Mauprat | Page 6

mine, while theirs is rather the goldsmith's craft. It
must not be supposed, however, that she was a writer without very
strong views with regard to the construction of a plot and the
development of character. Her literary essays and reviews show a
knowledge of technique which could be accepted at any time as a text-
book for the critics and the criticised. She knew exactly how artistic
effects were obtained, how and why certain things were done, why
realism, so-called, could never be anything but caricature, and why
over-elaboration of small matters can never be otherwise than
disproportionate. Nothing could be more just than her saying about
Balzac that he was such a logician that he invented things more truthful
than the truth itself. No one knew better than she that the truth, as it is
commonly understood, does not exist; that it cannot be logical because
of its mystery; and that it is the knowledge of its contradictions which
shows the real expert in psychology.
Three of her stories--/La Petite Fadette/, /La Mare au Diable/, and /Les
Maitres Mosaistes/--are as neat in their workmanship as a Dutch
painting. Her brilliant powers of analysis, the intellectual atmosphere
with which she surrounds the more complex characters in her longer
romances, are entirely put aside, and we are given instead a series of
pictures and dialogues in what has been called the purely objective
style; so pure in its objectivity and detachment that it would be hard for
any one to decide from internal evidence that they were in reality her
own composition.
To those who seek for proportion and form there is, without doubt,
much that is unsymmetrical in her designs. Interesting she always is,
but to the trained eye scenes of minor importance are, strictly speaking,
too long: descriptions in musical language sometimes distract the
reader from the progress of the story. But this arose from her own joy
in writing: much as she valued proportion, she liked expressing her
mind better, not out of conceit or self-importance, but as the birds,
whom she loved so well, sing.
Good nature is what we need above all in reading George Sand. It is
there--infectious enough in her own pages, and with it the courage

which can come only from a heart at peace with itself. This is why
neither fashion nor new nor old criticism can affect the title of George
Sand among the greatest influences of the last century and the present
one. Much that she has said still seems untried and unexpected. Writers
so opposite as Ibsen and Anatole France have expanded her themes.
She is quoted unconsciously to-day by hundreds who are ignorant of
their real source of inspiration. No woman ever wrote with such force
before, and no woman since has even approached her supreme
accomplishments.
PEARL MARY-TERESA CRAIGIE.

LIFE OF GEORGE SAND
George Sand, in whose life nothing was commonplace, was born in
Paris, "in the midst of roses, to the sound of music," at a dance which
her mother had somewhat rashly attended, on the 5th of July, 1804. Her
maiden name was Armentine Lucile Aurore Dupin, and her ancestry
was of a romantic character. She was, in fact, of royal blood, being the
great-grand-daughter of the Marshal Maurice du Saxe and a Mlle.
Verriere; her grandfather was M. Dupin de Francueil, the charming
friend of Rousseau and Mme. d'Epinay; her father, Maurice Dupin, was
a gay and brilliant soldier, who married the pretty daughter of a bird-
fancier, and died early. She was a child of the people on her mother's
side, an aristocrat on her father's. In 1807 she was taken by her father,
who was on Murat's staff, into Spain, from which she returned to the
house of her grandmother, at Nohant in Berry. This old lady adopted
Aurore at the death of her father, in 1808. Of her childhood George
Sand has given a most picturesque account in her "Histoire de ma Vie."
In 1817 the girl was sent to the Convent of the English Augustinians in
Paris, where she passed through a state of religious mysticism. She
returned to Nohant in 1820, and soon threw off her pietism in the
outdoor exercises of a wholesome country life. Within a few months,
Mme. Dupin de Francueil died at a great age, and Aurore was tempted
to return to Paris. Her relatives, however, were anxious that she should
not do this, and they introduced to her the natural son of a retired

colonel, the Baron Dudevant, whom, in September, 1822, she married.
She brought him to live with her at Nohant, and she bore him two sons,
Maurice and Solange, and a daughter. She quickly perceived, as her
own intellectual nature developed, that her boorish husband was
unsuited to her, but their