Belinda Jack - George Sand

Belinda Jack received her first degree in French with African and Caribbean Studies from the University of Kent and a doctorate from Oxford University, followed by a Fellowship at the European Humanities Research Centre at Oxford. She is currently Fellow and Lecturer in French at Christ Church, Oxford, where she lives with her husband and three children. This is her third book.

ALSO BY BELINDA JACK

Negritude and Literary Criticism:
The History and Theory of Negro-African Literature in French

Francophone Literatures:
An Introductory Survey

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 2001

Copyright 1999 by Belinda Jack

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover, in slightly different form, in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, London, in 1999, and subsequently in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Jack, Belinda Elizabeth.
George Sand: a womans life writ large/Belinda Jack.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-81466-1
1. George Sand, 18041876. 2. Women novelists, French19th centuryBiography.
3. Novelists, French19th centuryBiography. I. Title.
PQ2412.J33 2000
834.8dc21

[B] 99-40857

www.vitagebooks.com

v3.1

For my dear mother whoin the absence
of grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and
daughtershas managed to be all of these

Aurore Dupin, drawing by Ren Deschartres.

Louis-Claude Dupin de Francueil, pastel, artist unknown, mideighteenth century.

Aurore de Saxe, Aurores grandmother, natural child of the Marchal de Saxe, wife of Maurice Dupin, anonymous pastel, mid-eighteenth century.

Maurice de Saxe, pastel by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Salon of 1747 or 1748.

Le Chteau de George Sand, seen from the gardens.

George Sands Nohant.

Le Chteau de George Sand, dining room.

Aurore Dupin and Hippolyte Chatiron.

Maurice Dupin, oil on canvas, artist unknown, c. 1800.

Sophie-Victoire Dupin, ne Delaborde, charcoal drawing by George Sand.

George Sand, lithograph after Alcide Lorenz.

George Sand and Ledru-Rollin, anonymous engraving.

El Mallorqun, anonymous engraving.

The priests visit to George Sand, her children and Chopin, at Valldemosa, 1839, drawing by George Sand.

The Charterhouse of Valldemosa, drawing by Joseph-Bonaventure Laurens.

Alexandre Manceau, drawing by Grandsire.

George Sand, drawing by Manceau.

The house at Gargilesse, painting by Jules Vron, c. 1860.

Frdric Chopin, oil by Eugne Delacroix, 1838.

Gustave Flaubert, painting by Eugne Giraud.

Lina Sand (ne Calamatta), by Nadar.

Maurice Sand, by Nadar.

Solange Clsinger (ne Dudevant), by Nadar.

Jean-Baptiste Clsinger, photograph by Nadar.

Solange Sand, by Mercier.

Casimir Dudevant, anonymous drawing.

Maurice Sand dressed as an Officer of the National Guard, drawing by George Sand.

Aurlien de Sze, anonymous engraving.

Marie Dorval, lithograph by Lon Nel, c. 1835.

Pietro Pagello age twenty-eight, engraving after a portrait by Bevilacqua.

Louis-Chrysostome Michel (Michel de Bourges), anonymous lithograph.

Alfred de Musset, self-portrait.

Stphane Ajasson de Grandsagne, lithograph by Dvria.

Jules Sandeau, pencil by George Sand, 20 March 1831.

View of part of the new road to Cauterets, engraving by J. Jacottet.

Gondola: Remembrance of Venice, ink sketch by George Sand.

Proclamation of the Republic of 1870, anonymous engraving.

George Sand, by Nadar, 1866.

The invitation to George Sands funeral.

I am deeply grateful to Allan Doig, Jane Jack, Carol Janeway (my editor at Knopf), and Irene Skolnick (my literary agent), all of whom read my manuscript in something close to its final form and gave invaluable advice and much-needed support. I remain responsible for any errors that may remain in the text, and for those idiosyncrasies of approach and style which I have stubbornly decided to retain.

Friends and colleagues who read parts of the book, and those who have listened to my endless ramblings and indulgently engaged with them, are too numerous to name: their contribution is warmly appreciated. I have been touched by those confessions, generously delivered up in discussion, which have broadened my insight into womens lives.

I have been nourished by Georges Lubins scholarship, and was greatly encouraged by Jean Bruneaus early enthusiasm for my biography. I would also like to thank my husband and sons, Allan, John, Jamie, and Nicholas, for their kindness, and for always believing that the mounds of paper would one day metamorphose into a book; my brother Colin for technical help; and my father for a bibliophiles support.

My research has been generously supported by the British Academy, the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford, and Christ Church, Oxford. I am grateful to a large number of curators and librarians at: the Bodleian and Taylor Institute Libraries, Oxford; the British Library, London; the Bibliothque Nationale, the Bibliothque Historique de la Ville de Paris, the Muse Carnavalet, and the Muse de la Vie Romantique, Paris; the Bibliothque Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Chantilly; the Muse George Sand, La Chtre; the Maison George Sand, Nohant; and the Maison George Sand, Gargilesse.

This life of George Sand sets out to chart the course of an extraordinarily full life. But my interest is in both her outer visible life and her inner lifeof feelings and fantasies, ideas and beliefs. Because she was a writer and so prolific, there is ample evidence of that hidden life, although its treatment remains problematic and always open to speculative error. I think it is a risk worth taking.

Establishing many of my facts has been straightforward. Her own vast two-volume autobiography, The Story of My Life, and the twenty-five volumes of her Correspondance have been meticulously edited by the great French scholar Georges Lubin. He is a tremendously engaging presence even in his footnotes, occasionally expressing his own delight in her, or his gently scolding disappointmentwhere he has found her out. Thanks to his years of devotion, we know about almost every day of her adult life. We know with virtual certainty where she was, and with whom, and we know mostly what she was doingexcept perhaps when in bed, although some of her letters are refreshingly frank about that too. I have been guided too by earlier biographies, which often point to that same rich material, an accretion of pithy quotation. My reservations about aspects of earlier biographies have also helped to shape and strengthen my own intuitions and convictions.

I have had to selectsavagelyfrom a vast body of reliable documentation. Otherwise this book would be no more than the first of numerous volumes. But in any case I do not believe that there is any such thing as a comprehensive biography: life isnt like that. And in Sands case such a tome, or tomes, would be a monstrous work of referenceand virtually unreadable.