The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861

Uninvited, therefore, but unrepulsed, Hymen approached our heroine in the form of Casimir Dudevant, the illegitimate, but acknowledged son and heir of Colonel Dudevant, an officer of good standing and reasonable fortune. The only feeling he seems to have inspired in the bosom of his future wife was one of mild good-will. His only recommendation was a decent degree of suitableness in outward circumstances. For the true wants of her nature he had neither fitness nor sympathy; but she did not know herself then,—she was not yet George Sand. From the stand-point of her later development, her marriage would seem to us a low one; but we must remember that she started only from the plane, and not the highest plane, of French society, in which a marriage of some sort is the first necessity of a woman's life, and not the crowning point of her experience. To compensate the rigor of such a requisition, a French marriage, though civilly indissoluble, has yet a hundred modifications which remove it far from the Puritan ideal which we of the Protestant faith cherish. Hence the French novel, whose strained sentiment and deeply logical immorality have wakened strange echoes among us of the stricter rule and graver usage.

Without passion, then, or tender affection on either side, but with a tolerable harmony of views for the moment, and after long and causeless opposition on the part of Aurore's mother, this marriage took place. Aurore was but eighteen; her bridegroom was of suitable age. With dreams of a peaceful family existence, and looking forward to maternity as the great joy and office of the coming years, she brought her husband to Nohant, whose inheritance had been settled by contract upon the children of this marriage.

But these dreams were not to be realized. Aurore was not born to be the companion of a dull, narrow man, nor the Lady Bountiful of a little village in the heart of France. Would she not have had it so? She tells us that she would; and as honesty is one of her strong points, we may believe her. She knew not the stormy ocean of life, nor the precious freight she carried, when she committed the vessel of her fortunes to so careless a hand as that of M. Dudevant. She throws no special blame or odium upon him, nor does he probably deserve any.

The recital of the events spoken of above brings us well into the eighth volume of the "Histoire de ma Vie"; and as there are but ten in all, the treatment of the things that follow is pursued with much less detail, and with many a gap, which the malevolent among our author's contemporaries would assure us that they know well how to fill up. Between the extreme reserve of the last two volumes and the wild assertions of so many we would gladly keep the juste milieu, if we could; but we wish only truth, and it is not at the hands of the scandalmongers of any society—is it?—that we seek that commodity. The decree of the court which at a later day gave her the guardianship of her children, and the friendship of many illustrious and of some irreproachable men, must be accepted in favor of her of whom we write,—and the known fanaticism of slander, and the love of the marvellous, which craves, in stories of good or evil, such monstrous forms for its gratification, cause us, on the other side, to deduct a large average from the narrations current against her. But we anticipate.

Aurore, at first, was neither happy nor unhappy in her marriage. Her surroundings were friendly and pleasant, and the birth of a son, a third Maurice, soon brought to her experience the keenest joy of womanhood. Before this child numbered two years, however, she began to feel a certain blank in her household existence, an emptiness, a discouragement as to all things, whose cause she could not understand. In this ennui, she tells us, her husband sympathized, and by common consent they strove to remedy it by frequent changes of abode. They visited Paris, Plessis, returned to Nohant, made a journey in the Pyrenees, a visit to Guillery, the château of Colonel Dudevant. Still the dark guest pursued them. Aurore does not pretend that there was any special cause for her suffering. It was but the void which her passionate nature found in a conventional and limited existence, and for which as yet she knew no remedy. The fervor of Catholic devotion had, as we have seen, long forsaken her; her studies did not satisfy her; her children—she had by this time a daughter—were yet in infancy; her husband was not unkind, but indifferent, and the object of indifference. She occupied herself with the business of her estate, and with the wants of the neighboring poor; but she was unsuccessful in administering her expenses, and her narrow revenue did not allow her to give large satisfaction to her charitable impulses. After some years of seclusion and effort, she began to dream of liberty, of wealth,—in a word, of trying her fortunes in Paris. She felt a power within her for which she had found no adequate task. She speaks vaguely, too, of a Being platonically loved, and loving in like manner, absent for most of the year, and seen only for a few days at long intervals, whose correspondence had added a new influence to her life. This attenuated relation was, however, broken before she made her essay of a new life. Her half-brother, Hippolyte, brought to Nohant a habit of joviality which soon degenerated into chronic intemperance; and though she does not accuse her husband of participation in this vice, or, indeed, of any wrong towards her, she yet makes us understand that an occasional escape from Nohant became to her almost a matter of necessity. She, therefore, made arrangements, with her husband's free consent, to pass alternately three months in Paris and three months at home, for an indefinite period; and leaving Maurice in good hands, and the little Solange, her daughter, for a short time only, she came to Paris in the winter with the intention of writing.

