St. Paul, just as if a Cherokee and a Kaffir had met and conversed. He has such a pretty new notturno, several parts of which I have retained in my memory for the purpose of playing it for Paul’s amusement. Thus we passed the time pleasantly together, and he promised seriously to return in the course of the winter if I would compose a new symphony and perform it in honour of him. We vowed these things in the presence of three witnesses, and we shall see whether we both keep our word. My works of Handel [Footnote: A present from the Committee of the Cologne Musical Festival of 1835.] arrived before Chopin’s departure, and were a source of quite childish delight to him; but they are really so beautiful that I cannot sufficiently rejoice in their possession.
Although Mendelssohn never played any of Chopin’s compositions in public, he made his piano pupils practise some of them. Karasowski is wrong in saying that Mendelssohn had no such pupils; he had not many, it is true, but he had a few. A remark which Mendelssohn once made in his peculiar naive manner is very characteristic of him and his opinion of Chopin. What he said was this: “Sometimes one really does not know whether Chopin’s music is right or wrong.” On the whole, however, if one of the two had to complain of the other’s judgment, it was not Chopin but Mendelssohn, as we shall see farther on.
To learn what impression Chopin made on Schumann, we must once more turn to the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, where we find the Polish artist’s visit to Leipzig twice mentioned:–
October 6, 1835. Chopin was here, but only for a few hours, which he passed in private circles. He played just as he composes, that is, uniquely.
The second mention is in the P.S. of a transcendental Schwarmerbrief addressed by Eusebius (the personification of the gentle, dreamy side of Schumann’s character) to Chiara (Clara Wieck):–
October 20, 1835. Chopin was here. Florestan [the personification of the strong, passionate side of Schumann’s character] rushed to him. I saw them arm in arm glide rather than walk. I did not speak with him, was quite startled at the thought.
On his way to Paris, Chopin stopped also at Heidelberg, where he visited the father of his pupil Adolph Gutmann, who treated him, as one of his daughters remarked, not like a prince or even a king, but like somebody far superior to either. The children were taught to look up to Chopin as one who had no equal in his line. And the daughter already referred to wrote more than thirty years afterwards that Chopin still stood out in her memory as the most poetical remembrance of her childhood and youth.
Chopin must have been back in Paris in the first half or about the middle of October, for the Gazette musicale of the 18th of that month contains the following paragraph:–
One of the most eminent pianists of our epoch, M. Chopin, has returned to Paris, after having made a tour in Germany which has been for him a real ovation. Everywhere his admirable talent obtained the most flattering reception and excited enthusiasm. It was, indeed, as if he had not left our capital at all.
CHAPTER XVIII
1835–1837.
PUBLICATIONS IN 1835 AND 1836.–FIRST PERFORMANCE OF LES HUGUENOTS.– GUSIKOW, LIPINSKI, THALBERG.–CHOPIN’S IMPRESSIONABLENESS AND FICKLENESS IN REGARD TO THE FAIR SEX.–THE FAMILY WODZINSKI.–CHOPIN’S LOVE FOR MARIA WODZINSKA (DRESDEN, 1835; MARIENBAD, 1836).–ANOTHER VISIT TO LEIPZIG (1836).– CHARACTER OF THE CHIEF EVENTS IN 1837.–MENTION OF HIS FIRST MEETING WITH GEORGE SAND.–HIS VISIT TO LONDON.–NEWSPAPER ANNOUNCEMENT OF ANOTHER VISIT TO MARIENBAD.–STATE OF HIS HEALTH IN 1837.
IF we leave out of account his playing in the salons, Chopin’s artistic activity during the period comprised in this chapter was confined to teaching and composition. [Footnote: A Paris correspondent wrote in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik of May 17, 1836, that Chopin had not been heard at all that winter, meaning, of course, that he had not been heard in public.] The publication of his works enables us to form an approximate idea of how he was occupied as a creative musician. In the year 1835 were published: in February, Op. 20, Premier Scherzo (in B minor), dedicated to Mr. T. Albrecht, and in November, Op. 24, Quatre Mazurkas, dedicated to M. le Comte de Perthuis. In 1836 appeared: in April, Op. 21, Second Concerto (in F minor), dedicated to Madame la Comtesse Delphine Potocka: in May, Op. 27, Deux Nocturnes (in C sharp minor and D flat major), dedicated to Madame la Comtesse d’Appony; in June, Op. 23, Ballade (in G minor), dedicated to M. le Baron de Stockhausen; in July, Op. 22, Grande Polonaise brillante (E flat major) precedee d’un Andante spianato for pianoforte and orchestra, dedicated to Madame la Baronne d’Est; and Op. 26, Deux Polonaises (in C sharp minor and E flat minor), dedicated to Mr. J. Dessauer. It is hardly necessary to point out that the opus numbers do not indicate the order of succession in which the works were composed. The Concerto belongs to the year 1830; the above notes show that Op. 24 and 27 were sooner in print than Op. 23 and 26; and Op. 25, although we hear of its being played by the composer in 1834 and 1835, was not published till 1837.
The indubitably most important musical event of the season 1835- 1836, was the production of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, which took place on February 29, 1836, and had an extraordinary success. The concert-rooms, however, concern us more than the opera-houses. This year brought to Paris two Polish musicians: Lipinski, the violinist, and Gusikow, the virtuoso on the Strohfiedel, [FOOTNOTE: “Straw-fiddle,” Gigelira, or Xylophone, an instrument consisting of a graduated series of bars of wood that lie on cords of twisted straw and are struck with sticks.] whom Mendelssohn called “a true genius,” and another contemporary pointed out as one of the three great stars (Paganini and Malibran were the two others) at that time shining in the musical heavens. The story goes that Lipinski asked Chopin to prepare the ground for him in Paris. The latter promised to do all in his power if Lipinski would give a concert for the benefit of the Polish refugees. The violinist at first expressed his willingness to do so, but afterwards drew back, giving as his reason that if he played for the Polish refugees he would spoil his prospects in Russia, where he intended shortly to make an artistic tour. Enraged at this refusal, Chopin declined to do anything to further his countryman’s plans in Paris. But whether the story is true or not, Lipinski’s concert at the Hotel de Ville, on March 3, was one of the most brilliant and best-attended of the season. [FOOTNOTE: Revue et Gazette musicale of March 13, 1836. Mainzer had a report to the same effect in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik.]
The virtuoso, however, whose appearance caused the greatest sensation was Thalberg. The Gazette musicale announced his arrival on November 8, 1835. He was first heard at M. Zimmermann’s; Madame Viardot-Garcia, Duprez, and De Beriot being the other artists that took active parts in the soiree. The enthusiasm which Thalberg on this occasion as well as subsequently excited was immense. The Menestrel expressed the all but unanimous opinion when, on March 13, 1836, it said: “Thalberg is not only the first pianist in the world, but he is also a most distinguished composer.” His novel effects astonished and delighted his hearers. The pianists showed their appreciation by adopting their confrere’s manipulations and treatment of the piano as soon as these ceased to puzzle them; the great majority of the rising Parisian pianists became followers of Thalberg, nor were some of the older ones slow in profiting by his example. The most taking of the effects which Thalberg brought into vogue was the device of placing the melody in the middle–i.e., the most sonorous part of the instrument–and dividing it so between the hands that they could at the same time accompany it with full chords and brilliant figures. Even if he borrowed the idea from the harpist Parish-Alvars, or from the pianist Francesco G. Pollini, there remains to him the honour of having improved the invention of his forerunners and applied it with superior ability. His greatness, however, does not solely or even mainly rest on this or any other ingeniously-contrived and cleverly- performed trick. The secret of his success lay in the aristocratic nature of his artistic personality, in which exquisite elegance and calm self-possession reigned supreme. In accordance with this fundamental disposition were all the details of his style of playing. His execution was polished to the highest degree; the evenness of his scales and the clearness of his passages and embellishments could not be surpassed. If sensuous beauty is the sole end of music, his touch must be pronounced the ideal of perfection, for it extracted the essence of beauty. Strange as the expression “unctuous sonorousness” may sound, it describes felicitously a quality of a style of playing from which roughness, harshness, turbulence, and impetuosity were altogether absent. Thalberg has been accused of want of animation, passion, in short, of soul; but as Ambros remarked with great acuteness–
Thalberg’s compositions and playing had soul, a salon soul to be sure, somewhat like that of a very elegant woman of the world, who, nevertheless, has really a beautiful disposition [Gemueth], which, however, is prevented from fully showing itself by the superexquisiteness of her manners.
