George Sand

THE most important as well as perhaps the tritest thing to say about the distinguished writer whose death has just recalled every one’s attention to her is that she was undoubtedly a woman of great genius. This will be conceded to her not only by those who find esoteric truth in the various solutions she offered to those problems which seemed to her of universal interest because they were fashionable during part of her lifetime among a certain set of her friends, but also by her sternest judges, who feel a chilly distrust of her warm eloquence. All will agree in giving her high praise for her mastery in the art of novel writing. She had an almost inexhaustible invention of stories, and while at times there was a certain monotony about the dramatis personœ, yet any defect there might have been in this respect was well concealed by the unfailing charm of her style. This is always pellucid, flowing evenly, no matter what is the subject taken up, making impressive her descriptions of nature, — so often the reader’s bugbear, — and making even her

most artificial people seem almost lifelike. Its graceful simplicity, free from the appearance of effort, rising at times to eloquence and to declamation of a certain rhetorical worth, seems an accidental quality, — like a fine voice or a graceful figure, — attracts the reader, and tends to make him overlook deep-lying faults. There is something delusive in the ease with which she wrote; hardly any subject she chose for discussion seems beyond her powers, and she always had so much to say and said it so well, that it is easy to see how the reader who took up her novels, asking only for amusement, yielded to the charm of her eloquence and found himself an enthusiastic supporter of her crusades against the marriage-laws, the possession of property on the part of the rich, or whatever institution of society she saw good to attack. Moreover, it is not easy to form an opinion of so fertile a writer as George Sand, which shall give her credit for all that is admirable in her work, while at the same time fitting reservation is made for her faults; but the occasion of her death naturally calls for fresh attempts to revise and compare the successive impressions made by her different books, aud to come to what may be more nearly a final decision.

Lucile Aurore Dupin was the greatgranddaughter of Maréchal de Saxe. Her father — Maurice Dupin — was an army - officer of the first empire. In George Sand’s Histoire de ma Vie are given many of his letters to his mother, which, as well as those to his wife, show without much reserve what a careless, attractive, pleasure-loving, affectionate scapegrace he was. George Sand’s mother was a woman whose early youth had been “ livrée par la force des choses à des hasards effrayants.” When young Dupin met her she was the mistress of a rich general, whom she left for her penniless young lover, who afterwards, in the face of much opposition on the part of his mother, married her one month before the birth of their famous daughter, which event took place July 5, 1804. In 1808 George Sand’s father was killed by an accident, and she was left to the care of her mother and grandmother. Of all this part of her life the early volumes of her memoirs give full description, and from them we get clear light upon the conflicting methods of education pursued by her two guardians. Her mother, although warmly devoted to her child, was far from being a woman of judgment, and the grandmother seems to have carried, beneath a very polished exterior, a freedom from some prejudices which are of service in bringing up children to be honorable citizens. The grandmother had been Maurice’s confidante in all his dissipations, and her own morality was not of the most rigid sort; but she was very particular about her granddaughter’s manners. After running wild in the country, George Sand was sent to Paris to the convent of the English Augustines, where she had at one time an accession of religious fervor, which was soon succeeded by a short-lived dramatic enthusiasm. Soon after she left this school her grandmother died, and George Sand was left to the sole charge of her mother, whose peculiarities became only too clear to her now more experienced eyes, and, finding this new life almost unendurable, she readily consented to marry M. Casimir Dudevant. The wedding took place in 1822. She bore her husband two children: Maurice, a writer of some fame, which he has inherited rather than earned, and Solange, who married Clesinger, the sculptor.

