The times of Napoleon and the First Empire seem to be more than a lifetime away from us; and yet it was in that day that Victor Hugo lived as a child in the old convent of the Feuillantines so graphically described in "Les Misérables." Here he and his two brothers lived with their mother in the strictest seclusion, while the father, General Hugo, a soldier of the Empire, was off with the Grand Army at some distant point, either in garrison or in the field. The child, who was afterwards to hold Napoleon the Little up to the execration of the world, felt his earliest emotions of patriotism stirred by the glorious conquests of Napoleon the Great. General Hugo was one of the most gallant soldiers of the day, and placed in many positions of trust and of responsibility, as well as of danger, by Napoleon. He it was who conducted the terrible retreat from Spain just before the fall of Napoleon. His soldiers were the only protection to the lives of twenty thousand French fugitives, who were fleeing from Madrid wild with terror; for the pursuing Spaniards would not have hesitated to massacre the helpless multitude, had they found it in their power to do so. From every bush projected the muzzle of a gun, charged with the death of an invader; every pass concealed an ambush; every height bristled with guns in the hands of the patriots. But General Hugo conducted the fugitives through in safety, and proceeded to take command of the fortress at Thionville, soon to be besieged.
He defended this outpost of the Empire with great gallantry, and it was the last citadel over which the tri-color waved. But at last General Hugo was forced to surrender it to the Allies, and the star of Napoleon had set forever. Madame Hugo had been a royalist always, although she had not been allowed to influence the minds of the children in that direction; but after the fall of the Emperor she openly proclaimed her sympathy with the Bourbons, and was so demonstrative in her enthusiasm that it led to a complete estrangement between herself and her husband. Victor as a boy sided with his mother, and was royalist to the core; but as soon as he became a man he gravitated at once to his father's side. The years which he passed with his mother and brothers, and the priest who was their tutor, in the old garden of the Feuillantines, were as peaceful and happy as the years of childhood should always be. It was in an almost deserted quarter of Paris, and the grounds were spacious, being the remains of a park once attached to the convent. They were, however, neglected; and everything had run wild here, until it seemed to the city children almost like a forest. A ruined chapel was in this wood, which always excited the imagination of the boys, who were thoughtful and fanciful beyond their years. Beautiful horse-chestnut trees cast their shadows round this ruin, and were the home of innumerable birds who nested there. Upon the walls among the cankered and unnailed espaliers were niches for Madonnas and fragments of crucifixes; and vines hung there in ragged festoons to the ground. Through these dismantled cloisters and spacious abbey-chambers the imagination of the boys ran riot, and it cast a sort of poetic glamour over their young and solitary lives.
To this secluded place came, at one period of Victor's childhood, General Lahorie, his godfather, hiding from the authorities, who had set a price upon his head; and here he was securely hidden by Madame Hugo for two years, as Victor Hugo afterwards pictured Jean Valjean as being concealed there by the old gardener. Lahorie was implicated in Moreau's plot against Napoleon, and was being diligently sought after by the police all the time he occupied the ruined chapel in the old convent-garden. His camp bed was under the shelter of the altar; in a corner were his pistols; and although the rain and snow came in through the dilapidated windows, he bivouacked here in winter as well as summer. The children never knew who he was; he was called simply "the General," and was much loved by the boys, to whom he talked much of their country and of liberty. After a time, under the promise of pardon if he came forward to receive it, he was betrayed into giving himself up; was arrested at once, cast into prison, and afterward shot,—one of the most infamous of the acts of Napoleon, noted throughout his whole career for treachery and insatiable bloodthirstiness.
This devilish betrayal of his early friend did not fail to impress the mind of such a boy as Victor Hugo, and to add to his natural hatred of tyrants and their deeds. It was perhaps the most lasting and impressive lesson that he ever learned, and the world has seen its results in his life. Throughout all the varied years of a long and eventful career, it was ever at the shrine of liberty that he paid his devotions, ever her praises that he sung in his loftiest verse, ever for her that he struck the strongest blows of which his arm was capable.
Almost solitary as were the lives of the children under Madame Hugo's watchful eyes, the one visitor who was admitted to their companionship was welcomed with more than the accustomed warmth of children. This was a little girl named Adèle Foucher (about thirteen or fourteen years old when she first visited them), who used occasionally to spend the day with the boys in the garden. Victor soon felt for her the most tender and chivalric regard. He has himself described it once and again, the first time in the story of Pepita, in "Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné," where "he sees her in all her charms, just fourteen years of age, with large lustrous eyes and luxuriant hair, with rich golden-brown skin and crimson lips; he dwells on the proud emotion which he felt as she leaned upon his arm; he recounts how they wandered, talking softly, along the shaded walks; he tells how he picked up for her the handkerchief she had dropped, and was conscious of her hands trembling as they touched his own. And he recollects how they talked about the birds, the stars, and the golden sunset,—sometimes, too, about her school-fellows, her dresses, and her ribbons; they blushed together over the most innocent of thoughts." Again, in "Les Misérables," Victor Hugo reverts to the scenes of his youth, and to his child-love.
