George Sand, some aspects of her life and writings Part 11

It was due to his teaching that George Sand obtained her definite ideas about Catholicism, or rather against it. She was decidedly its adversary, because she held that the Church had stifled the spirit of liberty, that it had thrown a veil over the words of Christ, and that it was the obstacle in the way of holy equality. What she owed specially, though, to Lamennais was another lesson, of quite another character.

Lamennais was the man of the nineteenth century who waged the finest battle against individualism, against "the scandal of the adoration of man by man."(34)

(34) Compare Brunetiere, _Evolution de la poesie lyrique_, vol. i. p. 310.

Under his influence, George Sand began to attach less importance to the personal point of view, she ceased applying everything to herself, and she discovered the importance of the life of others. If we study this attentively, we shall see that a new phase now commenced in the history of her ideas. Lamennais was the origin of this transformation, although it is personified in another man, and that other man, was named Pierre Leroux.

What a strange mystery it is, among so many other mysteries, that of one mind taking possession of another mind. We have come into contact with great minds which have made no impression on us, whilst other minds, of secondary intelligence, perhaps, and it may be inferior to our own, have governed us.

By the side of a Lamennais, this Pierre Leroux was a very puny personage. He had been a compositor in a printing works, before founding the _Globe_. This paper, in his hands, was to become an organ of Saint-Simonism. He belonged neither to the _bourgeois_ nor to the working-cla.s.s. He was Clumsy, not well built, and had an enormous shock of hair, which was the joy of caricaturists. He was shy and awkward, in addition to all this. He nevertheless appeared in various _salons_, and was naturally more or less ridiculous. In January, 1840, Beranger writes: "You must know that our metaphysician has surrounded himself with women, at the head of whom are George Sand and Marliani, and that, in gilded drawing-rooms, under the light of chandeliers, he exposes his religious principles and his muddy boots." George Sand herself made fun of this occasionally. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, she writes:

"He is very amusing when he describes making his appearance in your drawing-room of the Rue Laffitte. He says: 'I was all muddy, and quite ashamed of myself. I was keeping out of sight as much as possible in a corner. _This lady_ came to me and talked in the kindest way possible.

She is very beautiful.'"(35)

(35) _Correspondance_: To Madame d'Agoult, October 16, 1837.

There are two features about him, then, which seem to strike every one, his unkemptness and his shyness. He expressed his ideas, which were already obscure, in a form which seemed to make them even more obscure.

It has been said wittily that when digging out his ideas, he buried himself in them.(36) Later on, when he spoke at public meetings, he was noted for the nonsense he talked in his interminable and unintelligible harangues.

(36) P. Thureau-Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet._

And yet, in spite of all this, the smoke from this mind attracted George Sand, and became her pillar of light moving on before her. His hazy philosophy seemed to her as clear as daylight, it appealed to her heart and to her mind, solved her doubts, and gave her tranquillity, strength, faith, hope and a patient and persevering love of humanity. It seems as though, with that marvellous faculty that she had for idealizing always, she manufactured a Pierre Leroux of her own, who was finer than the real one. He was needy, but poverty becomes the man who has ideas. He was awkward, but the contemplative man, on coming down from the region of thought on to our earth once more, only gropes along. He was not clear, but Voltaire tells us that when a man does not understand his own words, he is talking metaphysics. Chopin had personified the artist for her; Pierre Leroux, with his words as entangled as his hair, figured now to her as the philosopher. She saw in him the chief and the master. _Tu duca e tu maestro_.

In February, 1844, she wrote the following extraordinary lines: "I must tell you that George Sand is only a pale reflection of Pierre Leroux, a fanatical disciple of the same ideal, but a disciple mute and fascinated when listening to his words, and quite prepared to throw all her own works into the fire, in order to write, talk, think, pray and act under his inspiration. I am merely the popularizer, with a ready pen and an impressionable mind, and I try to translate, in my novels, the philosophy of the master."

The most extraordinary part about these lines is that they were absolutely true. The whole secret of the productions of George Sand for the next ten years is contained in these words. With Pierre Leroux and Louis Viardot she now founded a review, _La Revue independante_, in which she could publish, not only novels (beginning with _Horace_, which Buloz had refused), but articles by which philosophical-socialistic ideas could have a free course. Better still than this, the novelist could take the watchword from the sociologist, just as Mascarilla put Roman history into madrigals, she was able to put Pierre Leroux's philosophy into novels.

