George Sand

« I’ve never portrayed anyone I’ve actually known, with the exception of Planche, in Claude Vignon, with his consent, and G. Sand in Camille Maupin, also with her consent. » 

Honoré de Balzac, Letter to madame Hanska, 23 April 1843 

Balzac used George Sand as a model for the character of Camille Maupin, who appears in several of his works: Béatrix,Illusions perdues, Honorineand La Muse du département. Camille Maupin is a pseudonym adopted by Félicité des Touches, a famous author and free spirit, who wore pants and smoked a hookah. The inspiration for this character, George Sand, whose real name was Aurore Dupin, was a woman of letters who penned several successful novels and dramas. She left an impression on contemporaries for her male pseudonym and attire, but most of all for her free spirit, both intellectual and moral; she had a number of love affairs, including liaisons with the authors Jules Sandeau (a friend of Balzac’s) and Prosper Mérimée, the poet Alfred de Musset, the lawyer Michel de Bourges and the composer Frédéric Chopin. 

Sand and Balzac developed a warm friendship, despite a rough start, and from 1838 through 1842, the two novelists saw each other often. In 1838 Balzac stayed with Sand, in Nohant, and claimed he ‘experienced more during those three or four fierce discussions than I had for ages.’ By his return, he was to have all but finished his novel, Béatrix. 

Balzac dedicated to Sand his Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées (Memoirs of two young brides), while she, for her part, adapted Balzac’s novels for the puppet playhouse at her estate in Nohant.    

« One night that we dined rather oddly at Balzac’s—I believe it consisted of boiled beef, melon and Champagne slush—he went and donned a lovely new housecoat, showing it off to us with all the delight of a little girl, and wanted to go out thus attired, candlestick in hand, to see us to the Luxembourg gates. The hour was late, the streets empty, and I remarked that he was likely to be murdered on his way back home. “Not a bit of it! If I run into thieves, they will think me a madman and be afraid of me, or they will take me for a prince and respect me.» 

George Sand, Histoire de ma vie, 1855