"Marius" is but a free variation of himself; the circumstances are changed, but the character is the same, and the garden scenes between Marius and Cosette are but faint reproductions of passages in the courtship of the poet and Mlle. Foucher. Victor had begun to write poetry by this time, and some of his earlier efforts had attracted considerable attention. His whole ambition lay in this direction. We are told by his biographer that—
"his greatest pleasure was to accompany his mother to M. Foucher's house, and there spend long evenings in unspoken admiration of the maiden to whom his whole heart was devoted. It was not long before these admiring glances were noticed by the parents, to whom the danger of encouraging such a passion was apparent, as both the young people were of an age when marriage was out of the question. By mutual consent the two families broke off their intimacy for a time. Victor Hugo found expression for his grief at the separation, in a poem that is full of sad and gentle dignity. . . . In spite of apparent resignation, the obstacles placed in the way of his passion only increased its intensity, and absence, instead of extinguishing his love, served only to increase it. His fevered imagination devised a thousand means by which he might catch a glimpse of one without whom he felt it impossible to exist. Numberless are the stratagems he contrived, and incredible the ingenuity with which they were executed; the freshness of his romance was itself an exquisite idyl. . . . Victor never despaired; but in the midst of his anticipations he was overwhelmed by a terrible blow."
Madame Hugo died very suddenly in the summer of 1821, and the grief of her son was deep and lasting. He could no longer remain away from the one being he felt could afford him comfort, and he went boldly to the house of M. Foucher and declared his love for Mlle. Adéle, asking of her parents her hand in marriage. Although both were so young, and they had as yet no means of living, the parents did not deny the suit, only stipulating that there should be no present thought of marriage. Victor was very poor at this time, his allowance from his father having been withdrawn, and he having no settled employment; so the lovers were unwillingly forced to accept these terms. They were very happy at this time, despite his privations, which were very real, and hard for one brought up in comfort, as he had been, to endure. For a whole year he lived on seven hundred francs, which he earned by his pen, cooking his own meals in his humble lodgings, and finding them sometimes scanty and unsatisfactory. He tells us he had but three shirts at this time, and sometimes found it difficult to be as neat as he desired. It was not long, however, before the verses of the young poet attracted the attention of the king, who bestowed a pension upon him of one thousand francs, from his private purse. This enabled the poet to consummate his marriage with Mlle. Foucher, which was done in October, 1822. The bridegroom, whose fortune consisted of eight hundred francs, presented his bride with a wedding dress of French cashmere. The brightness of the occasion was destroyed by a sudden attack of insanity which overtook Victor's brother Eugene,—an attack from which he never recovered. Victor now began in earnest his literary work, and soon published his first novel, "Han d'Islande," which is said to bear a marked resemblance to the works of Walter Scott. He soon followed this with his plays, "Marion Delorme" and "Hernani," the former of which was soon prohibited by the Government.
The first representation of "Hernani" was an event long remembered in Paris. It was supposed that the classical school would receive the new drama with little favor, and would perhaps drive it from the stage; so the friends of the new movement in literature determined to organize for its defence; and as Victor Hugo had decided against having the usual paid claquers, they determined to form themselves into such a body and carry the play through at all hazards. Fired with zeal, all the young litterateurs of the day organized in companies, each under a captain of its own, and at an early hour in the afternoon of the day set for the performance, appeared before the theatre. Among those selected as captains was Théophile Gautier, then but nineteen years old. He determined to appear in a dress worthy of the occasion, and demanded such a costume of his tailor as that worthy man had never before prepared for a human being,—not even a poet. The waistcoat was of scarlet satin, and, according to Gautier's directions, it was made to open behind. The trousers were of a pale-green tint, with a stripe of black velvet down the seams, a black coat with broad velvet facings, and a voluminous gray overcoat turned up with green satin. A piece of watered ribbon did duty both for collar and neck-tie. With his long hair streaming down his back, and in this remarkable costume, Gautier must certainly have presented a picturesque appearance. Many other of the "Hernani" partisans appeared in costumes quite as eccentric. The passers-by stopped and stared at them in astonishment. Some of them wore soft felt hats, some appeared in coats of velvet or satin, frogged, broidered, or trimmed with fur; others were enveloped in Spanish cloaks, and the array of caps was quite miraculous. Most of them wore prodigious beards and long hair, at a time when every well-regulated citizen was closely cropped and shaven. They waited more than six hours in the street, and the moment the doors were opened rushed in and took possession of the theatre. They had brought their lunches; and eggs, sausages, and bottles of wine were consumed in the seats of the theatre where the fine ladies usually sat. The evening was tumultuous in the extreme; but whenever the classics hissed, the disciples of Romanticism not only cheered, but rose to their feet and howled. When the groans of the Philistines became unbearable, the enthusiasts of the pit would drown them by shouting "To the guillotine with the sycophants." But though the evening was a continual uproar, no doubt was entertained at its close that the victory was with the Romanticists; and at the conclusion of the performance the name of the author was proclaimed as that of a victorious general, and the shouts of acclamation overwhelmed the storm of hisses. Victor Hugo was the great star of the French capital from that day.
