CHAPTER V
GEORGE SAND
[Sidenote: George Sand--generalities about her.]
There is a Scotch proverb (not, I think, among those most generallyknown), "Never tell your foe when your foot sleeps"; and some have heldthat this applies specially to the revelation, by an author, of his ownweak points. I do not agree with them, having always had a fancy forplaying and seeing cards on table--except at cards themselves, where adummy seems to me only to spoil the game. Therefore I admit, in comingto George Sand, that this famous novelist has not, _as_ a novelist, everbeen a favourite of mine--that I have generally experienced some, andoccasionally great, difficulty in reading her. Even the "purgedconsiderate mind" (without, I venture to hope, much dulling of theliterary palate) which I have brought to the last readings necessary forthis book, has but partially removed this difficulty. The causes of it,and their soundness or unsoundness as reasons, must be postponed for alittle--till, as usual, sufficient survey and analysis of at leastspecimens (for here as elsewhere the immense bulk of the total workdefies anything more than "sampling") have supplied due evidence. But itmay be said at once that no kind of prejudice or dislike, arising fromthe pretty notorious history and character of Amantine (Amandine?Armandine?) Lucile Aurore Dupin or Dudevant, commonly called GeorgeSand, has anything to do with my want of affection or admiration for herwork. I do not recommend her conduct in her earlier days for imitation,and I am bound to say that I do not think it was ever excused by whatone may call real love. But she seems to have been an extremely goodfellow in her age, and not by any means a very bad fellow in her youth.She was at one time pretty, or at least good-looking;[174] she was atall times clever; and if she did not quite deserve that almostsuperhuman eulogy awarded in the Devonshire epitaph to
Mary Sexton, Who pleased many a man and never vexed one,[175]
she did fulfil the primal duty of her sex, and win its greatest triumph,by complying with the first half of the line, while, if she failed as tothe second, it was perhaps not entirely her fault.[176] Finally,Balzac's supposed picture of her as Camille in _Beatrix_ has the almostunique peculiarity, among its author's sketches of women, of beingpositively attractive--attractive, that is to say, not merely to thecritic as a powerful study and work of art; not perhaps at all to thesentimentalist as a victim or an adorable piece of _candeur_; not to thelover of physical beauty or passion, but to the reader--"sensible" inthe old sense as well as in the new--who feels that here is a woman heshould like to have known, even if he feels likewise that hisweather-eye would have had to be kept open during the knowledge.
[Sidenote: Phases of her work.]
It has been customary--and though these customary things are sometimesdelusive and too often mechanical, there is also occasionally, and, Ithink, here, her work, something not negligible in them, if they be notapplied too rigidly--to divide George Sand's long period (nearly half acentury) of novel-production into four sub-periods, correspondingroughly with the four whole decades of the thirties, forties, fifties,and sixties.[177] The first, sometimes called, but, I think,misleadingly, "Romantic," is the period of definite and mainly sexualrevolt, illustrated by such novels as _Indiana_, _Valentine_, _Lelia_,and _Jacques_. The second is that of _illumine_ mysticism andsemi-political theorising, to which _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_, _LaComtesse de Rudolstadt_, and others belong. The third, one of a certain_apaisement_, when the author had finally settled at her country-houseof Nohant in Berry, turns to studies of rural life: _La Petite Fadette_,_Francois le Champi_, _La Mare au Diable_, etc. The last is representedby novels of no one particular, or at least single, scope or bent, _LesBeaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore_, _Le Marquis de Villemer_, _MademoiselleLa Quintinie,_ etc., reaching to _Flamarande_ and its sequel shortlybefore her death. The thing, as has been hinted already, is one of thosefirst rough sketches of the ground which, if not too closely adhered to,are often useful. As a matter of fact, the divisions often--as one mightbe sure they would--run cross. There is a lot of occult or semi-occultstuff in _Lelia_, and the "period of appeasement" did not show muchreconciliation and forgiveness of injury in _Elle et Lui_, whether wetake this as by the injured or as by her who had done the wrong. But ifwe take the two first novels briefly and _Lelia_ itself more fully forPeriod I.; _Consuelo_ and its sequel (_Spiridion_ has been "done anddone thoroughly"[178] by Thackeray in the _Paris Sketch-book_) for II.;the three above-mentioned _berquinades_ for the Third, with _LucreziaFloriani_ thrown between as an all-important outsider, and _Les BeauxMessieurs de Bois-Dore_ for IV., giving each some detailed criticism,with a few remarks on others, it ought to suffice as a fairly solidgroundwork for a general summing-up.
[Sidenote: _Indiana_.]
To understand the _furore_ with which _Indiana_ and _Valentine_ werereceived, one must remember the time and the circumstance with even morecare than is usually desirable. They were--if not quite so well writtenas they seemed even to Thackeray--written very well; they expressed thefull outburst of the French _Sturm und Drang_ movement; there wasnothing like them either in French or in any other literature, thoughBulwer was beginning similar things with us. Essentially, and when taken_sub specie aeternitatis_, they are very nearly rubbish. The frail(extremely frail) and gentle Indiana, with her terrible husband, whosecrimes against her and nature even reach the abominable pitch ofdeclaring himself ready to shoot expected poachers and possibleburglars; her creole maid and foster-sister "Noun," who disguisesherself in Indiana's garments and occupies her room, receives there alover who is afterwards her mistress's, but soon commits suicide; thelover himself, a most appalling "tiger," as his own time would havecalled him; and the enigmatic English cousin, indifferently designatedas "Sir Rodolphe Brown," "Sir Ralph," "Sir Brown," and "M. Brown," withwhom Indiana makes a third trial of hitherto "incomprised" andunattained happiness--are all inhabitants of a sort of toy doll's-housepartaking of the lunatic-asylum. But the author's three prefaces,written at intervals of exactly ten years, passably inconsistent indetail, but all agreeing in contempt of critics and lofty anarchistsentiment, are great fun, and are almost a reward for reading the book.
[Sidenote: _Valentine._]
_Valentine_ has more of the really admirable description of her belovedBerry with which the author so often honeys her drugs; but thenovel-part of it is largely composed of the same sort of violent boshwhich almost monopolises _Indiana_. In fact, the peasant-_bourgeois_hero Benedict, whom every woman loves; who is a conceited andill-mannered mixture of clown and prig; who is angry with his mistressValentine (Madame de Lansac) for "not knowing how to prefer him to herhonour," though one would have said she had given ample proofs of thispreference; and who finally appeases the reader by tumbling on thepoints of a pitchfork placed in his way by an (as it happens) undulyjealous husband, is a more offensive creature than any one in theearlier book.[179] One is, on the other hand, a little sorry forValentine, while one is sorry for nobody in _Indiana_ except perhaps forthe husband, who has the sense to die early.
[Sidenote: _Lelia._]
_Lelia_, some years younger than these and later than the Mussettragedy, is a good deal better, or at least less childish. It is beyondall question an extraordinary book, though it may be well to keep thehyphen in the adjective to prevent confusion of sense. It opens, and toa large extent continues, with a twist of the old epistolary stylewhich, if nothing else, is ingeniously novel. George Sand was in truth a"well of ingenuity" as D'Artagnan was a _puits de sagesse_, and thisaccounts, to some extent, for her popularity. You have not only no datesand no places, but no indication who writes the letters or to whom theyare written, though, unless you are very stupid, you soon find out. The_personae_ are Lelia--a _femme incomprise_, if not incomprehensible;Stenio, a young poet, who is, in the profoundest and saddest sense ofthe adverb, hopelessly in love with her; and a mysterious personage--asort of Solomon-Socrates-Senancour--who bears the Ossianesque name ofTrenmor, with a later and less provincially poetical _alias_ of"Valmarina."[180] The history of the _preuves_ of Trenmor'snov
el-nobility are soon laid before the reader. They are not, in theirearlier stages, engaging to the old-fashioned believer in "good form."
