14 JULY 1928, Page 23

The Immortal George

George Sand. By Marie Jenney Howe. (Brentano's. 21e.) THERE is no literary criticism worth the name in this new life of George Sand, for the writer concerns herself entirely with the personality and enchantments of the great French novelist. HoWever, Mrs. Howe is able to convince her readers of the almost miraculous fascination exercised by Aurore Dupin from her earliest childhood to lier extreme old age, so the book must be accounted a success. Indeed, until one is half through the 340 odd pages, it is almost impossible to put it down.

Toward the middle, however, the author gets completely into the toils of her heroine, and, standing entranced at the foot of the pedestal, she is seized with a desire to whitewash her idol. She cannot, so to speak, " reach up " to do it. Her efforts become a little absurd, and she comes perilously near to destroying the illusion she has created.

The Alfred de Musset affair was a sordid business on the showing of both " Elle " and " Lui," and many adventures separated George the " Gamin " from George the Grand- mother. The fact that Musset died and the woman of genius whom he loved and hated was to spend many quiet years in the service of her children and dependants, has no bearing on the connexion between the gifted pair. But Aurorc Dupin before she married Casimir Dudevant is a child to adore. Her love for her vulgar passionate mother, whose father sold canaries on the Paris Boulevards, her devotion to the calm and stately paternal grandmother, in whose veins ran the blood of kings and Court ladies, her unchanging reverence for the nuns who undertook to turn a wild country child into a young lady of the period, and who believed the best way to accomplish their task was to keep her indoors, showed the amazing width of her sympathies, the inspiration of her intuition and insight. Her experience in the convent chapel, when she felt " that faith was laying hold of her by the heart," shows to what spiritual heights she might have risen. But the heights daunted and balked her, and she got very near the depths. In her prime, when the whole world acclaimed her genius, few men could resist her powers of temptation, but when all is said that can be said against her, who could have resisted the temptation of her powers ?