was during his connection with it that he became acquainted, at Dr.
Chapman's house, with Marion Evans. There was a great similarity between
their tastes. Both loved the study of languages, and of philosophical
thought, and of literature and science generally. Both were splendid in
conversation, brilliant in epigram; both loved music and were intensely
susceptible to its influence. The mind of the woman was, I need hardly
say, far the stronger, wider, deeper of the two; but the affinity was
clear and close. A great misfortune had fallen on Lewes; and he was
probably in that condition of mind which makes a man not unlikely to
lose his faith in everything and drift into hopeless, perpetual
cynicism. From this, if this impended over him, Lewes was saved by his
intercourse with the rarely-gifted woman he had met in so timely an
hour. The result is, as every one knows, a companionship and union
unusual indeed in literary life. Very seldom has a distinguished author
had for wife a distinguished authoress, or _vice versa_; indeed, it used
to be one of the dear delightful theories of blockheads that such
unions, if they could take place, would be miserably unhappy. This
theory, so soothing to complacent dulness, was hardly borne out in the
instance of the Brownings; it is just as little corroborated by the
example of "George Eliot" and George Lewes. I believe, too, the example
of George Eliot is highly unsatisfactory to the devotees of that other
theory, so long cherished by dolts of both sexes, that a woman of talent
and culture can never do anything in the way of mending or making, of
cooking a chop or ordering a household. People tell us they can trace
the influence of Lewes's varied scholarship and critical judgment in the
novels of George Eliot. It is hardly possible to doubt that some such
influence must be there, but I certainly never saw it anywhere
distinctly and openly evident. It would be poor art which allowed a thin
stream of Lewes to be seen sparkling through the broad, deep, luminous
lake which mirrors the genius of George Eliot. I am, however, rather
inclined to fancy that Lewes, in general, abstains from critical
_surveillance_ or restraint over the productions of his greater
companion, believing, perhaps, that the higher mind had better be a law
to itself. If this be so, I think it is a wholesome principle pushed
sometimes too far, for one can hardly believe that the calm judgment of
any sincere and qualified adviser would not have discouraged and
condemned the painful, unnecessary underplot of past intrigue and sin
which is so great a blot in "Felix Holt," or suggested a rapider
dramatic movement in some passages of "The Spanish Gypsy." Lewes once
wrote to Charlotte Bronte that he would rather be the author of Miss
Austen's stories than of the whole of the Waverley Novels. I certainly
do not agree with him in that opinion; but it is strange that one who
held it should not have endeavored to prevent an authoress greater than
Miss Austen, and far more directly under his influence than Charlotte
Bronte, from sinking, in one or two instances, into faults which neither
Miss Austen nor Miss Bronte would ever have committed. Many things are
strange about this literary and domestic companionship; this
comparatively trifling fact seems to me not the least strange.
Finally let me say that I fully expect George Eliot yet to give to the
world some work of art even greater than any she has already produced.
She is not a woman to close with even a comparative failure. Her maxim,
I feel confident, would be that of the Emperor Napoleon--offer terms of
peace and repose after a great victory; never otherwise.
GEORGE SAND.
We are all of us probably inclined now and then to waste a little time
in vaguely speculating on what might have happened if this or that
particular event had not given a special direction to the career of some
great man or woman. If there had been an inch of difference in the size
of Cleopatra's nose; if Hannibal had not lingered at Capua; if Cromwell
had carried out his idea of emigration; if Napoleon Bonaparte had taken
service under the Turk--and so on through all the old familiar
illustrations dear to the minor essayist and the debating society. I
have sometimes felt tempted thus to lose myself in speculating on what
might have happened if the woman whom all the world knows as George Sand
had been happily married in her youth to the husband of her choice.
Would she ever have taken to literature at all? Would she, loving as she
does, and as Frenchwomen so rarely do, the changing face of inanimate
nature--the fields, the flowers, and the brooks--have lived a peaceful
and obscure life in some happy country place, and been content with
home, and family, and love, and never thought of fame? Or if, thus
happily married, she still had allowed her genius to find an expression
in literature, would she have written books with no passionate purpose
in them--books which might have seemed like those of a good Miss Mulock
made perfect--books which Podsnap might have read with approval and put
without a scruple into the hands of that modest young person, his
daughter? Certainly one cannot but think that a different kind of early
life would have given a quite different complexion to the literary
individuality of George Sand.
