Part 19

Comfort was soon found however in her work, and in the schoolgirl friendships that she formed, some of which lasted her lifetime.

In 1820, when sixteen, she returned to Nohant. Her grandmother died in the following year; and then, although often suffering from her mother’s irritable and capricious temper, she seems to have enjoyed perfect liberty: riding, walking, and reading; devouring everything that came into her hands, from Thomas à Kempis to Jean Jacques Rousseau. On one occasion, kneeling before the altar in the chapel, she was seized with a paroxysm of devotion and talked of becoming a nun. To this succeeded complete emancipation in her religious opinions, and a refusal even to conform to the observances of her Church. A quarrel with her confessor accomplished the separation from orthodoxy. She became a deist, and remained so for the rest of her life, making art her religion, and passing through all the phases of pessimism and Saint-Simonianism that prevailed in her day.

In 1822, to escape the solicitations of her mother, she consented to marry Monsieur Dudevant, son of one of the barons of the Empire.

She describes in her autobiography how one evening, when sitting outside Tortoni’s eating ices after the theatre, she heard a friend (Madame Duplessis) say to her husband: “See, there is Casimir!” Whereupon a slight, elegant young man of military bearing came up to salute them. Her fate was sealed from that day. They were married in September 1822, she being only eighteen. After paying a few visits they returned to live at Nohant. The letters begin consecutively after the birth of her first child, and are written at odd times, and from different places—sometimes in the middle of the night, while all the household were asleep, the lightning flashing and the thunder rolling; sometimes in a garret overlooking a narrow little street of the town of Châtre, at six o’clock in the morning, the nightingales singing outside and the scent of a lilac-tree pervading the air; sometimes at her grandmother’s old bureau in the hall at Nohant, with all her family round her.

The portion of the “Correspondence” which will take readers most by surprise is that describing the first years of her married life. There is no desire here “to lose her identity in the great conscience of humanity!” her heart seems perfectly satisfied bending over her cradle, and her mind entirely occupied with the “concrete duties” of manufacturing soothing syrups and amusing her children.

“My son is splendidly fat and fresh,” she writes to her mother. “He has a bright complexion and determined expression, which I must say is borne out by his character. He has six teeth which he uses with great vigor, and he stands beautifully on his feet, though too young to run alone.”

Casimir is mentioned now and then, and always with a certain amount of affection. She is evidently attached to him through the children, and relates how fond he is of her and them.

“Our dear papa,” she says, “is very much taken up with his harvest. He has adopted a mode of threshing out his corn, which accomplishes in three weeks what used to occupy five or six. He works very hard all day, and is off rake in hand at daybreak. We women sit on the heaps of corn reading and working for hours together.”

She describes a carnival at Nohant in 1826, four years after her marriage, when she sits up three nights a week dancing, “Obligations which have to be accepted in life.” Obligations which seem to be grateful enough to her, although she only amuses herself by the light of three candles, with an orchestra composed of a hurdy-gurdy and bagpipes.

Certain disturbing elements seem however, as the year goes on, to agitate the domestic barometer. They make a journey to Bordeaux, and there the society, although not brilliant, is more attractive than that of Nohant—the prospect of returning to the “three candles and the hurdy-gurdy” seems to frighten her—and she complains of Casimir’s want of “intellectual” energy: “Paresseux de l’esprit, et enragé des jambes.”

“Cold, wet, nothing keeps him at home; whenever he comes in it is either to eat or to snore.” In writing about some commissions which her mother has executed for her in Paris, she says: “Casimir asks me to express his gratitude; it is a sentiment which we can _still_ feel in common.” Rustic duties pall upon her, her appetite and health fail, she is reduced to “looking at the stars, instead of sleeping.” “My existence is passed in a complete state of mental solitude surrounded by unsympathetic, commonplace people, some of whom deface their lives by coarse inebriety.” She here alludes to her brother, Hippolyte, who destroyed his own and his wife’s happiness by his drunken habits.

The only event that brightened her sadness was the arrival of a young tutor for her children, M. Jules Boucoiran, who always, as she says, remained her devoted friend and ally.

She thus whimsically relates an incident small in itself, but one that made an impression on her owing to the existing circumstances:

“I was living in what used to be my grandmother’s boudoir, because there was only one door, and no one could come in unless I liked. My two children sleep in the room next to me. The boudoir was so small that I could hardly fit into it with all my books. I therefore slept in a hammock, and wrote at an old bureau, which I used in company with a cricket, who seeing me so often had become perfectly tame. It lived on my wafers, which I purposely chose white for fear of poisoning it. After eating its meal on my paper as I wrote, it always went and sang in its favorite drawer. One evening, not hearing it move, I searched everywhere, but the only remains I found of my poor friend were his hind legs. He never told me that he went out for a walk every day, and the maid had crushed him when shutting the window. I buried him in a datura flower, which I kept for some time as a sacred relic. I could not get rid of a strange foreboding that with the song of this little cricket my domestic happiness had fled for ever.”

