Chapter XIV

Women of the Nineteenth Century

Among the unusually large number of prominent French women which the nineteenth century produced, possibly not more than a half-dozen names will survive,—Mme. de Stael, George Sand, Rosa Bonheur, Sarah Bernhardt, Mme. Lebrun, and Rachel. This circumstance is, possibly, largely due to the character of the century: its activity, its varied accomplishments, its wide progress along so many lines, its social development, its absolute freedom and tolerance—all of which tended to open a field for women more extensive than in any preceding century.

The salon, in its old-time glory, became a thing of the past; and the passing of this institution lessened, to a large extent, the possibility of great influence on the part of women. In short, the mode of life became, in the nineteenth century, unfavorable to the absolute power exercised by woman in former times. She was now on a level with man, enjoying more privileges and being looked upon more as the equal and possible rival of man. It became necessary for woman to make and establish her own position, whereas, under the old regime, her power and position were established by custom, which regarded her vocation as entirely distinct from that of man. The result was a host of prominent and active women, but few really great ones. Undoubtedly by far the most important and influential was Madame de Stael, but her influence and work are so intimately associated with her life that any account of her which aims at giving a true estimate of her significance must necessarily involve much biography.

Her mother, the Mme. Necker of salon fame, endeavored to bring up her daughter as the chef d'oeuvre of natural art,—pious, modest in her conversation, dignified in her behavior, without pride or frivolity, but with wide knowledge. In this ambition she partly succeeded. At the age of eleven the young girl was present at receptions, where she listened to discussions by such men as Grimm, Buffon, Suard, and others. Her parents took her to the theatre, and she would subsequently compose short stories on what she had heard and seen. Rousseau became her ideal, but she enjoyed all literature, showing an insatiable desire for knowledge. From her early youth to her death, her conversation was ever the result of her own impulse; consequently, it was uncontrolled and lacked the seriousness imparted by deep reflection.

Interested in all things except Nature, which seemed mournful to her, while solitude horrified her, society was her delight. At the age of twenty she wrote: "A woman must have nothing to herself and must find all power in that which she loves." Her masculine ideal was a man of society, of success, a hero of the Academy, a superior genius, animated more by the desire to please than to be useful. During these early years she wrote a great deal, her work being mostly in the form of sentimental utterances, but very little has survived her.

When she reached marriageable age, many ambitions of her parents were frustrated by her independent will. Pitt, Mirabeau, Bonaparte, were considered, but destiny had in store for her a Swedish ambassador, Stael-Holstein, a man of good family, but with little money and plenty of debts, who had been looking out for a comfortable dowry. In 1786, at the time when Marie Antoinette was at the height of her popularity, this girl of twenty years was married to a man seventeen years her senior, who had no affection for her and whom she could not love.

At Paris she immediately opened a salon, which soon eclipsed, both in beauty and wit, that of her mother; there her eloquence, enthusiasm, and conversational gifts captivated all, but her imprudent language, the recklessness of her conduct, her scorn of all etiquette, her outspoken preferences, frightened away women and stunned men. Her sympathy for her friends, Talleyrand, Narbonne, De Montmorency, together with the approaching Revolution, drew her into politics. When her father was called by the nation to the control of its finances, his daughter shared his glories.

Her salon was the centre of the elite and of all literary and political discussions; but as the majority of its frequenters were partisans of the English constitution and expressed their views openly and freely, her enemies became numerous. When Narbonne was made minister of war, a great triumph for her and her party, the eloquence of his reports was attributed to her, and when he fell into disgrace she rescued him. However, the atmosphere of Paris was too unfriendly, so she left in 1792 for her home at Coppet, which became an asylum for all the proscribed. When she visited England, she began a thorough study of its mode of life, its customs, and its parliamentary institutions. Upon her return to Coppet she wrote Reflexions sur le Proces de la Reine, to excite the commiseration of the judges. After the death of her mother in 1794, she devoted her energies to the education of her two boys.

After the violence of her love for Benjamin Constant, who drew her back to politics, was somewhat cooled, she became an ardent Republican, writing her treatise Reflexions sur la Paix adressees a M. Pitt et aux Anglais, which facilitated her return in 1795 to Paris, where she found her husband reinstalled as ambassador. Her hotel in the Rue de Bac was reopened, and she proceeded to form a salon from the debris of society floating about in Paris. It was an assembly of queer characters—elements of the old and new regime, but not at all reconciled, converts of the Jacobin party returning for the first time into society, surrounded by the women of the old regime, using all imaginable efforts and flattery to obtain the rentree of a brother, a son, or a lover; it was composed of the most moderate Revolutionists, of former Constitutionalists, of exiles of the Monarchy, whom she endeavored to bring over to the Republican cause.

Through the influence of Mme. de Stael, the decree of banishment was repealed by the convention, thus opening Paris to Talleyrand. In 1795 appeared her Reflexions sur la Paix Interieure; the aim of that work being to organize the French Republic on the plan of the United States; it strongly opposed the restoration of the Monarchy. The Comite du Salut Publique accused her of double play, of favoring intrigues, and, seeing the plots of the Royalists, she adopted a new plan in her salon; politics being too dangerous, she decided to devote herself more to literature. In her book Les Passions she endeavored to crush her calumniators; she wrote: "Condemned to celebrity, without being able to be known I find need of making myself known by my writings."

