his fresh complexion, his hair of a vivid auburn, waving like that
of the Apollo Belvedere," appeared like a swan amongst gray geese;
and, seating himself between "two equinoctial beings not classed
by Buffon," he soon engrossed all the attention of the fascinating
Sidora, to the suppressed but violent indignation of Prince
Rajab-Nandy, and her other copper-coloured admirers. One of these
waylays the handsome Frenchman on his return home. Whilst passing
over _Highgate Bridge_, Cyprian's horse starts violently, and an
"equinoctial gentleman, with nothing _white_ about his whole person,
except a pair of _yellow_ gloves, (a Gallo-Irishism,) springs from
amongst the _brushwood_, and plants himself in the middle of the
bridge, like a satyr in the poem of Ramaiana." A duel is arranged, to
take place at _Cricklewood Cottage_, and Cyprian gallops into London
by _Tottenham-Road_. Having no male acquaintances in London, except
two sobersided bankers, he is at a loss for seconds. Finally he
prevails on two of the opera chorus, in consideration of a new coat
and a sovereign, to accompany him to the field of danger; and, after
duly gloving and dressing them in _Saint-Martin-Court_, he packs them
in a hackney-coach and starts for _Cricklewood_, which we now learn
is on the summit of the _mountain of Hamstead_. "There, in a pavilion
decorated Chinese-fashion, three men of tropical physiognomy awaited
De Mayran...." Opposite the cottage there stretched out, to an
immense distance, over hill and over valley, a gloomy forest, which
served as dueling ground in the quarrelsome days of the Roundheads
and Cavaliers. In a level glade, bare of trees, the Anglo-Indians
paused. It was a wild and solitary place; nevertheless, here and
there, on the fir trees, were seen enormous electioneering placards,
bearing the words, "_Vote for Parker!_" This is rich, particularly if
we bear in mind that the author is perfectly serious, and devoutly
believes he is giving a very curious insight into the local usages
and characteristics of semi-civilised England. M. Méry's hero has
other adventures, equally true to life,--makes new acquaintances on
board a river-steamer; dines with them at _Sceptre and Crown_ at
Greenwich, and at _Star and Garter_ at Richmond; and falls violently
in love with Madame Katrina Lewing, a beautiful Englishwoman. M. Méry
makes merry on the river Thames, which he affects to believe rises in
the immediate vicinity of Richmond, and concerning whose origin and
exiguity he is very facetious. He also displays his acquaintance with
English literature by quoting "the great poet Pope's famous drinking
song in honour of the Thames, '_I you like, little stream!_'" Then
Cyprian prevails on Katrina to elope with him to _Port Natal_, (of
all places in the world!) and realises his fortune as a preparatory
measure; but Katrina proves a mere decoy-duck, and the amorous
Frenchman is stripped of his bank-notes, and left in the dead of
night in the middle of a field. In vain, at daybreak, does he seek
a shepherd to question, because, as M. Méry testifies, English
peasants do not inhabit the fields; shepherds are scarcely known in
the country; and the only one he, the aforesaid Méry, ever beheld,
during his extensive rambles in England, was a well-dressed young
gentleman, with gloves on, reading the _Morning Chronicle_ under a
tree. Then we have a thieves' orgie, where the liquors in demand are
claret and _absinthe_, nothing less--M. Méry not condescending to the
gin, so much abused by his contemporaries. And, finally, a murder
having been committed, its circumstances are investigated on the
spot, by a _Queen's proctor_, assisted by two policemen, a barmaid,
and a physician. We might multiply these literary curiosities; but
we have given enough to prove their author's intimate acquaintance
with the country about which he so agreeably writes. It is related
of M. Méry's friend Dumas, that he once resolved on a visit to
London, posted to Boulogne, steamed to London bridge, and reached St
Paul's, but there turned back, anathematising fog and sea-coal, and
never stopped till he found himself in the Chaussée d'Antin. Without
vouching for the truth of this tale, we must admit its probability
when told of the eccentric Alexander. Mr Méry's knowledge of this
country is just what he might have obtained by an hour's conversation
with his friend, upon the return of the latter from his journey to St
Paul's. But it is a crying sin of French writers, when they get upon
foreign ground, that, in their anxiety to give to their books a tinge
characteristic of the country, (_couleur locale_ they call it,) they
outstrip the limits assigned to them by their real knowledge of the
land and its inhabitants, and, meaning to be effective, become simply
ridiculous. And England is the country, of all others, whose ways
they apparently have most difficulty in rightly comprehending. On a
more southern soil they are less apt to run into absurdities, but sin
chiefly on the side of overcolouring. This may be alleged, although
to no violent extent, of a pleasant little romance by Paul de Musset,
_La Chèvre Jaune_--The Yellow Goat--intended as an illustration of
Sicilian life, particularly amongst the lower orders. The hero of
the tale is a precocious peasant boy, dwelling in the mountains with
his mother--a fierce old lady who owns a rifle, and detests the
Neapolitans. This boy, who herds goats, pets one of them, and trains
her to dance; by which means, and by his own good mien, he gains the
affections of a notary's daughter, whose papa, disapproving of the
attachment, has the peasant taken up on a false accusation of theft.
