On the Quai St. Michel—a portion of the Seine embankment facing the towers of Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, and other picturesque monuments of ancient Paris—she had now definitely installed herself in modest lodgings on the fifth story. Accepted and treated as a comrade by a little knot of fellow literati and colleagues on the Figaro, two of whom—Jules Sandeau and Félix Pyat—were from Berri, like herself; and with Delatouche, also a Berrichon, for their head-master, she served thus singularly her brief apprenticeship to literature and experience, sharing with the rest both their studies and their relaxations, dining with them at cheap restaurants, frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree; the youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in such collegians’ pranks as parading deserted quarters of the town by moonlight, in the small hours, chanting lugubrious strains to astonish the shop-keepers. The only great celebrity whose acquaintance she had made was Balzac, himself the prince of eccentrics. Although he did not encourage Madame Dudevant’s literary ambition, he showed himself kindly disposed towards her and her young friends, and she gives some amusing instances that came under her notice of his oddities. Thus once, after a little Bohemian dinner at his lodgings in the Rue Cassini, he insisted on putting on a new and magnificent dressing-gown, of which he was exceedingly vain, to display to his guests, of whom Madame Dudevant was one; and not satisfied therewith, must needs go forth, thus accoutred, to light them on their walk home. All the way he continued to hold forth to them about four Arab horses, which he had not got yet, but meant to get soon, and of which, though he never got them at all, he firmly believed himself to have been possessed for some time.
Bertha Thomas: ‘George Sand.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.
“An artist’s life.”
I must live. For that purpose I am doing the meanest of work. I write articles for the Figaro. If you only knew what it is! But they pay seven francs for a column; besides which it enables me to eat and drink and even go to the play.... It affords me the opportunity of making most useful and amusing observations. When intending to write, people must see and know everything and laugh at everything. Ah, upon my word, there is nothing like an artist’s life. Our motto is liberty.
That is, however, a rather exaggerated boast. We do not precisely enjoy liberty at the Figaro. M. de Latouche, our worthy director (ah! you ought to know the fellow), is always hanging over us, cutting, pruning, right or wrong, imposing upon us his whims, his aberrations, his fancies, and we have to write as he bids; for, after all, that is his affair. We are but his working tools.
Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, March, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’
Origin of her pseudonym.
The two young friends [Mme. Dudevant and Jules Sandeau] wrote a novel entitled ‘Rose et Blanche, ou la Comédienne et la Religieuse,’ which they sold for 400 francs.... But it was indispensable that the name of the author should be appended to the work. Madame Dudevant could not put her name to it for fear of a scandal; as for Sandeau, he was afraid of incurring the reproaches of his family, which objected to his pursuing a literary career. The name Sandeau was curtailed, and ‘Rose et Blanche’ appeared under the signature of Jules Sand.