It was not safe for her to return to Paris until 1797, when her friend Talleyrand was made minister of foreign affairs. Her efforts to charm Napoleon led only to estrangement, although he appointed her friend Benjamin Constant to the tribunate; but when he publicly announced the advent of the tyrant Napoleon, she was accused of inciting her friends against the government, and was again banished to Coppet, where she wrote the celebrated work De la Litterature Consideree sous ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales, a singular mixture of satirical allusions to Napoleon's government and cabals against his power; in that work she announced, also, her belief in the regeneration of French literature by the influence of foreign literature, and endeavored to show the relations which exist between political institutions and literature. Thus, she was the first to bring the message of a general cosmopolitan relationship of literatures and literary ideas.

In 1802 she returned to Paris and began to show, on every possible occasion, a morbid hatred for Napoleon. When her father published his work Dernieres Vues de Politique et de Finance, expressing a desire to write against the tyranny of one, after having fought so long that of the multitude, the emperor immediately accused Mme. de Stael of instilling these ideas into her father. Her salon and forty of her friends were put into the interdict.

After the death of her husband in 1802, she was free to marry Benjamin Constant; and after refusing him, she wrote her novel Delphine to give vent to her feelings. The two famous lines found in almost every work on Mme. de Stael may be quoted here, as they well express her ideas on marriage: "A man must know how to brave an opinion, and a woman must submit to it." This qualification Benjamin Constant lacked, and at that time she was unable to give the submission.

Her travels in Germany, Russia, and Italy were one great succession of triumphs; by her brilliancy, her wonderful gift of conversation, and her quickness of comprehension, she everywhere baffled and astounded those with whom she conversed. Schiller declared that when she left he felt as though he were just convalescing after a long spell of illness. One day she abruptly asked the staid old philosopher Fichte: "M. Fichte, can you give me, in a short time, an apercu of your system of philosophy, and tell me what you mean by your ego? I find it very obscure." He began by translating his thoughts into French, very deliberately. After talking for some ten minutes, in the midst of a deep argument she interrupted him, crying out: "Enough, M. Fichte, quite enough! I understand you perfectly; I have seen your system in illustration—it is an adventure of Baron Muenchhausen." The philosopher assumed a tragic attitude, and a spell of silence fell upon the audience.

The result of her visit to Italy was her novel Corinne, in which the problems of the destiny of women of genius—the relative joys of love and glory—are discussed. This work remained for a whole generation the standard of love and ideals, and at the same time revealed Italy to the French, After a second visit to Germany, she began to labor seriously on her work on that country, in 1810 going incognito to Paris to have it printed. Ten thousand copies, ready for sale, were destroyed before reaching the public. This work opened the German world to the French; it applied, to a great nation, the doctrine of progress, defending the independence and originality of nations, while endeavoring to show that the future lay in the reciprocal respect of the rights of people, declaring that nations are not at all the arbitrary work of men or the fatal work of circumstances, and that the submission of one people to another is contrary to nature. She wished to make "poor and noble Germany" conscious of its intellectual riches, and to prove that Europe could obtain peace only through the liberation of that country. The censors accused her of lack of patriotism in provoking the Germans to independence, and of questionable taste in praising their literature; consequently, the book was denounced, all the copies obtainable were destroyed, and a vigorous search for the manuscript was undertaken. After this episode, her friends were not permitted to visit her at Coppet.

In 1811 she was secretly married to a young Italian officer, Albert de Rocca, a handsome man of twenty-three—she was then forty-five. In him she realized the conditions which she described in Delphine, namely, a man who braved an opinion and prejudices; and she was ready to submit herself to him, Coppet became the centre for endless pleasures and fetes; Mme. de Stael began to write comedies and to forget Paris entirely. This blissful happiness was suddenly checked by the emperor, who determined to show his displeasure and also to give evidence of his power by banishing Schlegel and exiling Mme. Recamier and De Montmorency, who continued to visit Mme. de Stael. Fear for the safety of her husband and children influenced her to leave for Russia, where the czar ordered all Russians to honor her as the enemy of Napoleon. Indeed, she was everywhere received like a visiting queen.

In the autumn of 1816 she returned to Paris, and spent a number of months very happily in her old style—in the society of the salon. Though devoured by insomnia, enervated by the use of opium, and besieged by fear of death, she accepted all invitations, and kept open house herself, receiving in the morning, at dinner, and in the evening; and though at night she paced the floor for hours or tossed about on her bed until morning, she was yet fresh for all the pleasures of the next day. But this mode of existence was undermining her health.

She endured this constant strain until one evening in February, 1817, when, at a ball at the Duke of Decazes's, in the midst of her pleasure, she was stricken with paralysis. At the Rue des Mathurins, she had all her friends come and dine with her. Chateaubriand, who was one of the party, entered her room upon one occasion and found her suffering intensely, but able to raise herself and say: "Bonjour, my dear Francis! I am suffering, but that does not hinder me from loving you." She lingered until July, when there ended a life which not only influenced but even modified politics and the institutions of nations, which exercised, by writings, an incalculable influence upon French literature, opening paths which previously had not been trod.

The most important of her works is De l'Allemagne, in writing which her only desire was to make Germany known to the French, to explain it by comparison with France and to make her people admire it, and to open new paths to poetry. According to her, Germany possessed no classic prose, because the Germans attributed less importance to style than did the French. German poetry, however, had a distinct charm, being all sentiment and poetry of the soul, touching and penetrating; whereas French poetry was all esprit, eloquence, reason, raillery.

