However, in spite of difficulties and mortifications, Mlle. Clairon remained at her post, and, according to her own account, used the influence she had acquired over the Margrave in a highly beneficent manner; destroying abuses, reforming the finances, encouraging agriculture, and so forth. She also beautified the city of Anspach by an ornamental fountain, established a hospital, distributed considerable sums in charity, and was very popular among the poorer classes.
In the course of the year 1789, Mlle. Clairon found herself called up to face a rival influence. The eccentric and "infinitamente indiscreet,"[208] but charming and accomplished Elizabeth, Countess of Craven, descended upon Anspach. The countess had separated from her husband in 1780, since which she had spent the greater part of her time in wandering about the Continent. In the course of her travels, she had met the Margrave, whom she had known when she was a child, and who invited her to Anspach. She came, and her stay was a long one. She infused new life into that dull German Court; she organised a theatre in a disused coach-house, and wrote little plays for it; she had a garden laid out in the English style, under her direction, at the Margrave's palace of Triesdorf, near Anspach; she founded a little academy for the encouragement of literature and the arts, and found means to amuse even the unamusable Margravine. Finally, she stole away the heart of the Margrave from his grey-haired Egeria, and wrote to her husband, with whom she still corresponded, that she was to be "treated as a sister."
At length, Lady Craven left for Paris. Soon afterwards, the Margrave announced his intention of visiting the French capital; Mlle. Clairon decided to accompany him. In Paris, the Margrave favoured her with so little of his company that she felt constrained to inquire the reason.
The prince returned an evasive answer; Mlle. Clairon caused a watch to be kept upon his movements, and discovered the fatal truth. So long as the Margrave remained in Paris, the deceived sultana, by a great effort of will, succeeded "in concealing beneath a countenance always calm, and sometimes laughing, the rending tortures of mind and body." But when the prince returned to Anspach, she declined to follow him, and sent instead a long and reproachful letter, wherein she informed him that "his frenzied passion for a woman of whose character, unfortunately, he alone was ignorant, his indifference to public opinion, the license of his new morals, his want of respect for his age and his dignity, obliged her to see in him only one who had thrown aside all restraint and decency in compliance with the dictates of a depraved heart, or as one whose disordered intellect, while it excited pity, evinced also the necessity of restraint; that the veil was now lifted, and she knew herself never to have been anything but the hapless victim of his egotism and his divers caprices; and that, therefore, with infinite pain, she laid at his feet all the boons she had received from him, and bade him adieu ... adieu for ever."
And so ended the last romance of Mlle. Clairon, and the only souvenir of her seventeen years' residence at Anspach is a kind of fancy bread, which is called "Clairons Weck" unto this day.[209]
As for the faithless Margrave, he was too happy in the society of Lady Craven, who shortly afterwards took up her residence at Anspach, to care much what became of her predecessor in his affections; and so infatuated did he become with that lady that, on his wife's death in 1791, he married her. In the following year, the prince—in the face of an eloquent letter of remonstrance from Mlle. Clairon—sold his margravates of Anspach and Baireuth to the King of Prussia, and migrated, with his wife, to England, where he died in 1806. The Margravine survived her husband more than twenty years, and died, at Naples, in 1828.
In 1785, during one of the visits to Paris which she had paid in company with the Margrave, Mlle. Clairon had purchased a country-house at Issy, and it was here that she now took up her residence. She lived a very quiet life, receiving and visiting a few old friends, and occupying the rest of her time with collecting objects of natural history, which had always been one of her favourite occupations, and the writing of her Mémoires.
Madame Vigée Lebrun, the painter, who met Mlle. Clairon soon after her return to France, at the house of her former pupil, Larive, has left us the following impression of the famous tragédienne in her old age:—
"I had pictured to myself that she was very tall; and, on the contrary, she was very short and very thin; she held her head very erect, which gave her an air of dignity. I never heard any one speak with so much emphasis, for she retained her tragic tone and airs of a princess; but she gave me the impression of being clever and well informed. I sat beside her at table, and enjoyed much of her conversation. Larive showed her the greatest respect and attention."[210]