The boy escapes, turns bandit, and is accompanied in his forays and
ambuscades by his goat, who dances tarantellas on the mountain-tops,
and plays so many queer antics that she finally is held uncanny, and
becomes an object of fear and veneration to the ignorant Sicilians.
The story is prettily and pleasingly told, and is just the sort of
reading for a lazy man on a hot day. But, like most of the same
author's works, it wants vigour and originality. Paul de Musset is
a careful and a polished writer, and whatever he executes conveys
the idea of his having done his best; but his best is by no means
first-rate, and he labours under the great disadvantage of having a
younger brother a far cleverer fellow than himself. Nevertheless,
he is not to be spoken of disrespectfully. Slight as most of his
productions are, they are often graceful, and sometimes witty. One of
his recent _bluettes, Fleuranges_, although a thrice-told tale, is
distinguished by its charming vivacity and lightness.
We turn to _François le Champi_, by George Sand. We need hardly say
that Madame Dudevant is any thing but a favourite of ours. Whilst
admitting her genius and great literary talent, we deplore the evil
application of such rare powers,--the perversion of intellect so
high to purposes so mischievous. And we cannot agree with M. de
Lomenie, who, in his sketch of her life, asserts the pernicious
influence of her books to be greatly exaggerated, maintaining that
"the catastrophe of almost all of them contains a sort of morality
of misfortune which, to a certain extent, replaces any other."
This is a specious, but a very hollow argument. How many of those
who read George Sand's books have ability or inclination to strike
this nice balance between virtue and vice, and do not rather yield
themselves captives to the seductive eloquence with which the poetess
depicts and palliates the immorality of her characters! Her earlier
works gave her a fair claim to the title of the Muse of Adultery,
which some uncivil critic conferred on her. The personages were
invariably husband, wife, and lover, and the former was by no means
the best treated of the three. After a while she deviated from this
formula--employed other types, and produced occasionally books of
a less objectionable character; but, upon the whole, they are ill
to choose amongst. In the one before us there is no great harm,
but neither is there much to admire. As a literary production, it
is below the average of its predecessors. It is a story of peasant
life in western France. George Sand is taking a country walk one
evening, when her companion accuses her of making her rustics
speak the language of cities. She admits the charge, but urges, in
extenuation, that if she makes the dweller in the fields speak as
he really speaks, she must subjoin a translation for the civilised
reader. Her friend still insists on the possibility of elevating the
peasant dialect, without depriving it of its simplicity; of writing
a book in language that a peasant might employ, and which a Parisian
would understand without a single explanatory note. To professors and
amateurs of literary art, the discussion is of interest. Madame Sand
agrees to attempt the task; and takes for her subject a tale she has
heard related the previous evening, at a neighbouring farm-house.
