The Dream Lover (38 page)

“Tell me the purpose of your meeting with me,” he said, and I told him far more than that.

I told him about my upbringing, about the relationships I'd had, finally about the way that on the face of it, I lived an aristocratic life, but my heart and my politics were ever on the side of the people. “I am not one of those who look down upon their servants,” I said, and he threw back his head and laughed. I recognized the irony and blushed.

“Understand, it is more than that,” I said. “I have always tried to see the worth of the individual despite the clothes he wears, the place he resides, or the accent with which he speaks. I grew up playing with peasant children, and I—”

“Bah! Because you drop into their world now and then does not make you one of them. You find them interesting, charming, you pick from what they offer to suit your own needs. Then you go home to a plate full of fine food and sleep in imported linens.”

I looked pointedly at his white shirt, and he smiled. “I suppose we can all be caught out in hypocrisy one way or another,” he said. “But my wearing a linen shirt is not tantamount to your blowing kisses from the balcony of the privileged to those who suffer below. If you speak kindly to your house staff, if you write a few articles in a newspaper about the rights that should be given to every person, you have not done your duty.”

“And what is my duty?”

He studied my face. “Your duty is to use whatever talent you have to make for a kind of equality among people that we are nowhere close to achieving, and that many people do not want to have. Your duty is to persuade those who do not want it to, if not embrace it, at least accept it; and if one method does not work, you must engage fully in another.”

“You mean radicalism, fighting in the streets.”

“And perhaps more than that.” He grabbed hold of my wrist and spoke quietly but with great earnestness: “Life is difficult enough in and of itself, George. Is it not incumbent on us to create a social order where we do not let the weakest fall and the strongest survive?”

I pushed my empty wineglass away from me, staring into the burgundy residue at the bottom. “I listen in shame to your ideas of revolution and reform. You are right to suggest I have led a life of solipsism. Despite my mother's blood, which runs in my veins, I have watched from a distance the people's struggles and have reported their anguish without real understanding. I have allowed romantic passion to rule my life and have committed myself to faithless individuals rather than worthwhile causes.”

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. You remain solipsistic in excoriating yourself for your solipsism! Have done with that, George! You are here and alive, are you not?”

I said nothing, full of a rising hope that prevented speech.

“Your life is not over; it is about to begin! You will never be satisfied with the love of an individual; that kind of love will only disappoint. Turn your gaze outward, away from yourself, and toward a noble goal. It is that kind of purpose that brings lasting content, that speaks to the truest desires of the heart and the needs of the soul.”

I was galvanized by Michel's words, inspired in a way that seemed superior to the passions I had known before. I committed
my writing talents to the cause and then, inevitably perhaps, to Michel himself. For his part, he gave me a ring to serve as a symbol of what we might look forward to when we were both free.

After a few months, though, I began to see that I did not always agree with Michel. I began to think he was similar to those he wished to overthrow: a despot who demanded a slavish loyalty and affection from his followers. It seemed that Michel invoked the name of the people in order to bring glory to himself.

C
ASIMIR HAD INITIALLY AGREED
to our separation. Then he changed his mind and fought against it for over a year. But finally Michel secured for me a legal separation that left me with Nohant, with custody of Solange (later, I also obtained custody of Maurice), and with ninety-four hundred francs annually. Casimir received less. My fiery lawyer argued brilliantly for me, Madame Aurore Dudevant, sitting demurely in the courtroom in a white hood and a white dress with a collar of flowered lace.

Michel addressed himself to Casimir with a kind of deadly irony. He looked at a paper in his hand and said, “You list here Madame Dudevant's many faults. To name a few, you say that she often dressed like a man and smoked cigars. I assume that you found that very…Well, I confess I have a hard time guessing. Was it frightening? Dangerous? Did it break a law of which I am unaware?

“Never mind—we shall move on to the next complaint, which is that she had relationships outside the marriage.” Here he looked up. “Perhaps in imitation of you, who only weeks into your marriage pursued and easily conquered your wife's maid? Is not imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Or did she perhaps seek comfort with another after episodes such as the time you struck her across the face in full view of others?

“But I digress. We were talking about your wife's many flaws, not yours. So, let us see what other sins she has committed. Ah,
here is a brash demand: she asks for money from her own inheritance! A wonder you waited so long to bring her to court!

“Now, here is a vexing problem. Your wife wrote
Lélia
, recognized as a work of genius. You poor fellow, I'm sure it is utterly exasperating to be married to an artist whose income pays the bills when one's own inclination is to not work at all.

“Well. Rather than bore the court with the rest of this long list of grievances, I feel compelled to ask you about something I find very confusing. Perhaps you can enlighten me. With all these faults displayed by that diminutive woman sitting there, why would you go to court to keep her from separating from you?”

He won for me easily, and Casimir moved to his family's hunting cottage in Guillery.

Despite our differences in politics, I still had feelings for Michel. But after I was free, he began to retreat from me.
Mauprat
, which was about a wounded beast of a man being subdued—transformed, really—by a woman's love, after which they marry and live happily ever after, I now saw as the wishful thinking it had been.

I was at odds with myself. On the one hand, I had written to a friend, “I will lift women up from their abject state, both in my life and in my writings.” And yet, embarrassingly, I had also written a letter to Michel begging him simply to let me do all that I could to make him happy. I told him in that gushing missive that he would find me much like a faithful dog, a study in devotion.

