MADAME DE STAEL.
Anne Louise Germaine Necker, the celebrated daughter of a celebrated father, was born at Paris, April 22, 1766. In her earliest years she manifested uncommon vivacity of perception and depth of feeling; and at the age of eleven, her sprightliness, her self-possession, and the eager and intelligent interest which she took in all the subjects of conversation, rendered her the pet and the wonder of the brilliant circle which frequented her father’s house. Necker himself, though he delighted in promoting the developement of his daughter’s talents, was a watchful critic of her faults: “I owe,” she said, “to my father’s penetration, the frankness of my disposition, and the simplicity of my mind. He exposed every sort of affectation; and, in his company, I formed the habit of thinking that my heart lay open to view.” She repaid his care and tenderness by a passionate and devoted affection, such as scarcely seems to belong to the relationship which existed between them. Throughout his life, the desire to minister to his pleasure was her first object, and his death threw a permanent shade of melancholy over her spirit.
Madlle. Necker paid the usual price of mental precocity, in its debilitating effects upon her bodily constitution. At the age of fourteen, serious apprehensions were entertained for her life; and she was sent to St. Ouen, in the neighbourhood of Paris, for the benefit of country air, with orders to abstain from every species of severe study. Thither her father repaired at every interval of leisure; and being withdrawn from the strict line of behaviour prescribed by her mother, who, having done much herself by dint of study, thought that no accomplishments graces could be worth possessing which were not the fruit of study, she passed her time in the unrestrained enjoyment of M. Necker’s society, in the indulgence of her brilliant imagination, and the spontaneous cultivation of her powerful mind. This course of life was more favourable to the developement of that poetical, ardent, and enthusiastic temper, which was the source of so much enjoyment, and so much distinction, than to the habits of self-control without which such a temper is almost too dangerous to be called a blessing. Her character at this period of life is thus described by her relation and biographer, Mad. Necker de Saussure: “We may figure to ourselves Mad. de Stael, in her early youth, entering with confidence upon a life, which to her promised nothing but happiness. Too benevolent to expect hatred from others, too fond of talent in others to anticipate the envy of her own, she loved to exalt genius, enthusiasm, and inspiration, and was herself an example of their power. The love of glory, and of liberty, the inherent beauty of virtue, the pleasures of affection, each in turn afforded subjects for her eloquence. Not that she was always in the clouds: she never lost presence of mind, nor was she run away with by enthusiasm.” In later life her good taste led her to abstain from this lofty vein of conversation, especially when it was forced upon her: “I tramp in the mire with wooden shoes, whenever they would force me to live always in the clouds.”
Endowed with such qualities, the effect which Madlle. Necker produced upon her introduction to society was as brilliant as her friends could desire, though the effervescence of imagination and youthful spirits sometimes led her to commit breaches of etiquette, which might have been fatal to the success of a less accomplished debutant. At the age of twenty, in 1786, she married the Baron de Stael Holstein, ambassador of Sweden at the court of France. He was much the elder, and the matter seems to have been arranged by her parents, with her acquiescence indeed, but without her heart being at all interested in the connexion. And we trace the effect of her ruling passion, love of her father, in the Baron de Stael’s engagement not to take her to reside in Sweden, without her free consent. During a large portion of their married life they were separated from each other by the baron’s absences from France; but when age and sickness weighed him down, she hastened to comfort him, and his last hours (in 1802) were soothed by her presence and watchful care. By this marriage Mad. de Stael had four children, of whom only a son and a daughter survived her: the latter became the wife of the Duc de Broglie; the former inherited his father’s title, and has won for himself a creditable place in the literature of the age.
At the beginning of the revolution, Mad. de Stael watched the new prospects opening 011 her country with joyful anticipation: but she was shocked and disgusted by the ferocious excesses which ensued. Her love of liberty was too sincere to let her justify the policy, or join the party of the court, but, with an admirable courage, she used the powerful influence of her talents and her connexions to save as many as possible of the victims of that frenzied time. She arranged a plan for the escape of the royal family from the Tuileries; and after the death of Louis XVI., she had the boldness (for so it must be called) to publish her ‘Défense de la Reine.’ It needed all the author’s tact and ingenuity, as well as eloquence, so to plead the queen’s cause, as, on the one hand, not to compromise the dignity of her innocence, and, on the other, not to aggravate the rage of those who clamoured for her destruction.
