HER FRIENDSHIP WITH GEORGE SAND
1858-1870
“_Ma grande amie maternelle a été mon guide._”—Mme. Adam, _Souvenirs_.
To have been intimately associated with George Sand during the last
fifteen years of that distinguished woman’s life, Mme. Adam regards as
one of her greatest privileges.
Each of Mme. Adam’s seven volumes of _Souvenirs_ has its hero and
heroine: her grandmother, Mme. Seron, dominates the first, Mme.
d’Agoult the second, Gambetta the four last. George Sand, while
intervening in several volumes, figures most prominently in the third,
_Mes Sentiments et Nos Idées avant 1870_. Here we find a striking
portrait of that celebrated novelist whom her English critic, W.
H. Myers, considers “the most noteworthy woman, with perhaps one
exception, who has appeared since Sappho.”[138] Mme. Adam knew George
Sand in the evening of her days, when she had lived down her enemies,
partisanships, scandals, loves. They had passed away and left her “in
grand old age sitting beneath the roof that sheltered her earliest
years, and writing for her grandchildren stories in which her own
childhood lives anew.”
It is not surprising that Juliette Adam and George Sand should have
been attracted to one another; for they had many natural affinities.
They were both passionately romantic and idealist. “_Je suis restée
troubadour_,” writes Mme. Sand in January 1867,[139] “_c’est à dire
croyant à l’amour, à l’art, à l’idéal_.” They were both incurable
optimists, ardent adorers of nature, lovers of humble folk, and of
peasants especially; delighting in simple things, in the joys of
friendship, in the pleasures of family life, though both had known
marital miseries. Their upbringing had not been unlike, penetrated in
each case with a strong strain of paganism. Neither was a rationalist,
for surging up from the subconsciousness of them both was a keen sense
of the unseen and a lively curiosity in the occult.
Their creeds differed: George Sand was a deist, Juliette in those days
a pantheist. But Mme. Sand was not mistaken when she prophesied that
one day her young friend’s faith would approximate more nearly to her
own. “_Essayez donc de vous convertir à mon Dieu unique_,” she said.
“_Il y’a en votre âme un grand vide de spiritualité dont vous ne vous
apercevez pas a cette heure, parce que vous avez la vie la plus pleine
que se puisse imaginer, mais un beau jour vous sentirez l’insufficence
que vous apporte votre croyance en l’incroyance._”[140]
It was in 1858, on the publication of her first book, _Idées
Anti-Proudhoniennes_, written as we have seen partly in defence of
George Sand, that Juliette first came into personal relationship with
the writer whom she had long admired. “_George Sand me remercia par
une fort belle lettre pleine de gratitude_,” she writes.[141] Later
the young authoress received a visit from one of Mme. Sand’s friends,
a certain Captain d’Arpentigny, who explained to her that, as she
was the friend of the Comtesse d’Agoult, with whom Mme. Sand had
quarrelled,[142] the latter deemed it prudent that she and her young
champion should not meet. If some day Juliette should break off her
relations with Mme. d’Agoult, then she might come to see George Sand.
Such a condition was neither petty nor vindictive, though such at
first it might seem. Considering the temperaments of these two
distinguished women—one endowed with the passionate vehemence and
frankness of the Celt, the other not lacking in a certain Teutonic
vindictiveness—for Juliette to have been a loyal friend to them both
at the same time would have been impossible.[143]
There was no reason, however, why Juliette and George Sand should
not correspond. Mme. Sand never failed to take an interest in her
correspondent’s literary career.
She read all her books and gave the young author the invaluable
benefit of her criticism. Though her book _Mon Village_ was dedicated
to Mme. d’Agoult, it was, as we have seen, written at the suggestion
of George Sand.
For nine years Juliette and her unknown friend, her _amie éloignée_,
as Mme. Sand called herself, continued to correspond. And it was not
until Juliette’s final breach with Mme. d’Agoult, in 1867, that the
former considered herself at liberty to see in the flesh her whose
spirit and whose writings she had admired so long.
Mme. Adam’s graphic description of the memorable meeting in the third
volume of her _Souvenirs_[144] has become almost a classic.