It would be interesting to know what she saw in Pierre Leroux, and which of his ideas she approved and preferred. One of the ideas dear to Pierre Leroux was that of immortality, but an immortality which had very little in common with Christianity. According to it, we should live again after death, but in humanity and in another world. The idea of metempsychosis was very much in vogue at this epoch. According to Jean Reynaud and Lamennais, souls travelled from star to star, but Pierre Leroux believed in metempsychosis on earth.

"We are not only the children and the posterity of those who have already lived, but we are, at bottom, the anterior generations themselves. We have gone through former existences which we do not remember, but it may be that at times we have fragmentary reminiscences of them."

George Sand must have been very deeply impressed by this idea. It inspired her with _Sept cordes de la lyre_, _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_ and the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, the whole cycle of her philosophical novels.

The _Sept cordes de la lyre_ is a dramatic poem after the manner of _Faust_. Maitre Albertus is the old doctor conversing with Mephistocles.

He has a ward, named Helene, and a lyre. A spirit lives in this lyre.

It is all in vain that the painter, the _maestro_, the poet, the critic endeavour to make the cords vibrate. The lyre remains dumb. Helene, even without putting her hands on it, can draw from it magnificent harmony; Helene is mad. All this may seem very incomprehensible to you, and I must confess that it is so to me. Albertus himself declares: "This has a poetical sense of a very high order perhaps, but it seems vague to me."

Personally, I am of the same opinion as Albertus. With a little effort, I might, like any one else, be able to give you an interpretation of this logogriph, which might appear to have something in it. I prefer telling you frankly that I do not understand it. The author, perhaps, did not understand it much better so that it may have been metaphysics.

I would call your attention, though, to that picture of Helene, with the magic lyre in her hand, risking her life, by climbing to the spire of the steeple and uttering her inspiring speech from there. Is not this something like Solness, the builder, from the top of his tower? Like Tolstoi, Ibsen had evidently read George Sand and had not forgotten her.

_Spiridion_ introduces us into a strange convent, in which we see the portraits come out of their frames and roam about the cloisters. The founder of the convent, Hebronius, lives again in the person of Father Alexis, who is no other than Leroux.

In _Consuelo_ we have the same imagination. We have already considered the first part of this novel, that which takes place at Venice, in the schools of music and in the theatres of song. Who would have thought that the charming diva, the pupil of Porpora, was to have such strange adventures? She arrives in Bohemia, at the Chateau of Rudolstadt. She has been warned that extraordinary things take place there. Comte Albert de Rudolstadt is subject to nervous fits and to great lethargy. He disappears from the chateau and then reappears, without any one seeing him go in or out. He believes that he has been Jean Ziska, and this is probably true. He has been present at events which took place three hundred years previously, and he describes them. Consuelo discovers Albert's retreat. It is a cavern hollowed out of a mountain in the vicinity, which communicates, by means of a well, with his rooms. The Chateau of Rudolstadt is built on the same architectural plan as Anne Radcliffe's chateau. After staying for some time in this bewildering place, Consuelo sets forth once more. She now meets Haydn, goes through the Bohmer Wald with him, arrives in Venice, is introduced to Maria Theresa, and is engaged at the Imperial Theatre. She is now recalled to the Chateau of Rudolstadt. Albert is on his deathbed, and he marries her _in extremis_, after telling her that he is going to leave her for a time, but that he shall return to her on earth by a new birth. He, too, had evidently read Pierre Leroux, and it was perhaps that which had caused his illness.

_Consuelo_ is a novel of adventures after the style of _Gil Blas_, the _Vie de Marianne_, and _Wilkelm Meister_. It is a historical novel, for which we have Joseph Haydn, Maria Theresa, Baron Trenk, and the whole history of the Hussites. It is a fantastical story with digressions on music and on popular songs, but running through it all, with the persistency of a fixed idea, are divagations on the subject of earthly metempsychosis. Such, then, is this incongruous story, odd and exaggerated, but with gleams of light and of great beauty, the reading of which is apt to leave one weary and disturbed.

