I shall not continue the quotation, the discussion becomes too nauseous. One cannot help sympathising with Alfred de Musset's impatient interruption of George Sand's unctuous lecturing reported in his brother's book—"My dear, you speak so often of chastity that it becomes indecent." Or this other interruption reported by Louise Colet:—
When one gives the world what the world calls the scandale of love, one must have at least the courage of one's passion. In this respect the women of the eighteenth century are better than you: they did not subtilise love in metaphysics [elles n'alambiquaient pas l'amour dans la metaphysique].
It is hardly necessary to say that George Sand had much intercourse with men of intellect. Several litterateurs of some distinction have already been mentioned. Sainte-Beuve and Balzac were two of the earliest of her literary friends, among whom she numbered also Heine. With Lamartine and other cultivators of the belles-lettres she was likewise acquainted. Three of her friends, men of an altogether different type and calibre, have, however, a greater claim on the attention of the student of George Sand's personality than any of those just named, because their speculations and teachings gave powerful impulses to her mind, determined the direction of her thoughts, and widened the sphere of her intellectual activity. The influences of these three men— the advocate Michel of Bourges, an earnest politician; the philosopher and political economist: Pierre Leroux, one of the founders of the "Encyclopedie Nouvelle," and author of "De l'humanite, de son principe et de son avenir"; and the Abbe Lamennais, the author of the "Essai sur l'indifference en matiere de religion," "Paroles d'un Croyant," &c.—are clearly traceable in the "Lettres a Marcie, Spiridion," "Les sept Cordes de la Lyre," "Les Compagnons du tour de France," "Consuelo," "La Comtesse de Rudolstadt," "Le Peche de M. Antoine," "Le Meunier d'Angibault," &c. George Sand made the acquaintance of Pierre Leroux and the Abbe Lammenais in 1835. The latter was introduced to her by her friend Liszt, who knew all the distinguished men of the day, and seems to have often done her similar services. George Sand's friendship with Michel of Bourges, the Everard of her "Lettres d'un Voyageur," dates farther back than 1835.
During George Sand's stay in Venice M. Dudevant had continued to write to her in an amicable and satisfied tone. On returning in the summer of 1834 to France she therefore resumed her periodical sojourns at Nohant; but the pleasure of seeing her home and children was as short-lived as it was sweet, for she soon discovered that neither the former nor the latter, "morally speaking," belonged to her. M. Dudevant's ideas of how they ought to be managed differed entirely from those of his wife, and altogether things had become very uncongenial to her. George Sand, whose view of the circumstances I am giving, speaks mysteriously of abnormal and dangerous influences to which the domestic hearth was exposed, and of her inability to find in her will, adverse as it was to daily struggles and family quarrels, the force to master the situation. From the vague and exceedingly brief indications of facts which are scattered here and there between eloquent and lengthy dissertations on marriage in all its aspects, on the proper pride of woman, and more of the same nature, we gather, however, thus much: she wished to be more independent than she had been hitherto, and above all to get a larger share of her revenues, which amounted to about 15,000 francs, and out of which her husband allowed her and her daughter only 3,000 francs. M. Dudevant, it must be noted, had all along been living on his wife's income, having himself only expectations which would not be realised till after his stepmother's death. By the remonstrances of his wife and the advice of her brother he was several times prevailed upon to agree to a more equitable settlement. But no sooner had he given a promise or signed a contract than he revoked what he had done. According to one of these agreements George Sand and her daughter were to have a yearly allowance of 6,000 francs; according to another M. Dudevant was to have a yearly allowance of 7,000 francs and leave Nohant and the remainder of the revenues to his wife. The terms of the latter of these agreements were finally accepted by both parties, but not till after more than a year's quarrelling and three lawsuits. George Sand sued for a divorce, and the Court of La Chatre gave judgment in her favour on February 16, 1836. This judgment was confirmed after a second trial by the same Court on May 11, 1836.
[Footnote: What George Sand calls her "matrimonial biography" can be read in "Le Droit" ("Journal des Tribunaux") of May 18, 1836. The account there given, no doubt inspired by her advocate if not directly by herself, contains some interesting items, but leaves others unmentioned. One would have liked to learn something more of the husband's pleadings.
The proceedings began on October 30, 1835, when "Madame D——- a forme centre son mari une demande en separation de corps. Cette demande etait fondee sur les injures graves, sevices et mauvais traitements dont elle se plaignait de la part de son mari."
The following is a passage from Michel of Bourges, her advocate's defence: "Des 1824, la vie intime etait devenue difficile; les egards auxquels toute femme a droit furent oublies, des actes d'emportement et de violence revelerent de la part de M. D——- un caractere peu facile, peu capable d'apprecier le devouement et la delicatesse qu'on lui avail temoignes. Les mauvais traitements furent d'abord plus rares que les mauvais precedes, ainsi les imputations d'imbecillite, de stupidite, furent prodiguees a Madame D——- le droit de raisonner, de prendre l'art a la conversation lui fut interdit…des relations avec d'autres femmes furent connues de l'epouse,et vers le mois de Decembre, 1828, toute cohabitation intime cessa.
