social ideas which with feminine impulsiveness she at once adopted. In
his capacity of social reformer, Pierre Leroux, a metaphysician with a
noble heart and a confused brain, who thought in triads in the manner
of Schelling, championed equality and progress. To him progress meant
approach towards equality. He was instigated to his attempts at reform
by his indignation with the existing condition of society, with the
equality as regarded the law, which permitted the rich man to escape
the hardship of military service and the punishment due to his crime,
with the liberty which consisted in the right of free competition, that
is to say, the legal right of the rich to oppress the poor. Society as
reorganised by Leroux was to be based on the triple nature of man. Man
is constituted of perception, intuition, and cognition. To these three
elements were to correspond three classes, the artisan or industrial,
the artist, and the scientist class; but these three classes were
not, as in Saint-Simon's imaginary society, to be castes, but were to
act in unison. Three individuals or units, one from each class, were
to constitute a society individual or unit; and these same three,
working together, would constitute an "atelier." The "ateliers" also
were to be divided into three classes, according to the activity which
predominated in them, &c.
When we think of all these Utopias, we cannot but admire the sane
and wise attitude maintained towards them by the authors who allowed
themselves to be carried away by some of the ideas inspiring the
different systems. They held aloof from everything, or almost
everything, that was artificial, fantastic, or absurd. They contented
themselves with kindling their poetic torches at the altar fire kept
alight by the pure-hearted enthusiasts; they drew inspiration from
the philanthropy of these men, from their ardent championship of the
poor and the oppressed, from their fervent faith in the people and in
progress.
It is quite evident, whatever may be said to the contrary, that
Saint-Simonism was a beneficent influence in George Sand's life. It
produced tranquillity after the fit of despair which dictated _Lelia_;
it gave her a faith which was never afterwards disturbed, and a cause
to work and fight for. She had an observant eye for all that was going
on around her; and towards the close of the Thirties it was evident
that the French working classes were in a state of violent ferment.
At that period the slow transformation of France from an almost
exclusively agricultural country to one of the chief manufacturing
countries was already an accomplished fact. It was now no longer only
the poverty of the peasants which called for a remedy, but also, and
even more urgently, the poverty and discontent of the ever-increasing
proletariat population of the great manufacturing and commercial towns.
Like almost all the other French democratic writers, George Sand
turned her attention to the working people of the towns, their hard
struggle for existence, their remarkable intelligence, their social
and political ideas. Saint-Simonism had originally appealed to her and
aroused her enthusiasm by its condemnation of the relations between
the sexes upheld by the conventions of existing society; it denned
as truths to be proclaimed and championed the ideas which were most
precious to her--that there is no beauty or value in marriage except
when it is a voluntary union; and that mayor, witnesses, and priest
cannot invest it with greater sacredness than do love and conscience.
Now Saint-Simonism gave a more thoughtful and more definite character
to her love of the people. Among the men of the working classes she
discovered more unselfishness and manliness than among those of the
middle classes; it began to seem to her as if the vices of the male sex
which she had condemned with such severity in her first novels were in
reality more the vices of a class than of the whole sex; and her love
of the working class in conjunction with the innate idealism of her
nature led her to see and represent the working man from an ideal point
of view. She produced a series of novels in which the old contrast
between two men of the same class, one unselfish and the other a
hardened egotist, was superseded by the contrast between the idealised
representative of the working classes and a more or less egotistical
and slavishly conventional representative of the upper or middle
classes.
The most interesting books of this series are the two written about
1840--_Horace_, the refusal to accept which produced a temporary
disagreement between George Sand and the _Revue des deux Mondes_, and
_Le Compagnon du Tour de France_, a genuine labour-question novel,
which in its innocence and simple purity presents a striking contrast
to the glaringly coloured stories of a socialistic and democratic
tendency published a few years later by Eugène Sue.
In my opinion _Horace_ is one of George Sand's best books. In its hero
she represents with more shrewdness and profundity than ever before
or after the young bourgeois of the reign of Louis Philippe. The
acuteness and insight she in this case displays are in no way inferior
to Balzac's. She is inspired by a strong antipathy, which, however,
does not preclude a good-humouredly tolerant treatment. With Horace
is contrasted the noble proletarian, Arsène. This man, originally a
painter, has been compelled by poverty to take a place as waiter in a
_café_; but the dependent position has not degraded him. The simple
goodness and beauty of his character make him most attractive. We
believe in him.
