He cared
only for physical loveliness, he was a great child, who needed nothing
but amusement, emotion and beauty. But George Sand herself felt the
delight of existence. She says of Joy "It is the great uplifter of
men, the great upholder. For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as
a blessing." In all she wrote we feel the rare charm of perfect ease
and naturalness, combined with the cadences of beauty. We never feel
that she is "posing." And yet the author of the bitter attack "Lui et
elle," accused her of continual "posing." Edonard de Musset wrote with
an envenomed pen, (but we must remember he was defending a brother),
in that strange literary duel between him and George Sand. Alfred de
Musset had accused her of assuming the maternal "pose" towards poets
and musicians who adored her, whilst she absorbed their loves and
lives and then deserted them. It is certainly very striking how her
strong vitality seemed to sway and overpower some of those with whom
she came in contact. She was the oak, and the others were the ivy.
When they were torn apart, the oak was scarred but not irreparably
injured, it was the ivy that was destroyed. In, "Elle et Lui," George
Sand claims that hers was a protecting love for the wayward, gifted
child of art, the poet whose ingratitude she bore with, whose nerves
she soothed, and whom she cared for and nursed in illness.
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