She calls it _François le Champi_, but her critic cavils at the
very title. _Champi_, he says, is not French. George Sand quotes
Montaigne, to prove the contrary, although the dictionary declares
the word out of date. A _champi_ is a foundling, or child abandoned
in the fields, the derivation being from _champ_. And having thus
justified her hero's cognomen, she at once introduces him, at the
tender age of six years, boarded by the parish with Zabella, an
old woman who dwells in a hovel, and lives on the produce of a few
goats and fowls that find subsistence on the common. Madeleine
Blanchet, the pretty and very young wife of the miller of Cornouer,
takes compassion on the poor infant, and finds means to supply him,
unknown to her brutal husband and cross mother-in-law, with food and
raiment. The child grows into a comely lad, gentle, intelligent,
and right-hearted, and devotedly attached to Madeleine. He enters
the service of the miller, a rough dissipated fellow, given up to
the fascinations of a loose widow, Madame Sévère, a sort of rural
Delilah, who tries to seduce the handsome Champi, and, failing of
success, instils jealousy into the ear of the miller, who drives
François from his house. The young man finds occupation in a distant
village, and returns to the mill of Cornouer only when its master is
dead and Madeleine on a bed of sickness, to rescue his benefactress
from grasping creditors, by means of a sum of money his unknown
father has transmitted to him. George Sand makes every woman in
the book fall in love with the Champi; but he repulses all, save
one, and that one never dreams of loving him otherwise than as a
mother. At last one of the fair ones who would fain have gained his
heart, generously reveals to him, what he himself has difficulty in
believing, that he is in love with Madeleine Blanchet; and, further,
compassionating his timidity, undertakes to break the ice to the
pretty widow. It requires a talent like that of George Sand to give
an air of probability to all this. There are at most but a dozen
years' difference between Madeleine and the Champi, but the reader
has been so much accustomed to look upon them in the light of mother
and son, that he is somewhat startled on finding the boy of nineteen
enamoured of the woman of thirty. The love-passages, however, are
managed with Madame Sand's usual skill. As a picture of peasant life,
the book yields internal evidence of fidelity. The granddaughter
of the farmer-general of Berri has called up the memories of her
youthful days, passed in happy liberty upon the sunny banks of
Indre, and of the years of connubial discontent that went heavily
by in her husband's Aquitanian castle, when country rides and the
study of Nature's book were her chief resources. It was from this
castle of Nohant that the Baroness Dudevant fled, now nearly twenty
years ago, to commence the exceptional existence she since has led.
We may venture to take a page from her _Lettres d'un Voyageur_--a
page replete with that peculiar fascination which renders her pen so
powerful for good or evil.
"It grieves me not to grow old, it would grieve me much to grow
old alone; but I have not yet met the being with whom I would fain
have lived and died; or, if I have met him, I have not known how
to keep him. Hearken to a tale, and weep. There was a good artist,
called Watelet, who engraved in aquafortis better than any man of
his time. He loved Margaret Lecomte, and taught her to engrave as
well as himself. She left her husband, her wealth, and her country,
to live with Watelet. The world cursed them; then, as they were
poor and humble, it forgot them. Forty years afterwards there were
discovered, in the neighbourhood of Paris, in a little house called
_Moulin-Joli_, an old man who engraved in aquafortis, with an old
woman whom he called his _Meunière_, who also engraved at the same
table. The last plate they executed represented _Moulin-Joli_,
Margaret's house, with this device,--_Cur valle permutem Sabinâ
divitias operosiores!_ It hangs in my room, above a portrait whose
original no one here has seen. During one year, he who gave me that
portrait seated himself every night with me at a little table, and
lived on the same labour as myself. At daybreak we consulted each
other on our work, and we supped at the same table, talking of art,
of sentiment, and of the future. The future has broken its word to
us. Pray for me, O Margaret Lecomte!"
It is no secret that Madame Dudevant's Watelet was Jules Sandeau,
a French novelist of some ability, whose name still makes frequent
apparitions in the windows of circulating libraries, and at the foot
of newspaper feuilletons. Let us see what M. de Lomenie says of this
period of her life, and of her first appearance in the lists of
literature, in his brief but amusing memoir of this remarkable woman.
"Some time after the July revolution, there appeared a book entitled,
_Rose et Blanche_, or the Actress and the Nun. This book, which at
first passed unnoticed, fell by chance into a publisher's hands; he
read it, and, struck by the richness of certain descriptive passages,
and by the novelty of the situations, he inquired the author's
address. He was referred to a humble lodging-house, and, upon
applying there, was conducted to a small attic. There he saw a young
man writing at a little table, and a young woman painting flowers
by his side. These were Watelet and Margaret Lecomte. The publisher
spoke of the book, and it appeared that Margaret, who could write
books as well as Watelet, and even better, had written a good part,
and the best part, of this one; only, as books sold badly, or not at
all, she combined with her literary occupations the more lucrative
labour of a colourist. Encouraged by the publisher's approval, she
took from a drawer a manuscript written entirely by herself; the
publisher examined it, bought it, doubtless very cheap, and might
have paid a much higher price without making a bad speculation, for
it was the manuscript of _Indiana_. Soon after that, Margaret Lecomte
left Watelet, took half his name, called herself George Sand, and of
that half name has made herself one which shines to-day amongst the
greatest and most glorious."
