MADAME DE STAËL.
Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de Holstein-Staël, the most remarkable female writer of our century, was born at Paris on the 22d April, 1766. At that time her father was very far removed from the high position he was one day to occupy, being simply a clerk in Thelluson's bank. Mme. Necker herself undertook the education of her daughter—a task for which she was singularly unfitted, being cold and stern by nature, and a pedant to boot.
M. Necker was much more loved by his child, and he understood her disposition better. He liked to draw her out and make her talk, and for that purpose he used playfully to tease her: she invariably met him with that mixture of gaiety and tenderness which characterized their intercourse. Deeply grateful for his affection, Anne put the utmost good-will in the execution of his slightest wish. When only ten years old, she was so struck by the admiration he showed for Gibbon the historian, that the idea occurred to her to marry him, and thereby secure to her father the constant presence of one whose conversation he so much appreciated. Undismayed by Gibbon's repulsive ugliness, the child actually made the proposal to him herself. What makes the comical incident more curious is the fact that her mother had been, when little more than a child, Gibbon's first love. It was said of Anne Necker that she had always been young, and yet had never been a child. Her favorite pastime was fashioning doll kings and queens, and making them act tragedies of which she improvised the various parts. This innocent amusement was at last forbidden by her Calvinistic mother, but Anne used to hide herself and carry on her dramatic little games in secret.
In her mother's salon, Anne early made the acquaintance of some of the clever men of the day—amongst others, Grimm, Marmontel, and the Abbé Raynal. At the age of nineteen her intellectual faculties had become developed in the highest degree, but so much to the detriment of her health as to cause the greatest alarm to her parents. The famous Dr. Tronchin was called in, and ordered the young invalid to be taken to the country, where the mind should lie fallow, and the time hitherto devoted to study be spent in the open air. No prescription could have been more unwelcome to Mme. Necker, for it involved a relaxation, or rather a complete abandonment, of the severe régime she had adopted for her daughter. As it turned out, this was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of hardening into a learned prodigy, Anne's moral nature was allowed to put forth its full luxuriance. Her father came constantly to St. Ouen, and in the charms of his daughter's society he sought rest from the cares of the ministry. In this pleasant retreat he and Anne learned, if possible, to love each other better. M. Necker was not, however, a foolishly fond parent; his tenderness never obscured his judgment; and Anne declared herself that his eye, so far from being blinded by affection, was quicker to detect her faults than her merits. "He unmasked all affectation in me," she writes; "from living with him, I came to believe that people could see clearly into my heart."
Anne made her entrée into society at an early age, and immediately assumed there the position her talents merited. As the daughter of a powerful minister, and a future heiress, it was supposed she would marry at once, but it was not so. Mlle. Necker attained the in those days comparatively mature age of twenty before she gave her hand to the Baron de Staël-Holstein, ambassador from the court of Sweden.
Immediately after her marriage, the Baronne de Staël was presented at court. On this occasion she acquired a character for eccentricity by omitting one of the innumerable court courtesies; but what stamped her irrevocably as an oddity was that, going a few days later to visit the Duchesse de Polignac, the young baroness walked into the room without her head-dress—she had dropped it in the carriage. Those who were inclined to laugh at her, however, soon desisted, seeing that she was herself the first to relate her misdemeanors, and to laugh at them.
But a great event was at hand which was to turn the current of Mme. de Staël's thoughts into other channels: the French Revolution broke out. The daughter of the minister who was the immediate cause of that volcanic eruption was not likely to remain a cool spectator of the national upheaving. Misled by her own enthusiasm for the laws and constitution of England, and still more by the ephemeral homage paid to Necker, who had made his cause triumphant in the king's cabinet, Mme. de Staël honestly believed that the dawn of true political liberty was at hand; but this short-lived chimera was changed to horror when she realized the true motives, the aim and object, of the demagogues. The arrest of Louis XVI. and the queen at Varennes filled her with regret, the sincerity of which it is impossible to doubt when we read her account of this event in the Considérations sur la Révolution Française.
