Notes on novelists, with some other notes, by Henry James.

I40

NOTES ON NOVELISTS

The letter goes on with the ample flow that was always at the
author's command-an ease of suggestion and generosity, of
beautiful melancholy acceptance, in which we foresee, on her
own horizon, the dawn of new suns. Her simplifications are
delightful-they remained so to the end; her touch is a wondrous sleight-of-hand. The whole of this letter in short is a
splendid utterance and a masterpiece of the shade of sympathy,
not perhaps the clearest, which consists of wishing another to
feel as you feel yourself. To feel as George Sand felt, however,
one had to be, like George Sand, of the true male inwardness;
which poor Musset was far from being. This, we surmise, was
the case with most of her lovers, and the truth that makes the
idea of her liaison with Merimee, who was of a consistent
virility, sound almost like a union against nature. She repeats
to her correspondent, on grounds admirably stated, the injunction that he is to give himself up, to let himself go, to take his
chance. That he took it we all know-he followed her advice
only too well. It is indeed not long before his manner of doing
so draws from her a cry of distress. " Ta conduite est deplorable, impossible. Mon Dieu, a quelle vie vais-je te laisser~.
l'ivresse, le vin, les filles, et encore et toujours! " But apprehensions were now too late; they would have been too late at
the very earliest stage of this celebrated connection.
III
The great difficulty was that, though they were sublime, the
couple were really not serious. But on the other hand if on a
lady's part in such a relation the want of sincerity or of constancy is a grave reproach the matter is a good deal modified
when the lady, as I have mentioned, happens to be-I may not
go so far as to say a gentleman. That George Sand just fell
short of this character was the greatest difficulty of all; because
if a woman, in a love affair, may be-for all she is to gain or to
lose-what she likes, there is only one thing that, to carry it off
with any degree of credit, a man may be. Madame Sand forgot