Charles N. Crewdson - "Tales of the Road"

Thomas H. Huxley - "On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge"

G. A. Henty - "By Sheer Pluck"

Annie Fellows Johnston - "The Little Colonel"

The George Sand Gustave Flaubert Letters

G >> George Sand, Gustave Flaubert >> The George Sand Gustave Flaubert Letters




Do you think me very silly since you believe I am going to blame you
for your primer? I have enough philosophic spirit to know that such
a thing is very serious work.

Method is the highest thing in criticism, since it gives the means
of creating.



CCXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 28 January, 1872

Your preface is splendid and the book [Footnote: Dernieres Chansons,
by Louis Bouilhet.] is divine! Mercy! I have made a line of poetry
without realizing it, God forgive me. Yes, you are right, he was not
second rank, and ranks are not given by decree, above all in an age
when criticism undoes everything and does nothing. All your heart is
in this simple and discreet tale of his life. I see very well now,
why he died so young; he died from having lived too extensively in
the mind. I beg of you not to absorb yourself so much in literature
and learning. Change your home, move about, have mistresses or
wives, whichever you like, and during these phases, must change the
end that one lights. At my advanced age I throw myself into
torrents of far niente; the most infantile amusements, the silliest,
are enough for me and I return more lucid from my attacks of
imbecility.

It was a great loss to art, that premature death. In ten years there
will not be one single poet. Your preface is beautiful and well
done. Some pages are models, and it is very true that the bourgeois
will read that and find nothing remarkable in it. Ah! if one did not
have the little sanctuary, the interior little shrine, where,
without saying anything to anyone, one takes refuge to contemplate
and to dream the beautiful and the true, one would have to say:
"What is the use?"

I embrace you warmly.

Your old troubadour.



CCXIV. TO GEORGE SAND

Dear good master,

Can you, for le Temps, write on Dernieres Chansons? It would oblige
me greatly. Now you have it.

I was ill all last week. My throat was in a frightful state. But I
have slept a great deal and I am again afloat. I have begun anew my
reading for Saint-Antoine.

It seems to me that Dernieres Chansons could lend itself to a
beautiful article, to a funeral oration on poetry. Poetry will not
perish, but its eclipse will be long and we are entering into the
shades.

Consider if you have a mind for it and answer by a line.



CCXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris
Nohant, 17 February

My troubadour, I am thinking of what you asked me to do and I will
do it; but this week I must rest. I played the fool too much at the
carnival with my grandchildren and my great-nephews.

I embrace you for myself and for all my brood.

G. Sand



CCXVI. TO GEORGE SAND

What a long time it is since I have written to you, dear master. I
have so many things to say to you that I don't know where to begin.
Oh! how horrid it is to live so separated when we love each other.

Have you given Paris an eternal adieu? Am I never to see you again
there? Are you coming to Croisset this summer to hear Saint-Antoine?

As for me, I can not go to Nohant, because my time, considering my
straitened purse, is all counted; but I have still I a full month of
readings and researches in Paris. After that I am going away with my
mother: we are in search of a companion for her. It is not easy to
find one. Then, towards Easter I shall be back at Croisset, and
shall start to work again at the manuscript. I am beginning to want
to write.

Just now, I am reading in the evening, Kant's Critique de la raison
pure, translated by Barni, and I am freshening up my Spinoza. During
the day I amuse myself by looking over bestiaries of the middle
ages; looking up in the "authorities" all the most baroque animals.
I am in the midst of fantastic monsters.

When I have almost exhausted the material I shall go to the Museum
to muse before real monsters, and then the researches for the good
Saint-Antoine will be finished.

In your letter before the last one you showed anxiety about my
health; reassure yourself! I have never been more convinced that it
was robust. The life that I have led this winter was enough to kill
three rhinoceroses, but nevertheless I am well. The scabbard must be
solid, for the blade is well sharpened; but everything is converted
into sadness! Any action whatever disgusts me with life! I have
followed your counsels, I have sought distractions! But that amuses
me very little. Decidedly nothing but sacrosanct literature
interests me.

My preface to the Dernieres Chansons has aroused in Madame Colet a
pindaric fury. I have received an anonymous letter from her, in
verse, in which she represents me as a charlatan who beats the drum
on the tomb of his friend, a vulgar wretch who debases himself
before criticism, after having "flattered Caesar"! "Sad example of
the passions," as Prudhomme would say.