Her hopes and pretensions were at first very modest. It had been agreed that her husband should pay her an annual pension of fifteen hundred francs. She would have been well satisfied to earn a like sum by her literary efforts. She established herself in a small mansarde, a sort of garret, and managed by great economy to furnish it so that Solange could be made comfortable. She washed and ironed her fine linen with her own hands. Not finding literary employment at once, and her slender salary running very low, she adopted male attire for a while, as she says, because she was too poor to dress herself suitably in any other. The fashion of the period was favorable to her design. Men wore long square-skirted overcoats, down to the heels. With one of these, and trousers to match, with a gray hat and large woollen cravat, she might easily pass for a young student.

"I cannot express the pleasure my boots gave me. I would gladly have slept with them on. With these little iron-shod heels, I stood firm on the pavement. I flew from one end of Paris to the other. I could have made the circuit of the world, thus attired. Besides, my clothes did not fear spoiling. I ran about in all weathers, I came back at all hours, I went to the pit of every theatre. No one paid me any attention, or suspected my disguise. Besides that, I wore it with ease; the entire want of coquetry in my costume and physiognomy disarmed all suspicion. I was too ill-dressed, and my manner was too simple, to attract or fix attention. Women know little how to disguise themselves, even upon the stage. They are unwilling to sacrifice the slenderness of their waists, the smallness of their feet, the prettiness of their movements, the brilliancy of their eyes; and it is by all these, nevertheless, it is especially by the look, that they might avoid easy detection. There is a way of gliding in everywhere without causing any one to turn round, and of speaking in a low, unmodulated tone which does not sound like a flute in the ears which may hear you. For the rest, in order not to be remarked as a man, you must already have the habit of not making yourself remarked as a woman."

This travesty, our heroine tells us, was of short duration;—it answered the convenience of some months of poverty and obscurity. Its traditions did not pass away so soon;—ten years later, her son, in his beardless adolescence, was often taken for her, and sometimes amused himself by indulging the error in those who accosted him. But in the greatly changed circumstances in which she soon found herself, the disguise became useless and unavailing. Its economy was no longer needed, and the face of its wearer was soon too well known to be concealed by hat or coat-collar.

We would not be understood as relaxing in any degree the rigor of repudiation which such an act deserved. Yet it is imaginable, even to an undepraved mind, that a woman might sometimes like to be on the other side of the fence, to view the mad bull of publicity in its own pasture, and feel that it cannot gore her. Poor George! running about in the little boots, and wearing a great ugly coat and woollen choker,—it was not through vanity that you did this. Strange sights you must have seen in Paris!—none, perhaps, stranger than yourself! The would-be nun of the English convent walking the streets in male attire, and even, as you tell us, with your hands in your pockets! Yet when little Solange came to live with you, as we understand, you put on your weeds of weakness again;—your little daughter made you once more a woman!

For she was George Sand now. Aurore Dupin was civilly dead, Aurore Dudevant was uncivilly effaced. She had taken half a name from Jules Sandeau,—she had wrought the glory of that name herself. Yes, a glory, say what you will. Elizabeth Browning's hands were not too pure to soothe that forehead, chiding while they soothed; and these hands, not illustrious as hers, shall soil themselves with no mud flung at a sister's crowned head.

Every one knows the story of the name: how she and Jules Sandeau wrote a novel together, and sought a nom de plume which should represent their literary union,—how soon she found that she could do much better alone, and the weak work of Carl Sand was forgotten in the strong personality of George Sand. Of Jules Sandeau she speaks only as of the associate of a literary enterprise;—the world accords him a much nearer relation to her; but upon this point she cannot, naturally, be either explicit or implicit. One thing is certain: she was a hard worker, and did with her might what her hand found to do. She wrote "Indiana," "Lelia," "Valentine," and had fame and money at will. Neither, however, gave her unmixed pleasure. The éclat of her reputation soon destroyed her incognito, while the sums of money she was supposed to receive for her works attracted to her innumerable beggars and adventurers of all sorts. To ascertain the real wants and character of those who in every imaginable way claimed her assistance became one of the added labors of her life. She visited wretched garrets or cellars, and saw miserable families,—discovering often, too late, that both garret and family had been hired for the occasion. It was now that she first saw the real plagues and ulcers of society. Her convent had not shown her these, nor her life amid the peasantry of Berry. Only great cities produce those unhealthy and unnatural human growths whose monstrosities are their stock in trade, whose power of life lies in their depravation. She tells us that these horrors weighed upon her, and caused her to try various solutions of the ills that are, and are permitted to be. She was never tempted to become an atheist, never lost sight of the Divine in life, yet the necessity of a terrible fatalism seemed to envelop her. With her numerous friends, she sought escape from the dilemma through various theories of social development; and they often sat or walked half through the night, discussing the fortunes of the race, and the intentions of God. With her most intimate set, this sometimes led to a jest, and "It is time to settle the social question" became the formula of announcing dinner. These considerations led the way to her adoption of socialistic theories in later years, of which she herself informs us, but hints at the same time at many important reservations in her acceptance of them.

