George Sand is about to publish a book called "Memoirs of my Life,"
which is looked for with great expectations by both the admirers of
her genius and the lovers of scandalous gossip. It is certain that if
she makes a clean breast of her adventures and experiences, the world
will have reason both for admiration and disgust over the confessions:
admiration for the generosity of her character--for she never did
a mean thing, and probably never had a mean thought--disgust at the
recklessness with which she has cast off the delicacy and modesty of
woman, and undermined the morality on which the holiest institutions
of society depend. The interest with which the French public look
forward to the book may be understood from the enormous price she
has received for it between $30,000 and $40,000. The _Credit_, a most
respectable daily journal of Paris, has purchased of the publisher,
for $12,000, the right of issuing the first six volumes in its
_feuilleton_, in advance of the regular publication, and will soon
commence them.
Chateaubriand, in one of the latest chapters of his Posthumous
Memoirs, speaks at some length of George Sand. The verdict of the most
illustrious French literary man of the age which has just closed,
upon this most remarkable writer of the age now passing, is every
way interesting, and we translate it for the _International_ from the
columns of _La Presse_, as follows:
Madame Sand possesses talents of the first order. Her descriptions are
true as those of Rousseau in his Reveries, and those of Bernardin
St. Pierre in his Studies. Her free style is stained by none of the
current faults of the day. Lelia, a book painful to read, and offering
only here and there one of the delicious scenes which may be found in
Indiana and Valentine, is nevertheless a master-work of its kind. Of
the nature of a debauch, it is yet without passion, though it produces
the disturbance of passion. The soul is wanting, but still it weighs
upon the heart. Depravity of maxims, insult to rectitude of life,
could not go farther; but over the abyss descends the talent of the
author. In the valley of Gomorrah the dew falls nightly upon the Dead
Sea.
The works of Madame Sand, those romances, the poetry of matter, are
born of the epoch. Notwithstanding her superiority, it is to be feared
that the author has narrowed the circle of her readers by the very
character of her writings. George Sand will never be a favorite with
persons of all ages. Of two men equal in genius, one of whom preaches
order and the other disorder, the first will attract the greater
number of hearers. The human race never give unanimous applause to
what wounds morality, on which repose the feeble and the just. We do
not willingly associate with all the recollections of our life those
books which caused us the first blush, and whose pages were not
those we learned by heart as we left the cradle: books which we have
read only in secret, which have never been our avowed and cherished
companions, and which were never mingled with either the candor of our
sentiments or the integrity of our innocence. Providence has confined
to very straight limits all success which has not its source in
goodness, and has given universal glory as an encouragement for
virtue.
I am aware that I reason here like a man whose narrow view does not
embrace the vast _humanitary_ horizon, like a retrograde attached to
a ridiculous system of morality, a morality already passing to decay,
and at the best good only for minds without intelligence, in the
infancy of society. There is close at hand the birth of a new gospel,
far above the common-places of this conventional wisdom, which hinders
the progress of the human race, and the restoration to dignity and
honor of this poor body, so calumniated by the soul. When women all
resort to the street--when to perform the marriage ceremony it will
be enough to open the window and call on God as witness, priest,
and wedding-guest--then all prudery will be destroyed; there will be
espousals everywhere, and we shall rise the same as the birds to the
grandeur of nature. My criticism on books of the sort of George Sand's
has then no value except in the vulgar order of things past, and
therefore I trust she will not be offended by it. The admiration I
profess for her ought to make her excuse these remarks, which have
their origin in the infelicity of my age. Once I should have been more
carried away by the Muses. Those daughters of heaven were in times
past my lovely mistresses, now they are only my ancient friends. At
evening they kept me company by the fireside, but they soon depart;
for I go to bed early, and then they hasten to take their places
around the hearth-stone of Madame Sand.
Without doubt Madame Sand will in this path prove her intellectual
omnipotence, but yet she will please less, because she will be less
original. She will fancy she augments her power by venturing into the
depths of these reveries, beneath which we deplorable common mortals
are buried, and she will be mistaken. In fact she is much superior
to this extravagance, this vagueness, this presumptuous balderdash.
At the same time that a person endowed with a rare but too flexible
faculty, should be guarded against follies of the higher order, he
ought also to be warned that fantastic compositions, subjective or
intimate, painting (so runs the jargon) are restricted; that their
course is in youth; that its springs are drying up every instant, and
that after a number of productions the writer finishes with nothing
but weak repetitions.
Is it very likely that Madame Sand will always find the same charm
in what she now composes? Will not the merit and the enthusiasm of
twenty lose their value in her mind as the works of my first days are
depreciated in mine? There is nothing changeless except the labors of
the antique muse, and they are sustained by a nobility of manners, a
beauty of language, and a majesty of sentiments, which belong to the
entire human species. The fourth book of the Eneid remains forever
exposed to the admiration of men because it is suspended in heaven.
The ships bearing the founder of the Roman Empire,--Dido, the
foundress of Carthage, stabbing herself after having announced
Hannibal: