Famous Women: George Sand

Sand had additional inducements to do so, beyond those of ambition satiated with literary success,

taste for acting, which she transmitted to her children. We have seen her during her literary novitiate in Paris, a studious observer at all theatres, from the classic boards of the Fran?ais down to the lowest of popular stages, the Funambules, where reigned at that time a real artist in pantomime, Débureau. His Pierrot, a sort of modified Pulchinello, was renowned; and attracted more fastidious critics to his audience than the Paris artisans whose idol he was. Since then Madame Sand had numbered among her personal friends such leading dramatic celebrities as Madame Dorval, Bocage, and Pauline

d her to Mlle. Mars, as being a less studied actress, and one who abandoned herself more to the inspiration of the moment. The effect produced, as described by Madame Sand, will be understood by all keenly alive, like herself, to the enjoyment of dramatic art. "She" (Madame Dorval) "seemed

ruary, 1833, when Bocage and the author of Indiana, then strangers to each other, chanced to sit side by side. In their joint enthusiasm over the play they made the beginning of a thirty years' friendship, terminated only by Bocage's death in 1862. "It was difficult not to quarrel with him," she says of this popular favorite

Madame Sand's first drama, Cosima, produced, as will be remembered, in 1840. She allowed nearly a decade to elapse before a

sonages, here faithfully copied from reality, unlike the conventional village and villager of opera comique, and the pleasing sentiment that runs through the tale, were found refreshing by audiences upon whom the sensational incidents and harrowing emotions of their modern drama were already beginning to pall. The result was a little stage triumph for Madame Sand. It helped to draw to her pastoral tales the attention

engthened at its first production by the support of some of the best acting talent in Paris-Fechter, then a rising jeune premier, and the veteran Bocage ably representing, respectively, youth and age. Old Berrichon airs were introduced with effect, as also such pic

mountain of sheaves solemnly approaching, drawn by three pairs of enormous oxen, the whole adorned

of the value of dramatic art and her exact appreciation of the strength and weakness of the acting world, her plays remain, to great expectations, uniformly disappointing. Her specialty in fiction lies in her favorite art of analyzing and putting before us, with extreme clearness, the subtlest ramifications, the most

e slightness of plot-a mere thread in most instances-requires that the thread shall at least be never allowed to drop. But she cuts or slackens it perpetually, long arguments and digressions intervening, and the dialogue, whose monotony is unrelieved by wit, nowhere compensates

original. An extreme instance is Flaminio (1854), a protracted drama, drawn by Madame Sand from her novelette Teverino. This is a fantasy-piece whose audacity is redeemed, as are certain other blemishes, by the poetic suggestiveness of the figure of Madeline, the bird-charmer; whi

are never weary of analyzing their sentiments. Her flowing style, so pleasant to read, carries us swiftly and easily through her dissertations in print, before we have time to tire of them. On the sta

hich had so much attraction for her (possibly a result of her part German origin), is a growth that has hard work to flourish on French soil. The reader will remember the fate of Weber's Freischütz, outrageously hissed when first produced at Paris in its original form. Nine days later it was reproduced, having been taken to pieces and put together again by M. Castil-Blaze, and thus as Robin des Bois it ran for 357 nights. The reckless imagination that distinguishes the Shakespearian comedy and does not shrink before the introduction of a lion and a serpent into the forest of Arden, and the miraculous and instantaneous conversion of the wretch Oliver into a worthy suitor for Celia, needed to be toned down for acceptance by the Parisians. But Madame Sand was less fortunate than M. Castil-Blaze. Her version, produced at the Théatre Fran?ais, in 1856, failed to please, although supported by

longing to preserve intact his youthfulness of appearance as he has really preserved his youthfulness of heart, is both natural and original, comic and half pathetic withal. The part in the play seemed made for Bocage, and his heart was set upon undertaking it. But his health was failing at the time, and the manager hesitated about giving him the r?le. "Take care, my friend," wrote Bocage to Madame Sand; "perhaps I shall die if I play the part

ggested itself to her of Sedaine's century-old comedy, Le Philosophe sans le savoir, escapes the ill fate that seems to attend sequels in general. It is of the slightest materials, but holds together, and is gracefully conceived and executed. First produced at t

that weaken most of her stage compositions. It is said that in preparing it she accepted some hints from Alexander Dumas t

Madame Sarah Bernhardt impersonating the heroine. This not very agreeable play is derived, with mater

nterest and variety to her experience, which brought forth excellent fruit in her novels. Actors, their art and way of life have fared notoriously badly in fiction. Such p

rt of the spectator-and, in a corrupt and artificial age, to keep alive some latent faith in the ideal. Since then the stage and players had figured repeatedly in her works. Sometimes she portrays a perfected type, such as Consuelo, or Impéria in Pierre qui roule, but always side by side with more earthly and faulty representatives such as Corilla and Anzoleto, or Julia and Albany, in Narcisse, incarnations of the vanity and instabilit

icates than fully narrates the facts of her existence from the time of her marriage till the Revolution of 1848. It offers to her admirers invaluable glimpses into her life and mind, and is a highly interesting and characteristic composition, if a most irregular chronicle. It has given rise to two most incompatible-sounding criticisms. Some have been chiefly struck by its amazing unreserve, and denounced the over-frankness of the author in revealing herself to the public. Others complain that she keeps on a mask throughout, and never allows

r profoundly. "Is there a more mortal grief," she exclaims, "than to outlive, yourself, those who should have bloomed upon your grave?" The blow told upon her

o Italy.... I have seen Rome, revisited Florence, Genoa, Frascati, Spezia, Marseilles. I have walked a great deal, been out

e Eternal City was one of disillusion. Her hero, a Berrichon artist on his travels, confesses to a feeling of uneasiness and regret rather than of surprise and admiration. The ancient ruins, stupendous in themselves, seemed to her spoilt for

. "A grandiose ruin," she exclaims, "of colossal proportions; it is shut away, isolated, silent and respected. There

ed by modern buildings or otherwise-she felt to the full. But whatever came under her notice she looked on with t

o) "on the railway within a hundred miles of Paris, you would not pay it the slightest attention." Such places had their individuality, but she upheld that there is not a corner in the universe, "however common-place it may appear, but

Of these she records an instance in her pleasant Promenades autour d'un village, a lively sketch of a few days' walking-tour on the banks of the Creuse, undertaken by herself and some naturalist friends in June, 1857. In studying the interesting and secluded village of Gargilesse, with its tenth-century church and crypt with ancient frescoes, its simple and independent-minded pop

ppeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1859. Though many of the details are fictitious, the author here told the history of her relations with the deceased poet much too powerfully for her intention to be mistaken or to escape severe blame. That a magnanimous silence would have been the nobler course on her part towards the child of genius whose good genius she had so signally failed to be, need not be disputed. It must be remembered, however, that De Musset on his side had not refrained during his lifetime from denouncing in

tions, the hastiness with which, on discovering her mistake, she entertains the idea of bestowing her hand, if not her heart, on another, is an exhibition of feminine inconsequence which no amount of previous misconduct on the part of her lover, Laurent, can justify. Further, Therèse is self-deceived in supposing her passion to have died out with her esteem. She breaks with the culprit and engages her word to a worthier man. But enough remains over of the past to prevent her from keeping the promise she ought never to have made. When she sacrifices her unselfish friend to return to the lover who has made her miserable, she is sincere, but not heroic. She is too weak to shake off the influence of the

n that so often leads two exceptional but hopeless, irreconcilable spirits to seek in each other a refuge from the isolation in which their superiority places them, has been somewhat overlooked. Laurent, whether a true portrait or not, is only too true to nature; excessive in his admirable powe

illiant and ingenious effect, she had studied both historically and practically. She and her son found it so fascinating that, years before this time, a miniature stage had been constructed by the latter at Nohant, over which he presided, and which they and their friends found an endless source of amusement. Madame Sand wrote little dramas expressly for such r

oire, and the well-known and popular Marquis de Villemer, notable as a decid

of nature against affectation and convention which had prompted the Romantic movement, whose disciples had now become guilty of affectation in their turn. Madame Bovary she pronounced with truth to be but concentrated Balzac. She was ready to perceive and do justice to the great ability of the author, as to original genius in any school; thus of Tourguénief she speaks with enthusiasm: "Realist to see all, poet to beautify a

e last will have their rainy days, the first their days of sunshine. In all arts the victory remains with a

rd her work in a true perspective. As with Byron, Dickens, and other popular celebrities, a phase of infinite enthusiasm for her writings was duly succeeded by a pha