George Sand’s married life was not happy, and it was not many years before she made a bold stroke for freedom in obtaining permission to spend half the year in Paris with her children, away from her husband. Before long the separation was made complete by law, a decision which prevented this eminent writer from becoming a fellow-countrywoman of our own; for she had decided, if the award of the court had been different, to fly to America. In Paris she cast about for some time to find an honest livelihood. She painted miniatures and microscopic figures on cigar - cases with some success, but finally, in conjunction with one of her young friends, Jules Sandeau, she wrote a novel, Rose et Blanche, and soon commenced another for herself under the pseudonym by which she is generally known. Her first novels, Indiana, and Valentine, were loud outcries against marriage. Some of her admirers, with what is perhaps an excess of casuistry, claim for these stories that they are of great moral worth, that they attack only the faults of the peculiar marriage system of the French, and that to those who examine them from a sufficiently high ground they will appear full of lofty and delightful instruction. The objection to them is, however, a serious one, and it applies with great force to many of her novels; it is not the constant tendency of the author to sing the praises of forbidden fruit, and to gloat over indecency with unwearying pruriency, but rather the constant sophistical arguments going to show that whatever people want is right. The lesson of life, of experience and observation, that right is not a matter of desires, of whims and fancies and idle yearnings, but of duty defined by judgment and the conscience, is neglected. The lesson of George Sand’s novels is the exact opposite of this axiom, which is generally upheld in theory, however violated in practice. Before condemning her by general statements like this, it is, however, only fair to weigh the value of her asseverations in favor of the excellence of her work. Let us take the first novel, Indiana. The heroine, whose Christian name gives the book its title, is a creole who has married the aged, hot-tempered, rheumatic old soldier, Colonel Delmare, whose main pleasures in life are brutality to his inferiors and censoriousness towards his wife. The friend of the family is Sir Ralph Brown, a young Englishman who had suffered from the spleen at the early age of fifteen, who otherwise, however, enjoys good health. We are told that he has a sort of impediment in his speech, not a physical one, but a moral one, whereas in fact his tongue runs as smoothly as that of the most eloquent of the dramatis personæ. Raymon de Ramière falls in love with Indiana, and Indiana with him. Sir Ralph, her cousin, takes the part of a faithful watch-dog, guards their rendezvous, and stands between Indiana and her jealous husband. When she flies from Colonel Delmare, who is left to die on the island of Bourbon, to join Raymon, who unknown to her has meanwhile married in Paris, Sir Ralph meets her and proposes that they return to that remote island and commit suicide together by leaping into a favorite waterfall. After some high-toned conversation, in which he confesses his love to her, they leap, but by some unexplained circumstances— Sir Ralph thinks a blueeyed angel interfered — they survive and live happily together. There is not space to give the full particulars of the intrigue between Raymon and Indiana: this is no place to point out the scenes that mar even this picture of society, and it is impossible through so incomplete a sketch to give any adequate notion of the grotesque unreality of much of the book. The last scene in particular, the one at the waterfall, would seem incredible in its assumption of tragedy, if we did not remember that Victor Hugo is still considered a genius akin to Michael Angelo by a critic so much admired as Mr. Pater. Errors of this sort disappeared as George Sand grew older, and she acquired the power of painting life instead of unlikely melodramatic scenes; but they are of too slight importance to need much mention in comparison with the jugglery which makes the reader feel as if he were reading, not a decent but possible a moral book, because he condemns the man who is trying to lead Indiana astray, while approving the man who tried to keep her faithful to lier husband, not with wholly unselfish motives, however. The roué, Raymon, is drawn with enthusiasm, and is well represented in his usual cold selfishness, while the man of honor, Sir Ralph, who is so fond of sacrificing himself, tries to cut his throat with a hunting knife, out of despair, when he hears that Indiana has been injured by a hunting accident, and he — something of a physician —is called to aid her. That certainly is not sang froid hritannique. His

awkwardness of speech is represented by his remaining silent most of the time, but whenever he opens his month he outdoes his hereditary enemies on their own ground. As for Indiana herself, she is a weak, uneducated creature, who treats her husband with petty cruelty, learns nothing from Sir Ralph’s generosity, and meets her lover much more than halfway. It is flattery to call that ready victim a suffering wife, and injustice to try to attract sympathy for a woman impatient to fling herself away. But she is intended to represent a loving, persecuted creature, driven by irresistible force to misconduct. In fact, however, she withstands her lover only when she is justly jealous of her chambermaid, though fortunately for external morality he ceases to care for her before she has wholly compromised herself, and finally, when her husband is dead, she takes up with Sir Ralph.

In Valentine we have a young peasant who has received a desultory education in Paris, and falls in love with a young woman of noble birth, who returns bis love. She marries, however, a gentleman who cares only for her money and leaves her free to carry on her love-affair with the twenty - year-old peasant boy, who could give lessons to the whole band of contemporary English authors in the art of making romantic speeches. As is too frequently the case, the coarseness of much of the book, the gloating over wickedness, is the first thing that strikes the reader; but, bad as this is, much worse is the snarl of ingratitude and brutality into which the lover ties himself, although he is represented as a noble creature because in his passion he would like to destroy society. The fact that he wants something he cannot have ennobles him in the eyes of George Sand, and, assuming that society should be constituted for the purpose of yielding to exceptional individuals, she shows how far from that it is in its present condition. If these novels contained nothing but vicious sentimentality and false reasoning, they might well be left to the natural disdain the reader would feel for them; but, in fact, what is poisonous is hidden beneath good drawing of character and impassioned eloquence, so that the reader is led to sympathize with all sorts of uncommendable things of which he cannot really approve, forwith George Sand all judgments seem to he nothing but prejudices, and desires seem to take the place of the moral laws.