A propos of Caesar, I can not believe, no matter what they say, in
his near return. In spite of my pessimism, we have not come to that!
However, if one consulted the God called Universal Suffrage, who
knows?...Ah! we are very low, very low!

I saw Ruy Blas badly played except for Sarah. Melingue is a sleep-
walking drain-man, and the others are as tiresome. As Victor Hugo
had complained in a friendly way that I had not paid him a call, I
thought I ought to do so and I found him ...charming! I repeat the
word, not at all "the great man," not at all a pontiff! This
discovery greatly surprised me and did me worlds of good. For I have
the bump of veneration and I like to love what I admire. That is a
personal allusion to you, dear, kind master.

I have met Madame Viardot whom I found a very curious temperament.
It was Tourgueneff who took me to her house.



CCXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, from the 28 to the 29 February 1872. Night of Wednesday to
Thursday, three o'clock in the morning.

Ah! my dear old friend, what a dreadful twelve days I have spent!
Maurice has been very ill. Continually these terrible sore throats,
which in the beginning seem nothing, but which are complicated with
abscesses and tend to become membranous. He has not been in danger,
but always IN DANGER OF DANGER, and he has had cruel suffering, loss
of voice, he could not swallow; every anguish attached to the
violent sore throat that you know well, since you have just had one.
With him, this trouble continually tends to get worse, and his
mucous membrane has been so often the seat of the same illness that
it lacks energy to react. With that, little or no fever, almost
always on his feet, and the moral depression of a man used to
continual exercise of body and mind, whom the mind and body forbids
to exercise. We have looked after him so well that he is now, I
think, out of the woods, although, this morning, I was afraid again
and sent for Doctor Favre, our USUAL savior.

Throughout the day I have been talking to him, to distract him,
about your researches on monsters; he had his papers brought so as
to hunt among them for what might be useful you; but he has found
only the pure fantasies of his own invention. I found them so
original and so funny that I have encouraged him to send them to
you. They will be of no use to you except to make you burst out
laughing in your hours recreation.

I hope that we are going to come to life again without new relapses.
He is the soul and the life of the house. When he is depressed we
are dead; mother, wife, and children. Aurore says that she would
like to be very ill in her father's place We love each other
passionately, we five, and the SACROSANCT LITERATURE as you call it,
is only secondary in my life. I have always loved some one more than
it and my family more than that some one.

Pray why is your poor little mother so irritable and desperate, in
the very midst of an old age that when I last saw her was still so
green and so gracious? Is her deafness sudden? Did she entirely lack
philosophy and patience before these infirmities? I suffer with you
because I understand what you are suffering.

Another old age which is worse, since it is becoming malicious, is
that of Madame Colet. I used to think that all her hatred was
directed against me, and that seemed to me a bit of madness; for I
had never done or said anything against her, even after that vile
book in which she poured out all her fury WITHOUT cause. What has
she against you now that passion has become ancient history?
Strange! strange! And, a propos of Bouilhet, she hated him then, him
too this poor poet? She is mad.

You may well think that I was not able to write an iota for these
twelve days. I am going, I hope, to start at work as soon as I have
finished my novel which has remained with one foot in the air at the
last pages. It is on the point of being published but has not yet
been finished. I am up every night till dawn; but I have not had a
sufficiently tranquil mind to be distracted from my patient.

Good night, dear good friend of my heart.

Heavens! don't work nor sit up too much, as you also have sore
throats. They are terrible and treacherous illnesses. We all love
you, and we embrace you. Aurore is charming; she learns all that we
want her to, we don't know how, without seeming to notice it.

What kind of a woman do you want as a companion for your mother?
Perhaps I know of such a one. Must she converse and read aloud? It
seems to me that the deafness is a barrier to that. Isn't it a
question of material care and continual diligence? What are the
stipulations and what is the compensation?

Tell me how and why father Hugo did not have one single visit after
Ruy Blas? Did Gautier, Saint-Victor, his faithful ones, neglect him?
Have they quarreled about politics?



CCXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
March, 1872

Dear master,

I have received the fantastic drawings, which have diverted me. Is
there perhaps profound symbolism hidden in Maurice's work? But I did
not find it. ... Revery!

There are two very pretty monsters: (1) an embryo in the form of a
balloon on four feet; (2) a death's head emanating from an
intestinal worm.

