DEBUT IN LITERATURE.
In the first days of January 1831, the Rubicon was passed. The step,
though momentous in any case to Madame Dudevant, was one whose ultimate
consequences were by none less anticipated than by herself, when to town
she came, still undecided whether her future destiny were to decorate
screens and tea-caddies, or to write books, but resolved to give the
literary career a trial.
For actual subsistence she had her small fixed allowance from home; for
credentials she was furnished with an introduction or two to literary
men from her friends in the country who had some appreciation, more or
less vague, of her intellectual powers. Though courageous and
determined, she was far from self-confident; she asked herself if she
might not be mistaking a mere fancy for a faculty, and her first step
was to seek the opinion of some experienced authority as to her talent
and chances.
M. de Keratry, a popular novelist, to whom she was recommended, spoke
his mind to her without restraint. It was to the crushing effect that a
woman ought not to write at all. Her sex, Madame Dudevant was informed,
can have no proper place in literature whatsoever. M. Delatouche,
proprietor of the _Figaro_, poet and novelist besides, and cousin of her
old and intimate friends the Duvernets, of La Chatre, was a shade more
encouraging, even so far committing himself as to own that, if she would
not let herself be disgusted by the struggles of a beginner, there might
be a distant possibility for her of making some sixty pounds a year by
her pen. Such specimens of her fiction as she submitted to him he
condemned without appeal, but he encouraged her to persevere in trying
to improve upon them, and advised her well in advising her to avoid
imitation of any school or master, and fearlessly to follow her own
bent.
Meantime he took her on to the staff of his paper, then in its infancy
and comparative obscurity. Journalism however was the department of
literature least suited to her capabilities, and her
fellow-contributors, though so much less highly gifted than Madame
Dudevant, excelled her easily in the manufacture of leaders and
paragraphs to order. To produce an article of a given length, on a given
subject, within a given time, was for her the severest of ordeals; here
her exuberant facility itself was against her. She would exhaust the
space allotted to her, and find herself obliged to break off just at the
point when she felt herself "beginning to begin." But she justly valued
this apprenticeship as a professional experience, bringing her into
direct relations with the literary world she was entering as a perfect
stranger. Once able to devote herself entirely to composition and to
live for her work, she found her calling begin to assert itself
despotically. In a letter to a friend, M. Duteil, at La Chatre, dated
about six weeks after her arrival in Paris, she writes:--
If I had foreseen half the difficulties that I find, I should not
have undertaken this enterprise. Well, the more I encounter the
more I am resolved to proceed. Still, I shall soon be returning
home again, perhaps without having succeeded in launching my boat,
but with hopes of doing better another time, and with plans of
working harder than ever.
Three weeks later we find her writing to her son's tutor, M. Boucoiran,
in the same strain:--
I am more than ever determined to follow the literary career. In
spite of the disagreeables I often meet with, in spite of days of
sloth and fatigue that come and interrupt my work, in spite of the
more than humble life I lead here, I feel that henceforth my
existence is filled. I have an object, a task, better say it at
once, a passion. The profession of a writer is a violent one, and
so to speak, indestructible. Once let it take possession of your
wretched head, you cannot stop. I have not been successful; my work
was thought too unreal by those whom I asked for advice.
But still she persisted, providing, as best she could, "copy" for the
_Figaro_, at seven francs a column, and trying the experiment of
literary collaboration, working at fictions and magazine articles, the
joint productions of herself and her friend and fellow-student, Jules
Sandeau, who wrote for the _Revue de Paris_. It was under his name that
these compositions appeared, Madam Dudevant, in these first
trial-attempts, being undesirous to bring hers before the public.
"I have no time to write home," she pleads, petitioning M. Boucoiran for
news from the country, "but I like getting letters from Nohant, it rests
my heart and my head."
And alluding to her approaching temporary return thither, in accordance
with the terms of her agreement with M. Dudevant, she writes to M.
Charles Duvernet:--
I long to get back to Berry, for I love my children more than all
besides, and, but for the hopes of becoming one day more useful to
them with the scribe's pen than with the housekeeper's needle, I
should not leave them for so long. But in spite of innumerable
obstacles I mean to take the first steps in this thorny career.