What drew me to Michel was a passion grounded in politics. But politics will not forgive what love can; nor will politics endure what love will. Politics will not give a close embrace; it will not press upon a mouth a kiss that satisfies the beggar inside. It will not say to another: I will protect you from what frightens you; I will bring wild strawberries to your bedside; I will not betray you. Never mind that those words are often found to be lies; one longs to hear them anyway, one needs to; and one persists in trying to hear them in order to find a certain peace, without which one feels half of something
meant to be whole. Even God was lonely: we, His children, are the evidence.

My affair with Michel lasted less than a year. What followed were several halfhearted love affairs with other men that died for lack of fuel to feed the flames. Finally, I told myself and others that I was too old for the ups and downs of romantic relationships and would henceforth devote myself to things that mattered and upon which I could depend. I could not have been more sincere—or relieved. Or wrong.

May 1836

NOHANT

A
fter all the acrimony in fighting for my separation from Casimir, after all the charges and defenses, all the lies and half-truths—of which, I readily admit, both parties were guilty—I was at last home again, and in rightful possession of the place where I had grown up. I took up permanent residence at Nohant on a day when the bagpipes played and there was dancing under the great elms. This was because it was the feast day of a saint, but I let myself enjoy the fantasy that the celebration was also to welcome me home. Those servants whom I had not fired for their allegiance to Casimir I released to join in the festivities.

I was alone, standing before one of the windows in the dining room. I had toured the great house, I had wandered through every room, and in every room memories had assaulted my senses. I saw myself lying between my parents at night in the bedroom they had shared; I saw my baby brother, Louis, dead in his cradle. I saw Deschartres pacing before me, his hands clasped behind his stooped back; I saw my grandmother dressed in her lace and silk, her cockade trembling upon her head, instructing me on the harpsichord; I smelled her vetiver.

In my old bedroom, I had sat in a chair and spoken to the ghost of my child self, who lay on the floor in her peasant's play clothes, reading books with a great hunger and appreciation, mouthing the words to herself for the pleasure of their cadence. I'd remembered how it had been my habit to gently flick the corners of the pages back and forth as I read them, and how I had sometimes pressed my face into the folds of the books. Julie, my grandmother's maid, had once punished me for this.

Now I pressed my forehead to the glass and, with eyes closed, listened to the music being played here in the place where I most belonged. And then I wept copious tears, for all that had befallen me, and all that had not.

A
FEW MONTHS LATER,
I received a letter from Maurice that tore at my heart. He had been made fun of by other boys at his school, who told him of stories written about me in the newspaper:

They said all sorts of things, because you are a woman who writes, because you are not a prude like most of the other boys' mothers. They call you, I can't tell you the word because it is too wicked…. You must know what is happening in the heart of a good son and a true friend
.

Must history always repeat itself, not only in the larger ways of politics but upon the personal playing field of the self? Of course I knew what was happening in Maurice's heart; the same feelings had been in me when my own mother was attacked and derided. I vowed to find a tutor for Maurice and pull him from a school where he did not belong, even before such vicious attacks had befallen him. I knew he would not fight back against such cruelty; he would only bear it in an elegant manner completely foreign to his tormentors. In the morning, I would go to Paris to collect my son.

I went outside and wandered among the trees and the flowers,
then went to the cemetery to visit the graves of my father and Louis and my grandmother. I wondered, if my father had lived, what he would have thought of my success, as well as my notoriety. I thought he would have been more understanding, more forgiving, than my mother had been.

My father had defended my mother against her accusers, my grandmother among them. He believed that the moral compass of an individual was the true gauge by which one should measure and live one's life. If that compass was in keeping with what others thought, so be it. But if not, one was meant to answer to oneself: that was the way to come to a true and lasting peace. Perhaps the only way, I thought now.

October 1836

HÔTEL DE FRANCE

RUE LAFFITTE

PARIS

I
n September, I had taken the children to Switzerland to spend six weeks in the company of Franz Liszt and Arabella and their newly born daughter. I was in high spirits, we all were. In addition to my children, I had brought my maid and some friends; Franz and Arabella had surrounded themselves with a gay coterie as well. We lived in a way that both inflamed my senses and calmed my nerves. I saw how the balance of work, friendship, and family made for a satisfying happiness. Absent the tension caused by my years-long friction with Casimir, I was able to focus on my children in a different way.

Thirteen-year-old Maurice was the soulful artist, the one I found easier to love. A mother wants to love her children equally, but she is human, and she can favor the child who is more like her, or at least who fights less against her.

Solange, now eight years old, had long bedeviled me. Since her birth, there had been a strange kind of dissonance between us. When I smothered her with attention, she pulled away. When I put space between us, she resented me. When I begged for access to her soul, she ignored me. She was rude to my friends. She was unwilling to cooperate with figures of authority, and yet when they became exasperated and used punitive measures, she immediately bent to their will. It was as though she rejected kindness and invited harsh behavior toward herself.

I would have been willing to assume the blame, to think that my temperament and proclivities disallowed my being a good mother, but Maurice dispelled that theory: he adored me, and I him. Being with him was like swimming in a placid pool of water; spending time with Solange was like going over the falls.

There were times when I lay in bed worrying about her, and I would resolve to do all I could to make things better between us. The next day I would approach her with my heart open, and she would hurl insults at me. She would turn her back and walk away, and I would stare after her, my love transformed into a mix of despair and—it must be admitted—a feeling like hatred.

But late that summer, I came to understand something about her. We were out in the mountains climbing one day. I was struck by her beauty: her long blond curls, the pure whiteness of her skin despite the sun. She ran up the steep inclines over and over again, complaining only if any one of us tried to help her. Once she turned to me after I had expressed a great appreciation for everything around us and said, “Don't worry; when I'm queen, I'll give you the whole of Mont Blanc.”