Part 8 (1/2)

In these, her pastoral tales, she hit on a new and happy vein which she was peculiarly qualified to work, combining as she did, intimate knowledge of French peasant life with sympathetic interest in her subject and lively poetic fancy. Here she affronts no prejudices, advances no startling theories, handles no subtle, treacherous social questions, and to these compositions in a perfectly original _genre_ she brought the freshness of genius which ”age cannot wither,” together with the strength and finish of a practiced hand.

Peasants had figured as accessories in her earlier works. The rustic hermit and philosopher, Patience, and Marca.s.se the rat-catcher, in _Mauprat_, are note-worthy examples. In 1844 had appeared _Jeanne_, with its graceful dedication to Francoise Meillant, the unlettered peasant-girl who may have suggested the work she could not read--one of a family of rural proprietors, spoken of by Madame Sand in a letter of 1843 as a fine survival of a type already then fast vanis.h.i.+ng--of patriarchally const.i.tuted family-life, embodying all that was grand and simple in the forms of the olden time.

In _Jeanne_, Madame Sand had first ventured to make a peasant-girl the central figure of her novel, though still so far deferring to the received notions of what was essential in order to interest the ”gentle”

reader as to surround her simple heroine with personages of rank and education. Jeanne herself, moreover, is an exceptional and a highly idealized type--as it were a sister to Joan of Arc, not the inspired warrior-maid, but the visionary shepherdess of the Vosges. Yet the creation is sufficiently real. The author had observed how favorable was the life of solitude and constant communion with nature led by many of these country children in their scattered homesteads, to the development of remarkable and tenacious individuality. So with the strange and poetical Jeanne, too innately refined to prosper in her rough human environment, yet too fixedly simple to fare much better in more cultivated circles. She is the victim of a sort of celestial stupidity we admire and pity at once. In this study of a peasant heroine resides such charm as the book possesses, and the attempt was to lead on the author to the productions above alluded to, _La Mareau Diable_, _Francois le Champi_, and _La Pet.i.te Fadette_. Of this popular trio the first had been published already two years before the Revolution, in 1846; the second was appearing in the Feuilleton of the _Journal des Debats_ at the very moment of the breaking of the storm, which interrupted its publication awhile. When those tumultuous months were over, and Madame Sand, thrown out of the hurly-burly of active politics, was brought back by the course of events to Nohant, she seems to have taken up her pen very much where she had laid it down. The break in her ordinary round of work made by the excitements of active statesmans.h.i.+p was hardly perceptible, and in 1849 _Le Champi_ was followed by _La Pet.i.te Fadette_.

_La Mare au Diable_, George Sand's first tale of exclusively peasant-life, is usually considered her masterpiece in this _genre_. It was suggested to her, she tells us, by Holbein's dismal engraving of death coming to the husbandman, an old, gaunt, ragged, over-worked representative of his tribe--grim ending to a life of cheerless poverty and toil!

Here was the dark and painful side of the laborer's existence--a true picture, but not the whole truth. There was another and a bright side, which might just as allowably be represented in art as the dreary one, and which she had seen and studied. In Berry extreme poverty was the exception, and the agriculturist's life appeared as it ought to be, healthy, calm, and simple, its laboriousness compensated by the soothing influences of nature, and of strong home affections.

This little gem of a work is thoroughly well-known. The ploughing-scene in the opening--ploughing as she had witnessed it sometimes in her own neighborhood, fresh, rough ground broken up for tillage, the plough drawn by four yoke of young white oxen new to their work and but half-tamed, has a simplicity and grandeur of effect not easy to parallel in modern art. The _motif_ of the tale is that you often go far to search for the good fortune that lies close to your door. Never was so homely an adage more freshly and prettily ill.u.s.trated; yet how slight are the materials, how plain is the outline! Germain, the well-to-do, widowed laborer, in the course of a few miles' ride, a journey undertaken in order to present himself and his addresses to the rich widow his father desires him to woo, discovers the real life-companion he wants in the poor girl-neighbor, whom he patronizingly escorts on her way to the farm where she is hired for service. It all slowly dawns upon him, in the most natural manner, as the least incidents of the journey call out her good qualities of head and heart--her helpfulness in misadventure, forgetfulness of self, unaffected fondness for children, instinctively recognized by Germain's little boy, who, with his unconscious childish influence, is one of the prettiest features in the book. Germain, by his journey's end, has his heart so well engaged in the right quarter that he is proof against the dangerous fascinations of the coquettish widow.

There is a breath of poetry over the picture, but no denaturalization of the uncultured types. Germain is honest and warm-hearted, but not bright of understanding; little Marie is wise and affectionate, but as unsentimentally-minded as the veriest realist could desire. The native caution and mercenary habit of thought of the French agricultural cla.s.s are indicated by many a humorous touch in the pastorals of George Sand.