Trenmor is the sort of exaggeration of Childe Harold which a lively butrather vulgar mind might conceive. "He was born great; but theydeveloped the animal in him." The greatness postponed its appearance,but the animality did credit to the development. "He used to love tobeat his dogs; before long he beat his prostitutes." This harmlessdiversion accentuated itself in details, for which, till the acme, thereader must be referred to the original. The climacteric moment came. Hehad a mistress called "La Mantovana," whom he rather preferred to theothers, because she was beautiful and impudent. "In a night of noise andwine" he struck her, and she drew a dagger. This made him love her for amoment; but unfortunately she made an improper observation; thereupon hetore off her pearl necklace and trod it under his feet. She wept. Thisannoyed Trenmor very much. "She had wished revenge for a personalinsult, and she cried for a toy!" Accordingly he had a "crispation ofnerves," which obliged him to take a large cut-glass decanter and hither on the head with it. According to the natural perversity on suchoccasions of such persons, she died. The brutal justice of mankind--sohateful to Godwin and George Sand and Victor Hugo--sent Trenmor, not,indeed, to the gallows, as it should have done, but to the galleys. Yetthe incident made Lelia, who (she must have had a sweet set of friends)somehow knew him, very fond of Trenmor, though she certainly told himthat he might as well repent of what he had done, which seemsinconsistent.
They let him out after five years (why, Heaven or the otherplace knows!) and he became a reformed character--theSolomon-Socrates-Senancour above mentioned _plus_ a sort of lay"director" to Lelia, with a carbonaro attitude of politicalrevolutionary and free-thinking _illumine_. Now _corruptio pessimi_ isseldom _optima_.
The main interest, however, shifts (with apparitions ofTrenmor-Valmarina) to the loves (if they may be called so) of thepitiable Stenio and the intolerable heroine. She is unable to loveanybody, and knows it; she can talk--ye Demons, how she can talk!--butshe can never behave like a woman of this world. She alternately hugsStenio, so that she nearly squeezes his breath out, and, when he drawsnatural conclusions from this process, pushes him away. But worse andmore preposterous things happen. Lelia has a sister, Pulcherie, who isvery like her (they are of course both impossibly beautiful) in body,and so far resembles her in mind and soul as to be unable to behavedecently or sensibly. But her want of decency and sense takes the morecommonplace line of becoming an actual courtesan of the "Imperia" kindin Italy. By a series of muddles for which Lelia is--as her plain-spokensister points out after the catastrophe--herself really responsible,Stenio is induced, during the excitement of an _al fresco_ fete at nightin the grounds of a sort of fairy palace, to take the "coming" sisterfor the recalcitrant one, and avail himself of her complaisance, _usquead finem_. Lelia reproaches him (which she has not the least right todo), and he devotes himself entirely to Pulcherie (La Zinzolina is herprofessional name) and her group of noble paramours. He gets, however,generally drunk and behaves with a brutal rudeness, which would, in theItaly of tradition, have finished things up very soon by a stilettothrust, and in honest England by a kicking into the street. There aremysterious plots, cardinals, and anything else you like or don't like.Lelia becomes an abbess, Stenio a suicide, the above-mentioned priest,Magnus, being much concerned in this. She admits her unfortunate loverto burial, and is degraded and imprisoned for it--or for having savedTrenmor-Valmarina from the law. Everybody else now dies, and thenightmare comes to an end.
[Sidenote: The moral of the group and its tragi-comedy.]
The beauties of style which softened the savage breast of Thackerayhimself in the notice above mentioned, and which, such as they are,appear even in George Sand's earliest work, will receive attention whenthat work comes to be discussed as a whole. Meanwhile, at the risk ofany charge of Philistinism, I confess that this part of it seems to me,after fifty years and more of "corrected impression," almost worthless_au fond_. It is, being in prose, and therefore destitute of theeasements or at least masquerades which poetry provides for nonsense,the most conspicuous and considerable example--despite the undoubtedtalent of the writer--of the mischief which Byronism did on theContinent. With us, though it made a great stir, it really did littleharm except to some "silly women" (as the apostle, in unkindly anduncourtly, but truly apostolic fashion, had called similar persons ofthe angelic sex ages before). Counter-jumpers like Thackeray's ownPogson worshipped "the noble poet"; boys of nobler stamp like Tennyson_thought_ they worshipped him, but if they were going to become men ofaffairs forgot all about him; if they were to be poets took to Keats andShelley as models, not to him. Critics hardly took him seriously, exceptfor non-literary reasons. There was, as I think somebody (perhapsThackeray himself) says upon something, "too much roast beef about" forus to fill our bellies with this worse than east wind of Sensibilitygone rotten. But abroad, for reasons which would be easy but irrelevantto dwell upon, Byron hit the many-winged bird of popular favour onnearly all its pinions. He ran strikingly and delightfully contrary tothe accepted _Anglais_, whether of the philosophical or the caricaturetype; he was noble, but revolutionary; he looked (he never was, exceptin non-essentials) Romantic; he was new, naughty, nice, all at once. Andthey went mad over him, and to a large extent and for a long timeremained so; indeed, Continental criticism, whether Latin, Teutonic,Scandinavian, or Slav, has never reached "the centre" about Byron. NowGeorge Sand was at no time exactly a silly woman, but she was for a longtime a woman off her balance. Byronism was exactly the -ism with whichshe could execute the wildest feats of half-voluntary andhalf-involuntary acrobatics, saltimbanquery, and chucking of her bonnetover all conceivable and inconceivable mills. Childe Harold, Manfred,Conrad, Lara, Don Juan, Sardanapalus--the shades of these caught herand waltzed with her and reversed and figured and gesticulated,
With their Sentimentalibus lacrimae rorum, and pathos and bathos delightful to see,
--or perhaps _not_ so very delightful?
But let us pass to the next stage.
[Sidenote: _Consuelo._]
Those persons (I think, without tempting Nemesis too much, I might saythose fortunate persons) to whom the world of books is almost as real asthe other two worlds of life and of dream, may or must have observedthat the conditions and sensations of the individual in all three arevery much the same. In particular, the change from a state of discomfortto one of comfort--or _vice versa_ unluckily, but with that we havenothing immediately to do--applies to all. In actual life you are hot,tired, bored, headachy, "spited with fools," what not. A change ofatmosphere, a bath, a draught of some not unfermented liquor, the sightof a face, what not again, nay, sometimes a mere shift of clothing, willmake you cool, satisfied, at peace. In dreams you have generally towake, to shake off the "fierce vexation," and to realise that it _is_ adream; but the relief comes sooner or later. If anybody wants toexperience this change from discomfort to comfort in the book-world of asingle author, I cannot commend anything better than the perusal, with ashort interval--but there should be some--of _Consuelo_ after _Lelia_.We may have some things to say against the later novel; but that doesnot matter.
[Sidenote: Much better in parts.]
It opens with no tricks or _tours de force_; in no atmosphere ofdarkened footlights and smell of sawdust; but in frank and freenovel-fashion, with a Venetian church, a famous maestro (Porpora), achoir of mostly Italian girls, and the little Spanish gipsy Consuelo,the poorest, humblest, plainest (as most people think) of all the bevy,but the possessor of the rarest vocal faculties and the mosthappiness-producing-and-diffusing temper. There is nothing in the leastmilk-soppy or prudish about Consuelo, though she is perfectly "pure";nor is there anything tractified about her, though she is pious andgenerous. The contrast between her and her betrothed, the handsome butworthless Anzoleto, also a singer, is, at first, not overworked; and onescene--that in which, when Consuelo has got over the "scraggy" age andis developing a
ctual beauty, she and Anzoleto debate, in the mostnatural manner, whether she _is_ pretty or not--is quite capital, one ofthe things that stick in one's memory and stamp the writer's genius, or,at any rate, consummate talent.
