Biography of George Sand | Page 5

who used to keep a public-house,
and she was the great-granddaughter of Mere Cloquart.
This double heredity was personified in the two women who shared
George Sand's childish affection. We must therefore study the portraits
of these two women.
The grandmother was, if not a typical grande dame, at least a typical
elegant woman of the latter half of the eighteenth century. She was very
well educated and refined, thanks to living with the two sisters, Mlles.
Verrieres, who were accustomed to the best society. She was a good

musician and sang delightfully. When she married Dupin de Francueil,
her husband was sixty-two, just double her age. But, as she used to say
to her granddaughter, "no one was ever old in those days. It was the
Revolution that brought old age into the world."
Dupin was a very agreeable man. When younger he had been too
agreeable, but now he was just sufficiently so to make his wife very
happy. He was very lavish in his expenditure and lived like a prince, so
that he left Marie-Aurore ruined and poor with about three thousand a
year. She was imbued with the ideas of the philosophers and an enemy
of the Queen's coterie. She was by no means alarmed at the Revolution
and was very soon taken prisoner. She was arrested on the 26th of
November, 1793, and incarcerated in the Couvent des Anglaises, Rue
des Fosse's-Saint-Victor, which had been converted into a detention
house. On leaving prison she settled down at Nohant, an estate she had
recently bought. It was there that her granddaughter remembered her in
her early days. She describes her as tall, slender, fair and always very
calm. At Nohant she had only her maids and her books for company.
When in Paris, she delighted in the society of people of her own station
and of her time, people who had the ideas and airs of former days. She
continued, in this new century, the shades of thought and the manners
and Customs of the old regime.
As a set-off to this woman of race and of culture, Aurore's mother
represented the ordinary type of the woman of the people. She was
small, dark, fiery and violent. She, too, the bird-seller's daughter, had
been imprisoned by the Revolution, and strangely enough in the
Couvent des Anglaises at about the same time as Maurice de Saxe's
granddaughter. It was in this way that the fusion of classes was
understood under the Terror. She was employed as a figurante in a
small theatre. This was merely a commencement for her career. At the
time when Maurice Dupin met her, she was the mistress of an old
general. She already had one child of doubtful parentage. Maurice
Dupin, too, had a natural son, named Hippolyte, so that they could not
reproach each other. When Maurice Dupin married Sophie-Victoire, a
month before the birth of Aurore, he had some difficulty in obtaining
his mother's consent. She finally gave in, as she was of an indulgent

nature. It is possible that Sophie-Victoire's conduct was irreproachable
during her husband's lifetime, but, after his death, she returned to her
former ways. She was nevertheless of religious habits and would not,
upon any account, have missed attending Mass. She was
quick-tempered, jealous and noisy and, when anything annoyed her,
extremely hot-headed. At such times she would shout and storm, so
that the only way to silence her was to shout still more loudly. She
never bore any malice, though, and wished no harm to those she had
insulted. She was of course sentimental, but more passionate than
tender, and she quickly forgot those whom she had loved most fondly.
There seemed to be gaps in her memory and also in her conscience. She
was ignorant, knowing nothing either of literature or of the usages of
society. Her salon was the landing of her flat and her acquaintances
were the neighbours who happened to live next door to her. It is easy to
imagine what she thought of the aristocrats who visited her
mother-in-law. She was amusing when she joked and made parodies on
the women she styled "the old Countesses." She had a great deal of
natural wit, a liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all the
impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry. She was
a good housewife, active, industrious and most clever in turning
everything to account. With a mere nothing she could improvise a dress
or a hat and give it a certain style. She was always most skilful with her
fingers, a typical Parisian work-girl, a daughter of the street and a child
of the people. In our times she would be styled "a midinette."
Such are the two women who shared the affection of Aurore