Part 23 (1/2)
Yet, in none of her books did George Sand ever submit any theories as to how such children would be cared for; apparently, such a difficulty never troubled her, since almost all of the children of her books die of some disease, while to one--Jacques--she gives the advice to take his own life, so that his wife may be free to love elsewhere.
Her social theories are marked by an exaltation of sentiment, a weakness, an incoherency in conception, caused by her ardent love for theories and ideas, but which, in her pa.s.sionate sentiment and her loyal enthusiasm, she always confounds and confuses. From early youth she manifested an immense goodness, a profound tenderness, and a deep compa.s.sion for human misery. She rarely became angry, even though she suffered cruelly. Her own law of life and her message to the world was--be good. The only strong element within her, she said, was the need of loving, which manifested itself under the form of tenderness and emotion, devotion and religious ecstasy; and when this faith was shaken, doubt and social disturbances overwhelmed her.
Throughout life her consolation was Nature. ”It was half of her genius and the surest of her inspirations.” No other French novelist has been able to ”express in words the lights and shades, harmonies and contrasts, the magic of sounds, the symphonies of color, the depth and distances of the woods, the infinite movement of the sea and the sky--the interior soul of Nature, that vibrates in everything and everybody.” With Lamartine and Michelet, she has best reflected and expressed the dreams and hopes and loves of the first half of the nineteenth century.
George Sand saw Nature, lived in her, sympathized with her, and loved her as did few other French writers; therefore, she showed more memory than pure imagination in her work, for she always found Nature more beautiful in actuality than she could picture her mentally, while other great writers, like Lamartine, saw her less beautiful in reality than in their imagination; hence, they were disappointed in Nature, while for George Sand she was the truest friend. The world will always be interested in her descriptions of Nature, because with Nature she always a.s.sociated something of human life--a thought or a sentiment; her landscapes belonged to her characters--there is always a soul living in them, for, to George Sand, man and Nature were inseparable.
Thus, every novel of this auth.o.r.ess consists of a situation and a landscape, the poetic union of which nothing can mar. ”Man a.s.sociated with Nature and Nature with man is a great law of art; no painter has practised it with instinct more delicate or sure.” Because Nature, in her early youth, was her inspiration, guide, even her G.o.d, she returned to her later in life. M. Jules Lemaitre wrote that her works will remain eternally beautiful, because they teach us how to love Nature as divine and good, and to find in that love peace and solace.
There are many parts of her work which show as detailed, accurate, and realistic descriptions as those by Balzac. She constantly employed two elements--the fanciful and the realistic.
George Sand never studied or knew how to compose a work, how to preserve the unity of the subject or the unity in tone in characters; hence, there was nothing calculated or premeditated--everything was spontaneous. No preparation of plan did she ever think of--a mode of procedure which naturally resulted in a negligent style and caused the composition to drag. Her inspiration seemed to go so far, then she resorted to her imagination, to the chimerical, forcing events and characters. ”There are many defects in the style--such as the sentimental part, the romanesque in the violent expression of sentiments or invention of situations, the exaggerated improbabilities of events, the excessive declamation; but how many compensating qualities are there to offset these defects!”
Her method of writing was very simple. It was the love of writing that impelled her, almost without premeditation, to put into words her dreams, meditations, and chimeras under concrete and living forms.
Yet, by the largeness of her sympathy and the ardor of her pa.s.sions, by the abundant inventions of stories, and by the harmonious word-flow, she deserves to be ranked among the greatest writers of France. Her career, taken as a whole, is one of prodigious fecundity--a literary life that has ”enchanted by its fictions or troubled by its dreams” four or five generations. Never diminis.h.i.+ng in quality or inspiration, there are surprises in every new work.
No doubt George Sand has, for a generation or more, been somewhat forgotten, but what great writer has not shared the same fate? When the materialistic age has pa.s.sed away, many famous writers of the past will be resurrected, and with them George Sand; for her novels, although written to please and entertain, discuss questions of religion, philosophy, morality, problems of the heart, conscience, and education,--and this is done in such a dramatic way that one feels all to be true. More than that, her characters are all capable of carrying out, to the end, a common moral and general theme with eloquence seldom found in novels.