[Sidenote: The degeneration.]
This happy state of affairs continues without much deterioration, thoughperhaps with some warnings to the experienced, for some two hundredpages. The situations and the other characters--the Professor Porporahimself; Count Zustiniani, _dilettante_, _impresario_ and of coursegallant; his _prima donna_ and (in the story at least) first mistress,La Corilla; her extravagances and seduction of the handsome Anzoleto;his irresolution between his still existing affection for Consuelo, whopasses through all these things (and Zustiniani's siege of her) "inmaiden meditation, fancy-free"--all discharge themselves or play theirparts quite as they ought to do. But this comparatively quiet, though byno means emotionless or unincidented, part of the story "ends in ablow-up," or rather in a sink-down, for Anzoleto, on a stolen gondolatrip with Clorinda, third cantatrice and interim mistress of Zustiniani(beautiful, but stupid, and a bad singer), meets the Count in anothergondola with Corilla herself, and in his fury rams his rival and theperfidious one. Consuelo, who has at last had her eyes opened, quitsVenice and flees, with a testimonial from Porpora, to Germany. Even thenone hopes for the best, and acknowledges that at any rate something notfar from the best, something really good, has been given one for twohundred well-filled pages--more than the equivalent of the first deck ofone of our old average "three-deckers."
But in the mind of experience such hopes are always accompanied byfears, and alas! in this instance "the fears have it." There is on theborder of Bohemia a "Castle of the Giants"; and oh! how one wishes thatmy Uncle Toby had allowed the sea to execute the ravages he deprecatedand sweep that castle into nothingness! When we get there Byronism isback--nay, its papa and mamma, Lewisism and Radcliffism, are backalso--with their cardboard turrets and precipices and grottos; theirpine-woods reminding one of the little bristly green things, on roundcinnamon-coloured bases, of one's youth; their floods and falls soobviously supplied at so much a thousand gallons by the nearest watercompany, and their mystery-men and dwarfs and catalepsies and all therest of the weary old "tremblement." Count Christian of Rudolstadt isindeed a gentleman and an almost too affectionate father; his brother,Baron Frederick, a not disagreeable sportsman and _bon vivant_; theirsister, the Canoness, a not too theatrical old maid; and Frederick'sdaughter, Amelie, though pert and not too good-natured, the most humancreature of them all, albeit with the humanities of a soubrette ratherthan of a great lady. But what shall one say of Albert of Rudolstadt,the heir, the betrothed of Amelie (this fact excusing much in her), and,when Consuelo has joined the circle at Porpora's recommendation asmusic-mistress and companion in the higher kind to Amelie--_her_ slave,conqueror, tormentor, and in the long-run husband? He is perhaps themost intolerable hero[181] ever designed as a gentleman by a novelistwho has been classed as great, and who certainly has some qualitiesnecessary to greatness. In reading about him vague compunctions evencome over the mind at having spoken harshly of Stenio and Trenmor.Stenio was always a fool and latterly a cad; Trenmor first a brute andthen a bore. Albert is none of these (except perhaps the last), but heis madder than the Mad Hatter and the March Hare put together, and asdepressing as they are delightful. He has hallucinations whichobliterate the sense of time in him; he thinks himself one of hisancestors of the days of Ziska; he has second sight; he speaks Spanishto Consuelo and calls her by her name when he first sees her, though hehas not the faintest _sane_ idea who she is or whence she comes; and hereduces his family to abject misery by ensconcing himself for days in agrotto which can be isolated by means of a torrent turned on and off atpleasure by a dwarf gipsy called Zdenko, who is almost a greaternuisance than Albert himself. Consuelo discovers his retreat at the riskof being drowned; and various nightmarish scenes occur, resulting in theslight return to sanity on Albert's part involved in falling in lovewith her, and a very considerable advance towards _in_sanity on hers byfalling in love with him. But perhaps this give-and-take of lovers mayseem attractive to some. And when after a time we get into merehocus-pocus, and it seems to Consuelo that Albert's violin "speaks andutters words as through the mouth of Satan," the same persons may thinkit fine. For myself, I believe that without fatuity I may claim to be,if not a _visionnaire_ (perhaps that also), at least a lover of visions,and of Isaiah and Ezekiel and the Revelation. Dante, Blake, Shelley, thebest of Lamennais and the best of Hugo excite in me nothing but apassionate reverence. I can walk day-long and night-long by Ulai andChebar and Lethe-Eunoe and have no thought of sneer or slumber, shrug orsatiety. But when you ask me to be agitated at Count Albert ofRudolstadt's violin ventriloquising Satan I really must decline. I doeven remember the poor creature Paul de Kock, and would fain turn to oneof the things he was writing at this very time.
[Sidenote: Recovery; but not maintained quite to the end.]
_Consuelo_ is a very long book--it fills three of the tightly printedvolumes of the old Michel-Calmann-Levy collection, with some three orfour hundred pages in each; and we have not got, in the above survey, tomore than the middle of the second. But in its afternoon and eveningthere is some light. The creature Anzoleto recurs; but his immediateeffect is good,[182] for it starts the heroine on a fresh elopement ofan innocent kind, and we get back to reality. The better side of GeorgeSand's Bohemianism revives in Bohemia itself; and she takes Consuelo tothe road, where she adopts male dress (a fancy with her creatresslikewise), and falls in with no less a person than the composer Haydn inhis youth. They meet some Prussian crimps, and escape them by help of acoxcombical but not wholly objectionable Austrian Count Hoditz and thebetter (Prussian) Trenck. They get to Vienna (meeting La Corilla in anodd but not badly managed maternity-scene half-way) and rejoin oldPorpora there. There are interviews with Kaunitz and Maria Theresa:[183]and a recrudescence of the Venetian musical jealousies. Consueloendeavours to reopen communications with the Rudolstadts, butPorpora--chiefly out of his desire to retain her on the stage, butpartly also from an honest and not wholly unsound belief that a unionbetween a gipsy girl and a German noble would itself be madness--playsfalse with the letters. She accepts a professional invitation fromHoditz to his castle in Moravia, meets there no less a person thanFrederic the Second _incognito_, and by his order (after she has savedhis life from the vengeance of the re-crimped deserter rescued with herby Hoditz and Trenck) is invited to sing at Berlin. The carrying out ofthe invitation, which has its Fredericianities[184] (as one may perhapsbe allowed to call them), is, however, interrupted. The mysteriousAlbert, who has mysteriously turned up in time to prevent an attempt ofthe other and worse (Austrian) Trenck on Consuelo, is taken with anapparently mortal illness at home, and Consuelo is implored to returnthere. She does so, and a marriage _in articulo mortis_ follows, thesupposed dead Zdenko (whom we did not at all want) turning up aliveafter his master's death. Consuelo, fully if not cheerfully adopted bythe family, is offered all the heirloom jewels and promised successionto the estates. She refuses, and the book ends--with fair warning thatit is no ending.
