Literature at first a resource.
My husband has set down my private expenses at 3,000 francs. You know that that is little for me, who like to give and cannot bear to receive. I therefore only purpose increasing my income from some other source. I have no ambition to be known, and shall not be. I shall not attract either the envy or the hatred of any one. Most writers, I know, lead lives of anguish and struggle; but those whose sole ambition is to earn a livelihood live in peaceable obscurity. It would ... be very odd if a paltry talent like mine could not withhold itself from the public gaze.
Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, February, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’
But soon a passion.
I am more than ever intent upon following a literary career. In spite of the repugnance which I sometimes experience, despite the days of idleness and fatigue which cause me to break off my work, in spite of the life, more than quiet, which I lead here, I feel that henceforth my existence has an aim. I have a purpose in view, a task before me, and, if I may use the word, a passion. For the profession of writing is nothing else but a violent, indestructible passion. When it has once entered people’s heads it never leaves them.
Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, March, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’
Bohemian experiences.
Balzac’s oddities.