Meanwhile, all was happiness in the poet's household. The wife of his youthful dreams presided with tact and grace over his home and her dark Spanish beauty was much admired by the crowds of youthful friends who now began to frequent the house. This type of beauty appears almost as constantly in Victor Hugo's books as the head of La Fornarina did in the pictures of Raphael. He seems constantly to seek to immortalize her whom he had chosen for his own. Madame Hugo's picture was painted for the Salon by their friend M. Louis Boulanger, and was thus described at the time:—
"A full, well-developed bust, white arms of perfect form; a pair of plump, delicate hands that a queen might envy; the hips high, and setting off a figure that was faultless in its contour and flexibility."
She performed her duties as hostess with infinite grace, and her salon was filled with celebrities like Lamartine, who would write verses in her album, and with women like Madame de Girardin. The house was always filled with visitors, attracted by the fascinations of the hostess as much as by the joyousness of the poet. As Victor Hugo's fame increased, we are told that—
"the calm serenity of his early years of married life was somewhat disturbed by the cares and anxieties that glory brings; but at the time of his residence in the Place Royale, of which we have been speaking, there was great happiness in the household, with the young and beautiful children."
The beautiful Madame Drouet, then an actress upon the Parisian stage, was said to have come between the poet and his wife at a later day; and it is certain that she shared his banishment, assisting him much in his literary labor, and finally, after the death of the poet's wife, came to preside over his home in the last days, cherishing her love for him to the very close of his life. She is said to have been very beautiful, even in old age, when her hair, Alphonse Daudet tells us, was as white as swan's-down.
It is not our purpose to deal with the public life of Victor Hugo, and we pass over all that occurred up to the time of the exile, after the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon. The historian tells us that—
"Victor Hugo had asked the Assembly whether, having had a Napoleon the Great, they were now to have a Napoleon the Little; he had inquired of the Royalists how it was that they entered into such strange fellowship with the Empire, pointing out significantly how the Imperialists who had murdered the Duc D'Enghien, and the Legitimatists who had shot Murat, were now grasping each other's blood-stained hands. From the tribune he had proclaimed that the Republic is invincible, and that in France it would prove itself indestructible, as being identical on the one hand with the age, on the other with the people. In lofty language, alike prophetic of the future and condemnatory of the present, he had poured out his indignation in the ears of the nation. The result of all this was that Bonaparte wrote his name at the head of the list of the proscribed."
Feeling that if he remained in Paris his life would be sacrificed to no purpose, he endeavored to get away from the city. This was no easy matter to accomplish, and had it not been for the active and skilful assistance of Madame Drouet, he would doubtless have been imprisoned, with his many friends, who crowded all the jails of Paris. A price was set upon his head; twenty-five thousand francs was offered to any one who would either kill or arrest him, and there were many assassins lurking about in waiting for him. Madame Drouet took him in a fiacre, and secretly started out to seek for him a refuge. She thought she had friends who would shelter him, as Madame Hugo had sheltered Lahorie during the troublous times of the first Empire. She applied to friend after friend in vain. She wept, she implored, she tried to bribe,—in vain. The citizens were too much intimidated to dare shelter one of the proscribed,—even Victor Hugo, perhaps the most honored man in the nation. Madame Drouet, however, would not yield to despair, but pursued her way with undaunted determination. The drive was terrible,—past ruined barricades and pointed cannon, through bloody patrols, and among the police so thoroughly accustomed to the hunting of men. They passed more than one Javert in that fearful ride; and when Victor Hugo afterwards described the sensations of a man pursued like Jean Valjean, he did not have to draw very strongly upon his imagination. The horrible feeling of doubt and distrust, and the cold thrills of dread at every change of circumstance, were well known to his own soul. Madame Drouet's perseverance was at last rewarded by finding a temporary retreat for her charge under the roof of a distant relative of the poet, where he remained five days, filled with the most harrowing anxiety for the friends whom he was endangering, as well as for himself. His two sons were already in prison, and fears for their safety were added to his other burdens. But he escaped at last, in disguise, and fled to Brussels, now filled with French exiles. He managed to communicate with his wife, but his sons in their prison-cells could only conjecture as to his fate. But they heard the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry outside the walls, and knew that the prison was overflowing with victims; and they feared the worst. Madame Hugo soon joined her husband in Brussels, and he immediately set to work to write "L'Histoire d'un Crime," and completed it in five months. With the power of a Tacitus he describes the scenes of the great historical drama he has taken part in, and with the pen of a Juvenal lashes the betrayers of the Republic. The book was not published till 1877, but it will tell the story of a shameful epoch in French history to the remotest time. He was not allowed to enjoy his refuge in Brussels long; almost as soon as he had printed his "Napoleon the Little," which book he wrote after completing the "History of a Crime," he was requested by the Belgian government to leave the country.