With her whole being throbbing with emotion, Juliette went by
appointment to Mme. Sand’s flat, No. 97, Rue des Feuillantines. In a
large arm-chair, which made her appear quite a little woman, Mme. Sand
sat with both arms on a table in front of her, rolling a cigarette.
“I approached,” writes Juliette; “she did not rise, but she pointed to
a seat, which I was to take, quite near the table. Her large kind eyes
enveloped, attracted me. My pulse beat violently.
“I made a great effort to greet her with a word. I found nothing to
say. My heart came into my mouth.
“She lit her cigarette and began to smoke. She also seemed searching
for a word to address to me; but she no more than I could find
anything to say.
“Later I knew how reserved she felt in the presence of any one whom
she saw for the first time.
“Then, realising that I must appear idiotic, my feelings overcame me,
and I burst into tears.
“George Sand threw away her cigarette and held out her arms to me. I
threw myself into them, possessed by that filial tenderness which I
had longed to experience, and which has remained with me to this hour.”
Naturally they could not avoid talking of that disagreement with Mme.
d’Agoult which had rendered the meeting possible.
Then they discussed a theme constantly recurring in the conversation
of serious persons in that day: the frivolity and corruption of
Parisian society under the Empire, and the reign of opportunism.
They rejoiced at the boldness of the manager of the Théâtre français,
who had dared to represent a play by Victor Hugo, then a political
exile, and they delighted to think of the consolation it must bring to
the author in his banishment.
“I left Mme. Sand,” writes Juliette, “after two hours of confidences,
confirmed in my adoration of her and in our friendship.
“Would that I could tell and tell again all her delicacy of feeling,
her nobility of heart, her moral elevation, her wide comprehension of
life, her serenity learnt in so hard a school, won at the price of
such cruel experiences.”
That Juliette on her part had favourably impressed her new
acquaintance may be seen by the terms in which Mme. Sand refers to
her in her correspondence. Writing to Flaubert in September 1867, she
calls Juliette _une charmante jeune femme de lettres_,[145] and again
to the same correspondent she exclaims later, _Mme. Juliette Lamber
est vraiment charmante_. George Sand took a deep interest in all the
members of her young friend’s family. At her invitation Juliette’s
betrothed, Edmond Adam, went to see her. They talked of 1848. Speaking
of Juliette, Mme. Sand said to Adam, “I have waited long for _cette
fille adoptive_”; of Adam to his bride, “He has a loyal hand:[146]
you must be proud to give him yours.”[147] Henceforth nothing would
satisfy Juliette and her affianced but that Mme. Sand should visit
them on the Golfe Juan. Juliette described her Bruyères as modest
but gay, Adam’s villa, Le Grand Pin, as fine and equipped with every
possible comfort and convenience. George decided for Bruyères.
“_Et me voilà_,” writes Juliette, “_aussi joyeuse qu’Edmond Adam va
devenir jaloux_.”[148] Mme. Sand, who adored children and was never
tired of talking of her own little granddaughter Aurora, insisted on
seeing Alice. With Juliette’s daughter it was a case of love at first
sight. For Mme. Sand, who had a nickname for every one she loved,
Alice was henceforth Topaz, because of the dark olive complexion she
had inherited from her Sicilian father, Lamessine.
Henceforth Juliette lived in the hope of that promised winter visit
to Bruyères. But before her southern flight in November, she was
to see a great deal of her friend in Paris. In September they went
together to Rouen and Jumièges.[149] They dined together in town. Once
at Mme. Sand’s favourite restaurant, the famous Magny’s, on the left
bank,[150] Juliette met for the first time an illustrious quartette
of whom she was to see much later: Edmond and Jules de Goncourt,
Gustave Flaubert and Dumas _fils_. The friendship between Juliette and
Flaubert, which dates from that evening, endured until the novelist’s
death. With Flaubert’s family Mme. Adam has continued intimate, and
the opening weeks of this year (1917) she spent with Flaubert’s niece
at her country house in the department of Var. The talk, _chez_ Magny,
that evening[151] was lively and frank, to say the least of it. The
youth, the beauty, the charm of Mme. Sand’s new friend, provoked Dumas
to scoff at the idea of her becoming a writer and a _bas bleu_. He,
like Michel Lévy of old,[152] believed, as he put it, that she had
something better to do. “_Il faut aimer, aimer, aimer_,” he cried. And
Flaubert and the de Goncourts repeated, “_Il faut aimer_.” “To learn
that, gentlemen, I have not waited for your words of wisdom,” replied
Juliette. “I love to love whom I love, and he, whom I love, loves to
see me write.”