Arsène has friends among the _Bousingots_, the circle of young students
who in the Thirties transferred the style and deportment of the
Romantic School to the domain of politics. They figure in many of the
lithographs of the period with their Robespierre waistcoats, thick
sticks, and glazed hats or red velvet caps. In outward appearance they
somewhat resembled German _corps_ students; and they took part in all
riots which were demonstrations of discontent with the _Juste-milieu_
government. George Sand defends them warmly. "None of the men," she
says, "who at that time caused a slight disturbance of public order
need blush now at the thought of having displayed a little youthful
ardour. If the only use which youth can make of such nobility and
courage as it possesses, is to attack society with it, the condition
of society must be very bad." Arsène fights like a hero and is badly
wounded in the working-men's revolt of the 5th of June 1832, which
is sympathetically described; and in the course of a few years he
becomes an experienced, able politician. The story of his political
education is peculiarly interesting to us, because, in telling it, the
authoress gives unambiguous expression to her own feelings. Arsène's
hero is Godefroy Cavaignac; George Sand describes him and his friends,
the society _Les amis du people_. "Their ideas," she writes, "at any
rate indicated a great advance upon the liberalism of the Restoration
period. The other Republicans were a little too much taken up with the
idea of overthrowing monarchy, and did not give sufficient thought to
the laying of the foundations of the republic; Godefroy Cavaignac's
thoughts were of the emancipation of the people, of free education,
of universal suffrage, of the gradual modification of the rights
of property, &c." Horace's cold-heartedness and narrow-mindedness
display themselves in his contemptuously sweeping condemnation of
Saint-Simonism, which to him is pure charlatanism. He is incapable of
appreciating its conception of the mutual relations of the sexes, and
is obliged to submit to being reproved with the calmness of conscious
superiority by a young dressmaker who lives with her friend, a clever
young doctor, and regards this life of theirs as "the truly religious
marriage."[1] The authoress undoubtedly attacks in this novel more
problems than she is capable of solving, but the very fact of its
dealing largely with the ideas and aims of the day gives it a vivid and
attractive historical colouring. Besides, it was not her business, as a
novelist, to solve social problems, but to show how they moved hearts
and set brains to work, even the hearts and brains of enamoured young
women and self-satisfied young men.
What I specially admire in _Le Compagnon du Tour de France_, a book
which, as a novel, is inferior to _Horace_, is the impulsive strength
of the feeling which inspired it. To feel the heart swell and burn with
compassion for the unfortunates of society, to feel burdened by the
favours which Fortune has bestowed on us and not on all, are sensations
with which many a youth and maiden are familiar. But it is a rare thing
indeed for the man or woman of forty still to hunger and thirst after
justice for others, to be unable to sit still and see the yoke weighing
down the innocent neck, unable to refrain from planning and striving
after a different order of things, a different morality from that which
seems to satisfy society in general, nay, to be actually ashamed to
sleep or to take pleasure or to be happy for a few moments, as long as
things are as they are. And these were the feelings which compelled
George Sand to write this book. What a love for "the people" lies at
the foundation of it! And it is a love for the people as they are--for
the drinking, brawling people, as well as for the working, aspiring
people--a love so great that the authoress cannot bear to describe
or dwell upon the vices she sees and names. See the conversations in
chapter xxv. The best definition of the idea which dominates the book
is to be found in the book itself. A nobleman asserts that he holds the
old opinion that everything possible ought to be done for the people,
but that they ought not to be consulted, because that would make them
both appealing party and judge. His daughter answers: "And is not that
just what we are?"
Soon after writing this work George Sand began to take a vigorous
share in the practical politics of the day. After her quarrel with
the _Revue des deux Mondes_ she had, in collaboration with Pierre
Leroux, Viardot, Lamennais, and the Polish author Mickiewiez, started
the _Revue Indépendante_; now (in 1843) she and some friends started
a republican provincial newspaper in her own part of the country.
In this paper, _L'Éclaireur de l'Indre_, to which Lamartine also
contributed, she defended the cause, now of the town artisan, now of
the peasant (article on the Paris journeymen bakers, letters from
a Black Forest peasant). In 1844, in her long essay, _Questions
politiques et sociales_, she distinctly declared herself a socialist.