[Sidenote: _La Comtesse de Rudolstadt._]
When her history begins again under the title she has "reneged," thereader may for no short time think that the curse of the sequel--a curseonly too common, but not universal--is going to be averted. She is inBerlin alone (see note above); is successful, but not at allhappy--perhaps least of all happy because the king, partly out ofgratitude for his safety, partly out of something like a more naturalkind of affection than most authors have credited him with, pays hermarked attentions. For a time things are not unlively; and even the verydangerous experiment of a supper--one of those at which Frederic'sguests were supposed to have perfectly "free elbows" and availedthemselves of the supposition at their peril--a supper with Voltaire, LaMettrie, Algarotti, D'Argens, Poellnitz, and "Quintus Icilius"present--comes off not so badly. One of the reasons of this is thatGeorge Sand has the
sense to make Voltaire ill and silent, and puts thebulk of the "business" on La Mettrie--a person much cleverer than mostpeople who have only read book-notices of him may think, but notdangerously brilliant. Then Consuelo, or "La Porporina," as her stagename is, gets mixed up--owing to no fault of her own in the first placeat any rate--with the intrigues of the Princess Amelie of Prussia andher lover, the less bad Trenck. This has two awkward results--forherself an imprisonment at Spandau, into which she is cast by Frederic'shalf jealous, half purely tyrannical wrath, and for us a revival of allthe _massacrant_ illuminism in which the Princess herself is dabbling.So we have on the scene not only (as the reader sees at once, thoughsome rather clumsy efforts are made to hide it) the resuscitated Albert,who passes as a certain Trismegistus, not only the historical charlatanSaint-Germain, but another charlatan at this time not at all historical(seeing that the whole story ends in 1760, and he never left Palermotill nine years later), Cagliostro. Even at Spandau Consuelo herself isnot quite uninteresting; but the Illuminati determine to rescue her, andfor the latter part of the first volume and the whole of the second theentire thing is, once more, Bosh. The most absurd "double-gangings" takeplace between an _inconnu_ named Liverani, whom Consuelo cannot helploving, and Albert himself, who _is_ Liverani, as everybody but herselfsees at once, interspersed between endless tracts of the usual rubbishabout underground tribunals, and judges in red cloaks, and skeletons,and museums of torture-implements, and all the Weishauptian trumpery ofmixed occultism and revolutionary sentiment. The author has even theinsufferable audacity to fling at us _another_ resuscitation--that ofthe Countess Wanda, Albert's mother, who appears to have transmitted tohim her abominable habit of catalepsy. So ends, unsatisfactorilyenough--unless anybody is satisfied by the fact that two solid childrenresult from the still mystifying married life of the pair--the storywhich had begun so well in the first volume of _Consuelo_, and which inthe major part of _Consuelo_ itself, though not throughout, maintainsthe satisfaction fairly.
[Sidenote: The "making good" of _Lucrezia Floriani_.]
If any reader, in two ways gentle, has been good enough to take someinterest in the analysis of these books, but is also so soft-hearted asto feel slightly _froisse_ by it, as showing a disqualifying inabilityto sympathise with the author, I hope I may put myself right by what Iam going to say of another. _Lucrezia Floriani_ is to me the mostremarkable book that George Sand ever wrote; and the nearest to a greatone, if it be not actually that. I have read it, with no diminution ofinterest and no abatement of esteem, at very different times of my life,and I think that it is on the whole not only the most perfect revelationof what at any rate the author would have liked to be her owntemperament, but--a much greater thing--a presentment in possible andhuman form of a real temperament, and almost of a real character.Further, it is much the most achieved example of that peculiar style ofwhich more will be said in a general way presently, and it containscomparatively few blots. One always smiles, of course, at the picture ofLucrezia swinging in a hammock in the centre of a large room, the fourcorners of which are occupied by four bedsteads containing fourchildren, in the production of whom not exactly _four_ fathers, as theyought for perfect symmetry, but as a compromise _three_, have assisted.One always shudders at her notion of restoring a patient, sufferingunder a nervous ailment, by surrounding his couch with the cherubiccountenances and the balmy breaths of these infants.[185] Prince Karol,the hero (such as there is), is a poor creature, though not such a cadas Stenio; but then, according to Madame Dudevant, men as a rule _were_poor creatures, unless they were convicts or conjurors, so thepresentation is _ex hypothesi_ or _secundum hypothesin_ correct. And thewhole is firmly drawn and well, but neither gaudily nor pitchily,coloured. It ought to be remembered that, with the possible exception ofJane Austen, who has no peer or second among lady novelists, theseeither confine themselves to representation of manners, externalcharacter, _ton_, as was said of Fanny Burney, or else, like the other"George" and Charlotte Bronte, endeavour to represent themselves as theyare or as they would like to be on the canvas. They never create; ifthey "imitate" not in the degraded modern but the original classicalsense, and do it well, _punctum ferunt_--_suum_ if not _omne_.
[Sidenote: The story.]
_Lucrezia Floriani_ does this higher imitation well--almost, if notquite, greatly. Had George Sand been more of a blue-stocking and of anaffected creature than she was, she might have called the book_Anteros-Nemesis_. The heroine, by her real name Antonietta Menapace, isthe daughter of a fisherman on the Lago d'Iseo, and in her earliestgirlhood the servant-maid of a rich neighbour's wife. As her father, aclose-fisted peasant, wants her to marry a well-to-do churl of her ownrank, she elopes with her employer's son and has two children by him;but develops a magnificent voice, with no small acting and managingcapacity. So she makes a fortune by the time she is thirty, acquiringthe two other children by two other lovers, and having so many more whodo not leave permanent memorials of their love and necessitate polygonalrooms, that, as she observes, "she cannot count them."[186] At theabove-mentioned age, however, she becomes weary of this sort of life,retires to her native district, buys the very house in which she hadbeen a servant, and with the heir of which (now dead) she had eloped,and settles down to be a model mother, a Lady Bountiful, and a sort ofrecluse. No more "love" for her. In fact, in one of the most remarkablepassages of the book she gives a story of her chief attachments, showingthat, with brief accesses of physical excitement, it has always been_amour de tete_ and never _amour de coeur_.
Things being so, there arrive one evening, at the only inn on the lake,a young German Prince, Karol von Roswald, and his friend the ItalianCount Salvator Albani. They are travelling for the Prince's health, hebeing a sort of spoilt child, pitiably nervous, imperfectly educated,and half paralysed by the recent death of his mother and the earlier oneof a _fiancee_. The inn is good to eat in (or rather out of), but fornothing else; and Salvator, hearing of Lucrezia, whose friend, thoughnot her lover, he has formerly been, determines to ask a hospitalitywhich she very cheerfully gives them. _Cetera quis nescit_, as GeorgeSand herself in other but often-repeated words admits.[187] Karol fallsin love at first sight, though he is horrified at his hostess's past. Healso falls ill, and she nurses him. Salvator leaves them for a time,and though Lucrezia plays quite the reverse of the part of temptress,the inevitable does not fail to happen.
That they were _not_ married and that they did _not_ live happy everafter, everybody will of course be certain, though it is not Karol'sfault that actual marriage does not take place. There is, however, analmost literal, if unsanctified and irregular honeymoon; but long beforeSalvator's[188] return, it has "reddened" more than ominously. Karol isinsanely jealous, and it may be admitted that a more manly and lesschildishly selfish creature might be somewhat upset by the arrival ofLucrezia's last lover, the father of her youngest child, though it isquite evident that she has not a spark of love for this one left. But heis also jealous of Salvator; of an old artist named Beccaferri whom sheassists; of a bagman who calls to sell to her eldest boy a gun; of theaged peasant whom she had refused to marry, but whose death-bed shevisits; of the _cure_; of everybody. And his jealousy takes the form notmerely of rage, which is bad enough for Lucrezia's desire of peace, butof cold insult, which revolts her never extinguished independence andpride. He has, as noted, begged her to marry him in the time ofintoxication, but she has refused, and persists in the refusal. Afterone or two "scenes" she rows herself over to an olive wood on the otherside of the lake, and makes it a kind of "place of sacrifice"--of thesacrifice, that is to say, of all hopes of happiness with him or any onethenceforward. But she neither dismisses nor leaves him; on thecontrary, they live together, unmarried, but with no public scandal, forten years, his own passion for her in its peculiar kind never ceasing,while hers gradually dies under the stress of the various torments heinflicts, unintentionally if not quite unconsciously, upon her. At lastit is too much, and she dies of heart-failure at forty years of age.