In process of time she visited Italy with Alfred de Musset. The fever seized on her at Genoa, and she saw the wonders of the fair land through half-shut eyes, alternately shivering and burning. In the languor of disease, she allowed the tossing of a coin to decide whether she should visit Rome or Venice. Venice came uppermost ten times, and she chose to consider it an affair of destiny. Her long stay in this city suggested the themes of several of her romances, and the "Lettres d'un Voyageur" might almost be pages from her own journal. Her companion was here seized with a terrible illness. She nursed him day and night through all its length, being so greatly fatigued at the time of his recovery that she saw every object double, through want of sleep. Yet De Musset went forth from his sick-room with a heart changed towards her. Hatred had taken the place of love. Some say that this cruel change was the punishment of as cruel a deception; others call it a mania of the fever, perpetuating itself thenceforth in a brain sound as to all else. The world does not know about this, and she herself tells us nothing. In the "Lettres d'un Voyageur," however, she gives us to understand that constancy is not her forte, and a sigh escapes with this confession, "Prie pour moi, ô Marguerite Le Conte!"

George Sand was now launched,—with brilliant success, in the world of letters, unheeding the conventional restraints of domestic life. The choicest spirits of the day gathered round her. She was the luminous centre of a circle of light. She did not hold a salon, the mimic court of every Frenchwoman of distinction,—nor were the worldly wits of fashion her vain and supercilious satellites. But De Lamennais climbed to her mansarde, and unfolded therein his theories of saintly and visionary philosophy. Liszt and Chopin bound her in the enchantment of their wonderful melodies. De Balzac feasted her in his fantastic lodgings, and lighted her across the square with a silver-gilt flambeau, himself attired in a flounced satin dressing-gown, of which he was extremely proud. Pierre Leroux instructed her in the old and the new religions, and taught her the history of secret societies. Louis Blanc, Cavaignac, and Pauline Garcia were bound to her by ties of intimacy. She knew Lablache, Quinet, Miekiewiez, whom she calls the equal of Lord Byron. Her intimates in her own province were men of high character and intelligence, nor were friends wanting among her own sex. Good-will and sympathy, therefore, not ill-will and antipathy, inspired her best works. Her views of parties were charitable and conciliatory, and her revolutionism more reconstructive than destructive. Yet, with all this array of good company, we cannot accord her a miraculous immunity from the fatalities of her situation. Of the guilt we are not here called upon to judge; of the suffering many pages in this record of her life bear witness. Little as we know, however, of her own power of self-protection against the tyranny of the selfish and the sensual, we yet feel as if the really base could never have held her in other than the briefest thraldom, and as if her nobler nature must have continually asserted and reasserted itself, with a constant tendency towards that higher liberty which she had sought in the abandonment of outward restraints, but which can never be thus attained. Some great moral safeguards she had in her tireless industry, her love of art, her honesty and geniality of nature, and, above all, in her passionate love for her children. Happily, these deep and solid forces of Nature are calculated to outlast the heyday of the blood, and to redeem its errors.

