THE GENIUS OF GEORGE SAND.
the comedy of françois le champi.
Scarcely half a dozen years have elapsed since it was considered a dangerous experiment to introduce the name of George Sand into an English periodical. In the interval we have overcome our scruples, and the life and writings of George Sand are now as well known in this country as those of Charles Dickens, or Bulwer Lytton. The fact itself is a striking proof of the power of a great intellect to make itself heard in spite of the prejudices and aversion of its audience.
The intellectual power of George Sand is attested by the suffrages of Europe. The use to which she has put it is another question. Unfortunately, she has applied it, for the most part, to so bad a use, that half the people who acknowledge the ascendency of her genius, see too much occasion to deplore its perversion.
The principles she has launched upon the world have an inevitable tendency toward the disorganization of all existing institutions, political and social. This is the broad, palpable fact, let sophistry disguise or evade it as it may. Whether she pours out an intense novel that shall plow up the roots of the domestic system, or composes a proclamation for the Red Republicans that shall throw the streets into a flame, her influence is equally undeniable and equally pernicious.
It has been frequently urged, in the defense of her novels, that they do not assail the institution of marriage, but the wrongs that are perpetrated in its name. Give her the full benefit of her intention, and the result is still the same. Her eloquent expositions of ill-assorted unions—her daring appeals from the obligations they impose, to the affections they outrage—her assertion of the rights of nature over the conventions of society, have the final effect of justifying the violation of duty on the precarious ground of passion and inclination. The bulk of her readers—of all readers—take such social philosophy in the gross; they can not pick out its nice distinctions, and sift its mystical refinements. It is less a matter of reasoning than of feeling. Their sensibility, and not their judgment, is invoked. It is not to their understanding that these rhapsodies are addressed, but to their will and their passions. A writer who really meant to vindicate an institution against its abuses, would adopt a widely different course; and it is only begging George Sand out of the hands of the jury to assert that the intention of her writings is opposed to their effect, which is to sap the foundations upon which the fabric of domestic life reposes.
Her practice accords harmoniously with her doctrines. Nobody who knows what the actual life of George Sand has been, can doubt for a moment the true nature of her opinions on the subject of marriage. It is not a pleasant subject to touch, and we should shrink from it, if it were not as notorious as every thing else by which she has become famous in her time. It forms, in reality, as much a part of the philosophy she desires to impress upon the world, as the books through which she has expounded her theory. It is neither more nor less than her theory of freedom and independence in the matter of passion (we dare not dignify it by any higher name) put into action—rather vagrant action, we fear, but, on that account, all the more decisive. The wonder is, how any body, however ardent an admirer of George Sand's genius, can suppose for a moment that a woman who leads this life from choice, and who carries its excesses to an extremity of voluptuous caprice, could by any human possibility pass so completely out of herself into another person in her books. The supposition is not only absurd in itself, but utterly inconsistent with the boldness and sincerity of her character.
Some sort of justification for the career of Madame Dudevant has been attempted to be extracted from the alleged unhappiness of her married life, which drove her at last to break the bond, and purchase her liberty at the sacrifice of a large portion of her fortune, originally considerable. But all such justifications must be accepted with hesitation in the absence of authentic data, and more especially when subsequent circumstances are of a nature to throw suspicion upon the defense. Cases undoubtedly occur in which the violent disruption of domestic ties may be extenuated even upon moral grounds; but we can not comprehend by what process of reasoning the argument can be stretched so as to cover any indiscretions that take place afterward.
Madame Dudevant was married in 1822, her husband is represented as a plain country gentleman, very upright and literal in his way, and quite incapable, as may readily be supposed, of sympathizing with what one of her ablest critics calls her "aspirations toward the infinite, art and liberty." She bore him two children, lived with him eight years, and, shortly after the insurrection of July, 1830, fled from her dull house at Nohant, and went up to Paris. Upon this step nobody has a right, to pronounce judgment. Nor should the world penetrate the recesses of her private life from that day forward, if her life could be truly considered private, and if it were not in fact and in reality a part and parcel of her literary career. She has made so little scruple about publishing it herself, that nobody else need have any such scruple on that head. She has been interwoven in such close intimacies with a succession of the most celebrated persons, and has acted upon all occasions so openly, that there is not the slightest disguise upon the matter in the literary circles of Paris. But even all this publicity might not wholly warrant a reference to the erratic course of this extraordinary woman, if she had not made her own experiences, to some extent, the basis of her works, which are said by those most familiar with her habits and associations, to contain, in a variety of forms, the confession of the strange vicissitudes through which her heart and imagination have passed. The reflection is not limited to general types of human character and passion, but constantly descends to individualization; and her intimate friends are at no loss to trace through her numerous productions a whole gallery of portraits, beginning with poor M. Dudevant, and running through a remarkable group of contemporary celebrities. Her works then are, avowedly, transcripts of her life; and her life consequently becomes, in a grave sense, literary property, as the spring from whence has issued the turbid principles she glories in enunciating.