Her knowledge of the men who were the prime motors of these momentous changes enabled her to foresee the terrible catastrophe of the 10th of August. With great courage and clear-sightedness, Mme. de Staël drew up a plan of escape for the royal captives. M. Bertrand de Moleville, one of the king's ministers, gives the details of this scheme, which its author forwarded with a letter to M. de Montmorin, one of his colleagues in the ministry. Her idea was to convey the royal family to the coast of Normandy, whence they were to sail for England. Whether the plan was practicable or not, was never tested; M. de Montmorin knew too well that it was utterly useless to place it before the king.
The murder of the king and queen filled the heart of Mme. de Staël with indignation and dismay. Such was the effect that this crime had upon her, that for a long time she was quite broken-hearted, all her faculties were absorbed and, as it were, paralyzed by the deeds of blood that were being perpetrated around her. When at last she roused herself to resume her pen, it was on behalf of the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette; she addressed to the monsters who then ruled France an article entitled "Défense de la Reine." We can easily imagine what consummate skill and prudence were necessary at such a moment in dealing with the tigers she was striving to disarm. But not even at this crisis would Mme. de Staël descend to flattery; her talent and her spirit were alike above such arts. While scorning to propitiate them by insulting the queen, or using any of those invectives against royalty then in vogue, she tried to merge the sovereign in the woman, the mother, and the devoted and courageous wife. Strong and deep reverence, joined to a delicate and ingenuous pity, breathe throughout this noble appeal.
If Mme. de Staël had written nothing else, this article alone would have sufficed to ensure her fame.
Shortly after the fall of Robespierre, she published two pamphlets, one entitled Reflections on Peace at Home, the other Reflections on Peace, addressed to Pitt and to the French. This latter work received a tribute of praise from Fox in the House of Commons.
Mme. de Staël took a deep interest in the government formed under the new constitution of 1795, but in her desire to become acquainted with the men who were likely to be chosen members of it, she formed intimacies with some who were unworthy of her; even her literary reputation suffered from these so-called friendships. The public rarely discriminates wisely between the character of an author and that of his or her surroundings.
Just at this time Mme. de Staël became the centre of a circle of politicians, who used to meet at the Hôtel de Salm under the title of the Constitutional Club: this society had been formed to counterbalance the doctrines of the Clichy Club, which were ultra-revolutionary. Benjamin Constant was one of the principal speakers at the "Constitutional."
Thibaudeau, in his memoirs, lately published, declares that Mme. de Staël secretly favored the Directory, and even attributes to her influence the reappearance on the political stage of one who had long forfeited the position he formerly held there. "M. de Talleyrand," says Thibaudeau, "had just returned from the United States without any money, when, through the influence of a woman famous for her wit and her spirit of intrigue, he was introduced into the intimacy of Barras."
But enthusiastic as this famous woman was for glory and talent, she was far too shrewd to be deceived by the fine talk of the young conqueror, who came with the spoils of Egypt in his knapsack to dictate to France, promising to replace the "ignoble Directory by a splendid and solid government." Her knowledge of human nature enabled her to foresee with certainty what the result would be when the despot was raised to power; it would be war to the knife against liberty in every shape and form, and against all its supporters. One of Bonaparte's panegyrists has attempted by a base and monstrous calumny to exonerate his petty persecution of a woman by attributing to her a woman's vindictive spite as the motive of her resistance to him and his policy. This worthy servant of his master declares, on the word of the latter, that Mme. de Staël was in love with Bonaparte, and that his coldness to the femme savante was the real motive of her opposition. The story is as worthy of the husband of the loving and divorced Josephine as it is unworthy of Mme. de Staël. Her real crime in his eyes was her unyielding integrity of principle, and the preternatural insight of her genius, which made it impossible for him to dupe her. He verified all her previsions to the full. No sooner had he seized the reins of power than he used it to paralyze liberty in every form; most, above all, when it was handled by talent. Mme. de Staël was imprudent enough to boast of her prophetic instinct on this score to Joseph Bonaparte, who was her friend, but who was also the brother of the First Consul. He entreated her to be more guarded in her words, and soon after warned her that the conversations of her salon found their echo in the Tuileries. When she laughed at his friendly information, he tried to convince her by a more powerful argument. Necker had deposited two millions in the royal treasury, and this sum should be restored to his daughter if she would so far condescend to recognize the First Consul as to ask him for it. Mme. de Staël replied that she would never sue where she had a right to exact, and instead of conciliating the great man, she urged Benjamin Constant to pronounce immediately his famous speech denouncing the covert tyranny of the First Consul, which so roused the wrath of the latter against him and her that from this time forth Mme. de Staël was to know no peace. The daring act sealed her doom. Friends, terrified at her boldness and its consequences, deserted her salon. Fouché, the minister of police, summoned her to his presence, and informed her in his master's name what she already knew, that no one might brave his anger with impunity.