* * * * *
“The fool,” cried Dumas.
“What an extraordinary idea,” exclaimed Mme. Sand, “to attempt to
prove in my presence that a woman who is a writer cannot love.”
“There is truth in it all the same,” said Edmond de Goncourt.
“Never,” protested George Sand. “The reproach which may be brought
against women writers is precisely that they have loved too much. _Et
la preuve, dedans moi-même, je la treuve_,” she added, relapsing into
_patois_.
“You,” cried Dumas, “why you have never loved anything but the
prefigurings of the heroes of your future novels, something like the
marionettes,[153] whom you have rigged out to repeat your play. Can
that be called loving?”
“Come,” said Flaubert. “Now, we four are writers of some standing. Can
we be called great lovers?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” replied Mme. Sand. “But, to confine
oneself to recent examples, it is absurd to maintain that Mme. de
Staël, Mme. d’Agoult, Mme. de Girardin and I have not been passionate
lovers. Indeed, on the contrary, what remains to be proved is the
possibility of a pretty woman writer, who is really gifted, continuing
a simple, loving, faithful wife like any other woman.”
“Yes, that is an interesting problem,” said Jules de Goncourt.
That evening Mme. Sand talked more than usual. Generally she preferred
to listen, delighting to emphasise some witty remark, which she
relished more than any one by a frank outburst of laughter or a brief
exclamation.
In conversation Mme. Sand was best in _tête-à-tête_. Some of the most
memorable of her confidential talks with her friend, Mme. Adam has
reproduced in her _Souvenirs_.
One evening in Paris, when they were to have gone to the Odéon
together, the play having been suddenly changed through an actor’s
illness, “Let us stay at home and talk, dear Juliette,” said George.
That conversation marked the beginning of George Sand’s ascendancy
over her young friend’s mind. “_A partir de cette heure_,” writes
Juliette, “_ma grande amie maternelle a été mon guide”_.[154]
At the end of a long silence, during which she had been smoking
cigarettes, throwing them into a bowl of water after a few whiffs,
George said, as if resuming the thoughts that had been occupying her—
“I want my life to be useful to another, to the daughter whom I choose
to adopt, to you, my child. As we learn to know one another better, as
we talk more and more to one another, I will tell you by what paths,
always roughest when I most sought to find them smooth, I have climbed
the hill of existence.”
Through all that she has written of George Sand, we find Juliette ever
attempting to excuse, or at least to account for, the irregularities,
the ebullience, the wild passions of her friend’s exuberant and
turbulent youth. She attributes them to the extravagance and
effervescence of that romantic movement, in the hey-day of which Mme.
Sand lived the first half of her life. For this view of her friend’s
career Juliette had the authority of George herself.
“In my young days,” said Mme. Sand on this memorable evening, “I moved
in a purely artificial world, in which we were all resolved to feel,
to experience, to love, to think, differently from the vulgar herd.
Determined to avoid the bank, to swim out into the open, we were
constantly losing our foothold and floundering in unfathomable depths.
Remote from the crowd, remote from the shore, always more and more
remote. How many of us have not perished body and soul!
“And those who would not be drowned, who struggled, who were thrown
back on to the bank, they recovered their footing, they became like
other people, through contact with the earth, and especially with the
common sense of humble folk. How often have I not become myself again
in the midst of peasants! How often has not Nohant cured me of and
saved me from Paris!”
For George Sand, as for Joan of Arc four centuries ago, as for
Anatole France to-day, the most adorable, the most salutary, the most
indispensable of all human sentiments is pity. Looking back from the
vantage point of old age on the mad, passionate adventures of her
youth, Mme. Sand saw herself ever swayed from the bottom of her heart
by _une grand pitié_. It was often that pity which caused her to
quarrel with her lovers. She loved them as a mother loves her child.
But they demanded from her the love of a mistress.