In her case it was really the first step only that cost dear; whilst
against the annoyances with which, as a new comer, she had to contend,
there was ample compensation to set in the novel interests of the
intellectual, political, and artistic world stirring around her. Country
life and peasant life she had had the opportunity of studying from her
youth up; of middle-class society she had sufficient experience; she
counted relatives and friends among the _noblesse_, and had moved in
those charmed circles; but the republic of art and letters, to which by
nature and inclination she emphatically belonged, was a land of promise
first opened up to her now. She was eager and impatient to
deprovincialize herself.
In the art galleries of the Louvre, at the theatre and the opera, in the
daily interchange of ideas on all kinds of topics with her little circle
of intelligent acquaintance, her mind grew richer by a thousand new
impressions and enjoyments, and rapidly took fresh strength together
with fresh knowledge. The heavy practical obstacles that interfere with
such self-education on the part of one of her sex were seriously
aggravated in her case by her narrow income. How she surmounted them is
well known; assuming on occasion a disguise which, imposing on all but
the initiated, enabled her everywhere to pass for a collegian of
sixteen, and thus to go out on foot in all weathers, at all hours, alone
if necessary, unmolested and unobserved, in theatre or restaurant,
boulevard or reading-room. In defense of her adoption of this strange
measure, she pleads energetically the perishable nature of feminine
attire in her day,--a day before double-soles or ulsters formed part of
a lady's wardrobe,--its incompatibility with the incessant going to and
fro which her busy life required, the exclusion of her sex from the best
part of a Paris theatre, and so forth; the ineffable superiority of a
costume which, economy and comfort apart, secured her equal independence
with her men competitors in the race, and identical advantages as to the
rapid extension of her field of observation. The practice, though never
carried on by her to such an extent as very commonly asserted, was one
to which she did not hesitate to resort now and then in later years, as
a mere measure of convenience--a measure the world will only tolerate in
the Rosalinds and Violas of the stage. The career of George Sand was,
like her nature, entirely exceptional, and any attempt to judge it in
any other light lands us in hopeless moral contradictions. She had
extraordinary incentives to prompt her to extraordinary actions, which
may be condemned or excused, but which there could be no greater
mistake than to impute to ordinary vulgar motives. It must also be
remembered that fifty years ago, the female art student had no
recognized existence. She was shut out from that modicum of freedom and
of practical advantages it were arbitrary to deny, and which may now be
enjoyed by any earnest art aspirant in almost any great city. However
unjustifiable the proceeding resorted to for a time by George Sand and
Rosa Bonheur may be held to be, it cannot possibly be said they had no
motive for it but a fantastic one.
Writing to her mother from Nohant, whither she had returned in April for
a length of time as agreed, Madam Dudevant speaks out characteristically
in defense of her love of independence:--
I am far from having that love of pleasure, that need of amusement
with which you credit me. Society, sights, finery, are not what I
want,--you only are under this mistake about me,--it is liberty. To
be all alone in the street and able to say to myself, I shall dine
at four or at seven, according to my good pleasure; I shall go to
the Tuileries by way of the Luxembourg instead of going by the
Champs Elysees; this is what amuses me far more than silly
compliments and stiff drawing-room assemblies.
Such audacious self-emancipation, she was well aware, must estrange her
from her friends of her own sex in the upper circles of Parisian
society, and she anticipated this by making no attempt to renew such
connections. For the moment she thought only of taking the shortest,
and, as she judged, the only way for a "torpid country wife," like
herself, to acquire the freedom of action and the enlightenment she
needed. Those most nearly related to her offered no opposition. It was
otherwise with her mother-in-law, the _baronne_ Dudevant, with whom she
had a passage-of-arms at the outset on the subject of her literary
campaign, here disapproved _in toto_.
"Is it true," enquired this lady, "that it is your intention to _print
books_?"
"Yes, madame."
"Well, I call that an odd notion!"
"Yes, madame."
"That is all very good and very fine, but I hope you are not going to
put the name that I bear on the _covers of printed books_?"
"Oh, certaintly not, madame, there is no danger."
