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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Every one knows the story of the name: how she and Jules Sandeau wrote a novel together, and sought a nom de plume which should represent their literary union,—how soon she found that she could do much better alone, and the weak work of Carl Sand was forgotten in the strong personality of George Sand. Of Jules Sandeau she speaks only as of the associate of a literary enterprise;—the world accords him a much nearer relation to her; but upon this point she cannot, naturally, be either explicit or implicit. One thing is certain: she was a hard worker, and did with her might what her hand found to do. She wrote "Indiana," "Lelia," "Valentine," and had fame and money at will. Neither, however, gave her unmixed pleasure. The éclat of her reputation soon destroyed her incognito, while the sums of money she was supposed to receive for her works attracted to her innumerable beggars and adventurers of all sorts. To ascertain the real wants and character of those who in every imaginable way claimed her assistance became one of the added labors of her life. She visited wretched garrets or cellars, and saw miserable families,—discovering often, too late, that both garret and family had been hired for the occasion. It was now that she first saw the real plagues and ulcers of society. Her convent had not shown her these, nor her life amid the peasantry of Berry. Only great cities produce those unhealthy and unnatural human growths whose monstrosities are their stock in trade, whose power of life lies in their depravation. She tells us that these horrors weighed upon her, and caused СКАЧАТЬ