Rereading Their Letters: Flaubert & Sand

Barnes returned me to "A Simple Soul" to see the parrot. That prompted me to return again to the letters. Some three hundred in all, but an easy read.

My selection might insinuate that I'm a mild Flaubertophile. I won't pass judgement.

*

F. to S.:

At the present time I am disheartened by the populace which rushes by under my windows in pursuit of the fatted calf. And they say that intelligence is to be found in the street!

S. to F.:

I forgot to get three leaves from the tulip tree, you must send them to me in a letter, it is for something cabalistic.

F. to S.:

I a mysterious being, dear master, nonsense! I think that I am sickeningly platitudinous, and I am sometimes exceedingly bored with the bourgeois which I have under my skin. Sainte-Beuve, between ourselves, does not know me at all, no matter what he says. I even swear to you (by the smile of your grandchild) that I know few men less vicious than I am. I have dreamed much and have done very little.

F. to S.:

Of the two portraits, I like that of Couture's the better. As for Marchal's he saw in you only "the good woman," but I who am an old Romantic, find in the other, "the head of the author" who made me dream so much in my youth.

F. to S.:

 

I have followed your counsel, dear master, I have EXERCISED!!! Am I not splendid; eh? Sunday night, at eleven o'clock, there was such lovely moonlight along the river and on the snow that I was taken with an itch for movement, and I walked for two hours and a half imagining all sorts of things, pretending that I was travelling in Russia or in Norway. When the tide came in and cracked the cakes of ice in the Seine and the thin ice which covered the stream, it was, without any exaggeration, superb. Then I thought of you and I missed you.