Equally pleasing, though not aiming at the almost antique simplicity of the _Mare au Diable_, is the story of _Francois le Champi_, the foundling, saved from the demoralization to which lack of the softening influences of home and parental affection predestine such unhappy children, through the tenderness his forlorn condition inspires in a single heart--that of Madeline Blanchet, the childless wife, whose own wrongs, patiently borne, have quickened her commiseration for the wrongs of others. Her sympathy, little though it lies in her power to manifest it, he feels, and its incalculable worth to him, which is such that the grat.i.tude of a whole life cannot do more than repay it.

Part of the narrative is here put into the mouth of a peasant, and told in peasant language, or something approaching to it. Over the propriety of this proceeding, adopted also in _Les Maitres Sonneurs_, French critics are disagreed, though for the most part they regret it. It is not for a foreigner to decide between them. One would certainly regret the absence of some of the extremely original and expressive words and turns of speech current among the rural population, forms which such a method enabled her to introduce into the narrative as well as into the dialogue.

_La Pet.i.te Fadette_ is not only worthy of its predecessors but by many will be preferred to either. There is something particularly attractive in the portraits of the twin brothers--partly estranged by character, wholly united by affection,--and in the figure of Fanchon Fadet, an original in humble life, which has made this little work a general favorite wherever it is known.

These prose-idylls have been called ”The Georgics of France.” It is curious that in a country so largely agricultural, and where nature presents more variety of picturesque aspect than perhaps in any other in Europe, the poetic side of rural life should have been so sparingly represented in her imaginative literature. French poets of nature have mostly sought their inspiration out of their own land, ”In France, especially,” observes Theophile Gautier, ”all literary people live in town, that is in Paris the centre, know little of what is unconnected with it, and most of them cannot tell wheat from barley, potatoes from beetroot.” It was a happy inspiration that prompted Madame Sand to fill in the blank, in a way all her own, and her task as we have seen was completed, revolutions notwithstanding. She owns to having then felt the attraction experienced in all time by those hard hit by public calamities, ”to throw themselves back on pastoral dreams, all the more nave and childlike for the brutality and darkness triumphant in the world of activity.” Tired of ”turning round and round in a false circle of argument, of accusing the governing minority, but only to be forced to acknowledge after all that they were put there by the choice of the majority,” she wished to forget it all: and her poetic temperament which unfitted her for success in politics a.s.sisted her in finding consolation in nature.

Moreover a district like Le Berry, singularly untouched by corruptions of the civilization, and preserving intact many old and interesting characteristics, was a field in which she might draw from reality many an attractive picture. She was as much rallied by town critics about her shepherdesses as though she had invented them. And yet she saw them every day, and they may be seen still by any wanderer in those lanes, and at every turn, Fanchons, Maries, Nanons, as she described them, tending their flock of from five to a dozen sheep, or a few geese, a goat and a donkey, all day long between the tall hedgerows, or on the common, spinning the while, or possibly dreaming. A certain refinement of cast distinguishes the type. Eugene Delacroix, in a letter describing a village festival at Nohant, remarks that if positive beauty is rare among the natives, ugliness is a thing unknown. A gentle, pa.s.sive cast of countenance prevails among the women: ”They are all St. Annes,” as the artist expresses it. The inevitable changes brought about by steam-communication, which have as yet only begun to efface the local habits and peculiarities, must shortly complete their work. George Sand's pastoral novels will then have additional value, as graphic studies of a state of things that has pa.s.sed away.

It does not appear that the merit of these stories was so quickly recognized as that of _Indiana_ and _Valentine_. The author might abstract herself awhile from pa.s.sing events and write idylls, but the public had probably not yet settled down into the proper state of mind for fully enjoying them. Moreover Madame Sand's antagonists in politics and social science, as though under the impression that she could not write except to advance some theory of which they disapproved, pre-supposed in these stories a set purpose of exalting the excellence of rustic as compared with polite life--of exaggerating the virtues of the poor, to throw into relief the vices of the rich. The romances themselves do not bear out such a supposition. In them the author chooses exactly the same virtues to exalt, the same vices to condemn, as in her novels of refined society. She shows us intolerance, selfishness, and tyranny of custom marring or endangering individual happiness among the working-cla.s.ses, as with their superiors. There are Philistines in her thatched cottages, as well as in her marble halls. Germain, in _La Mare au Diable_, has some difficulty to discover for himself, as well as to convince his family and neighbors, that in espousing the penniless Marie he is not marrying beneath him in every sense. Francois le Champi is a pariah, an outcast in the estimation of the rustic world. Fanchon Fadet, by her disregard of appearances and village etiquette, scandalizes the conservative minds of farmers and millers very much as Aurore Dupin scandalized the leaders of society at La Chatre. Most prominence is given to the more pleasing characters, but the existence of brutality and cupidity among the peasant cla.s.ses is nowhere kept out of sight. Her long practical acquaintance with these cla.s.ses indeed was fatal to illusions on the subject. The average son of the soil was as far removed as any other living creature from her ideal of humanity, and at the very time when she penned _La Pet.i.te Fadette_ she was experiencing how far the ignorance, ill-will, and stupidity of her poorer neighbors could go.