He repaired to the Island of Jersey, where he was joined by his sons upon their release, and by quite a party of friends. He took a small house known as Marine Terrace, on the sea-shore, and there set up his household gods once more. The house was only one story high, but it had a balcony, a terrace, and a garden; and it overlooked the sea, which seemed more than all to Victor Hugo. His income was now but seven thousand francs, and he had nine persons to provide for. No more money could be expected from France, and probably no more from literature, at present. But his busy pen kept at its work, trusting to the future; and the time passed not altogether unpleasantly to the little body of exiles. Jersey is of itself delightful, and the poet found great pleasure in its climate, its scenery, and its luxuriant vegetation. But Napoleon did not at all enjoy the proximity of his great enemy, and soon took measures to drive him from his retreat. Hearing of the new move against him, Victor Hugo took occasion to defy Napoleon, and to "warn him that whether it be from France, from Belgium, from England, or from America, my voice shall never cease to declare that sooner or later he will have to expiate the crime of the 2d of December. What is said is true: there is a personal quarrel between him and me; there is the old quarrel of the judge upon the bench and the prisoner at the bar." They were ordered to quit the Island of Jersey, and were treated to some scenes of violence before departing, which they did with considerable regret, having found life in that favored region comfortable, if not inspiring. They received a warm welcome at Guernsey, whither they retreated, and soon made a new home on that hospitable shore. A large and convenient residence, known as Hauteville House, situated on the top of a cliff, was rented and repaired, and served as a home for the poet and his friends during all the remaining years of his exile, which were destined to be many. Victor Hugo changed and beautified the house according to his own ideas, doing much of the work with his own hands; and the result is something eminently characteristic of the man.
On the third story is the study, a kind of belvedere, with its sides and roof composed of glass. In this study, which overlooked the little town of St. Sampson and its picturesque promontory, the poet did his work. Here he finished "Les Misérables," which had been begun in the Place Royale; here was produced the magnificent essay on Shakspeare; and here he worked almost literally from morning until night. The house became a refuge for exiles from many lands, and a chamber, still known as "Garibaldi's room," was fitted up expressly for that hero, under the expectation that he would accept the invitation of Victor Hugo to share his home, at a time when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Many literary men were here at different times, generously cared for by the host, who called the retreat "the raft of Medusa." There were many pets also, especially dogs, as Victor Hugo almost shared the sentiment of Madame de Staël concerning these animals, "The more I know men, the better I love dogs."
The wonderful success of "Les Misérables," when it was published in 1862, called the attention of the whole world to the illustrious exile on the sea-girt isle, and after that time he was overwhelmed with visitors from all parts of the earth, anxious to see one who had come to be looked upon as the greatest man of his time. The success of the book was unprecedented, the sales were enormous, and the enthusiasm of readers and critics almost without a parallel.
Madame Hugo died in 1868, and it was always a great grief to her husband that she could not have lived to share his return to his native land, which took place after the downfall of Louis Napoleon in 1870. After nineteen years of exile, he returned to his country only to find it in the hands of the Prussians first, and of the Commune afterward. One of his companions on that eventful journey thus describes the feelings of the returned exile:—
"Making good their retreat from Mézières, on their way to Paris, the remnant of Vinoy's corps, poor, harassed creatures, covered with dust and discolored with powder, pale with exertion and discouragement, were lying all along the road. Close behind them were the Uhlans. There was no alternative for them but flight, if they would escape the disaster that had befallen the army at Sedan. Defeat was written in their faces, demoralization was evident in their attitude, they were dejected and dirty, they were like pebbles driven along by a hurricane. But what of that? Anyhow, they were soldiers of France; their uniform proclaimed their nationality: they wore the blue tunic and the red trousers,—but what was of infinitely more consequence, they were carrying their colors back with them. Their defeat did not prevent them bringing back the tri-color safe and sound.
"Great tears rolled from Victor Hugo's eyes. He leaned from the carriage-window, and with a voice thrilling in its earnestness, he kept shouting: 'Vive la France, vive l'armée, vive la patrie!' Exhausted as they were with hunger and fatigue, the bewildered soldiers looked up. They scarcely comprehended what he said, but he continued his shouting, and it was almost like an order of quick march to them all, when they made out that they were being assured that they had done their duty, and that it was by no fault of theirs that they had sustained defeat.
"And so the train went on. The tears still lost themselves in Victor Hugo's snowy beard. He had lived in the proud illusion that France was invincible; he was a soldier's son, and could not conceive that the soldiers of his country were not pledged to glory."
It was ten o'clock when the train reached Paris, but a great crowd which had been gathering for hours was there to receive him. With continued acclamations they bore him to the house of his friend Paul Meurice, where he was to stay, and called upon him continually for a speech. He said a few words to the crowd, at the station and at the house, but gladly sought the seclusion of his new home, being completely overcome with emotion. This was at the beginning of the investment of the city by the Prussian troops, and he witnessed the whole of the siege of Paris, and endured its privations with the people. He also witnessed the terrible deeds of the Communists, but—sympathizing, as he always had done, with the poor and the downtrodden—only to condemn them with the utmost vehemence of his nature. Still, he desired their pardon when all was over, feeling for the ignorance which had caused their misguided zeal. About this time his son Charles died very suddenly, which was a great blow to him, and he began to feel that all things were falling away from him.