In her treatise on the drama, she was the first in French literature to use the term "romantic" and to define it; but she had not invented the word, Wieland having used it to designate the country in which the ancient Roman literature flourished. Her definition was: "The classic word is sometimes taken as a synonym of perfection. I use it in another acceptance by considering classic poetry that of the ancients and romantic poetry that which holds in some way to the chivalresque traditions. The literature of the ancients is a transplanted literature with us; but romantic or chivalresque literature is indigenous. An imitation of works coming from a political, social, and religious midst different from ours means a literature which is no longer in relation with us, which has never been popular, and which will become less so every day. On the contrary, the romantic literature is the only one which is susceptible of being perfected, because it bears its roots from our soil and is, consequently, the only one which can be revived and increased. It expresses our religion and recalls our history." This opinion alone was enough to create a revolt among her contemporaries. Almost all other interpretations of Faust were based on her conception.

At the time of its publication, her book was considered to have been written in a political spirit, but her motive was far from that; it was the action of a generous heart, a book as true and loyal to the French as was ever a book written by a Frenchman. In her work Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise she expressed the most advanced ideas on politics and government. The Revolution freed France and made it prosper; "every absolute monarch enslaves his country, and freedom reigns not in politics nor in the arts and sciences. Local and provincial liberties have formed nations, but royalty has deformed the nation by turning it to profit." Mme. de Stael found nothing to admire in Louis XIV., and to Richelieu she attributed the destruction of the originality of the French character, of its loyalty, candor, and independence. In that work she advocated education, which she considered a duty of the government to the people. "Schools must be established for the education of the poor, universities for the study of all languages, literatures, and sciences;" these ideas took root after her death.

Mme. de Stael was a finished writer; because of its force, openness, and seriousness, her style might be termed a masculine one; she wrote to persuade and, as a rule, succeeded. Her grave defect seemed to be in her inspirations, which were always superior to her ideas, and in her sentiments, which she invariably turned to passions.

Few French writers have exercised such a great influence in so many directions, and it became specially marked after her death; while living, the gossip against her salon prevented her opinions from being accepted or taking root. Her political influence was great at her time and lasted some twenty years. Directly influenced by her were Narbonne, De Montmorency, Benjamin Constant, and the Duc Victor de Broglie, her son-in-law. By her and her father, the Globe, the orators of the Academy and the tribune, and the politicians of the day, were inspired. The greatest was Guizot, who interpreted and preached in the spirit of Mme. de Stael. In history her influence was equally felt, especially in Guizot's Essays on the History of France, and in his History of Civilization, wherein civilization was considered as the constant progress in justice, in society, and in the state. To her Guizot owed his idea of Amour dans le Mariage. The Historical Essays on England, by Remusat, an ardent admirer of hers, was largely influenced by her Considerations, while Tocqueville's Ancien Regime contains many of her ideas.

Literature owes even more to her works, which encouraged the study of foreign literatures; almost all translations were due to her works. Michelet, Quinet, Nodier, Victor Hugo, so much influenced by German literature, owe their knowledge of it mainly to her. Too much credit may be given her when it is stated that all Mignons, Marguerites, Mephistopheles, etc., proceeded indirectly from her work, as well as nearly all descriptions of travels. Lamartine undoubtedly used her De l'Allemagne and her Des Passions freely. The heroine of Jocelyn is called but a daughter of Delphine, and the same author's terrible invective against Napoleon was inspired by her.

Mme. de Stael had an indestructible faith in human reason, liberty, and justice; she believed in human perfection and in the hope of progress. "From Rousseau, she received that passionate tenderness, that confidence in the inherent goodness of man. Believing in an intimate communion of man with God, her religion was spirit and sentiment which had no need of pomp or symbols, of an intermediary between God and man." She was not so much a great writer as she was a great thinker, or rather a discoverer of new thoughts. By instituting a new criticism and by opening new literatures to the French, she succeeded in emancipating art from fixed rules and in facilitating the sudden growth of romanticism in France.

In her life, her great desire was to spread happiness and to obtain it, to love and to be loved in return. In politics it was always the sentiment of justice which appealed to her, in literature it was the ideal. Sincerity was manifested in everything she said and did. Pity for the misery of her fellow beings, the sentiment of the dignity of man and his right to independence, of his future grandeur founded on his moral elevation, the cult of justice, and the love of liberty—such were the prevailing thoughts of her life and works.

Mme. de Stael's chief influence will always remain in the domain of literature; she was the first French writer to introduce and exercise a European or cosmopolitan influence by uniting the literatures of the north and the south and clearly defining the distinction between them. By the expression of her idea that French literature had decayed on account of the exclusive social spirit, and that its only means of regeneration lay in the study and absorption of new models, she cut French taste loose from traditions and freed literature from superannuated conventionalities. Also, by her idea that a common civilization must be fostered, a union of the eastern and western ideals, and that literature must be the common expression thereof, whose object must be the amelioration of humanity, morally and religiously, she gave to the world at large ideas which are only now being fully appreciated and nearing realization. In her novels she vigorously protested against the lot of woman in modern society, against her obligation to submit everything to opinion, against the innumerable obstacles in the way of her development—thus heralding George Sand and the general movement toward woman's emancipation. France has never had a more forceful, energetic, influential, cosmopolitan, and at the same time moral, writer than Mme. de Stael.

The events in the life of George Sand had comparatively little influence upon her works, which were mainly the expression of her nature. As a young girl, she was strongly influenced by her mother, an amiable but rather frivolous woman, and by her grandmother, a serious, cold, ceremonious old lady. Calm and well balanced, and possessing an ardent imagination, she followed her own inclinations when, as a girl of sixteen, she was married to a man for whom she had no love. After living an indifferent sort of life with her husband for ten years, they separated; and she, with her children, went to Paris to find work.