Having passed safely through the Reign of Terror, Mad. de Stael hailed the establishment of the Directory in 1795, as the commencement of a settled government. Through life she devoted a large portion of her attention to politics, which she designated as comprehending within their sphere, morality, religion, and literature; and at this period especially, while her fame in literature was not yet established, and the ardent enthusiasm of her temper was unchecked by misfortune, she not only took an eager interest in the course of affairs, but exerted her powers to gain some influence in the direction of them. Her brilliant conversation drew around her the ablest and most accomplished men of the French capital; and in Paris, where the public opinion of France is compressed into a narrow space, wit or beauty have always had an influence unknown to the more sedate nations of the north. To this period of her life belong the treatises,—more interesting as specimens of her genius, than important for the truth of her theories—‘De l’Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur des Individus et des Nations,’ published in 1796, of which only the first part, relating to individuals, was completed; and ‘De la Littérature considerée dans ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales,’ published in 1800: subjects, it has been truly said, which demand the observation and study of a whole life. It is not on these, therefore, that her fame is based. But the latter has the great merit, according to the testimony of Sir James Mackintosh, of being the first attempt to treat the philosophy of literary history upon a bold and comprehensive scale.
But she could not aspire to “direct the storm,” without running some danger of being caught in it; and it is probable, as indeed she herself admits, that if she had foreseen the troubles which political influence was to bring upon her, she would have been well pleased to resign all pretension to it. At the end of 1799, Bonaparte rose to power on the ruin of the Directory. That remarkable man inspired Mad. de Stael from the first with an indescribable fear and dislike, which she has expressed throughout her very interesting work, entitled ‘Dix Années d’Exil;’ and as she saw at once the danger to which the cause of rational liberty was exposed by his ambition, and feared not to express her sentiments, her house became the focus of discontent. Benjamin Constant, then one of her intimate associates, having prepared and communicated to her a speech to expose the dawning tyranny of the First Consul, warned her that, if spoken, it would necessarily be followed by the desertion of the brilliant society which she loved, and by which she was surrounded. She replied, “We must do as we think right.” It was accordingly pronounced on the following day, on the evening of which her favourite circle was to assemble at her own house. Before six o’clock she received ten notes of excuse. “The first and second I bore well enough, but as one note came after another, they began to disturb me. I appealed in vain to my conscience, which had bidden me resign the pleasures which depended on Bonaparte’s favour: so many good sort of persons blamed me, that I could not hold fast enough by my own view of the question.” And she says just before, with her usual candour, “If I had foreseen what I have suffered, dating from that day, I should not have been resolute enough to decline M. Constant’s offer to abstain from coming forward, for the sake of not compromising me.” The speech was followed by an intimation from Fouché, that Mad. de Stael’s retirement from Paris for a short time would be expedient.
In the spring of 1800, Bonaparte’s absence upon the campaign of Marengo, and the publication of her work on literature, brought Mad. de Stael again into fashion. From that time until 1802, she remained undisturbed, and divided her time chiefly between Paris, and her father’s residence at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva. In the latter year (in which she published ‘Delphine’) her intimacy with Bernadotte caused the First Consul to regard her with suspicion, though the dread of being banished from the delights of Parisian society had taught her prudence. “They pretend,” he said, “that she neither talks politics, nor mentions me; but I know not how it happens, that people seem to like me less after visiting her.” Prudence, or the warning of her friends, detained Mad. de Stael at Coppet during the winter of 1802–3: but when war broke out, and she thought that Bonaparte’s attention was fully occupied by the proposed descent upon England, she could not resist the thirst of conversation which always drew her to Paris. She did not venture to enter the city; but she had not been long in its neighbourhood, when she was terribly disconcerted by a peremptory order not to appear within forty leagues of the metropolis. She candidly avows that “la conversation Française n’existe qu’à Paris, et la conversation a été, depuis mon enfance mon plus grand plaisir.” The rest of France, therefore, had no attraction for her, and she determined to visit Germany. Weimar was her first place of abode, where she became acquainted with Goethe, Wieland, and Schiller, and, under their auspices, commenced her study of the German language and literature. In 1804, she proceeded to Berlin; but she was suddenly recalled to Switzerland by the illness and death of M. Necker.
