteenth century, and which was directed
both against monarchical power and against the Church. It contributed to
prepare the way for the Revolution, and gave to this that international
character and that mystic allure which would otherwise have been
incomprehensible.
From _Spiridion_ to the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, then, we have this
series of fantastical novels with ghosts, subterranean passages, secret
hiding-places, hallucinations and apparitions. The unfortunate part is
that at present we scarcely know to what category of readers they would
appeal. As regards grown-up people, we all prefer something with a
vestige of truth in it now-a-days. As to our children, they would prefer
_Monte-Cristo_ to _Consuelo_, and _Tom Thumb_ to _Spiridion_. At the
time that they were written, in spite of the fact that Buloz protested
against all this philosophy, these novels were quite in accordance with
the public taste. A mania for anything fantastic had taken possession
of the most serious people. Ballanche wrote his _La Palingenesie_, and
Edgar Quinet _Ahasverus_. Things took place through the ages, and the
reader travelled through the immensity of the centuries, just as though
Wells had already invented his machine for exploring time. In a country
like France, where clear-mindedness and matter-of-fact intelligence are
appreciated, all this seems surprising. It was no doubt the result of
infiltrations which had come from abroad. There was something wrong with
us just then, "something rotten in the kingdom of France." We see this
by that fever of socialistic doctrines which burst forth among us about
the year 1840. We have the _Phalanstere_ by Fourier, _La Phalange_
by Considerant, the _Icarie_ by Cabet, and his famous _Voyage_, which
appeared that very year. We were always to be devoured by the State,
accompanied by whatever sauce we preferred. The State was always to find
us shelter, to dress us, to govern us and to tyrannize over us. There
was the State as employer, the State as general storekeeper, the State
to feed us; all this was a dream of bliss. Buonarotti, formerly Babeuf's
accomplice, preached Communism. Louis Blanc published his _Organisation
du travail_, in which he calls to his aid a political revolution,
foretaste of a social revolution. Proudhon published his _Memoire sur la
propriete_, containing the celebrated phrase: "Property means theft."
He declared himself an anarchist, and as a matter of fact anarchy was
already everywhere. A fresh evil had suddenly made its appearance, and,
by a cruel irony, it was the logical consequence of that industrial
development of which the century was so proud. The result of all that
wealth had been to create a new form of misery, an envious, jealous form
of misery, much more cruel than the former one, for it filled the heart
with a ferment of hatred, a passion for destruction.
It was Pierre Leroux, also, who led George Sand on to Socialism. She had
been on the way to it by herself. For a long time she had been raising
an altar in her heart to that entity called the People, and she had been
adorning it with all the virtues. The future belonged to the people, the
whole of the future, and first of all that of literature.
Poetry was getting a little worn out, but to restore its freshness there
were the poets of the people. Charles Poncy, of Toulon, a bricklayer,
published a volume of poetry, in 1842, entitled _Marines_. George Sand
adopted him. He was the demonstration of her theory, the example which
illustrated her dream. She congratulated him and encouraged him. "You
are a great poet," she said to him, and she thereupon speaks of him to
all her friends. "Have you read Baruch?" she asks them. "Have you read
Poncy, a poet bricklayer of twenty years of age?" She tells every one
about his book, dwells on its beauties, and asks people to speak of it.
As a friend of George Sand, I have examined the poems by Poncy of which
she specially speaks. The first one is entitled _Meditation sur les
toits_. The poet has been obliged to stay on the roof to complete his
work, and while there he meditates.
_"Le travail me retient bien tard sur ces toitures_. . . ."
He then begins to wonder what he would see if, like Asmodee in the
_Diable boiteux_, he could have the roof taken off, so that the various
rooms could be exposed to view. Alas! he would not always find the
concord of the Golden Age.
_Que de fois contemolant cet amas de maisons
Quetreignent nos remparts couronnes de gazons,
Et ces faubourgs naissants que la ville trop pleine
Pour ses enfants nouveaux eleve dans la plaine.
Immobiles troufieaux ou notre clocher gris
Semble un patre au milieu de ses blanches brebis,
Jai pense que, malgre notre angoisse et nos peines,
Sous ces toits paternels il existait des haines,
Et que des murs plus forts que ces murs mitoyens
Separent ici-bas les coeurs des citoyens._
This was an appeal to concord, and all brothers of humanity were invited
to rally to the watchword.
The intention was no doubt very good. Then, too, _murs mitoyens_ was
an extremely rich and unexpected rhyme for _citoyens_. This was worthy
indeed of a man of that party.
Another of the poems greatly admired by George Sand was _Le Forcat_.
_Regarder le forcat sur la poutre equarrie
Poser son sein hale que le remords carie_. . .
Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that
are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading
Charles Poncy.
In another poem addressed to the rich, entitled _L'hiver_, the poet
notices with grief that the winter
. . . _qui remplit les salons, les Watres,
Remplit aussi la Morgue et les amphitheatres._
He is afraid that the people will, in the end, lose their patience, and
so he gives to the happy mortals on this earth the following counsel:
_Riches, a vos plaisirs faites participer
L'homme que les malheurs s'acharnent a frapper
Oh, faites travailler le pere de famille,
Pour qu'il puisse arbiter la pudeur de sa fille,
Pourqu'aux petits enfants maigris par les douleurs
Il rapporte, le soir, le pain et non des pleurs,
Afin que son epouse, au desespoir en proie,
Se ranime a sa vue et l'embrasse avec joie,
Afin qua l'Eternel, a l'heure de sa mort.
Vous n'offriez pas un coeur carie de remords_.
The expression certainly leaves much to be desired in these poems, but
they are not lacking in eloquence. We had already had something of this
kind, though, written by a poet who was not a bricklayer. He, too, had
asked the rich the question following:
_Dans vos fetes d'hiver, riches, heureux du monde,
Quand le bal tournoyant de ses feux vous inonde. . .
Songez-vous qu'il est la, sous le givre et la neige,
Ce pere sans travail que la famine assiege?_
He advises them to practise charity, the sister of prayer.
"_Donnez afin qu'un jour, a votre derniere heure,
Contre tous vos peches vous ayez la Priere
D'un mendiant puissant au ciel_."
We cannot, certainly, expect Poncy to be a Victor Hugo. But as we had
Victor Hugo's verses, of what use was it for them to be rewritten by
Poncy? My reason for quoting a few of the fine lines from _Feuilles
d'automne_ is that I felt an urgent need of clearing away all these
platitudes. Poncy was not the only working-man poet. Other trades
produced their poets too. The first poem in _Marines_ is addressed to
Durand, a poet carpenter, who introduces himself as "_Enfant de la foret
qui ceint Fontainebleau_."
This man handled the plane and the lyre, just as Poncy did the trowel
and the lyre.
This poetry of the working-classes was to give its admirers plenty of
disappointment. George Sand advised Poncy to treat the things connected
with his trade, in his poetry. "Do not try to put on other men's
clothes, but let us see you in literature with the plaster on your hands
which is natural to you and which interests us," she said to him.
Proud of his success with the ladies of Paris, Poncy wanted to wash
his hands, put on a coat, and go into society. It was all in vain that
George Sand beseeched Poncy to remain the poet of humanity. She exposed
to him the dogma of impersonality in such fine terms, that more than one
_bourgeois_ poet might profit by what she said.
"An individual," she said, "who poses as a poet, as a pure artist, as
a god like most of our great men do, whether they be _bourgeois_ or
aristocrats, soon tires us with his personality. . . . Men are only
interested in a man when that man is interested in humanity."
This was all of no use, though, for Poncy was most anxious to treat
other subjects rather more lively and--slightly libertine. His literary
godmother admonished him.
"You are dedicating to _Juana l'Espagnole_ and to various other
fantastical beauties verses that I do not approve. Are you a _bourgeois_
poet or a poet of the people? If the former, you can sing in honour of
all the voluptuousness and all the sirens of the universe, without ever
having known either. You can sup with the most delicious houris or
with all the street-walkers, in your poems, without ever leaving
your fireside or having seen any greater beauty than the nose of your
hall-porter. These gentlemen write their poetry in this way, and their
rhyming is none the worse for it. But if you are a child of the people
and the poet of the people, you ought not to leave the chaste breast of
Desiree, in order to run about after dancing-girls and sing about their
voluptuous arms."(38)
(38) See the letters addressed to Charles Poncy in the
_Correspondance._
It is to be hoped that Poncy returned to the chaste Desiree. But why
should he not read to the young woman the works of Pierre Leroux?
We need a little gaiety in our life. In George Sand's published
_Correspondance_, we only have a few of her letters to Charles Poncy.
They are all in excellent taste. There is an immense correspondence
which M. Rocheblave will publish later on. This will be a treat for us,
and it will no doubt prove that there was a depth of immense candour in
the celebrated authoress.