The death of his youngest son, François, in 1873, removed the last prop of his age, and only two young grandchildren remained of all who had composed his beloved family. The mother of these children, and her second husband, however, were very much loved by the old poet, and watched very tenderly over his declining years. The children were a source of constant interest and pleasure to him, and have become well known to the world through his work upon "The Art of being a Grandfather." Of the honors which were showered upon him from every side in his closing years, it is useless to write. All are familiar with them, as with the magnificent demonstrations after his death. It is safe to say that few men have been so honored while living, or held in such sacred remembrance after death.
Upon no woman of the century has the public fixed its eye with a more eager interest and curiosity than upon Aurore Dudevant, known to the world as George Sand.
The utmost heights of panegyric and adulation have been scaled in describing her and her work; also the lowest depths of denunciation and of calumny. Her admirers describe her as being not only the greatest genius of her time, which perhaps few will dispute, but as being the most magnificent and adorable of women as well; while her detractors can find no language in which to express the depths of their loathing both for her life and some of her works. As usual, a just estimate of such a character as this will be found between the two extremes. She was neither a monster nor a saint, but a woman of magnificent qualities and of defects upon a corresponding scale. As with her life, so with her works. Some are undoubtedly pernicious to an alarming degree, while the influence of others cannot by any stretch of imagination be called bad. The two kinds may perhaps be divided under the head of earlier and later works. When the tumultuous feelings and wild visions of youth were calmed by age, a new kind of literary product came forth. And her life in its latter years was as quiet as her books, and ran as little against the traditions and usages of mankind.
George Sand was born in 1804, and descended from Marshal Saxe, the natural son of the King of Poland. This Marshal Saxe was one of the bravest but most licentious men of his time,—a time not noted for its domestic virtues. She was brought up in the country until fifteen years of age, in the midst of the elegancies of an aristocratic home. But her unbounded vitality called loudly for an out-of-door life, and she lived the life of a boy, never wearying of its rude sports, and enjoying its sometimes dangerous excitements. At the close of her fifteenth year she was taken to the Augustine Convent in Paris, where she remained for three years, and where she passed through a very intense religious experience and came near becoming a nun. It is a curious piece of speculation to try to imagine what her life as a nun would have been, had this design been carried out. Would the prayers and litanies, the penances and the fasts, have tamed her wild blood? Would her nature have still asserted itself under the cap of the sister? would she have led a revolt against authority within the church as she did without? Are there any such fierce, tumultuous natures as hers to-day kneeling on stony cloister floors? Can matins and vespers, the odors of incense, and the sacred ceremonial of the church fill up for an ardent nature all that the service of the world supplies? We shall never know; for the real history of a faithful daughter of the church will never be written. The story of the three years of George Sand's convent life is very charming, full of variety and sincerity, and matchless in point of style; but it is a fragment.
She came out of the convent a young woman knowing absolutely nothing of real life. The object of all who have charge of young girls in France is to keep them in perfect ignorance of the world. The safety that lies in knowledge is utterly forbidden to them. They are supposed to be children, and are watched over as such until a marriage can be arranged. And this marriage, whatever it may be, is usually accepted by the girl as an escape from a sort of slavery. She is always told that she may only do the things she desires to do after marriage. And it is very unusual for any girl to object to the wishes of her friends in this matter. The whole system of marriage in France is so utterly abominable that no other civilized land would tolerate it; and this sacrifice of the young and ignorant is only one of its diabolical features. Aurore Dudevant did not seem to object more than the rest. She was married, and lived for eight years with her husband, becoming the mother of two children.
She then left him and her estate of Nohant, and went up to Paris, taking her two children with her. She sacrificed her personal fortune—which was considerable—in doing so, and was obliged to earn her own living. She tried various things in the artistic line before she essayed the writing of books. At last with one grand bound she leaped before the world in "Indiana." Of course she had written some things of small value before this, but that wonderful book was really her introduction to the world. And it brought the whole literary world to her feet. Thereafter her friends were the first men of France. De Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, Michel, Alfred de Musset, Chopin, Liszt, Delacroix, Béranger, Sainte-Beuve, Gustave Planche, Mazzini, were her friends, her intimates, or her lovers.
Alfred de Musset was the first who found favor with her heart, it appears; and they were inseparably associated for about three years. This brilliant young poet, so sceptical, so sad, so audacious, so dissolute, was the first of this famous coterie of men to become madly infatuated with George Sand,—but far from the last. It is asserted that each in turn, and many more besides, were the victims of her luring wiles. For many years the wildest stories were afloat concerning her and her enchantments. And the fact that two or three of her most ardent worshippers ended their lives for her sake only added to the interest and the horror with which the world of respectability and morality looked upon this strange woman. She had broken once for all with the world of conventionality, and was free to follow whatever inclination seized upon her, unrestrained by aught but conscience,—for we are far from thinking that she ever parted permanently with that disagreeable but useful monitor.