We meet with Consuelo again in another book. In those days, it was not enough for a novel to consist of several volumes. People liked a sequel also. _Vingt ans apres_ was the sequel to _Trois Mousquetaires_, and the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_ was a sequel to that sequel. Our grandparents were capable of allowing themselves to be bored to a degree which makes us ashamed of our frivolity. The _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ was the sequel to _Consuelo_. As time went on, Pierre Leroux called George Sand's attention to the study of freemasonry. In 1843, she declared that she was plunged in it, and that it was a gulf of nonsense and uncertainties, in which "she was dabbling courageously."

"I am up to my ears in freemasonry," she writes. "I cannot get away from the kaddosh, the Rose Croix and the Sublime Scotchman. The result of all this will be a mysterious novel." The mysterious novel was the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_. Consuelo, who through her marriage with Albert is now Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin, and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire, La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great interest in Consuelo, and transport her to a strange dwelling, where she has a whole series of surprises. It is, in fact, a sort of Palace of Illusions. She is first in a dark room, and she then finds herself suddenly in a room of dazzling light. "At the far end of this room, the whole aspect of which is very forbidding, she distinguishes seven personages, wrapped in red cloaks and wearing masks of such livid whiteness that they looked like corpses. They were all seated behind a table of black marble. Just in front of the table, and on a lower seat, was an eighth spectre. He was dressed in black, and he, too, wore a white mask. By the wall, on each side of the room, were about twenty men in black cloaks and masks. There was the most profound silence. Consuelo turned round and saw that there were also black phantoms behind her.

At each door there were two of them standing up, each holding a huge, bright sword."(37)

(37) _Comtesse de Rudolstadt._

She wondered whether she had reached the infernal regions, but she discovered that she was in the midst of a secret society, styled the Invisibles. Consuelo is to go through all the various stages of the initiation. She first puts on the bridal dress, and after this the widow's weeds. She undergoes all the various trials, and has to witness the different spectacles provided for her edification, including coffins, funeral palls, spectres and simulated tortures. The description of all the various ceremonies takes up about half of the book. George Sand's object was to show up this movement of secret societies, which was such a feature of the eighteenth century, and which was directed both against monarchical power and against the Church. It contributed to prepare the way for the Revolution, and gave to this that international character and that mystic allure which would otherwise have been incomprehensible.

From _Spiridion_ to the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, then, we have this series of fantastical novels with ghosts, subterranean pa.s.sages, secret hiding-places, hallucinations and apparitions. The unfortunate part is that at present we scarcely know to what category of readers they would appeal. As regards grown-up people, we all prefer something with a vestige of truth in it now-a-days. As to our children, they would prefer _Monte-Cristo_ to _Consuelo_, and _Tom Thumb_ to _Spiridion_. At the time that they were written, in spite of the fact that Buloz protested against all this philosophy, these novels were quite in accordance with the public taste. A mania for anything fantastic had taken possession of the most serious people. Ballanche wrote his _La Palingenesie_, and Edgar Quinet _Ahasverus_. Things took place through the ages, and the reader travelled through the immensity of the centuries, just as though Wells had already invented his machine for exploring time. In a country like France, where clear-mindedness and matter-of-fact intelligence are appreciated, all this seems surprising. It was no doubt the result of infiltrations which had come from abroad. There was something wrong with us just then, "something rotten in the kingdom of France." We see this by that fever of socialistic doctrines which burst forth among us about the year 1840. We have the _Phalanstere_ by Fourier, _La Phalange_ by Considerant, the _Icarie_ by Cabet, and his famous _Voyage_, which appeared that very year. We were always to be devoured by the State, accompanied by whatever sauce we preferred. The State was always to find us shelter, to dress us, to govern us and to tyrannize over us. There was the State as employer, the State as general storekeeper, the State to feed us; all this was a dream of bliss. Buonarotti, formerly Babeuf's accomplice, preached Communism. Louis Blanc published his _Organisation du travail_, in which he calls to his aid a political revolution, foretaste of a social revolution. Proudhon published his _Memoire sur la propriete_, containing the celebrated phrase: "Property means theft."

