Marriage is beautiful for lovers and useful for saints.
Besides saints and lovers there are a great many ordinary
minds and placid hearts that do not know love and cannot
attain to sanctity.
Marriage is the supreme aim of love. When love has left it,
or never entered it, sacrifice remains. This is very well for
those who understand sacrifice. The latter presupposes a
measure of heart and a degree of intelligence which are not
frequently to be met with.
For sacrifice there are compensations which the vulgar mind
can appreciate. The approbation of the world, the routine
sweetness of custom, a feeble, tranquil, and sensible
devotion that is not bent on rapturous exaltation, or money,
that is to say baubles, dress, luxury—in short, a thousand
little things which make one forget that one is deprived of
happiness.
The following extracts give us some glimpses which enable us to realise the situation:—
I left rather sad. ____ said hard things to me, having been told
by a Madame ____ that I was wrong in making excursions without
my husband. I do not think that this is the case, seeing that
my husband goes first, and I go where he intends to go.
My husband is one of the most intrepid of men. He goes
everywhere, and I follow him. He turns round and rebukes me.
He says that I affect singularity. I'll be hanged if I think
of it. I turn round, and I see Zoe following me. I tell her
that she affects singularity. My husband is angry because Zoe
laughs.
...We quickly leave the guides and the caravan behind us.
We ride over the most fantastic roads at a gallop. Zoe is mad
with courage. This intoxicates me, and I at once am her
equal.
In addition to the above, we must read a remark suggested by certain entries in the diary:—
Aimee was an accomplished person of an exquisite distinction.
She loved everything that in any way is elegant and ornate in
society: names, manners, talents, titles. Madcap as I
assuredly was, I looked upon all this as vanity, and went in
quest of intimacy and simplicity combined with poesy. Thanks
to God, I found them in Zoe, who was really a person of
merit, and, moreover, a woman with a heart as eager for
affection as my own.
M. and Madame Dudevant spent the greater part of autumn and the whole winter at Guillery, the chateau of Colonel Dudevant. Had the latter not died at this time, he might perhaps have saved the young people from those troubles towards which they were drifting, at least so his daughter-in-law afterwards thought. In the summer of 1826 the ill-matched couple returned to Nohant, where they continued to live, a few short absences excepted, till 1831. Hitherto their mutual relation had left much to be desired, henceforth it became worse and worse every day. It would, however, be a mistake to account for this state of matters solely by the dissimilarity of their temperaments—the poetic tendency on the one side, the prosaic on the other—for although it precluded an ideal matrimonial union, it by no means rendered an endurable and even pleasant companionship impossible. The real cause of the gathering clouds and imminent storm is to be sought elsewhere. Madame Dudevant was endowed with great vitality; she was, as it were, charged with an enormous amount of energy, which, unless it found an outlet, oppressed her and made her miserable. Now, in her then position, all channels were closed up. The management of household affairs, which, if her statement may be trusted, she neither considered beneath her dignity nor disliked, might have served as a safety-valve; but her administration came to an untimely end. When, after the first year of their married life, her husband examined the accounts, he discovered that she had spent 14,000 francs instead of 10,000, and found himself constrained to declare that their purse was too light for her liberality. Not having anything else to do, and her uselessness vexing her, she took to doctoring the poor and concocting medicines. Hers, however, was not the spirit that allows itself to be fettered by the triple vow of obedience, silence, and poverty. No wonder, therefore, that her life, which she compared to that of a nun, was not to her taste. She did not complain so much of her husband, who did not interfere with her reading and brewing of juleps, and was in no way a tyrant, as of being the slave of a given situation from which he could not set her free. The total lack of ready money was felt by her to constitute in our altogether factitious society an intolerable situation, frightful misery or absolute powerlessness. What she missed was some means of which she might dispose, without compunction and uncontrolled, for an artistic treat, a beautiful book, a week's travelling, a present to a poor friend, a charity to a deserving person, and such like trifles, which, although not indispensable, make life pleasant. "Irresponsibility is a state of servitude; it is something like the disgrace of the interdict." But servitude and disgrace are galling yokes, and it was not likely that so strong a character would long and meekly submit to them. We have, however, not yet exhausted the grievances of Madame Dudevant. Her brother Hippolyte, after mismanaging his own property, came and lived for the sake of economy at Nohant. His intemperance and that of a friend proved contagious to her husband, and the consequence was not only much rioting till late into the night, but occasionally also filthy conversations. She began, therefore, to consider how the requisite means might be obtained—which would enable her to get away from such undesirable surroundings, and to withdraw her children from these evil influences. For four years she endeavoured to discover an employment by which she could gain her livelihood. A milliner's business was out of the question without capital to begin with; by needlework no more than ten sous a day could be earned; she was too conscientious to make translation pay; her crayon and water-colour portraits were pretty good likenesses, but lacked originality; and in the painting of flowers and birds on cigar-cases, work-boxes, fans, &c., which promised to be more successful, she was soon discouraged by a change of fashion.