This simile reminds me of a remark of Heine’s, who thought that Thalberg distinguished himself favourably from other pianists by what he (Heine) felt inclined to call “his musical conduct [Betragen].” Here are some more of the poet-critic’s remarks on the same subject:–
As in life so also in art, Thalberg manifests innate tact; his execution is so gentlemanlike, so opulent, so decorous, so entirely without grimace, so entirely without forced affectation of genius [forcirtes Genialthun], so entirely without that boastful boorishness which badly conceals the inner pusillanimity…He enchants by balsamic euphony, by sobriety and gentleness….There is only one I prefer. That is Chopin.
As a curiosity I must quote a passage from a letter dated July 10, 1836, and addressed by George Sand to the Comtesse d’Agoult. Feelings of friendship, and, in one case at least, of more than friendship, made these ladies partial to another prince of the keyboard:–
I have heard Thalberg in Paris. He made on me the impression of a good little child, very nice and very well-behaved. There are hours when Franz [Liszt], while amusing himself, trifles [badine], like him, on some notes in order to let the furious elements afterwards loose on this gentle breeze.
Liszt, who was at the time of Thalberg’s visit to Paris in Switzerland, doubted the correctness of the accounts which reached him of this virtuoso’s achievements. Like Thomas he would trust only his own senses; and as his curiosity left him no rest, he betook himself in March, 1836, to Paris. But, unfortunately, he arrived too late, Thalberg having quitted the capital on the preceding day. The enthusiastic praises which were everywhere the answer to his inquiries about Thalberg irritated Liszt, and seemed to him exaggerations based on delusions. To challenge criticism and practically refute the prevalent opinion, he gave two private soirees, one at Pleyel’s and another at Erard’s, both of which were crowded, the latter being attended by more than four hundred people. The result was a brilliant victory, and henceforth there were two camps. The admiration and stupefaction of those who heard him were extraordinary; for since his last appearance Liszt had again made such enormous progress as to astonish even his most intimate friends. In answer to those who had declared that with Thalberg a new era began, Berlioz, pointing to Liszt’s Fantasia on I Pirati and that on themes from La Juive, now made the counter-declaration that “this was the new school of pianoforte-playing.” Indeed, Liszt was only now attaining to the fulness of his power as a pianist and composer for his instrument; and when after another sojourn in Switzerland he returned in December, 1836, to Paris, and in the course of the season entered the lists with Thalberg, it was a spectacle for the gods. “Thalberg,” writes Leon Escudier, “est la grace, comme Liszt la force; le jeu de l’un est blond, celui de l’autre est brun.” A lady who heard the two pianists at a concert for the Italian poor, given in the salons of the Princess Belgiojoso, exclaimed: “Thalberg est le premier pianiste du monde.”–“Et Liszt?” asked the person to whom the words were addressed– “Liszt! Liszt–c’est le seul!” was the reply. This is the spirit in which great artists should be judged. It is oftener narrowness of sympathy than acuteness of discrimination which makes people exalt one artist and disparage another who differs from him. In the wide realm of art there are to be found many kinds of excellence; one man cannot possess them all and in the highest degree. Some of these excellences are indeed irreconcilable and exclude each other; most of them can only be combined by a compromise. Hence, of two artists who differ from each other, one is not necessarily superior to the other; and he who is the greater on the whole may in some respects be inferior to the lesser. Perhaps the reader will say that these are truisms. To be sure they are. And yet if he considers only the judgments which are every day pronounced, he may easily be led to believe that these truisms are most recondite truths now for the first time revealed. When Liszt after his first return from Switzerland did not find Thalberg himself, he tried to satisfy his curiosity by a careful examination of that pianist’s compositions. The conclusions he came to be set forth in a criticism of Thalberg’s Grande Fantaisie, Op. 22, and the Caprices, Op. 15 and 19, which in 1837 made its appearance in the Gazette musicale, accompanied by an editorial foot-note expressing dissent. I called Liszt’s article a criticism, but “lampoon” or “libel” would have been a more appropriate designation. In the introductory part Liszt sneers at Thalberg’s title of “Pianist to His Majesty the Emperor of Austria,” and alludes to his rival’s distant (i.e., illegitimate) relationship to a noble family, ascribing his success to a great extent to these two circumstances. The personalities and abusiveness of the criticism remind one somewhat of the manner in which the scholars of earlier centuries, more especially of the sixteenth and seventeenth, dealt critically with each other. Liszt declares that love of truth, not jealousy, urged him to write; but he deceived himself. Nor did his special knowledge and experience as a musician and virtuoso qualify him, as he pretended, above others for the task he had undertaken; he forgot that no man can be a good judge in his own cause. No wonder, therefore, that Fetis, enraged at this unprovoked attack of one artist on a brother-artist, took up his pen in defence of the injured party. Unfortunately, his retort was a lengthy and pedantic dissertation, which along with some true statements contained many questionable, not to say silly, ones. In nothing, however, was he so far off the mark as in his comparative estimate of Liszt and Thalberg. The sentences in which he sums up the whole of his reasoning show this clearly: “You are the pre-eminent man of the school which is effete and which has nothing more to do, but you are not the man of a new school! Thalberg is this man–herein lies the whole difference between you two.” Who can help smiling at this combination of pompous authoritativeness and wretched short-sightedness? It has been truly observed by Ambros that there is between Thalberg and Liszt all the difference that exists between a man of talent and a man of genius; indeed, the former introduced but a new fashion, whereas the latter founded really a new school. The one originated a few new effects, the other revolutionised the whole style of writing for the pianoforte. Thalberg was perfect in his genre, but he cannot be compared to an artist of the breadth, universality, and, above all, intellectual and emotional power of Liszt. It is possible to describe the former, but the latter, Proteus-like, is apt to elude the grasp of him who endeavours to catch hold of him. The Thalberg controversy did not end with Fetis’s article. Liszt wrote a rejoinder in which he failed to justify himself, but succeeded in giving the poor savant some hard hits. I do not think Liszt would have approved of the republication of these literary escapades if he had taken the trouble to re-read them. It is very instructive to compare his criticism of Thalberg’s compositions with what Schumann–who in this case is by no means partial–said of them. In the opinion of the one the Fantaisie sur Les Huguenots is not only one of the most empty and mediocre works, but it is also so supremely monotonous that it produces extreme weariness. In the opinion of the other the Fantaisie deserves the general enthusiasm which it has called forth, because the composer proves himself master of his language and thoughts, conducts himself like a man of the world, binds and loosens the threads with so much ease that it seems quite unintentional, and draws the audience with him wherever he wishes without either over-exciting or wearying it. The truth, no doubt, is rather with Schumann than with Liszt. Although Thalberg’s compositions cannot be ranked with the great works of ideal art, they are superior to the morceaux of Czerny, Herz, and hoc genus omne, their appearance marking indeed an improvement in the style of salon music.
But what did Chopin think of Thalberg? He shared the opinion of Liszt, whose side he took. In fact, Edouard Wolff told me that Chopin absolutely despised Thalberg. To M. Mathias I owe the following communication, which throws much light on Chopin’s attitude:–
I saw Chopin with George Sand at the house of Louis Viardot, before the marriage of the latter with Pauline Garcia. I was very young, being only twelve years old, but I remember it as though it had been yesterday. Thalberg was there, and had played his second fantasia on Don Giovanni (Op. 42), and upon my word Chopin complimented him most highly and with great gravity; nevertheless, God knows what Chopin thought of it in his heart, for he had a horror of Thalberg’s arrangements, which I have seen and heard him parody in the most droll and amusing manner, for Chopin had the sense of parody and ridicule in a high degree.
Thalberg had not much intercourse with Chopin, nor did he exercise the faintest shadow of an influence over him; but as one of the foremost pianist-composers–indeed, one of the most characteristic phenomena of the age–he could not be passed by in silence. Moreover, the noisy careers of Liszt and Thalberg serve as a set-off to the noiseless one of Chopin.