One might make a few cavils at this. The exact reason of what has beencalled the "sacrifice" is not made clear, despite Lucrezia's soliloquyin the olive wood. If it were meant as an atonement for her ill-spentyouth it would be intelligible. But there is no sign of this, and itwould not be in George Sand's way. Lucrezia merely resolves that shewill try to make everybody happy without trying or expecting to be happyherself. But she must know more and more that she is _not_ making Karolhappy, and that the cohabitation cannot, even in Italy, but beprejudicial to her children; though, to do him the very scanty justicehe deserves, he does not behave ill to them, little as he likes them.
Again, this long self-martyrdom would need no explanation if shecontinued to love Karol. But it is very doubtful whether she had notceased to do so (she was admittedly good at "ceasing to love") when sheleft the Wood of Olives, and the cessation admittedly took place longbefore the ten years' torture came to an end. One is therefore,from more than one point of view, left with a sort of Fakirself-mortification, undertaken and "dreed" neither to atone foranything, nor to propitiate any Power, nor really to benefit any man.After all, however, such a thing is quite humanly possible. And these_aporiae_ hardly touch knots--only very small spots--in a reed ofadmirable strength and beauty. We know that George Sand did _not_sacrifice herself for her lovers--very much the reverse. But we knowalso that in her youth and early middle age she was very much of aLucrezia Floriani, something of a genius, if not so great a one as shemade her creature, something of a beauty, entirely negligent of ordinarysexual morality, but thoroughly, if somewhat heartlessly, good-natured,and (not merely at the times mentioned, but to the end of her life) anaffectionate mother, a delightful hostess, and a very satisfactoryfriend. No imaginary Stenio or Karol, no actual Sandeau or Musset orChopin could have caused her at any time of her life the misery whichthe Prince caused Lucrezia, because she would simply have "sent himwalking," as the vigorous French idiom has it. But it pleased her tograft upon her actual nature something else that it lacked, and alife-like and tragical story resulted.
It is not a bad "turn over of the leaf" from this, the strongest, and inthe best sense most faultless, of George Sand's novels of analysis, tothe "idyllic" group of her later middle and later period--the"prettiest" division, and in another grade of faultlessness the mostfree from faults, in ordinary estimation, of her entire production.
[Sidenote: The "Idylls"--_La Petite Fadette_.]
The most popular of these, the prettiest again, the most of a_bergerie-berquinade-conte-de-fees_, is no doubt _La Petite Fadette_,the history of two twin-boys and a little girl--this last, of course,the heroine. The boys are devoted to each other and as like as two peasin person, but very different in character, one being manly, and theother, if not exactly effeminate, something like it. As for Fadette,she, though never exactly like the other girl of the saying "horrid,"but only (and with very considerable excuses) naughty and untidy andrude, becomes "so very, very good when she is good" as to awake slightrecalcitrances in those who have acquired the questionable knowledge ofgood and evil in actual life. But one does not want to cavil. It _is_ apretty book, and when the not exactly wicked but somewhat ill-famedgrandmother's stocking yields several thousand francs and facilitatesthe marriage of Landry, the manly brother, and Fadette, one can be verycheerfully cheerful, and anticipate a real ever-after happiness forboth. No doubt, too, the army did knock the girlishness out of the otherbrother, Sylvinet, and we hope that one of the village gossips was wrongwhen she said that he would never love any girl but one. For it ishardly necessary to say that his agreement with his twin extends to lovefor Fadette--love which is quite honourable, and quite kindlyextinguished by that agreeable materialisation of one of Titania'slower-class maids-of-honour.
Only one slight piece of _malice_ (in the mitigated French sense) may bepermitted. We are told that Sylvinet, after the marriage, served for tenyears "in the Emperor Napoleon's glorious campaigns." This will hardlyadmit of a later date for that marriage itself than the breach of thePeace of Amiens. And this, even if Landry was no more than eighteen ornineteen at that time (he could hardly be less), will throw the date ofhis and his brother's birth well before the Revolution. Now, to insiston chronological exactitude and draw inferences from its absence is--oneadmits most cheerfully, and more than admits--a mere curmudgeonlypedantry in most cases of great or good fiction, prose or verse. Oneknows what to think of people who make crimes of these things inShakespeare or Scott, in Dumas or Thackeray. But when a writer makes agreat point of Purpose and sets a high value on Questions, it is notunfair to expect him or her to mind their P's and Q's in other matters.George Sand is never tired, in other books, of insisting on theblessedness of the Revolution itself, on the immense and gloriousemancipation from feudal tyranny, etc. But how does it come about thatthere is not the very slightest sign of that tyranny in the earlier partof the story, or of any general disturbance in the middle and laterpart? _Glissons; n'appuyons pas_ on this point, but it may be permittedto put it.
[Sidenote: _La Mare au Diable._]
In another book of this group--I think chronologically the earliest,also very popular, and quite "on the side of the angels"--the heroine,another divine little peasant-girl--who, if George Sand had been fond ofseries-titles, might have caused the book to be named _La PetiteMarie_--omits any, however slightly, "horrid" stage altogether. She is,if not "the whole" good--which, as Empedocles said long ago, few canboast to find,--good, and nothing but good, except pretty, and otherthings which are parts or forms of goodness. The piece really is, in theproper sense which so few people know, or at least use, an idyll, alittle picture of Arcadian life. Speaking precisely--that is to say in_precis_--it is nothing but the story of a journey in which thetravellers get benighted, and which ends in a marriage. Speakinganalytically, it consists of a prologue--one of the best examples ofGeorge Sand's style and of her power of description, dealing with theploughlands of Berry and the ways of their population; of theproposition to a young widower that he shall undertake re-marriage witha young widow, well-to-do, of another parish; of his going a-wooing withthe rather incongruous adjuncts of a pretty young servant girl, who isgoing to a "place," and his own truant elder sonlet; of the benightingof them as above by the side of a mere or marsh of evil repute; of theinsult offered to Marie on the arrival at her new place; of thediscomfiture of Germain, the hero, at finding that the young widow keepsa sort of court of pretenders dangling about her; of his retirement andvengeance on Marie's insulter; and of the proper marriage-bells. Thereis also a rather unnecessary appendix, doubtless dear to the folklorist,of Berrichon wedding customs.
Once more, to cavil at this would be contemptibly easy. To quote _LaTerre_ against it would be uncritical, for, as may be seen later,whatever M. Zola's books are, they are not evidence that can negativeanything. It would be as sensible to set against the night scene in thewood by the Devil's Pool the history of the amiable Dumollard, who, asfar as fifty years' memory serves me, used, some years before GeorgeSand's death, sometimes to escort and sometimes to lie in wait forservant-girls on the way to or from places, violate, murder, and robthem, in another country district of France. Nor would it be quitecritical, though a little more so, to compare George Sand's own friend,contemporary, and in some sort counterpart, Balzac's peasant scenesagainst her. If, at this time, she viewed all such things _en rose_,Balzac viewed them, at this and almost all times, _en noir_. Perhapseverybody (except the wicked farmer, who insults Marie) is a little toogood, and it seems rather surprising that somebody did not say somethingabout Germain and Marie arriving next morning instead of overnight. Butnever mind this. The scenery and the writing of the book have realcharm. The long conversation by the watch-fire in the wood, whereGermain tries to break off his suit to the widow already and transferhimself to Marie, with Marie's cool and (for she has loved him already)self-denying refusal on the most atrociously rational and business-likeprinciples, is first-rate. It may rank, with t
he above-mentioneddiscussion about Consuelo's beauty between herself and her lover, as oneof the best examples of George Sand's gift for the novel.