Bulwer Lytton, in one of his novels, insists that true genius is always
quite independent of the individual sufferings or joys of its possessor,
and describes some inspired youth in the novel as sitting down while
sorrow is in his heart and hunger gnawing at his vitals, to throw off a
sparkling and gladsome little fairy tale. Now this is undoubtedly true
in general of any high order of genius; but there are at least some
great and striking exceptions. Rousseau and Byron are, in modern days,
remarkable illustrations of genius, admittedly of a very high rank,
governed and guided almost wholly by the individual fortunes of the men
themselves. So too must we speak of the genius of George Sand. Not
Rousseau, not even Byron, was in this sense more egotistic than the
woman who broke the chains of her ill-assorted marriage with a crash
that made its echoes heard at last in every civilized country in the
world. Just as people are constantly quoting _nous avons change tout
cela_ who never read a page of Moliere, or _pour encourager les autres_
without even being aware that there is a story of Voltaire's called
"Candide," so there have been thousands of passionate protests uttered
in America and Europe for the last twenty years by people who never saw
a volume of George Sand, and yet are only echoing her sentiments and
even repeating her words.
In a former number of THE GALAXY I expressed casually the opinion that
George Sand is probably the most influential writer of our day. I am
still, and deliberately, of the same opinion. It must be remembered that
very few English or American authors have any wide or deep influence
over peoples who do not speak English. Even of the very greatest authors
this is true. Compare, for example, the literary dominion of Shakespeare
with that of Cervantes. All nations who read Shakespeare read
Cervantes: in Stratford-upon-Avon itself Don Quixote is probably as
familiar a figure in people's minds as Falstaff; but Shakespeare is
little known indeed to the vast majority of readers in the country of
Cervantes, in the land of Dante, or in that of Racine and Victor Hugo.
In something of the same way we may compare the influence of George Sand
with that of even the greatest living authors of England and America.
What influence has Charles Dickens or George Eliot outside the range of
the English tongue? But George Sand's genius has been felt as a power in
every country of the world where people read any manner of books. It has
been felt almost as Rousseau's once was felt; it has aroused anger,
terror, pity, or wild and rapturous excitement and admiration; it has
rallied around it every instinct in man or woman which is revolutionary;
it has ranged against it all that is conservative. It is not so much a
literary influence as a great disorganizing force, riving the rocks of
custom, resolving into their original elements the social combinations
which tradition and convention would declare to be indissoluble. I am
not now speaking merely of the sentiments which George Sand does or did
entertain on the subject of marriage. Divested of all startling effects
and thrilling dramatic illustrations, these sentiments probably amounted
to nothing more dreadful than the belief that an unwedded union between
two people who love and are true to each other is less immoral than the
legal marriage of two uncongenial creatures who do not love and probably
are not true to each other. But the grand, revolutionary idea which
George Sand announced was that of the social independence and equality
of woman--the principle that woman is not made for man in any other
sense than as man is made for woman. For the first time in the history
of the world woman spoke out for herself with a voice as powerful as
that of man. For the first time in the history of the world woman spoke
out as woman, not as the servant, the satellite, the pupil, the
plaything, or the goddess of man.
Now I intend at present to write of George Sand rather as an individual,
or an influence, than as the author of certain works of fiction.
