George Sand

Musset wrote to her after reading ‘Indiana’, and became her lover. Travelling to Venice, they ran into Stendhal, drinking and dancing around the table. She had a one-night stand with Mérimée, and a ten-year affair with Chopin, sending Delacroix out for a bottle of Bordeaux when Chopin was ill. Sainte-Beuve was her confidant, Liszt a friend but not a lover. She corresponded with Dumas père, and intimately and extensively with Flaubert. Balzac invited her round for ice-cream; arriving to stay with her, he found her smoking a cigar by the fire (he slept from 6 p.m. to midnight, while she slept from 6 a.m. to midday).