An interesting comparison might be made between Mme. de Stael and George Sand, the two greatest women writers of France. Both wrote from their experience of life, and fought pa.s.sionately against the prejudices and restrictions of social conventions; both were ideal natures and were severely tried in the school of life, profiting by their experiences; both possessed highly sensitive natures, and suffered much; both were keenly enthusiastic and sympathetic, with pardonable weaknesses; both lived through tragic wars; both evinced a dislike for the commonplace and strove for greater freedom, but for different publics, after unhappy marriages, both rose up as accusers against the prevalent system of marrying young girls. But Mme. de Stael was a virtuoso in conversation, a salon queen, and her happiness was to be found in society alone; while George Sand found her happiness in communion with Nature. This explains the two natures, their sufferings, their joys, their writings.
The greatest punishment ever inflicted upon Mme. de Stael was her exile, for it deprived her of her social life, a fact of which the emperor was well aware. Her entire literary effort was directed to describing her social life and the relation of society to life. ”She belongs to the moralists and to the writers who wrote of society and man--social psychologists.” Not poetic or artistic by nature, but with an exceptional power of observation, she shows on every side the influence of a pedagogical, literary, and social training; she was the product of an artificial culture.
George Sand, on the contrary, was a product of Nature, reared in free intercourse and unrestrained relation with her genius and Nature. A powerful pa.s.sion and a mighty fantasy made of her a poetess and an artist. These two qualities were manifested in her intense and deep feeling for the beauty of Nature, in her power of invention, in a harmonious equilibrium between idealism and realism. Her fantasy overbalanced her reason, impeding its development and thus relegating it to a secondary role. ”She is possibly the only French writer who possessed no _esprit_ (in the sense that it is used in French society)--that playful, epigrammatic, querulous wit of conversation.”
She never enjoyed communion with others for any length of time, or the companions.h.i.+p of anyone for a long period; the companions of which she never tired were the fields and woods, birds and dogs; therefore, she enjoyed those people most who were nearer her ideals, the peasants and workmen, and these she best describes. Thus, her whole creation is one of instinct rather than of reason, as it was with Mme. de Stael.
George Sand was a genius, a master-product of Nature, while Mme. de Stael was a talent, a consummate work of the art of modern culture; she reflects, while George Sand creates from impulse; the latter was a true poetess, communing with Nature, while the banker's daughter was an observing thinker, communicating with society--but both were great writers.
Intimately a.s.sociated with George Sand is Rosa Bonheur, in all of whose canvases we find the same aim, the same spirit, the same message, that are found in so many of the novels of George Sand.
They were two women who have contributed, through different branches, masterworks that will be enjoyed and appreciated at all times.
”It would be difficult not to speak of _La Mare au Diable_ and the _Meunier d'Angibault_ when recalling the fields where Rosa Bonheur speeds the plow or places the oxen lowering their patient heads under the yoke.”
In the evening, at home, while other members of the family were at work, one member read aloud to the rest; and George Sand was a favorite author with the Bonheur group of artists. It was while reading _La Mare au Diable_ that Rosa conceived the idea of the work which by some critics is p.r.o.nounced her masterpiece, _Plowing in Nivernais_. The artist's deep sympathy was aroused by her love of Nature, which no contemporary novelist expressed or appreciated as did George Sand. In all her works, and throughout the long life of the artist, there is absolutely nothing unhealthy or immoral to be found.
The novelist had theories which were inspired by her pa.s.sion, and these became unhealthy at times; she belongs first of all to France, while Rosa Bonheur belongs first of all to the world, her message reaching the young and old of every clime and every people. The novelist is to be a.s.sociated with the artist by virtue of her exquisite, simple, and wholesome peasant stories.
The entire Bonheur family were artists, and all were moral and genuinely sympathetic. As a young girl, Rosa manifested an intense love for Nature, suns.h.i.+ne, and the woods; always independent in manners, she used to caricature her teachers; and while walking out into the country, she would draw, with charcoal or in sand, any objects that met her eye. Her father was not long in detecting her talent. She was wedded to her art from the very beginning, showing no taste for or interest in any other subject. As soon as her father gave permission to follow art as a profession, she devoted all her energy to advancing herself in what she felt to be her life's work. For four years the young girl could be seen every day at the Louvre, copying the great masters and receiving princ.i.p.ally from them her ideas of coloring and harmony, while from her father she learned her technique.
