AURORE DUDEVANT: _Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran_, December, 1830. ‘Letters of George Sand,’ translated by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort. London: Ward & Downey, 1886.
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[Sidenote: Her life in Paris.]
The beginning of her life in Paris was one of considerable poverty and privation. She lived _au cinquième_ in a lodging which cost her a yearly rent of £12; she had no servant, and got in her food from an eating-house close by for the sum of two francs a day. Her washing and needlework she did herself. Notwithstanding this rigid economy, it was impossible to keep within the limits of her husband’s allowance of £120 a year, especially as far as her dress was concerned. After some hesitation, therefore, she took the resolution, which caused so much scandal then and afterwards, of adopting male attire.
[Sidenote: Adoption of male attire.]
“My thin boots wore out in a few days,” she tells us in the autobiography. “I forgot to hold up my dress, and covered my petticoats with mud. My bonnets were spoilt one after another by the rain. I generally returned from the expeditions I took, dirty, weary, and cold. Whereas my young men acquaintances--some of whom had been the companions of my childhood in Berri--had none of these inconveniences to submit to. I therefore had a long gray cloth coat made, with a waistcoat and trousers to match. When the costume was completed by a gray felt hat and a loose woollen cravat, no one could have guessed that I was not a young student in my first year. My boots were my particular delight. I should like to have gone to bed with them. On their little iron heels I wandered from one end of Paris to the other; no one took any notice of me, or suspected my disguise.”
---- ----: ‘George Sand.’ _Temple Bar_, April, 1885.
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[Sidenote: Literature at first a resource.]
My husband has set down my private expenses at 3,000 francs. You know that that is little for me, who like to give and cannot bear to receive. I therefore only purpose increasing my income from some other source. I have no ambition to be known, and shall not be. I shall not attract either the envy or the hatred of any one. Most writers, I know, lead lives of anguish and struggle; but those whose sole ambition is to earn a livelihood live in peaceable obscurity. It would ... be very odd if a paltry talent like mine could not withhold itself from the public gaze.
AURORE DUDEVANT: _Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran_, February, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’
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[Sidenote: But soon a passion.]
I am more than ever intent upon following a literary career. In spite of the repugnance which I sometimes experience, despite the days of idleness and fatigue which cause me to break off my work, in spite of the life, more than quiet, which I lead here, I feel that henceforth my existence has an aim. I have a purpose in view, a task before me, and, if I may use the word, a _passion_. For the profession of writing is nothing else but a violent, indestructible passion. When it has once entered people’s heads it never leaves them.
AURORE DUDEVANT: _Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran_, March, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’
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[Sidenote: Bohemian experiences.]
[Sidenote: Balzac’s oddities.]
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.
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[Sidenote: “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.’
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[Sidenote: 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_.
Shortly before the departure of Madame Dudevant for Nohant, where she was about to spend three months, it was arranged between herself and Sandeau that they should each contribute a portion of a novel, whose title was to be ‘Indiana.’
On her return to Paris our heroine called upon Sandeau in order to submit to him what she had done, and found that he had not yet written a single line of his allotted share of the work.
He began to read the work of his collaborator, but had not proceeded beyond a few lines when he gave vent to enthusiastic expressions.
“You have written a masterpiece!”
“So much the better; let us go off at once to the publisher’s.”
“Wait a moment; you wrote that work alone--you alone must sign it.”
“Never! we will continue to sign _Jules Sand_.”
“Not at all,” replied Sandeau; “I am too honest to rob you of your glory. My conscience would never fail to reproach me with such an action.”
The young man was firm in his decision; and, in spite of the protests of M. de Latouche, declined to alter it.
At last an idea struck the director of the _Figaro_. “You wrote ‘Rose et Blanche,’ and gave the name of its author as _Jules Sand_; Sand is, therefore, your common property. Madame needs only to select another Christian name. Now, madame, to-day is St. George’s Day. Call yourself _George Sand_, and the difficulty is solved.” Madame Dudevant assented, and thus assumed a name upon which her genius conferred more imperishable titles of nobility than had been bestowed upon her either by birth or marriage.
RAPHAËL LEDOS DE BEAUFORT: _Biographical Sketch_, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’
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[Sidenote: Another account.]
‘Rose et Blanche,’ though little noticed by the public, brought a publisher to the door, one Ernest Dupuy, with an order for another novel by the same authors. ‘Indiana’ was ready-written, and came in response to the demand. But as Sandeau had had no hand whatever in this composition, the signature had of course to be varied. The publisher wishing to connect the new novel with its predecessor, it was decided to alter the prefix only. She fixed on George, as representative of Berri, the land of husbandmen; and George Sand thus became the pseudonym of the author of ‘Indiana,’ a pseudonym whose origin imaginative critics have sought far afield.... Its assumption was to inaugurate a new era in her life.