“_Quand je m’examine_,” she said to Juliette, “_je vois que les deux
seules passions de ma vie ont été la maternité et l’amitié_.”[155]
After numerous delays and postponements Mme. Sand, accompanied by
her son Maurice and her friend Planet, at length, in February 1868,
arrived at Bruyères. The date of the visit had been so frequently
changed that Juliette and Alice had begun to fear that it might never
take place at all. “Cold outside, comfort within, and especially the
happiness of living surrounded by one’s family,” writes Mme. Sand to
a friend in Paris,[156] “have delayed my journey.” But on the 22nd
of February she was able to write to a friend at Toulon from “Golfe
Juan, Villa Bruyères.” “We are very comfortably installed, very much
spoilt, very energetic, very happy. The day after to-morrow we are
going to Nice, Monaco and Mentone. We shall be away three or four
days. Consequently you must try not to let your business bring you
here before the end of the week. Friday, for example, we are always at
home. For on that day Mme. Lamber receives. But if you come on another
day you must let us know; for we generally spend the whole day out of
doors, and sometimes go a considerable distance.”[157]
In picnics, in visits to Monte Carlo and other scenes of gaiety,
in sailing in _La Petite Fadette_, the yacht which had been Edmond
Adam’s New Year’s gift to his affianced bride, the time passed very
pleasantly. George Sand was a fervent geologist and botanist. “Give
me a piece of stone,” she would say, “and I will tell you the kind of
flora it will produce.” By such means and without visiting the country
she is said to have given a background to some of her novels. On one
of their picnics Mme. Sand suggested that they should found a new
Abbey of Thelema, in which Juliette was to be housekeeper and caterer.
And she could not have made a better choice, as will testify all who
have tasted of Mme. Adam’s hospitality.
The fortnight which Mme. Sand passed on the Golfe Juan was for
Juliette one of the happiest in that happy year, 1868, the year of her
marriage with Edmond Adam. Bruyères was a home of delight to those
who enjoyed its charming hospitality and had the good fortune to stay
there. _La Villa du Bon Repos_ some of them christened it, and later
it was known as “the Adam’s earthly Paradise.” During the February of
1868 it was the gayest house on the Riviera.
Mme. Sand was a delightful person to entertain, so simple, so
contented, so entirely occupied with other people, never permitting
her hosts to perceive in her the slightest suggestion of care,
anxiety, or fatigue. Perfectly regular and orderly in her manner of
life, every day she made her first appearance at the twelve-o’clock
lunch, and from that hour until ten her friends had her to themselves.
At ten in the evening she bade them good-night and retired to her
room to work, frequently until the small hours of the morning.
Juliette, whose room was beneath Mme. Sand’s and who also went to bed
late, used to hear her moving about. Her cigarettes and a glass of
water were all she required for her long vigils.
Maurice Sand, her son, himself a gifted writer, one of the wittiest
and gayest of companions, the inventor and manager of the celebrated
marionette theatre at Nohant, entertained the company with his
jokes—no one could long be serious in his presence.
Mme. Sand’s friend Planet had been brought up to laugh at Nohant
(_élevé à rire_), for Mme. Sand believed in mirth as the most
effectual of sanitives. _La gaieté est la meilleure hygiène de
l’esprit._ “Consequently,” writes Juliette, “I assure you we are not
sad.”[158]
George Sand used to say that she was never sure of her friends until
she had stayed with them and lived some days of their life. Her visit
to Bruyères drew more closely the cords of her intimacy with Juliette,
and sealed their friendship.
On their return to Paris, and after their marriage, which took place
in the spring, the Adams were constantly being urged by Mme. Sand to
visit her at Nohant. “_Chers enfants_,” wrote George, “_quand vous
verra t’on? On vous attend maintenant tout l’été, sans aucun projet
que le bonheur de vous embrasser tous trois_”[159] (Edmond Adam,
Juliette and Alice). Adam had a horror of country visits. But in this
case he was willing to set aside his prejudice, and to accept the
great George’s invitation. The Adams only waited until Juliette’s
father, Dr. Lambert, had recovered from an operation for stone.
Finally, on the 4th of July, in time for their hostess’s sixty-fifth
birthday, _jour de bouquets et d’embrassades_, they arrived at Mme.
Sand’s picturesque home at Nohant, in the heart of that beloved Berry,
which readers of her novels know so well.
