Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

wants vigour and originality. Paul ing a country walk one evening, when of money his unknown father has her country, to live with Watelet. transmitted to him. George Sand The world cursed them; then, as they makes every woman in the book fall were poor and humble, it forgot them. in love with the Champi; but he re- Forty years afterwards there were pulses all, save one, and that one never discovered, in the neighbourhood of dreams of loving him otherwise than Paris, in a little house called Moulin

de Musset is a careful and a polished writer, and whatever he executes conveys the idea of his having done his best; but his best is by no means firstrate, and he labours under the great disadvantage of having a younger brother a far cleverer fellow than him self. Nevertheless, he is not to be spoken of disrespectfully. Slight as most of his productions are, they are often graceful, and sometimes witty. One of his recent bluettes, Fleuranges, although a thrice-told tale, is distinguished by its charming vivacity and lightness.

We turn to François le Champi, by George Sand. We need hardly say that Madame Dudevant is anything but a favourite of ours. Whilst admitting her genius and great literary talent, we deplore the evil application of such rare powers, the perversion of intellect so high to purposes so mischievous. And we cannot agree with M. de Lomenie, who, in his sketch of her life, asserts the perni cious influence of her books to be greatly exaggerated, maintaining that "the catastrophe of almost all of them contains a sort of morality of misfor tune which, to a certain extent, replaces any other." This is a specious, but a very hollow argument. How many of those who read George Sand's books have ability or inclination to strike this nice balance between virtue and vice, and do not rather yield themselves captives to the seductive eloquence with which the poetess depicts and palliates the im morality of her characters! Her earlier works gave her a fair claim to the title of the Muse of Adultery, which some uncivil critic conferred on her. The personages were invariably husband, wife, and lover, and the former was by no means the best treated of the three. After a while she deviated from this formula--employed other types, and produced occasionally books of a less objection able character; but, upon the whole they are ill to choose amongst. In the one before us there is no great harm, but neither is there much to admire. As a literary production, it is below the average of its predecesIt is a story of peasant life in western France. George Sand is tak

sors.

her companion accuses her of making her rustics speak the language of cities. She admits the charge, but urges, in extenuation, that if she makes the dweller in the fields speak as he really speaks, she must subjoin a translation for the civilized reader. Her friend still insists on the possibility of elevating the peasant dialect, without depriving it of its simplicity; of writing a book in language that a peasant might employ, and which a Parisian would understand without a single explanatory note. To professors and amateurs of literary art, the discussion is of interest. Madame Sand agrees to attempt the task; and takes for her subject a tale she has heard related the previous evening, at a neighbouring farm-house. She calls it François le Champi, but her critic cavils at the very title. Champi, he says, is not French. George Sand quotes Montaigne, to prove the contrary, although the dictionary declares the word out of date. A champi is a foundling, or child abandoned in the fields, the derivation being from champ. And having thus justified her hero's cognomen, she at once introduces him, at the tender age of six years, boarded by the parish with Zabella, an old woman who dwells in a hovel, and lives on the produce of a few goats and fowls that find subsistence on the common. Madeleine Blanchet, the pretty and very young wife of the miller of Cornouer, takes compassion on the poor infant, and finds means to supply him, unknown to her brutal husband and cross mother-in-law, with food and raiment. The child grows into a comely lad, gentle, intelligent, and right-hearted, and devotedly attached to Madeleine. He enters the service of the miller, a rough dissipated fellow, given up to the fascinations of a loose widow, Madame Sévère, a sort of rural Delilah, who tries to seduce the handsome Champi, and, failing of success, instils jealousy into the ear of the miller, who drives François from his house. The young man finds occupation in a distant village, and returns to the mill of Cornouer only when its master is dead and Madeleine on a bed of sickness, to rescue his benefactress from grasping creditors, by means of a sum

as a mother. At last one of the fair ones who would fain have gained his heart, generously reveals to him, what he himself has difficulty in believing, that he is in love with Madeleine Blanchet; and, further, compassionating his timidity, undertakes to break the ice to the pretty widow. It requires a talent like that of George Sand to give an air of probability to all this. There are at most but a dozen years' difference between Madeleine and the Champi, but the reader has been so much accustomed to look upon them in the light of mother and son, that he is some what startled on finding the boy of nineteen enamoured of the woman of thitty. The love-passages, however, are managed with Madame Sand's usual skill. As a picture of peasant life, the book yields internal evidence of fidelity. The granddaughter of the farmer-general of Berri has called up the memories of her youthful days, passed in happy liberty upon the sunny banks of Indre, and of the years of connubial discontent that went heavily by in her husband's Aquitanian castle, when country rides and the study of Nature's book were her chief resources. It was from this castle of Nohant that the Baroness Dudevant fled, now nearly twenty years ago, to commence the exceptional existence she since has led. We may venture to take a page from her Lettres dun Voyageur-a page replete with that peculiar fascination which renders her pen so powerful for good or evil.