The liberty to which other considerations were required to give way was
certainly complete enough. The beginning of July found her back at work
in the capital. On the Quai St. Michel--a portion of the Seine
embankment facing the towers of Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, and
other picturesque monuments of ancient Paris--she had now definitely
installed herself in modest lodgings on the fifth story. Accepted and
treated as a comrade by a little knot of fellow _literati_ and
colleagues on the _Figaro_, two of whom--Jules Sandeau and Felix
Pyat--were from Berry, like herself; and with Delatouche, also a
Berrichon, for their head-master, she served thus singularly her brief
apprenticeship to literature and experience;--sharing with the rest both
their studies and their relaxations, dining with them at cheap
restaurants, frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree;
the youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in such
collegians' pranks as parading deserted quarters of the town by
moonlight, in the small hours, chanting lugubrious strains to astonish
the shopkeepers. The only great celebrity whose acquaintance she had
made was Balzac, himself the prince of eccentrics. Although he did not
encourage Madame Dudevant's literary ambition, he showed himself kindly
disposed towards her and her young friends, and she gives some amusing
instances that came under her notice of his oddities. Thus, once after a
little Bohemian dinner at his lodgings in the Rue Cassini, he insisted
on putting on a new and magnificent dressing-gown, of which he was
exceedingly vain, to display to his guests, of whom Madame Dudevant was
one; and not satisfied therewith, must needs go forth, thus accoutred,
to light them on their walk home. All the way he continued to hold forth
to them about four Arab horses, which he had not got yet, but meant to
get soon, and of which, though he never got them at all, he firmly
believed himself to have been possessed for some time. "He would have
escorted us thus," says Madame Dudevant, "from one extremity of Paris to
another, if we had let him."
Twice again before the end of the year, faithful to her original
intentions, we find her returning to her place as mistress of the house
at Nohant, occupying herself with her children, and working at the novel
_Indiana_, which was to create her reputation the following year.
Meanwhile, a novelette, _La Prima Donna_, the outcome of the literary
collaboration with Jules Sandeau, had found its way into a magazine, the
_Revue de Paris_; and was followed by a longer work of fiction, of the
same double authorship, entitled _Rose et Blanche_, published under
Sandeau's _nom de plume_ of Jules Sand.
This literary partnership was not to last long, and to-day the novel
will be found omitted in the list of the respective works of its
authors. Its perusal will hardly repay the curious. The powerful genius
of Madame Dudevant, the elegant talent of the author of _Mlle. de la
Seigliere_, are mostly conspicuous by their absence in _Rose et
Blanche_, or _La Comedienne et la Religieuse_, an imitative attempt, and
not a happy one, in the style of fiction then in vogue.
Madame Dudevant had stepped into the literary world at the moment of the
most ardent activity of the Romantic movement. The new school was on the
point of achieving its earliest signal triumphs. Victor Hugo's first
poems had just been followed by the dramas _Hernani_ and _Marion
Delorme_. Dumas' _Antony_ was drawing crowded and enthusiastic houses. A
few months before the publication of _Rose et Blanche_ appeared _Notre
Dame de Paris_. The passion for innovation which had seized on all the
younger school of writers was leading many astray. The strange freaks of
Hugo's genius had, to quote Madame Dudevant's own expression, excited a
"ferocious appetite" for whatever was most outrageous, and set taste,
precedent, and probability most flatly at defiance. From those
aberrations into which the great master's imitators had been betrayed
Madame Dudevant's fine art-instincts were calculated to preserve her;
but she had not yet learned to trust to them implicitly.
_Rose et Blanche_, though containing many clever passages--waifs and
strays of shrewd observation, description and character analysis,--is in
the main ill-conceived, ill-constructed, and unreal. The two authors
have sacrificed their individualities in a mistaken effort to follow the
fashion's lead, resulting in a most ineffective compound of tameness and
sensationalism. Amazing adventures are undergone by each heroine before
she is one-and-twenty. Angels of innocence, they are doomed to have
their existences crushed out by the heartless conduct of man, Blanche
expiring of dismay almost as soon as she is led from the altar, Rose
burying herself and her despair in a convent. The then favorite heroes
of romance were of the French Byronic type--young men of fortune who
have exhausted life before they are five-and-twenty, whose minds are
darkened by haunting memories of some terrific crime, but who are none
the less capable of all the virtues and great elevation of sentiment on
occasion. None of these requisitions are left unfulfilled by the
unamiable hero of _Rose et Blanche_, a work which did little to advance
the fortunes of its authors, and whose intrinsic merits offer little
warrant for dragging it out of the oblivion into which it has been
suffered to drop.
To escape the influences of the literary revolution everywhere then
triumphant was of course impossible. To make them serve her individual
genius instead of enslaving her individuality was all Madame Dudevant
needed to learn. Her friend Balzac had done this for himself, suiting
his genius to the period without any sacrifice of originality. Although
not yet at the height of his fame he had produced many most successful
works, and Madame Dudevant, according to her own account, derived great
profit from the study of his method, although with no inclination to
follow in his direction. Yet he afterwards observed to her, "Our two
roads lead to the same goal."
