George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings

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Among the _habitues_ of Madame d'Agoult's _salon_ was Chopin. This is
a new chapter in George Sand's life, and a little later on we shall be
able to consider, as a whole, the importance of this intercourse with
great artists as regards her intellectual development.

Before finishing our study of this epoch in her life, we must notice how
much George Sand's talent had developed and blossomed out. _Mauprat_ was
published in 1837, and is undoubtedly the first of her _chefs-d'oeuvre_.
In her uninterrupted literary production, which continued regularly in
spite of and through all the storms of her private life, there is much
that is strange and second-rate and much that is excellent. _Jacques_
is an extraordinary piece of work. It was written at Venice when she was
with Pagello. George Sand declared that she had neither put herself nor
Musset into this book. She was nevertheless inspired by their case,
and she merely transposed their ideal of renunciation. _Andre_ may be
classed among the second-rate work. It is the story of a young noble who
seduces a girl of the working-class. It is a souvenir of Berry, written
in a home-sick mood when George Sand was at Venice. _Simon_ also belongs
to the second-rate category. The portrait of Michel of Bourges can
easily be traced in it. George Sand had intended doing more for Michel
than this. She composed a revolutionary novel in three volumes, in his
honour, entitled: _Engelwald with the high forehead_. Buloz neither
cared for _Engelwald_ nor for his high forehead, and this novel was
never published.

According to George Sand, when she wrote _Mauprat_ her idea was
the rehabilitation of marriage. "I had just been petitioning for a
separation," she says. "I had, until then, been fighting against the
abuses of marriage, and, as I had never developed my ideas sufficiently,
I had given every one the notion that I despised the essential
principles of it. On the contrary, marriage really appeared to me in all
the moral beauty of those principles, and in my book I make my hero, at
the age of eighty, proclaim his faithfulness to the only woman he has
ever loved."

"She is the only woman I have ever loved," says Bernard de Mauprat. "No
other woman has ever attracted my attention or been embraced by me. I am
like that. When I love, I love for ever, in the past, in the present and
in the future."

_Mauprat_, then, according to George Sand, was a novel with a purpose,
just as _Indiana_ was, although they each had an opposite purpose.
Fortunately it is nothing of the kind. This is one of those explanations
arranged afterwards, peculiar sometimes to authors. The reality about
all this is quite different.

In this book George Sand had just given the reins to her imagination,
without allowing sociological preoccupations to spoil everything. During
her excursions in Berry, she had stopped to gaze at the ruins of an old
feudal castle. We all know the power of suggestion contained in those
old stones, and how wonderfully they tell stories of the past they
have witnessed to those persons who know how to question them. The
remembrance of the _chateau_ of Roche Mauprat came to the mind of the
novelist. She saw it just as it stood before the Revolution, a fortress,
and at the same time a refuge for the wild lord and his eight sons,
who used to sally forth and ravage the country. In French narrative
literature there is nothing to surpass the first hundred pages in which
George Sand introduces us to the burgraves of central France. She is
just as happy when she takes us to Paris with Bernard de Mauprat, to
Paris of the last days of the old _regime_. She introduces us to the
society which she had learnt to know through the traditions of her
grandmother. It is not only Nature, but history, which she uses as a
setting for her story. How cleverly, too, she treats the analysis which
is the true subject of the book, that of education through love. We see
the untamed nature of Bernard de Mauprat gradually giving way under the
influence of the noble and delicious Edmee.

There are typical peasants, too, in _Mauprat_. We have Marcasse, the
mole-catcher, and Patience, the good-natured Patience, the rustic
philosopher, well up in Epictetus and in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who has
gone into the woods to live his life according to the laws of Nature and
to find the wisdom of the primitive days of the world. We are told that,
during the Revolution, Patience was a sort of intermediary between the
_chateau_ and the cottage, and that he helped in bringing about the
reign of equity in his district. It is to be hoped this was so.

In any case, it is very certain that we come across this Patience again
in Russian novels with a name ending in _ow_ or _ew_. This is a proof
that if the personage seems somewhat impossible, he was at any rate
original, new and entertaining.