Meantime the artistic leaven was working within her. On one of her flying visits to Paris she entered the Louvre and felt singularly “taken possession of” by the beautiful pictures around her.

“I returned,” she says, “again and again, arriving early in the morning and going away late in the evening. I was transported into another world, and was haunted day and night by the grand figures created by genius. The past and present were revealed to me, I became classical and romantic at the same time, without understanding the struggle between the two that agitated the artistic world. I seemed to have acquired a treasure, the existence of which I had never been aware of. My spirit expanded, and when I left the gallery I walked through the streets as in a dream.”

After this awakening of her intellectual nature she returned to Nohant, more determined than ever to escape from her wretched life, and to save her children from influences that might destroy them in the future. Her first object was to endeavor to make money enough to procure the means of existence. She tried everything, translating, drawing, needlework, and at last discovered that she could earn an humble pittance by painting flowers on wooden boxes. To this pursuit she devoted herself for some time, believing it to be the only trade for which she was fitted.

Meantime her domestic affairs came to a crisis sooner than she expected. The cause is thus related to Jules Boucoiran:

“You know my home life, and how intolerable it is! You yourself have often been astonished to see me raise my head the day after I had been crushed to the earth. But there is a term to everything. Events latterly have hastened the resolution which otherwise I should not have been strong enough to take. No one suspects anything; there has been no open quarrel. When seeking for something in my husband’s desk I found a packet addressed to myself. On it were written these words: ‘To be opened after my death.’ I opened it however at once. What did I find? imprecations, anathemas, insulting accusations, and the word ‘perversity.’”

This discovery, she tells him, decided her to come to an arrangement with her husband at once, by which she was to live the greater part of the year in Paris with her children, spending a month or two of the summer at Nohant. There were, no doubt, faults on both sides. She herself confesses in her autobiography “that she was no saint, and was often unjust, impetuous in her resolves, too hasty in her judgments.” Wherever there are strong feelings and desires there must be discord at times.

“Happy he who plants cabbages,” says she. “He has one foot on the earth, and the other is only raised off it the height of the spade. Unfortunately for me, I fear if I did plant cabbages I should ask for a logical justification for my activity, and some reason for the necessity of planting cabbages.”

Hers is not a nature that must be judged coldly. What right have we to say that she was to clip the wings of her genius, pass her years in the service of conventionality, and never seek the full development of her artistic nature? When she left the home of her childhood with pilgrim’s staff and scrip to start along the thorny path that led to the shrine of art, she was not actuated by any weak and wayward desire of change, but by the vehement and passionate desire to give forth to the world what was locked within her breast.

The beginning of her life in Paris was one of considerable poverty and privation. She lived _au cinquième_ in a lodging, which cost her a yearly rent of £12; she had no servant, and got in her food from an eating-house close by for the sum of two francs a day. Her washing and needlework she did herself. Notwithstanding this rigid economy, it was impossible to keep within the limits of her husband’s allowance of £10 a year, especially as far as her dress was concerned.

After some hesitation therefore she took the resolution, which caused so much scandal then and afterwards, of adopting male attire.

“My thin boots wore out in a few days,” she tells us in the autobiography. “I forgot to hold up my dress, and covered my petticoats with mud. My bonnets were spoilt one after another by the rain. I generally returned from the expeditions I took, dirty, weary, and cold. Whereas my young men acquaintances—some of whom had been the companions of my childhood in Berri—had none of these inconveniences to submit to. I therefore had a long gray cloth coat made with a waistcoat and trousers to match. When this costume was completed by a gray felt hat and a loose woollen cravat, no one could have guessed that I was not a young student in my first year. My boots were my particular delight. I should like to have gone to bed with them. On their little iron heels I wandered from one end of Paris to the other; no one took any notice of me, or suspected my disguise.”

George Sand was twenty-seven years of age at this time. Without being beautiful she was striking and sympathetic-looking. Sainte-Beuve thus describes his first interview with her:

“I saw, as I entered the room, a young woman with expressive eyes and a fine open brow, surrounded by black hair, cut rather short. She was quiet and composed in manner, speaking little herself, but listening attentively to all I had to say.”

In an engraving of Calmatta’s from a picture done by Ary Scheffer, we see that her features were large but regular, her eyes magnificent, and her face distinguished by an expression of strength and calm that was very remarkable. Her hair, dressed in long bandeaux, increases this expression of peace so belied by the audacity of her genius.