_Rose et Blanche_, though little noticed by the public, brought a
publisher to the door, one Ernest Dupuy, with an order for another novel
by the same authors. _Indiana_ was ready-written, and came in response
to the demand. But as Sandeau had had no hand whatever in this
composition, the signature had of course to be varied. The publisher
wishing to connect the new novel with its predecessor it was decided to
alter the prefix only. She fixed on George, as representative of Berry,
the land of husbandmen; and George Sand thus became pseudonym of the
author of _Indiana_, a pseudonym whose origin imaginative critics have
sought far afield and some have discovered in her alleged sympathy with
Kotzebue's murderer, Karl Sand, and political assassination in general!
Its assumption was to inaugurate a new era in her life.
In the last days of April, 1832, appeared _Indiana_, by George Sand. "I
took," says Madame Dudevant, in her account of the transaction, "the
1,200 francs paid me by the publisher, which to me were a little
fortune, hoping he would see his money back again." She had recently
returned from one of her periodical visits to Nohant, accompanied this
time by her little girl, whom the progress already achieved enabled her
now to take into her charge, and was living very quietly and studiously
in her humble establishment on the Quai St. Michel, when she awoke to
find herself famous.
Her success, for which indeed there had been nothing to prepare
her--neither flattery of friends, nor vain-glorious ambition within
herself--was immediate and conclusive. Whatever differences of opinion
might exist about the book, critics agreed in recognizing there the
revelation of a new writer of extraordinary power. "One of those masters
who have been gifted with the enchanter's wand and mirror," wrote
Sainte-Beuve, a few months later, when he did not hesitate to compare
the young author to Madame de Stael. The novel of sentimental analysis,
a style in which George Sand is unsurpassed, was then a fresh and
promising field. _Indiana_, without the aid of marvellous incidents,
startling crimes, or iniquitous mysteries, riveted the attention of its
readers as firmly as the most thrilling tales of adventure and horror.
It is a "soul's tragedy," and that is all--the love-tragedy vulgarized
since by repeated treatment by inferior novelists, of a romantic,
sensitive, passionate, high-natured girl, hopelessly ill-mated with a
somewhat tyrannical and stupid, yet not entirely ill-disposed old
colonel, and exposed to the seductions of a Lovelace--the truth about
whose unloveable character, in its profound and heartless egoism, first
bursts upon her at the moment when, maddened by brutal insult, she is
driven to claim the generous devotion he has proffered a thousand times.
Side by side with the ideal of selfishness, Raymon stands in contrast
with the ideally chivalrous Ralph, Indiana's despised cousin, who,
loving her disinterestedly and in silence, has watched over her as a
guardian-friend to the last, and does save her ultimately. The florid
descriptions, the high-flown strains of emotion, which now strike as
blemishes in the book, were counted beauties fifty years since; and even
to-day, when reaction has brought about an extreme distaste for
emotional writing, they cannot conceal the superior ability of the
novelist. The sentiment, however extravagantly worded, is genuine and
spontaneous, and has the true ring of passionate conviction. The
characters are vividly, if somewhat closely drawn and contrasted, the
scenes graphic; every page is colored by fervid imagination, and despite
some violations of probability in the latter portion, out of keeping
artistically with the natural character of the rest of the book, the
whole has the strength of that unity and completeness of conception
which is the distinguishing stamp of a genius of the first order. The
_entrain_ of the style is irresistible. It was written, she tells us,
_tout d'un jet_, under the force of a stimulus from within. Ceasing to
counterfeit the manner of anyone, or to consult the exigencies of the
book-market, she for the first time ventures to be herself responsible
for the inspiration and the mode of expression adopted.
The papers spoke of the new novel in high tones of praise, the public
read it with avidity. The authorship, for a time, continued to perplex
people. In spite of the masculine pseudonym, certain feminine qualities,
niceties of perception and tenderness, were plainly recognized in the
work, but the possibility that so vigorous and well-executed a
composition could come from a feminine hand was one then reckoned
scarcely admissible. Even among those already in the secret were
sceptics who questioned the author's power to sustain her success,
since nearly everybody, it is said, can produce one good novel.
