In later years, I came to believe that this inclination toward nurturing is one of the main reasons that the female is the superior sex. I saw quite clearly that if our humanistic abilities were given the worth they deserved, the world would be a far better place. But women are not naturally self-promoting; most of us quietly put ourselves last. It seems it is our nature to compromise and not make a fuss. Some think these qualities are instinctive and, therefore, inescapable. I certainly always recognized that I was as much a victim of my heart and my womb as any other female. And in spite of persistent misperceptions of me regarding my views on feminism, I never advocated for women choosing work over family, never advocated for taking women away from their homes and their children.
Did I love being an artist? Yes. But I worked because I had to, and not for one instant did I ever underestimate the importance of what a mother can do for her children. Or fail to do.
—
FOR SIX WEEKS THAT winter when I was pregnant, I was ordered to bed by Deschartres, after an episode of spotting early in my pregnancy, the news of which I had shared with him. I was only mildly concerned and was seeking reassurance from him in his role of village doctor, but he became so alarmed, I did as he said, even though I did not really believe it necessary.
I spent that time in drowsy contemplation of what life as a mother would be, sewing various things for the layette. And then, as fate would have it, I began practicing mothering skills with my favorite species.
It was an unusually cold winter that year. The snow was high and did not melt, and birds were dying of hunger. They were so weak and desperate, they put aside all fear of humans and allowed themselves to be taken in hand. Deschartres first brought in a blue-hooded chaffinch so weak he appeared dead. I believed he brought him to me so that we might mourn together, despite the fact that Deschartres would never admit to any sentimental or anthropomorphic feelings. But we soon noticed a bit of movement, a flicker of the bird’s eyelid, a jerking in the legs. I took him gently under the covers with me to warm him, laid him on my breast so that he might feel my heartbeat, and hoped that something about that universal rhythm could comfort him. He soon revived, and we gave him some crumbs and water. Then he hopped across the bedcovers, took off for a brief tour of the room, and came back to me to rest.
In a matter of hours, the bird’s movements were confident, then a bit anxious, for he wanted back outside. And so we raised the window to let him go.
After that, there was nothing for it but that I must care for all the birds in distress that anyone came across. I asked for a green coverlet that might seem like grass to the birds, and had boughs of evergreen wrapped around the bed’s four posters. The sound of birdsong is always sweet, but when, by your ministrations, you believe you have saved a free and glorious creature from an early death, your pleasure knows no bounds.
Those birds served another purpose, too, which was to give Casimir and me our first experience as caretakers together. Casimir would come in from the outdoors with his cheeks ruddy with cold, his nose hairs stiff and frosted white. He would remove his gloves and rub his hands together, bringing back warmth and feeling, before he ventured to gently touch our charges. “And how are our children today?” he would ask.
“See for yourself,” I would tell him, pointing to the coverlet, where there might be up to six birds nestled, these in addition to the several who had warmed up enough to investigate the room. Those perched on the canopy of the bed, on the tops of the portraits hung on the walls, and on the windowsills; and they hopped across the floor and the rugs, pecking at bits of food we put out in little saucers for them. It seemed an absurdity, a dream, this impromptu bird sanctuary, but to my delight it was altogether real.
“They are happy, are they not?” Casimir would ask, in a schoolboy’s shy yet prideful way, and I would agree that they were happy indeed.
I knew that Casimir was speaking not only of the birds, for despite our difficulties in bed, we were content in those days. Part of the reason was that I thought I had uncovered the secret to a successful marriage.
Many new brides carry with them a certain smugness. They look with pity upon the bitter or strained relationships of the long-married, vowing that they will never be in that position. They believe themselves to be in possession of a superior way of thinking and of behaving.
Here is proof.
I received at that time a letter from a friend I had met at the convent who was experiencing a great deal of anguish in her marriage. She confided in me quite trustingly and openly and asked me what I thought she should do. This was the advice I gave her:
It is essential, I believe, that one of the two, in marrying, should practice self-abnegation, should renounce not only his will but even his opinion, should firmly strive to see through the other’s eyes, to like what he likes, etc. The only question is if it’s up to the man or the woman to remake himself thus on the model of the other, and since all power is on the side of the beard, and since, besides, men are incapable of such a degree of attachment, it is necessarily up to us to bend in obedience.
I often reread the copy I kept of that letter, at first flattering myself that I had dispensed such good advice but later astonished at my naïveté, and regretful of passing on advice that, if held to, would lead to the death of a soul. Those words were very far away from a time that came in my later years, when I wrote a letter to a young woman telling her that love was “a bad thing, or at least a dangerous trial.” I went on to say, “Maternity procures ineffable delights; but, either through love or marriage, we must pay such a price for it that I would never advise anybody to incur the cost.”
Strange are the vicissitudes of a normal life. Strange and unpredictable.