After a number of unsuccessful efforts of a literary nature, she wrote Indiana, which immediately made her success. Her articles were sought by the journals, and from about 1830 her life was that of the average artist and writer of the time. Her relations with Chopin and Alfred de Musset are too well known to require repetition. After 1850 she retired to her home, the Chateau de Nohant, where she enjoyed the companionship of her son, her daughter-in-law, and her grandchildren; she died there in 1876.

To appreciate her works, it is more important to study her nature than her career. This has been admirably done by the Comte d'Haussonville. George Sand is said to have possessed a dual nature, which seemed to contradict itself, but which explains her works—a dreamy and meditative, and a lively, frolicsome nature; the first might throw light upon her religious crisis, the second, upon her social side. The combination of these two phases caused the numerous conflicts of opinions and doctrines, extending her knowledge and inciting her curiosity; the not infrequent result was an intellectual and moral bewilderment and the deepest melancholy, from which she with great difficulty freed herself. Because of these peculiarities she was constantly agitated, her strongly reflective nature keeping her awake to all important questions of the day.

Her intellectual development may be traced in her works, which, from 1830 to 1840, were personal, lyrical, spontaneous—a direct flow from inspiration, issuing from a common source of emotions and personal sorrows, being the expressions of her habitual reflections, of her moral agitations, of her real and imaginary sufferings. These first works were a protest against the tyranny of marriage, and expressed her conception of a woman in love—a love profound and naive, exalted and sincere, passionate and chaste: such is pictured in Indiana. In Valentine she portrays the impious and unfortunate marriage that the sacrilegious conventions of the world have imposed, and the results issuing therefrom. In all of these early works are seen an inventiveness, a lively allure, an exquisite style, a freshness and brilliancy, finesse and grace; but they show an undisciplined talent, giving vent to feelings that her unbounded enthusiasm would not allow to be checked—there is emotion, but no system.

In her second period, from about 1840 to 1848, her reflection and emotion combined produced a system and theories. The higher problems took stronger hold on her as she matured; philosophy and religious science in their deeper phases excited her emotive faculties, which threw out a mere echo of what she had heard and studied. Her inspiration thus came from without, throwing out those endless declamatory outbursts which we meet in Consuelo and in Comtesse de Rudolstadt. These theory-novels were soon followed by novels dealing with social problems, now and then relieved by delightful idyllics such as La Mare au Diable and Francois le Champi. This third tendency M. d'Haussonville considers the least successful.

After 1850 there appeared from her pen a series of historical novels, especially fine in the portrayal of characters, variety of situations, movement, and intrigues; these are free from all social theories; in these, reverting to her first tendencies, she is at her best in elegance and clearness, in analysis of characters. Thus does the work of George Sand change from a personal lyricism, in which the emotions, held in check during a solitary and dreamy youth, burst forth in brilliant and passionate fiction, to a theoretical, systematic novel, finally reverting to the first efforts, but tempered by experience and age.

M. d'Haussonville says that in the strict sense of the word George Sand had no doctrines, but possessed a powerful imagination that manifested itself at various periods of her life. Whatever the principles might have been at first, they were made concrete under a sentiment with her, for her heart was her first inspiration, her teacher in all things. The ideas are thus analyzed through her sentiments under a threefold inspiration,—love, passion for humanity, sentiment for Nature.

According to other novels, love is the unique affair of life; without love we do not really live, before love enters life we do not live, and after we cease to love there is no object in life. This love comes directly from God, of whom George Sand had ideas peculiar to herself. The majority of her characters have a sort of mystic, exalted love, looking upon it as a sacred right, making of themselves great priests rather than genuine human lovers. This love, issuing from God, is sacred; therefore, the yielding to it is a pious act; he who resists commits sacrilege, while he who blames others for it is impious; for love legitimizes itself by itself. Such a theory naturally led her to a sensual ideality, and her heroes rose to the highest phase of fatalism and voluptuousness; this impelled her to protest against the social laws. Jacques says:

"I do not doubt at all that marriage will be abolished if humankind makes any progress toward justice and reason; a bond more human and none the less sacred will replace this one and will take care of the children which may issue from a man and woman, without ever interfering with the liberty of either. But men are too coarse and women are too cowardly to ask for a law more noble than the iron law which binds them—beings without conscience—and virtue must be burdened with heavy chains."

Yet, in none of her books did George Sand ever submit any theories as to how such children would be cared for; apparently, such a difficulty never troubled her, since almost all of the children of her books die of some disease, while to one—Jacques—she gives the advice to take his own life, so that his wife may be free to love elsewhere.

Her social theories are marked by an exaltation of sentiment, a weakness, an incoherency in conception, caused by her ardent love for theories and ideas, but which, in her passionate sentiment and her loyal enthusiasm, she always confounds and confuses. From early youth she manifested an immense goodness, a profound tenderness, and a deep compassion for human misery. She rarely became angry, even though she suffered cruelly. Her own law of life and her message to the world was—be good. The only strong element within her, she said, was the need of loving, which manifested itself under the form of tenderness and emotion, devotion and religious ecstasy; and when this faith was shaken, doubt and social disturbances overwhelmed her.

Throughout life her consolation was Nature. "It was half of her genius and the surest of her inspirations." No other French novelist has been able to "express in words the lights and shades, harmonies and contrasts, the magic of sounds, the symphonies of color, the depth and distances of the woods, the infinite movement of the sea and the sky—the interior soul of Nature, that vibrates in everything and everybody." With Lamartine and Michelet, she has best reflected and expressed the dreams and hopes and loves of the first half of the nineteenth century.