[Sidenote: _Francois le Champi._]
The third in the order of mention of what is usually considered hertrilogy of idylls, _Francois le Champi_, if not the prettiest, is thestrongest, and the most varied in interest, of the three. The shadierside of human character lifts itself and says, _Et in Arcadia ego_,[189]much more decidedly than in the childish petulances of _La PetiteFadette_ and the merely "Third Murderer" appearance of the unprincipledfarmer in _La Mare au Diable_. Even the mostly blameless hero isallowed, towards the close, to exhibit the well-known _ruse_ or _madre_characteristics of the French peasant to the extent of more than one notquite white lie; the husband of the heroine is unfaithful, tyrannical asfar as he dare be, and a waster of his family's goods before hisfortunately rather early death; his pretty young sister, Mariette, is aselfish and spiteful minx; and his paramour (sarcastically named "LaSevere") is unchaste, malignant, and dishonest all at once--acombination which may be said to exclude any possible goodness in woman.
The only thoroughly white sheep--though the "Champi" or foundling (hiscradle being the genial fields and not the steps of stone) has but thegrey patches noticed above, and those acquired with the bestintentions--is Madeleine Blanchet, his protectress for many years, andfinally, after difficulties and her widowhood, his wife. That she issome twelve years older than he is is a detail which need not in itselfbe of much importance. It lends itself to that combination of maternaland sexual affection of which George Sand is so fond, and of which wemay have to speak some harsh words elsewhere. But here it matterslittle. Arcady is a kind of Saturnian realm, and "mixtures" elsewhere"held a stain" may pass there.
[Sidenote: Others--_Mauprat_.]
We may make a further _glissade_ (to return to some remarks made above),though of a different kind, over a few of the very large number ofnovels that we cannot discuss in detail. But _Mauprat_ adds just alittle support to the remarks there made. For this (which is a sort ofcrime-and-detection novel, and therefore appeals to some readers morethan to the present historian) turns wholly on the atrocious deeds of aseignorial family of the most melodramatic kind. Yet it is questionablewhether the wickedest of them ever did anything worse than the action oftheir last and renegade member, who actually, when he comes into theproperty, ruins his ancestral castle because naughty things have beendone there. Now, when Milton said, "As well kill a man as kill a goodbook," though it was no doubt an intentional hyperbole, there was muchsound sense in what he said. Still, except in the case of such a book ashas been produced only a few times in the world's history, it may beurged that probably something as good might be written by somebody elseamong the numerous men that were not killed. But, on the same principle,one would be justified in saying, "Better kill a hundred men than ruin acastle with hundreds of years of memories, bad or good." You can neverreplace _it_, while the hundred men will, at the very moment they arekilled, be replaced, just as good on the average, by the ordinaryoperations of nature. Besides, by partially ruining the castle, you givean opening to the sin of the restorer, for which there is, we know, _no_pardon, here or hereafter.[190]
[Sidenote: _La Daniella._]
_La Daniella_ is a rather long book and a rather dull one. There is agood deal of talkee-talkee of the _Corinne_ kind in it: the heroine isan angelic Italian soubrette; the hero is one of the coxcombish heroesof French novels, who seem to have set themselves to confirm the mostunjust ideas of their nation entertained in foreign climes; there is a"Miss Medora," who, as the hero informs us, "plays the coquetteclumsily, as English girls generally do," etc. _Passons outre_, withoutinquiring how much George Sand knew about English girls.
[Sidenote: _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore._]
One of the best of her books to read, though it has neither the humaninterest of _Lucrezia Floriani_, nor the prettiness of the Idylls, northe style-colour of some other books, is _Les Beaux Messieurs deBois-Dore_. It is all the more agreeable that we may even "begin with alittle aversion." It suggests itself as a sort of interloper in thegreat business of Dumas and Co.: it opens, indeed, only a few yearsbefore D'Artagnan rode up to the inn on the buttercup-coloured pony.And, in manner, it may look at first as if the writer were followinganother but much inferior example--our own G. P. R. James; for there are"two cavaliers," and one tells the other a tale fit to make him fallasleep and off his saddle. But it improves remarkably, and before youhave read a hundred pages you are very fairly "enfisted." The figure ofthe old Marquis de Bois-Dore--an aged dandy with divers absurditiesabout him,[191] but a gentleman to his by no means yet stiffened orstooping backbone; a heart of gold, and a wrist with a good core ofsteel left in it--might easily have been a failure. It is a success. Hisfirst guest and then adversary, the wicked Spaniard, Sciarra d'Alvimaror de Villareal, whom the old marquis runs through the body in amoonlight duel for very sufficient reason,[192] may not be thought quiteequally successful. Scoundrel as he is, George Sand has unwisely thrownover him a touch of _guignon_--of shadowing and resistless fate--whichcreates a certain sympathy; and she neglects the good old rule that yourvillain should always be allowed a certain run for his money--atemporary exercise of his villainy. Alvimar, though he does not feel themarquis's rapier till nearly the end of the first half, as it were, ofthe book, is "marked down" from the start, and never kills anythingwithin those limits except a poor little tame wolf-cub which is going(very sensibly) to fly at him. He is altogether too much in appearanceand too little in effectuality of the stage Spaniard--black garments,black upturned moustache, hook-nose, _navaja_, and all the rest of it.But he does not spoil the thing, though he hardly does it much good; andif he is badly treated he has his revenge on the author.
For the book becomes very dull after his supposed death (he _does_ die,but not at once), and only revives when, some way into the secondvolume, an elaborate attempt to revenge him is made by his servant,Sanche, _ame damnee_ and also _damnante_ (if one may coin this variant),who is, as it turns out, his irregular father. This again rather stagycharacter organises a formidable body of wandering _reitres_, gipsies,and miscellaneous ruffians to attack and sack the marquis's house--aplan which, though ultimately foiled, brings about a very refreshingseries of hurly-burlys and hullabaloos for some hundred and fifty pages.The narrative is full of improbable impossibilities, and contrastssingularly with the fashion in which Dumas, throughout all his greatbooks (and not a few of his not so great ones), manages to _escamoter_the difficulty. The boy Mario,[193] orphan of the murdered brother, leftunknown for many years, recognised by his uncle, avenger of his fatheron Sanche, as Bois-Dore himself had been on Alvimar, is altogether tooclever and effective for his age; and the conduct of Bellinde,Bois-Dore's cashiered _gouvernante_, is almost preposterous throughout.But it is what a schoolboy of the old days would have called a "jollygood scrimmage," and restores the interest of the book for most of thesecond volume. The end--scarcely, one would think, very interesting toany one--is quite spoilt for some by another example of George Sand'sinveterate passion for "maternal" love-making and matches where the ladyis nearly double the age of her husband. Others--or the same--may not bepropitiated for this by the "horrors"[194] which the author hasliberally thrown in. But the larger part of the book, like the largerpart of _Consuelo_, is quite good stuff.
[Sidenote: _Le Marquis de Villemer._]
It is, indeed, a really lively book. Two duller ones than the first twoallotted, at the beginning of this notice, to her last period I haveseldom read. They are both instances (and one at least contains anelaborate vindication) of the "novel of purpose," and they are bythemselves almost enough to damn it. M. le Marquis de Villemer is anappalling prig--virtuous, in the Devil-and-his-grandmother style, to the_n_th--who devotes his energies to writing a _History of the Patriciatesince the Christian Era_, the object being to reveal the sins ofaristocracy. He has a rather nice half-brother spend-thrift, Duqued'Aleria (Madame de Vill
emer the elder has first married a Spaniard),whose debts he virtuously pays, and after a great deal of scandal hemarries a poor but noble and noble-minded damsel, Caroline deSaint-Geneix, who has taken the position of companion to his mother inorder to help her widowed and four-childed sister. For the virtue ofGeorge Sand's virtuous people _is_ virtue and no mistake. The lively andamiable duke is fortunately fitted with a lively and amiable duchess,and they show a little light in the darkness of copy-book morality andrepublican principles.