In connection with her domestic life, she gives some explanations which must not be overlooked. She did not at first quit her husband's roof with an intention of permanent absence, but with the intention of a periodical return thither. In time, however, her presence there became unwelcome, and she found those arrangements of which, as she says, she had no right to complain, but which she could not recognize. Friends intervened, advising an effectual reintegration of the broken marriage; but against this, she says, her conscience, no less than her heart, rebelled. There existed, indeed, no virtual bond between herself and her late husband. Whatever may have been the beginning of their estrangement, it seems certain that he acquiesced in her independence with easy satisfaction. He wrote to her,—"I shall not put up at your lodgings when I come to Paris, because I wish as little to be in your way as I wish to have you in mine." At the same time, by visiting her there, and appearing with her in public, he had given a certain recognition to her position. There was, therefore, no room for penitence on the one side, for forgiveness on the other, and, through these, for a renewable moral relation between the two. The law took cognizance of these facts, when, some years later, M. Dudevant brought an action for civil divorce, wishing to recover possession of his children. His complicity in what had taken place, and the amicable nature of the separation, were so fully established, that the court, recognizing in the parties neither husband nor wife, followed the pleadings of Nature, and bestowed the children where, in the present instance, they were likely to find the warmest cherishing. Under this decision, she gave up the estate of Nohant to M. Dudevant, who, becoming weary of its management, returned it to her, by a later compromise, in exchange for other property, and the home of her childhood now shelters her declining years.

For the history draws near its close; more travels, more novels, more successes, more sorrows, much fond talk of her friends, many of whom death has endeared to her, a shadowy sketch of her seven years' intimacy with Chopin, a sob over the untimely grave of her married daughter, and the wonderful book is ended. Surely, it tells its own moral; and we, who have woven into short measure the tissue of its relations, need not appear either as the apologist of a very exceptional woman, or as the vindicator of laws inevitable and universal, the mischief of whose violation no human knowledge can justly fathom. The world knows that the life before us is no example for women to follow; but it also knows, we think, that she who led it was on the whole an earnest and sincere person, of ardent imagination and large heart, loving the good as well as the beautiful, even if often mistaken in both,—and above all, honest in her errors and their acknowledgment. Gross injustice has, no doubt, been done her. The creations of her powerful fancy have been taken for images of herself, and the popular mind, delighting to elevate all things beyond the bounds of Nature, has made her a monster. It is clear, we think, that those who have represented her as plunged headlong in a career of vice and dissipation, the companion of all that is low and trivial, have slandered alike her acts and her intentions. Like the rest of us, she is the child of her antecedents and surroundings. Her education was as exceptional as her character. Her marriage brought no moral influence to bear upon her. Her separation opened before her a new and strange way, never to be trodden by any with impunity. Yet we do not believe, that, in the most undesirable circumstances of her life, she ever long lost sight of its ideal object. We do not doubt that her zeal for human progress, her sympathy for the wrongs of the race, and her distrust of existing institutions were deep and sincere. We do not doubt that she was devoted in friendship, disinterested in love, ardent in philanthropy. She has seen the poverty and insincerity of society; she has quarrelled with what she calls the shams of sacred things, the merely conventional marriage, the God of bigotry and hypocrisy, the government of oppression and fraud; but she ends by recognizing and demanding the marriage of heart, the God of enlightened faith, the government of order and progress. Responding to the dominant chord of the nineteenth century, she strove to exalt individuality above sociality, and passion above decorum and usage. Nor would she allow any World's Congress of morals to settle the delicate limits between these opposing vital forces, between what we owe to ourselves and what we owe to others. If there be a divine of passion for which it is noble to suffer and sacrifice, there is also a deeper divine of duty, far transcending the other both in sacrifice and in reward. To this divine, too often obscured to all of us, her later life increasingly renders homage; and to its gentle redemption, our loving, pitying hearts—the more loving, the more pitying for her story—are glad to leave her.

Ave, thou long laborious! Ave, thou worker of wonders, thou embalmer of things most fleeting, most precious, so sealed in thy amber,

 
  "That Nature yet remembers
  What was so fugitive!"
 

Thou hast wrought many a picture of wild and guilty passion,—yet methinks thou didst always paint the mean as mean, the generous as generous. Nobler stories, too, thou hast told, and thy Consuelo is as pure as holy charity and lofty art could make her. They complain, that, in the world of thy creations, women are sublime and men weak; may not these things, then, be seen and judged for once through woman's eyes? Much harm hast thou done? Nay, that can only God know. They misquote thee, who veil a life of low intrigue with high-flown dicta borrowed from thy works. Thou art not of their sort,—or, if it be indeed thee they seek to imitate,

"Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile."

Thy faults have attracted them, not the virtues that redeem them. Shake thyself free of such, and with those who have loved much, and to whom much has been forgiven, go in peace! The shades of the Poets will greet thee as they greeted Dante and Virgil, when, thyself a shade, thou goest towards them. The heart that fainted at Francesca's sorrows will not refuse a throb to thine. For there is a gallery of great women, great with and without sin, where thou must sit, between Sappho and Cleopatra, the Magdalen thy neighbor,—nor yet removed wholly out of sight the Mother of the Great Forgiveness of God.

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