George Sand saw Nature, lived in her, sympathized with her, and loved her as did few other French writers; therefore, she showed more memory than pure imagination in her work, for she always found Nature more beautiful in actuality than she could picture her mentally, while other great writers, like Lamartine, saw her less beautiful in reality than in their imagination; hence, they were disappointed in Nature, while for George Sand she was the truest friend. The world will always be interested in her descriptions of Nature, because with Nature she always associated something of human life—a thought or a sentiment; her landscapes belonged to her characters—there is always a soul living in them, for, to George Sand, man and Nature were inseparable.

Thus, every novel of this authoress consists of a situation and a landscape, the poetic union of which nothing can mar. "Man associated with Nature and Nature with man is a great law of art; no painter has practised it with instinct more delicate or sure." Because Nature, in her early youth, was her inspiration, guide, even her God, she returned to her later in life. M. Jules Lemaitre wrote that her works will remain eternally beautiful, because they teach us how to love Nature as divine and good, and to find in that love peace and solace. There are many parts of her work which show as detailed, accurate, and realistic descriptions as those by Balzac. She constantly employed two elements—the fanciful and the realistic.

George Sand never studied or knew how to compose a work, how to preserve the unity of the subject or the unity in tone in characters; hence, there was nothing calculated or premeditated—everything was spontaneous. No preparation of plan did she ever think of—a mode of procedure which naturally resulted in a negligent style and caused the composition to drag. Her inspiration seemed to go so far, then she resorted to her imagination, to the chimerical, forcing events and characters. "There are many defects in the style—such as the sentimental part, the romanesque in the violent expression of sentiments or invention of situations, the exaggerated improbabilities of events, the excessive declamation; but how many compensating qualities are there to offset these defects!"

Her method of writing was very simple. It was the love of writing that impelled her, almost without premeditation, to put into words her dreams, meditations, and chimeras under concrete and living forms. Yet, by the largeness of her sympathy and the ardor of her passions, by the abundant inventions of stories, and by the harmonious word-flow, she deserves to be ranked among the greatest writers of France. Her career, taken as a whole, is one of prodigious fecundity—a literary life that has "enchanted by its fictions or troubled by its dreams" four or five generations. Never diminishing in quality or inspiration, there are surprises in every new work.

No doubt George Sand has, for a generation or more, been somewhat forgotten, but what great writer has not shared the same fate? When the materialistic age has passed away, many famous writers of the past will be resurrected, and with them George Sand; for her novels, although written to please and entertain, discuss questions of religion, philosophy, morality, problems of the heart, conscience, and education,—and this is done in such a dramatic way that one feels all to be true. More than that, her characters are all capable of carrying out, to the end, a common moral and general theme with eloquence seldom found in novels.

An interesting comparison might be made between Mme. de Stael and George Sand, the two greatest women writers of France. Both wrote from their experience of life, and fought passionately against the prejudices and restrictions of social conventions; both were ideal natures and were severely tried in the school of life, profiting by their experiences; both possessed highly sensitive natures, and suffered much; both were keenly enthusiastic and sympathetic, with pardonable weaknesses; both lived through tragic wars; both evinced a dislike for the commonplace and strove for greater freedom, but for different publics, after unhappy marriages, both rose up as accusers against the prevalent system of marrying young girls. But Mme. de Stael was a virtuoso in conversation, a salon queen, and her happiness was to be found in society alone; while George Sand found her happiness in communion with Nature. This explains the two natures, their sufferings, their joys, their writings.

The greatest punishment ever inflicted upon Mme. de Stael was her exile, for it deprived her of her social life, a fact of which the emperor was well aware. Her entire literary effort was directed to describing her social life and the relation of society to life. "She belongs to the moralists and to the writers who wrote of society and man—social psychologists." Not poetic or artistic by nature, but with an exceptional power of observation, she shows on every side the influence of a pedagogical, literary, and social training; she was the product of an artificial culture.

George Sand, on the contrary, was a product of Nature, reared in free intercourse and unrestrained relation with her genius and Nature. A powerful passion and a mighty fantasy made of her a poetess and an artist. These two qualities were manifested in her intense and deep feeling for the beauty of Nature, in her power of invention, in a harmonious equilibrium between idealism and realism. Her fantasy overbalanced her reason, impeding its development and thus relegating it to a secondary role. "She is possibly the only French writer who possessed no esprit (in the sense that it is used in French society)—that playful, epigrammatic, querulous wit of conversation."

She never enjoyed communion with others for any length of time, or the companionship of anyone for a long period; the companions of which she never tired were the fields and woods, birds and dogs; therefore, she enjoyed those people most who were nearer her ideals, the peasants and workmen, and these she best describes. Thus, her whole creation is one of instinct rather than of reason, as it was with Mme. de Stael. George Sand was a genius, a master-product of Nature, while Mme. de Stael was a talent, a consummate work of the art of modern culture; she reflects, while George Sand creates from impulse; the latter was a true poetess, communing with Nature, while the banker's daughter was an observing thinker, communicating with society—but both were great writers.

Intimately associated with George Sand is Rosa Bonheur, in all of whose canvases we find the same aim, the same spirit, the same message, that are found in so many of the novels of George Sand. They were two women who have contributed, through different branches, masterworks that will be enjoyed and appreciated at all times. "It would be difficult not to speak of La Mare au Diable and the Meunier d'Angibault when recalling the fields where Rosa Bonheur speeds the plow or places the oxen lowering their patient heads under the yoke."