"Les enfants eux-memes eurent quelque part dans les mauvais traitements."]
M. Dudevant then appealed to the Court of Cassation at Bourges, where the case was tried on July 25; but he withdrew his appeal before judgment was given. The insinuations and revelations made in the course of these lawsuits were anything but edifying. George Sand says that she confined herself to furnishing the proofs strictly demanded by the law, and revealed only such facts as were absolutely necessary. But these facts and proofs must have been of a very damaging nature, for M. Dudevant answered them by imputations to merit one hundred-thousandth part of which would have made her tremble. "His attorney refused to read a libel. The judges would have refused to listen to it." Of a deposition presented by M. Dudevant to the Court, his wife remarks that it was "dictated, one might have said, drawn up," by two servants whom she had dismissed. She maintains that she did not deserve this treatment, as she betrayed of her husband's conduct only what he himself was wont to boast of.
George Sand's letters [Footnote: George Sand: Correspondence 1812- 1876; Six volumes (Paris: Calman Levy).] seem to me to show conclusively that her chief motives for seeking a divorce were a desire for greater independence and above all for more money. Complaints of ill-treatment are not heard of till they serve to justify an action or to attain a purpose. And the exaggeration of her varying statements must be obvious to all but the most careless observer. George Sand is slow in making up her mind; but having made it up she acts with fierce promptitude, obstinate vigour, and inconsiderate unscrupulousness, in one word, with that concentration of self which sees nothing but its own desires. On the whole, I should say that M. Dudevant was more sinned against than sinning. George Sand, even as she represents herself in the Histoire de ma Vie and in her letters, was far from being an exemplary wife, or indeed a woman with whom even the most angelic of husbands would have found it easy to live in peace and happiness.
From the letters, which reveal so strikingly the ungentlewomanlikeness (not merely in a conventional sense) of her manners and her numerous and curious intimacies with men of all ages, more especially with young men, I shall now cull a few characteristic passages in proof of what I have said.
One must have a passion in life. I feel ennui for the want of one. The agitated and often even rather needy life I am leading here drives spleen far away. I am very well, and you will see me in the best of humours. [To her friend A. M. Duteil. Paris, February 15, 1831.]
I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one. [To Jules Boucoiran. Paris, March 4, 1831.]
I cannot bear the shadow of a constraint, this is my principal fault. Everything that is imposed upon me as a duty becomes hateful to me.
After saying that she leaves her husband full liberty to do what he likes—"qu'il a des maitresses ou n'en a pas, suivant son appetit,"—and speaking highly of his management of their affairs, she writes in the same letter as follows:—
Moreover, it is only just that this great liberty which my husband enjoys should be reciprocal; otherwise, he would become to me odious and contemptible; that is what he does not wish to be. I am therefore quite independent; I go to bed when he rises, I go to La Chatre or to Rome, I come in at midnight or at six o'clock; all this is my business. Those who do not approve of this, and disparage me to you, judge them with your reason and your mother's heart; the one and the other ought to be with me. [To her mother. Nohant, May 31, 1831.]
Marriage is a state so contrary to every kind of union and happiness that I have good reason to fear for you. [To Jules Boucoiran, who had thoughts of getting married. Paris, March 6, 1833.]
You load me with very heavy reproaches, my dear child…you reproach me with my numerous liaisons, my frivolous friendships. I never undertake to clear myself from the accusations which bear on my character. I can explain facts and actions; but never defects of the mind or perversities of the heart. [To Jules Boucoiran. Paris, January 18, 1833.]
Thou hast pardoned me when I committed follies which the world calls faults. [To her friend Charles Duvernet. Paris, October 15, 1834.]
But I claim to possess, now and for ever, the proud and entire independence which you believe you alone have the right to enjoy. I shall not advise it to everyone; but I shall not suffer that, so far as I am concerned, any love whatever shall in the least fetter it. I hope to make my conditions so hard and so clear that no man will be bold and vile enough to accept them. [To her friend Adolphe Gueroult. Paris, May 6, 1835.]
Nothing shall prevent me from doing what I ought to and what I will do. I am the daughter of my father, and I care not for prejudices when my heart enjoins justice and courage. [To her mother. Nohant, October 25, 1835.]
Opinion is a prostitute which must be sent about her business with kicks when one is in the right. [To her friend Adolphe Gueroult. La Chatre, November 9, 1835.]
