Rebel Rebel

In December 1833 George Sand traveled to Venice with her younger lover, the poet and novelist Alfred de Musset. She was trying to outrun the ruckus over her recent affair in Paris with the actress Marie Dorval. Also left behind were Sand’s young son and daughter, whom she frequently found surplus to requirements. Scandal, though, had a way of stalking the twenty-nine-year-old novelist. On arrival in the water-logged city the always sickly Musset contracted typhoid. A handsome doctor with a smart mustache was called, and within weeks Pietro Pagello and George Sand had become lovers. When Musset finally emerged from his sweaty sheets to discover what had been going on, he departed the city in high dudgeon. Four months later Sand and her twenty-six-year-old medico also returned to Paris, whereupon their relationship promptly floundered. Sand resumed her affair with Musset, though not before a catastrophic episode in which he threatened to kill either her or himself.George Sand has proved catnip to scores of biographers in the 150 years since her death. Anglophone writers have been particularly tickled by the Frenchness of it all: not just the younger lovers but the cross-dressing, cig...