So she lived out her brief romance with De Musset, and, apparently unmindful of his tragic end, entered upon a new epoch of her life with that most remarkable modern musical genius, Chopin.
Poor Alfred de Musset has had the sympathy of all classes and conditions of men, apparently, from that day to this. She tried to vindicate herself in the affair by publishing a book entitled "Elle et Lui," "wherein she depicted the sufferings of an angelic woman, all tenderness, love, and patience, whose fate was joined to that of a man all egotism, selfishness, sensuousness, and eccentricity." How grandly the woman suffered, and how wantonly the man flung happiness away, is told with all the impassioned fervor of George Sand in her early writings. The taste of the whole proceeding was revoltingly low, and no more than matched by that of the rejoinder, which was made in a book called "Lui et Elle," written by Paul de Musset after his brother's death. In this book the picture is reversed: "a hideous woman is portrayed, utterly selfish, dissolute, heartless; and her lover, who is easily recognized as Musset himself, is described as having almost all of the heroic virtues." Both books were thoroughly French,—thoroughly execrable.
Chopin at first feared Madame Sand very much, and refused to be presented to her; but as she persisted in her desire to make the acquaintance of so fine and delicate a genius, they at last met, and the fate of poor Chopin was at once sealed. He was consumed from the very first by an absorbing passion, to which no other name but morbid infatuation could be applied. Madame Sand herself describes it in "Lucrezia Floriani" thus:—
"For it seemed as if this fragile being was absorbed and consumed by his affection. . . . Others seek happiness in their attachments; when they no longer find it, the attachment gently vanishes. But he loved for the sake of loving. No amount of suffering was sufficient to discourage him. He could enter upon a new phase, that of woe; but the phase of coldness he could never arrive at. It would have been indeed a phase of physical agony,—for his love was his life, and, delicious or bitter, he had not the power of withdrawing himself a single moment from its domination."
Chopin, suffering from severe sickness, was ordered to a warmer climate; and in the fall of 1837 Madame Sand accompanied him to the Island of Majorca, where she nursed him back to life, although his friends at the time of his departure never thought to see him again, and although he was dangerously ill for a long time after their arrival. This solitude, surrounded by the blue waves of the Mediterranean, and shaded by groves of orange, seemed fitted by its exceeding loveliness for the ardent vows of youthful lovers, still believing in their naïve and sweet illusions, sighing for happiness in some desert isle. In this case it was the refuge of those who had grown weary and disenchanted with life, but who hoped in deep devotion to each other to find some solace for their sadness. The memory of those days, like the remembrance of an entrancing ecstasy which Fate grants but once in a lifetime to her most favored children, always remained dear to the heart of Chopin. When he was restored to health they returned to Paris, where their friendship was continued for about eight years. She then severed her connection with him. Liszt asks in regard to this, in his life of Chopin:—
"Has genius ever attained that utter self-abnegation, that sublime humility of heart which gives the power to make those strange sacrifices of the entire Past, of the whole Future; those immolations as courageous as mysterious; those mystic and utter holocausts of self, not temporary and changing, but monotonous and constant,—through whose might alone tenderness may justly claim the higher word devotion? Has not the force of genius its own exclusive and legitimate exactions, and does not the force of woman consist in the abdication of all exactions? Can the purple and burning flames of genius ever float over the immaculate azure of a woman's destiny?"
Liszt also tells us that—
"Chopin spoke frequently and almost by preference of Madame Sand, without bitterness or recrimination. Tears always filled his eyes when he named her; but with a kind of bitter sweetness he gave himself up to the memories of past days, alas, now stripped of their manifold significance. . . . All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects were made in vain; he refused to be comforted, and would constantly speak of the one engrossing subject. . . . He was another great and illustrious victim to the transitory attachments occurring between persons of different character, who, experiencing a surprise full of delight in their first sudden meeting, mistake it for a durable feeling, and build hopes and illusions upon it which can never be realized. It is always the nature the most deeply moved, the most absolute in its hopes and attachments, for which all transplantation is impossible, which is destroyed and ruined in the painful awakening from the absorbing dream. . . . Chopin felt, and often repeated, that the sundering of this long friendship, the rupture of this strong tie, broke all the cords which bound him to life."
Her friends say, upon her part, that he was a morbid, dreary invalid, jealous beyond endurance, and that she suffered much at his hands, and separated from him only when she could endure his exactions no longer. He did not long survive the sundering of their relations, and died in Paris in 1849, very deeply deplored by all admirers of his genius. Chopin was a wonderfully gifted and very remarkable man, exceedingly reserved, and with little of the egotism of genius. His eyes were blue and dreamy, his smile very sweet, his complexion very fair and delicate, his hair light in color, soft and silky, his nose slightly aquiline. His bearing was so distinguished, and his manners stamped with so much high breeding, that involuntarily he was always treated en prince. His gestures were many and graceful, yet he was on the whole serene in his bearing, and generally gay in company, though subject to moods of deep melancholy. He was passionately devoted to Poland all his life, and when he was dying requested the Countess Potocka to sing to him the melodies of his country. He was deeply religious in nature, a devout Catholic.
