George Sand, some aspects of her life and writings Part 15

At the epoch at which we have now arrived, George Sand had commenced that period of tranquillity and calm in which she was to spend the rest of her life. She had given up politics, for, as we have seen, she was quickly undeceived with regard to them, and cured of her illusions. When the _coup d'etat_ of December, 1851, took place, George Sand, who had been Ledru-Rollin's collaborator and a friend of Barbes, soon made up her mind what to do. As the daughter of Murat's _aide-de-camp_, she naturally had a certain sympathy with the Bonapartists. Napoleon III was a socialist, so that it was possible to come to an understanding. When the prince had been a prisoner at Ham, he had sent the novelist his study ent.i.tled _L'Extinction du pauperisme_. George Sand took advantage of her former intercourse with him to beg for his indulgrence in favour of some of her friends. This time she was in her proper _role_, the _role_ of a woman. The "tyrant" granted the favours she asked, and George Sand then came to the conclusion that he was a good sort of tyrant. She was accused of treason, but she nevertheless continued to speak of him with grat.i.tude. She remained on good terms with the Imperial family, particularly with Prince Jerome, as she appreciated his intellect. She used to talk with him on literary and philosophical questions. She sent him two tapestry ottomans one year, which she had worked for him. Her son Maurice went for a cruise to America on Prince Jerome's yacht, and he was the G.o.dfather of George Sand's little grandchildren who were baptized as Protestants.

George Sand deserves special mention for her science in the art of growing old. It is not a science easy to master, and personally this is one of my reasons for admiring her. She understood what a charm there is in that time of life when the voice of the pa.s.sions is no longer heard, so that we can listen to the voice of things and examine the lesson of life, that time when our reason makes us more indulgent, when the sadness of earthly separations is softened by the thought that we shall soon go ourselves to join those who have left us. We then begin to have a foretaste of the calmness of that Great Sleep which is to console us at the end of all our sufferings and grief. George Sand was fully aware of the change that had taken place within her. She said, several times over, that the age of impersonality had arrived for her. She was delighted at having escaped from herself and at being free from egoism.

From henceforth she could give herself up to the sentiments which, in pedantic and barbarous jargon, are called altruistic sentiments. By this we mean motherly and grandmotherly affection, devotion to her family, and enthusiasm for all that is beautiful and n.o.ble. She was delighted when she was told of a generous deed, and charmed by a book in which she discovered talent. It seemed to her as though she were in some way joint author of it.

"My heart goes out to all that I see dawning or growing . . ." she wrote, at this time. "When we see or read anything beautiful, does it not seem as though it belongs to us in a way, that it is neither yours nor mine, but that it belongs to all who drink from it and are strengthened by it?"(50)

(50) _Correspondance:_ To Octave Feuillet, February 27, 1859.

This is a n.o.ble sentiment, and less rare than is generally believed.

The public little thinks that it is one of the great joys of the writer, when he has reached a certain age, to admire the works of his fellow-writers. George Sand encouraged her young _confreres_, Dumas _fils_, Feuillet and Flaubert, at the beginning of their career, and helped them with her advice.

We have plenty of information about her at this epoch. Her intimate friends, inquisitive people and persons pa.s.sing through Paris, have described their visits to her over and over again. We have the impressions noted down by the Goncourt brothers in their _Journal_. We all know how much to trust to this diary. Whenever the Goncourts give us an idea, an opinion, or a doctrine, it is as well to be wary in accepting it. They were not very intelligent. I do not wish, in saying this, to detract from them, but merely to define them. On the other hand, what they saw, they saw thoroughly, and they noted the general look, the att.i.tude or gesture with great care.

We give their impressions of George Sand. In March, 1862, they went to call on her. She was then living in Paris, in the Rue Racine. They give an account of this visit in their diary.

"_March_ 30, 1862.

"On the fourth floor, No. 2, Rue Racine. A little gentleman, very much like every one else, opened the door to us. He smiled, and said: 'Messieurs de Goncourt!' and then, opening another door, showed us into a very large room, a kind of studio.

"There was a window at the far end, and the light was getting dim, for it was about five o'clock. We could see a grey shadow against the pale light. It was a woman, who did not attempt to rise, but who remained impa.s.sive to our bow and our words. This seated shadow, looking so drowsy, was Madame Sand, and the man who opened the door was the engraver Manceau. Madame Sand is like an automatic machine. She talks in a monotonous, mechanical voice which she neither raises nor lowers, and which is never animated. In her whole att.i.tude there is a sort of gravity and placidness, something of the half-asleep air of a person ruminating. She has very slow gestures, the gestures of a somnambulist.