After she had mastered these two principles, she decided to specialize in pastoral nature.
From that time her whole life was given up to the study of Nature and animals. Not able to study those near by, she procured a fine Beauvais sheep, which served as her model for two years. From the very first her work showed accuracy, purity, and an intuitive perception of Nature, and these qualities soon placed her among the foremost artists of the time. Her struggle for reputation and glory was not a long and arduous one, for after 1845 her fame was established--she was then but twenty-three years old; and after 1849, having exhibited some thirty pictures, her reputation had become European.
In order to be able to study her models with greater ease and freedom from the annoyance and coa.r.s.e incivilities of the workmen at the slaughter houses, farmyards, and markets that she was in the habit of visiting, she adopted the garb of man.
Her honors in life were many, though always unsought. The Empress Eugenie, while regent during the absence of Napoleon III., went in person to her chateau and put around her neck the ribbon of the decoration of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, then for the first time bestowed upon woman for merit other than bravery and charity. The Emperor Maximilian of Mexico conferred upon her the decoration of San Carlos; the King of Belgium created her a chevalier of his order, the first honor won by a woman; the King of Spain made her a Commander of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic; and President Carnot created her an Officer of the Legion of Honor.
With qualities such as she possessed, Rosa Bonheur could not fail to attain immortality. Her success was due in no small degree to the scientific instruction which she received when a mere child; having been taught, from the very first, how to paint directly from a model, she supplemented this training by a period of four years of copying great masters. In the latter period she studied Paul Potter's work rather slavishly, but was individual enough to combine only the best in him with the best in herself; this gave her an originality such as possibly no other animal painter ever possessed---not even Landseer, who is said to be ”stronger in telling the story than in the manner of telling it.”
Rosa Bonheur was too independent and original to follow any particular school or master, for her only inspiration and guide were her models, always living near by and upon intimate terms with her. Thus, in all her paintings, we instinctively feel that she painted from conviction, from her own observation, nothing being added for mere artistic effect. To some extent her pictures impress one as a perfect French poem in which there is no superfluous word, in which no word could be changed without destroying the effect of the whole; thus, in her paintings there is not a superfluous brush stroke; everything is necessary to the telling of the story; but she excels the perfect poem, for, in French literature, it seldom has a message distinct from its technique, while her pictures breathe the very essence of sympathy, love, and life. We feel that she thoroughly knew her subjects as a connoisseur; but her animals do not impress one as the production of an artist who knew them as do horse traders and cattle dealers, who know their stock from the purely physical standpoint; the animals of this artist are from the brush of one who was familiar with their habits, who loved them, had lived with and studied them--who knew and appreciated their higher qualities. Rosa Bonheur most harmoniously united two essential elements in art--a scientific as well as sympathetic conception of her subject. Possibly this is the reason that her pictures appeal to animal lovers throughout the world.
As was stated, she was independent, hence kept aloof from the corruptions of contemporary French art and its technique lovers, always pursuing an even tenor in her art and never permitting one of her pictures to leave her studio in a crude or unfinished state. In all her long career she kept her original sketches, never parting with one, in spite of the most tempting offers; and this explains the fact that the work of her later years exhibits the freshness and other qualities of that of her youth. Thus, her art has gained by her experience, even though her best work was done between about 1848 and 1860, and is especially marked by its excellence in composition, the anatomy, the breadth of touch, the harmony of coloring, and the action, although it is said to lack the spontaneity, the originality, and the highly imaginative quality which are at their best in _The Horse Fair_; the same qualities seem to have been possessed by many of her contemporaries, such as Troyon.
Notwithstanding these apparent defects, Rosa Bonheur stands for something higher in art than do most of her contemporaries. She was not influenced by the skilled and often corrupt technicians; she perfected her technique by study of the old masters and learned her art from Nature; wisely keeping free from the ornamental, gorgeous, and highly imaginative and exaggerated historical Romantic school, in French art she stands out almost alone with Millet. Whatever may be said of the more virile and masculine art of other great animal painters, Rosa Bonheur, by her truthfulness, her science, her close a.s.sociation and intimate communion with her animal world, by the glad and healthy vigor which her paintings breathe, has taught the world the great lesson that there are intelligence, will, love, and even soul, in animals.