It was during the years of which we have been speaking that George Sand produced her most famous works. "Indiana" was followed by "Valentine," "Lelia," and "Lettres d'un Voyageur." Others followed in quick succession, many of them dealing with the subject of marriage in such a manner as to raise a most violent storm about her head. People who had never read these books described them as being of revolting indecency; and that impression prevails in many quarters even yet. In point of fact, she is no more open to the charge of indelicacy than any prominent English novelist of the day. The opinions are bad enough many times, but the style is always pure and perfect. This is the answer she herself made to her critics:—
"I was astounded when a few Saint Simonians, conscientious and sincere philanthropists, estimable and sincere seekers of truth, asked me what I would put in the place of husbands. I answered them naïvely that it was marriage; in the same way as in the place of priests who have so much compromised religion, I believe it is religion which ought to be put. . . . That love which I erect and crown over the ruins of the infamous, is my Utopia, my dream, my poetry. That love is grand, noble, beautiful, voluntary, eternal; but that love is marriage such as Jesus made it, such as Saint Paul explained it. This I ask of society as an innovation, as an institution lost in the night of ages, which it would be opportune to revive, to draw from the dust of æons, and the shrine of habits, if it wishes to see real conjugal fidelity, real repose, and the real sanctity of the family, replace the species of shameful contract and stupid despotism bred by the infamous decrepitude of the world."
It must always be remembered that she wrote of French marriages, in which there is no pretence of having love to start with; and if we remember this, her language can scarcely be considered too strong. The system is utterly vile, and her hatred of it an honor to her in every sense. Had she done nothing worse than to protest against this form of marriage few would condemn her; her condemnation comes rather from the life she felt it consistent with her theories to live for many years.
What the world said was: "The welfare of the human family demands that a marriage legally made shall never be questioned or undone. Marriage is not a union depending on love, or congeniality, or any such condition. It is just as sacred when made for money, or for ambition, or for lust of the flesh, or for any other purpose, however ignoble or base, as when contracted in the spirit of the purest mutual love." Against all this, George Sand, both with pen and life, protested. She contended that it was love alone which made marriage anything but a disgusting sin. We have heard much of this in these latter days, even in our own country, but it was George Sand who first struck the keynote; the doctrine is essentially hers in all its parts. That she denounced the whole system of marriages of convenience, is an honor to her; that she proclaimed love as the only true foundation for marriage, is equally an honor; but that she assailed the institution of legal marriage as a whole, and overleaped its bounds and became a law to herself in the matter, is her weakness and her shame. It is frequently denied that she did this. It is said that she did not assail the institution of marriage, but only the things that are perpetrated in its name.
"But all the same [as another has well said], her eloquent expositions of ill-assorted unions, her daring appeals from the obligations they impose to the affections they outrage, her assertion of the rights of nature over the conventions of society, have the final effect of justifying the violation of duty on the precarious ground of passion and inclination.
"Nobody who knows what the actual life of George Sand has been can doubt for a moment the true nature of her opinions on the subject of marriage. It is not a pleasant subject to touch, and we should shrink from it if it were not as notorious as everything else by which she has become famous in her time. It forms in reality as much a part of the philosophy she desires to impress upon the world as the books through which she has expanded her theory. It is neither more nor less than her theory of freedom and independence in the matter of passion (we dare not dignify it by any higher name) put into action,—rather vagrant action, we fear, but on that account all the more decisive."
Society and she were naturally at war from the beginning of her career; and she suffered from it, though she dealt many bitter blows at it even while she suffered. "What has it done," she says in one place,—
"what has it done for our moral education, and what is it doing for our children, this society shielded with such care? Nothing. Those whom it calls vain complainers, and rebels, and madmen, may reply: Suffer us to bewail our martyrs, poets without a country that we are, forlorn singers well versed in the causes of their misery and of our own. You do not comprehend the malady which killed them; they themselves did not comprehend it. If one or two of us at the present day open our eyes to a new light, is it not by a strange and unaccountable good Providence? and have we not to seek our grain of faith in storm and darkness, combated by doubt, irony, the absence of all sympathy, all example, all brotherly aid, all protection and countenance in high places? Try yourselves to speak to your brethren heart to heart, conscience to conscience! Try it! but you cannot, busied as you are with watching and patching up in all directions your dykes which the flood is invading: the material existence of this society of yours absorbs all your cares, and requires more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the powers of human thought are growing into strength and rise on all sides around you. Among these threatening apparitions there are some which fade away and re-enter the darkness, because the hour of life has not yet struck, and the fiery spirit which quickened them could strive no longer with the horrors of the present chaos; but there are others that can wait, and you will find them confronting you, up and alive, to say, 'You have allowed the death of our brethren, and we, we do not mean to die.'"
