This great writer, whose works have triumphed over prejudice and secured her a homage that rarely falls to the lot of authors, was as unassuming as she was brilliant and fearless. She disliked all parade, and while ever ready and prompt to come to the front when circumstances rendered her prominence necessary or desirable, she preferred retirement. Of her literary claims she says, in her calm old age: "I have never entertained the pretension of being a first-rate writer. My object has been to react on my contemporaries, even were they only a few, and to induce them to partake of my ideal of meekness and poetry."
After an interval of usual reaction from great popularity, which George Sand's works have not escaped, a reawakened interest has come. Time has removed many prejudices, and her aim and intent are better understood. Of the multitude of works she has contributed, it is not too venturesome to assert that posterity will cherish many of her romances as classic treasures. As long as the human heart feels the burden of the real life, so long will men and women take delight and comfort in the ideal life; in wandering amid scenes that will shed a cheering ray to lighten the gloom and brighten the sadness of our real world. Nor will it be found that George Sand takes us so out of the reality that we shall experience only a mere wondering diversion. She indeed pictures life as it should, and might, be; but she also describes it as she sees it; she feels what she writes; she reads and interprets the "never-changing language of nature"; she recognizes that the romance must be human before all else, and assumes that true reality consists in a mixture of good and evil. Her writings are too interestingly human for humanity to lose its appreciation of those of them that are not precluded by special reasons from enjoying lasting fame.
J. A. B.
Philadelphia, 1902.
[SHE AND HE]
[TO MADEMOISELLE JACQUES]
"MY DEAR THÉRÈSE:
"Since you permit me not to call you mademoiselle, let me tell you an important piece of news in the world of art, as our friend Bernard says. Ah! there's a rhyme;[1] but what I am going to tell you has neither rhyme nor reason.
"Fancy that yesterday, after boring you with my visit, I found, on returning to my rooms, an English milord (by the way, perhaps he isn't a milord; but he surely is an Englishman), who said to me in his dialect:
"'Are you a painter?'