We have no desire to pursue this view of George Sand's writings to its ultimate consequences. It is enough for our present purpose to indicate the source and nature of the influence she exercises. Taking her life and her works together, their action and re-action upon each other, it may be observed that such a writer could be produced and fostered only in such a state of society as that of Paris. With all her genius she would perish in London. The moral atmosphere of France is necessary alike to its culture and reception—the volcanic soil—the perpetual excitement—the instability of the people and the government—the eternal turmoil, caprice, and transition—a society agitated and polluted to its core. These elements of fanaticism and confusion, to which she has administered so skillfully, have made her what she is. In such a country as England, calm, orderly, and conservative, her social philosophy would lack earth for its roots and air for its blossoms. The very institutions of France, upon which no man can count for an hour, are essential to her existence as a writer.
But time that mellows all things has not been idle with George Sand. After having written "Indiana," "Lelie," "Valentine," and sundry other of her most conspicuous works, she found it necessary to defend herself against the charge of advocating conjugal infidelity. The defense, to be sure, was pre-eminently sophistical, and rested on a complete evasion of the real question; but it was a concession to the feelings and decorum of society which could not fail in some measure to operate as a restraint in future labors. Her subsequent works were not quite so decisive on these topics; and in some of them marriage was even treated with a respectful recognition, and love was suffered to run its course in purity and tranquillity, without any of those terrible struggles with duty and conscience which were previously considered indispensable to bring out its intensity.
And now comes an entirely new phase in the development of George Sand's mind. Perhaps about this time the influences immediately acting upon her may have undergone a modification that will partly help to explain the miracle. Her daughter, the fair Solange, is grown up and about to be married; and the household thoughts and cares, and the tenderness of a serious and unselfish cast, which creep to a mother's heart on such occasions, may have shed their sweetness upon this wayward soul, and inspired it with congenial utterances. This is mere speculation, more or less corroborated by time and circumstance; but whatever may have been the agencies by which the charm was wrought, certain it is that George Sand has recently produced a work which, we will not say flippantly in the words of the song,
"Has for once a moral,"
but which is in the highest degree chaste in conception, and full of simplicity and truthfulness in the execution. This work is in the form of a three-act comedy, and is called "François le Champi." (For the benefit of the country gentlemen, we may as well at once explain that the word champi means a foundling of the fields.)
The domestic morality, the quiet nature, the home feeling of this comedy may be described as something wonderful for George Sand; not that her genius was not felt to be plastic enough for such a display, but that nobody suspected she could have accomplished it with so slight an appearance of artifice or false sentiment, or with so much geniality and faith in its truth. But this is not the only wonder connected with "François le Champi." Its reception by the Paris audience was something yet more wonderful. We witnessed a few weeks ago at the Odeon its hundred and fourth or fifth representation—and it was a sight not readily forgotten. The acting, exquisite as it was through the minutest articulation of the scene, was infinitely less striking than the stillness and patience of the spectators. It was a strange and curious thing to see these mercurial people pouring in from their gay cafés and restaurants, and sitting down to the representation of this dramatic pastoral with much the same close and motionless attention as a studious audience might be expected to give to a scientific lecture. And it was more curious still to contrast what was doing at that moment in different places with a like satisfaction to other crowds of listeners; and to consider what an odd compound that people must be who can equally enjoy the rustic virtues of the Odeon, and the grossnesses and prurient humors of the Variétés. Paris and the Parisians will, probably, forever remain an enigma to the moral philosopher. One never can see one's way through their surprising contradictions, or calculate upon what will happen next, or what turn any given state of affairs will take. In this sensuous, sentimental, volatile, and dismal Paris, any body who may think it worth while to cross the water for such a spectacle, may see reproduced together, side by side, the innocence of the golden age, and the worst vices of the last stage of a high civilization.
At the bottom of all this, no doubt, will be found a constitutional melancholy that goes a great way to account for the opposite excesses into which the national character runs. A Frenchman is at heart the saddest man in the universe; but his nature is of great compass at both ends, being deficient only in the repose of the middle notes. And this constitutional melancholy opposed to the habitual frivolity (it never deserved to be called mirth) of the French is now more palpable than ever. Commercial depression has brought it out in its darkest colors. The people having got what they wanted, begin now to discover that they want every thing else. The shops are empty—the Palais Royal is as triste as the suburb of a country town—and the drive in the Champs Elysées, in spite of its display of horsemen and private carriages, mixed up in motley cavalcade with hack cabriolets and omnibuses, is as different from what it used to be in the old days of the monarchy, as the castle of Dublin will be by-and-by, when the viceregal pageant is removed to London. The sparkling butterflies that used to flirt about in the gardens of the Tuileries, may now be seen pacing moodily along, their eyes fixed on the ground, and their hands in their pockets, sometimes with an old umbrella (which seems to be received by common assent as the emblem of broken-down fortunes), and sometimes with a brown paper parcel under their arms. The animal spirits of the Parisians are very much perplexed under these circumstances; and hence it is that they alternately try to drown their melancholy in draughts of fierce excitement, or to solace it by gentle sedatives.
George Sand has done herself great honor by this charming little drama. That she should have chosen such a turbulent moment for such an experiment upon the public, is not the least remarkable incident connected with it. Only a few months before we heard of her midnight revels with the heads of the Repulican party in the midst of the fury and bloodshed of an emeute; and then follows close upon the blazing track of revolution, a picture of household virtues so sweet and tranquil, so full of tenderness and love, that it is difficult to believe it to be the production of the same hand that had recently flung flaming addresses, like brands, into the streets to set the town on fire. But we must be surprised at nothing that happens in France, where truth is so much stranger than fiction, as to extinguish the last fragment of an excuse for credulity and wonder.