In the recently published "Lettres a l'etrangere" of Honore de Balzac, this about Sand is very apropos. A visit paid to George Sand at Nohant, in March 1838, brought the following to Madame Hanska:
It was rather well that I saw her, for we exchanged confidences regarding Sandeau. I, who blamed her to the last for deserting him, now feel only a deep compassion for her, as you will have for me, when you learn with whom we have had relations, she of love, I of friendship.
But she has been even more unhappy with Musset. So here she is, in retreat, denouncing both marriage and love, because in both she has found nothing but delusion.
I will tell you of her immense and secret devotion to these two men, and you will agree that there is nothing in common between angels and devils. All the follies she has committed are claims to glory in the eyes of great and beautiful souls. She has been the dupe of la Dorval, Bocage, Lamenais, etc.; through the same sentiment she is the dupe of Liszt and Madame d'Agoult.
So let us accept without too much questioning as did Balzac, a reader of souls, the Sand-Chopin partnership and follow its sinuous course until 1847.
Chopin met Sand at a musical matinee in 1837. Niecks throttles every romantic yarn about the pair that has been spoken or printed. He got his facts viva voce from Franchomme. Sand was antipathetic to Chopin but her technique for overcoming masculine coyness was as remarkable in its particular fashion as Chopin's proficiency at the keyboard. They were soon seen together, and everywhere. She was not musical, not a trained musician, but her appreciation for all art forms was highly sympathetic. Not a beautiful woman, being swarthy and rather heavy-set in figure, this is what she was, as seen by Edouard Grenier:—
She was short and stout, but her face attracted all my attention, the eyes especially. They were wonderful eyes, a little too close together, it may be, large, with full eyelids, and black, very black, but by no means lustrous; they reminded me of unpolished marble, or rather of velvet, and this gave a strange, dull, even cold expression to her countenance. Her fine eyebrows and these great placid eyes gave her an air of strength and dignity which was not borne out by the lower part of her face. Her nose was rather thick and not over shapely. Her mouth was also rather coarse and her chin small. She spoke with great simplicity, and her manners were very quiet.
But she attracted with imperious power all that she met. Liszt felt this attraction at one time—and it is whispered that Chopin was jealous of him. Pouf! the woman who could conquer Franz Liszt in his youth must have been a sorceress. He, too, was versatile.
In 1838, Sand's boy Maurice being ill, she proposed a visit to Majorca. Chopin went with the party in November and full accounts of the Mediterranean trip, Chopin's illness, the bad weather, discomforts and all the rest may be found in the "Histoire de Ma Vie" by Sand. It was a time of torment. "Chopin is a detestable invalid," said Sand, and so they returned to Nohant in June 1839. They saw Genoa for a few days in May, but that is as far as Chopin ever penetrated into the promised land—Italy, at one time a passion with him. Sand enjoyed the subtle and truly feminine pleasure of again entering the city which six years before she had visited in company with another man, the former lover of Rachel.
Chopin's health in 1839 was a source of alarm to himself and his friends. He had been dangerously ill at Majorca and Marseilles. Fever and severe coughing proved to be the dread forerunners of the disease that killed him ten years later. He was forced to be very careful in his habits, resting more, giving fewer lessons, playing but little in private or public, and becoming frugal of his emotions. Now Sand began to cool, though her lively imagination never ceased making graceful, touching pictures of herself in the roles of sister of mercy, mother, and discreet friend, all merged into one sentimental composite. Her invalid was her one thought, and for an active mind and body like hers, it must have been irksome to submit to the caprices of a moody, ailing man. He composed at Nohant, and she has told us all about it; how he groaned, wrote and re-wrote and tore to pieces draft after draft of his work. This brings to memory another martyr to style, Gustave Flaubert, who for forty years in a room at Croisset, near Rouen, wrestled with the devils of syntax and epithet. Chopin was of an impatient, nervous disposition. All the more remarkable then his capacity for taking infinite pains. Like Balzac he was never pleased with the final "revise" of his work, he must needs aim at finishing touches. His letters at this period are interesting for the Chopinist but for the most part they consist of requests made to his pupils, Fontana, Gutmann and others, to jog the publishers, to get him new apartments, to buy him many things. Wagner was not more importunate or minatory than this Pole, who depended on others for the material comforts and necessities of his existence. Nor is his abuse of friends and patrons, the Leos and others, indicative of an altogether frank, sincere nature. He did not hesitate to lump them all as "pigs" and "Jews" if anything happened to jar his nerves. Money, money, is the leading theme of the Paris and Mallorean letters. Sand was a spendthrift and Chopin had often to put his hands in his pocket for her. He charged twenty francs a lesson, but was not a machine and for at least four months of the year he earned nothing. Hence his anxiety to get all he could for his compositions. Heaven-born geniuses are sometimes very keen in financial transactions, and indeed why should they not be?