With a mechanical movement she strikes a wax match, which gives a flicker, and lights the cigar she is holding between her lips.

"Madame Sand was extremely pleasant; she praised us a great deal, but with a childishness of ideas, a plat.i.tude of expression and a mournful good-naturedness that was as chilling as the bare wall of a room.

Manceau endeavoured to enliven the dialogue. We talked of her theatre at Nohant, where they act for her and for her maid until four in the morning. . . . We then talked of her prodigious faculty for work. She told us that there was nothing meritorious in that, as she had always worked so easily. She writes every night from one o'clock until four in the morning, and she writes again for about two hours during the day.

Manceau explains everything, rather like an exhibitor of phenomena. 'It is all the same to her,' he told us, 'if she is disturbed. Suppose you turn on a tap at your house, and some one comes in the room. You simply turn the tap off. It is like that with Madame Sand.'"

The Goncourt brothers were extremely clever in detracting from the merits of the people about whom they spoke. They tell us that George Sand had "a childishness in her ideas and a plat.i.tude of expression."

They were unkind without endeavouring to be so. They ran down people instinctively. They were eminently literary men. They were also artistic writers, and had even invented "artistic writing," but they had very little in common with George Sand's att.i.tude of mind. To her the theory of art for the sake of art had always seemed a very hollow theory. She wrote as well as she could, but she never dreamed of the profession of writing having anything in common with an acrobatic display.

In September, 1863, the Goncourt brothers again speak of George Sand, telling us about her life at Nohant, or rather putting the account they give into the mouth of Theophile Gautier. He had just returned from Nohant, and he was asked if it was amusing at George Sand's.

"Just as amusing as a monastery of the Moravian brotherhood," he replies. "I arrived there in the evening, and the house is a long way from the station. My trunk was put into a thicket, and on arriving I entered by the farm in the midst of all the dogs, which gave me a fright. . . ."

As a matter of fact, Gautier's arrival at Nohant had been quite a dramatic poem, half tragic and half comic. Absolute freedom was the rule of Nohant. Every one there read, wrote, or went to sleep according to his own will and pleasure. Gautier arrived in that frame of mind peculiar to the Parisian of former days. He considered that he had given a proof of heroism in venturing outside the walls of Paris. He therefore expected a hearty welcome. He was very much annoyed at his reception, and was about to start back again immediately, when George Sand was informed of his arrival. She was extremely vexed at what had happened, and exclaimed, "But had not any one told him how stupid I am!"

The Goncourt brothers asked Gautier what life at Nohant was like.

"Luncheon is at ten," he replied, "and when the finger was on the hour, we all took our seats. Madame Sand arrived, looking like a somnambulist, and remained half asleep all through the meal. After luncheon we went into the garden and played at _cochonnet_. This roused her, and she would then sit down and begin to talk."

It would have been more exact to say that she listened, as she was not a great talker herself. She had a horror of a certain kind of conversation, of that futile, paradoxical and spasmodic kind which is the speciality of "brilliant talkers." Sparkling conversation of this sort disconcerted her and made her feel ill at ease. She did not like the topic to be the literary profession either. This exasperated Gautier, who would not admit of there being anything else in the world but literature.

"At three o'clock," he continued, "Madame Sand went away to write until six. We then dined, but we had to dine quickly, so that Marie Caillot would have time to dine. Marie Caillot is the servant, a sort of little Fadette whom Madame Sand had discovered in the neighbourhood for playing her pieces. This Marie Caillot used to come into the drawing-room in the evening. After dinner Madame Sand would play patience, without uttering a word, until midnight. . . . At midnight she began to write again until four o'clock. . . . You know what happened once. Something monstrous.

She finished a novel at one o'clock in the morning, and began another during the night. . . . To make copy is a function with Madame Sand."

The marionette theatre was one of the Nohant amus.e.m.e.nts. One of the joys of the family, and also one of the delights of _dilettanti_,(51) was the painting of the scenery, the manufacturing of costumes, the working out of scenarios, dressing dolls and making them talk.

(51) "The individual named George Sand is very well. He is enjoying the wonderful winter which reigns in Berry; he gathers flowers, points out any interesting botanical anomalies, sews dresses and mantles for his daughter-in-law, and costumes for the marionettes, cuts out stage scenery, dresses dolls and reads music. . .."--_Correspondance:_ To Flaubert, January 17, 1869.

In one of her novels, published in 1857, George Sand introduces to us a certain Christian Waldo, who has a marionette show. He explains the attraction of this kind of theatre and the fascination of these _burattini_, which were living beings to him. Those among us who, some fifteen years ago, were infatuated by a similar show, are not surprised at Waldo's words. The marionettes to which we refer were to be seen in the Pa.s.sage Vivienne. Sacred plays in verse were given, and the managers were Monsieur Richepin and Monsieur Bouchor. For such plays we preferred actors made of wood to actors of flesh and blood, as there is always a certain desecration otherwise in acting such pieces.

