Chapter V: George Sand (2)

It is, indeed, a really lively book. Two duller ones than the first two allotted, at the beginning of this notice, to her last period I have seldom read. They are both instances (and one at least contains an elaborate vindication) of the "novel of purpose," and they are by themselves almost enough to damn it. M. le Marquis de Villemer is an appalling prig--virtuous, in the Devil-and-his-grandmother style, to the _n_th--who devotes his energies to writing a _History of the Patriciate since the Christian Era_, the object being to reveal the sins of aristocracy. He has a rather nice half-brother spend-thrift, Duque d'Aleria (Madame de Villemer the elder has first married a Spaniard), whose debts he virtuously pays, and after a great deal of scandal he marries a poor but noble and noble-minded damsel, Caroline de Saint-Geneix, who has taken the position of companion to his mother in order to help her widowed and four-childed sister. For the virtue of George Sand's virtuous people _is_ virtue and no mistake. The lively and amiable duke is fortunately fitted with a lively and amiable duchess, and they show a little light in the darkness of copy-book morality and republican 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 rather famous, and was, at the time, much read, because it is not merely a novel of purpose, but an instance of the duello fought, not with sword or pistol, not with quarter-staves or sand-bags, but with _feuilletons_ of fiction. It, and Octave Feuillet's _Sibylle_, to which it is the countercheck-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 not a genius, as some people would have George Sand to be, nor yet possessing anything like the talent which no sane criticism can deny her, 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, of all her books--we may take _Flamarande_ and its sequel, _Les Deux Frères_. They give the history of the unfounded jealousy of a husband in regard to his wife--a jealousy which is backed up by an equally unfounded suspicion (supported by the most outrageous proceedings of espionage and something like burglary) on the part of a confidential servant, who, as we are informed at last, has himself had a secret passion for his innocent mistress. It is more like a Feuillet book than a George Sand, and in this respect shows the curious faculty--possessed also by some lady novelists of our own--of adapting itself to the change of novel-fashion. But to me at least it appeals not.

So turn we from particulars (for individual notice of the hundred books is impossible) to generals.

[Sidenote: Summary and judgment.]

[Sidenote: Style.]

It may be difficult to sum up the characteristics of such a writer as George Sand shortly, but it has to be done. There is to be allowed her--of course and at once--an extraordinary fertility, and a hardly less extraordinary escape from absolute sinking into the trivial. She is preposterous early, somewhat facile and "journalistic" later, but she is never exactly commonplace. She belongs to the school of immense and almost mechanical producers who are represented in English by Anthony Trollope as their "prior" and by Mrs. Oliphant[195] and Miss Braddon as commandresses of the order. (I think she runs a good deal below the Prior but a good deal above the Commandresses.[196]) But, if she does so belong, it is very mainly due, not to any pre-eminence of narrative faculty, but to that gift of style which has been for nearly a hundred years admitted. Now I have in this _History_ more than once, and by no means with tongue in cheek, expressed a diffidence about giving opinions on this point. I have, it is true, read French for more than sixty years, and I have been accustomed to "read for style" in it, and in divers other languages, for at least fifty. But I see such extraordinary blunders made by foreigners in regard to this side of our own literature, that I can never be sure--being less conceited than the pious originator of the phrase--that even the Grace of God has prevented me from going the same way. Still, if I have any right to publish this book, I must have a little--I will not say "right," but _venia_ or licence--to say what seems to me to be the fact of the matter. That fact--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. On the contrary, it is sometimes, especially in her early books, ornate to gorgeousness, and even to gaudiness. And it was a curious mistake of the late Mr. Pater, in a quite honorific reference to me, to imply that I preferred the plain style--a mistake all the more curious that he knew and acknowledged (and was almost unduly grateful for) my admiration of his own. I like both forms: but for style--putting meaning out of the question--I would rather read Browne than Swift, and Lamennais than Fénelon.

George Sand has both the plain and the ornate styles (and various shades of "middle" between them) at command. But it seems to me that she has them--to use a financial phrase recently familiar--too much "on tap." You see that the current of agreeable and, so to speak, faultless language is running, and might run volubly for any period of life that might be allotted to her. In fact it did so. Now no doubt there was something of Edmond de Goncourt's bad-blooded fatuity in his claim that his and his brother's epithets were "personal," while Flaubert's were not. Research for more personal "out-of-the-wayness" in style will rarely result in anything but jargon. But, on the other hand, Gautier's great injunction:

Sculpte, lime, cisèle!

is sound. You cannot reach the first class in any art by turning a tap and letting it run.

[Sidenote: Conversation and description.]

