The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-08-11
GEORGE SAND.

Saint Michel, muffled in her coarse
gray frock coat, or to follow her with
her friends of Berry to the PinSon res
taurant, to the smoking room, to the
museums, to the concerts, to the pit Of
the theatre on a first night, frankly
curious concerning everything which
interested the intelligent youth of
that time-the literary and political in
cidents of the assembly. the club the
street-who would recognize in this
somewhat boiSterous student the mys-
tic pupil of the English nuns. the hum
bic and gentle friend of Sister Alicia, or
again the shepherd girl of the Berry
fields, the adventurous and visionary
child of the heaths and woods? This
smart young man who takes such gay
evening promenadeS with a troop of
hail fellows under the lead of a vain
and very old young man, Henri Della
touche, chief of the literary bohemia of
that time-this vaSabond observer, this
new-fiedged romancer, is woman
very serious at heart. who has already
known mortal sadness, who has lived
much by sorrow Gf sorrow gives life,
who has suffered in all her deeper af-
fections, who has been lacerated by all
her family ties.-E. Caro- in Great
French Writer'S"
To George Sand love is a divine es-
sence. 1t contains happiness, even vir-
tue. She has represented il as superior
to social laws as well as the human
will, not only stronger than worldly
prejudices. but also more powerful than
moral principles, and, like fire, purify
ing all it consumes.
She possessed charity. that virtue of
virtues, which opens the doors of heav-
en-. Upon human SufferingS she poured
all the treasures of an ineXhaustible
tenderness. To give her whole self was
her vocation. Optimism and idealism
are but a form of her native generosity:
she loved humanity so much that she
did not even see its vices and deformi-
ties. Kindness of heart was the foun-
dation of her nature; she was kind, and
she was so naturally.
She began to write novels for the pur-
pose of earning her bread, and, without
having so intended, became one of the
greatest writer's of her times. Indolent
and passive by nature as a child, she
consumed herself in long frances; she
seemed like an animal" Those who
knew her at the epoch of Indiana"
Valentine" and all those tempestous
romances that imprisoned her contem-
poraries even to delirium, represent her
as kind, inert with rather dull. mild,
tranquil eyes and a wearied, listless
manner. She is without esprit; she
never grows animated; indeed, she
seems to be waking and sleeping. She
speaks in a monotonous voice, using
slow, calm gestures; there is something
automatic about her whole person.
George Sands genius is instructive. All
but a stranger to her own creations, she
works like somnambulist. Little mat
ters to her the noise about her; she
none the less pursues her task with
calm security, as if writing from the
dictation of some invisible master. She
g
Her intimate frinds employed an an
alagous comparison, even more express
i've in it's vulgarity. Suppose" said
one of them, that you leave one of
your spigotS open; some one enters, in
terrupts you, and you close it: once the
visitor departed, you have only to re-
open it. That is like George Sand"
She assigns her daily measure. and full
fills it without erasing word or find
ing it necessary to re-read her work.
Her novel is finished at 1 o'clock in the
morning, as runs the legend, and she
begins another in the same breath.
can almost be said to be
a purely mechanical function with her !
-Pellissier.
After having ''sown her wild oats" So |
to speak; after occupying attention |
with the story of her marriage and the |
scandal of her love affairs, George Sand |
herself begins to see that objective, i'm |
and disinterested observation, |
which is the very definition of the nov
Ell, also constitutes its value. With the |
facility for going to extremes charac- |
teristic of women, and with their ten |
dency to obey the masculine influences |
that sway them for the time being, |
George Sand. guided at first by Lamen- |
nails, and afterward by Pierre Leroux, |
passes at bound from the subjective |
Or lyric to the social. and even the So |
cialist novel; with the result that the
'Peche de NJ. Antoine" or the "Compag- |
non du Tour de France" if they be now
els at all, are assuredly not good now
els. Are those of Alexandra Dumas,
Frederic Soulie and Eugene Sue any
better? Their vulgarity admitted they /
are at least better composed, more in