—
TOWARD THE END OF JUNE, it was time to travel to Paris, where my child would be born. It was also time for Deschartres’s lease at Nohant to come to an end. I had spoken privately with Casimir, urging him to allow Deschartres to live out his remaining years with us. I was worried about him. While he excelled in overseeing Nohant, I knew that he often fumbled in other endeavors. More than one person had told the old tutor that he must never attempt to have a business of his own, for he would soon be ruined. In Deschartres’s practice as a doctor, he would never take payment and, in fact, become enraged by those who attempted to pay him. One patient who tried to leave a rabbit at the doctor’s doorstep was met with loud remonstrations and a shaking fist and had the rabbit flung back in his face.
Casimir offered no resistance to my request to have Deschartres stay with us. But Deschartres himself would have no part of it. “Your husband has been kind not to interfere with my long-standing authority here, though you and I both know he is eager to take up his rightful place. But I could not make the same promise to him. For forty years I have been lord and master at Nohant. You women never got in my way, and your father always gave me total freedom. If I stay here now, I would be constantly critical and trying to be involved in matters I am no longer part of. No, it is time for me to set off on my own. You know that I have desired this for a long time.”
Deschartres’s last day at Nohant would be June 24, 1823. In advance of that time, Casimir and I left Nohant for Paris. But first we spent a few days at the country estate of James and Angèle du Plessis, where I was always glad to stay: the house was full of visitors and boarders. My choice for company was always children, for their honesty and high spirits and for the way they entered into a game for the sake of the game alone—they were not interested in impressing anyone, or holding forth, or enlisting someone to come over to their point of view. Whereas adults often became wearying to me, children were endlessly interesting, enlivening, and quick to forgive. I could feel that they cared for me, too; we were kindred spirits in our need for heedless gaiety.
Casimir was surprised by the joy they never failed to inspire in me; he had seen, by now, that I had difficulty with times of despair, the cause for which I could not usually articulate. It would not have
mattered if I could have told him the reason; his response to melancholy in me was to get as far away from it as he could. But it was an unalterable part of me, a darkness that came sometimes and made me pine, as if for a lover, for the blankness of death.
I would eventually see that certain kinds of melancholia are natural for many artists, and not only melancholia but strange kinds of behavior that are difficult for anyone who is not an artist to understand, let alone embrace.
July 1833
PARIS
When Alfred de Musset and I went on vacation, I left the children with my maid and was given a promise from Gustave Planche that he would stop in and check on them. I did not see Planche the way I used to, but our friendship had been too deep for me to deny us altogether. I was touched by his offer to help me, for I knew he still did not approve of Musset.
Alfred and I took the riverboat down the Seine to Fontainebleau and settled ourselves into a charming country inn. We were eager to get out and explore: Alfred had been there before and wanted to show me a certain place where echoes reverberated off the canyon walls. And so after an early dinner, we hired a driver to take us into the woods, saying that we would walk back.
At dusk, Alfred found the place he was looking for and bade me to sit at the edge of one cliff while he traveled to the top of the one opposite it. The light had not yet left the sky, and there would be a full moon; nonetheless, Alfred bent toward me solicitously to ask, “Will you be all right here alone?”
I laughed. “Do you mean, will I be frightened?”
He nodded.
“Of course not. I have never been afraid of the dark!”
Not so for him, apparently, for soon after he left me, I heard a bone-chilling cry. I leapt up and began moving down the hill, half running, half falling, regretting the fact that I had not worn pants. Thorns on the bushes I passed tangled in my dress, but I had not time to stop and release the fabric, and so I let it tear: I feared for what had happened to Alfred.
I found him huddled on the ground, shaking, crying, nearly delirious. I approached him slowly, put my hand on his shoulder, and spoke softly: “Alfred?”
He spun around and grasped my knees so tightly he nearly knocked me off my feet.
“Alfred! What is it?”
He stopped sobbing and looked up into my face. “I saw…Oh, George, I saw a horrible sight. Some being appeared and assaulted me with his speech; he said terrible things. And when he turned to look directly at me, I saw that it was myself I was seeing—my own face on that terrible specter!”
I sat beside him as he began to weep again. He apologized, and I murmured assurances and rubbed his back until he calmed down, and then we walked together back to the inn.
I felt for him nothing but compassion, a loving pity. I wanted only to go back to our room, where I would care for him further. And that is exactly what I did. I soothed him, held him to my breast and stroked his beautiful hair, telling him over and over that it was all right, it was over, everything would be fine, we were together. At last, he looked up at me and the boy in his face disappeared. He took me nearly savagely into his arms.
In the morning, he awakened before me, and when I sat up in bed, he presented me with a drawing he had done of last night’s terror, him wide-eyed and quaking in my arms, me with my dress shredded, my face full of its own kind of alarm. He had meant it to be amusing, but I did not want to revisit in any form something that had hurt him so; nor did I want him to belittle the tender ministrations I had offered him, those things that had let him recover from whatever had upset him. What had happened to him was real. For him to make a joke of it was to deny a part of himself, and I did not want him to think he had to hide any part of himself from me. I told him so.
“Never mind all that,” he said. “Get dressed; we will have a hearty breakfast and hike the day away. Would you like that?”
I hesitated. He came over and kissed me, and every concern I might have had about his breakdown disappeared. I transformed it into an event that served only to demonstrate his great sensitivity and imagination. I did not know then, as I would come to find out later, that he suffered from a particular kind of mental disorder that would bring great distress to us both.