I suspect that Chopin was one of that race of artists and poets “qui font de la passion un instrument de l’art et de la poesie, et dont l’esprit n’a d’activite qu’autant qu’il est mis en mouvement par les forces motrices du coeur.” At any rate, the tender passion was a necessary of his existence. That his disappointed first love did not harden his heart and make him insensible to the charms of the fair sex is apparent from some remarks of George Sand, who says that although his heart was ardent and devoted, it was not continuously so to any one person, but surrendered itself alternately to five or six affections, each of which, as they struggled within it, got by turns the mastery over all the others. He would passionately love three women in the course of one evening party and forget them as soon as he had turned his back, while each of them imagined that she had exclusively charmed him. In short, Chopin was of a very impressionable nature: beauty and grace, nay, even a mere smile, kindled his enthusiasm at first sight, and an awkward word or equivocal glance was enough to disenchant him. But although he was not at all exclusive in his own affections, he was so in a high degree with regard to those which he demanded from others. In illustration of how easily Chopin took a dislike to anyone, and how little he measured what he accorded of his heart with what he exacted from that of others, George Sand relates a story which she got from himself. In order to avoid misrepresenting her, I shall translate her own words:–
He had taken a great fancy to the granddaughter of a celebrated master. He thought of asking her in marriage at the same time that he entertained the idea of another marriage in Poland–his loyalty being engaged nowhere, and his fickle heart floating from one passion to the other. The young Parisian received him very kindly, and all went as well as could be till on going to visit her one day in company with another musician, who was of more note in Paris than he at that time, she offered a chair to this gentleman before thinking of inviting Chopin to be seated. He never called on her again, and forgot her immediately.
The same story was told me by other intimate friends of Chopin’s, who evidently believed in its genuineness; their version differed from that of George Sand only in this, that there was no allusion to a lady-love in Poland. Indeed, true as George Sand’s observations are in the main, we must make allowance for the novelist’s habit of fashioning and exaggerating, and the woman’s endeavour to paint her dismissed and aggrieved lover as black as possible. Chopin may have indulged in innumerable amorous fancies, but the story of his life furnishes at least one instance of his having loved faithfully as well as deeply. Nor will it be denied that Chopin’s love for Constantia Gladkowska was a serious affair, whether the fatal end be attributable to him or her, or both. And now I have to give an account of another love-affair which deserves likewise the epithet “serious.”
As a boy Chopin contracted a friendship with the brothers Wodzinski, who were boarders at his father’s establishment. With them he went repeatedly to Sluzewo, the property of their father, and thus became also acquainted with the rest of the family. The nature of the relation in which Chopin and they stood to each other is shown by a letter written by the former on July 18, 1834, to one of the brothers who with his mother and other members of the family was at that time staying at Geneva, whither they had gone after the Polish revolution of 1830-31, in which the three brothers–Anthony, Casimir, and Felix–had taken part:- –
My dear Felix,–Very likely you thought “Fred must be moping that he does not answer my letter!” But you will remember that it was always my habit to do everything too late. Thus I went also too late to Miss Fanche, and consequently was obliged to wait till honest Wolf had departed. Were it not that I have only recently come back from the banks of the Rhine and have an engagement from which I cannot free myself just now, I would immediately set out for Geneva to thank your esteemed mamma and at the same time accept her kind invitation. But cruel fate–in one word, it cannot be done. Your sister was so good as to send me her composition. It gives me the greatest pleasure, and happening to improvise the veryevening of its arrival in one of our salons, I took for my subject the pretty theme by a certain Maria with whom in times gone by I played at hide and seek in the house of Mr. Pszenny…To-day! Je prends la liberte d’envoyer a mon estimable collegue Mile Marie une petite valse que je viens de publier. May it afford her a hundredth part of the pleasure which I felt on receiving her variations. In conclusion, I once more thank your mamma most sincerely for kindly remembering her old and faithful servant in whose veins also there run some drops of Cujavian blood. [Footnote: Cujavia is the name of a Polish district.]
F. CHOPIN.
P.S.–Embrace Anthony, stifle Casimir with caresses if you can. as for Miss Maria make her a graceful and respectful bow. Be surprised and say in a whisper, “Dear me, how tall she has grown!”
The Wodzinskis, with the exception of Anthony, returned in the summer of 1835 to Poland, making on their way thither a stay at Dresden. Anthony, who was then in Paris and in constant intercourse with Chopin, kept the latter informed of his people’s movements and his people of Chopin’s. Thus it came about that they met at Dresden in September, 1835, whither the composer went after his meeting with his parents at Carlsbad, mentioned in the preceding chapter (p. 288). Count Wodzinski says in his Les trois Romans de Frederic Chopin that Chopin had spoken to his father about his project of marrying Maria Wodzinska, and that this idea had sprung up in his soul by the mere force of recollections. The young lady was then nineteen years of age, and, according to the writer just mentioned, tall and slender in figure, and light and graceful in gait. The features, he tells us, were distinguished neither by regularity nor classical beauty, but had an indefinable charm. Her black eyes were full of sweetness, reverie, and restrained fire; a smile of ineffable voluptuousness played around her lips; and her magnificent hair was as dark as ebony and long enough to serve her as a mantle. Chopin and Maria saw each other every evening at the house of her uncle, the Palatine Wodzinski. The latter concluded from their frequent tete-a-tete at the piano and in corners that some love-making was going on between them. When he found that his monitory coughs and looks produced no effect on his niece, he warned his sister-in-law. She, however, took the matter lightly, saying that it was an amitie d’enfance, that Maria was fond of music, and that, moreover, there would soon be an end to all this–their ways lying in opposite directions, hers eastward to Poland, his westward to France. And thus things were allowed to go on as they had begun, Chopin passing all his evenings with the Wodzinskis and joining them in all their walks. At last the time of parting came, the clock of the Frauenkirche struck the hour of ten, the carriage was waiting at the door, Maria gave Chopin a rose from a bouquet on the table, and he improvised a waltz which he afterwards sent her from Paris, and which she called L’Adieu. Whatever we may think of the details of this scene of parting, the waltz composed for Maria at Dresden is an undeniable fact. Facsimiles may be seen in Szulc’s Fryderyk Chopin and Count Wodziriski’s Les trois Romans de Frederic Chopin. The manuscript bears the superscription: “Tempo de Valse” on the left, and “pour Mile. Marie” on the right; and the subscription: “F. Chopin, Drezno [Dresden], September, 1835.” [FOOTNOTE: It is Op. 69, No. 1, one of the posthumous works published by Julius Fontana.]
The two met again in the following summer, this time at Marienbad, where he knew she and her mother were going. They resumed their walks, music, and conversations. She drew also his portrait. And then one day Chopin proposed. Her answer was that she could not run counter to her parents’ wishes, nor could she hope to be able to bend their will; but she would always preserve for him in her heart a grateful remembrance.[FOOTNOTE: Count Wodzinski relates on p. 255 of his book that at a subsequent period of her life the lady confided to him the above-quoted answer.] This happened in August, 1836; and two days after mother and daughter left Marienbad. Maria Wodzinska married the next year a son of Chopin’s godfather, Count Frederick Skarbek. The marriage turned but an unhappy one, and was dissolved. Subsequently the Countess married a Polish gentleman of the name of Orpiszewski, who died some years ago in Florence. She, I think, is still alive.
Karasowski relates the affair very differently. He says Chopin, who knew the brothers Wodzinski in Poland, met them again in Paris, and through them made the acquaintance of their sister Maria, whose beauty and amiability inspired him at once with an interest which soon became ardent love. But that Chopin had known her in Poland may be gathered from the above letter to Felix Wodzinski, quite apart from the distinct statements of the author of Les trois Romans that Chopin was a frequent visitor at Sluzewo, and a great friend of Maria’s. Further, Karasowski, who does not mention at all the meeting of Chopin and the Wodzinskis at Dresden in 1835, says that Chopin went in the middle of July, 1836, to Marienbad, where he knew he would find Maria and her mother, and that there he discovered that she whom he loved reciprocated his affection, the consequence being an engagement approved of by her relations. When the sojourn in Marienbad came to an end, the whole party betook itself to Dresden, where they remained together for some weeks, which they spent most pleasantly.
[FOOTNOTE: Karasowski relates that Chopin was at the zenith of happiness. His good humour was irresistible. He imitated the most famous pianists, and played his dreamy mazurkas in the manner much in favour with Warsaw amateurs–i.e., strictly in time and with the strongly-accented rhythm of common dance-tunes. And his friends reminded him of the tricks which, as a boy, he had played on his visits to the country, and how he took away his sisters’ kid gloves when he was going to an evening-party, and could not buy himself new ones, promising to send them dozens as soon as he had gained a good position in Paris. Count Wodzinski, too, bears witness to Chopin’s good humour while in the company of the Wodzinskis. In the course of his account of the sojourn at Marienbad, this writer speaks of Chopin’s polichinades: “He imitated then this or that famous artist, the playing of certain pupils or compatriots, belabouring the keyboard with extravagant gestures, a wild [echevele] and romantic manner, which he called aller a la chasse aux pigeons.”]
