The Dream Lover (30 page)

Oftentimes, on those nights that degenerated in such a fashion,
I would slip away to go into the little room on the ground floor that I had created for myself for times when I wanted to be alone. It was there that I had my books and my herbals, my butterflies and my small collection of rocks. There was no bed, but I hung a hammock in which I could rest and dream.

In that little room, on the drop leaf of a little chiffonier that had belonged to my grandmother, I began writing again, too. What I produced was ill-formed and undisciplined and usually quite sentimental. But it showed me that writing could lift me out of my surroundings entirely and into a rarefied place of peace, one that was not subject to the weather in another's soul.

On the whole, things were going very badly between Casimir and me. One rainy afternoon, full of despair, I had tried writing to a friend about Casimir's and my problems. “Lately,” I confided, “his affections, such as they are, are wasted on me. So early in our marriage, it seems too late for everything. It is as if we are two vessels in a sea of fog, not sure if its lifting would reveal anything more promising than the gray we have grown accustomed to.”

But, afraid that if I sent that letter, the sentiments expressed therein would become realer and more constant, I burned it. Then I proceeded to the garden, where Casimir was brusquely ordering workmen about. I stood beside him for some time before he turned and asked me what I wanted. The words were in my mouth:
To find you. To share again the simple joy we knew
. But when I spoke, it was only to say, “Luncheon is served.” And he refused me, saying he was not hungry. Not at all.

I sat alone at the table and was offered food by servants whose pity for me was nearly palpable. I spooned in mouthfuls of a soup I could not taste, feeling a terrible erosion of confidence, then pushed myself away from my meal to go to Casimir's and my bedroom. There, sitting in a chair by the window and watching my husband outside, I did the only thing I thought I could do: I made a pledge to try harder. I couldn't be sure that most—if not all—of our problems weren't my fault. It was true I had endured some cruelty from
my husband, but I had also conveniently overlooked my bad behavior toward him. For I was my mother's daughter, and when I wanted to, I could use my intellect and sharp tongue to cut Casimir; and at such times I did so with a devil's pleasure.

Spring 1824

NOHANT

E
arly on in the marriage, Casimir had procured for me a new piano, which we could ill afford, and I had looked upon it as a great act of love. I loved music, and thanks to my grandmother's tutelage, I played well. I also knew a great deal about harmony and theory. I played regularly in the evenings, and I thought that my husband enjoyed it. When I played for friends who visited, they complimented me enhusiastically.

But then, in an odd turn, Casimir began abruptly leaving the room whenever I began playing the piano. I knew that his turning away from me then had to do with something other than notes upon the page. Nonetheless, for him and for the sake of our marriage, I gave up my music, which caused me great pain.

And that was not the only thing troubling me. Under Casimir's direction, that spring Nohant underwent a number of changes that others would call improvements but that I saw as a removal of the rustic things that had made it so charming. The serpentine garden paths, so lovely and wandering, were straightened. Dogs and horses who had gotten old were put to death; no more was I calmed by the sight of old Phanor at the fireside, his graying muzzle resting on his paws. There was a peacock at Nohant, a rascal who raided the strawberries, but he also ate most gently from my hand. When I mentioned to Casimir one evening that I had not seen the peacock that day, he looked up from his soup and with some irritation said, “I told you I was getting rid of him.” He also got rid of dead trees
and enlarged the courtyard. In so doing, he destroyed the dark alcoves that had so enchanted me in my youth.

Gradually, Casimir, flexing invisible muscles, renovated virtually everything, most often changing things simply for the sake of change. For me, it was not much different from dogs marking territory. I could not argue with him; he was my husband and so, by law, the care of Nohant was up to him. But after he had finished his “improvements,” I walked outside not with familiar pleasure but with a sense of disorientation and deepest sorrow.

One morning, I sat down at the breakfast table and burst into tears. It surprised me as much as it did Casimir. “What ever is the matter now?” he asked, and I saw that the patience he had shown for me and what he called my moodiness had come to an end.

I calmed myself and tried to speak reasonably: “I think it is probably only springtime and the way it affects me sometimes. I am often made melancholy at this time of year.”

Casimir sighed and shook his head, then resumed eating.

I straightened in my chair and spoke louder: “But also, I am no longer happy living here. Nohant no longer feels like home.”

Casimir put down his fork and leapt up in exuberance. “Thank God you feel this way, for I would live anywhere but here!”

If our reasons for wanting to leave Nohant were not the same, we could at least agree that we wanted to find another place to live; and having that goal in common helped us get along better than we had been. In later years, when I thought of how content other couples were to stay at home with each other, I realized I should have known that our constant moving here and there was only a way of distracting us from what neither of us wanted to face.

It was a life of constant deception that we had come to. When Casimir left me alone for his various excursions into Paris or to other places, I wrote him letters telling him how much I missed him and longed for him to come home. Then, when he came home, I wished that he would go away. For his part, it was the same: in letters, he called me his angel; in person, he scorned my company.
We had not gotten, either of us, what we had bargained for, and our only true affection was for a false persona that each of us created on paper.

When we changed residences, we became busy with the myriad details that moving always involves, and we did not have to think about all that was wrong between us. And so we frequently changed residences.

C
ASIMIR WANTED TO GO TO
L
E
P
LESSIS,
but I was reluctant to wear out our welcome there. And so we arranged with our hosts to contribute to the household costs and stayed with that delightful family for four months.

As always, I loved playing with the children, all kinds of organized games that even included young Maurice, who was still crawling. We marched around the gardens and the immense grounds and chased each other across the lawn. Such simple and pure antics revived my spirit.