Thus she writes from Nohant to Barbes at Vincennes, November 1848: ”Since May, I have shut myself up in prison in my retreat, where, though without the hards.h.i.+ps of yours, I have more to suffer than you from sadness and dejection, ... and am less in safety.” Threatened by the violence and hatred of the people, she had painfully realized that she and her party had their most obstinate enemies among those whom they wished and worked to save and defend.

Her profound discouragement finds expression in many of her letters from 1849 to 1852. The more sanguine hopes of Mazzini and other of her correspondents she desires, but no longer expects, to see fulfilled. She compares the moral state of France to the Russian retreat; the soldiers in the great army of progress seized with vertigo, and seeking death in fighting with each other.

To her son, who was in Paris at the time of the disturbances in May, 1849, she writes:--

Come back, I implore you. I have only you in the world, and your death would be mine. I can still be of some small use to the cause of truth, but if I were to lose you it would be all over with me. I have not got the stoicism of Barbes and Mazzini. It is true they are men, and they have no children. Besides, in my opinion it is not in fight, not by civil war, that we shall win the cause of humanity in France. We have got universal suffrage. The worse for us if we do not know how to avail ourselves of it, for that alone can lastingly emanc.i.p.ate us, and the only thing that would give us the right to take up arms would be an attempt on their part to take away our right to vote.

During the two years preceding the _coup d'etat_ of December, 1851, life at Nohant had resumed its wonted cheerfulness of aspect. Madame Sand was used to surround herself with young people and artistic people; but now, amid their light-heartedness, she had for a period to battle with an extreme inward sadness, confirmed by the fresh evidence brought by these years of the demoralization in all ranks of opinion. ”Your head is not very lucid when your heart is so deeply wounded,” she had remarked already, after the disasters of 1848, ”and how can one help suffering mortally from the spectacle of civil war and the slaughter among the people?”

To that was now added a loss of faith in the virtues of her own party, as well as of the ma.s.ses. It is no wonder if she fell out of love for awhile with the ideals of romance, with her own art of fiction, and the types of heroism that were her favorite creations. But if the shadow of a morbid pessimism crept over her mind, she could view it now as a spiritual malady which she had yet the will and the strength to live down; as years before she had surmounted a similar phase of feeling induced by personal sorrow.

Already, in 1847, she had begun to write her _Memoirs_, and reverting to them now, she found there work that suited her mood, as dealing with the past, more agreeable to contemplate just then than the present or the future.

However, in September, 1850, we find her writing to Mazzini,--after dwelling on the present shortcomings of the people, and the mixture of pity and indignation with which they inspired her: ”I turn back to fiction and produce, in art, popular types such as I see no longer; but as they ought to be and might be.” She alludes to a play on which she was engaged, and continues: ”The dramatic form, being new to me, has revived me a little of late; it is the only kind of work into which I have been able to throw myself for a year.”

The events of December, 1851, surprised her during a brief visit to Paris. Her hopes for her country had sunk so low, that she owns herself at the moment not to have regarded the _coup d'etat_ as likely to prove more disastrous to the cause of progress than any other of the violent ends which threatened the existing political situation. She left the capital in the midst of the cannonade, and with her family around her at Nohant awaited the issue of the new dictators.h.i.+p.

The wholesale arrests that followed immediately, and filled the country with stupefaction, made havoc on all sides of her. Among the victims were comrades of her childhood, numbers of her friends and acquaintance and their relatives--as well in Berry as in the capital--many arrested solely on suspicion of hostility to the President's views, yet none the less exposed to chances of death, or captivity, or exile.

The crisis drove Madame Sand once more to quit the privacy of her country life, but this time in the capacity of intercessor with the conqueror for his victims. She came up to Paris, and on January 20, 1852, addressed a letter to the President, imploring his clemency for the accused generally in an admirably eloquent appeal to his sentiments as well of justice as of generosity. The plea she so forcibly urged, that according to his own professions mere opinion was not to be prosecuted as a crime, whereas the so-called ”preventive measures” had involved in one common ruin with his active opponents those who had been mere pa.s.sive spectators of late events, was, of course, unanswerable.

The future Emperor granted her two audiences within a week at the Elysee, in answer to her request, and he succeeded on the first occasion in convincing her that the acts of iniquity and intimidation perpetrated as by his authority were as completely in defiance of his public intentions as of his private principles. As a personal favor to herself, he readily offered her the release of any of the political prisoners that she choose to name, and promised that a general amnesty should speedily follow. She left him, rea.s.sured to some extent as to the fate in store for her country. The second interview she had solicited in order to plead the cause of one of her personal friends, condemned to transportation. The mission was a delicate one, for her client would engage himself to nothing for the future, and Madame Sand, in pet.i.tioning for his release, saw no better course open to her than as expressed by herself, frankly to denounce him to the President as his ”incorrigible personal enemy.” Upon this the President granted her the prisoner's full pardon at once. Madame Sand was naturally touched by this ready response of the generous impulse to which she had trusted. To those who cast doubts on the sincerity of any good sentiment in such a quarter, she very properly replied that it was not for her to be the first to discredit the generosity she had so successfully appealed to.