We hear people say that George Sand is no longer read. It is to be hoped
that _Mauprat_ is still read, otherwise our modern readers miss one of
the finest stories in the history of novels. This, then, is the point
at which we have arrived in the evolution of George Sand's genius. There
may still be modifications in her style, and her talent may still be
refreshed under various influences, but with _Mauprat_ she took her
place in the first rank of great storytellers.




VI

A CASE OF MATERNAL AFFECTION IN LOVE

CHOPIN


We have passed over George Sand's intercourse with Liszt and Madame
d'Agoult very rapidly. One of Balzac's novels gives us an opportunity of
saying a few more words about it.

Balzac had been introduced to George Sand by Jules Sandeau. At the time
of her rupture with his friend, Balzac had sided entirely with him. In
the _Lettres a l'Etrangere_, we see the author of the _Comedie humaine_
pouring out his indignation with the blue stocking, who was so cruel in
her love, in terms which were not extremely elegant. Gradually, and when
he knew more about the adventure, his anger cooled down. In March, 1838,
he gave Madame Zulma Carraud an account of a visit to Nohant. He found
his comrade, George Sand, in her dressing-gown, smoking a cigar by her
fireside after dinner.

"She had some pretty yellow slippers on, ornamented with fringe,
some fancy stockings and red trousers. So much for the moral side.
Physically, she had doubled her chin like a canoness. She had not a
single white hair, in spite of all her fearful misfortunes; her dusky
complexion had not changed. Her beautiful eyes were just as bright, and
she looked just as stupid as ever when she was thinking. . . ."

This is George Sand in her thirty-fifth year, as she was at the time of
the fresh adventure we are about to relate.

Balzac continues by giving us a few details about the life of the
authoress. It was very much like his own, except that Balzac went to bed
at six o'clock and got up at midnight, and George Sand went to bed at
six in the morning and got up at noon. He adds the following remark,
which shows us the state of her feelings:

"She is now in a very quiet retreat, and condemns both marriage and
love, because she has had nothing but disappointment in both herself.
Her man was a rare one, that was really all."


In the course of their friendly conversation, George Sand gave him the
subject for a novel which it would be rather awkward for her to
write. The novel was to be _Galeriens_ or _Amours forces_. These
"galley-slaves" of love were Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult, who had
been with George Sand at Chamonix, Paris and Nohant. It was very evident
that she could not write the novel herself.

Balzac accordingly wrote it, and it figures in the _Comedie humaine as
Beatrix_. Beatrix is the Comtesse d'Agoult, the inspirer, and Liszt is
the composer Conti.

"You have no idea yet of the awful rights that a love which no longer
exists gives to a man over a woman. The convict is always under the
domination of the companion chained to him. I am lost, and must return
to the convict prison," writes Balzac in this book. Then, too, there is
no mistaking his portrait of Beatrix. The fair hair that seems to give
light, the forehead which looks transparent, the sweet, charming face,
the long, wonderfully shaped neck, and, above and beyond all, that air
of a princess, in all this we can easily recognize "the fair, blue-eyed
Peri." Not content with bringing this illustrious couple into his novel,
Balzac introduces other contemporaries. Claude Vignon (who, although
his special work was criticism, made a certain place for himself in
literature) and George Sand herself appear in this book. She is Felicite
des Touches, and her pen name is Camille Maupin. "Camille is an artist,"
we are told; "she has genius, and she leads an exceptional life such as
could not be judged in the same way as an ordinary existence." Some one
asks how she writes her books, and the answer is: "Just in the same way
as you do your woman's work, your netting or your tapestry." She is said
to have the intelligence of an angel and even more heart than talent.
With her fixed, set gaze, her dark complexion and her masculine ways,
she is the exact antithesis of the fair Beatrix. She is constantly being
compared to the latter, and is evidently preferred to her. It is very
evident from whom Balzac gets his information, and it is also evident
that the friendship between the two women has cooled down.

The cause of the coolness between them was George Sand's infatuation
for Chopin, whom she had known through Liszt and Madame d'Agoult. George
Sand wrote to Liszt from Nohant, in March, 1837: "Tell Chopin that I
hope he will come with you. Marie cannot live without him, and I adore
him." In April she wrote to Madame d'Agoult: "Tell Chopin that I idolize
him." We do not know whether Madame d'Agoult gave the message, but
she certainly replied: "Chopin coughs with infinite grace. He is an
irresolute man. The only thing about him that is permanent is his
cough." This is certainly very feminine in its ferociousness.