"The success of _Indiana_ has thrown me into dismay," writes Madame
Dudevant, in July, 1832, to M. Charles Duvernet, at La Chatre. "Till
now, I thought my writing was without consequence, and would not merit
the slightest attention. Fate has decreed otherwise. The unmerited
admiration of which I have become the object must be justified." And
_Valentine_ was already in progress; and its publication, not many
months after _Indiana_, to be a conclusive answer to the challenge.
The season of 1832, in which George Sand made her _debut_ in literature,
was marked, in Paris, by public events of the most tragic character. In
the spring, the cholera made its appearance, and struck panic into the
city. Six people died in the house where Madame Dudevant resided, but
neither she nor any of her friends were attacked. She was next to be a
witness of political disturbances equally terrible. The disappointment
felt by the Liberals at the results of the Revolution of 1830, and of
the establishment of Louis Philippe's Government, upon which such high
hopes had been founded, was already beginning to assert itself in secret
agitation, and in the sanguinary street insurrections, such as that of
June, 1832, sanguinarily repressed. Madame Dudevant at this time had no
formulated political creed, and political subjects were those least
attractive to her. But though born in the opposite camp she felt all her
natural sympathies incline to the Republican side. They were further
intensified by the scenes of which she was an eye-witness, and which
roused a similar feeling even among anti-revolutionists. Thus Heine, in
giving an account of the struggle mentioned above, and speaking of the
enthusiasts who sacrificed their lives in this desperate demonstration,
exclaims: "I am, by God! no Republican. I know that if the Republicans
conquer they will cut my throat, and all because I don't admire all they
admire; but yet the tears came into my eyes as I trod those places still
stained with their blood. I had rather I, and all my fellow-moderates,
had died than those Republicans."
Amid such disturbing influences it is not surprising that we find her
complaining in the letter last quoted that her work makes no progress;
but the lost time was made up for by redoubled industry during her
summer visit to Nohant.
In the autumn appeared _Valentine_. This second novel not only confirmed
the triumph won by the first, but was a surer proof of the writer's
calibre, as showing what she could do with simpler materials. Here,
encouraged by success, she had ventured to take her stand entirely on
her own ground--dispensing even with an incidental trip to the tropics,
which, in _Indiana_, strikes as a misplaced concession to the prevalent
craze for Oriental coloring--and to lay the scene in her own obscure
province of Berry, her first descriptions of which show her rare
comprehension of the poetry of landscape. Like _Indiana_, _Valentine_ is
a story of the affections; like _Indiana_, it is a domestic tragedy, of
which the girl-heroine is the victim of a pernicious system that makes
of marriage, in the first instance, a mere commercial speculation.
Indeed, the extreme painfulness of the story would render the whole too
repulsive but for the charm of the setting, which relieves it not a
little, and a good deal of humor in the treatment of the minor
characters, notably the eighteenth century _marquise_, and the Lhery
family of peasant-_parvenus_. The personages are drawn with more finish
than those in _Indiana_; the tone is more natural in its pitch. It is
the work of one who finds in every-day observation, as well as in such
personal emotions as come but once in a lifetime, the inspiration that
smaller talents can derive from the latter alone.
In both her consummate art, or rather natural gift of the art of
narrative, is the mainstay of the fabric her imagination has reared.
That incomparable style of hers is like some magic fairy-ring, that
bears the wearer, safe and victorious, through manifold perils--perils
these of prolixity, exaggeration, and disdain of careful construction.
Both _Indiana_ and _Valentine_, moreover, contain scenes and passages
offensive to English taste, but it is impossible fairly to criticise the
fiction of a land where freer expression in speech and in print than
with us is habitually recognized and practiced, from our own standpoint
of literary decorum. It was not for this feature that French criticism
had already begun to charge her books with dangerous tendencies (thus
contributing largely to noise her fame abroad), as breathing rebellion
against the laws of present society; charges which, so far as _Indiana_
and _Valentine_ are concerned, had, as is now generally admitted, but
little foundation. Each is the story of an unhappy marriage, but there
is no attempt whatever to throw contempt on existing institutions, or to
propound any theory, unless it be the idea--no heresy or novelty in
England at least--that marriage, concluded without love on either side,
is fraught with special dangers to the wife, whose happiness is bound up
with her affections. It was the bold and uncompromising manner in which
this plain fact was brought forward, the energy of the protest against
a real social abuse, which moved some critics to sound a war-cry for
which, as yet, no just warrant had been given.
