Produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters
Translated by A.L. McKenzie (1921)
Introduction by Stuart Sherman
This translation of the correspondence between George Sand andGustave Flaubert was undertaken in consequence of a suggestion byProfessor Stuart P. Sherman. The translator desires to acknowledgevaluable criticism given by Professor Sherman, Ruth M. Sherman, andProfessor Kenneth McKenzie, all of whom have generously assisted inrevising the manuscript.
A. L. McKenzie
The correspondence of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert, ifapproached merely as a chapter in the biographies of these heroes ofnineteenth century letters, is sufficiently rewarding. In arelationship extending over twelve years, including the tryingperiod of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, theseextraordinary personalities disclose the aspects of their diversenatures which are best worth the remembrance of posterity. Howeverher passionate and erratic youth may have captivated ourgrandfathers, George Sand in the mellow autumn of her life is for usat her most attractive phase. The storms and anguish and hazardousadventures that attended the defiant unfolding of her spirit areover. In her final retreat at Nohant, surrounded by her affectionatechildren and grandchildren, diligently writing, botanizing, bathingin her little river, visited by her friends and undistracted by thefiery lovers of the old time, she shows an unguessed wealth ofmaternal virtue, swift, comprehending sympathy, fortitude, sunnyresignation, and a goodness of heart that has ripened into wisdom.For Flaubert, too, though he was seventeen years her junior, theflamboyance of youth was long since past; in 1862, when thecorrespondence begins, he was firmly settled, a shy, proud, grumpytoiling hermit of forty, in his family seat at Croisset, beginninghis seven years' labor at L'Education Sentimentale, master of hisart, hardening in his convictions, and conscious of increasingestrangement from the spirit of his age. He, with his craving forsympathy, and she, with her inexhaustible supply of it, meet; hepours out his bitterness, she her consolation; and so with equalcandor of self-revelation they beautifully draw out and strengtheneach the other's characteristics, and help one another grow old.
But there is more in these letters than a satisfaction for thebiographical appetite, which, indeed, finds ITS account rather inthe earlier chapters of the correspondents' history. What impressesus here is the banquet spread for the reflective and criticalfaculties in this intercourse of natural antagonists. As M. Faguetobserves in a striking paragraph of his study of Flaubert:
"It is a curious thing, which does honor to them both, that Flaubertand George Sand should have become loving friends towards the end oftheir lives. At the beginning, Flaubert might have been looked uponby George Sand as a furious enemy. Emma [Madame Bovary] is GeorgeSand's heroine with all the poetry turned into ridicule. Flaubertseems to say in every page of his work: 'Do you want to know what isthe real Valentine, the real Indiana, the real Lelia? Here she is,it is Emma Roualt.' 'And do you want to know what becomes of a womanwhose education has consisted in George Sand's books? Here she is,Emma Roualt.' So that the terrible mocker of the bourgeois haswritten a book which is directly inspired by the spirit of the 1840bourgeois. Their recriminations against romantic