We have not found a companion yet. It seems difficult to me, we must
have someone who can read aloud and who is very gentle; we should
also give her some charge of the household. She would not have much
bodily care to give, as my mother would keep her maid.

We must have someone who is kind above all, and perfectly honest.
Religious principles are not objected to! The rest is left to your
perspicacity, dear master! That is all.

I am uneasy about Theo. I think that he is getting strangely old. He
must be very ill, doubtless with heart trouble, don't you think so?
Still another who is preparing to leave me.

No! literature is not what I love most in the world, I explained
myself badly (in my last letter). I spoke to you of distractions and
of nothing more. I am not such a pedant as to prefer phrases to
living beings. The further I go the more my sensibility is
exasperated. But the basis is solid and the thing goes on. And then,
after the Prussian war there is no further great annoyance possible.

And the Critique de la raison pure of the previously mentioned Kant,
translated by Barni, is heavier reading than the Vie Parisienne of
Marcelin; never mind! I shall end by understanding it.

I have almost finished the scenario of the last part of Saint
Antoine. I am in a hurry to start writing. It is too long since I
have written. I am bored with style!

And tell me more about you, dear master! Give me at once news of
Maurice, and tell me if you think that the lady you know would suit
us.

And thereupon I embrace you with both arms.

Your old troubadour always agitated, always as wrathful as Saint
Polycarp.



CCXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
17 March, 1872

No, dear friend, Maurice is almost well again but I have been tired,
worn out with URGENT work: finishing my novel, and correcting a mass
of proof from the beginning. And then unanswered letters, business,
no time to breathe! That is why I have not been able to write the
article on Bouilhet, and as Nanon has begun, as they are publishing
five numbers a week in le Temps, I don't see where I shall publish
that article very soon.

In the Revue des Deux Mondes, they don't want me to write criticism;
whoever is not, or was not of their circle, has no talent, and they
do not give me the right to say the contrary.

There is, to be sure, a new review wide open to me, which is
published by very fine people, but it is more widely read in other
countries than in France, and you will find perhaps that an article
in that would not excite comment. It is the Revue universelle
directed by Amedee Marteau. Discuss that with Charles Edmond. Ask
him if, in spite of the fact that Nanon is being published, he could
find me a little corner in the body of the paper.

As for the companion, you may rest assured that I am looking for
her. The one whom I had in view is not suitable, for she could not
read aloud, and I am not sure enough of the others to propose them.
I thought that your poor mother was too deaf to listen to reading,
and to converse, and that it would be enough for her to have some
one very gentle, and charming, to care for her, and to stay with
her.

That is all, my dear old friend, it is not my fault, I embrace you
with all my heart. For the moment that is the only thing that is
functioning. My brain is too stupefied.

G. Sand



CCXX. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset

Here I am, back again here, dear master, and not very happy; my
mother worries me. Her decline increases from day to day, and almost
from hour to hour. She wanted me to come home although the painters
have not finished their work, and we are very inconveniently housed.
At the end of next week, she will have a companion who will relieve
me in this foolish business of housekeeping.

As for me, I have quite decided not to make the presses groan for
many years, solely not to have "business" to look after, to avoid
all connection with publishers, editors and papers, and above all
not to hear of money.

My incapacity, in that direction, has developed to frightful
proportions. Why should the sight of a bill put me in a rage? It
verges on madness. Aisse has not made money. Dernieres Chansons has
almost gotten me into a lawsuit. The story of la Fontaine is not
ended. I am tired, profoundly tired, of everything.

If only I do not make a failure also of Saint-Antoine. I am going to
start working on it again in a week, when I have finished with Kant
and Hegel. These two great men are helping to stupefy me, and when I
leave them I fall with eagerness upon my old and thrice great
Spinoza. What genius, how fine a work the Ethics is!



CCXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
9 April, 1872

I am with you all day and all night, and at every instant, my poor
dear friend. I am thinking of all the sorrow that you are in the
midst of. I would like to be near you. The misfortune of being tied
here distresses me. I would like a word so as to know if you have
the courage that you need. The end of that noble and dear life has
been sad and long; for from the day that she became feeble, she
declined and you could not distract her and console her. Now, alas!
the incessant and cruel task is ended, as the things of this world
end, anguish after struggle! What a bitter achievement of rest! and
you are going to miss this anxiety, I am sure of that. I know the
sort of dismay that follows the combat with death.

