George Sand, in whose life nothing was commonplace, was born in Paris,
“in the midst of roses, to the sound of music,” at a dance which her
mother had somewhat rashly attended, on the 5th of July, 1804. Her
maiden name was Armentine Lucile Aurore Dupin, and her ancestry was of
a romantic character. She was, in fact, of royal blood, being the
great-grand-daughter of the Marshal Maurice du Saxe and a Mlle.
Verriere; her grandfather was M. Dupin de Francueil, the charming friend
of Rousseau and Mme. d’Epinay; her father, Maurice Dupin, was a gay and
brilliant soldier, who married the pretty daughter of a bird-fancier,
and died early. She was a child of the people on her mother’s side, an
aristocrat on her father’s. In 1807 she was taken by her father, who was
on Murat’s staff, into Spain, from which she returned to the house of
her grandmother, at Nohant in Berry. This old lady adopted Aurore at the
death of her father, in 1808. Of her childhood George Sand has given a
most picturesque account in her “Histoire de ma Vie.” In 1817 the girl
was sent to the Convent of the English Augustinians in Paris, where she
passed through a state of religious mysticism. She returned to Nohant
in 1820, and soon threw off her pietism in the outdoor exercises of a
wholesome country life. Within a few months, Mme. Dupin de Francueil
died at a great age, and Aurore was tempted to return to Paris. Her
relatives, however, were anxious that she should not do this, and
they introduced to her the natural son of a retired colonel, the Baron
Dudevant, whom, in September, 1822, she married. She brought him to live
with her at Nohant, and she bore him two sons, Maurice and Solange,
and a daughter. She quickly perceived, as her own intellectual nature
developed, that her boorish husband was unsuited to her, but their early
years of married life were not absolutely intolerable. In 1831, however,
she could endure him no longer, and an amicable separation was agreed
upon. She left M. Dudevant at Nohant, resigning her fortune, and
proceeded to Paris, where she was hard pressed to find a living. She
endeavoured, without success, to paint the lids of cigar-boxes, and in
final desperation, under the influence of Jules Sandeau--who became her
lover, and who invented the pseudonym of George Sand for her--she turned
her attention to literature. Her earliest work was to help Sandeau in
the composition of his novel, “Rose et Blanche” Her first independent
novel, “Indiana,” appeared at the close of 1831, and her second,
“Valentine,” two months later. These books produced a great and
immediate sensation, and she felt that she had found her vocation.
In 1833 she produced “Lebia”; in 1834 the “Lettres d’un Voyageur” and
“Jacques”; in 1835 “Andre” and “Leone Leoni.” After this her works
become too numerous and were produced with too monotonous a regularity
to be chronicled here. But it should be said that “Mauprat” was written
in 1836 at Nohant, while she was pleading for a legal separation from
her husband, which was given her by the tribunal of Bourges, with full
authority over the education of her children. These early novels all
reflect in measure the personal sorrows of the author, although
George Sand never ceased to protest against too strict a biographical
interpretation of their incidents. “Spiridion” (1839), composed under
the influence of Lamennais, deals with questions of free thought in
religion. But the novels of the first period of her literary activity,
which came to a close in 1840, are mainly occupied with a lyrical
individualism, and are inspired by the wrongs and disillusions of the
author’s personal adventures.
The years 1833 and 1834 were marked by her too-celebrated relations with
Alfred de Musset, with whom she lived in Paris and at Venice, and with
whom she quarrelled at last in circumstances deplorably infelicitous.
Neither of these great creatures had the reticence to exclude the world
from a narrative of their misfortunes and adventures; of the two it was
fairly certainly the woman who came the less injured out of the furnace.
In “Elle et Lui” (1859) she gave long afterward her version of the
unhappy and undignified story. Her stay in Venice appears to have
impressed her genius more deeply than any other section of her numerous
foreign sojournings.
The writings of George Sand’s second period, which extended from 1840
to 1848, are of a more general character, and are tinged with a generous
but not very enlightened ardour for social emancipation. Of these
novels, the earliest is “Le Compagnon du Tour de France” (1840), which
is scarcely a masterpiece. In the pursuit of foreign modes of thought,
and impelled by experiences of travel, George Sand rose to far greater
heights in “Jeanne” (1842), in “Consuelo” (1842-’43), and in “La
Comtesse de Rudolstade” (1844). All these books were composed in her
retirement at Nohant, where she definitely settled in 1839, after
having travelled for several months in Switzerland with Liszt and Mme.
d’Agoult, and having lived in the island of Majorca for some time
with the dying Chopin, an episode which is enshrined in her “Lucrezia
Floriani” (1847).
The Revolution of 1848 appeared to George Sand a realization of her
Utopian dreams, and plunged her thoughts into a painful disorder. She
soon, however, became dissatisfied with the result of her republican
theories, and she turned to two new sources of success, the country
story and the stage. Her delicious romance of “Francois le Champi”
(1850) attracted a new and enthusiastic audience to her, and her entire
emancipation from “problems” was marked in the pages of “La Petite
Fadette” and of “La Mare au Diable.” To the same period belong “Les
Visions de la Nuit des les Campagnes,” “Les Maitres Sonneurs,” and
“Cosina.” From 1850 to 1864 she gave a great deal of attention to
the theatre, and of her numerous pieces several enjoyed a wide and
considerable success, although it cannot be said that any of her plays
have possessed the vitality of her best novels. The most solid of the
former was her dramatization of her story, “Le Marquis de Villemer”
(1864), which was one of the latest, and next to it “Le Mariage de
Victorine” (1851), which was one of the earliest. Her successes on the
stage, such as they are, appear mainly due to collaboration with others.
In her latest period, from 1860 to 1876, George Sand returned to
her first lyrical manner, although with more reticence and a wider
experience of life. Of the very abundant fruitage of these last years,
not many rank with the masterpieces of her earlier periods, although
such novels as “Tamaris” (1862), “La Confession d’une Jeune Fille”
(1865), and “Cadio,” seemed to her admirers to show no decline of force
or fire. Still finer, perhaps, were “Le Marquis de Villemer” (1861) and
“Jean de la Roche” (1860). Her latest production, which appeared after
her death, was the “Contes d’une Grand’mere,” a collection full of
humanity and beauty. George Sand died at Nohant on the 8th of June,
1876. She had great qualities of soul, and in spite of the naive
irregularities of her conduct in early middle life, she cannot
be regarded otherwise than as an excellent woman. She was brave,
courageous, heroically industrious, a loyal friend, a tender and wise
mother. Her principle fault has been wittily defined by Mr. Henry James,
who has remarked that in affairs of the heart George Sand never “behaved
like a gentleman.”