Unless Chopin was twice with the Wodzinskis in Dresden, Karasowski must be mistaken. That Chopin sojourned for some time at Dresden in 1835 is evidenced by Wieck’s letter, quoted on p. 288, and by the above-mentioned waltz. The latter seems also to confirm what Count Wodzinski says about the presence of the Wodzinskis at Dresden in that year. On the other hand, we have no such documents to prove the presence at Dresden in 1836 either of Chopin or the Wodzinskis. According to Karasowski, the engagement made at Marienbad remained in force till the middle of 1837, when Chopin received at Paris the news that the lady withdrew from it. [FOOTNOTE: In explanation of the breaking-off of this supposed engagement, it has also been said that the latter was favoured by the mother, but opposed by the father.] The same authority informs us that before this catastrophe Chopin had thoughts of settling with his future wife in the neighbourhood of Warsaw, near his beloved parents and sisters. There he would cultivate his art in retirement, and found schools for the people. How, without a fortune of his own, and with a wife who, although belonging to a fairly wealthy family, would not come into the possession of her portion till after the death of her parents, he could have realised these dreams, I am at a loss to conjecture.
[FOONOTE: To enable his readers to measure the social distance that separated Chopin from his beloved one, Count Wodzinski mentions among other details that her father possessed a domain of about 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares). It is hardly necessary to add that this large acreage, which we will suppose to be correctly stated, is much less a measure of the possessor’s wealth than of his social rank.]
Chopin’s letters, which testify so conclusively to the cordial friendship existing between him and the Wodzinskis, unfortunately contain nothing which throws light on his connection with the young lady, although her name occurs in them several times. On April 2, 1837, Chopin wrote to Madame Wodzinska as follows:–
I take advantage of Madame Nakwaska’s permission and enclose a few words. I expect news from Anthony’s own hand, and shall send you a letter even more full of details than the one which contained Vincent’s enclosure. I beg of you to keep your mind easy about him. As yet all are in the town. I am not in possession of any details, because the correspondents only give accounts of themselves. My letter of the same date must certainly be in Sluzewo; and, as far as is possible, it will set your mind at rest with regard to this Spaniard who must, must write me a few words. I am not going to use many words in expressing the sorrow I felt on learning the news of your mother’s death–not for her sake whom I did not know, but for your sake whom I do know. {This is a matter of course!) I have to confess, Madam, that I have had an attack like the one I had in Marienbad; I sit before Miss Maria’s book, and were I to sit a hundred years I should be unable to write anything in it. For there are days when I am out of sorts. To-day I would prefer being in Sluzewo to writing to Sluzewo. Then would I tell you more than I have now written. My respects to Mr. Wodzinski and my kind regards to Miss Maria, Casimir, Theresa, and Felix.
The object of another letter, dated May 14, 1837, is likewise to give news of Anthony Wodzinski, who was fighting in Spain. Miss Maria is mentioned in the P.S. and urged to write a few words to her brother.
After a careful weighing of the evidence before us, it appears to me that–notwithstanding the novelistic tricking-out of Les trois Romans de Frederic Chopin–we cannot but accept as the true account the author’s statement as to Chopin’s proposal of marriage and Miss Wodzinska’s rejection at Marienbad in 1836. The testimony of a relation with direct information from one of the two chief actors in the drama deserves more credit than that of a stranger with, at best, second-hand information; unless we prefer to believe that the lady misrepresented the facts in order to show herself to the world in a more dignified and amiable character than that of a jilt. The letters can hardly be quoted in support of the engagement, for the rejection would still admit of the continuation of the old friendship, and their tone does not indicate the greater intimacy of a closer relationship.
Subsequent to his stay at Marienbad Chopin again visited Leipzig. But the promises which Mendelssohn and Chopin had so solemnly made to each other in the preceding year had not been kept; the latter did not go in the course of the winter to Leipzig, and if he had gone, the former could not have performed a new symphony of his in honour of the guest. Several passages in letters written by Schumann in the early part of 1836 show, however, that Chopin was not forgotten by his Leipzig friends, with whom he seems to have been in correspondence. On March 8, 1836, Schumann wrote to Moscheles:–
Mendelssohn sends you his hearty greetings. He has finished his oratorio, and will conduct it himself at the Dusseldorf Musical Festival. Perhaps I shall go there too, perhaps also Chopin, to whom we shall write about it.
The first performance of Mendelssohn’s St. Paul took place at Dusseldorf on May 22, and was a great success. But neither Schumann nor Chopin was there. The latter was, no doubt, already planning his excursion to Marienbad, and could not allow himself the luxury of two holidays within so short a time.
Here is another scrap from a letter of Schumann’s, dated August 28, 1836, and addressed to his brother Edward and his sister-in- law Theresa:–
I have just written to Chopin, who is said to be in Marienbad, in order to learn whether he is really there. In any case, I should visit you again in autumn. But if Chopin answers my letter at once, I shall start sooner, and go to Marienbad by way of Carlsbad. Theresa, what do you think! you must come with me! Read first Chopin’s answer, and then we will fully discuss the rest.
Chopin either had left or was about to leave Marienbad when he received Schumann’s letter. Had he received it sooner, his answer would not have been very encouraging. For in his circumstances he could not but have felt even the most highly-esteemed confrere, the most charming of companions, in the way.[FOOTNOTE: Mendelscohn’s sister, Rebecka Dirichlet, found him completely absorbed in his Polish Countess. (See The Mendelssohn Family, Vol. II, p. 15.)] But although the two musicians did not meet at Marienbad, they saw each other at Leipzig. How much one of them enjoyed the visit may be seen in the following extract from a letter which Schumann wrote to Heinrich Dorn on September 14, 1836:–
The day before yesterday, just after I had received your letter and was going to answer it, who should enter?–Chopin. This was a great pleasure. We passed a very happy day together, in honour of which I made yesterday a holiday…I have a new ballade by Chopin. It appears to me his genialischstes (not genialstes) work; and I told him that I liked it best of all.
[FOOTNOTE: “Sein genialischstes (nicht genialstes) Werk.” I take Schumann to mean that the ballade in question (the one in G minor) is Chopin’s most spirited, most daring work, but not his most genial–i.e., the one fullest of genius. Schumann’s remark, in a criticism of Op. 37, 38, and 42, that this ballade is the “wildest and most original” of Chopin’s compositions, confirms my conjecture.]
After a long meditative pause he said with great emphasis: “I am glad of that, it is the one which I too like best.” He played besides a number of new etudes, nocturnes, and mazurkas–everything incomparable. You would like him very much. But Clara [Wieck] is greater as a virtuoso, and gives almost more meaning to his compositions than he himself. Imagine the perfection, a mastery which seems to be quite unconscious of itself!
Besides the announcement of September 16, 1836, that Chopin had been a day in Leipzig, that he had brought with him among other things new “heavenly” etudes, nocturnes, mazurkas, and a new ballade, and that he played much and “very incomparably,” there occur in Schumann’s writings in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik unmistakable reminiscences of this visit of the Polish musician. Thus, for instance, in a review of dance-music, which appeared in the following year, and to which he gave the fantastic form of a “Report to Jeanquirit in Augsburg of the editor’s last artistico- historical ball,” the writer relates a conversation he had with his partner Beda:–
I turned the conversation adroitly on Chopin. Scarcely had she heard the name than she for the first time fully looked at me with her large, kindly eyes. “And you know him?” I answered in the affirmative. “And you have heard him?” Her form became more and more sublime. “And have heard him speak?” And when I told her that it was a never-to-be- forgotten picture to see him sitting at the piano like a dreaming seer, and how in listening to his playing one seemed to one’s self like the dream he created, and how he had the dreadful habit of passing, at the end of each piece, one finger quickly over the whizzing keyboard, as if to get rid of his dream by force, and how he had to take care of his delicate health–she clung to me with ever-increasing timorous delight, and wished to know more and more about him.