A few days after this official interview she went to a fête given by Gen. Berthier, having accepted the invitation in hopes that some violent outburst from Bonaparte would give her the opportunity of taking a woman's vengeance, and sharpening her wit on him. She actually tells us that she rehearsed an imaginary scene between them, and wrote down her own answers, polishing them off till they were sharp as steel. It was time and wit wasted, however; Bonaparte only accosted her with some vulgar platitude that afforded no opening for pert reprisals. Not long after this disappointment she met the enemy again, this time by chance, and fortune served her better. Mme. de Staël was discussing some political question with great animation when the First Consul came up to the group of admiring listeners, and said brusquely:
"Madame, I hate women who talk politics."
"So do I, General," replied his adversary, looking him coolly in the face; "but in a country where men persecute them and cut their heads off, it is well to know why." On another occasion, when he accosted her in a gracious mood, she made bold to ask him what woman in France he was proudest of. "The woman who has most children," was the coarse rejoinder.
Mme. de Staël made frequent journeys to Coppet, her father's residence. This was another crime in the eyes of the First Consul, as Necker was supposed to have been helped by his talented daughter in his work, Politics and Finance—a book which Bonaparte resented furiously as an attack on his own policy and system of finance.
On Mme. de Staël's return to Paris after the appearance of the work, she was warned that her personal liberty was in danger. Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angély, who was her friend though in Napoleon's service, got her safe out of Paris, and secured her the hospitality of a relative of his in the country, where, she tells us, she used often to sit at her window of a night watching for the arrival of the gendarmes to seize her. She soon left this kindly shelter for the home of her friend Mme. Récamier, at Saint Brice. In the security of this quiet retreat the fugitive fancied herself forgotten by Napoleon, and decided to settle down at a small country-house about ten leagues from Paris. Scarcely had she done so when the happy illusion was dispelled. A commandant of gendarmerie presented himself at her door with an order signed by the First Consul, bidding her withdraw forty leagues from the capital within twenty-four hours.
Joseph Bonaparte and General Tunat had interceded for her, but in vain. Mme. de Staël, exasperated, refused the privilege of remaining in France on such conditions, and decided to seek refuge in Germany, where she could "confront the courtesy of the ancient dynasty with the impertinence of the new one that was striving to crush France."
Her first resting-place was Weimar, the German Athens of that day. Here she learned German under such professors as Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland. In 1804, she visited Berlin, where she met with the kindest reception from the king and queen; but her stay there was short; she was summoned hence to her father's death-bed, and arrived too late to embrace him. This was a fearful blow; she strove to assuage her grief by collecting his MSS., with a view to publishing them, but her health, shaken by so many vicissitudes, gave way, and she was obliged to seek change and rest in Italy. The sight of Rome and of Naples awoke a new life within her, and restored to her the power of writing, which for a time she had lost.
But nothing could long console her for her absence from her own beloved country. The longing to see France at last so far subdued her proud spirit that she determined to avail herself of the privilege of approaching within forty leagues of Paris; she returned accordingly, and settled at Rouen. This was indeed a violation of the permitted limits, but Fouché shut his eyes to it, and the exile remained undisturbed at the residence of her friend M. de Castellane, where she finished Corinne, and corrected the proof-sheets. The work appeared in 1807, and awoke a very trumpet-blast of applause all over Europe. But fame was a crime in one who had incurred the tyrant's displeasure, and the author received a peremptory order to quit France. Broken-hearted and despairing, she returned to Coppet, where she was accompanied by a few faithful friends, who braved all to share her solitude. Here she continued to occupy herself with her great work, Germany. Feeling, however, that a more perfect knowledge of the country was necessary before completing it, she resolved to spend the winter of 1807 at Vienna. She met with a flattering reception there from the Prince de Ligne, the Princesse Lubomirska, and most of the distinguished personages of the court, and returned in the spring to Coppet.