Casimir did not see it that way, however. I believe that for him, the children were competition, and his ego was already challenged by my inability to respond to his brusque advances at night. Unable to confess to a jealousy of rosy-cheeked innocents, he converted his feelings to rage and aimed it at me.

One morning, as I was playing with the children on the terrace, I accidentally got sand in Casimir's coffee cup. “Do that again, and I shall slap you,” he said.

“No, you won't,” I said, and, in a way I blush now to say I thought was charming, I dropped a few more grains in. He reached over and slapped my cheek, never mind the presence of others—adults as well as children.

Everyone fell silent, embarrassed. I put my hand over the stinging redness and walked away. I was sure that Casimir would follow me, and I did not want him to. I vowed that if he did, I would slap him back and admonish him for his treatment of me.

Yet when he did not follow me, I sat forlorn at the base of a tree and bawled like a calf. I wept because I missed the Nohant of my youth. I wept because of my naïveté in getting married, at the ideas I'd had about the lovely life I would lead. And I wept because I had been taught to hold my tongue and not challenge authority and because Casimir, as my husband, had authority over me. There was nothing for me to do in retaliation except what I did do: that night, when we went to bed, I completely rejected Casimir's advances. I told him I was in the bed with him only because I had to be. “If we were at Nohant,” I said, “I would be in my little room, in my hammock, and all the better for it.”

“Be my guest,” said my husband. “Go to your hammock.”

I laughed. “And how would I get there?”

“For all I care, you can walk.” He turned away from me. In a few moments, he began to snore. I lay wide awake, thinking of the rumor I had heard that he had a mistress in Paris, and how I had offered only the mildest of reproaches. In a letter, I'd told him to sleep well but
alone
, in a nearly jocular way. I wanted to let him know that I knew and did not approve. That was as far as I could go. I couldn't divorce him for adultery—the law was infuriating and unfair for the way it permitted a man to divorce his wife for infidelity, but not the other way around.

And so I lay there and listened to him snore.

August 1833

PARIS

A
lfred de Musset and I returned from Fontainebleau to Paris happy and well rested. The day after, I met Marie for coffee and told her that she had been right to suggest a getaway for Alfred and me. “What did I tell you?” she said. “It is refreshing to have a different view out your window, and of your beloved.” She leaned forward, her eyes flashing. “And it spices things up, am I right?”

I looked down into my cup.

“Yes, I can see that I am right. I am happy for you, my darling. And what welcome news for Alfred to come back to!”

The August 15 issue of the
Revue des Deux Mondes
had just been published. In it was a long poem of Alfred's that took up twenty-five pages and had been wonderfully well received. His public acclaim spread far and wide. One night, as we went up the steps to the Opéra, Alfred flung aside an unfinished cigar he had been smoking, and it was eagerly snatched up by a young woman, who wrapped it in her handkerchief and then called out to him. He ignored her, blushing; I gave her a little wave and playfully chided Alfred for his coolness toward his adoring fan.

At the end of August, the children left for Nohant, and Alfred moved into my apartment with me. I relished the presence of him there, as well as the routine we developed: I worked all night while he slept; then, in the morning, when I slept, he worked until I arose. We would spend the late afternoons and evenings together: walk out, dine, read aloud to each other, make love; and then I would all but tuck him into our bed and go to the desk in my dressing gown.

There was no more coming home to a darkened room with a ticking clock the only sound therein, a single cigarette put out in a saucer the only evidence of someone having been there. Alfred loved me. And being loved let me breathe, let me work, let me live.%

December 1833

PARIS

A
lfred and I decided to go to Italy for the winter. He had not been working well, and he hoped that a place so inspiring to other poets would reawaken his creativity.

I was extremely disciplined, and I knew I would have no trouble taking up my pen every night, no matter where I was. I got an advance from Buloz for what was to be my “Italian novel,” which I was certain would be inspired by our trip, and I promised to deliver it by June.

I had Solange with me at that time, and I made arrangements for my maid to bring her back to her father at Nohant. Maurice was in school in Paris and would be able to go to my mother's for his days off. There was one last thing to do before we left, a visit I felt compelled to make.

Alfred's mother, the
vicomtesse
de Musset, had reportedly rather coldly tolerated our living together. Then, when Alfred told her of our plans to travel to Italy for such a long time, she became greatly agitated.

It had not bothered Alfred or me when his friends protested our going. They predicted our trip would be a disaster. But then they would: his friends had never embraced me. For one thing, I was an impediment for him living the kind of wild life he had enjoyed with them before he moved in with me: the drinking, the opium, the prostitutes.

His mother's protests were another story. He was very close to her, and whatever grief she suffered tore at his own heart. As a mother myself, I understood the nervous concerns of a woman who had lost two of her children in infancy; and there was the added sorrow of having lost her husband so recently. Alfred, her youngest child and reportedly her favorite, suffered frequent bouts of ill
health. I could imagine what might be going through her head:
What if something happens when he is so far away from me? Who will care for him?
I knew from experience that one worried about one's children as a matter of course, but when one was separated from them, the worries became magnified.

On the day of our departure, I told Alfred I would go to see his mother in order to reassure her face-to-face that he would be well looked after.

“It isn't necessary,” Alfred said.

But I told him, “I shall be back shortly,” and went downstairs to secure a carriage. I soon arrived at the townhouse at 59 Rue de Grenelle and asked the driver to go to the door and request that madame come out to speak with me briefly. After several minutes, Alfred's mother exited the house and climbed into the carriage to sit opposite me.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I said.

She merely nodded. Her mouth was set, her chin trembling.

“I want to assure you that I love your son with all my heart and I will look after him while we are away.”