George Sand rarely left Nohant now except for her little flat in Paris.

In the spring of 1855, she went to Rome for a short time, but did not enjoy this visit much. She sums up her impressions in the following words: "Rome is a regular see-saw." The ruins did not interest her much.

"After spending several days in visiting urns, tombs, crypts and columns, one feels the need of getting out of all this a little and of seeing Nature."

Nature, however, did not compensate her sufficiently for her disappointment in the ruins.

"The Roman Campagna, which has been so much vaunted, is certainly singularly immense, but it is so bare, flat and deserted, so monotonous and sad, miles and miles of meadow-land in every direction, that the little brain one has left, after seeing the city, is almost overpowered by it all."

This journey inspired her with one of the weakest of her novels, _La Daniella_. It is the diary of a painter named Jean Valreg, who married a laundry-girl. In 1861, after an illness, she went to Tamaris, in the south of France. This name is the t.i.tle of one of her novels. She does not care for this place either. She considers that there is too much wind, too much dust, and that there are too many olive-trees in the south of France.

I am convinced that at an earlier time in her life she would, have been won over by the fascination of Rome. She had comprehended the charm of Venice so admirably. At an earlier date, too, she would not have been indifferent to the beauties of Provence, as she had delighted in meridional Nature when in Majorca.

The years were over, though, for her to enjoy the variety of outside shows with all their phantasmagoria. A time comes in life, and it had already come for her, when we discover that Nature, which has seemed so varied, is the same everywhere, that we have quite near us all that we have been so far away to seek, a little of this earth, a little water and a little sky. We find, too, that we have neither the time nor the inclination to go away in search of all this when our hours are counted and we feel the end near. The essential thing then is to reserve for ourselves a little s.p.a.ce for our meditations, between the agitations of life and that moment which alone decides everything for us.

X

THE GENIUS OF THE WRITER

CORRESPONDENCE WITH FLAUBERT--LAST NOVELS

With that maternal instinct which was so strong within her, George Sand could not do without having a child to scold, direct and take to task.

The one to whom she was to devote the last ten years of her life, who needed her beneficent affection more than any of those she had adopted, was a kind of giant with hair turned back from his forehead and a thick moustache like a Norman of the heroic ages. He was just such a man as we can imagine the pirates in Duc Rollo's boats. This descendant of the Vikings had been born in times of peace, and his sole occupation was to endeavour to form harmonious phrases by avoiding a.s.sonances.

I do not think there have been two individuals more different from each other than George Sand and Gustave Flaubert. He was an artist, and she in many respects was _bourgeoise_. He saw all things at their worst; she saw them better than they were. Flaubert wrote to her in surprise as follows: "In spite of your large sphinx eyes, you have seen the world through gold colour."

She loved the lower cla.s.ses; he thought them detestable, and qualified universal suffrage as "a disgrace to the human mind." She preached concord, the union of cla.s.ses, whilst he gave his opinion as follows:

"I believe that the poor hate the rich, and that the rich are afraid of the poor. It will be like this eternally."

It was always thus. On every subject the opinion of the one was sure to be the direct opposite of the opinion of the other. This was just what had attracted them.

"I should not be interested in myself," George Sand said, "if I had the honour of meeting myself." She was interested in Flaubert, as she had divined that he was her ant.i.thesis.

"The man who is Just pa.s.sing," says Fantasio, "is charming. There are all sorts of ideas in his mind which would be quite new to me."

George Sand wanted to know something of these ideas which were new to her. She admired Flaubert on account of all sorts of qualities which she did not possess herself. She liked him, too, as she felt that he was unhappy.

She went to see him during the summer of 1866. They visited the historic streets and old parts of Rouen together. She was both charmed and surprised. She could not believe her eyes, as she had never imagined that all that existed, and so near Paris, too. She stayed in that house at Croisset in which Flaubert's whole life was spent. It was a house with wide windows and a view over the Seine. The hoa.r.s.e, monotonous sound of the chain towing the heavy boats along could be heard distinctly within the rooms. Flaubert lived there with his mother and niece. To George Sand everything there seemed to breathe of tranquillity and comfort, but at the same time she brought away with her an impression of sadness. She attributed this to the vicinity of the Seine, coming and going as it does according to the bar.

"The willows of the islets are always being covered and uncovered," she writes; "it all looks very cold and sad."(52)

(52) _Correspondance:_ To Maurice Sand, August 10, 1866.