My mother used to sing to me a rhyme on Christmas Eve; but as that only occurred once a year, I do not recollect it. What I have not forgotten is the absolute belief which I had in the descent down the chimney of Old Father Christmas, a good old man with a snowy beard, who, during the night, as the clock struck twelve, was to come and place in my little shoe a present which I should find upon awaking. Twelve o’clock at night! that mysterious hour unknown to children, and which is represented to them as the impossible limit to which they can keep awake! What incredible efforts did I not make to resist my tendency to sleep before the appearance of the little old man! I felt anxious yet afraid to see him! But I could never keep awake long enough, and the following morning my first anxiety was to go and examine my shoe in the fire-place. What emotion did I not feel at sight of the white paper parcel! for Father Christmas was extremely clean in his ways, and never failed to carefully wrap up his offering. I used to jump out of bed and run barefooted to seize my treasure. It was never a very magnificent affair, for we were not wealthy! It used to be a little cake, an orange, or simply a nice rosy apple. But, nevertheless, it seemed so precious to me that I scarcely dared to eat it.
George Sand: ‘Histoire de ma Vie,’ quoted by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’
Early education.
Imaginativeness.
Activity.
There seems to have been little or no method about her early education. The study of her own language was neglected, and the time spent less profitably, she considered, in acquiring a smattering of Latin. She took to some studies with avidity, while others remained wholly distasteful to her. For mere head-work she cared little. Arithmetic she detested; versification no less. The dry technique in music was a stumbling block of which she was impatient. History and literature she enjoyed in whatever they offered that was romantic, heroic, or poetically suggestive. In her Nohant surroundings there was nothing to check, and much to stimulate, this dominant imaginative faculty.... Such a visionary life might have been most dangerous and mentally enervating had her organization been less robust, and the tendency to reverie not been matched by lively external perception and plentiful physical activity. As it was, if at one moment she was in a cloud-land of her own, or poring over the stories of the Iliad, the classic mythologies, or Tasso’s Gerusalemme, the next would see her scouring the fields, ... playing practical jokes on the tutor, and extemporizing wild out-of-door games and dances with her village companions.
A curious development.
Of serious religious education she received none at all.... Her mother was pious in a primitive way, though holding aloof from priestly influences. The grandmother [was] a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Voltaire.... On both sides what was offered her to worship was too indefinite to satisfy her strong religious instincts.... She filled in the blank with her imagination, which was forthwith called upon to picture a being who should represent all perfections, human and divine; something that her heart could love, as well as her intelligence approve.
“Corambé.”