It was Chopin who began our ritual of theater: it became incorporated into the house’s routine as much as were the lavish breakfasts followed by walks, followed by work, followed by dinner, followed by fun. We might read aloud or play dominoes or cards, but mostly we loved play-acting.
Later, Maurice built a marionette theater and carved from willow wood twenty different characters, including a theater manager, policemen, Bamboula the Negress, and the Comtesse de Bombrecoulant, who made a show of displaying her ample bosom. The puppets’ faces were painted by Maurice and his artist friends, and I sewed elaborate costumes for them: silk gowns and little frock coats and waistcoats enhanced with starched ruffs, embroideries, and feathered hats
Two years after Frédéric’s death, I combined the billiard room and Solange’s former bedroom into a large space that I made into a real theater, complete with a raised stage, proscenium, and benches for the audiences. To the left of that was Maurice’s marionette theater, which I made high enough to hide the bodies of the people who animated the puppets.
There was beautiful, hand-painted scenery. I had equipment for sound effects: piano and trumpets and the horns used for hunting; and I had machines for making the sound of rain, wind, thunder, cowbells, ocean waves, carriage wheels, and birdsong. Long after Frédéric had left Nohant and even long after he’d died, I often saw him sitting in the audience watching the shows, erect in posture, the crease lines in his pants legs undisturbed, every soft hair on his head in place, his hands folded lightly in his lap, his lips pursed to let escape a whisper of the music he was putting to the scenes being played out before him, his delight muted but obvious; his love contained, yet given.
—
FACED WITH GROWING OLDER, one is consoled by things both predictable and surprising. Grandchildren are expected to bring joy, and I lost my heart to all of mine: first to Jeanne, Solange’s second daughter, who, to my great sorrow, died young of scarlet fever. But then came Marc-Antoine, Maurice’s son, who was born after my son had the good sense to marry Lina Calamatta, who became a true daughter to me. The couple had two more children, Aurore and Gabrielle, and they offered me boundless joy. Those little ones and I made a nest of the wild thyme that came up year after year. They sat in my lap and I rested my chin on their heads, and I taught them to read, and the birds sang, and the wind parted the grasses, and the flowering gorse rose up next to water colored pink by a setting sun. What else better was there? What else better had there ever been?
February 1866
PARIS
“Ah! So tonight we are graced with George Sand in her peach silk dress, here to rape Flaubert.”
This is the comment I overheard as I sat down with a group of men in a private dining room at Magny’s restaurant. This group, made up of various artists and writers, had been founded by Sainte-Beuve, and they gathered bimonthly to dine and to enjoy vigorous conversation. After having received many invitations to join them, this was the first time I had come. It was for the express purpose of being with Gustave Flaubert, though not for the reason suggested.
In 1862, I had given Flaubert a good review of his historical novel, Salammbô. He had written me to thank me, and I had invited him to visit me at Nohant. At the time of this dinner, he had yet to come, but in the letters we sent back and forth a great friendship developed, in spite of our differences in worldview and character.
Over and over again I invited him to Nohant; over and over again he made his excuses—he was very much a recluse. In one letter, I told him: “You fancy that the work of the spirit is only in the brain, but you are very much mistaken, it is also in the legs. You live in your dressing gown—the great enemy of freedom and the active life.”
And he wrote back to me: “I wonder why I am so fond of you. Is it because you are a great man or a charming creature?” (This because I often assumed a male persona in my letters to him, just as I did in my private journals.)
On the night of the dinner, after a few minutes of my sitting silent and stiff-backed at the table, my glass of wine untouched before me, Flaubert finally blew in with the winter wind and came to sit beside me, close enough that I could feel the cold coming off his coat. I was becalmed by his open, handsome face. He was in his mid-forties then, tall, blond, green-eyed, and one of those men who have about them a sense of coiled strength. I was in my early sixties, beginning to show age in my graying hair and in a certain drooping at the jowls, though my energy had not diminished.
He acknowledged the rest of the group, then turned to me with a kind of mischief in his eyes. “George,” he said, lifting the lace at my sleeve to kiss my hand.
“Gustave,” said I, and kissed his. Because of the warmth and camaraderie we had developed over the last six months through letters, I felt comfortable being playful.
I leaned close to him to whisper into his ear: “You are the only man here who doesn’t scare me.”
“And you are the only woman who does scare me.”
“It isn’t so,” I said, smiling, and began rolling a slim cigarette in my customary pink paper, using the Turkish tobacco I loved.
“It is. I find myself practically tongue-tied.”
“You must know that you can say whatever you like. I would welcome your taking chances.”
He watched me finish rolling the cigarette and said softly, “Such delicate hands for such a strong woman. They invite a caress.”
I held the cigarette out to him and looked directly into his eyes. “Are you so inclined?”
He laughed. “And you say you are not a coquette!”
“I assure you, I am not a coquette! But neither am I the strong woman that people make me out to be.”
Gustave signaled for a glass of wine. Then he turned back to me and smiled. “To be with you, and to feel that I am with an old friend! What a pleasure. I find myself exceedingly happy at this moment. And you know from my letters how rare that is!”