She began her life of independence with very fixed opinions on abstract ideas, but with complete ignorance, so far as material necessities were concerned:

“I know nothing about the world, and have no prejudices on the subject of society, to which the more I see of it, the less I desire to belong. I do not think I can reform it, I do not interest myself enough about it to wish to do so. This reserve and laziness is perhaps a mistake, but it is the inevitable result of a life of isolation and solitude. I have a basis of ‘nonchalance’ and apathy in my disposition which, without any effort on my part, keeps me attached to a sedentary life, or, as my friends would call it, ‘an animal one.’”

A great many of these friends were so shocked at her eccentric proceedings, that she made up her mind to withdraw voluntarily from intercourse with them, leaving them the option of continuing it if they liked.

“What right had I to be angry with them, if they gave me up? How could I expect them to understand my aims or my desires? Did _they_ know? Did _I_ know myself, when burning my vessels, whether I had any talent, any perseverance?

“I never told any one my real intentions; and whenever I talked of becoming an authoress, it was in joke, making fun of the idea, and of myself.”

Still her destiny urged her forward, and she was more than ever resolved, in spite of the difficulty, to follow a literary career:

“My life is restricted here, but I feel that I now have an object. I am devoted to one task, and indeed to one passion. The love of writing is a violent, almost an indestructible one; when once it has taken possession of an unfortunate brain it never leaves it again.... I have had no success: my work has been found unnatural by people whose opinion I have asked.... Better known names must take precedence of mine, that is only fair: patience, patience.... Meantime I must live on. I am not above any work. I write even articles for _Figaro_. I wish you knew what that meant; but at least they pay me seven francs a column; and with that I can eat, drink, and go to the play, which is an opportunity for me to make the most useful and amusing observations.

“If one wishes to write, one must see everything, know everything, laugh at everything. Ah, ma foi, vive la vie d’artiste! notre devise est liberté.”

She thus describes her mornings spent in the editorial offices of the _Figaro_:

“I was not very industrious, I must confess, but then I understood nothing of the work. Delatouche would give me a subject, and a piece of foolscap paper, telling me not to exceed certain limits. I often scribbled over ten pages which I threw in the fire, and on which I had not written one word of sense. My colleagues were full of intelligence, energy, and facility. I listened, was much amused, but did no good work, and at the end of the month received an average of twelve francs fifty centimes, and am not sure I was not overpaid at that.”

She writes to M. Boucoiran:

“People blame me because I write for the _Figaro_. I do not care much what they say. I must live, and am proud enough of earning my bread myself. The _Figaro_ is a means as well as another. I must pass through the apprenticeship of journalism. I know it is often disagreeable; but one need never dirty one’s hands with anything unworthy. Seven francs a column is not much to earn, but it is most important to get a good footing in a newspaper office.”

She painted the most vivid portraits of the various eminent men whose aid she sought, and who invariably tried to dissuade her from embarking on a literary career. Balzac, when she first knew him, lived in an “entresol” in the Rue de Cassini.

“I was introduced to him as a person greatly struck by his talent, which indeed was true, for although at that time he had not yet produced his ‘chefs-d’œuvre,’ I had admired his original manner of looking at things, and felt that he had a great future before him. Every one knows how satisfied he was with himself, a satisfaction which was so well justified that one forgave him for it. He loved to talk of his works, to describe them beforehand, and to read little bits of them aloud. Naïve and good-hearted, he asked advice of children, and then only made use of it as an argument to prove how right he was himself.

“One evening when we had dined with him in some eccentric manner on boiled beef, melon and iced champagne, he went and put on a beautiful new dressing-gown, which he showed off with the delight of a young girl. We could not dissuade him from going out in this costume to accompany us as far as the entrance to the Luxembourg. There was not a breath of wind, and he carried a lighted candle in his hand, talking continuously of four Arab horses, which he never owned, but which he firmly believed for some time were in his possession. He would have gone with us to the other end of Paris, had we permitted it.

“My employer Delatouche was not nearly so pleasant. He also talked continuously about himself, and read aloud his novels with more discretion than Balzac, but with still more complacency. Woe betide you if you moved the furniture, stirred the fire, or even sneezed while he was thus occupied. He would stop immediately to ask you, with polite solicitude, if you had a cold, or an attack of nerves, and pretending to forget the book he had been reading, he obliged you to beg and pray before he would open it again. He never could accept the idea of growing old with resignation, and always said: ‘I am not fifty, but twice twenty-five years of age.’ He had plenty of critical discernment, and his observations often kept me from affectations and peculiarities of style—the great stumbling-block of all young authors. Although he gave me good advice, he put what seemed to me insurmountable difficulties in my way. ‘Beware of imitation,’ he said, ‘make use of your own powers, read in your own heart, and in the life you see around you, and then record your impressions.... You are too absolute in your sentiments. Your character is too strong. You neither know the world, nor individuals, your brain is empty! Your works may be charming, but they are quite wanting in common sense. You must write them all over again.’ I perfectly agreed with him and went away, making up my mind to keep to the painting of tea-caddies and cigarette cases.”