As soon as her book on Germany was ready for the press, Mme. de Staël set out for France, and placed herself at the distance prescribed—forty leagues. She took up her abode at the old castle of Chaumont, formerly the residence of the Cardinal d'Amboise, Diana of Poitiers, and Catherine de' Medicis.
While passing a few days with her dear and valiant friend, M. de Montmorency, the persecuted author received the terrible tidings that 10,000 copies of her new work just issued had been seized by the minister, although she had taken the precaution of submitting the proofs for approval to the censorship. This tyrannical measure was followed by an order to leave France within three days. She begged for a short delay, hoping, by means of a German passport, to land in England; but to this request the Duc de Rovigo sent a positive refusal. Mme. de Staël revenged herself later by placing the duke's letter in her second edition of Germany.
From Fossé she fled to Coppet. Here she found that the prefect of Geneva had received orders to destroy any proofs or copies of her work that he could discover. At the same time, he hinted to Mme. de Staël that she might soften the tyrant by seizing the opportunity to write an ode on the new-born "King of Rome." "My best wish for his infant majesty," she replied, "is, that he may have a good nurse." This impertinence came to Napoleon's ears, and Mme. de Staël expiated it by a prohibition to move two leagues from Coppet. Her friends were finally included in her disgrace. M. Schlegel, her son's tutor, was ordered to resign his position in her family, and M. de Montmorency was exiled for daring to give her the protection of his presence in return for the courageous hospitality he had received from her during the Terror. Mme. Récamier was similarly punished for her boldness in befriending the woman who defied Bonaparte. Hunted to earth while she remained on French soil, Mme. de Staël felt that nothing remained to her but to seek peace and security in flight. But whither should she fly? Bonaparte's spies were spread like a network over the Continent. They would vie with each other in setting traps for her. Russia alone offered some chance of rest; so, one bright spring morning, Mme. de Staël went out for a drive, and, instead of returning home, posted on through Switzerland and the Tyrol to Vienna. She quickly discovered that it was not possible for her to tarry here; the tyrant's tools were on her track. "March! march!" was still the cry of fate; and, like the Wandering Jew, she sallied forth once more on her wanderings. Moscow seemed like a promised land where she might rest awhile; but, scarcely had she drawn breath amidst the unmelted snows of the northern city, when the hunter was down upon her. The Grande Armée was advancing rapidly on the Russian capital. "March! march!" And again the fugitive was on the road, flying to St. Petersburg. Here at last came a respite. The emperor and empress received her like a dethroned sovereign; the nobility followed suit, partly out of admiration for the gifted exile, partly in hatred to her foe, who was theirs also. She was entertained at public banquets, and became the lion of the hour. At one of these magnificent fêtes given in her honor, the toast, "Success to the Russian arms against France!" was proposed. Mme. de Staël seized her glass, and, with a sudden inspiration of patriotism, cried out: "No, not against France! against her oppressor!" The amendment was adopted with applause. But St. Petersburg was no safe retreat for the baroness while the French legions were at Moscow. She was advised by friends to fly, and, once more folding her tent, she carried it to Stockholm. Here she was allowed to recruit her wearied limbs and more wearied spirit for some months. She employed the interval of quiet in writing the recollections called Ten Years in Exile. On leaving Sweden she set sail for England, with a view to publishing her famous Allemagne—the work which had been the immediate cause of her recent persecutions, having exasperated Bonaparte beyond all powers of endurance. It was not until the fall of her enemy that Mme. de Staël ventured to return to France. Her joy, however, at this twofold event was of short duration. The despot who knew no mercy to the weak was not to be bound by the chains of honor. He broke his plighted word, fled from Elba, and landed one morning on the shores of France. It was the signal for Mme. de Staël to fly from them. Filled with patriotic grief and personal dismay, she started immediately for Coppet. She had barely arrived there when a letter followed her with the unexpected order to return to Paris, "where the emperor considered her presence would be useful in establishing constitutional ideas." But she, whom threats and exile had not daunted, was not to be beguiled by flattery. "Tell your master," she replied to the writer of the singular invitation,—"tell your master that since he has got on for twelve years without me or the constitution, he can do without us a little longer, and that at this moment he hates one about as much as the other."