The materials made use of in the foregoing sketch of George Sand's life up to 1836 consist to a very considerable extent of her own DATA, and in part even of her own words. From this fact, however, it ought not to be inferred that her statements can always be safely accepted without previous examination, or at any time be taken au pied de la lettre. Indeed, the writer of the Histoire de ma Vie reveals her character indirectly rather than directly, unawares rather than intentionally. This so-called "history" of her life contains some truth, although not all the truth; but it contains it implicitly, not explicitly. What strikes the observant reader of the four-volumed work most forcibly, is the attitude of serene self-admiration and self- satisfaction which the autobiographer maintains throughout. She describes her nature as pre-eminently "confiding and tender," and affirms that in spite of the great and many wrongs she was made to suffer, she never wronged anyone in all her life. Hence the perfect tranquillity of conscience she always enjoyed. Once or twice, it is true, she admits that she may not be an angel, and that she as well as her husband may have had faults. Such humble words, however, ought not to be regarded as penitent confessions of a sinful heart, but as generous concessions of a charitable mind. In short, a thorough belief in her own virtuousness and superior excellence was the key-note of her character. The Pharisaical tendency to thank God for not having made her like other people pervades every page of her autobiography, of which Charles Mazade justly says that it is—
a kind of orgy of a personality intoxicated with itself, an abuse of intimate secrets in which she slashes her friends, her reminiscences, and—truth.
George Sand declares again and again that she abstains from speaking of certain matters out of regard for the feelings or memories of other persons, whereas in reality she speaks recklessly of everybody as long as she can do so without compromising herself. What virtuous motives can have prompted her to publish her mother's shame? What necessity was there to expatiate on her brother's drunkenness? And if she was the wronged and yet pitiful woman she pretended to be, why, instead of burying her husband's, Musset's, and others' sins in silence, does she throw out against them those artful insinuations and mysterious hints which are worse than open accusations? Probably her artistic instincts suggested that a dark background would set off more effectively her own glorious luminousness. However, I do not think that her indiscretions and misrepresentations deserve always to be stigmatised as intentional malice and conscious falsehood. On the contrary, I firmly believe that she not only tried to deceive others, but that she actually deceived herself. The habit of self-adoration had given her a moral squint, a defect which was aggravated by a powerful imagination and excellent reasoning faculties. For, swayed as these were by her sentiments and desires, they proved themselves most fertile in generating flattering illusions and artful sophisms. George Sand was indeed a great sophist. She had always in readiness an inexhaustible store of interpretations and subterfuges with which to palliate, excuse, or even metamorphose into their contraries the most odious of her words and actions. It is not likely that any one ever equalled, much less surpassed, her expertness in hiding ugly facts or making innocent things look suspicious. To judge by her writings and conversations she never acted spontaneously, but reasoned on all matters and on all occasions.
At no time whatever [writes Paul Lindau in his "Alfred de Musset"] is there to be discovered in George Sand a trace of a passion and inconsiderateness, she possesses an imperturbable calmness. Love sans phrase does not exist for her. That her frivolity may be frivolity, she never will confess. She calculates the gifts of love, and administers them in mild, well-measured doses. She piques herself upon not being impelled by the senses. She considers it more meritorious if out of charity and compassion she suffers herself to be loved. She could not be a Gretchen [a Faust's Margaret], she would not be a Magdalen, and she became a Lady Tartuffe.
George Sand's three great words were "maternity," "chastity," and "pride." She uses them ad nauseam, and thereby proves that she did not possess the genuine qualities. No doubt, her conceptions of the words differed from those generally accepted: by "pride" (orgueil), for instance, she seems to have meant a kind of womanly self-respect debased by a supercilious haughtiness and self-idolatry. But, as I have said already, she was a victim to self-deception. So much is certain, the world, with an approach to unanimity rarely attained, not only does not credit her with the virtues which she boasts of, but even accuses her of the very opposite vices. None of the writers I have consulted arrives, in discussing George Sand's character, at conclusions which tally with her own estimate; and every person, in Paris and elsewhere, with whom I have conversed on the subject condemned her conduct most unequivocally. Indeed, a Parisian—who, if he had not seen much of her, had seen much of many who had known her well—did not hesitate to describe her to me as a female Don Juan, and added that people would by-and-by speak more freely of her adventures. Madame Audley (see "Frederic Chopin, sa vie et ses oeuvres," p. 127) seems to me to echo pretty exactly the general opinion in summing up her strictures thus:—
A woman of genius, but a woman with sensual appetites, with insatiable desires, accustomed to satisfy them at any price, should she even have to break the cup after draining it, equally wanting in balance, wisdom, and purity of mind, and in decorum, reserve, and dignity of conduct.