He declared himself an anarchist, and as a matter of fact anarchy was already everywhere. A fresh evil had suddenly made its appearance, and, by a cruel irony, it was the logical consequence of that industrial development of which the century was so proud. The result of all that wealth had been to create a new form of misery, an envious, jealous form of misery, much more cruel than the former one, for it filled the heart with a ferment of hatred, a pa.s.sion for destruction.

It was Pierre Leroux, also, who led George Sand on to Socialism. She had been on the way to it by herself. For a long time she had been raising an altar in her heart to that ent.i.ty called the People, and she had been adorning it with all the virtues. The future belonged to the people, the whole of the future, and first of all that of literature.

Poetry was getting a little worn out, but to restore its freshness there were the poets of the people. Charles Poncy, of Toulon, a bricklayer, published a volume of poetry, in 1842, ent.i.tled _Marines_. George Sand adopted him. He was the demonstration of her theory, the example which ill.u.s.trated her dream. She congratulated him and encouraged him. "You are a great poet," she said to him, and she thereupon speaks of him to all her friends. "Have you read Baruch?" she asks them. "Have you read Poncy, a poet bricklayer of twenty years of age?" She tells every one about his book, dwells on its beauties, and asks people to speak of it.

As a friend of George Sand, I have examined the poems by Poncy of which she specially speaks. The first one is ent.i.tled _Meditation sur les toits_. The poet has been obliged to stay on the roof to complete his work, and while there he meditates.

_"Le travail me retient bien tard sur ces toitures_. . . ."

He then begins to wonder what he would see if, like Asmodee in the _Diable boiteux_, he could have the roof taken off, so that the various rooms could be exposed to view. Alas! he would not always find the concord of the Golden Age.

_Que de fois contemolant cet amas de maisons Quetreignent nos remparts couronnes de gazons, Et ces faubourgs naissants que la ville trop pleine Pour ses enfants nouveaux eleve dans la plaine.

Immobiles troufieaux ou notre clocher gris Semble un patre au milieu de ses blanches brebis, Jai pense que, malgre notre angoisse et nos peines, Sous ces toits paternels il existait des haines, Et que des murs plus forts que ces murs mitoyens Separent ici-bas les coeurs des citoyens._

This was an appeal to concord, and all brothers of humanity were invited to rally to the watchword.

The intention was no doubt very good. Then, too, _murs mitoyens_ was an extremely rich and unexpected rhyme for _citoyens_. This was worthy indeed of a man of that party.

Another of the poems greatly admired by George Sand was _Le Forcat_.

_Regarder le forcat sur la poutre equarrie Poser son sein hale que le remords carie_. . .

Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading Charles Poncy.

In another poem addressed to the rich, ent.i.tled _L'hiver_, the poet notices with grief that the winter

. . . _qui remplit les salons, les Watres, Remplit aussi la Morgue et les amphitheatres._

He is afraid that the people will, in the end, lose their patience, and so he gives to the happy mortals on this earth the following counsel:

_Riches, a vos plaisirs faites participer L'homme que les malheurs s'acharnent a frapper Oh, faites travailler le pere de famille, Pour qu'il puisse arbiter la pudeur de sa fille, Pourqu'aux pet.i.ts enfants maigris par les douleurs Il rapporte, le soir, le pain et non des pleurs, Afin que son epouse, au desespoir en proie, Se ranime a sa vue et l'embra.s.se avec joie, Afin qua l'Eternel, a l'heure de sa mort.

Vous n'offriez pas un coeur carie de remords_.

The expression certainly leaves much to be desired in these poems, but they are not lacking in eloquence. We had already had something of this kind, though, written by a poet who was not a bricklayer. He, too, had asked the rich the question following:

_Dans vos fetes d'hiver, riches, heureux du monde, Quand le bal tournoyant de ses feux vous inonde. . .

Songez-vous qu'il est la, sous le givre et la neige, Ce pere sans travail que la famine a.s.siege?_

He advises them to practise charity, the sister of prayer.

"_Donnez afin qu'un jour, a votre derniere heure, Contre tous vos peches vous ayez la Priere D'un mendiant puissant au ciel_."