It would be impossible to take up in the present article every one of George Sand’s many novels in detail, but it is advisable to mention one other book, in which she gives full expression to some wild notions about the world. The one in question is Lélia. As Julian Schmidt says, this is not really a novel, but rather a series of rhapsodies put into the mouths of half a dozen different people. These rhapsodies discuss with considerable fervor the relations of men to women, and are full of declamation against the necessity of doing what one does not want to do. At times George Sand seems to have drunk at the same spring with Walt Whitman when he is wildest in his rapturous cries; for time, space, and elementary truths all roll in confusion throughout these pages. One does not wonder at Chateaubriand’s statement that George Sand’s talent has its root in corruption, for it was her constant effort to prove that this corruption was the best thing about herself and her novels. She was doubtless aware of her many talents; she knew herself to he an affectionate mother, a warm friend, a kind acquaintance, and, imagining herself to be a consistent person, she endeavored to prove to a deaf world that her morbid curiosity and noisy discontent were equally reputable manifestations of her genius, whereas they simply expressed her shame. That she should have had influence is not surprising; there are always enough people in the world who mistake fluency of speech for eloquence, and boldness of design for wise reform, and there is never any lack of weak people who are delighted to find the secret longings of their hearts printed in black and white before them, and called a. new religion or a new philosophy. Lélia, in the novel of that name, just before her sudden death from cold, in her conversation with the solemn jail-bird, Trenmor, said that for ten thousand years she had cried to the infinite: Truth, truth! and that for ten thousand years the infinite had answered: Desire, desire! And it is not truth, but desire, which marks all the pages of George Sand’s earlier novels, and stains so much of her better work.

It was her own weakness that created her sympathy for weak people; and it is an open secret that she was continually bringing herself and her belongings into her books. Stenio in Lélia was intended to represent Alfred de Musset, whose liaison with her was of great importance in the lives of both. In Lucrezia Floriani, again, she portrays Chopin in Prince Karol de Roswald, who certainly in his essential purity stands in marked contrast with the sensual, easy-going heroine of depraved life, who tries to dignify her position by letting herself be wearied to death by a jealous lover. The lack of reserve in these novels is something amazing, and what seems to have puzzled George Sand more than anything is that any one should regard them as disgraceful. Since, however, the world at large is readier to see the faults of any man or woman than is the man or woman in question, this trouble has been less marked amoug this author’s readers.