At the time when he came into George Sand's life, Chopin, the composer
and virtuoso, was the favourite of Parisian _salons_, the pianist in
vogue. He was born in 1810, so that he was then twenty-seven years
of age. His success was due, in the first place, to his merits as
an artist, and nowhere is an artist's success so great as in Paris.
Chopin's delicate style was admirably suited to the dimensions and to
the atmosphere of a _salon_.(25)

(25) As regards Chopin, I have consulted a biography by
Liszt, a study by M. Camille Bellaigue and the volume by M.
Elie Poiree in the _Collection des musiciens celebres_,
published by H. Laurens.

He confessed to Liszt that a crowd intimidated him, that he felt
suffocated by all the quick breathing and paralyzed by the inquisitive
eyes turned on him. "You were intended for all this," he adds, "as, if
you do not win over your public, you can at least overwhelm it."

Chopin was made much of then in society. He was fragile and delicate,
and had always been watched over and cared for. He had grown up in a
peaceful, united family, in one of those simple homes in which all
the details of everyday life become less prosaic, thanks to an innate
distinction of sentiment and to religious habits. Prince Radziwill had
watched over Chopin's education. He had been received when quite young
in the most aristocratic circles, and "the most celebrated beauties had
smiled on him as a youth." Social life, then, and feminine influence had
thus helped to make him ultra refined. It was very evident to every one
who met him that he was a well-bred man, and this is quickly observed,
even with pianists. On arriving he made a good impression, he was well
dressed, his white gloves were immaculate. He was reserved and somewhat
languid. Every one knew that he was delicate, and there was a rumour
of an unhappy love affair. It was said that he had been in love with a
girl, and that her family had refused to consent to her marriage with
him. People said he was like his own music, the dreamy, melancholy
themes seemed to accord so well with the pale young face of the
composer. The fascination of the languor which seemed to emanate from
the man and from his work worked its way, in a subtle manner, into the
hearts of his hearers. Chopin did not care to know Lelia. He did not
like women writers, and he was rather alarmed at this one. It was Liszt
who introduced them. In his biography of Chopin, he tells us that the
extremely sensitive artist, who was so easily alarmed, dreaded "this
woman above all women, as, like a priestess of Delphi, she said so many
things that the others could not have said. He avoided her and postponed
the introduction. Madame Sand had no idea that she was feared as a
sylph. . . ." She made the first advances. It is easy to see what
charmed her in him. In the first place, he appealed to her as he did to
all women, and then, too, there was the absolute contrast of their two
opposite natures. She was all force, of an expansive, exuberant nature.
He was very discreet, reserved and mysterious. It seems that the Polish
characteristic is to lend oneself, but never to give oneself away, and
one of Chopin's friends said of him that he was "more Polish than Poland
itself." Such a contrast may prove a strong attraction, and then, too,
George Sand was very sensitive to the charm of music. But what she saw
above all in Chopin was the typical artist, just as she understood the
artist, a dreamer, lost in the clouds, incapable of any activity that
was practical, a "lover of the impossible." And then, too, he was ill.
When Musset left Venice, after all the atrocious nights she had spent at
his bedside, she wrote: "Whom shall I have now to look after and tend?"
In Chopin she found some one to tend.

About this time, she was anxious about the health of her son Maurice,
and she thought she would take her family to Majorca. This was a
lamentable excursion, but it seemed satisfactory at first. They
travelled by way of Lyons, Avignon, Vaucluse and Nimes. At Perpignan,
Chopin arrived, "as fresh as a rose." "Our journey," wrote George Sand,
"seems to be under the most favourable conditions." They then went on
to Barcelona and to Palma. In November, 1838, George Sand wrote a most
enthusiastic letter: "It is poetry, solitude, all that is most
artistic and _chique_ on earth. And what skies, what a country; we are
delighted."(26) The disenchantment was soon to begin, though. The first
difficulty was to find lodgings, and the second to get furniture. There
was no wood to burn and there was no linen to be had. It took two months
to have a pair of tongs made, and it cost twenty-eight pounds at the
customs for a piano to enter the country. With great difficulty, the
forlorn travellers found a country-house belonging to a man named Gomez,
which they were able to rent. It was called the "Windy House." The wind
did not inconvenience them like the rain, which now commenced. Chopin
could not endure the heat and the odour of the fires. His disease
increased, and this was the origin of the great tribulations that were
to follow.

