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George Sand
Photo: Auguste Charpentier, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

1804–1876

George Sand

Born in Paris, she came back in 1831 in boots and a frock coat, and the city became her freedom.

Aurore Dupin was born in Paris on 1 July 1804, in the rue Meslay, but grew up at Nohant in the Berry, the house that remained her centre of gravity. Paris came back into her life in 1831, when, at twenty-six, she left an unhappy marriage to live and write in the capital. With little money, she dressed in a man’s coat, trousers and boots so that she could walk the streets, sit in the pit at the theatre and go wherever the young men went.

Her first novel under the name George Sand, Indiana, appeared in 1832 and made her famous almost overnight. On the quai Malaquais, in a garret she called the blue attic, she wrote Lélia and lived through her stormy affair with Alfred de Musset. Later, with Chopin, she settled in the new quarter below Montmartre, first on the rue Pigalle and then in the square d’Orléans, a courtyard of apartments where artists lived as neighbours. They were regular guests of the painter Ary Scheffer on the rue Chaptal, a short walk away.

After 1848, when she threw herself briefly into the Republic’s cause, Sand spent more and more of her life at Nohant, coming to Paris for her plays and her publishers. In Histoire de ma vie, published in 1854 and 1855, she described with humour and gratitude the freedom the city had given her as a young woman alone. She died at Nohant on 8 June 1876.

Je ne peux pas dire quel plaisir me firent mes bottes : j’aurais volontiers dormi avec, comme fit mon frère dans son jeune âge, quand il chaussa la première paire. Avec ces petits talons ferrés, j’étais solide sur le trottoir. Je voltigeais d’un bout de Paris à l’autre. Il me semblait que j’aurais fait le tour du monde. Et puis, mes vêtements ne craignaient rien. Je courais par tous les temps, je revenais à toutes les heures, j’allais au parterre de tous les théâtres.

Sand remembers her first months in Paris in 1831, when men’s clothes and iron-heeled boots let her cross the city freely. No public-domain English translation of this part of the memoir was found.

✓ Quotation checked word for word against the edition cited.

Addresses

  1. 46 rue Meslay · 3rd · 1804

    Her birthplace, on 1 July 1804.

    ICI EST NÉE LE 1 JUILLET 1804/AURORE DUPIN DITE GEORGE SAND/LITTÉRATEUR ET AUTEUR DRAMATIQUE

  2. 19 quai Malaquais · 6th · 1832–1836

    The ‘blue attic’ where she wrote Lélia during the years of her affair with Musset.

    ICI EST LA MANSARDE BLEUE / OU GEORGE SAND VÉCUT DE / 1832 à 1836 / ELLE Y ÉCRIVIT LÉLIA

  3. 20 rue Jean-Baptiste-Pigalle · 9th · 1839–1842

    Site of the garden pavilions she and Chopin rented on their return from Majorca; the buildings have gone.

  4. 5 square d’Orléans, 80 rue Taitbout · 9th · 1842–1847

    Her first-floor apartment in the square d’Orléans; Chopin lived across the courtyard at no. 9.

    GEORGE SAND / HABITA / LE 1ER ÉTAGE DE CETTE MAISON / DE 1842 À 1847 / LA SOCIÉTÉ / (LES AMIS DE GEORGE SAND)

  5. 16 rue Chaptal · 9th · 1830s–1840s

    Ary Scheffer’s house and studio, where she and Chopin were regular guests; now the Musée de la Vie romantique, which keeps her jewels and souvenirs. → Musée de la Vie romantique

In this guide

Small museums · 9th Musée de la Vie romantique Ary Scheffer’s house and studios at the end of a cobbled lane, where Chopin, Sand and Delacroix came on Friday evenings.

Sources