These attempts at justification, on George Sand’s part, of the errors of her principles and the vagaries of her life were succeeded by great enthusiasm for remodeling society by means of socialism. Socialism was in the air about thirty years ago, and stronger heads than hers were turned giddy by the hope of making over the human race by starting once more from agricultural pursuits. She was much under the influence of certain prominent socialists, who probably smiled with joy when they saw their theories forming the plots of novels and their wisest remarks put into the mouths of peasants of genius. In Le Péché de M. Antoine we have a rustic carpenter of the most enlightened sort, who would have made an admirable preacher in a community; and in Le Meunier d’Angibault we have again the sou of a workman, who refuses to marry a rich woman on account of her wealth, but who finally relents, " not,”as he tells his bride, " to be happy in the égoïsme à deux which is called love, but to suffer together, to pray together, to seek together what we two poor birds lost in the storm can do, day by day, to avert this curse which disperses our race, and to gather under our wing some fugitive crushed like ourselves by terror and distress.” In Le Péché de M. Antoine the socialistic problem is relegated into the same unreached future as the married life of the heroes and heroines of most novels, for the young man and young woman of the tale are left enormous wealth by a marquis with socialistic ideas, for founding a community in the future, and with their marriage the story ends. Certainly this seems like very unfair treatment of socialism, but on the other hand nothing could be finer than the lad’s previous attempt to convert his father, a wealthy manufacturer, to establish a phalanstery. But these criticisms do not do full justice to these stories, even if they indicate certain faults that are very prominent in them. In Lucrezia Floriani, distasteful as the book is, the character of the prince is analyzed with great skill and without sacrificing those inconsistencies which are to be found in life rather than in books. In Le Péché de M. Antoine, moreover, besides the rather florid tendency towards socialism, and the declamation it inspires, there are many proofs of keen observation and careful reflection, which explain a good part of the admiration we feel for George Sand. What she saw she could put down clearly, and her eyes were very sharp. Take the following example; it is a description of Madame Cardonnet, the wife of the manufacturer mentioned above; she is decidedly one of the minor characters: " She presented the strange anachronism of a woman of our time, capable of reasoning and feeling, who by her own unconscious effort had retrograded to the position of one of those women of antiquity who gloried in proclaiming the inferiority of their sex. What was strange and sad in this was that she did not do it knowingly, and that she did so, as she told herself, for the sake of peace. But peace she did not have. The more she immolated herself, the more her master tired of her. Nothing so rapidly destroys and effaces the intelligence as blind submission. Madame Cardonnet was an example of this. Her brain had withered in slavery, and her husband, not understanding that this was the result of his own despotism, had come to despise her in his heart. Some years earlier Cardonnet had been terribly jealous of her, and his wife, though now far from young, still trembled at the idea of his suspecting her of a light thought. She had formed the habit of neither hearing nor seeing, so that she could say with truth when any man was mentioned, ' I did not look at him; I don’t know what he said; I paid no attention to him.' ” Sometimes her husband " would notice that she had been crying, and would become tender in his way and say, ' What is the matter ? Are you bored ? Should you like a cashmere shawl? . . . No! Then it’s those frozen camelias! I’ll send to Paris for some hardier ones.’ And in fact he never neglected to satisfy, at any expense, his wife’s innocent tastes. . . . ‘ There is no doubt,’ Madame Cardonnet used to say, ' that my husband loves me and that he is always thinking of me. Of what do I complain, and why am I always sad? ’”

George Sand is much surer of her ground in pointing out the harm that is so often a consequence of family life, than she is in recommending substitutes for and advocating various modifications of the marriage relations. She saw about her bullying husbands and cringing wives, consequently marriage was an unholy thing; she saw poor people about her in suffering, therefore no one should be obliged to work; but when she is building up her theories she leaves far behind her the petty foundation of fact, and the further she gets from that the less marked is her talent, the more stilted her whole manner of writing, the dimmer the impression she makes. After all, music is not the only art in which it is dangerous to try to express too much; the novelist runs the risk of failure when he tries to write a story to teach some special truth or theory. The tract is the simplest example of what is produced by too much interest in some specific end, and the more this end is insisted on the greater becomes the likeness, in a literary point of view, to the tract. Now this is George Sand’s most frequent fault, that she writes tracts instead of stories, although in almost every one there is some valuable and delightful material. It is hard to believe that the woman who wrote Lélia could have drawn such a character as Jeanne in the novel of that name, or as Gilberte in Le Péché de M. Antoine. But her success in this direction only shows how great was her error in attempting subjects outside of her own observation, and certainly this limitation would exclude first of all her attempts at portraying herself, as well as her reforms of society. It was not her own depravity alone that poisoned her novels; it was also her habit — which Heine says was pointed out to him by Alfred de Musset—of filling her mind at others’ fountains and rendering their views charming by her own eloquence. Her rhetorical skill led her to the habit of announcing and sustaining all sorts of views, which it would be as vain to try to disprove as to show the fallacies in the philosophy of a drinking-song, — her illusions all the while appearing to her as revelations of the higher law. She was not alone in this; she did not appear in French literature unheralded or unaccompanied, for since 1830 the general course of the best French writers had been towards the popular discussion of all sorts of matters which are not to be decided by the literary sense alone. What the writer of fiction rightly tries to do is to win admiration for his work, and what has been confounded with this just aim is the endeavor to identify admiration of the work with admiration of the subject treated. Everything has been regarded from the literary point of view alone, and the consequence has been a great confusion in the minds of the public, which has led to indiscreet indifference to the ethical value of the literature, an error as great as if those who like the music of Mozart’s great opera should think that Don Juan was a hero to he imitated in every part of his private life. If it is not in the province of literature to teach morality, it also does not belong to it to teach immorality; but it is only the first division of this sentence which is denied by critics who plume themselves on their liberality. George Sand held herself above the first law, but was indifferent to the second in much of her work, and it is pleasant to turn from contemplating such perversion of her powers to observing their fairer because more artistic employment in writing stories without a definite object.