In the evening, at home, while other members of the family were at work, one member read aloud to the rest; and George Sand was a favorite author with the Bonheur group of artists. It was while reading La Mare au Diable that Rosa conceived the idea of the work which by some critics is pronounced her masterpiece, Plowing in Nivernais. The artist's deep sympathy was aroused by her love of Nature, which no contemporary novelist expressed or appreciated as did George Sand. In all her works, and throughout the long life of the artist, there is absolutely nothing unhealthy or immoral to be found. The novelist had theories which were inspired by her passion, and these became unhealthy at times; she belongs first of all to France, while Rosa Bonheur belongs first of all to the world, her message reaching the young and old of every clime and every people. The novelist is to be associated with the artist by virtue of her exquisite, simple, and wholesome peasant stories.

The entire Bonheur family were artists, and all were moral and genuinely sympathetic. As a young girl, Rosa manifested an intense love for Nature, sunshine, and the woods; always independent in manners, she used to caricature her teachers; and while walking out into the country, she would draw, with charcoal or in sand, any objects that met her eye. Her father was not long in detecting her talent. She was wedded to her art from the very beginning, showing no taste for or interest in any other subject. As soon as her father gave permission to follow art as a profession, she devoted all her energy to advancing herself in what she felt to be her life's work. For four years the young girl could be seen every day at the Louvre, copying the great masters and receiving principally from them her ideas of coloring and harmony, while from her father she learned her technique. After she had mastered these two principles, she decided to specialize in pastoral nature.

From that time her whole life was given up to the study of Nature and animals. Not able to study those near by, she procured a fine Beauvais sheep, which served as her model for two years. From the very first her work showed accuracy, purity, and an intuitive perception of Nature, and these qualities soon placed her among the foremost artists of the time. Her struggle for reputation and glory was not a long and arduous one, for after 1845 her fame was established—she was then but twenty-three years old; and after 1849, having exhibited some thirty pictures, her reputation had become European.

In order to be able to study her models with greater ease and freedom from the annoyance and coarse incivilities of the workmen at the slaughter houses, farmyards, and markets that she was in the habit of visiting, she adopted the garb of man.

Her honors in life were many, though always unsought. The Empress Eugenie, while regent during the absence of Napoleon III., went in person to her chateau and put around her neck the ribbon of the decoration of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, then for the first time bestowed upon woman for merit other than bravery and charity. The Emperor Maximilian of Mexico conferred upon her the decoration of San Carlos; the King of Belgium created her a chevalier of his order, the first honor won by a woman; the King of Spain made her a Commander of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic; and President Carnot created her an Officer of the Legion of Honor.

With qualities such as she possessed, Rosa Bonheur could not fail to attain immortality. Her success was due in no small degree to the scientific instruction which she received when a mere child; having been taught, from the very first, how to paint directly from a model, she supplemented this training by a period of four years of copying great masters. In the latter period she studied Paul Potter's work rather slavishly, but was individual enough to combine only the best in him with the best in herself; this gave her an originality such as possibly no other animal painter ever possessed—-not even Landseer, who is said to be "stronger in telling the story than in the manner of telling it."

Rosa Bonheur was too independent and original to follow any particular school or master, for her only inspiration and guide were her models, always living near by and upon intimate terms with her. Thus, in all her paintings, we instinctively feel that she painted from conviction, from her own observation, nothing being added for mere artistic effect. To some extent her pictures impress one as a perfect French poem in which there is no superfluous word, in which no word could be changed without destroying the effect of the whole; thus, in her paintings there is not a superfluous brush stroke; everything is necessary to the telling of the story; but she excels the perfect poem, for, in French literature, it seldom has a message distinct from its technique, while her pictures breathe the very essence of sympathy, love, and life. We feel that she thoroughly knew her subjects as a connoisseur; but her animals do not impress one as the production of an artist who knew them as do horse traders and cattle dealers, who know their stock from the purely physical standpoint; the animals of this artist are from the brush of one who was familiar with their habits, who loved them, had lived with and studied them—who knew and appreciated their higher qualities. Rosa Bonheur most harmoniously united two essential elements in art—a scientific as well as sympathetic conception of her subject. Possibly this is the reason that her pictures appeal to animal lovers throughout the world.

As was stated, she was independent, hence kept aloof from the corruptions of contemporary French art and its technique lovers, always pursuing an even tenor in her art and never permitting one of her pictures to leave her studio in a crude or unfinished state. In all her long career she kept her original sketches, never parting with one, in spite of the most tempting offers; and this explains the fact that the work of her later years exhibits the freshness and other qualities of that of her youth. Thus, her art has gained by her experience, even though her best work was done between about 1848 and 1860, and is especially marked by its excellence in composition, the anatomy, the breadth of touch, the harmony of coloring, and the action, although it is said to lack the spontaneity, the originality, and the highly imaginative quality which are at their best in The Horse Fair; the same qualities seem to have been possessed by many of her contemporaries, such as Troyon.

Notwithstanding these apparent defects, Rosa Bonheur stands for something higher in art than do most of her contemporaries. She was not influenced by the skilled and often corrupt technicians; she perfected her technique by study of the old masters and learned her art from Nature; wisely keeping free from the ornamental, gorgeous, and highly imaginative and exaggerated historical Romantic school, in French art she stands out almost alone with Millet. Whatever may be said of the more virile and masculine art of other great animal painters, Rosa Bonheur, by her truthfulness, her science, her close association and intimate communion with her animal world, by the glad and healthy vigor which her paintings breathe, has taught the world the great lesson that there are intelligence, will, love, and even soul, in animals.