It does not seem to me that the writings of the working-men poets have
greatly enriched French literature. Fortunately George Sand's sympathy
with the people found its way into literature in another way, and this
time in a singularly interesting way. She did not get the books written
by the people themselves, but she put the people into books. This was
the plan announced by George Sand in her preface to the _Compagnon du
tour de France_. There is an entirely fresh literature to create, she
writes, "with the habits and customs of the people, as these are so
little known by the other classes." The _Compagnon du tour de France_
was the first attempt at this new literature of the people. George Sand
had obtained her documents for this book from a little work which
had greatly struck her, entitled _Livre du compagnonnage_, written by
Agricol Perdiguier, surnamed Avignonnais-la-Vertu, who was a _compagnon_
carpenter. Agricol Perdiguier informs us that the _Compagnons_ were
divided into three chief categories: the _Gavots_, the _Devorants_
and the _Drilles_, or the _Enfants de Salomon_, the _Enlants de Maitre
Jacques_ and the _Enfants du_ _Pere Soubise_. He then describes the
rites of this order. When two _Compagnons_ met, their watchword was
"_Tope_." After this they asked each other's trade, and then they went
to drink a glass together. If a _Compagnon_ who was generally respected
left the town, the others gave him what was termed a "conduite en
regle." If it was thought that he did not deserve this, he had a
"conduite de Grenoble." Each _Compagnon_ had a surname, and among such
surnames we find _The Prudence of Draguignan_, _The Flower of Bagnolet_
and _The Liberty of Chateauneuf_. The unfortunate part was that among
the different societies, instead of the union that ought to have
reigned, there were rivalries, quarrels, fights, and sometimes all this
led to serious skirmishes; Agricol Perdiguier undertook to preach to
the different societies peace and tolerance. He went about travelling
through France with this object in view. His second expedition was-at
George Sand's expense.
A fresh edition of his book contained the letters of approval addressed
to him by those who approved his campaign. Among these signatures
are the following: Nantais-Pret-a-bien-faire, Bourgignonla-Felicite,
Decide-le-Briard. All this is a curious history of the syndicates of the
nineteenth century. Agricol Perdiguier may have seen the _Confederation
du Travail_ dawning in the horizon.
In the _Compagnon du Tour de France_, Pierre Huguenin, a
carpenter, travels about among all these different societies of the
_Compagnonnage_, and lets us see something of their competition,
rivalries, battles, etc. He is then sent for to the Villepreux Chateau,
to do some work. The noble Yseult falls in love with this fine-talking
carpenter, and at once begs him to make her happy by marrying her.
In the _Meunier d'Angibault_ it is a working locksmith, Henri Lemor, who
falls in love with Marcelle de Blanchemont. Born to wealth, she regrets
that she is not the daughter or the mother of workingmen. Finally,
however, she loses her fortune, and rejoices in this event. The
personage who stands out in relief in this novel is the miller, Grand
Louis. He is always gay and contented, with a smile on his lips, singing
lively songs and giving advice to every one.
In the _Peche de M. Antoine_, the _role_ of Grand Louis falls to Jean
the carpenter. In this story all the people are communists, with the
exception of the owner of the factory, who, in consequence, is treated
with contempt. His son Emile marries the daughter of Monsieur Antoine.
Her name is Gilberte, and a silly old man, the Marquis de Boisguilbaut,
leaves her all his money, on condition that the young couple found a
colony of agriculturists in which there shall be absolute communism. All
these stories, full of eloquence and dissertations on the misfortune
of being rich and the corrupting influence of wealth, would be
insufferable, if it were not for the fact that the Angibault mill were
in the Black Valley, and the crumbling chateau, belonging to Monsieur
Antoine, on the banks of the Creuse.
They are very poor novels, and it would be a waste of time to attempt
to defend them. They are not to be despised, though, as regards their
influence on the rest of George Sand's work, and also as regards the
history of the French novel. They rendered great service to George
Sand, inasmuch as they helped her to come out of herself and to turn her
attention to the miseries of other people, instead of dwelling all the
time on her own. The miseries she now saw were more general ones, and
consequently more worthy of interest. In the history of the novel they
are of capital importance, as they are the first ones to bring into
notice, by making them play a part, people of whom novelists had never
spoken. Before Eugene Sue and before Victor Hugo, George Sand gives a
_role_ to a mason, a carpenter and a joiner. We see the working-class
come into literature in these novels, and this marks an era.
As to their socialistic influence, it is supposed by many people that
they had none. The kind of socialism that consists of making tinkers
marry marchionesses, and duchesses marry zinc-workers, seems very
childish and very feminine. It is just an attempt at bringing about the
marriage of classes. This socialistic preaching, by means of literature,
cannot be treated so lightly, though, as it is by no means harmless. It
is, on the contrary, a powerful means of diffusing doctrines to which
it lends the colouring of imagination, and for which it appeals to the
feelings. George Sand propagated the humanitarian dream among a whole
category of men and women who read her books. But for her, they would
probably have turned a deaf ear to the inducements held out to them with
regard to this Utopia. Lamartine with his _Girondins_ reconciled the
_bourgeois_ classes to the idea of the Revolution. In both cases the
effect was the same, and it is just this which literature does in
affairs of this kind. Its _role_ consists here in creating a sort of
snobbism, and this snobbism, created by literature in favour of all the
elements of social destruction, continues to rage at present. We still
see men smiling indulgently and stupidly at doctrines of revolt and
anarchy, which they ought to repudiate, not because of their own
interest, but because it is their duty to repudiate them with all
the strength of their own common sense and rectitude. Instead of any
arguments, we have facts to offer. All this was in 1846, and the time
was now drawing near when George Sand was to see those novels of hers
actually taking place in the street, so that she could throw down to the
rioters the bulletins that she wrote in their honour.