To this most painful loss Mad. Necker de Saussure attributes a deep and beneficial influence on her friend’s character. It inspired a melancholy which perhaps never was entirely dissipated, it raised her thoughts to a more exalted strain of meditation, and gave vigour and consistency to those reverential feelings, which before were perhaps hardly definite enough to be termed religion. At this time she composed her account of the private life of M. Necker, of which B. Constant has said, that no other of her works conveys so good a notion of the author. Shortly after she visited Italy for the first time. The grand and solemn remains of antiquity harmonized with the melancholy of her mind; and in this journey was developed a love of art, and, in a less degree, a taste for scenery, of which up to this time she seems to have been strangely deficient. The fruit of her travels appeared in ‘Corinne,’ written after her return to Coppet in 1805, and published at Paris early in 1807, which raised her to the first class of living writers. Mad. Necker de Saussure says, in the strain of high panegyric, “Il n’eut qu’une voix, qu’un cri d’admiration dans l’Europe lettrée; et ce phénomène fut partout un événement;” and Sir James Mackintosh, who read it in India, in a translation, says, “I swallow Corinne slowly, that I may taste every drop. I prolong my enjoyment, and really dread the termination.” Dictated by the same leading idea as ‘Delphine,’ but far superior in depth and truth of sentiment, as well as eloquence, and genuine poetic ardour, it was also free from the moral objections to the former novel. Each heroine, according to the lively author first quoted, is a transcript from the author herself. “‘Corinne’ is the ideal of Mad. de Stael; ‘Delphine’ is her very self in youth.” A similar idea occurred to Mackintosh,—“In the character of ‘Corinne,’ Mad. de Stael draws an imaginary self—what she is, what she had the power of being, and what she can easily imagine that she might have become. Purity, which her sentiments and principles teach her to love; talents and accomplishments, which her energetic genius might easily have acquired; uncommon scenes, and incidents fitted for her extraordinary mind; and even beauty, which her fancy contemplates so constantly, that she can scarcely suppose it to be foreign to herself, and which, in the enthusiasm of invention, she bestows on this adorned as well as improved self,—these seem to be the materials out of which she has formed ‘Corinne,’ and the mode in which she reconciled it to her knowledge of her own character.... The grand defect is the want of repose—too much, and too ingenious reflection—too uniform an ardour of feeling. The understanding is fatigued, the heart ceases to feel.”
Before the publication of ‘Corinne.’ Mad. de Stael had ventured into the neighbourhood of Paris. The book contained nothing hostile to Napoleon; but the new wreath of fame which the author had woven for herself revived his spleen, and she soon received a peremptory order to quit France. This was a bitter mortification. We have mentioned her ruling love of conversation: and to her Paris was the world; beyond its limits life was vegetation. “Give me the Rue du Bac,” she said to those who extolled the Lake of Geneva; “I would prefer living in Paris on a fourth story, with a hundred louis a year.” The chief studies of her exile were German literature and metaphysics. In the autumn of 1807 she visited Vienna, where she spent a year in tranquil enjoyment, soothed by the respect and admiration, and gratified by the polished manners and conversation of the exalted circles in which she moved, and undisturbed by the petty tyranny which, in her stolen visits to France, always hung over her head. In 1808 she returned to Coppet, to arrange the materials for her great work on Germany. Having devoted nearly two years to this task, she went to France in the summer of 1810, the decree of exile being so far relaxed, that she was permitted, as before, to reside forty leagues from the capital. Her principal object was to superintend the printing of her work, which was to be published at Paris. After passing safely, though with many alterations, through the censorship, the last proof was corrected, September 23. Scarcely was this done, and 10,000 copies struck off, when the whole impression was seized and destroyed. Mad. de Stael fortunately was enabled, by timely warning, to secrete the manuscript. This blow was accompanied by an order to quit France without delay. America, which she had expressed a desire to visit, and Coppet, were the only places offered to her choice: an attempt to reach England, which was her secret wish, would have been followed by immediate arrest. She chose to return to her paternal home. There the Emperor’s persecution, and her hatred of him, reached their height; and though not to be ranked with the graver offences of tyranny, his treatment of her was of a most irritating character, and unbecoming any but a low-minded despot. It was intimated that she had better confine her excursions to a circle of two leagues; her motions were watched, even within her own house; to be regarded as her friend was equivalent to a sentence of disgrace or dismissal, to any person dependent on the government; her sons were forbidden to enter their native country; M. Schlegel, their domestic tutor, was ordered to quit Coppet; and worst of all, her two dearest friends, M. de Montmorency and Mad. Recamier, were banished France for having presumed to visit her. These, and more trifling delinquencies are set forth with most stinging sarcasm, in her ‘Ten Years of Exile.’