In short, my poor child, I can only open a maternal heart to you
which will replace nothing, but which is suffering with yours, and
very keenly in each one of your troubles.

G. Sand



CCXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 14 April, 1872

My daughter-in-law has been staying several days with our friends,
at Nimes, to stop a bad case of WHOOPING-COUGH that Gabrielle was
suffering with, to separate her from Aurore, from fear of contagion,
and to recuperate, for she has not been well for some time. As for
me, I am well again. That little illness and this departure suddenly
resolved upon and accomplished, have upset my plans somewhat. I had
to look after Aurore so that she might be reconciled to it, and I
have not had a moment to answer you. I am wondering too if you don't
like it better to be left to yourself these first few days. But I
beguile the need I feel of being near you at this sad time, by
telling you over and over again, my poor, dear friend, how much I
love you. Perhaps, too, your family has taken you to Rouen or to
Dieppe, so as not to let you go back at once into that sad house. I
don't know anything about your plans, in case those which you made
to absorb yourself in work are changed. If you have any inclination
to travel, and the sinews of war are lacking, I have ready for you a
few sous that I have just earned, and I put them at your disposal.
Don't feel constrained with me any more than I would with you, dear
child. They are going to pay me for my novel in five or six days at
the office of le Temps; you need only to write me a line and I shall
see that you get it in Paris. A word when you can, I embrace you,
and so does Maurice, very tenderly.



CCXXIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Tuesday, 16 April, 1872

Dear good master,

I should have answered at once your first, very kind letter. But I
was too sad. I lacked physical strength.

At last, today, I am beginning to hear the birds singing and to see
the leaves growing green. The sun irritates me no longer, which is a
good sign. If I could feel like working again I should be all right.

Your second letter (that of yesterday) moved me to tears! You are so
good! What a splendid creature you are! I do not need money now,
thank you. But if I did need any, I should certainly ask you for it.

My mother has left Croisset to Caroline with the condition that I
should keep my apartments there. So, until the estate is completely
settled, I stay here. Before deciding on the future, I must know
what I have to live on, after that we shall see.

Shall I have the strength to live absolutely alone in solitude? I
doubt it, I am growing old. Caroline cannot live here now. She has
two dwellings already, and the house at Croisset is expensive. I
think I shall give up my Paris lodging. Nothing calls me to Paris
any longer. All my friends are dead, and the last one, poor Theo, is
not for long, I fear. Ah! it is hard to grow a new skin at fifty
years of age!

I realized, during the last two weeks, that my poor dear, good
mother was the being that I have loved the most! It is as if someone
had torn out a part of my vitals.



CCXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 28 April, 1872

I hold my poor Aurore, who has a terrible case of whooping-cough,
day and night in my arms. I have an important piece of work that I
must finish, and which I shall finish in spite of everything. If I
have not already done the article on Bouilhet, rest assured it is
because it is IMPOSSIBLE. I shall do it at the same time as that on
l'Annee terrible. I shall go to Paris between the 20th and 25th of
May, at the latest. Perhaps sooner, if Maurice takes Aurore to Nimes
where Lina and the littlest one are. I shall write to you, you must
come to see me in Paris, or I will go to see you.

I thirst too to embrace you, to console you--no, but to tell you
that your sorrows are mine. Good-bye till then, a line to tell me if
your affairs are getting settled, and if you are coming out on top.

Your old G. Sand



CCXXV. TO GEORGE SAND

What good news, dear master! In a month and even before a month, I
shall see you at last!

Try not to be too hurried in Paris, so that we may have the time to
talk. What would be very nice, would be, if you came back here with
me to spend several days. We should be quieter than there; "my poor
old mother" loved you very much, would be sweet to see you in her
house, when she has been gone only such a short time.

I have started work again, for existence is only tolerable when one
forgets one's miserable self.

It will be a long time before I know what I have to live on. For all
the fortune that is left to us is in meadowland, and in order to
divide it, we have to sell it all.

Whatever happens, I shall keep my apartments at Croisset. That will
be my refuge, and perhaps even my only habitation. Paris hardly
attracts me any longer. In a little while I shall have no more
friends there. The human being (the eternal feminine included)
amuses me less and less.