When the Revolution broke out in 1848 she was ripe to take part in it.
For a short time she published a weekly paper, _La Cause du Peuple_;
she wrote _A Word to the Middle Classes_, and the famous _Letters to
the People_, and composed the bulletins of the Provisional Government.
Towards the close of the year, in face of threatening danger, her
republican socialism assumed an almost fanatical form. The article _La
Majorité et l'Unanimité_, in which, immediately before the elections
for the Constituent National Assembly, she exhorts the electors to
show their liberal principles by their votes, ends with the threat,
expressed with much circumlocution, but yet plain enough, that if the
assembly presently to be elected by universal suffrage does not prove
to be such an assembly as popular interests demand, mere still remains
the appeal to arms.[2] It is curious to see the champion of the
sovereignty of the people having recourse to a threat of despotically
violent measures; it shows what a vigorous, ardent, manly spirit dwelt
in the bosom of this gifted woman. The same indomitable energy which
produced hundreds of novels displayed itself in her alliance with
Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc, men who were content with thinking what
she gave expression to in words.
It was chiefly through Lamennais that the current of democratic
ideas reached Victor Hugo. In Lamennais' principal work, _Essai sur
l'Indifférence_, there were already signs indicating the possibility of
a rejection of that principle of authority which he had championed so
ardently in his youth. In August 1832 his theories were condemned by
the Pope. The intimate relations between Lamennais and Hugo began in
the latter's youth; Lamennais congratulated Hugo on the occasion of his
marriage, and Hugo's first odes were dedicated to Lamennais. In 1822,
persuaded by the Abbé de Rohan, Hugo determined to unburden his mind
to a father confessor. The first he went to was Frayssinous, once the
intrepid, self-sacrificing curé, now the fashionable Paris clergyman, a
bishop, and head of the University. Hugo was repelled by Frayssinous'
worldly ideas and counsels, and the Abbé then sent him to the little,
frail, slender man with the yellow face, hooked nose, and beautiful,
restless eyes, who walked the streets of Paris in a shabby cassock,
blue woollen stockings, and hobnailed shoes--the famous Lamennais, whom
he already knew so well.
The ideas of both confessor and penitent underwent a change in the
course of the years preceding the Revolution of July, and the one was
not long after the other in going over to the Liberal and anti-clerical
party. One evening in September 1830 Lamennais, entering Hugo's
room, found him writing. "I am disturbing you," said Lamennais. "No.
But you will not approve of what I am writing." "Never mind; let me
hear it." And Hugo read the following lines from his _Journal d'un
Révolutionnaire de 1830_:
"The republic, which is not yet ripe, but which in a century will
embrace the whole of Europe, signifies that society is its own
sovereign. It protects itself by means of its citizen-soldiers; judges
itself, by trial by jury; administers its own affairs, by local
government; rules itself, by popular representation. The four limbs
of monarchy--the standing army, the courts, the bureaucracy, the
peerage--are for the republic only four troublesome excrescences which
are withering up and will soon die."
"You have one clause too many," said Lamennais; "that which asserts
that the republic is not ripe. You speak of it in the future tense, I
in the present."
A few years later, Lamennais' connection with the Roman Catholic Church
was at an end. It was in order to show that his defection was not the
result of unbelief but of a new conviction, that he entitled his famous
manifesto _Paroles d'un Croyant_ (1833).
It has been averred that no book since the invention of printing
had created such a stir as this did. In the course of a few years
a hundred editions of it were printed; it was published in foreign
countries and translated into many languages. It is an imitation of
a work which appeared not long before it, Mickiewiez's _Book of the
Polish Pilgrim_. Half in Old Testament, half in Christian style, it
denounces monarchy in Europe, the Pope and the priesthood, those to
whom the fall of Poland and the serfdom of Italy were due, and the
self-interested bourgeois government of France. The eloquence is of
the genuine sacerdotal type; the book is strong in pathos, but weak in
psychology; it only condemns and praises, knows no shade between black
and white--the blackness of hell, the whiteness of heaven; nevertheless
its author's warm-heartedness, purity of motive, and beauty of soul
have imparted to it a rare charm.
In 1837 followed _Livre du Peuple_, a work written in the same spirit.