"It grieves me not to grow old, it would grieve me much to grow old alone; but I have not yet met the being with whom I would fain have lived and died; or, if I have met him, I have not known how to keep him. Hearken to a tale, and weep. There was a good artist, called Watelet, who engraved in aquafortis better than any man of his time. He loved Margaret Lecomte, and taught her to engrave as well as himself. She left her husband, her wealth, and

Joli, an old man who engraved in
aquafortis, with an old woman whom
he called his Meunière, who also
engraved at the same table. The
last plate they executed represented
Moulin - Joli, Margaret's house, with
this device, - Cur valle permutem
Sabina divitias operosiores! It hangs
in my room, above a portrait whose
original no one here has seen. Dur-
ing one year, he who gave me that
portrait seated himself every night
with me at a little table, and lived on
the same labour as myself. At day-
break we consulted each other on our
work, and we supped at the same
table, talking of art, of sentiment, and
of the future. The future has broken
its word to us.
Pray for me, O Mar-
garet Lecomte!"

It is no secret that Madame Dudevant's Watelet was Jules Sandeau, a French novelist of some ability, whose name still makes frequent apparitions in the windows of circulating libraries, and at the foot of newspaper feuilletons. Let us see what M. de Lomenie says of this period of her life, and of her first appearance in the lists of literature, in his brief but amusing memoir of this remarkable woman.

"Some time after the July revolution, there appeared a book entitled, Rose et Blanche, or the Actress and the Nun. This book, which at first passed unnoticed, fell by chance into a publisher's hands; he read it, and, struck by the richness of certain descriptive passages and by the novelty of the situations, he inquired the author's address. He was referred to a humble lodging-house, and, upon applying there, was conducted to a small attic. There he saw a young man writing at a little table, and a young woman painting flowers by his side. These were Watelet and Margaret Lecomte. The publisher spoke of the book, and it appeared that Margaret, who could write books as well as Watelet, and even better, had written a good part, and the best part, of this one; only, as books sold badly, or not at all, she combined with her

literary occupations the more lucrative with whom we have not the honour of whole attitude there was a striking character of simplicity, nobility, and calm. In the ample temples and rich development of of brow, Gall Gall would have discerned genius; in the frankness of her glance, in the outline of her countenance, and in the features, correct but worn, Lavater would have read, it seems to me, past suffering, a time-present somewhat barren, an extreme propensity to enthusiasm, and consequently to discouragement. Lavater might have read many other

labour of a colourist. Encouraged by the publisher's approval, she took from a drawer a manuscript written entirely by herself; the publisher examined it, bought it, doubtless very cheap, and might have paid a much higher price, without making a bad speculation, for it was the manuscript of Indiana. Soon after that, Margaret Lecomte left Watelet, took half his name, called herself George Sand, and of that half name has made herself one which shines to-day amongst the greatest and most glorious."

Somebody has hazarded the sweep ing assertion that the lover is the King of George Sand's novels. George Sand herself is the queen of the class of femmes incomprises, the victim of a mariage de convenance. The death of her gra grandmother left her, at the very moment she quitted the convent where she had been educated, alone and almost friendless. Ignorant of the world, she allowed herself to be married to a rough old soldier, who led a prosaic existence in a lonely country-house, had no notion of romance, sentiment, or reverie, and made little allowance for them in others. The days that ought to rank amongst the brightest memories of a woman's heart, the early years of marriage, were a blank, or worse, to Aurora Dudevant, and the bitterness thus amassed not unfrequently breaks forth in her writings. It has been urged by her partisans, in extenuation of her conjugal faux pas that her husband was ignorant and brutal. On the other hand, the idle have invented many of the delinquencies imputed to her since her separation, just as they have told absurd stories about her fantastical habits; and have made her out a sort of literary Lola Montes, swaggering and smoking in man's attire, and brandishing pistol and horsewhip with virile energy and effect. The atmosphere of Paris is famous for its magnifying powers. Seen through it, a grain of sand becomes a mountain, an eccentricity is often distended into a vice. We lay this down as a rule, which none who know and understand the French metropolis will dispute; but we do not, at the same time, in any way take up the gloves in defence of George Sand,