Besides these two novels, containing full proof of her genius, if not of
its highest employment, there appeared, late in 1832, that remarkable
novelette, _La Marquise_, revealing fresh qualities of subtle
penetration and clear analysis. The flexibility of her imagination, the
variety in her modes of its application, form an essential
characteristic of her work. Not by any single novel, nor, indeed by
half-a-dozen taken at random, can she be adequately represented.
When in the winter of 1832 Madame Sand returned with her little girl to
Paris after spending the autumn, as usual, at Nohant, it was to rather
more comfortable quarters, on the Quai Malplaquet. The rapid sale of her
books was placing her in comparatively easy circumstances, and giving
fresh spur to her activity. But her situation was transforming itself
fast; the freedom of obscurity was lost to her for ever from the day
when the unknown personage, George Sand, became the object of general
curiosity--of curiosity redoubled in Paris by the rumors current there
of her exceptional position, eccentric habits, and interesting
personality.
The celebrated portrait of her by Eugene Delacroix was painted in the
year 1833. It is a three-quarter view, and represents her wearing her
_quasi_ masculine _redingote_, with broad _revers_ and loosely knotted
silk neck-tie. Of somewhat later date is a highly interesting drawing by
Calamatta, well-known by engravings; but of George Sand in her first
youth no likeness unfortunately has been left to the world. She has been
most diversely described by her different contemporaries. But that at
this time she possessed real beauty is perfectly evident; for all that
she denies it herself, and that, unlike most women, and nearly all
French women, she scorned to enhance it by an elaborated toilette.
Heine, though he never professed himself one of her personal adorers,
compares the beauty of her head to that of the Venus of Milo, saying,
"It bears the stamp of ideality, and recalls the noblest remaining
examples of Greek art." Her figure was somewhat too short, but her hands
and feet were very small and beautifully shaped. His acquaintance with
her dates from the early years of her literary triumphs, and his
description is in harmony with Calamatta's presentation. She had dark
curling hair, a beauty in itself, falling in profusion to her shoulders,
well-formed features, pale olive-tinted complexion, the countenance
expressive, the eyes dark and very fine, not sparkling, but mild and
full of feeling. The face reminds us of the character of "Still Waters,"
attributed to the Aurore Dupin of fifteen by the Lady Superior of the
English convent. Her voice was soft and muffled, and the simplicity of
her manner has been remarked on by those who sought her acquaintance, as
a particular charm. Yet, like all reserved natures, she often failed to
attract strangers at a first meeting. In general conversation she
disappointed people, by not shining. Men and women, immeasurably her
inferiors, surpassed her in ready wit and brilliant repartee. Her
taciturnity in society has been somewhat ungenerously laid to a _parti
pris_. She was one, it is said, who took all and gave nothing. That she
was intentionally chary of her passing thoughts and impressions to those
around her, is, however, sufficiently disproved by her letters. Here she
shows herself lavish of her mind to her correspondents. Conversation and
composition necessitate a very different brain action, and her
marvellous facility in writing seems really to have been accompanied
with no corresponding readiness of speech and reply. Probably it was
only, as she herself states, when she had a pen in her hand that her
lethargic ideas would arise and flow in order as they should. And the
need of self-expression felt by all those who have not the gift of
communicating themselves fully and easily in speech or manner, a strong
need in her case, from her having so much to express, was the spur that
drove her to seek and find the mode of so doing in art.
Her silence in company certainly did not detract from her fascination
upon a closer acquaintance. Of those who fell under the spell, the more
fortunate came at once to terms of friendship with her, which remained
undisturbed through life. Thus, of one among this numerous brotherhood,
Francois Rollinat, with whom she would congratulate herself on having
realized the perfection of such an alliance of minds, she could write
when recording their friendship, then already a quarter of a century
old, that it was still young as compared with some that she counted, and
that dated from her childhood.
Others fell in love with her, and found her unresponsive. With some of
these, jealousies and misunderstandings arose, and led to estrangements,
for the most part but temporary. Yet the winner of her heart was
scarcely to be envied. She was apt--she has herself thus expressed
it--to see people through a prism of enthusiasm, and afterwards to
recover her lucidity of judgment. Great, no doubt, was her power of
self-illusion; it betrayed her into errors that have been unsparingly
judged. For her power of calm and complete disillusion she was perhaps
unique among women, and it is no wonder if mankind have found it hard to
forgive.