Her art and life inspired respect and admiration; we have nothing to regret, nothing to conceal; we desire to love her for her animals, and we must esteem her for her grand devotion to her art and family, for her purity and charity, for her kindness to and love for those in the lower walks of life, for her goodness and honesty. An illustration of the last quality may be taken from her dealings with art collectors. After having offered her Horse Fair, which she desired should remain in France, to her own town for twelve thousand francs, she sold it for forty thousand francs to Mr. Gambert, but with the condition which she thus expressed: "I am grateful for your giving me such a noble price, but I do not like to feel that I have taken advantage of your liberality. Let us see how we can combine matters. You will not be able to have an engraving made from so large a canvas; suppose I paint you a small one of the same subject, of which I will make you a present." Naturally, the gift was accepted, and the smaller canvas now hangs in the National Gallery of London.

In all her dealings she showed this kindness and uprightness, sympathy and honesty. Although numberless orders were constantly coming to her, she never let them hurry her in her work. She was, possibly, the highest and noblest type—certainly among great French women—of that strong and solid virtue which constitutes the backbone and the very essence of French national strength. The reputation of Rosa Bonheur has never been blemished by the least touch of petty jealousy, hatred, envy, vanity, or pride—and, among all great French women, she is one of the few of whom this may be said. She won for herself and her noble art the genuine and lasting sympathy of the world at large.

The only woman artist in France deserving a place beside Rosa Bonheur belongs properly under the reign of Louis XVI., although she lived almost to the middle of the nineteenth century. At the age of twenty, Mme. Lebrun was already famous as the leading portrait painter; this was during the most popular period of Marie Antoinette—1775 to 1785. In 1775, but a young girl, admitted to all the sessions of the Academy as recognition of her portraits of La Bruyere and Cardinal Fleury, she made her life unhappy and gave her art a serious blow by consenting to marry the then great art critic and collector of art, Lebrun. His passion for gambling and women ruined her fortune and almost ended her career as an artist. Her own conduct was not irreproachable.

Mme. Lebrun will be remembered principally as the great painter of Marie Antoinette, who posed for her more than twenty times. The most prominent people of Europe eagerly sought her work, while socially she was welcomed everywhere. Her famous suppers and entertainments in her modestly furnished hotel, at which Garat sang, Gretry played the piano, and Viotti and Prince Henry of Prussia assisted, were the events of the day. Her reputation as a painter of the great ladies and gentlemen of nobility, and her entertainments, naturally associated her with the nobility; hence, she shared their unpopularity at the outbreak of the Revolution and left France.

It is doubtful whether any artist—certainly no French artist—ever received more attention and honors, or was made a member of so many art academies, than Mme. Lebrun. It would be difficult to make any comparison between her and Rosa Bonheur, their respective spheres of art being so different. Only the future will speak as to the relative positions of each in French art.

In the domain of the dramatic art of the nineteenth century, two women have made their names well known throughout Europe and America,—Rachel, and Sarah Bernhardt, both tragediennes and both daughters of Israel. While Rachel was, without question, the greatest tragedienne that France ever produced, excelling Bernhardt in deep tragic force, she yet lacked many qualities which our contemporary possesses in a high degree. She had constantly to contend with a cruel fate and a wicked, grasping nature, which brought her to an early grave. The wretched slave of her greedy and rapacious father and managers, who cared for her only in so far as she enriched them by her genius and popularity, hers was a miserable existence, which detracted from her acting, checked her development, and finally undermined her health.

After her critical period of apprenticeship was successfully passed and she was free to govern herself, she rose to be queen of the French stage—a position which she held for eighteen years, during which she was worshipped and petted by the whole world. As a social leader, she was received and made much of by the great ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Her taste in dress was exquisite in its simplicity, being in perfect harmony with the reserved, retiring, and amiable actress herself.

Possibly no actress, singer, or other public woman ever received such homage and general recognition. With all her great qualities as an actress, vigor, grandeur, wild, savage energy, superb articulation, irreproachable diction, and a marvellous sense of situations, she lacked the one quality which we miss in Sarah Bernhardt also—a true tenderness and compassion. As a tragedienne she can be compared to Talma only. Her greed for money soon ended her brilliant career; unlike her sister in art, she amassed a fortune, leaving over one million five hundred thousand francs.

Compared with Bernhardt, Rachel is said to have been the greater in pure tragedy, but she did not possess as many arts of fascination. There are many points of similarity between the two actresses: Rachel was at times artificial, wanting in tenderness and depth, while at times she was superhuman in her passion and emotion, and often put more into her role than was intended; and the acting of Sarah Bernhardt has the same characteristics. Rachel, however, was much more subject to moods and fits of inspiration than is Bernhardt—especially was she incapable of acting at her best on evenings of her first appearance in a new role. Her critical power was very weak in comparison with her intellectual power, the reverse being true of her modern rival. Rachel's greatest inspiration was Phedre, and in this role Bernhardt "is weak, unequal. We see all the viciousness in Phedre and none of her grandeur. She breaks herself to pieces against the huge difficulties of the conception and does not succeed in moving us.... Rachel was the mouthpiece of the gods; no longer a free agent, she poured forth every epithet of adoration that Aphrodite could suggest, clambering up higher and higher in the intensity of her emotions, whilst her audience hung breathless, riveted on every word, and dared to burst forth in thunders of applause only after she had vanished from their sight."

Both of these artists were children of the lower class, and struggled with a fate which required grit, tenacity, and determination to win success. The artist of to-day is no social leader—"never the companion of man, but his slave or his despot." It is entirely her physical charms and the outward or artificial requisites of her art that make her what she is. According to Mr. Lynch, her tragedy "is but one of disorder, fury, and folly—passions not deep, but unbridled and hysterical in their intensest display. Her forte lies in the ornate and elaborate exhibition of roles," for which she creates the most capricious and fantastic garbs. She is a great manager,—omitting the financial part,—quite a writer, somewhat of a painter and sculptor, throwing her money away, except to her creditors, adored by some and execrated by others. Her care of her physical self and her utter disregard for money have undoubtedly contributed to her long and brilliant career; rest and idleness are her most cruel punishments. All nervous energy, never happy, restless, she is a true fin de siecle product.