What wonder if the health of this intrepid woman gave way, in spite of her indomitable spirit, under this long spell of mental and physical fatigue, and ceaseless vexation and disappointment. Her declining years were consumed in intense suffering, borne with the utmost courage and resignation. She returned finally to France after the Restoration, and was treated with every mark of esteem by Louis XVIII. He delighted in her conversation, and gave her a more substantial proof of good-will by restoring to her the two millions that her father had deposited in the treasury before his fall. This act of justice bound her by ties of enduring gratitude to the king and his dynasty.
But she was not spared long to enjoy the honors that now surrounded her. Sorrow, and the despondency consequent on great bodily exhaustion, had tempted Mme. de Staël into the deadly habit of using opium, and when once contracted she had not strength to relinquish it, even after the cause that made the stimulant a necessity of existence to her had disappeared. Her friends used every argument and every stratagem to cure her, but in vain. She fell into a state of lethargy, or rather into a succession of lethargic slumbers, broken by sudden gleams of her old brightness. Her patience was very touching, and many evidences are preserved to show that she drew it from her unshaken faith in Christianity, however imperfect the form in which she had been reared, and to which she was outwardly attached. Once, on awaking from her slumbrous state, she exclaimed to those who surrounded her bed: "It seems to me that I know now what the passage from life to death is; and I feel how God in his mercy softens it to us." She expired on the 14th of July, 1817, the anniversary of the very day on which her father's false theories and blind self-confidence had put the match to the powder and kindled that terrific conflagration which enveloped France in flames. Her remains were deposited at Coppet, in the tomb she had raised to the memory of the great financier.
Those who were present at the reading of her will, heard for the first time of her marriage with M. de Rocca. In that document she bade her children proclaim the fact, as also the birth of a boy by this union. A relative and intimate friend of Mme. de Staël's gives us an account of her first meeting with her second husband:
"A young man of good birth excited much interest at Geneva by the stories current about his bravery, and by the contrast between his age and his fragile appearance and shattered health; the result of wounds received in Spain, where he had served in a French hussar regiment. A few words of sympathy addressed to him by Mme. de Staël produced a most wonderful effect; his head and heart took fire. 'I will love her so well,' he vowed, 'that she will end by marrying me!' and he was right. Their affection for each other was of the deepest and tenderest kind. She lived in perpetual fear of losing him, owing to his delicate health; and yet it was he who survived her, but only a year; he died at Hyères, more from grief than from his infirmities, in his thirty-first year."
We have said nothing of the person of this singularly gifted woman. "She was," to quote the words of a contemporary, "graceful in all her movements; her face, without being handsome, attracted your attention, and then fixed it; a sort of intellectual beauty radiated from her countenance, which seemed the reflex of her soul. Genius was visible in her eyes, which were of a rare splendor; her glance had a fire and strength that resembled the flash of the lightning, and was the forerunner of the thunder-roll of her language; her large and well-proportioned figure gave a kind of energy and weight to her discourse. To this was added a certain dramatic effect. Though free from all exaggeration in her dress, she studied what was picturesque more than what was the fashion. Her arms and hands were beautiful, and singularly white."