Criticism would now be superfluously bestowed on the literary merits and
peculiarities of the great woman whose astonishing intellectual activity
has never ceased to produce, during the last thirty years, works which
take already a classical place in French literature. If any reputation
of our day may be looked upon as established, we may thus regard the
reputation of George Sand. She is, beyond comparison, the greatest
living novelist of France. She has won this position by the most
legitimate application of the gifts of an artist. With all her
marvellous fecundity, she has hardly ever given to the world any work
which does not seem at least to have been the subject of the most
elaborate and patient care. The greatest temptation which tries a
story-teller is perhaps the temptation to rely on the attractiveness of
story-telling, and to pay little or no attention to style. Walter
Scott's prose, for example, if regarded as mere prose, is rambling,
irregular, and almost worthless. Dickens's prose is as bad a model for
imitation as a musical performance which is out of tune. Of course, I
need hardly say that attention to style is almost as characteristic of
French authors in general, as the lack of it is characteristic of
English authors; but even in France, the prose of George Sand stands out
conspicuous for its wonderful expressiveness and force, its almost
perfect beauty. Then of all modern French authors--I might perhaps say
of all modern novelists of any country--George Sand has added to
fiction, has annexed from the worlds of reality and of imagination, the
greatest number of original characters--of what Emerson calls new
organic creations. Moreover, George Sand is, after Rousseau, the one
only great French author who has looked directly and lovingly into the
face of Nature, and learned the secrets which skies and waters, fields
and lanes, can teach to the heart that loves them. Gifts such as these
have won her the almost unrivalled place which she holds in living
literature, and she has conquered at last even the public opinion which
once detested and proscribed her. I could therefore hope to add nothing
to what has been already said by criticism in regard to her merits as a
novelist. Indeed, I think it probable that the majority of readers in
this country know more of George Sand through the interpretation of the
critics than through the pages of her books. And in her case criticism
is so nearly unanimous as to her literary merits, that I may safely
assume the public in general to have in their minds a just recognition
of her position as a novelist. My object is rather to say something
about the place which George Sand has taken as a social revolutionist,
about the influence she has so long exercised over the world, and about
the woman herself. For she is assuredly the greatest champion of woman's
rights, in one sense, that the world has ever seen; and she is, on the
other hand, the one woman out of all the world who has been most
commonly pointed to as the appalling example to scare doubtful and
fluttering womanhood back into its sheepfold of submissiveness and
conventionality. There is hardly a woman's heart anywhere in the
civilized world which has not felt the vibration of George Sand's
thrilling voice. Women who never saw one of her books, nay, who never
heard even her _nom de plume_, have been stirred by emotions of doubt or
fear or repining or ambition, which they never would have known but for
George Sand, and perhaps but for George Sand's uncongenial marriage. For
indeed there is not now, and has not been for twenty years, I venture to
think, a single "revolutionary" idea, as slow and steady-going people
would call it, afloat anywhere in Europe or America, on the subject of
woman's relations to man, society, and destiny, which is not due
immediately to the influence of George Sand, and to the influence of
George Sand's unhappy marriage upon George Sand herself.
The world has of late years grown used to this extraordinary woman, and
has lost much of the wonder and terror with which it once regarded her.
I can quite remember--younger people than I can remember--the time when
all good and proper personages in England regarded the authoress of
"Indiana" as a sort of feminine fiend, endowed with a hideous power for
the destruction of souls and an inextinguishable thirst for the
slaughter of virtuous beliefs. I fancy a good deal of this sentiment was
due to the fearful reports wafted across the seas, that this terrible
woman had not merely repudiated the marriage bond, but had actually put
off the garments sacred to womanhood. That George Sand appeared in men's
clothes was an outrage upon consecrated proprieties far more astonishing
than any theoretical onslaught upon old opinions could be. Reformers
indeed should always, if they are wise in their generation, have a care
of the proprieties. Many worthy people can listen with comparative
fortitude when sacred and eternal truths are assailed, who are stricken
with horror when the ark of propriety is never so lightly touched.