The birthday of the mistress of Nohant was a fête for the
neighbourhood. Maurice had spent the previous night decorating the
hall and reception-rooms with garlands woven by the peasants. In
the art of decoration, the creator of the Marionette Theatre was a
past master; and the whole house appeared a bower of flowers and
verdure.[160]
The firing of a gun announced the luncheon hour. Marshalled by
Maurice, the entire household, guests, servants and even the tiny
granddaughter Aurora, holding Alice’s hand, assembled in _grande
toilette_. Alice and her mother had been early out in the fields
gathering wild flowers for the birthday nosegays, which they were
to present to their hostess. Then she appeared. The servants cried:
“_Vive la bonne dame._” Maurice read an address which he had prepared
for the occasion. “_Ce que tu es adorablement stupide_,” cried his
mother, embracing him. Then all the guests in turn expressed their
good wishes. Luncheon passed gaily, the afternoon was spent out of
doors. But the great event of the day was the evening performance in
the marionette theatre.
To the description of this highly ingenious, perfectly artistic and
most entrancing of entertainments Mme. Adam devotes six pages of her
_Souvenirs_. The spectators were encouraged to express their opinions
audibly as the play went on. Each had his favourite actor or actress.
Mme. Adam, having declared her preference for a certain Coq-en-Bois,
he from the stage invited her to dine with him in a _cabinet
particulier_ at the Café Brébant. “Ah! no, I protest!” cried Adam; and
led by the queen of the festival, the whole audience was convulsed
with laughter.
In theory, and in practice during her early days, always a rebel
against order and discipline, in her home George Sand had ever been
the personification of orderliness. Perfect tidiness reigned in her
simply furnished study. In her desk and her large cupboards, every
drawer and shelf was furnished with a label indicating the contents.
Equally precise was the arrangement of her bedroom, opening out of the
study, with its fine old furniture and its hangings of blue—the colour
of the Golfe Juan, as she said to Juliette. In her gardens, where she
had acclimatised an immense variety of plants, collected during her
travels, Mme. Sand took great delight. But no one was allowed to cut
the flowers. Those used for house decoration were all gathered in the
woods and fields.
Serious conversation, profound discussions, Mme. Sand reserved for her
_tête-à-têtes_. The general talk at Nohant was of the mirth-provoking
order, that intelligent nonsense which clears the brain and
sharpens the wits. If any one was inclined to be too serious, he was
immediately prodded into liveliness by one of those practical jokes in
which the mistress of Nohant revelled. The unhappy Edmond Adam had all
his worst prejudices against country-house parties confirmed when he
was roused from his slumbers by the crowing of a cock, which Maurice
had hidden in the wood-chest of his bedroom. The wretched victim’s
vociferations, mingling with the voice of chanticleer, as in night
attire this much-tried guest searched for his tormentor, afforded
intense amusement to the household assembled in the passage, as well
as to Juliette, who, being in the secret, was cowering beneath the
sheets, trying to suppress her laughter, and to Alice in the adjoining
room.
Several days of the Nohant visit were occupied in excursions to places
of interest in the neighbourhood, to the Druidical monuments of
Crevant and to La Mare au Diable.
After they had left Nohant the Adams continued to see a great deal of
George Sand. In the autumn of 1868 they accompanied her on a tour to
the Meuse Valley, which she intended to make the scene of her next
novel, _Malgré Tout_. The great George was a valiant traveller. None
of the discomforts of country tours in days when inns were close
and filthy disturbed her. With what she called the _poltronnerie_
of Juliette and Alice, who complained of sleepless nights spent in
hunting vermin, their friend had no sympathy. She only jeered at them
for not following her example and keeping the pests away by smoking
cigars and cigarettes.
Mme. Sand returned with her friends to Paris. There she established
herself in a flat in the Rue Gay-Lussac, from the windows of which she
could see her beloved Luxembourg. Her chambermaid, who had not the
remotest idea of her mistress’s distinction, always addressed her as
“Madame de Cendre,” and George forbade any one to enlighten her.
Mme. Sand had come to Paris to assist at the rehearsals at the
Porte-Saint-Martin of her play _Cadio_. This indefatigable old lady of
threescore years and more, went every evening to the theatre, where
she stayed from six till two. In her company Juliette for the first
time penetrated “behind.” She was also present on the first night. But
the play was a failure. According to the author, this was chiefly
because the principal actor, one Roger, persisted in wearing a hat
with a white feather instead of a battered and weather-stained cap.