Very interesting is Schumann’s description of how Chopin played some etudes from his Op. 25; it is to be found in another criticism of the same year (1837):–
As regards these etudes, I have the advantage of having heard most of them played by Chopin himself, and, as Florestan whispered in my ear at the time, “He plays them very much a la Chopin.” Imagine an AEolian harp that had all the scales, and that these were jumbled together by the hand of an artist into all sorts of fantastic ornaments, but in such a manner that a deeper fundamental tone and a softly-singing higher part were always audible, and you have an approximate idea of his playing. No wonder that we have become fondest of those pieces which we heard him play himself, and therefore we shall mention first of all the first one in A flat, which is rather a poem than an etude. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that he brought out every one of the little notes with distinctness; it was more like a billowing of the A flat major chord, swelled anew here and there by means of the pedal; but through the harmonies were heard the sustained tones of a wondrous melody, and only in the middle of it did a tenor part once come into greater prominence amid the chords along with that principal cantilena. After listening to the study one feels as one does after a blissful vision, seen in a dream, which, already half awake, one would fain bring back. He soon came to the one in F minor, the second in the book, likewise one which impresses one indelibly with his originality; it is so charming, dreamy, and soft, somewhat like the singing of a child in its sleep. Beautiful also, although less new in character than in the figure, was the following one in F major; here the object was more to exhibit bravura, the most charming bravura, and we could not but praise the master highly for it….But of what use are descriptive words?
This time we cannot cite a letter of Mendelssohn’s; he was elsewhere similarly occupied as Chopin in Marienbad. After falling in love with a Frankfort lady, Miss Jeanrenaud, he had gone to Scheweningen to see whether his love would stand the test of absence from the beloved object. It stood the test admirably, and on September 9, a few days before Chopin’s arrival in Leipzig, Mendelssohn’s engagement to the lady who became his wife on March 28, 1837, took place.
But another person who has been mentioned in connection with Chopin’s first visit to Leipzig, Henrietta Voigt, [FOOTNOTE: The editor of “Acht Briefe und ein Facsimile van Felix Mendelssohn- Bartholdy” speaks of her as “the artistic wife of a Leipzig merchant, whose house stood open to musicians living in and passing through Leipzig.”] has left us an account of the impression made upon her. An entry in her diary on September 13, 1836, runs thus:–
Yesterday Chopin was here and played an hour on my piano–a fantasia and new etude of his–interesting man and still more interesting playing; he moved me strangely. The over- excitement of his fantastic manner is imparted to the keen- eared; it made me hold my breath. Wonderful is the ease with which his velvet fingers glide, I might almost say fly, over the keys. He has enraptured me–I cannot deny it–in a way which hitherto had been unknown to me. What delighted me was the childlike, natural manner which he showed in his demeanour and in his playing.
After this short break of his journey at Leipzig, which he did not leave without placing a wreath of flowers on the monument of Prince Joseph Poniatowski, who in 1812 met here with an early death, being drowned in the river Elster, Chopin proceeded on his homeward journey, that is toward Paris, probably tarrying again for a day or two at Heidelberg.
The non-artistic events of this period are of a more stirring nature than the artistic ones. First in time and importance comes Chopin’s meeting with George Sand, which more than any other event marks an epoch in the composer’s life. But as this subject has to be discussed fully and at some length we shall leave it for another chapter, and conclude this with an account of some other matters.
Mendelssohn, who arrived in London on August 24, 1837, wrote on September 1 to Hiller:–
Chopin is said to have suddenly turned up here a fortnight ago; but he visited nobody and made no acquaintances. He played one evening most beautifully at Broadwood’s, and then hurried away again. I hear he is still suffering very much.
Chopin accompanied by Camille Pleyel and Stanislas Kozmian, the elder, came to London on the 11th of July and stayed till the 22nd. Pleyel introduced him under the name of M. Fritz to his friend James Broadwood, who invited them to dine with him at his house in Bryanston Square. The incognito, however, could only be preserved as long as Chopin kept his hands off the piano. When after dinner he sat down to play, the ladies of the family suspected, and, suspicion being aroused, soon extracted a confession of the truth.
Moscheles in alluding in his diary to this visit to London adds an item or two to its history:–
Chopin, who passed a few days in London, was the only one of the foreign artists who visited nobody and also did not wish to be visited, as every conversation aggravates his chest- complaint. He went to some concerts and disappeared.
Particularly interesting are the reminiscences of the writer of an enthusiastic review [Footnote: Probably J. W. Davison.]of some of Chopin’s nocturnes and a scherzo in the “Musical World” of February 23, 1838:–
Were he [Chopin] not the most retiring and unambitious of all living musicians, he would before this time have been celebrated as the inventor of a new style, or school, of pianoforte composition. During his short visit to the metropolis last season, but few had the high gratification of hearing his extemporaneous performance. Those who experienced this will not readily lose its remembrance. He is, perhaps, par eminence, the most delightful of pianists in the drawing- room. The animation of his style is so subdued, its tenderness so refined, its melancholy so gentle, its niceties so studied and systematic, the tout-ensemble so perfect, and evidently the result of an accurate judgment and most finished taste, that when exhibited in the large concert- room, or the thronged saloon, it fails to impress itself on the mass. The “Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik” of September 8, 1837, brought the piece of news that Chopin was then at a Bohemian watering-place. I doubt the correctness of this statement; at any rate, no other information to that effect has come to my knowledge, and the ascertained facts do not favour the assumption of its truth.
Never robust, Chopin had yet hitherto been free from any serious illness. Now, however, the time of his troubles begins. In a letter, undated, but very probably written in the summer of 1837, which he addressed to Anthony Wodzinski, who had been wounded in Spain, where civil war was then raging, occur remarks confirmatory of Mendelssohn’s and Moscheles’ statements:–
My dearest life! Wounded! Far from us–and I can send you nothing….Your friends are thinking only of you. For mercy’s sake recover as soon as possible and return. The newspaper accounts say that your legion is completely annihilated. Don’t enter the Spanish army….Remember that your blood may serve a better purpose….Titus [Woyciechowski] wrote to ask me if I could not meet him somewhere in Germany. During the winter I was again ill with influenza. They wanted to send me to Ems. Up to the present, however, I have no thought of going, as I am unable to move. I write and prepare manuscript. I think far more of you than you imagine, and love you as much as ever.
F. C.
Believe me, you and Titus are enshrined in my memory.
On the margin, Chopin writes–
I may perhaps go for a few days to George Sand’s, but keep your mind easy, this will not interfere with the forwarding of your money, for I shall leave instructions with Johnnie [Matuszynski].
With regard to this and to the two preceding letters to members of the Wodzinski family, I have yet to state that I found them in M. A. Szulc’s “Fryderyk Chopin.”
CHAPTER XIX.
GEORGE SAND: HER EARLY LIFE (1804–1836); AND HER CHARACTER AS A WOMAN, THINKER, AND LITERARY ARTIST.
It is now necessary that the reader should be made acquainted with Madame Dudevant, better known by her literary name, George Sand, whose coming on the scene has already been announced in the preceding chapter. The character of this lady is so much a matter of controversy, and a correct estimate of it so essential for the right understanding of the important part she plays in the remaining portion of Chopin’s life, that this long chapter–an intermezzo, a biography in a biography–will not be regarded as out of place or too lengthy. If I begin far off, as it were before the beginning, I do so because the pedigree has in this case a peculiar significance.
The mother of George Sand’s father was the daughter of the Marschal de Saxe (Count Maurice of Saxony, natural son of August the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and the Countess Maria Aurora von Konigsmark) and the dame de l’opera, Mdlle. de Verrieres, whose real name was Madame de la Riviere, nee Marie Rinteau. This daughter, Marie Aurore, married at the age of fifteen Comte de Home, a natural son of Louis XV., who died soon after; and fifteen years later she condescended to accept the hand of M. Dupin de Francueil, receveur general, who, although of an old and well-connected family, did not belong to the high nobility. The curious may read about Mdlle. de Verrieres in the “Memoires” of Marmontel, who was one of her many lovers, and about M. Dupin, his father, mother-in-law, first wife &c., in Rousseau’s “Confessions,” where, however, he is always called De Francueil. Notwithstanding the disparity of age, the husband being twice as old as his wife, the marriage of M. Dupin and the Comtesse de Home proved to be a very happy one. They had one child, a son, Maurice Francois Elisabeth Dupin. He entered the army in 1798, and two years later, in the course of the Italian campaign, became first lieutenant and then aide-de-camp to General Dupont.