Do you know that my poor Theo is very ill? He is dying from boredom
and misery. No one speaks his language anymore! We are like fossils
who subsist astray in a new world.



CCXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 18 May, 1872

Dear friend of my heart, your inability does not disturb me at all,
on the contrary. I have the grippe and the prostration that follows
it. I cannot go to Paris for a week yet, and shall be there during
the first part of June. My little ones are both in the sheepfold. I
have taken good care of and cured the eldest, who is strong. The
other is very tired, and the trip did not prevent the whooping-
cough. For my part, I have worked very hard in caring for my dear
one, and as soon as my task was over, as soon as I saw my dear world
reunited and well again, I collapsed. It will be nothing, but I have
not the strength to write. I embrace you, and I count on seeing you
soon.

G. Sand



CCXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Paris, Monday, 3 June, 1872, Rue Gay Lussac, 5

I am in Paris, and for all this week, in the horror of personal
business. But next week will you come? I should like to go to see
you in Croisset, but I do not know if I can. I have taken Aurore's
whooping-cough, and, at my age, it is severe. I am, however, better,
but hardly able to go about. Write me a line, so I can reserve the
hours that you can give me. I embrace you, as I love you, with a
full heart.

G. Sand



CCXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
1872

The hours that I could give you, dear Master! Why, all the hours,
now, by and by, and forever.

I am planning to go to Paris at the end of next week, the 14th or
the 16th. Shall you be there still? If not, I shall go earlier.

But I should like it much better if you came here. We should be
quieter, without callers or intruders! More than ever, I should like
to have you now in my poor Croisset.

It seems to me that we have enough to talk about without stopping
for twenty-four hours. Then I would read you Saint-Antoine, which
lacks only about fifteen pages of being finished. However, don't
come if your cough continues. I should be afraid that the dampness
would hurt you.

The mayor of Vendome has asked me "to honor with my presence" the
dedication of the statue of Ronsard, which occurs the 23rd of this
month: I shall go. And I should even like to deliver an address
there which would be a protest against the universal modern flap-
doodle. The occasion is good. But for the production of a really
appropriate little gem, I lack the snap and vivacity.

Hoping to see you soon, dear master, your old troubadour who
embraces you.



CCXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
7 June, 1872

Dear friend,

Your old troubadour has such a bad cough that a little bit more
would be the last straw. On the other hand, they cannot get on
without me at our house, and I cannot stay longer than next week,
that is to say, the 15th or the 16th. If you could come next
Thursday, the 13th, I should reserve the 13th, the 14th, even the
15th, to be with you at my house for the day for dinner, for the
evening, in short, just as if we were in the country, where we could
read and converse. I would be supposed to have gone away.

A word at once, I embrace you as I love you.

G. Sand



CCXXX. TO GEORGE SAND

Dear master,

Have you promised your support to the candidacy of Duquesnel? if
not, I should like to beg you to use to the utmost your influence to
support my friend, Raymond Deslandes, as if he were

Your old troubadour,

G. Flaubert

Thursday, three o'clock, 13 June, 1872.

Answer me categorically, so that we may know what you will do.



CCXXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
..Nohant, 5 July, 1872

I must write to you today. Sixty-eight years old. Perfect health in
spite of the cough, which lets me sleep now that I am plunging daily
in a furious little torrent, cold as ice. It boils around the
stones, the flowers, the great grasses in a delicious shade. It is
an ideal place to bathe.

We have had some terrible storms: lightning struck in our garden;
and our stream, the Indre, has become like a torrent in the
Pyrenees. It is not unpleasant. What a fine summer! The grain is
seven feet high, the wheat fields are sheets of flowers. The peasant
thinks that there are too many; but I let him talk, it is so lovely!
I go on foot to the stream, I jump, all boiling hot, into the icy
water. The doctor says that is madness. I let him talk, too; I am
curing myself while his patients look after themselves and croak. I
am like the grass of the fields: water and sun, that is all I need.

Are you off for the Pyrenees? Ah! I envy you, I love them so! I have
taken frantic trips there; but I don't know Luchon. Is it lovely,
too? You won't go there without seeing the Cirque of Gavarnie, and
the road that leads there, will you? And Cauterets and the lake of
Gaube? And the route of Saint-Sauveur? Heavens! How lucky one is to
travel and to see the mountains, the flowers, the cliffs! Does all
that bore you?

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