But she rises after a while out of her depths of passionate contention with a world out of joint, with the reign of stupidity and the tyranny of convention, into serener heights; and in her later books she gives us exquisite pictures of nature, with which she has the closest sympathy; lovely stories of rural life and gentle tales of perfectly pure love. Her passionate resentment against the world has worn itself out, and she is calmer, wiser now. Her daughter, too, Solange, has grown to be a woman and has a lover of her own, and the household thoughts and cares, and the tenderness of a serious and unselfish cast which creep into a mother's heart upon such occasions, shed their sweetness upon this wayward soul, and inspire it with congenial utterances. Now she looks back and says:—
"My poor children, my own flesh and blood, will perhaps turn upon me and say: 'You are leading us wrong; you mean to ruin us as well as yourself. Are you not unhappy, reprobated, evil spoken of? What have you gained by these unequal struggles, by these much-trumpeted duels of yours with Custom and Belief? Let us do as others do; let us get what is to be got from this easy and tolerant world.' This is what they will say to me. Or at best, if, out of tenderness for me, or from their own natural disposition, they give ear to my words and believe me, whither should I guide them? Into what abysses shall we go and plunge ourselves, we three? for we shall be our own three upon earth, and not one soul with us. What shall I reply to them, if they come and say to me: 'Yes, life is unbearable in a world like this. Let us die together. Show us the path of Bernica, or the Lake of Sténio, or the glaciers of Jacques'?"
Again, in the later times, she said:—
"Let us all try to be saints, and if we succeed we will know all the more how difficult a thing it is, and what indulgence is owed to those who are not yet saints. Then we shall acknowledge that there is something to be modified, either in law or opinion; for the aim of society should be to render perfection accessible to all, and man is very feeble when he struggles alone against the mad torrent of custom and of ideas."
A very wise, saying truly, written out of her own experience. Sad, too, as is much of her later writing, though there is not in it the passionate despair of her earlier work.
She lived to be seventy-two years old, and had known and experienced many phases of life,—the tumultuous passions and the wild revolt of youth, the cooler and more self-contained life of middle age, and the sombre color of a rather hopeless old age. Even in age she had her pleasures, however. She delighted in her grandchildren, in books, in pictures, in nature, and in work. Her unwearied pen moved until the last, and did not lose its cunning. There was much of the old strength and power to the last. But she had ceased to desire to destroy; she sought at last to build up.
Here are two descriptions of her as she appeared to different observers, in youth and in later life. Heine, who saw with the eye of an artist and wrote with the pen of a critic, described her in youth:—
"George Sand, the greatest of French writers, is a woman of remarkable beauty. Like the genius revealed in her writings, her countenance may rather be called beautiful than fascinating. The face of George Sand has precisely the character of Grecian regularity. The cut of her features has not exactly the severity of antique models; her face is softened by modern sentiment, which veils it with sadness. Her forehead is not high, and her rich and luxuriant brown hair falls from either side of her head upon her shoulders. Her eyes are not brilliant; has their fire gone out under frequent tears, or only in her writings? George Sand's eyes are soft and tranquil. Her nose is neither aquiline, nor spiritual, nor pugged; it is a straight and ordinary nose. Around her mouth habitually plays a smile of kindness and benevolence, but not very bewitching: her inferior lip protrudes a little, and seems to reveal a fatigue of the senses. Her chin is finely formed. Her shoulders are magnificent; also her hands, her arms, her feet, which are very small. George Sand is beautiful like the Venus of Milo."
Now hear one who described her in old age:—
"She was not at all like the woman of my imagination; she looked very little like the bold and vigorous thinker she is; one would have taken her at first sight for a gentle, serene old grandmother. She is short, and inclined to embonpoint. Her hair, which is still abundant, though faded by time, was simply arranged. Her features are not striking; her eyes have that vague, dreamy look which she herself refers to in her 'Histoire de Ma Vie' as one of her marked characteristics."
Most people in her youth found her beautiful, though some thought her face heavy, and even coarse; but she had a matchless charm of manner which had far more effect than any mere beauty. She seemed to enslave men at her will. Poets, artists, statesmen, and priests, were all at her side, or at her feet. Her manner, at least in later life, was very retiring, and she was singularly modest and free from literary vanity. When asked once which of her works she preferred, she answered, apparently quite sincerely, "Mon Dieu, I detest them all."
Let us close with Matthew Arnold's tribute of respect:—
"It is silent, that eloquent voice; it is sunk, that noble, that speaking head; we sum up as we best can what she said to us, and we bid her adieu. From many hearts, in many lands, a troop of tender and grateful regrets converge toward her humble churchyard in Berry. Let them be joined by these words of sad homage from one of a nation which she esteemed, and which knew her very little and very ill. Her guiding thought, the guiding thought which she did her best to make ours too, 'the sentiment of the ideal life, which is none other than man's normal life as we shall one day know it,' is in harmony with words and promises familiar to that sacred place where she lies."
Over her grave might well be written those words over another grave in Père-la-Chaise:—
He Knoweth.