a portrait will hardly be accepted as an excuse, nay, is sure to be
regarded as the very head and front of her offending. But George Sand
had extraordinarily naive notions on this subject, notions which are
not likely to be shared by many, at least not by many outside the
fraternities of novelists and dramatists. Having mentioned, in speaking
of her grand-uncle the Abbe de Beaumont, that she thought of him when
sketching the portrait of a certain canon in Consuelo, and that she had
very much exaggerated the resemblance to meet the requirements of the
romance, she remarks that portraits traced in this way are no longer
portraits, and that those who feel offended on recognising themselves
do an injustice both to the author and themselves. "Caricature or
idealisation," she writes, "it is no longer the original model, and
this model has little judgment if it thinks it recognises itself, if it
becomes angry or vain on seeing what art or imagination has been able
to make of it." This is turning the tables with a vengeance; and if
impudence can silence the voice of truth and humanity, George Sand has
gained her case. In her account of the Lucrezia Floriani incident George
Sand proceeds as usual when she is attacked and does not find it more
convenient simply to declare that she will not condescend to defend
herself--namely, she envelops the whole matter in a mist of beautiful
words and sentiments out of which issues--and this is the only
clearly-distinguishable thing--her own saintly self in celestial
radiance. But notwithstanding all her arguments and explanations there
remains the fact that Liszt and thousands of others, I one of them, read
Lucrezia Floriani and were not a moment in doubt that Chopin was the
prototype of Prince Karol. We will not charge George Sand with the
atrocity of writing the novel for the purpose of getting rid of Chopin;
but we cannot absolve her from the sin of being regardless of the pain
she would inflict on one who once was dear to her, and who still loved
her ardently. Even Miss Thomas, [FOOTNOTE: In George Sand, a volume of
the "Eminent Women Series."] who generally takes George Sand at her
own valuation, and in this case too tries to excuse her, admits that
in Lucrezia Floriani there was enough of reality interwoven to make
the world hasten to identify or confound Chopin with Prince Karol, that
Chopin, the most sensitive of mortals, could not but be pained by the
inferences which would be drawn,