[Sidenote: _Mlle. La Quintinie._]
This kindly light is altogether wanting in _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_,where the purpose passes from politics to religion. The book is ratherfamous, and was, at the time, much read, because it is not merely anovel of purpose, but an instance of the duello fought, not with swordor pistol, not with quarter-staves or sand-bags, but with _feuilletons_of fiction. It, and Octave Feuillet's _Sibylle_, to which it is thecountercheck-quarrelsome, both appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.It should be seen at a further stage of this volume that I do not think_Sibylle_ a masterpiece, either of tale-telling or of argumentation,though it is more on my side than the reply is. But Feuillet, though nota genius, as some people would have George Sand to be, nor yetpossessing anything like the talent which no sane criticism can denyher, was a much better craftsman in the art of novel-writing.
[Sidenote: _Flamarande._]
For a final notice--dealing also with the last, or almost the last, ofall her books--we may take _Flamarande_ and its sequel, _Les DeuxFreres_. They give the history of the unfounded jealousy of a husband inregard to his wife--a jealousy which is backed up by an equallyunfounded suspicion (supported by the most outrageous proceedings ofespionage and something like burglary) on the part of a confidentialservant, who, as we are informed at last, has himself had a secretpassion for his innocent mistress. It is more like a Feuillet book thana George Sand, and in this respect shows the curious faculty--possessedalso by some lady novelists of our own--of adapting itself to the changeof novel-fashion. But to me at least it appeals not.
So turn we from particulars (for individual notice of the hundred booksis impossible) to generals.
[Sidenote: Summary and judgment.]
[Sidenote: Style.]
It may be difficult to sum up the characteristics of such a writer asGeorge Sand shortly, but it has to be done. There is to be allowedher--of course and at once--an extraordinary fertility, and a hardlyless extraordinary escape from absolute sinking into the trivial. She ispreposterous early, somewhat facile and "journalistic" later, but she isnever exactly commonplace. She belongs to the school of immense andalmost mechanical producers who are represented in English by AnthonyTrollope as their "prior" and by Mrs. Oliphant[195] and Miss Braddon ascommandresses of the order. (I think she runs a good deal below thePrior but a good deal above the Commandresses.[196]) But, if she does sobelong, it is very mainly due, not to any pre-eminence of narrativefaculty, but to that gift of style which has been for nearly a hundredyears admitted. Now I have in this _History_ more than once, and by nomeans with tongue in cheek, expressed a diffidence about giving opinionson this point. I have, it is true, read French for more than sixtyyears, and I have been accustomed to "read for style" in it, and indivers other languages, for at least fifty. But I see such extraordinaryblunders made by foreigners in regard to this side of our ownliterature, that I can never be sure--being less conceited than thepious originator of the phrase--that even the Grace of God has preventedme from going the same way. Still, if I have any right to publish thisbook, I must have a little--I will not say "right," but _venia_ orlicence--to say what seems to me to be the fact of the matter. Thatfact--or that seeming of fact--is that George Sand's style is _too_facile to be first-rate. By this I do not mean that it is too plain. Onthe contrary, it is sometimes, especially in her early books, ornate togorgeousness, and even to gaudiness. And it was a curious mistake of thelate Mr. Pater, in a quite honorific reference to me, to imply that Ipreferred the plain style--a mistake all the more curious that he knewand acknowledged (and was almost unduly grateful for) my admiration ofhis own. I like both forms: but for style--putting meaning out of thequestion--I would rather read Browne than Swift, and Lamennais thanFenelon.
George Sand has both the plain and the ornate styles (and various shadesof "middle" between them) at command. But it seems to me that she hasthem--to use a financial phrase recently familiar--too much "on tap."You see that the current of agreeable and, so to speak, faultlesslanguage is running, and might run volubly for any period of life thatmight be allotted to her. In fact it did so. Now no doubt there wassomething of Edmond de Goncourt's bad-blooded fatuity in his claim thathis and his brother's epithets were "personal," while Flaubert's werenot. Research for more personal "out-of-the-wayness" in style willrarely result in anything but jargon. But, on the other hand, Gautier'sgreat injunction:
Sculpte, lime, cisele!
is sound. You cannot reach the first class in any art by turning a tapand letting it run.
[Sidenote: Conversation and description.]
The one point of what we may call the "furniture" of novels, in whichshe seems to me to have, occasionally at least, touched supremacy, isconversation. It has been observed by those capable of making theinduction that, close as drama and novel are in some ways, thedistinction between dramatic and non-dramatic talk is, though narrow,deeper than the very deepest Alpine crevasse from Dauphine to Carinthia.Such specimens as those already more than once dwelt on--Consuelo's andAnzoleto's debate about her looks, and that of Germain and Marie in themidnight wood by the Devil's Mere--are first-rate, and there is no moreto say. Some of her descriptions, again, such as the opening of the booklast quoted (the wide, treeless, communal plain with its variouslabouring teams), or as some of the Lake touches in _Lucrezia Floriani_,or as the relieving patches in the otherwise monotonous grumble of _UnHiver a Majorque_, are unsurpassable. Nor is this gift limited to mere_paysage_. The famous account of Chopin's playing already mentioned forpraise is only first among many. But whether these things are supportedby sufficient strength of character, plot, incident, "thought," and therest; whether that strange narrative power, so hard to define and soimpossible to mistake or to fail to distinguish from these otherelements, is present--these are great questions and not easy to answer.I am, as will have been seen throughout, rather inclined to answer themin the unfavourable way.
In fact--impertinent, insolent, anything else as it may seem--I ventureto ask the question, "Was George Sand a very great craftswoman in thenovel?" and, what is more, to answer it in the negative. I understandthat an ingenious critic of her own sex has recently described hermethod as "rolling through the book, locked in the embraces of hersubject," as distinguished from the aloofness and elaboration of a morerecent school. So far, perhaps, so good; but I could wish to find "theintricacies of Diego and Julia" more interesting to me than as a rulethey are. And it must be remembered that she is constantly detachingherself from the forlorn "subject," leaving it _un_embraced andshivering, in order to sermonise it and her readers. I do not make thevery facile and somewhat futile criticism that she would have writtenbetter if she had written half or a quarter as much as she did. Shecould not have written little; it is as natural and suitable for Tweedto "rin wi' speed" as for Till to "rin slaw," though perhaps theresult--parallel to but more cheerful than that recorded in the oldrhyme--may be that Till has the power not of drowning but ofintoxicating two men, where Tweed can only manage one. But thisengrained fecundity and facundity of hers inevitably make her worknovel-journalism rather than novel-literature in all points but in thatof style, which has been discussed already.[197]
FOOTNOTES:
[174] It is attested by the well-known story, more excusable in a manthan creditable to a gentleman, of her earliest or earliest known lover,Jules Sandeau (_v. inf._), seeing a photograph of her in later days,turning to a companion and saying, "Et je l'ai connue _belle_!"
[175] It is possible that some readers may not k
now the delightfullyunexpected, and not improbably "more-expressive-than-volumes" _third_line--
"Not like the woman who lies under the next stone."
But tradition has, I believe, mercifully omitted to identify thisneighbouring antipode.