It was her disappointment at the turn affairs took after 1848, and her aversion to the ensuing political condition, that confirmed her in portraying the simple beauties of rustic life in those charming stories by which she is most favorably known. There is a fine poetry in these which shows how far George Sand wandered in her early work from the field where she would have done best. Jeanne is the first of these innocent novels, and it would be hard to find in contemporary fiction a figure of greater poetic worth. She is not an artificial creature, like the furbelowed shepherdesses of romance, but a very living creature, whose superstitions, candor, and high - mindedness combine to make her adorable. In La petite Fadette, François le Champi, and La Mare an Diable, there is the same art and the same attractive result. To be sure it may be, and indeed it has been, objected that in some of them, as in La petite Fadette, there is a slight exaggeration in the way in which the sensibility of the young peasants is represented; but this barely, if at all, exceeds the limit which the uncritical reader would willingly set. As there are probably in the whole of France very few country girls like Jeanne, so it is with most of the other characters of this series of novels; but granting that this is so, the greater is the amount of praise due George Sand for adding so much that is fine to the qualities which bear the mark of truth, and for writing stories in which all the technical skill and the knowledge of the scenes and life described are put to such innocent use. George Sand did not devise out of her own head this return to simple country life, for Balzac had already set the fashion; but her intimacy with it, and her recollections of the scenes where her own childhood was passed, gave her writings that poetical truth and beauty which none of her contemporaries have equaled, and which is far more fascinating than the monotonous, half-social, half-intellcctual uneasiness of so many of her other stories, written under the direct influence of Balzac, or inspired by great awe of the grandeur of Parisian life.

It, is worth while to pause and consider the merits of this part of her literary work, if only on account of its influence in France. But, in addition, it is to be noted that from that time, although deserting the somewhat narrow field of country life pure and simple, George Sand enriched her stories by continually showing her love of nature, and by writing novels complete in design and construction, free from all attempts at theorizing and preaching, the place which these had occupied being now given to fascinating description of scenery or the unaffected portrayal of lifelike people.

Her later novels are somewhat more complex than the simple rustic stories mentioned above, and in their variety give a fairer notion of the nature of her genius. Mauprat, Le Marquis de Villemer, Monsieur Sylvestre, La Ville Noire, are perhaps the best known, and they are deservedly well known. In these novels she chooses some story which is not improbable, and tells it with the greatest facility, regarding much more the artistic smoothness of the tale than the secondary impression it is to make on the mind of the reader. Her skill and fertility are equally wonderful, although there are pages where the men and women talk too much like angels, or like George Sand. These novels are for the most part placid, and in their even flow resemble stories told to contented listeners, rather than books written with intent to prove this or that, or with any serious design. This is not surprising, for this singular woman had fought the battle of life in strange company, she had drunk in inspiration at many springs, and it was only when no longer young that she perceived what should be the novelist’s real aim, — the reader’s entertainment, with instruction of only the vaguest sort. Her later work shows more clearly her skill, her poetical power, her sympathy with her fellowcreatures, while her early novels are marred by the exposition she makes of the unsoundness of her principles, which led her into the grossest errors. Few writers have been able to tell stories better, and few have told worse stories than many of hers. Questioning everything, she decided always by what seemed pleasant to herself, so that all her fine words, redolent as they are with half the spirit that makes eloquence, are more conclusive as proving her unsound nature than as guides for her fellow-creatures. Her intelligence was keen in matters where she was not interested by her own feelings or by personal sympathy with others, but it was often blinded by prejudice. When she was writing her best she showed great skill in portraying passion. This was also her favorite subject when she was writing her worst; and that worst was very bad. It is claimed for her that she wrote in defense of an ideal, but this ideal was too often the exaltation of weakness and the glorification of discontented selfishness. The admiration her genius commands only deepens our disapproval of her too frequent misuseof this great gift. It would be unfair were we led by her prominence to hold her responsible for all the errors of her writings, many of which she only held in common with a number of her contemporaries; but for our own sakes we have certainly the right to regret them. It is hard to conjecture what she may have left behind her, for her pen was never idle, but it would be interesting to have had her final, candid opinion of her experience, her judgment of the whole matter. Her restless curiosity and hunger after forbidden fruit had led her to try almost everything that life can afford to those who dispense with principles and prejudices; she left little untasted in her long life, except, perhaps, the sweetness of self-denial. One cannot help wondering what was her final verdict concerning the worth of it all.

Thomas Sergeant Perry.