BOOKS OF THE WEEK
Restless Egotism
Lelia: The Life of George Sand. By Andre Maurois. Translated by Gerard Hopkins. (Cape. 25s.) ANDRE MAUROIS 's biography of George Sand contains a consider- able amount of new material in the form of hitherto unpublished
letters. The book has already been acclaimed by many critics and
Is certain to be popular, particularly amongst those who enjoy reading accounts of " true " or " real " love affairs. Of these
George Sand had a considerable number, and it is with these that the greater part of M. Maurois's book is concerned. There are also excellent and vivid accounts of George Sand's ancestry and early
upbringing, of her not very profound religious and sociological ideas and of her declining years during which she seems at last to have lived the life for which she was best fitted, the life of a grand- mother.
I M. Maurois arranges and presents his material with great skill. Must own, however, that I find it impossible to share his enthusiasm have his heroine ; nor can I entirely concur with those critics who the lavished their praises on the biography as a whole. Though me composition of it is admirably efficient, some of the judgements Made seem to be facile or sentimental. M. Maurois writes, for example, " But we cannot weigh in the same scales the acts of artists with those of other men. Every artist is a superb actor who must, and knows that he must, go beyond the tolerable in emotion, since only so can his thought be transformed into something rich and strange." This is, to put it plainly, sheer nonsense. If the first sentence means anything that is not obvious, it means something that is untrue. And as for the notion of the artist (every artist, to be Precise) as " a superb actor " hankering, from a conscious sense of duty, for emotions that are " beyond the tolerable," it seems to Me a notion better fitted for the making of a bad film than for the explanation of the thought or method of real and distinguished
the beings. It is true that M. Maurois is very seldom as bad as Uneasy Passage I have quoted might suggest. Yet one is left with an uneasy feeling that both his literary and his moral standards may be of the nature of shifting sand, piling up into attractive wrinkles and Capable, when soundly bagged, of forming an impressive front ; yet With something temporary about them, and fluid.
M. Maurois gives the impression of being just. Much as he admires his heroine, he does not pretend that she was a Florence Nightingale (although in some respects this particular comparison Might be interesting). He does not minimise her faults or her absurdities. They are left, usually in her own words, to speak for themselves. He does not hold her up as a pattern of intellectual virtue or as an unselfish protagonist in the struggle for the rights of Women. Often he carefully points out her inconsistencies, and her tremendous egotism is visible on every page. M. Maurois would, re imagines, admit that she was an extremely silly woman, wholly lacking, as he himself points out, in that quality of humility without Which happiness was bound to be impossible for her. Yet he admires her, partly for her courage (which was certainly worthy of her ancestry), partly for her qualities as a good housekeeper, and chiefly, I should say, for a kind of " protestantism " (to use the word Without any religious sense), an insistence on the validity and truth of what at any time she conceived to be her own deep feelings, com- bined with a regularisation of these feelings to be a code for the use, not only of herself, but of all others who were for the time in contact With her. In fact, in her many love affairs she was more like a governess or excited nurse than like a woman wanting to give and _o receive happiness. The adjective most regularly used by her of her lovers is " little." In getting rid of one of the first of these, " little " Jules Sandeau, she actually did the packing for him, reserved his seat in the coach that was to carry him abroad and got him his passport. Not content with this, she self-righteously Re in a letter to a friend, " I shall never abandon him.... him." Will never have any right to keep me from being a mother to 'um." Fortunately, probably, for " little " Jules, she was not as good M. as her word. It is, I think, a misuse of language to employ, as m. Maurois often does, the adjective " maternal " to describe such restless, devouring and unsatisfactory passions. „, One of George Sand's lovers, Didier, wrote of her, " There are depths of ferocity in her. She loves to make others suffer. ... She has no heart. Imagination is her predominant quality and it rules her life." There seems to be an.unpleasant truth in this state- rut, indeed a terrible truth. For good intentions which spring not from the heart, not even from a sense of duty, but from an arrogant and egotistic fantasy, may turn sour on their possessor and end in
positive evil. Baudelaire disliked George Sand intensely. " There is," he writes (in a passage quoted by M. Maurois), " in her moral ideas about as much depth of thought, as much sensibility as you would find in a concierge or a kept woman." This is perhaps unjust and peevish ; but what really offended Baudelaire, and rightly so, was her extraordinary and arrogant belief in her own " heart " when, as Didier said, the " heart " was really " imagination." Again writing in anger, Baudelaire says :
" She is above all, and outstandingly, a groat fool : but she is possessed. It is the Devil who has persuaded her to put her trust in her good heart and her good sense, in order that she may persuade all the other great fools to put their trust in their good hearts and their good sense. -I cannot think of the stupid creature without a shudder of horror."
It is true that against this judgement must be set the facts that George Sand was a good friend, a hard worker and generous with her money. And in favour of M. Maurois it must be said that he appears to have been scrupulously fair in describing the life and thought of one who is, to him and to many, still a heroine, a brilliant and an engaging woman. Personally 1 find the story of her life pathetic, infuriating and very interesting. But the real interest of it is, I think, rather suggested by Baudelaire than illuminated by
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