VIII
1848
GEORGE SAND AND THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT--HER PASTORAL NOVELS
IN 1846, George Sand published _Le Peche de M. Antoine_. It was a very
dull story of a sin, for sins are not always amusing. The same year,
though, she published _La Mare au Diable_. People are apt to say, when
comparing the socialistic novels and the pastoral novels by George Sand,
that the latter are superb, because they are the result of a conception
of art that was quite disinterested, as the author had given up her
preaching mania, and devoted herself to depicting people that she knew
and things that she liked, without any other care than that of painting
them well. Personally, I think that this was not so. George Sand's
pastoral style is not essentially different from her socialistic style.
The difference is only in the success of the execution, but the ideas
and the intentions are the same. George Sand is continuing her mission
in them, she is going on with her humanitarian dream, that dream which
she dreamed when awake.
We have a proof of this in the preface of the author to the reader with
which the _Mare au Diable_ begins. This preface would be disconcerting
to any one who does not remember the intellectual atmosphere in which it
was written.
People have wondered by what fit of imagination George Sand, when
telling such a wholesome story of country life, should evoke the ghastly
vision of Holbein's Dance of Death. It is the close of day, the horses
are thin and exhausted, there is an old peasant, and, skipping about in
the furrows near the team, is Death, the only lively, careless,
nimble being in this scene of "sweat and weariness." She gives us the
explanation of it herself. She wanted to show up the ideal of the new
order of things, as opposed to the old ideal, as translated by the
ghastly dance.
"We have nothing more to do with death," she writes, "but with life. We
no longer believe in the _neant_ of the tomb, nor in salvation bought by
enforced renunciation. We want life to be good, because we want it to be
fertile. . . . Every one must be happy, so that the happiness of a few
may not be criminal and cursed by God." This note we recognize as the
common feature of all the socialistic Utopias. It consists in taking the
opposite basis to that on which the Christian idea is founded. Whilst
Christianity puts off, until after death, the possession of happiness,
transfiguring death by its eternal hopes, Socialism places its Paradise
on earth. It thus runs the risk of leaving all those without any
recourse who do not find this earth a paradise, and it has no answer to
give to the lamentations of incurable human misery.
George Sand goes on to expose to us the object of art, as she
understands it. She believes that it is for pleading the cause of the
people.
She does not consider that her _confreres_ in novel-writing and in
Socialism set about their work in the best way. They paint poverty that
is ugly and vile, and sometimes even vicious and criminal. How is it to
be expected that the bad, rich man will take pity on the sorrows of
the poor man, if this poor man is always presented to him as an escaped
convict or a night loafer? It is very evident that the people, as
presented to us in the _Mysteres de Paris_, are not particularly
congenial to us, and we should have no wish to make the acquaintance of
the "Chourineur." In order to bring about conversions, George Sand has
more faith in gentle, agreeable people, and, in conclusion, she tells
us: "We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and
of love, and that the novel of to-day ought to take the place of the
parable and the apologue of more primitive times." The object of the
artist, she tells us, "is to make people appreciate what he presents to
them." With that end in view, he has a right to embellish his subjects
a little. "Art," we are told, "is not a study of positive reality; it is
the seeking for ideal truth." Such is the point of view of the author of
_La Mare au Diable_, which we are invited to consider as a parable and
an apologue.
The parable is clear enough, and the apologue is eloquent. The novel
commences with that fine picture of the ploughing of the fields, so rich
in description and so broadly treated that there seems to be nothing in
French literature to compare with it except the episode of the Labourers
in _Jocelyn_. When _Jocelyn_ was published, George Sand was severe in
her criticism of it, treating it as poor work, false in sentiment and
careless in style. "In the midst of all this, though," she adds, "there
are certain pages and chapters such as do not exist in any language,
pages that I read seven times over, crying all the time like a donkey."
I fancy that she must have cried over the episode of the _Labourers_.
Whether she remembered it or not when writing her own book little
matters. My only reason for mentioning it is to point out the affinity
of genius between Lamartine and George Sand, both of them so admirable
in imagining idylls and in throwing the colours of their idyllic
imagination on to reality.