Among the large number of women who wielded influence in the nineteenth century, either through their salons or through their works, Mme. Guizot was one of the most important as the author of treatises on education and as a moralist. As an intimate friend of Suard, she was placed, as a contributor, on the Publiciste, and for ten years wrote articles on morality, society, and literature which showed a varied talent, much depth, and justness. Fond of polemics, she never failed to attack men like La Harpe, De Bonald, etc., thus making herself felt as an influence to be reckoned with in matters literary and moral.

As Mme. Guizot, she naturally had a powerful influence upon her husband, shaping his thoughts and theories, for she immediately espoused his principles and interests. In 1821, at the age of forty-eight, she began her literary work again, after a period of rest, writing novels in which the maternal love and the ardent and pious sentiments of a woman married late in life are reflected. In her theories of education she showed a highly practical spirit. Sainte-Beuve said that, next to Mme. de Stael, "she was the woman endowed with the most sagacity and intelligence; the sentiment that she inspires is that of respect and esteem—and these terms can only do her justice."

Mme. de Duras, in her salon, represented the Restoration, "by a composite of aristocracy and affability, of brilliant wit and seriousness, semi-liberal and somewhat progressive." Her credit lies in the fact that, by her keen wit, she kept in harmony a heterogeneous mixture of social life. She wrote a number of novels, which are, for the most part, "a mere delicate and discreet expression of her interior life."

Mme. Ackermann, German in her entire makeup, was, among French female writers, one of the deepest thinkers of the nineteenth century. A true mystic, she was, from early youth, filled with ardent, dreamy vagaries, to which she gave expression in verse—poems which reflect a pessimism which is rather the expression of her life's experiences, and of twenty-four years of solitude after two years of happy wedded state, than an actual depression and a discouraging philosophy of life. Her poetry shows a vigor, depth, precision of form, and strength of expression seldom found in poetry of French women.

One of the most conspicuous figures in the latter half of the nineteenth century is Mme. Adam,—Juliette Lamber,—an unusual woman in every respect. In 1879 she founded the Nouvelle Revue, on the plan of the Revue des Deux Mondes, for which she wrote political and literary articles which showed much talent. In politics she is a Republican and something of a socialist, a somewhat sensational—but modestly sensational—figure. She has been called "a necessary continuator of George Sand." Her salon was the great centre for all Republicans and one of the most brilliant and important of this century. In literature her name is connected with the movement called neo-Hellenism, the aim of which seems to have been to inspire a love and sympathy for the art, religion, and literature of ancient and modern Greece. In her works she shows a deep insight into Greek life and art. Her name will always be connected with the Republican movement in France; as a salon leader, femme de lettres, journalist, and female politician, no woman is better known in France in the nineteenth century.

A woman who might be called the rival of Mme. Adam, but whose activity occurred much earlier in the century, was Mme. Emile de Girardin,—Delphine Gay,—who ruled, at least for a short time, the social and literary world of Paris at her hotel in the Rue Chaillot. Her very early precocity, combined with her rare beauty, made her famous. In 1836, after having written a number of poems which showed a weak sentimentality and a quite mannered emotion, she founded the Courrier Francais, for which she wrote articles on the questions of the day—effusions which were written upon the spur of the moment and were very unreliable. Her dramas were hardly successful, although they were played by the great Rachel. Her present claim to fame is based upon the brilliancy of her salon.

The future will possibly remember Mme. Alphonse Daudet more as the wife of the great Daudet than as a writer, although, according to M. Jules Lemaitre, she possessed the gift of ecriture artiste to a remarkable degree. According to him, sureness and exactness and a striking truth of impressions are her characteristics as a writer. She exercised a most wholesome power over Alphonse Daudet, taking him away from bad influences, giving him a home, dignity, and happiness, and saving him from brutality and pessimism; she was his guardian and censor; she preserved his grace and noble sentiments. The nature of her relations to him should ensure the preservation of her name to posterity.

We are accustomed to give Gyp—Sybille Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de Riquetti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville—little credit for seriousness or morality, associating her with the average brilliant, flippant novelists, who write because they possess the knack of writing in a brilliant style. Her object is to show that man, in a civilized state in society, is vain, coarse, and ridiculous. She paints Parisian society to demonstrate that the apparently fortunate ones of the world are not to be envied, that they are miserable in their so-called joys and ridiculous in their pleasures and their elegance. She has described the most risque situations and the most delightful women, but she gives us to understand that the latter are not to be loved. The vanity of the social world might be called her text.

Mme. Blanc—Therese de Solms—is known to us to-day as the first woman to reveal English and American authors and habits to her contemporaries. By advocating American customs she has done much to ameliorate the condition of French girls, by giving them a freer intercourse with young men and permitting them to see more of the world before entering upon married life.

Mme. Greville, who died recently, deserves a place among the prominent women writers of France. No femme de lettres ever received more honors, prizes, and decorations than she; a number of her writings were crowned by the Academy. A member of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, with all her literary work she was a domestic woman, keeping aloof from all feminist movements. Her husband, Professor Durand, to show his esteem and admiration for her, adopted her name—a wise act, for it may preserve his name with that of his talented wife.

Many other names might be cited, but, as the list of prominent women is practically without end, owing to the indefiniteness of the term "prominent," we shall close with these names, which have become familiar in both continents.

THE END