The one point of what we may call the "furniture" of novels, in which she seems to me to have, occasionally at least, touched supremacy, is conversation. It has been observed by those capable of making the induction that, close as drama and novel are in some ways, the distinction between dramatic and non-dramatic talk is, though narrow, deeper than the very deepest Alpine crevasse from Dauphiné to Carinthia. Such specimens as those already more than once dwelt on--Consuelo's and Anzoleto's debate about her looks, and that of Germain and Marie in the midnight wood by the Devil's Mere--are first-rate, and there is no more to say. Some of her descriptions, again, such as the opening of the book last quoted (the wide, treeless, communal plain with its various labouring teams), or as some of the Lake touches in _Lucrezia Floriani_, or as the relieving patches in the otherwise monotonous grumble of _Un Hiver à Majorque_, are unsurpassable. Nor is this gift limited to mere _paysage_. The famous account of Chopin's playing already mentioned for praise is only first among many. But whether these things are supported by sufficient strength of character, plot, incident, "thought," and the rest; whether that strange narrative power, so hard to define and so impossible to mistake or to fail to distinguish from these other elements, is present--these are great questions and not easy to answer. I am, as will have been seen throughout, rather inclined to answer them in the unfavourable way.

In fact--impertinent, insolent, anything else as it may seem--I venture to ask the question, "Was George Sand a very great craftswoman in the novel?" and, what is more, to answer it in the negative. I understand that an ingenious critic of her own sex has recently described her method as "rolling through the book, locked in the embraces of her subject," as distinguished from the aloofness and elaboration of a more recent school. So far, perhaps, so good; but I could wish to find "the intricacies of Diego and Julia" more interesting to me than as a rule they are. And it must be remembered that she is constantly detaching herself from the forlorn "subject," leaving it _un_embraced and shivering, in order to sermonise it and her readers. I do not make the very facile and somewhat futile criticism that she would have written better if she had written half or a quarter as much as she did. She could not have written little; it is as natural and suitable for Tweed to "rin wi' speed" as for Till to "rin slaw," though perhaps the result--parallel to but more cheerful than that recorded in the old rhyme--may be that Till has the power not of drowning but of intoxicating two men, where Tweed can only manage one. But this engrained fecundity and facundity of hers inevitably make her work novel-journalism rather than novel-literature in all points but in that of style, which has been discussed already.[197]

FOOTNOTES:

[174] It is attested by the well-known story, more excusable in a man than 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 know the delightfully unexpected, 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 this neighbouring antipode.

[176] Details of personal scandal seldom claim notice here. But it may be urged with some show of reason that _this_ scandal is too closely connected with the substance and the spirit of the novelist's whole work, from _Indiana_ to _Flamarande_, to permit total ignoring of it. _Lucrezia Floriani_, though perhaps more suggestive of Chopin than of Musset, but with "tangency" on both, will be discussed in the text. That most self-accusing of excuses, _Elle et Lui_, with its counterblast Paul de Musset's _Lui et Elle_, and a few remarks on _Un Hiver à Majorque_ (conjoined for a purpose, which will be indicated) may be despatched in a note of some length.

[Sidenote: Note on _Elle et Lui_, etc.,]

The rival novel-_plaidoyers_ on the subject of the loves and strifes of George Sand and Alfred de Musset are sufficiently disgusting, and if they be considered as novels, the evil effect of purpose--and particularly of personal purpose--receives from them texts for a whole series of sermons. Reading them with the experience of a lifetime, not merely in literary criticism, but (for large parts of that lifetime) in study of evidence on historical, political, and even directly legal matters, I cannot help coming to the conclusion that, though there is no doubt a certain amount of _suggestio falsi_ in both, the _suppressio veri_ is infinitely greater in _Elle et Lui_. If the letters given in Paul de Musset's book were not written by George Sand they were written by Diabolus. And there is one retort made towards the finale by "Édouard de Falconey" (Musset) to "William Caze" (George Sand) which stigmatises like the lash of a whip, if not even like a hot iron, the whole face of the lady's novels.

"Ma chère," lui dit-il, "vous parlez si souvent de chasteté que cela devient indécent. Votre amitié n'est pas plus 'sainte' que celle des autres." [If he had added "maternité" the stigma would have been completer still.] And there is also a startling verisimilitude in the reply assigned to her:

"Mon cher, trouvez bon que je console mes amis selon ma méthode. Vous voyez qu'elle leur plaît assez, puisqu'ils y reviennent."

It was true: they did so, rather to their own discredit and wholly to their discomfort. But she and her "method" must have pleased them enough for them to do it. It is not so pleasing a method for an outsider to contemplate. He sees too much of the game, and has none of the pleasure of playing or the occasional winnings. Since I read Hélisenne de Crenne (_v. sup._ Vol. I, pp. 150-1) there has seemed to me to be some likeness between the earlier stage of her heroine (if not of herself) and that of George Sand in her "friendships." They both display a good deal of mere sensuality, and both seem to me to have been quite ignorant of passion. Hélisenne did not reach the stage of "maternal" affection, and perhaps it was well for her lover and not entirely bad for her readers. But the best face that can be put on the "method" will be seen in _Lucrezia Floriani_.