Somebody has hazarded the sweeping assertion that the lover is the
_King_ of George Sand's novels. George Sand herself is the queen
of the class of _femmes incomprises_, the victim of a _mariage de
convenance_. The death of her grandmother left her, at the very
moment she quitted the convent where she had been educated, alone
and almost friendless. Ignorant of the world, she allowed herself
to be married to a rough old soldier, who led a prosaic existence
in a lonely country-house, had no notion of romance, sentiment, or
reverie, and made little allowance for them in others. The days that
ought to rank amongst the brightest memories of a woman's heart, the
early years of marriage, were a blank, or worse, to Aurora Dudevant,
and the bitterness thus amassed not unfrequently breaks forth in
her writings. It has been urged by her partisans, in extenuation of
her conjugal _faux pas_, that her husband was ignorant and brutal.
On the other hand, the idle have invented many of the delinquencies
imputed to her since her separation, just as they have told absurd
stories about her fantastical habits; and have made her out a sort
of literary Lola Montes, swaggering and smoking in man's attire,
and brandishing pistol and horsewhip with virile energy and effect.
The atmosphere of Paris is famous for its magnifying powers. Seen
through it, a grain of sand becomes a mountain, an eccentricity
is often distended into a vice. We lay this down as a rule, which
none who know and understand the French metropolis will dispute;
but we do not, at the same time, in any way take up the gloves
in defence of George Sand, with whom we have not the honour of a
personal acquaintance, and whose writings would certainly incline
us to somewhat ready credence of her irregularities and masculine
addictions. Now that she has attained the ripe age of forty-four,
we may suppose her sobered down a little. Before the February
revolution upset society, and drove the majority of the wealthy from
Paris, we happen to know she was a welcome guest in some of the
most fashionable and aristocratic drawing-rooms of the Faubourg St
Germain, where she was sought and cultivated for the charm of her
conversation. Since the revolution, there have been reports of her
presiding, or at least assisting, at democratic orgies; but these
rumours, as the newspapers say, "require confirmation." Since we
have, somehow or other, got led into this long gossip about the
lady, we will make another extract from the writer already quoted,
who tells an amusing story of his first introduction, obtained by
means of a misdelivered note, intended by the authoress of _Lelia_
for a man who cured smoky chimnies. A resemblance of name brought
the missive (a summons to a sick funnel) into the hands of the
biographer, who, puzzled at first, finally resolved to take advantage
of the mistake, to ascertain whether George Sand really did wear
boots and spurs, and smoke Virginian in a short pipe. He expected
something masculine and alarming, but in this respect was agreeably
disappointed.
"I saw before me a woman of short stature, of comfortable plumpness,
and of an aspect not at all _Dantesque_. She wore a dressing gown, in
form by no means unlike the wrapper which I, a commonplace mortal,
habitually wear; her fine hair, still perfectly black, whatever
evil tongues may say, was separated on a brow broad and smooth as a
mirror, and fell freely adown her cheeks, in the manner of Raphael;
a silk handkerchief was fastened loosely round her throat; her eyes,
to which some painters persist in imparting an exaggerated power of
expression, were remarkable, on the contrary, for their melancholy
softness; her voice was sweet, and not very strong; her mouth,
especially, was singularly graceful; and in her whole attitude
there was a striking character of simplicity, nobility, and calm.
In the ample temples and rich development of brow, Gall would have
discerned genius; in the frankness of her glance, in the outline of
her countenance, and in the features, correct but worn, Lavater would
have read, it seems to me, past suffering, a time-present somewhat
barren, an extreme propensity to enthusiasm, and consequently to
discouragement. Lavater might have read many other things, but he
certainly could have discovered neither insincerity, nor bitterness,
nor hatred, for there was not a trace of these on that sad but serene
physiognomy. The Lelia of my imagination vanished before the reality;
and it was simply a good, gentle, melancholy, intelligent, and
handsome face that I had before my eyes.
"Continuing my examination, I remarked with pleasure that the
_grande désolée_ had not yet completely renounced human vanities;
for, beneath the floating sleeves of her gown, at the junction of
the wrist with the white and delicate hand, I saw the glitter of
two little gold bracelets of exquisite workmanship. These feminine
trinkets, which became her much, greatly reassured me touching the
sombre tint, and the politico-philosophic exaltation, of certain of
George Sand's recent writings. One of the hands that thus caught
my attention concealed a _cigarito_, and concealed it badly, for a
treacherous little column of smoke ascended behind the back of the
prophetess."
Whether or no the interview thus described really took place, Madame
Dudevant should feel obliged to her biographer for his gentle
treatment and abstinence from exaggeration. On the strength of the
puff of smoke and the epicene dressing gown, many writers would
have sketched her hussar fashion, and hardly have let her off the
mustaches.