“I do indeed. And tonight I hope to lead you to embrace the idea that life is more joyful than you allow it to be.”
“Ah, so that I am able to ‘let the wind play in my strings a bit,’ as you suggested that I do in my work.”
“Precisely. Do away with any system for writing. Simply obey your inspiration.”
He leaned back as our plates were put before us, then raised his wineglass. “To you, and to your efforts to improve my life, even to making my writing as painless and flowing as it is for you. Though here I very much doubt you will succeed.”
It is true that in all our years of friendship, I did not succeed in moving Gustave from one who agonized over every word, who doubted himself at every turn. With his first great success, Madame Bovary, he had encountered full force the arbitrary nature of publishing and criticism, and the bewildering frustration that could cause. The novel first came out as a serialization in the Revue de Paris, which was at the time being watched by the government for any writing that could be seen as scandalous. It was said that when a friend of Gustave’s who was an editor at the magazine told him the publisher wanted cuts, including the scene of Léon and Madame Bovary making love in a closed carriage traveling the streets of Rouen, Gustave gave that friend a message to give to the publisher in return:
I don’t care. If my novel upsets the bourgeois, I don’t care. If we end up in court, I don’t care. If they suppress the Revue de Paris, I don’t care. You had only to reject Bovary. You took it on, so much the worse for you. You’ll have to publish it as is.
Naturally, he did not succeed in refusing all cuts, and the novel was not much liked when it came out in serialization. When it became a book, however, with those scenes reinstated, it was, after a few mixed reviews, very highly praised and sold well.
I visited Gustave several times at his mother’s house in Croisset, near Rouen. I always found the view from that fine house on the banks of the Seine beautiful, even when the river’s waters were a muddy yellow. When I was there, we worked all day and talked much of the night away, usually in his stu
dy, with its green leather sofa and bearskin rug before the fire, with its stuffed parrot and gilded statue of Buddha and bowl full of sharpened goose quills. He had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with volumes he had read—the man devoured books, often reading three in a day, and he took great offense at being interrupted while he did so. Reading was nearly as sacred to him as writing.
We spoke a great deal about our works in progress, which we read aloud to each other. He called me “Dear Master,” for the assistance I provided him with his work on L’Éducation Sentimentale and Un Coeur Simple. In acknowledgment of our friendship, I dedicated my novel Le Dernier Amour to him—that one with a theme of adultery not weighted down by guilt!
Whereas work was Gustave’s highest priority, I had never attached nearly as much importance to mine, because what consumed me most was the search for the absolute in love. First it was my mother I dedicated myself to, then God, then a series of lovers. In old age, my brain centered more than anything else on the love of my grandchildren. And also, because of Flaubert, on chaste love.
During one of my early visits to him, Gustave and I sat warming ourselves at the fire late into the night, and at my urging we shared many stories about our lives. When I returned home, I had a letter from him that said:
We parted at a moment when many things were about to pass our lips. All the doors between us are not yet open. You inspire a great respect in me, and I do not dare to ask you questions.
I answered:
I was very happy in the week I spent with you. I feel an infinitely kind protectiveness in you. I didn’t want to leave, but I was keeping you from your work. From a distance I can tell you how much I love you without overdoing it. You are one of the rare kind, still impressionable, sincere, in love with art, uncorrupted by ambition, not intoxicated by success.
He responded:
They were very fine, our nocturnal chats. There were moments when I had to restrain myself from giving you little kisses as though you were a big child.
Despite rumors that I was out to “rape Flaubert,” the love we shared, in which we found an intimacy both of us had long desired, was completely innocent.
Our relationship did suffer somewhat toward the end, as I grew weary of Flaubert’s frequent complaining. He was a terrible pessimist, and I had my life’s work cut out for me to persuade him that one could hold on to optimism even as one moved toward death. I did not look upon aging as a downward spiral. I did not fear it. I saw it not as movement toward a dark and frightening thing but, rather, as a natural goal. There is a dignity in death; one does well to meet it halfway with calmness and acceptance and, if one can, rest assured in the knowledge that when the veil is lifted one will see that God possesses a caring hand after all.
I still believed in life eternal, though, as ever, my faith was of my own making. I was long done with the way that man attempted to represent what religion should be and to make it in his own image. I knew my time was coming, and I did not despair. Instead, I enjoyed the deepest happiness I had ever known. My mind was active, I was able to go out for long walks, I was even able to stay up for more hours of the day than I had when I was younger.
There was no longing for the days of my youth. I had lost all interest in fame. I wanted money only to secure my ability to leave behind something for the grandchildren. Perhaps most important, I still felt useful—in fact, more useful than I had been in my younger years, because what I offered was more direct: a heartfelt embrace, a pretty blue dress I had made, a winter stew, a story still wet upon the page that I shared with those young ones gathered at my feet, having written it just for them.