[Sidenote: and on _Un Hiver à Majorque_.]

The bluntness of taste and the intense concentration on self, which were shown most disagreeably in _Elle et Lui_, appear on a different side in another book which is not a novel at all--not even a novel as far as masque and domino are concerned,--though indirectly it touches another of George Sand's curious personal experiences--that with Chopin. _Un Hiver à Majorque_ is perhaps the most ill-tempered book of travel, except Smollett's too famous production, ever written by a novelist of talent or genius. The Majorcans certainly did not ask George Sand to visit them. They did not advertise the advantages of Majorca, as is the fashion with "health resorts" nowadays. She went there of her own accord; she found magnificent scenery; she flouted the sentiments of what she herself describes as the most priest-ridden country in Europe by never going to church, though and while she actually lived in a disestablished 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, varying the talk only to foul-smelling oil and garlic, extortion, bad food, discomfort, or dirt. The book no doubt yields some of her finest passages of descriptive prose, both as regards landscape, and in the famous record of Chopin's playing; but otherwise it is hardly worth reading.

[177] She survived into the next decade and worked till the last with no distinct declension, but she did not complete it, dying in 1876. Her famous direction about her grave, _Laissez la verdure_, is characteristic of her odd mixture if theatricality and true nature. But if any one wishes to come to her work with a comfortable preoccupation in favor of herself, he should begin with her _Letters_. Those of her old 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, irregularily existent, but is as much in love with Benedict as if she were a girl and he were a gentleman; and this son marries the much older Athenais, a lovely peasant girl who has been the unwilling _fiancée_ and wife of the ingenious pitchforker. You have seldom to go far in George Sand for an unmarried lady with a child for chastity, and a widow who marries a boy for maternal affection.

[180] There is also an Irish priest called Magnus, who, like everybody else, is deeply and (in the proper sense of _sans espoir_) desperately in love with Lélia. He is, on the whole, quite the maddest--and perhaps the most despicable--of the lot.

[181] If any one says, "So, then, there are several 'most intolerables,'" let me point out that intolerableness is a more than "twy-peaked" hill or range. Julien Sorel and Marius were not designed to be gentlemen.

[182] It is bad for Amélie, who, in a not unnatural revulsion from her _fiancé's_ neglects and eccentricities, lets herself be fooled by the handsome Italian.

[183] George Sand's treatment of the great Empress, Marie Antoinette's mother, is a curious mixture of half-reluctant admiration and Republican bad-bloodedness.

[184] Porpora is included, but the amiable monarch, who has heard that the old _maestro_ speaks freely of him, gives private orders that he shall be stopped at the frontier.

[185] _Cow's_ breath has, I believe, been prescribed in such cases by the faculty; hardly children's.

[186] She does not make the delicate distinction once drawn by another of her sex: "I can tell you how many people I have kissed, but I cannot tell 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 to Thackeray's _parabases_ ought to think this is a still more objectionable thing.

[188] The Count Albani plays his difficult part of thirdsman very well throughout, though just at first he would make an advance on "auld lang syne" if Lucrezia would let him. But later he is on strict honour, and quarrels with the Prince for his tyranny.

[189] It is very pleasing to see, as I have seen, this famous phrase quoted as if it had reference to the _joys_ of Arcadia.

[190] If any among my congregation be offended by apparent flippancy in this notice of a book which, to my profound astonishment, some people have taken as the author's masterpiece, I apologise. But if I spoke more seriously I should also speak more severely.

[191] He is a frantic devotee of the _Astrée_, and George Sand brings in a good deal about the most agreeable book, without, however, showing very intimate or accurate knowledge of it.

[192] The Spaniard (rather his servant with his connivance) has murdered and robbed Bois-Doré's brother.

[193] He is also very handsome, and so makes up for the plurality of the title.

[194] Alvimar lies dying for hours with the infidel Bohemians and roistering Protestant _reîtres_ not only disturbing his death-bed, but interfering with the "consolation of religion"; the worst of the said Bohemians is buried alive (or rather stifled after he has been _half_-buried alive) by the little gipsy girl, Pilar, whom he has tormented; and Pilar herself is burnt alive on the last page but one, after she has poisoned Bellinde.

[195] Taking her work on the whole. The earlier part of it ran even Trollope hard.

[196] Her points of likeness to her self-naming name-child, "George Eliot," are too obvious to need discussion. But it is a question whether the main points of _un_likeness--the facility and extreme fecundity of the French George, as contrasted with the laborious book-bearing of the English--are not more important than the numerous but superficial and to a large extent non-literary resemblances.

[197] I have said little or nothing of the short stories. They are fairly numerous, but I do not think that her _forte_ lay in them.