At last Madame Dudevant made up her mind to go to Paris and try her luck in literature. She had no ambition whatever, and merely hoped to be able to eke out in this way her slender resources. As regards the capital of knowledge she was possessed of she wrote: "I had read history and novels; I had deciphered scores; I had thrown an inattentive eye over the newspapers....Monsieur Neraud [the Malgache of the "Lettres d'un Voyageur">[ had tried to teach me botany. According to the "Histoire de ma Vie" this new departure was brought about by an amicable arrangement; her letters, as in so many cases, tell, however, a very different tale. Especially important is a letter written, on December 3, 1830, to Jules Boucoiran, who had lately been tutor to her children, and whom, after the relation of what had taken place, she asks to resume these duties for her sake now that she will be away from Nohant and her children part of the year. Boucoiran, it should be noted, was a young man of about twenty, who was a total stranger to her on September 2, 1829, but whom she addressed on November 30 of that year as "Mon cher Jules." Well, she tells him in the letter in question that when looking for something in her husband's writing-desk she came on a packet addressed to her, and on which were further written by his hand the words "Do not open it till after my death." Piqued by curiosity, she did open the packet, and found in it nothing but curses upon herself. "He had gathered up in it," she says, "all his ill-humour and anger against me, all his reflections on my perversity." This was too much for her; she had allowed herself to be humiliated for eight years, now she would speak out.
Without waiting a day longer, still feeble and ill, I
declared my will and mentioned my motives with an aplomb and
coolness which petrified him. He hardly expected to see a
being like me rise to its full height in order to face him.
He growled, disputed, beseeched. I remained immovable. I want
an allowance, I shall go to Paris, my children will remain at
Nohant.
She feigned intractability on all these points, but after some time relented and consented to return to Nohant if her conditions were accepted. From the "Histoire de ma Vie" we learn what these conditions were. She demanded her daughter, permission to pass twice three months every year in Paris, and an allowance of 250 francs per month during the time of her absence from Nohant. Her letters, however, show that her daughter was not with her during her first three months at Paris.
Madame Dudevant proceeded to Paris at the beginning of 1831. Her establishment there was of the simplest. It consisted of three little rooms on the fifth story (a mansarde) in a house on the Quai Saint-Michel. She did the washing and ironing herself, the portiere assisting her in the rest of the household work. The meals came from a restaurant, and cost two francs a day. And thus she managed to keep within her allowance. I make these and the following statements on her own authority. As she found her woman's attire too expensive, little suited for facing mud and rain, and in other respects inconvenient, she provided herself with a coat (redingote-guerite), trousers, and waistcoat of coarse grey cloth, a hat of the same colour, a large necktie, and boots with little iron heels. This latter part of her outfit especially gave her much pleasure. Having often worn man's clothes when riding and hunting at Nohant, and remembering that her mother used to go in the same guise with her father to the theatre during their residence in Paris, she felt quite at home in these habiliments and saw nothing shocking in donning them. Now began what she called her literary school-boy life (vie d'ecolier litteraire), her vie de gamin. She trotted through the streets of Paris at all times and in all weathers, went to garrets, studios, clubs, theatres, coffee-houses, in fact, everywhere except to salons. The arts, politics, the romance of society and living humanity, were the studies which she passionately pursued. But she gives those the lie who said of her that she had the "curiosite du vice."