The bold Abbé was imprisoned, but from his prison he sent book after
book out into the world. _Une Voix du Prison, Du Passé et de l'Avenir
du Peuple, De l'Esclavage modern_, were all written in Sainte-Pélagie.
Lamennais died three years before the Revolution of February, at a time
of violent political and social agitation.
I give a few fragments from _Paroles d'un Croyant_ as specimens of his
style:
"Ne vous laissez pas tromper par de vaines paroles. Plusieurs
chercheront à vous persuader que vous êtes vraiment libres,
parce qu'ils auront écrit sur une feuille de papier le mot de
liberté, et l'auront affiché à tous les carrefours.
La liberté n'est pas un placard qu'on lit au coin de la rue.
Elle est une puissance vivante qu'on sent en soi et autour de
soi, le génie protecteur du foyer domestique, la garantie des
droits sociaux, et le premier de ces droits.
L'oppresseur qui se couvre de son nom est le pire des
oppresseurs. Il joint le mensonge à la tyrannie, et à
l'injustice la profanation; car le nom de la liberté est saint.
Gardez-vous de ceux qui disent: Liberté, Liberté, et qui la
détruisent par leurs œuvres."
"Le laboureur porte le poids du jour, s'expose à la pluie, au
soleil, aux vents, pour préparer par son travail la moisson qui
remplira ses greniers à l'automne.
La justice est la moisson des peuples.
L'artisan se lève avant l'aube, allume sa petite lampe,
et fatigue sans relâche pour gagner un peu de pain qui le
nourrisse, lui et ses enfants.
La justice est le pain des peuples.
Le marchand ne refuse aucun labeur, ne se plaint d'aucunes
peines; il use son corps et oublie le sommeil, afin d'amasser
des richesses.
La liberté est la richesse des peuples.
Le matelot traverse les mers, se livre aux flots et aux
tempêtes, se hasarde entre les écueils, souffre le froid et le
chaud, afin de s'assurer quelque repos dans ses vieux ans.
La liberté est le repos des peuples.
Le soldat se soumet aux plus dures privations, il veille et
combat, et donne son sang, pour ce qu'il appelle la gloire.
La liberté est la gloire des peuples.
S'il est un peuple qui estime moins la justice et la liberté
que le laboureur sa moisson, l'artisan un peu de pain, le
marchand les richesses, le matelot le repos et le soldat la
gloire; élevez autour de ce peuple une haute muraille, afin que
son haleine n'infecte pas le reste de la terre."
"Jeune soldat, où vas-tu?
Je vais combattre pour la justice, pour la sainte cause des
peuples, pour les droits sacrés du genre humain.
Que tes armes soient bénies, jeune soldat!
Jeune soldat, où vas-tu?
Je vais combattre contre les hommes iniques pour ceux qu'ils
renversent et foulent aux pieds, contre les maîtres pour les
esclaves, contre les tyrans pour la liberté.
Que tes armes soient bénies, jeune soldat!
Jeune soldat, où vas-tu?
Je vais combattre pour renverser les barrières qui séparent les
peuples, et les empêchent de s'embrasser comme les fils du même
père, destinés à vivre unis dans un même amour.
Que tes armes soient bénies, jeune soldat!
Jeune soldat, où vas-tu!
Je vais combattre pour affranchir de la tyrannie de l'homme la
pensée, la parole, la conscience.
Que tes armes soient bénies, sept fois bénies, jeune soldat!"
Idealistic and monotonous as these utterances and refrains are, they
possess the kind of eloquence which makes a powerful impression upon
the common people.