Buloz:

_Monday 13th._

MY DEAR CHRISTINE,

"I have only been at Palma four days. My journey has been
very satisfactory, but rather long and difficult until we
were out of France. I took up my pen (as people say) twenty
times over to write the last five or six pages for which
_Spiridion_ has been waiting for six months. It is not the
easiest thing in the world, I can assure you, to give the
conclusion of one's own religious belief, and when
travelling it is impossible. At twenty different places I
have resolved to think it solemnly over and to write down my
conclusion. But these stoppages were the most tiring part of
our journey. There were visits, dinners, walks, curiosities,
ruins, the Vaucluse fountain, Reboul and the Nimes arena,
the Barcelona cathedrals, dinners on board the war-ships,
the Italian theatres of Spain (and what theatres and what
Italians!), guitars and Heaven knows what beside. There was
the moonlight on the sea and above all Valma and Mallorca,
the most delightful place in the world, and all this kept me
terribly far away from philosophy and theology. Fortunately
I have found some superb convents here all in ruins, with
palm-trees, aloes and the cactus in the midst of broken
mosaics and crumbling cloisters, and this takes me back to
_Spiridion_. For the last three days I have had a rage for
work, which I cannot satisfy yet, as we have neither fire
nor lodging. There is not an inn in Palma, no house to let
and no furniture to be bought. On arriving here people first
have to buy some ground, then build, and afterwards send for
furniture. After this, permission to live somewhere has to
be obtained from Government, and after five or six years one
can think about opening one's trunk and changing one's
chemise, whilst waiting for permission from the Customs to
have some shoes and handkerchiefs passed. For the last four
days then we have spent our time going from door to door, as
we do not want to sleep in the open air. We hope now to be
settled in about three days, as a miracle has taken place.
For the first time in the memory of man, there is a
furnished house to let in Mallorca, a charming country-house
in a delightful desert. . . ."

At that time Spain was the very last country in which to travel with a
consumptive patient. In a very fine lecture, the subject of which was
_The Fight with Tuberculosis_,(27) Dr. Landouzy proves to us that ever
since the sixteenth century, in the districts of the Mediterranean,
in Spain, in the Balearic Isles and throughout the kingdom of Naples,
tuberculosis was held to be contagious, whilst the rest of Europe was
ignorant of this contagion. Extremely severe rules had been laid down
with regard to the measures to be taken for avoiding the spread of
this disease. A consumptive patient was considered as a kind of
plague-stricken individual. Chateaubriand had experienced the
inconveniences of this scare during his stay in Rome with Madame de
Beaumont, who died there of consumption, at the beginning of the winter
of 1803. George Sand, in her turn, was to have a similar experience.
When Chopin was convicted of consumption, "which," as she writes, "was
equivalent to the plague, according to the Spanish doctors, with their
foregone conclusions about contagion," their landlord simply turned
them out of his house. They took refuge in the Chartreuse monastery of
Valdemosa, where they lived in a cell. The site was very beautiful. By a
wooded slope a terrace could be reached, from which there was a view of
the sea on two sides.

(27) L. Landouzy of the Academy of Medecine, _La Lutte
contre la tuberculose_, published by L. Maretheux.

"We are planted between heaven and earth," wrote George Sand. "The
clouds cross our garden at their own will and pleasure, and the eagles
clamour over our heads."

A cell in this monastery was composed of three rooms: the one in the
middle was intended for reading, prayer and meditation, the other
two were the bedroom and the workshop. All three rooms looked on to a
garden. Reading, rest and manual labour made up the life of these men.
They lived in a limited space certainly, but the view stretched out
infinitely, and prayer went up direct to God. Among the ruined buildings
of the enormous monastery there was a cloister still standing, through
which the wind howled desperately. It was like the scenery in the nuns'
act in _Robert le Diable_. All this made the old monastery the most
romantic place in the world.(28)

(28) George Sand to Madame Buloz. Postscript to the letter
already quoted:

"I am leaving for the country where I have a furnished house
with a garden, magnificently situated for 50 francs a month.
I have also taken a cell, that is three rooms and a garden
for 35 francs a year in the Chartreuse of Valdemosa, a
magnificent, immense monastery quite lonely in the midst of
mountains. Our garden is full of oranges and lemons. The
trees break under them. We have hedges of cactus twenty to
thirty feet high, the sea is about a mile and a half away.
We have a donkey to take us to the town, roads inaccessible
to visitors, immense cloisters and the most beautiful
architecture, a charming church, a cemetery with a palm-tree
and a stone cross like the one in the third act of _Robert
le Diable_. Then, too, there are beds of shrubs cut in
form. All this we have to ourselves with an old woman to
wait on us, and the sacristan who is warder, steward,
majordomo and Jack-of-all-trades. I hope we shall have
ghosts. The door of my cell leads into an enormous
cloister, and when the wind slams the door it is like a
cannon going off through all the monastery. I am delighted
with everything, and fancy I shall be more often in the cell
than in the country-house, which is about six miles away.
You see that I have plenty of poetry and solitude, so that
if I do not work I shall be a stupid thing."

The only drawback was that it was most difficult to live there. There
was no way of getting warm. The stove was a kind of iron furnace which
gave out a terrible odour, and did not prevent the rooms from being so
damp that clothes mildewed while they were being worn. There was no way
of getting proper food either. They had to eat the most indigestible
things. There were five sorts of meat certainly, but these were pig,
pork, bacon, ham and pickled pork. This was all cooked in dripping,
pork-dripping, of course, or in rancid oil. Still more than this, the
natives refused, not only to serve the unfortunate travellers, but
to sell them the actual necessaries of life. The fact was, they had
scandalized the Majorcan people. All Majorca was indignant because
Solange, who at that time was nine years old, roamed about the mountains
_disguised as a man_. Added to this, when the horn sounded which called
people to their devotions in the churches, these strange inhabitants
of the old Valdemosa monastery never took any more notice than pagans.
People kept clear of them. Chopin suffered with the cold, the cooking
made him sick, and he used to have fits of terror in the cloisters. They
had to leave hastily. The only steamboat from the island was used to
transport the pigs which are the pride and wealth of Majorca. People
were only taken as an extra. It was, therefore, in the company of these
squealing, ill-smelling creatures that the invalid crossed the water.
When he arrived at Barcelona, he looked like a spectre and was spitting
blood. George Sand was quite right in saying that this journey was an
"awful fiasco."

Art and literature did not gain much either by this expedition. George
Sand finished her novel entitled _Spiridion_ at Valdemosa. She had
commenced it before starting for Spain. In a volume on _Un hiver a
Majorque_ she gave some fine descriptions, and also a harsh accusation
of the monks, whom she held responsible for all the mishaps of the
Sand caravan. She considered that the Majorcans had been brutalized and
fanaticized, thanks to their influence. As to Chopin, he was scarcely in
a state to derive any benefit from such a journey, and he certainly did
not get any. He did not thoroughly appreciate the beauties of nature,
particularly of Majorcan nature. In a letter to one of his friends he
gives the following description of their habitation:--

"Between rocks and sea, in a great deserted monastery, in a cell, the
doors of which are bigger than the carriage entrances to the houses in
Paris, you can imagine me, without white gloves, and no curl in my hair,
as pale as usual. My cell is the shape of a large-sized bier. . . ."

This certainly does not sound very enthusiastic. The question is whether
he composed anything at all at Valdemosa. Liszt presents him to
us improvising his Prelude in B flat minor under the most dramatic
circumstances. We are told that one day, when George Sand and her
children had started on an excursion, they were surprised by a
thunderstorm. Chopin had stayed at home in the monastery, and, terrified
at the danger he foresaw for them, he fainted. Before they reached home
he had improvised his _Prelude_, in which he has put all his terror and
the nervousness due to his disease. It appears, though, that all this is
a legend, and that there is not a single echo of the stay at Valdemosa
in Chopin's work.

The deplorable journey to Majorca dates from November, 1838 to March,
1839. The intimacy between George Sand and Chopin continued eight years
more.

In the summer Chopin stayed it Nohant. Eugene Delacroix, who was paying
a visit there too, describes his presence as follows: "At times, through
the window opening on to the garden, we get wafts of Chopin's music, as
he too is at work. It is mingled with the songs of the nightingales and
with the perfume of the rose trees."