us to

a personal acquaintance, and whose writings would certainly incline somewhat ready credence of her irregularities and masculine addictions. Now that she has attained the ripe age of forty-four, we may suppose her sobered down a little. Before the February revolution upset society, and drove the majority of the wealthy from Paris, we happen to know she was a welcome guest in some of the most fashionable and aristocratic drawingrooms of the Faubourg St. Germain, where she was sought and cultivated for the charm of her conversation. Since the revolution, there have been reports of her presiding, or at least assisting, at democratic orgies; but these rumours, as the newspapers say, "require confirmation." Since we have, somehow or other, got led into this long gossip about the lady, we will make another extract from the writer already quoted, who telis an amusing story of his first introduction, obtained by means of a misdelivered note, intended by the authoress of Lelia for a man who cured smoky chimneys. A resemblance of name brought the missive (a summons to a sick funnel) into the hands of the biographer, who, puzzled at first, finally resolved to take advantage of the mistake, to ascertain whether George Sand really did wear boots and spurs, and smoke Virginian in a short pipe. He expected something masculine and alarming, but in this respect was greatly disappointed.

"I saw before me a woman of short

stature, of comfortable plumpness, and of an aspect not at all Dantesque. She wore a dressing-gown, in form by no means unlike the wrapper which 1, a commonplace mortal, habitually wear; her fine hair, still perfectly black, whatever evil tongues may say, was separated on a brow broad and smooth as a mirror, and fell freely adown her cheeks, in the manner of Raphael; a silk handkerchief was fastened loosely round her throat; her eyes, to which some painters persist in imparting an exaggerated power of expression, were remarkable, on the contrary, for their melancholy softness; her voice was sweet, and not very strong; her mouth, especially, was singularly graceful; and in her

this ancient dealer in dirt-namely, that he has no deliberate intention to corrupt the morals or alarm the delicacy of his readers, for that morals and delicacy are words of whose meaning he has not the slightest conception. Paul, every Frenchman tells you, is not read in France, save by milliners' girls and shopboys, or by literary porters, who solace the leisure of their lodge by a laugh over his pages, contraband amongst gens comme il faut. No man is a prophet in his things, but he certainly could have own land; and yet we have certain discovered neither insincerity, nor reasons for believing that, even in bitterness, nor hatred, for there was not a trace of these on that sad but serene physiognomy. The Lelia of my imagination vanished before the reality; and it was simply a good, gentle, melancholy, intelligent, and handsome face that I had before my eyes.

"Continuing my examination, I remarked with pleasure that the grande désolée had not yet completely renounced human vanities; for, beneath the floating sleeves of her gown, at the junction of the wrist with the white and delicate hand, I saw the glitter of two little gold bracelets of exquisite workmanship. These feminine trinkets, which became her much, greatly reassured me touching the sombre tint, and the politico-philosophic exaltation, of certain of George Sand's recent writings. One of the hands that thus caught my attention concealed a cigarito, and concealed it badly, for a treacherous little column of smoke ascended behind the back of the prophetess."

Whether or no the interview thus described really took place, Madame Dudevant should feel obliged to her biographer for his gentle treatment and abstinence from exaggeration. On the strength of the puff of smoke and the epicene dressing-gown, many writers would have sketched her hussar fashion, and hardly have let her off the mustaches.

We are nearly at the end of our parcel, at least of such portion of it as appears worthy a few words. Here are a brace of volumes by M. de Kock, over which we are not likely long to linger. An esteemed contributor to Maga expressed, a few years ago, his and our opinion concerning

France, Paul has more readers, avowed or secret, than his countrymen admit. But at any rate, we can offer the old gentleman (for M. Kock must be waxing venerable, and his son has for some years been before the public as an author), the consolatory assurance, that in England he has numerous admirers, to judge from the thumbed condition of a set of his works, which caught our eye last summer on the shelves of a London circulating library. To these amateurs of "Kockneyisms," whether genuine cockneys, or naturalized cooks and barbers from Gaul, Taquinet le Bossu will be welcome. The hunchback, everybody knows, is a great type in France. Whois not acquainted with the glorious Mayeux, the swearing, fighting, love-making hero of a host of popular songs, anecdotes, and caricatures, and of more than one romance-especially of a four-volume one by Ricard, a deceased rival of De Kock? Well, Paul-who, we must admit, is quite original, and disdains imitation-has never meddled with the hackneyed veteran Mayeux, but now creates a hunchback of his own Taquinet is the dwarf clerk of a notary, luxuriating in a wage of fifty pounds a-year, and a hunch of the first magnitude. Pert as a magpie, mischievous and confiding, devoted to the fair sex, and especially to its taller specimens, he is a fine subject for Monsieur de Kock, who gets him into all manner of queer scrapes, some not of the most refined description. The French hunchback, we must observe, is a genius apart-quite different from high-shouldered people of other countries. Far from being susceptible on the score of his dorsal