George Sand's pantaloons were therefore regarded as the most appalling
illustration of George Sand's wickedness. I well remember what
excitement, scandal, and horror were created in the provincial town
where I lived some twenty years ago, when the editor of a local
Panjandrum (to borrow Mr. Trollope's word) insulted the feelings and the
morals of his constituents and subscribers by polluting his pages with a
translation from one of George Sand's shorter novels. Ah me, the little
novel might, so far as morality was concerned, have been written every
word by Miss Phelps, or the authoress of the "Heir of Redcliffe"; it
had not a word, from beginning to end, which might not have been read
out to a Sunday school of girls; the translation was made by a woman of
the purest soul, and in her own locality the highest name; and yet how
virtue did shriek out against the publication! The editor persevered in
the publishing of the novel, spurred on to boldness by some of his very
young and therefore fearless coadjutors, who thought it delightful to
confront public opinion, and liked the notion of the stars in their
courses fighting against Sisera, and Sisera not being dismayed. That
charming, tender, touching little story! I would submit it to-day
cheerfully to the verdict of a jury of matrons, confident that it would
be declared a fit and proper publication. But at that time it was enough
that the story bore the odious name of George Sand; public opinion
condemned it, and sent the magazine which ventured to translate it to an
early and dishonored grave. I remember reading about that time a short
notice of George Sand by an English authoress of some talent and
culture, in which the Frenchwoman's novels were described as so
abominably filthy, that even the denizens of the Paris brothels were
ashamed to be caught reading them. Now this declaration was made in all
good faith, in the simple good faith of that class of persons who will
pass wholesale and emphatic judgment upon works of which they have never
read a single page. For I need hardly tell any intelligent person of
to-day, that whatever may be said of George Sand's doctrines, she is no
more open to the charge of indelicacy than the authoress of "Romola." I
cannot myself remember any passage in George Sand's novels which can be
called indelicate; and indeed her severest and most hostile critics are
fond of saying, not without a certain justice, that one of the worst
characteristics of her works is the delicacy and beauty of her style,
which thus commends to pure and innocent minds certain doctrines that,
broadly stated, would repel and shock them. Were I one of George Sand's
inveterate opponents, this, or something like it, is the ground I would
take up. I would say: "The welfare of the human family demands that a
marriage, legally made, shall never be questioned or undone. Marriage is
not a union depending on love or congeniality, or any such condition. It
is just as sacred when made for money, or for ambition, or for lust of
the flesh, or for any other purpose, however ignoble and base, as when
contracted in the spirit of the purest mutual love. Here is a woman of
great power and daring genius, who says that the essential condition of
marriage is love and natural fitness; that a legal union of man and
woman without this is no marriage at all, but a detestable and
disgusting sin. Now the more delicately, modestly, plausibly she can put
this revolutionary and pernicious doctrine, the more dangerous she
becomes, and the more earnestly we ought to denounce her." This was in
fact what a great many persons did say; and the protest was at least
consistent and logical.
But horror is an emotion which cannot long live on the old fuel, and
even the world of English Philistinism soon ceased to regard George Sand
as a mere monster. Any one now taking up "Indiana," for example, would
perhaps find it not quite easy to understand how the book produced such
an effect. Our novel-writing women of to-day commonly feed us on more
fiery stuff than this. Not to speak of such accomplished artists in
impurity as the lady who calls herself Ouida, and one or two others of
the same school, we have young women only just promoted from
pantalettes, who can throw you off such glowing chapters of passion and
young desire as would make the rhapsodies of "Indiana" seem very feeble
milk-and-water brewage by comparison. Indeed, except for some of the
descriptions in the opening chapters, I fail to see any extraordinary
merit in "Indiana"; and toward the end it seems to me to grow verbose,
weak, and tiresome. "Leone Leoni" opens with one of the finest dramatic
outbursts of emotion known to the literature of modern fiction; but it
soon wanders away into discursive weakness, and only just toward the
close brightens up into a burst of lurid splendor. It is not those which
I may call the questionable novels of George Sand--the novels which were
believed to illustrate in naked and appalling simplicity her doctrines
and her life--that will bear up her fame through succeeding generations.
If every one of the novels which thus in their time drew down the
thunders of society's denunciation were to be swept into the wallet
wherein Time, according to Shakespeare, carries scraps for oblivion,
George Sand would still remain where she now is, at the head of the
French fiction of her day. It is true, as Goethe says, that
"miracle-working pictures are rarely works of art." The books which make
the hair of the respectable public stand on end, are not often the works
by which the fame of the author is preserved for posterity.