SAND, GEORGE (1804-1876), the pseudonym of Madame Amandine Lucile Aurore Dudevant, née Dupin.
George Sand was the daughter of Maurice Dupin, a retired lieutenant, and of Sophie Delaborde, the daughter of a Paris bird fancier. Their ill-assorted marriage took place only a month before the birth of the child (July 1, 1804; at Paris). Her pa ternal grandfather was M. Dupin de Francueil, a farmer-general of the revenue, who married the widow of Count Horn, a natural son of Louis XV., she in her turn being the natural daughter of Maurice de Saxe, the most famous of the many illegitimate chil dren of Augustus the Strong, by Marie Rinteau ("Mlle. de Ver rieres"). George Sand, who was a firm believer in the doctrine of heredity, devotes a whole volume of her autobiography (Histoire de ma vie, 1857 seq.) to the elaboration of this strange pedigree. She boasts of the royal blood which ran through her veins, but she is no less frank in declaring that she is vilaine et tres vilaine, a daughter of the people who shares by birth their instincts and sympathies. Her birth itself was romantic. Her father died when she was a small child, and her mother, after a struggle, abandoned Aurore to the care of her grandmother, Madame Dupin de Fran cueil, who was a survival of the ancien regime.
Her childhood was spent at Nohant, near La Chatre in Berry, Madame Dupin's country house. Here she imbibed the passion ate love of country scenes and country life which neither ab sence, politics nor dissipation could uproot; here she learnt to understand the ways and thoughts of the peasants, and laid up that rich store of scenes and characters which a marvellously re tentive memory enabled her to draw upon at will. Next to the grandmother, the most important person in the household at Nohant was Deschatres. He was an ex-abbe who had shown his devotion to his mistress when her life was threatened during the Revolution, and henceforward was installed at Nohant as facto tum. He was maire of the village, tutor to Aurore's half-brother, and undertook the education of the girl. At odd hours of lessons she picked up a smattering of Latin, music and natural science, but most days were holidays and spent in country rambles and games with village children.
From the free out-door life at Nohant she passed at thirteen to the convent of the English Augustinians at Paris, where for the first two years she never went outside the walls. Nothing
better shows the plasticity of her character than the ease with which she adapted herself to this sudden change. One day in the convent chapel she underwent conversion in the mystical sense. There is no doubt of the sincerity of her narrative, or even the permanence of her religious feelings under all her many phases of faith and aberrations of conduct.
Again in 182o Aurore exchanged the restraint of a convent for freedom, being recalled to Nohant by Mme. de Francueil, who had no intention of letting her granddaughter grow up a devote. She rode across country with her brother, she went out shooting with Deschatres, she sat by the cottage doors on the long summer evenings and heard the flax-dressers tell their tales of witches and warlocks. She was a considerable linguist and knew English, Italian and some Latin, though she never tackled Greek. She read widely though unsystematically, studying philo sophy in Aristotle, Leibnitz, Locke and Condillac, and feeding her imagination with Rene and Childe Harold. Her confessor lent her the Genie du Christianisme, and to this book she ascribes the first change in her religious views.
On her grandmother's death she married on Dec. 11, 1822, Casimir Dudevant, natural son of Baron Dudevant. He seems then to have been neither better nor worse than the Berrichon squires around him, and the first years of her married life, during which her son Maurice and her daughter Solange were born, except for lovers' quarrels, were passed in peace and quiet ness, though signs were not wanting of the coming storm. Among these must be mentioned her friendship with Aurelien de Seze, advocate-general at Bourdeau, which her husband resented. So long as the conventions were preserved she endured her life, but when her husband took to drinking and made love to the maids under her eyes she resolved to break a yoke that bad grown in tolerable. She then discovered a paper docketed "Not to be opened till after my death," which was nothing but a railing accusation against herself. She at once quitted Nohant, taking with her Solange, and in 1831 an amicable separation was agreed upon, by which her whole estate was surrendered to the husband with the stipulation that she should receive, in return for this relinquishment on her part, an allowance of £120 a year.