protuberance, he views it in the light of an excellent joke, a benefaction of nature, placed upon his spine for the diversion of himself and his fellowmen. The words bosse and bossu (hunch and hunchback) have various idiomatic and proverbial applications in France. To laugh like a bossu implies the ne plus ultra of risibility: se donner une bosse-literally, to give one's self a hunch-is synonymous with sharing in a jovial repast where much is eaten and more drunk. An excellent caricature in the Charivari, some years ago, represented a group of half-starved soldiers sitting round a fire of sticks at the foot of Atlas, and picking a dromedary's scull-" Pas moyen de se donner une bosse!" exclaims one of the dissatisfied conscripts. On twelve hundred francs

nauseous

fame by his Scènes de la Vie de Pro-
vince, by his Peau de Chagrin his Père
Goriot and other striking and popular
works. The hour of his decline then
struck, and he has since been rolling
down the hill at a faster rate than he
ascended it. His affectation of ori-
ginality is wearisome and
in the extreme.
nurseryman we once knew, who,
despairing of equalling the splendour
of a neighbour's flowers, applied
himself to the production of all man-
ner of floral monstrosities, mistaking
distortion for beauty, and eccen-
tricity for grace. He strains for new
conceptions and ideas till he writes
nonsense, or something very little
better. And his mania for introdu-
cing the same personages in twenty
different books, renders it necessary

He reminds us of a

per annum, poor Taquinet often makes to read all in order to understand the same complaint; and, in hopes of one. The question becomes, whether bettering his fortune, wanders into it is worth while going through so Germany on a matrimonial venture, there to be jilted by Fraülein Carottsmann, for a strolling player with one coat and three sets of buttons, who styles himself Marquis, because he has been occasionally hissed in the line of characters designated in France by that aristocratic denomination. Then there is a general of Napoleon's army who cannot write his name; anda buxom sutler and a handsome aide-decamp, sundry grisettes, and the other dramatis personæ habitually to be met with in the pages of Paul-the whole set forth in indifferent French, and garnished with buffoonery and impropriety, after the usual fashion of this zany of Parisian novelists.

A

much to obtain so little. Our reply is
a decided negative. If the system,
however, be annoying to the reader,
for the author it has its advantages.
It is, in fact, a new species of puffery,
of considerable ingenuity. Backwards
and forwards, M. de Balzac refers his
public; his books are a system of
mutual accommodation and advertise-
ment. Thus, in the Député &c.,
apropos of a lawsuit, we find in
brackets and in large capitals," See
UNE TENEBREUSE AFFAIRE."
little further on, an allusion being
made to the town of Provins, we are
requested to "See PIERRETTE."
Similar admonitions are of constant
recurrence in the same author's writ-
ings. The plan is really clever, and
proves Paris a step or two ahead of
London in the art of advertising. We
have not yet heard of Moses and Doud-
ney stamping on a waistcoat back an
injunction to "Try our trousers," or
embroidered on a new surtout a hint
as to the merits of a " poplin overcoat."
"Buy our bear's grease!" cries Mr.
Ross the perfumer.
Prenez
ours" chimes in M. Balzac the
author.
O Paris! Paris! romantie
and republican, political and poetical,
the queen, and humbug is the chief
jewel in thy diadem!

Is it true that M. Honoré de Balzac is married to a female millionaire, who fell in love with him through his books and his reputation? If so, let him take our advice and abjure scribbling -at least till he is in the vein to turn out something better than his recent productions-better, at least, than the first volume of the Député d' Arcis, now lying before us. What heavy, vulgar trash, to flow from the pen of a man of his abilities! After beginning his literary career with a series of worthless books, published under of all the cities of the plain thou art

various pseudonymes, and whose authorship he has since in vain endeavoured to disclaim, he rose into

mon

« AnteriorContinuar »