As the curtain was about to rise Mme. Sand tore out the feather and
broke it. But swift as lightning Mme. Roger, an ex-milliner, sewed it
together again. The actor entered beplumed. “_La pièce est perdu!_”
cried the authoress.
The next year the Adams were staying at Pierrefonds. There George Sand
joined them, and they spent together a delightful fortnight there.
In all that concerned her young friend, in Juliette’s spiritual,
professional, domestic and physical welfare, Mme. Sand took the
deepest interest. She marvelled at the numerous activities Juliette
continued to crowd into her life.
“_J’admire q’étant ‛mondaine’ et toujours par monts et par vaux,”
she writes, “et très occupée de la famille et du ménage, vous ayez
le temps d’écrire et de penser. Au reste, cette activité est bonne à
l’esprit, mais n’usez pas trop le corps._”[161]
Sometimes George Sand feared for her friend the consequences of
her excitable temperament and her untiring energy. She would have
liked to have seen in her something of the serenity which the great
George had herself acquired. But she realised that with Juliette, as
with herself, this calm, this aloofness from life’s petty worries,
would come with old age. “We must not ask youth to anticipate age,”
she wrote. “And youth’s charm is in its impressionability.”[162]
Nevertheless, she adjures her friend to cultivate moderation in all
things, not to strive after violent sensations. “You are passionate
and exalted,” she wrote to Juliette; “that is good and beautiful, and
we love you for it.” “But,” she adds, “do not, in your craving for
emotion, afflict yourself unnecessarily. Spend yourself, but do not
waste yourself.... Your sleeplessness is not natural to youth.” It
indicated, thought Mme. Sand, that something was wrong in Juliette’s
ordering of her life. She advised her not to work at night, but to go
to bed at eleven, to rise at six and to write then, before the time
came for her daughter’s morning lessons. The writer of this letter
did not herself follow these precepts. But she had long passed out
of Juliette’s condition of nervous excitability. “Work,” she added,
“is an act of lucidity. Now, perfect lucidity is impossible without
preliminary rest.”
Alas! the course of international affairs was rapidly rendering
impossible that calm restfulness to which George Sand was so wisely
exhorting Juliette.
In the summer of 1870 the Adams repeated their visit to Nohant. On
the 15th of July diplomatic relations between France and Prussia
were severed. On the 25th, M. Émile Ollivier read before the Corps
Legislatif the French Government’s declaration of war.
The house-party at Nohant immediately broke up, and the Adams returned
to Paris.
FOOTNOTES:
[138] W. H. Myers, _Modern Essays_ (1883).
[139] George Sand, _Correspondance_, V. 164.
[140] _Souvenirs_, III. 282-3.
[141] _Ibid._, II. 83.
[142] That Liszt was the cause of their quarrel was well known.
Mme. Sand had written of it in her novel _Horace_, Mme. d’Agoult in
_Nélida_.
[143] For the bitterness of Mme. d’Agoult’s resentment, see
_Souvenirs_, II. 201-4.
[144] pp. 145-7.
[145] _Correspondance_, V. 220.
[146] The great George, apparently like Juliette herself, was a
believer in palmistry. See _Souvenirs_, II. 97.
[147] _Souvenirs_, III. 161, 239.
[148] _Ibid._
[149] See George Sand’s letter to Flaubert, _Correspondance_, V. 220.
[150] It was at this restaurant that Sainte-Beuve gave that Good
Friday dinner which clerical circles regarded as a shocking blasphemy.
[151] _Souvenirs_, III. 165-8.
[152] See _ante_, 55.
[153] Dumas was thinking of George Sand’s famous marionette theatre at
Nohant. See _post_, 129.
[154] _Souvenirs_, III. 172.
[155] _Souvenirs_, III. 170.
[156] George Sand, _Correspondance_, V. 243.
[157] _Ibid._, 245.
[158] _Souvenirs_, III. 205.
[159] _Ibid._, 259, and George Sand’s _Correspondance_, V. 258-9.
[160] _Souvenirs_, III. 268.
[161] George Sand, _Correspondance_, V. 317.
[162] _Ibid._, 250.