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Gilbert Parker - "Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Volume 5."

Georg Ebers - "In The Blue Pike, Volume 3."

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John S. C. Abbott - "David Crockett: His Life and Adventures"

Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

F >> Frederick Niecks >> Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician




All this time George Sand had, according to agreement, spent
alternately three months in Paris and three months at Nohant. A
letter written by M. Dudevant to his wife in 1831 furnishes a
curious illustration of the relation that existed between husband
and wife. The accommodating spirit which pervades it is most
charming:--

I shall go to Paris; I shall not put up at your lodgings, for
I do not wish to inconvenience you any more than I wish you
to inconvenience me (parceque je ne veux pas vous gener, pas
plus que je ne veux que vous me geniez).

In August, 1833, George Sand and Alfred de Musset met for the
first time at a dinner which the editor Buloz gave to the
contributors to the Revue des deux Mondes. The two sat beside
each other. Musset called on George Sand soon after, called again
and again, and before long was passionately in love with her. She
reciprocated his devotion. But the serene blissfulness of the
first days of their liaison was of short duration. Already in the
following month they fled from the Parisian surroundings and
gossipings, which they regarded as the disturbers of their
harmony. After visiting Genoa, Florence, and Pisa, they settled
at Venice. Italy, however, did not afford them the hoped-for
peace and contentment. It was evident that the days of
"adoration, ecstasy, and worship" were things of the past.
Unpleasant scenes became more and more frequent. How, indeed,
could a lasting concord be maintained by two such disparate
characters? The woman's strength and determination contrasted
with the man's weakness and vacillation; her reasoning
imperturbation, prudent foresight, and love of order and
activity, with his excessive irritability and sensitiveness,
wanton carelessness, and unconquerable propensity to idleness and
every kind of irregularity. While George Sand sat at her writing-
table engaged on some work which was to bring her money and fame,
Musset trifled away his time among the female singers and dancers
of the noiseless city. In April, 1834, before the poet had quite
recovered from the effects of a severe attack of typhoid fever,
which confined him to his bed for several weeks, he left George
Sand after a violent quarrel and took his departure from Venice.
This, however, was not yet the end of their connection. Once
more, in spite of all that had happened, they came together; but
it was only for a fortnight (at Paris, in the autumn of 1834),
and then they parted for ever.

It is impossible, at any rate I shall not attempt, to sift the
true from the false in the various accounts which have been
published of this love-drama. George Sand's version may be read
in her Lettres d'un Voyageur and in Elle et Lui; Alfred de
Musset's version in his brother Paul's book Lui et Elle. Neither
of these versions, however, is a plain, unvarnished tale. Paul de
Musset seems to keep on the whole nearer the truth, but he too
cannot be altogether acquitted of the charge of exaggeration.
Rather than believe that by the bedside of her lover, whom she
thought unconscious and all but dead, George Sand dallied with
the physician, sat on his knees, retained him to sup with her,
and drank out of one glass with him, one gives credence to her
statement that what Alfred de Musset imagined to be reality was
but the illusion of a feverish dream. In addition to George
Sand's and Paul de Musset's versions, Louise Colet has furnished
a third in her Lui, a publication which bears the stamp of
insincerity on almost every page, and which has been described, I
think by Maxime du Camp, as worse than a lying invention--namely,
as a systematic perversion of the truth. A passage from George
Sand's Elle et Lui, in which Therese and Laurent, both artists,
are the representatives of the novelist and poet, will indicate
how she wishes the story to be read:--

Therese had no weakness for Laurent in the mocking and
libertine sense that one gives to this word in love. It was
by an act of her will, after nights of sorrowful meditation,
that she said to him--"I wish what thou wishest, because we
have come to that point where the fault to be committed is
the inevitable reparation of a series of committed faults. I
have been guilty towards thee in not having the egotistical
prudence to shun thee; it is better that I should be guilty
towards myself in remaining thy companion and consolation at
the expense of my peace and of my pride."..."Listen," she
added, holding his hand in both of hers with all the strength
she possessed, "never draw back this hand from me, and,
whatever happens, preserve so much honour and courage as not
to forget that before being thy mistress I was thy
FRIEND....I ask of thee only, if thou growest weary of my
Jove as thou now art of my friendship, to recollect that it
was not a moment of delirium that threw me into thy arms, but
a sudden impulse of my heart, and a more tender and more
lasting feeling than the intoxication of voluptuousness."

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.]

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