This picture is an attractive one, and paints Mme. de Staël in very different colors from those generally used by her portrayers. It is only natural that a woman who had all her life been before the world, should be variously judged by various people. A celebrated writer of her own day, who knew the author of Corinne both as an author and a woman, said that she would not be impartially judged until a century had gone by. Napoleon raised her to a pedestal of martyrdom by his unmanly and cruel persecution, and the éclat of her genius hid her individual faults and errors in a haze of glory. She was hated by the flatterers who fawned on the tyrant because she dared to defy him. Some considered her a cold, masculine woman, who had none of the charm of womanhood about her; while others, dazzled by her talent, idealized her as a sort of demigod. Distance enables us to estimate her more justly. She was a woman of unrivalled energy of character, of incomparably brilliant parts, and endowed with a heart equal in tenderness to the power of her genius. Her written style gives but a faint idea of the lustre of her conversation. She was, perhaps, quite unparalleled in this last sphere. The play of wit, logic, and grace never flagged for an instant, but kept her hearers spellbound as long as her voice was heard. Once, at a soirée at Mme. Récamier's, she got into a discussion with the Archbishop of Sens, as to whether it was an advantage or a misfortune for a nation to be in debt; the archbishop took the latter view of the question, and they kept up the ball for two hours, until the excitement among the guests became so great that they stood upon chairs in the adjoining salon to enjoy the brilliancy of the intellectual combat. She was, as her death attests, a devout believer in Christianity. On one occasion, after listening to some metaphysicians crossing lances over their pet theories, she remarked: "The Lord's prayer says more to me than all that."
From the repetition of this divine prayer during her long nights of sleeplessness she drew patience and resignation. By birth and education a Protestant, she never allowed her lofty mind to be prejudiced against Catholics, and often spoke with enthusiasm of the heroic courage of the martyred priests and bishops of the memorable 2d of September, 1792. The Imitation of Christ was her constant companion and solace during her long illness. This woman of genius was a devoted mother. Her literary pursuits did not interfere with her maternal duties: she superintended the education of her children herself, and often impressed upon them that, "if they fell away from the path of honor and duty it would be not alone an irreparable sorrow, but a remorse" to her, as she would accuse herself of being the cause of it.
She was not happy in her first marriage, which was purely one of "arrangement." There was no sympathy of taste or ideas between her and the Baron de Staël; her separation from him was nevertheless a deep source of pain to her, and she never would have consented to it but for the ruinous state into which his imprudence and extravagance had thrown her financial affairs, and which must have led to the utter ruin of his family if they had been left longer in his hands. When his increasing years and illness demanded the consolation of her companionship, she returned to her husband with affectionate alacrity, and devoted herself to him until his death.
The multiplicity of Mme. de Staël's writings earned for her the sobriquet of "the female Voltaire." She began to write when most girls of her age are still in pinafores; her early works are like the flights of a young eagle, betraying the fearless temerity of conscious power, combined with the inexperience of youth—she plunges into depths, and soars to heights of metaphysics and philosophy with all the audacity of untaught genius. The Influence of the Passions on the Happiness of Nations and Individuals is one of the most striking of those juvenile feats, and was quickly followed by others in the same field. Her novels are undoubtedly the first of her claims on enduring fame. Delphine is supposed to be Mme. de Staël as she was, and Corinne as she wished to be. They are both masterpieces of the romantic school prevalent in that day, and they both inaugurated a new reign in fiction. The closing years of the author's agitated life were devoted to the compilation of the volumes entitled Considerations on the French Revolution—a work of great magnitude, and which was intended to embrace the full exposition and justification of her father's policy and life, and a philosophical analysis of the theories of all known forms of government, as well as an elaborate history of the causes and effects of the Revolutionary crisis. The plan was colossal in scope, and almost infinite in the variety of subjects it included; but death did not wait for her to finish it. Amongst her earliest literary productions we must not refuse a passing mention to her dramatic efforts. She was not twenty when Sophie and Jane Grey earned for her a place amongst the most mature and brilliant writers of the period. There is no doubt, if she had had leisure to pursue this vein, Mme. de Staël would have enriched the French language with some remarkable comedies and tragedies. Her works were collected after her death by the Baron de Staël, her son, and form a series of eighteen large volumes.
The interest of the subject has led us into a somewhat lengthy sketch of the life of this distinguished lady. French annals furnish a study, almost unique, of women who were models of all womanly virtues, and yet by their brilliancy, wit, and conversance with public affairs were fitted to be the advisers of rulers and statesmen. We are very far from wishing to see the sex drawn out of their proper sphere, but when by natural and acquired talents they evince a vocation for affairs of state, we think that governments may wisely accept their counsel, and that their services are worthy of permanent record.