In Italy and about the same time Maurice Dupin saw and fell in love with Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, the daughter of a Paris bird-seller, who had been a supernumerary at some small theatre, and whose youth, as George Sand delicately expresses it, “had by the force of circumstances been exposed to the most frightful hazards.” Sacrificing all the advantages she was then enjoying, she followed Maurice Dupin to France. From this liaison sprang several children, all of whom, however, except one, died very young. A month before the birth of her in whom our interest centres, Maurice Dupin married Sophie Delaborde. The marriage was a civil one and contracted without the knowledge of his mother, who was opposed to this union less on account of Sophie’s plebeian origin than of her doubtful antecedents.
It was on July 5, 1804, that Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who under the name of George Sand became famous all the world over, saw for the first time the light of day. The baby, which by a stratagem was placed in the arms of her grandmother, mollified the feelings of the old lady, whom the clandestine marriage had put in a great rage, so effectually that she forgave her son, received his wife, and tried to accommodate herself to the irremediable. After the Spanish campaign, during which he acted as aide-de-camp to Murat, Maurice Dupin and his family came to Nohant, his mother’s chateau in Berry. There little Aurora lost her father when she was only four years old. Returning home one evening from La Chatre, a neighbouring town, he was thrown off his horse, and died almost instantly.
This was an event that seriously affected the future of the child, for only the deceased could keep in check the antagonism of two such dissimilar characters as those of Aurora’s mother and grandmother. The mother was “dark-complexioned, pale, ardent, awkward and timid in fashionable society, but always ready to explode when the storm was growling too strongly within”; her temperament was that “of a Spaniard–jealous, passionate, choleric, and weak, perverse and kindly at the same time.” Abbe Beaumont (a natural son of Mdlle. de Verrieres and the Prince de Turenne, Duke de Bouillon, and consequently grand-uncle of Aurora) said of her that she had a bad head but a good heart. She was quite uneducated, but had good natural parts, sang charmingly, and was clever with her hands. The grandmother, on the other hand, was “light-complexioned, blonde, grave, calm, and dignified in her manners, a veritable Saxon of noble race, with an imposing demeanour full of ease and patronising goodness.” She had been an assiduous student of the eighteenth century philosophers, and on the whole was a lady of considerable culture. For about two years these two women managed to live together, not, however, without a feeling of discord which was not always successfully suppressed, and sometimes broke out into open dissension. At last they came to an arrangement according to which the child was to be left in the keeping of the grandmother, who promised her daughter-in-law a yearly allowance which would enable her to take up her abode in Paris. This arrangement had the advantage for the younger Madame Dupin that she could henceforth devote herself to the bringing-up of another daughter, born before her acquaintance with Aurora’s father.
From her mother Aurora received her first instruction in reading and writing. The taste for literary composition seems to have been innate in her, for already at the age of five she wrote letters to her grandmother and half-brother (a natural son of her father’s). When she was seven, Deschartres, her grandmother’s steward, who had been Maurice Dupin’s tutor, began to teach her French grammar and versification, Latin, arithmetic, botany, and a little Greek. But she had no liking for any of these studies. The dry classifications of plants and words were distasteful to her; arithmetic she could not get into her head; and poetry was not her language. History, on the other hand, was a source of great enjoyment to her; but she read it like a romance, and did not trouble herself about dates and other unpleasant details. She was also fond of music; at least she was so as long as her grandmother taught her, for the mechanical drilling she got from the organist of La Chatre turned her fondness into indifference. That subject of education, however, which is generally regarded as the foundation of all education–I mean religion–was never even mentioned to her. The Holy Scriptures were, indeed, given into the child’s hands, but she was left to believe or reject whatever she liked. Her grandmother, who was a deist, hated not only the pious, but piety itself, and, above all, Roman Catholicism. Christ was in her opinion an estimable man, the gospel an excellent philosophy, but she regretted that truth was enveloped in ridiculous fables. The little of religion which the girl imbibed she owed to her mother, by whose side she was made to kneel and say her prayers. “My mother,” writes George Sand in her “Histoire de ma Vie,” from which these details are taken, “carried poetry into her religious feeling, and I stood in need of poetry.” Aurora’s craving for religion and poetry was not to remain unallayed. One night there appeared to her in a dream a phantom, Corambe by name. The dream-created being took hold of her waking imagination, and became the divinity of her religion and the title and central figure of her childish, unwritten romance. Corambe, who was of no sex, or rather of either sex just as occasion might require–for it underwent numberless metamorphoses–had “all the attributes of physical and moral beauty, the gift of eloquence, and the all-powerful charm of the arts, especially the magic of musical improvisation,” being in fact an abstract of all the sacred and secular histories with which she had got acquainted.
The jarrings between her mother and grandmother continued; for of course their intercourse did not entirely cease. The former visited her relations at Nohant, and the latter and her grandchildren occasionally passed some weeks in Paris. Aurora, who loved both, her mother even passionately, was much harassed by their jealousy, which vented itself in complaints, taunts, and reproaches. Once she determined to go to Paris and live with her mother, and was only deterred from doing so by the most cruel means imaginable–namely, by her grandmother telling her of the dissolute life which her mother had led before marrying her father.
I owe my first socialistic and democratic instincts to the singularity of my position, to my birth a cheval so to speak on two classes–to my love for my mother thwarted and broken by prejudices which made me suffer before I could comprehend them. I owe them also to my education, which was by turns philosophical and religious, and to all the contrasts which my own life has presented to me from my earliest years.
At the age of thirteen Aurora was sent to the convent of English Augustines in Paris, the only surviving one of the three or four institutions of the kind that were founded during the time of Cromwell. There she remained for the next three years. Her knowledge when she entered this educational as well as religious establishment was not of the sort that enables its possessor to pass examinations; consequently she was placed in the lowest class, although in discussion she could have held her own even against her teachers. Much learning could not be acquired in the convent, but the intercourse with other children, many of them belonging, like the nuns, to English-speaking nations, was not without effect on the development of her character. There were three classes of pupils, the diables, betes, and devotes (the devils, blockheads, and devout). Aurora soon joined the first, and became one of their ringleaders. But all of a sudden a change came over her. From one extreme she fell into the other. From being the wildest of the wild she became the most devout of the devout: “There was nothing strong in me but passion, and when that of religion began to break out, it devoured everything in my heart; and nothing in my brain opposed it.” The acuteness of this attack of religious mania gradually diminished; still she harboured for some time the project of taking the veil, and perhaps would have done so if she had been left to herself.
After her return-to Nohant her half-brother Hippolyte, who had recently entered the army, gave her riding lessons, and already at the end of a week she and her mare Colette might be seen leaping ditches and hedges, crossing deep waters, and climbing steep inclines. “And I, the eau dormante of the convent, had become rather more daring than a hussar and more robust than a peasant.” The languor which had weighed upon her so long had all of once given way to boisterous activity. When she was seventeen she also began seriously to think of self-improvement; and as her grandmother was now paralytic and mentally much weakened, Aurora had almost no other guidance than that of chance and her own instinct. Thomas a Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ,” which had been her guide since her religious awakening, was now superseded, not, however, without some struggles, by Chateaubriand’s “Le Genie du Christianisme.” The book was lent her by her confessor with a view to the strengthening of her faith, but it produced quite the reverse effect, detaching her from it for ever. After reading and enjoying Chateaubriand’s book she set to work on the philosophers and essayists Mably, Locke, Condillac, Montesquieu, Bacon, Bossuet, Aristotle, Leibnitz, Pascal, Montaigne, and then turned to the poets and moralists La Bruyere, Pope, Milton, Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare, &c. But she was not a metaphysician; the tendencies of her mind did not impel her to seek for scientific solutions of the great mysteries. “J’etais,” she says, “un etre de sentiment, et le sentiment seul tranchait pour moi les questions a man usage, qui toute experience faite, devinrent bientot les seules questions a ma, portee.” This “le sentiment seul tranchait pour moi les questions” is another self- revelation, or instance of self-knowledge, which it will be useful to remember. What more natural than that this “being of sentiment” should prefer the poets to the philosophers, and be attracted, not by the cold reasoners, but by Rousseau, “the man of passion and sentiment.” It is impossible to describe here the various experiences and doings of Aurora. Without enlarging on the effects produced upon her by Byron’s poetry, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” and Chateaubriand’s “Rene”; on her suicidal mania; on the long rides which, clad in male attire, she took with Deschartres; on the death of her grandmother, whose fortune she inherited; on her life in Paris with her extravagantly-capricious mother; on her rupture with her father’s family, her aristocratic relations, because she would not give up her mother–I say, without enlarging on all this we will at once pass on to her marriage, about which there has been so much fabling.
Aurore Dupin married Casimir Dudevant in September, 1822, and did so of her own free will. Nor was her husband, as the story went, a bald-headed, grey-moustached old colonel, with a look that made all his dependents quake. On the contrary, Casimir Dudevant, a natural son of Colonel Dudevant (an officer of the legion of honour and a baron of the Empire), was, according to George Sand’s own description, “a slender, and rather elegant young man, with a gay countenance and a military manner.” Besides good looks and youth–he was twenty-seven–he must also have possessed some education, for, although he did not follow any profession, he had been at a military school, served in the army as sub-lieutenant, and on leaving the army had read for the bar and been admitted a barrister. There was nothing romantic in the courtship, but at the same time it was far from commonplace.
He did not speak to me of love [writes George Sand], and owned that he was little inclined to sudden passion, to enthusiasm, and in any case no adept in expressing it in an attractive manner. He spoke of a friendship that would stand any test, and compared the tranquil happiness of our hosts [she was then staying with some friends] to that which he believed he could swear to procure me.
She found sincerity not only in his words, but also in his whole conduct; indeed, what lady could question a suitor’s sincerity after hearing him say that he had been struck at first sight by her good-natured and sensible look, but that he had not thought her either beautiful or pretty?
Shortly after their marriage the young couple proceeded to Nohant, where they spent the winter. In June, 1823, they went to Paris, and there their son Maurice was born. Their only other offspring, the daughter Solange, did not come into the world till fiveyears later. The discrepancies of the husband and wife’s character, which became soon apparent, made themselves gradually more and more felt. His was a practical, hers a poetic nature. Under his management Nohant assumed an altogether different aspect–there was now order, neatness, and economy, where there was previously confusion, untidiness, and waste. She admitted that the change was for the better, but could not help regretting the state of matters that had been–the old dog Phanor taking possession of the fire-place and putting his muddy paws upon the carpet; the old peacock eating the strawberries in the garden; and the wild neglected nooks, where as a child she had so often played and dreamed. Both loved the country, but they loved it for different reasons. He was especially fond of hunting, a consequence of which was that he left his wife much alone. And when he was at home his society may not always have been very entertaining, for what liveliness he had seems to have been rather in his legs than in his brain. Writing to her mother on April i, 1828, Madame Dudevant says: “Vous savez comme il est paresseux de l’esprit et enrage des jambes.” On the other hand, her temper, which was anything but uniformly serene, must have been trying to her husband. Occasionally she had fits of weeping without any immediate cause, and one day at luncheon she surprised her husband by a sudden burst of tears which she was unable to account for. As M. Dudevant attributed his wife’s condition to the dulness of Nohant, the recent death of her grandmother, and the air of the country, he proposed a change of scene, which he did the more readily as he himself did not in the least like Berry. The pleasant and numerous company they found in the house of the friends with whom they went to stay at once revived her spirits, and she became us frolicsome as she had before been melancholy. George Sand describes her character as continually alternating between “contemplative solitude and complete giddiness in conditions of primitive innocence.” It is hardly to be wondered at that one who exhibited such glaring and unaccountable contrasts of character was considered by some people whimsical (bizarre) and by her husband an idiot. She herself admits the possibility that he may not have been wrong. At any rate, little by little he succeeded in making her feel the superiority of reason and intelligence so thoroughly that for a long time she was quite crushed and stupefied in company. Afraid of finding themselves alone at Nohant, the ill-matched pair continued their migration on leaving their friends. Madame Dudevant made great efforts to see through her husband’s eyes and to think and act as he wished, but no sooner did she accord with him than she ceased to accord with her own instincts. Whatever they undertook, wherever they went, that sadness “without aim and name” would from time to time come over her. Thinking that the decline of her religiousness was the cause of her lowness of spirits, she took counsel with her old confessor, the Jesuit Abbe de Premord, and even passed, with her husband’s consent, some days in the retirement of the English convent. After staying during the spring of 1825 at Nohant, M. and Madame Dudevant set out for the south of France on July 5, the twenty-first anniversary of the latter’s birthday. In what George Sand calls the “History of my Life,” she inserted some excerpts from a diary kept by her at this time, which throw much light on the relation that existed between wife and husband. If only we could be sure that it is not like so much in the book the outcome of her powerful imagination! Besides repeated complaints about her husband’s ill-humour and frequent absences, we meet with the following ominous reflections on marriage:–
Marriage is beautiful for lovers and useful for saints.
Besides saints and lovers there are a great many ordinary minds and placid hearts that do not know love and cannot attain to sanctity.
Marriage is the supreme aim of love. When love has left it, or never entered it, sacrifice remains. This is very well for those who understand sacrifice. The latter presupposes a measure of heart and a degree of intelligence which are not frequently to be met with.
For sacrifice there are compensations which the vulgar mind can appreciate. The approbation of the world, the routine sweetness of custom, a feeble, tranquil, and sensible devotion that is not bent on rapturous exaltation, or money, that is to say baubles, dress, luxury–in short, a thousand little things which make one forget that one is deprived of happiness.
The following extracts give us some glimpses which enable us to realise the situation:–
I left rather sad. * said hard things to me, having been told by a Madame *** that I was wrong in making excursions without my husband. I do not think that this is the case, seeing that my husband goes first, and I go where he intends to go.
My husband is one of the most intrepid of men. He goes everywhere, and I follow him. He turns round and rebukes me. He says that I affect singularity. I’ll be hanged if I think of it. I turn round, and I see Zoe following me. I tell her that she affects singularity. My husband is angry because Zoe laughs.
…We quickly leave the guides and the caravan behind us. We ride over the most fantastic roads at a gallop. Zoe is mad with courage. This intoxicates me, and I at once am her equal.
In addition to the above, we must read a remark suggested by certain entries in the diary:–
Aimee was an accomplished person of an exquisite distinction. She loved everything that in any way is elegant and ornate in society: names, manners, talents, titles. Madcap as I assuredly was, I looked upon all this as vanity, and went in quest of intimacy and simplicity combined with poesy. Thanks to God, I found them in Zoe, who was really a person of merit, and, moreover, a woman with a heart as eager for affection as my own.
M. and Madame Dudevant spent the greater part of autumn and the whole winter at Guillery, the chateau of Colonel Dudevant. Had the latter not died at this time, he might perhaps have saved the young people from those troubles towards which they were drifting, at least so his daughter-in-law afterwards thought. In the summer of 1826 the ill-matched couple returned to Nohant, where they continued to live, a few short absences excepted, till 1831. Hitherto their mutual relation had left much to be desired, henceforth it became worse and worse every day. It would, however, be a mistake to account for this state of matters solely by the dissimilarity of their temperaments–the poetic tendency on the one side, the prosaic on the other–for although it precluded an ideal matrimonial union, it by no means rendered an endurable and even pleasant companionship impossible. The real cause of the gathering clouds and imminent storm is to be sought elsewhere. Madame Dudevant was endowed with great vitality; she was, as it were, charged with an enormous amount of energy, which, unless it found an outlet, oppressed her and made her miserable. Now, in her then position, all channels were closed up. The management of household affairs, which, if her statement may be trusted, she neither considered beneath her dignity nor disliked, might have served as a, safety-valve; but her administration came to an untimely end. When, after the first year of their married life, her husband examined the accounts, he discovered that she had spent 14,000 francs instead of 10,000, and found himself constrained to declare that their purse was too light for her liberality. Not having anything else to do, and her uselessness vexing her, she took to doctoring the poor and concocting medicines. Hers, however, was not the spirit that allows itself to be fettered by the triple vow of obedience, silence, and poverty. No wonder, therefore, that her life, which she compared to that of a nun, was not to her taste. She did not complain so much of her husband, who did not interfere with her reading and brewing of juleps, and was in no way a tyrant, as of being the slave of a given situation from which he could not set her free. The total lack of ready money was felt by her to constitute in our altogether factitious society an intolerable situation, frightful misery or absolute powerlessness. What she missed was some means of which she might dispose, without compunction and uncontrolled, for an artistic treat, a beautiful book, a week’s travelling, a present to a poor friend, a charity to a deserving person, and such like trifles, which, although not indispensable, make life pleasant. “Irresponsibility is a state of servitude; it is something like the disgrace of the interdict.” But servitude and disgrace are galling yokes, and it was not likely that so strong a character would long and meekly submit to them. We have, however, not yet exhausted the grievances of Madame Dudevant. Her brother Hippolyte, after mismanaging his own property, came and lived for the sake of economy at Nohant. His intemperance and that of a friend proved contagious to her husband, and the consequence was not only much rioting till late into the night, but occasionally also filthy conversations. She began, therefore, to consider how the requisite means might be obtained–which would enable her to get away from such undesirable surroundings, and to withdraw her children from these evil influences. For four years she endeavoured to discover an employment by which she could gain her livelihood. A milliner’s business was out of the question without capital to begin with; by needlework no more than ten sous a day could be earned; she was too conscientious to make translation pay; her crayon and water-colour portraits were pretty good likenesses, but lacked originality; and in the painting of flowers and birds on cigar-cases, work-boxes, fans, &c., which promised to be more successful, she was soon discouraged by a change of fashion.