At last “Indiana” was begun, aimlessly, and with no hope of success.

“I resolutely,” she says in the “Histoire de ma Vie,” “put all precept and example out of my mind, and neither sought in others, nor in my own individuality, a type or character. Of course it has been said that Indiana was me, and her history mine. She was nothing of the kind. I have drawn many different female personations, but I think when the world reads this confession of my impressions and reflections, it will see that none of them are intended for my own portrait. I am too elevated in my views to see a heroine of romance in my mirror. I never found myself handsome enough nor amiable enough to be either poetic or interesting; it would have seemed to me as impossible to dramatise my life, as to embellish my person.”

“Indiana” was signed for the first time by her _nom de plume_ George Sand.

Her former romance, “Rose et Blanche,” had been written in collaboration with M. Jules Sandeau. It appeared under the name of Jules Sand. When “Indiana” was finished Delatouche, who undertook to publish it, advised its authoress to change the name of Jules to George. She did so, and henceforth in literature and society was known by no other name but George Sand.

“Indiana” was a genuine success, and made a considerable stir in Paris. The imperfections of its construction were forgiven for the eloquence of its passion and the beauty of its style; and the only words on every one’s lips for some days after its appearance, were, “Have you read ‘Indiana’? You must read ‘Indiana.’”

Even her severe friend Delatouche was stirred out of his critical frame of mind. She describes his clambering up to her garret, and finding a copy of “Indiana” lying on the table.

“He took it up, and opened it contemptuously. I wished to keep him from the subject and spoke about other things, but he would read on, and kept calling out at each page: ‘Come, it is a copy! Nothing but a copy of Balzac.’ I had neither sought nor avoided an imitation of the great novelist’s style, and felt that although the book had been written under his influence, it was unjust to say it was a copy. I let him carry away the volume, hoping he would rescind his judgment. Next morning on awaking I received the following letter:

“‘GEORGE,—I beg your pardon; I am at your feet. Forgive the insulting observations I made last night. Forgive all that I have said to you for the last six months. I have spent the night reading your book. Ah, my child! How proud I am of you!’”

The following extract from one of her letters written after the publication of “Indiana” shows how modest she remained in the midst of her success:

“The popularity of my book frightens me. Up to this moment I have worked inconsequently, convinced that anything I produced would pass unnoticed. Fate has ordained otherwise. I must try to justify the undeserved admiration of which I am the object.

“Curiously enough, it seems as if half the pleasure of my profession were gone. I had always thought the word inspiration very ambitious, and only to be employed when referring to genius of the highest order. I would never dare to use it when speaking of myself without protesting against the exaggeration of a term which is only sanctioned by an incontestable success. We must find a word, however, which will not make modest people blush, and will express that ‘grace’ which descends more or less intensely on all heads in earnest about their work. There is no artist, however humble, who has not his moments of inspiration, and perhaps the heavenly liquor is as precious in an earthenware vessel as in a golden one. Only one keeps it pure and clear, while the other transmutes it or breaks itself. Let us accept the word as it is therefore, and take it for granted that from my pen it means nothing presumptuous.

“When beginning to write ‘Indiana,’ I felt an unaccustomed and strong emotion, unlike anything I had ever experienced in my former efforts at composition; it was more painful than agreeable. I wrote spontaneously, never thinking of the social problem on which I was touching. I was not Saint-Simonian, I never have been, although I have had great sympathy with some of the ideas and for some of the members of the fraternity; but I did not know them at that time, and was uninfluenced by their tenets. The only feeling I had was a horror of ignorant tyranny.”

In spite of her literary success the year 1833 was one of the most unhappy of George Sand’s life. We know the lines addressed to her by Mrs. Browning:

“True genius, but true woman! dost deny The woman’s nature with a manly scorn, And break away the gauds and armlets worn By weaker women in captivity? Ah, vain denial! That revolted cry Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn,— Thy woman’s hair, my sister! all unshorn, Floats back dishevelled, strength in agony, Disproving thy man’s name: And while before The world thou burnest in a poet-fire, We see thy woman’s heart beat evermore Through the large flame.”