[176] Details of personal scandal seldom claim notice here. But it maybe urged with some show of reason that _this_ scandal is too closelyconnected with the substance and the spirit of the novelist's wholework, from _Indiana_ to _Flamarande_, to permit total ignoring of it._Lucrezia Floriani_, though perhaps more suggestive of Chopin than ofMusset, but with "tangency" on both, will be discussed in the text. Thatmost self-accusing of excuses, _Elle et Lui_, with its counterblast Paulde Musset's _Lui et Elle_, and a few remarks on _Un Hiver a Majorque_(conjoined for a purpose, which will be indicated) may be despatched ina note of some length.
[Sidenote: Note on _Elle et Lui_, etc.,]
The rival novel-_plaidoyers_ on the subject of the loves and strifes ofGeorge Sand and Alfred de Musset are sufficiently disgusting, and ifthey be considered as novels, the evil effect of purpose--andparticularly of personal purpose--receives from them texts for a wholeseries of sermons. Reading them with the experience of a lifetime, notmerely in literary criticism, but (for large parts of that lifetime) instudy of evidence on historical, political, and even directly legalmatters, I cannot help coming to the conclusion that, though there is nodoubt a certain amount of _suggestio falsi_ in both, the _suppressioveri_ is infinitely greater in _Elle et Lui_. If the letters given inPaul de Musset's book were not written by George Sand they were writtenby Diabolus. And there is one retort made towards the finale by "Edouardde Falconey" (Musset) to "William Caze" (George Sand) which stigmatiseslike the lash of a whip, if not even like a hot iron, the whole face ofthe lady's novels.
"Ma chere," lui dit-il, "vous parlez si souvent de chastete que celadevient indecent. Votre amitie n'est pas plus 'sainte' que celle desautres." [If he had added "maternite" the stigma would have beencompleter still.] And there is also a startling verisimilitude in thereply assigned to her:
"Mon cher, trouvez bon que je console mes amis selon ma methode. Vousvoyez qu'elle leur plait assez, puisqu'ils y reviennent."
It was true: they did so, rather to their own discredit and wholly totheir discomfort. But she and her "method" must have pleased them enoughfor them to do it. It is not so pleasing a method for an outsider tocontemplate. He sees too much of the game, and has none of the pleasureof playing or the occasional winnings. Since I read Helisenne de Crenne(_v. sup._ Vol. I, pp. 150-1) there has seemed to me to be some likenessbetween the earlier stage of her heroine (if not of herself) and that ofGeorge Sand in her "friendships." They both display a good deal of meresensuality, and both seem to me to have been quite ignorant of passion.Helisenne did not reach the stage of "maternal" affection, and perhapsit was well for her lover and not entirely bad for her readers. But thebest face that can be put on the "method" will be seen in _LucreziaFloriani_.
[Sidenote: and on _Un Hiver a Majorque_.]
The bluntness of taste and the intense concentration on self, which wereshown most disagreeably in _Elle et Lui_, appear on a different side inanother book which is not a novel at all--not even a novel as far asmasque and domino are concerned,--though indirectly it touches anotherof George Sand's curious personal experiences--that with Chopin. _UnHiver a Majorque_ is perhaps the most ill-tempered book of travel,except Smollett's too famous production, ever written by a novelist oftalent or genius. The Majorcans certainly did not ask George Sand tovisit them. They did not advertise the advantages of Majorca, as is thefashion with "health resorts" nowadays. She went there of her ownaccord; she found magnificent scenery; she flouted the sentiments ofwhat she herself describes as the most priest-ridden country in Europeby never going to church, though and while she actually lived in adisestablished and disendowed monastery. To punish them for which (the_non sequitur_ is intentional) she does little but talk of dirt,discomfort, bad food, extortion, foul-smelling oil and garlic, varyingthe talk only to foul-smelling oil and garlic, extortion, bad food,discomfort, or dirt. The book no doubt yields some of her finestpassages of descriptive prose, both as regards landscape, and in thefamous record of Chopin's playing; but otherwise it is hardly worthreading.
[177] She survived into the next decade and worked till the last with nodistinct declension, but she did not complete it, dying in 1876. Herfamous direction about her grave, _Laissez la verdure_, ischaracteristic of her odd mixture if theatricality and true nature. Butif any one wishes to come to her work with a comfortable preoccupationin favor of herself, he should begin with her _Letters_. Those of herold age especially are charming.
[178] Cf. Mr. Alfred Lammle on his unpoetical justice to Mr. Fledgeby in_Our Mutual Friend_.
[179] Valentine has an elder sister who has a son, irregularilyexistent, but is as much in love with Benedict as if she were a girl andhe were a gentleman; and this son marries the much older Athenais, alovely peasant girl who has been the unwilling _fiancee_ and wife of theingenious pitchforker. You have seldom to go far in George Sand for anunmarried lady with a child for chastity, and a widow who marries a boyfor maternal affection.
[180] There is also an Irish priest called Magnus, who, like everybodyelse, is deeply and (in the proper sense of _sans espoir_) desperatelyin love with Lelia. He is, on the whole, quite the maddest--and perhapsthe most despicable--of the lot.
[181] If any one says, "So, then, there are several 'mostintolerables,'" let me point out that intolerableness is a more than"twy-peaked" hill or range. Julien Sorel and Marius were not designed tobe gentlemen.
[182] It is bad for Amelie, who, in a not unnatural revulsion from her_fiance's_ neglects and eccentricities, lets herself be fooled by thehandsome Italian.
[183] George Sand's treatment of the great Empress, Marie Antoinette'smother, is a curious mixture of half-reluctant admiration and Republicanbad-bloodedness.
[184] Porpora is included, but the amiable monarch, who has heard thatthe old _maestro_ speaks freely of him, gives private orders that heshall be stopped at the frontier.
[185] _Cow's_ breath has, I believe, been prescribed in such cases bythe faculty; hardly children's.
[186] She does not make the delicate distinction once drawn by anotherof her sex: "I can tell you how many people I have kissed, but I cannottell you how many have kissed _me_."
[187] She is rather fond of taking her readers into confidence this way.I have no particular objection to it; but those who object toThackeray's _parabases_ ought to think this is a still moreobjectionable thing.
[188] The Count Albani plays his difficult part of thirdsman very wellthroughout, though just at first he would make an advance on "auld langsyne" if Lucrezia would let him. But later he is on strict honour, andquarrels with the Prince for his tyranny.
[189] It is very pleasing to see, as I have seen, this famous phrasequoted as if it had reference to the _joys_ of Arcadia.
[190] If any among my congregation be offended by apparent flippancy inthis notice of a book which, to my profound astonishment, some peoplehave taken as the author's masterpiece, I apologise. But if I spoke moreseriously I should also speak more severely.
[191] He is a frantic devotee of the _Astree_, and George Sand brings ina good deal about the most agreeable book, without, however, showingvery intimate or accurate knowledge of it.
[192] The Spaniard (rather his servant with his connivance) has murderedand robbed Bois-Dore's brother.
[193] He is also very handsome, and so makes up for the plurality of thetitle.
[194] Alvimar lies dying for hours with the infidel Bohemians androistering Protestant _reitres_ not only disturbing his death-bed, butinterfering with the "consolation of religion"; the worst of the saidBohemians is buried alive (or rather stifled after he has been_half_-buried alive) by the little gipsy girl, Pilar, whom he hastormented; and Pilar herself is burnt alive on the last page but one,after she has poisoned Bellinde.
&n
bsp; [195] Taking her work on the whole. The earlier part of it ran evenTrollope hard.
[196] Her points of likeness to her self-naming name-child, "GeorgeEliot," are too obvious to need discussion. But it is a question whetherthe main points of _un_likeness--the facility and extreme fecundity ofthe French George, as contrasted with the laborious book-bearing of theEnglish--are not more important than the numerous but superficial and toa large extent non-literary resemblances.
[197] I have said little or nothing of the short stories. They arefairly numerous, but I do not think that her _forte_ lay in them.
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