At last Madame Dudevant made up her mind to go to Paris and try her luck in literature. She had no ambition whatever, and merely hoped to be able to eke out in this way her slender resources. As regards the capital of knowledge she was possessed of she wrote: “I had read history and novels; I had deciphered scores; I had thrown an inattentive eye over the newspapers….Monsieur Neraud [the Malgache of the “Lettres d’un Voyageur”] had tried to teach me botany.” According to the “Histoire de ma Vie” this new departure was brought about by an amicable arrangement; her letters, as in so many cases, tell, however, a very different tale. Especially important is a letter written, on December 3, 1830, to Jules Boucoiran, who had lately been tutor to her children, and whom, after the relation of what had taken place, she asks to resume these duties for her sake now that she will be away from Nohant and her children part of the year. Boucoiran, it should be noted, was a young man of about twenty, who was a total stranger to her on September 2, 1829, but whom she addressed on November 30 of that year as “Mon cher Jules.” Well, she tells him in the letter in question that when looking for something in her husband’s writing-desk she came on a packet addressed to her, and on which were further written by his hand the words “Do not open it till after my death.” Piqued by curiosity, she did open the packet, and found in it nothing but curses upon herself. “He had gathered up in it,” she says, “all his ill-humour and anger against me, all his reflections on my perversity.” This was too much for her; she had allowed herself to be humiliated for eight years, now she would speak out.
Without waiting a day longer, still feeble and ill, I declared my will and mentioned my motives with an aplomb and coolness which petrified him. He hardly expected to see a being like me rise to its full height in order to face him. He growled, disputed, beseeched. I remained immovable. I want an allowance, I shall go to Paris, my children will remain at Nohant.
She feigned intractability on all these points, but after some time relented and consented to return to Nohant if her conditions were accepted. From the “Histoire de ma Vie” we learn what these conditions were. She demanded her daughter, permission to pass twice three months every year in Paris, and an allowance of 250 francs per month during the time of her absence from Nohant. Her letters, however, show that her daughter was not with her during her first three months at Paris.
Madame Dudevant proceeded to Paris at the beginning of 1831. Her establishment there was of the simplest. It consisted of three little rooms on the fifth story (a mansarde) in a house on the Quai Saint-Michel. She did the washing and ironing herself, the portiere assisting her in the rest of the household work. The meals came from a restaurant, and cost two francs a day. And thus she managed to keep within her allowance. I make these and the following statements on her own authority. As she found her woman’s attire too expensive, little suited for facing mud and rain, and in other respects inconvenient, she provided herself with a coat (redingote-guerite), trousers, and waistcoat of coarse grey cloth, a hat of the same colour, a large necktie, and boots with little iron heels. This latter part of her outfit especially gave her much pleasure. Having often worn man’s clothes when riding and hunting at Nohant, and remembering that her mother used to go in the same guise with her father to the theatre during their residence in Paris, she felt quite at home in these habiliments and saw nothing shocking in donning them. Now began what she called her literary school-boy life (vie d’ecolier litteraire), her vie de gamin. She trotted through the streets of Paris at all times and in all weathers, went to garrets, studios, clubs, theatres, coffee-houses, in fact, everywhere except to salons. The arts, politics, the romance of society and living humanity, were the studies which she passionately pursued. But she gives those the lie who said of her that she had the “curiosite du vice.”
The literary men with whom she had constant intercourse, and with whom she was most closely connected, came, like herself, from Berry. Henri de Latouche (or Delatouche, as George Sand writes), a native of La Chatre, who was editor of the Figaro, enrolled her among the contributors to this journal. But she had no talent for this kind of work, and at the end of the month her payment amounted to perhaps from twelve to fifteen francs. Madame Dudevant and the two other Berrichons, Jules Sandeau and Felix Pyat, were, so to speak, the literary apprentices of Delatouche, who not only was much older than they, having been born in 1785, but had long ago established his reputation as a journalist, novelist, and dramatic writer. The first work which Madame Dudevant produced was the novel “Rose et Blanche”; she wrote it in collaboration with Jules Sandeau, whose relation to her is generally believed to have been not only of a literary nature. The novel, which appeared in 1831, was so successful that the publishers asked the authors to write them another. Madame Dudevant thereupon wrote “Indiana”, but without the assistance of Jules Sandeau. She was going to have it published under the nom de plume Jules Sand, which they had assumed on the occasion of “Rose et Blanche.” But Jules Sandeau objected to this, saying that as she had done all the work, she ought to have all the honour. To satisfy both, Jules Sandeau, who would not adorn himself with another’s plumes, and the publishers, who preferred a known to an unknown name, Delatouche gave Madame Dudevant the name of George Sand, under which henceforth all her works were published, and by which she was best known in society, and generally called among her friends. “Valentine” appeared, like “Indiana,” in 1832, and was followed in 1833 by Lelia. For the first two of these novels she received 3,000 francs. When Buloz bought the Revue des deux Mondes, she became one of the contributors to that journal. This shows that a great improvement had taken place in her circumstances, and that the fight she had to fight was not a very hard one. Indeed, in the course of two years she had attained fame, and was now a much-praised and much- abused celebrity.
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.]
These letters, moreover, contain much that is damaging to her claim to chastity. Indeed, one sentence in a letter written in June, 1835 (Correspondance, vol. I., p. 307), disposes of this claim decisively. The unnecessarily graphic manner in which she here deals with an indelicate subject would be revolting in a man addressing a woman, in a woman addressing a man it is simply monstrous.
As a thinker, George Sand never attained to maturity; she always remained the slave of her strong passions and vitiated principles. She never wrote a truer word than when she confessed that she judged everything by sympathy. Indeed, what she said of her childhood applies also to her womanhood: “Il n’y avait de fort en moi que la passion…rien dans man cerveau fit obstacle.” George Sand often lays her finger on sore places, fails, however, not only to prescribe the right remedy, but even to recognise the true cause of the disease. She makes now and then acute observations, but has not sufficient strength to grapple successfully with the great social, philosophical, and religious problems which she so boldly takes up. In fact, reasoning unreasonableness was a very frequent condition of George Sand’s mind. That the unreasonableness of her reasoning remains unseen by many, did so at any rate in her time, is due to the marvellous beauty and eloquence of her language. The best that can be said of her subversive theories was said by a French critic–namely, that they were in reality only “le temoignage d’aspirations genereuses et de nobles illusions.” But even this is saying too much, for her aspirations and illusions are far from being always generous and noble. If we wish to see George Sand at her best we must seek her out in her quiet moods, when she contents herself with being an artist, and unfolds before us the beauties of nature and the secrets of the human heart. Indeed, unless we do this, we cannot form a true idea of her character. Not all the roots of her talent were imbedded in corruption. She who wrote Lelia wrote also Andre, she who wrote Lucrezia Floriani wrote also La petite Fadette. And in remembering her faults and shortcomings justice demands that we should not forget her family history, with its dissensions and examples of libertinism, and her education without system, continuity, completeness, and proper guidance.
The most precious judgment pronounced on George Sand is by one who was at once a true woman and a great poet. Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning saw in her the “large-brained woman and large- hearted man…whose soul, amid the lions of her tumultuous senses, moans defiance and answers roar for roar, as spirits can”; but who lacked “the angel’s grace of a pure genius sanctified from blame.” This is from the sonnet to George Sand, entitled “A Desire.” In another sonnet, likewise addressed to George Sand and entitled “A Recognition,” she tells her how vain it was to deny with a manly scorn the woman’s nature…while before
The world thou burnest in a poet-fire, We see thy woman-heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!
END OF VOLUME I.