Many of the current rumours about her doings were no doubt inventions of idle gossips and malicious enemies, but the number of well-ascertained facts go far to justify the worst accusations. And even though the evidence of deeds were wanting, have we not that of her words and opinions as set forth in her works? I cannot help thinking that George Sand's fondness for the portraiture of sensual passion, sometimes even of sensual passion in its most brutal manifestations, is irreconcilable with true chastity. Many a page in her novels exhibits indeed a surprising knowledge of the physiology of love, a knowledge which presupposes an extensive practical acquaintance with as wellas attentive study of the subject. That she depicts the most repulsive situations with a delicacy of touch which veils the repulsiveness and deceives the unwary rather aggravates the guilt. Now, though the purity of a work of art is no proof of the purity of the artist (who may reveal only the better part of his nature, or give expression to his aspirations), the impurity of a work of art always testifies indubitably to the presence of impurity in the artist, of impurity in thought, if not in deed. It is, therefore, not an unwarranted assumption to say that the works of George Sand prove conclusively that she was not the pure, loving, devoted, harmless being she represents herself in the "Histoire de ma Vie." Chateaubriand said truly that: "le talent de George Sand a quelque ratine dans la corruption, elle deviendrait commune en devenant timoree." Alfred Nettement, who, in his "Histoire de la litterature franqaise sous le gouvernement de Juillet," calls George Sand a "painter of fallen and defiled natures," remarks that—
most of her romances are dazzling rehabilitations of adultery, and in reading their burning pages it would seem that there remains only one thing to be done—namely, to break the social chains in order that the Lelias and Sylvias may go in quest of their ideal without being stopped by morality and the laws, those importune customs lines which religion and the institutions have opposed to individual whim and inconstancy.
Perhaps it will be objected to this that the moral extravagances and audacious sophistries to be met with in "Lelia," in "Leoni," and other novels of hers, belong to the characters represented, and not to the author. Unfortunately this argument is untenable after the publication of George Sand's letters, for there she identifies herself with Lelia, and develops views identical with those that shocked us in Leoni and elsewhere.
[Footnote: On May 26, 1833, she writes to her friend Francois Rollinat with regard to this book: "It is an eternal chat between us. We are the gravest personages in it." Three years later, writing to the Comtesse d'Agoult, her account differs somewhat: "I am adding a volume to 'Lelia.' This occupies me more than any other novel has as yet done. Lelia is not myself, je suis meilleure enfant; but she is my ideal."—Correspondance," vol. I., pp. 248 and 372.]
These letters, moreover, contain much that is damaging to her claim to chastity. Indeed, one sentence in a letter written in June, 1835 (Correspondance, vol. I., p. 307), disposes of this claim decisively. The unnecessarily graphic manner in which she here deals with an indelicate subject would be revolting in a man addressing a woman, in a woman addressing a man it is simply monstrous.
As a thinker, George Sand never attained to maturity; she always remained the slave of her strong passions and vitiated principles. She never wrote a truer word than when she confessed that she judged everything by sympathy. Indeed, what she said of her childhood applies also to her womanhood: "Il n'y avait de fort en moi que la passion…rien dans man cerveau fit obstacle." George Sand often lays her finger on sore places, fails, however, not only to prescribe the right remedy, but even to recognise the true cause of the disease. She makes now and then acute observations, but has not sufficient strength to grapple successfully with the great social, philosophical, and religious problems which she so boldly takes up. In fact, reasoning unreasonableness was a very frequent condition of George Sand's mind. That the unreasonableness of her reasoning remains unseen by many, did so at any rate in her time, is due to the marvellous beauty and eloquence of her language. The best that can be said of her subversive theories was said by a French critic—namely, that they were in reality only "le temoignage d'aspirations genereuses et de nobles illusions." But even this is saying too much, for her aspirations and illusions are far from being always generous and noble. If we wish to see George Sand at her best we must seek her out in her quiet moods, when she contents herself with being an artist, and unfolds before us the beauties of nature and the secrets of the human heart. Indeed, unless we do this, we cannot form a true idea of her character. Not all the roots of her talent were imbedded in corruption. She who wrote Lelia wrote also Andre, she who wrote Lucrezia Floriani wrote also La petite Fadette. And in remembering her faults and shortcomings justice demands that we should not forget her family history, with its dissensions and examples of libertinism, and her education without system, continuity, completeness, and proper guidance.
The most precious judgment pronounced on George Sand is by one who was at once a true woman and a great poet. Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning saw in her the "large-brained woman and large- hearted man…whose soul, amid the lions of her tumultuous senses, moans defiance and answers roar for roar, as spirits can"; but who lacked "the angel's grace of a pure genius sanctified from blame." This is from the sonnet to George Sand, entitled "A Desire." In another sonnet, likewise addressed to George Sand and entitled "A Recognition," she tells her how vain it was to deny with a manly scorn the woman's nature…while before
The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,
We see thy woman-heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher,
Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!