—
June 30, 1823
HÔTEL DE FLORENCE
PARIS
When Maurice was born, early in the morning on June 30, I was rendered not only speechless but incapable of any movement for hours, save to hold him in my arms and regard him. I watched every flicker of his eyelids, every movement of his arms and legs, the rise and fall of an abdomen I found heartbreakingly fragile-looking, with its one blue vein running close to the surface. His hair was black and plentiful, silky and fine and curly, like mine. Casimir could claim as much responsibility as he liked; in my mind, the child who lay staring up at me, the cosmos in his eyes, belonged solely to me.
There was one other who seemed as besotted as I by the tiny individual who lay with his hands resting on his belly like a satisfied diner, his fingernails tiny chips of pearlescence. That person was not his father, whose admiration for his child seemed but illdisguised admiration of himself. No, the one who regarded the baby with a tenderness equal to mine was Deschartres.
Here came the old curmudgeon, striding regally through the streets of Paris in some outdated frock coat he had had stored away for who knew how many years, the ill-cut, bright blue garment adorned with brass buttons. He cared nothing for the disapproving or haughty looks he encountered on the streets of Paris; his focus was on one thing: finding his way to his beloved Maurice’s namesake.
When Deschartres arrived at my bedside, he unwrapped the blanket in which Maurice was swaddled and inspected with grim solemnity every part of him. Then, satisfied, he wrapped him up again and held him for a long time. He did not kiss him, except soul to soul. He did not offer me every good wish, except by quick glance. He did not speak of my father, except to take one last lingering look into the face of this new Maurice; and I believed his brow was wrinkled with the weight of all that he was remembering, and all that he was hoping for. The tears that stood in my eyes attested to the same feelings.
In the first months after I gave birth, Deschartres had a great deal of contact with baby Maurice and spoiled him as much as I would permit. And since I, too, spoiled the child, I permitted a great deal of it from others. I did not believe one so young could really be spoiled, anyway; I felt that all the attentions paid Maurice now would only be to his advantage later. And if his character as the man he became is any example, I was correct in my thinking.
—
IN AUGUST, SEEKING RELIEF from the heat, Casimir, Maurice, and I went to stay with James and Angèle du Plessis. Then, in October, we went on to Nohant. The stillness there, in comparison to Le Plessis—which, at one point, had accommodated forty guests—was astonishing. I did not want such extreme numbers of people about me at all times, but I did wish for occasional visits from two or three friends who might want to talk about more than hunting and local politics, or how best to run Nohant, or how one’s bunions ached.
Almost every evening after dinner, Hippolyte (who, with his sickly wife, was staying with us) and Casimir would have conversations that never rose to a level above this. They would share snippets of gossip in the way of old women at the market, then tell crass barroom jokes that no one but they found amusing. They would often drink themselves into sickness and pronounce it a perfect evening before they fell into bed. When I compared these evenings with the noble and enlightening ones I’d witnessed when my grandmother was alive, my heart ached. I felt full of shame to have let slip her dignified traditions; I saw clearly, now, the value in such things.
Oftentimes, on those nights that degenerated in such a fashion, I would slip away to go into the little room on the ground floor that I had created for myself for times when I wanted to be alone. It was there that I had my books and my herbals, my butterflies and my small collection of rocks. There was no bed, but I hung a hammock i
n which I could rest and dream.
In that little room, on the drop leaf of a little chiffonier that had belonged to my grandmother, I began writing again, too. What I produced was ill-formed and undisciplined and usually quite sentimental. But it showed me that writing could lift me out of my surroundings entirely and into a rarefied place of peace, one that was not subject to the weather in another’s soul.
On the whole, things were going very badly between Casimir and me. One rainy afternoon, full of despair, I had tried writing to a friend about Casimir’s and my problems. “Lately,” I confided, “his affections, such as they are, are wasted on me. So early in our marriage, it seems too late for everything. It is as if we are two vessels in a sea of fog, not sure if its lifting would reveal anything more promising than the gray we have grown accustomed to.”
But, afraid that if I sent that letter, the sentiments expressed therein would become realer and more constant, I burned it. Then I proceeded to the garden, where Casimir was brusquely ordering workmen about. I stood beside him for some time before he turned and asked me what I wanted. The words were in my mouth: To find you. To share again the simple joy we knew. But when I spoke, it was only to say, “Luncheon is served.” And he refused me, saying he was not hungry. Not at all.
I sat alone at the table and was offered food by servants whose pity for me was nearly palpable. I spooned in mouthfuls of a soup I could not taste, feeling a terrible erosion of confidence, then pushed myself away from my meal to go to Casimir’s and my bedroom. There, sitting in a chair by the window and watching my husband outside, I did the only thing I thought I could do: I made a pledge to try harder. I couldn’t be sure that most—if not all—of our problems weren’t my fault. It was true I had endured some cruelty from my husband, but I had also conveniently overlooked my bad behavior toward him. For I was my mother’s daughter, and when I wanted to, I could use my intellect and sharp tongue to cut Casimir; and at such times I did so with a devil’s pleasure.