Lamennais' outbursts of revolutionary sentiment come very near to being
pure poetry. Hugo's are pure poetry. In reading his verses written
in the Forties we feel how his poet's ear hears the dull underground
rumbling of the approaching Revolution, and how he foresees that
its crater will open in Paris. As far back as in the preface to the
_Feuilles d'Automne_ he reproaches England with having turned Ireland
into a graveyard, the sovereigns of Europe with having made Italy
a prison for galley-slaves, the Czar with having populated Siberia
with Poles. In it, too, he already writes of the old religions which
are sloughing their skins, and (alluding to Saint-Simonism) of the
new, which are stammeringly enunciating their half-reasonable,
half-false principles. And from this time onward he is in all his
works the champion of the liberty of the people, of their right to
self-government, and of the religion of humanity. As a dramatist he
began by rebelling merely against the accepted laws of style; but ere
long he was, like Voltaire a century earlier, making the drama the
organ of his ideas. One of his plays (_Le Roi s'amuse_) is an attack
upon absolute monarchy as represented by Francis I, the most brutal
of the royal debauchees of France. Another (_Angelo_), the preface
to which is an affirmation of genuine Saint-Simonistic principles,
contrasts woman within the pale of society with her sister beyond
it, endows the strolling actress with virtues which the great lady
lacks, and gives each of them her own ideality. A third (_Ruy Blas_)
symbolises the elevation of the lowest class to supreme power. In
Molière's _Les Précieuses_ the lackey was treated like some animal
which, however clever it might be, was liable to be thrashed, even when
it had only carried out its master's orders; shortly before the great
Revolution Scapin is transformed into Figaro, who, though still in
livery, openly manages his masters; in _Ruy Blas_ the servant, that is
to say, the born plebeian, throws off his livery, assumes authority,
and rules. While fully conscious of the great improbabilities and
weaknesses of these dramas, we are also sensible of the atmosphere of
new ideas which pervades them.
Hugo's was so dogmatic a mind that each new world of ideas which he
entered in the course of his life crystallised itself, for him, into
a code of doctrines. From the moment he became a democrat he was the
opponent of capital punishment. He protested against it as an author in
_Le dernier Jour d'un Condamné_, and also in _Claude Gueux_, where a
very unpleasant real incident is turned topsy-turvy, and an execrable
bandit is transformed into a hero and victim; he protested against it
as a private individual; he made personal appeals for the remittance
of sentences of death, both to French kings and foreign juries. Though
opinion is still, and with good reason, divided as to the advisability
of abolishing capital punishment for murder, Hugo's endeavours to
save the lives of political offenders have a claim to our undivided
sympathy. In 1839 he interceded in behalf of the noble revolutionary,
Armand Barbès; Louis Philippe had, however, in this case remitted the
sentence of death before Hugo's verses reached him.
But the most beautiful and the only perfectly accurate expression of
the mental attitude of France's greatest lyric poet is, naturally, to
be found in his poetry. The dramas of his first period, the novels of
his second (which do not fall within the scope of this volume), are
of small significance in comparison with the poems of the Thirties
and Forties, which are contained in the two volumes entitled _Les
Contemplations_. In these his faith in progress, his political
convictions, his social hopes, his religious feelings, are expressed in
the only artistic form which suits them. It is a form which cannot be
dissolved, a style which cannot be paraphrased; it must be enjoyed in
the original.
Hugo had every right to exclaim, as he did in one of the poems of this
collection:
"J'ai, dans le livre, avec le drame, en prose, en vers.
Plaidé pour les petits et les misérables;
Suppliant les heureux et les inexorables;
J'ai réhabilité le bouffon, l'histrion,
Tous les damnés humains, Triboulet, Marion,
Le laquais, le forçat et la prostituée;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
J'ai réclamé des droits pour la femme et l'enfant;
J'ai tâché d'éclairer l'homme en le réchauffant;
J'allais criant: Science! Écriture! Parole!
Je voulais résorber le bagne par l'école."
But, he complains:
"Le passé ne veut pas s'en aller. Il revient
Sans cesse sur ses pas, reveut, reprend, retient.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
L'immense renégat d'Hier, marquis, se nomme
Demain; mai tourne bride et plante là l'hiver;
Use à tout ressaisir ses ongles noirs; fait rage;
Il gonfle son vieux flot, souffle son vieil orage,
Vomit sa vieille nuit, crie: À bas! crie: À mort!
Pleure, tonne, tempête, éclate, hurle, mord."
But the onward movement would not be checked. The cleansing
thunderstorm of 1848 broke over Europe. It came, that year of
earthquakes, that year of emancipation, of heroic struggles, and, alas!
of romantic childishness--when the helm of France was in the hands,
not of statesmen, but of poets and enthusiasts; when Saint-Simonistic,
neo-Christian, and poetical, instead of practical political ideas
prevailed in the councils of the State. How eloquent is such a little
fact as this, that one of the first proceedings of the Provisional
Government was (at Lamartine's suggestion) to declare negro-slavery
abolished! The ideas of Romantic France find their realisation in the
Revolution of 1848.
[1] See chapters vi., x., xiv., xx.