All of this I tried to explain to the Old Troubadour, as I called Flaubert—because of his love of Gypsies. But the troubadour also sings of love, and I believe that at heart Gustave was as susceptible to the charms of romance and the quest for joy as the rest of us, no matter what he might have said. How else to explain the apparent hypocrisy he displayed when he finally came for the first time to visit us at Nohant? He took a seven-hour train ride followed by a one-hour carriage ride, no doubt grumbling all the way. Then, when he stepped into the happy cacophony of our house full of people, what a change I witnessed!
The first day, with a grand flourish, he presented the grandchildren with dolls, which were wonderfully well received. The next day he relaxed enough to take a walk outside and look at a ram I wanted him to see.
“His name is Gustave,” I said and saw a little smile flicker beneath Flaubert’s monstrous mustache.
On his last night there, astonishingly, Flaubert appeared before dinner dressed as a woman and proceeded to dance the cachucha. It was both grotesque and delightful, and we were a most appreciative audience, laughing and applauding until, in splendid falsetto, he bade us stop.
The next day, he went home and returned to his hermitlike ways, and became immediately depressed.
Yes, we all need love, perhaps most especially those who argue against the need for it.
April 1873
NOHANT
Inside, the music has started and my guests are beckoning. But I do not go back to the house just yet. For I have found the answer I was seeking, the answer to what was most vital of all the things in my life, and it is the deep love I had for Marie Dorval. Having called her into my consciousness now, I want to stay with her longer.
I saw her many times after she left Nohant that day; we met for coffee and conversation, we went to plays and concerts and had dinners together, she came to my salons in Paris. In the spring of 1840, I wrote a play for her to star in, which closed in a week. She was deemed too old and too fat to play a romantic heroine; she was booed off the stage.
Naturally, this devastated her. And she grew very afraid of what her fate might be. I invited her to live with me; I told her I would always take care of her. I confess I hoped that we could find love again, that what had been snuffed out between us might now, because of this misfortune, resurrect itself. “Come to Nohant,” I told her. “We can leave everything in Paris behind.”
She smiled. “It is a lovely dream, the two of us together there again. But I must continue to tour to provide for my family. And you know my work is in my blood, as is yours; I cannot separate it from myself.”
She played in smaller and smaller towns, in smaller and smaller roles, for sums so minute I wondered that she could feed herself. Despite her objections, I often sent her money, so that she could afford to keep her beloved grandson, Georges, with her when she was in warmer climes. From one such small venue, she sent me a letter that ended this way: “Isn’t it curious, all of our lives, we long to know what our future will be. It is a mercy we do not know.”
She died on May 20, 1849, at fifty-one years of age, her health ruined from life on the road, her great beauty and fame a distant memory. She died, too, from a broken heart, for she was inconsolable after Georges died, the year before. “I do not expect to recover from seeing one so young die so nobly,” she told me. “I do not expect to, nor do I want to.” She had always told me that the only love she was helpless against was that she had for children.
I was informed of her death one morning in a letter from René Luguet, her son-in-law. He had invited her to come to Caen, but she wanted first to go to the Français Theater in Paris, in an attempt to find work that might pay her five hundred francs a month and enable her to survive. The director did not mince words: he told her that her request was absurd. He might be able to find her something for far less money, he said, but he would have to overcome the resistance of the board. How humiliating for my dear Marie, who once had all of Paris at her feet! I imagined her small person standing before him, her head bent in shame, those little hands holding on to each other for want of anything else to steady her.
She went to Caen after that but had no sooner arrived than she fell seriously ill. A doctor was summoned; her condition was pronounced critical, and it was advised that she not be moved. Luguet reserved a coach nonetheless; Marie wanted to die in
Paris. She made it to her beloved city and her familiar bed. She asked for Dumas fils, and he came immediately. He reassured her that she would not lie in a pauper’s grave; he would pay for a proper place for her to take her rest. “Even in death, they will flock to see you,” he said. She died with a smile on her lips.
“You were her last and latest poet,” Luguet wrote. “I read Fadette aloud at her bedside, and we had a long talk about all the wonderful books you have written. We wept as we recalled the many moving scenes that they contain. Then she spoke to me of you, of your heart…. Ah, dear Madame Sand, how deeply you loved Marie, how truly you understood her spirit.”
There was a black cross over her grave, Luguet said. On it were these words: MARIE DORVAL: SHE DIED OF GRIEF.
I secluded myself in my bedroom for the rest of the day. I sat quietly before my window, looking out as day progressed into night, and the terrible pain that lay in my heart refused to lessen. I had promised myself to take care of her family, to bring them to Nohant for every holiday; but this did nothing to help. And so I turned to my imagination.
In my mind, I created a scene of me at her deathbed. I made the room dark, lit with candles that cast a flattering glow on the face of my vain beloved. I put myself bending over her, clutching her hands, as we talked in low voices about the life we might have had together. Marie’s face brightened in playfulness at one point. “But tell me, would we have had donkeys? For you know I love donkeys. They are so gay and comical.”
“We would have had many donkeys, and in winter I would have made them fat and in summer I would have braided garlands of daisies for them to wear around their necks. I would have used cook’s grease to polish their hooves. And we would have ridden them to the river, to that place where we bathed.”