Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

There are a number of traits of Mme. Roland which should be considered before giving a final estimate of her character, of her rôle in French history, and of her right to be ranked among the most illustrious women of France. Critics in general seem to show her a marked hostility; such men as Caro assert that she had no modesty, that she lacked sentiment, delicacy, and reserve. M. Saint-Amand said that she reflected the vices and virtues of her age, summing up the passions and illusions, being intellectually and morally the disciple of Rousseau, but socially personifying the third estate, which in the beginning asked for nothing, but later demanded all. Politics made her cruel at times, although by nature she was good and sensible. He declared that with her acquaintance with Buzot began her career of love and ambition. In love, she believed herself a patriot, but all the various phases of her public career were simply the results of her emotions. Thus, for example, in order to see Buzot, she persuaded her husband to return to Paris to seek his fortune and make the realization of her dreams possible. She desired to play a rôle for which her origin had not destined her, which made her actions appear theatrical and affected. It is evident that she hated both the king and the queen, and at the council for the Girondist ministry demanded the death of the royal couple. And yet, Saint-Amand cites her as the most beautiful of that group of martyrs who lost their lives in the first heat of the Revolution—as the genius among them by her force, purity, and grace—the brilliant and austere muse in all the saintliness of martyrdom.

The two maxims which Mme. Roland followed throughout her career had much to do with her fall: security is the tomb of liberty; indulgence toward men in authority is the means of pushing them to despotism. These maxims as her motto or impulse, united with the spirit of push, energy, and at times rashness and impropriety, naturally led her to her ruin in those days of revolutionary ideas. She was a woman of powerful passion controlled by reason, and with frankness, devotion, courage, and fidelity as forces impelling her to activity. But there was one great defect which was at the bottom of her misfortunes,—a too great ambition, which often led her into perilous paths, even to the scaffold, which, in its turn, covered her errors.

She is said to have married M. Roland more as a theory than as a husband, for her ideas of marriage were such as to make pure, disinterested love impossible. Her husband was in many respects her intellectual superior, but she excelled him in versatility. Being her senior by twenty years, when he grew old and infirm he depended upon her for a great deal, all of which contributed to her restlessness and unhappiness. Then there developed in her that terrible struggle between loyalty to her husband and passion for Buzot, in which reason conquered. This devotion to duty was indeed rare in those days, when passion was supreme and pure love was almost unknown. Mr. Dobson says that this one trait by which she gave real expression of virtue is profoundly a product of her mental self. Her instinct would have led her to self-abandonment, so common in that day, but her "man by the head" self was stronger than her "woman by the heart" self. These two sides of her character, fostered by incessant reading, incited her fearful and unrelenting hatreds as well as her passion, "masculine enough to be mistrusted and feminine enough to be admired." These two qualities made her a power and an attraction. Her better side will continue to shine clearer as the horror of those days is revealed. Whatever may be the effects of her ambitious nature and of her unfortunate passion for Buzot, by the very virtue of her intellect and reasoning she will remain the one great woman of the Revolution who willingly and conscientiously sacrificed her life for her country.

A type perhaps more universally known in her relation to the Revolution than is Mme. Roland, though no better understood, was Charlotte Corday. Possessed of a most intense patriotism and an unusual emotional nature, she represented better than any other woman of her age the peculiar French trait—namely, the emotional perfectly combined with the mathematical. She was unique; her compatriots practised the art of studying themselves, in order to be attractive, and thus accomplished their ends, while her ambition was not to please merely, but to be of some real, practical value to her troubled country. She stands out, however, as the product of the end of the eighteenth century, a natural result of the reading of philosophy and political pamphlets. Quite naturally, she entertained such philosophical sentiments as this: "No one will lose in losing me, and the country may be better off for the sacrifice. Death comes only once, and let us use it to the good of the country or the greatest number of people." Thus, her philosophy led her to a complete detachment from her individual self, and fostered the idea of dying for her country.

Her decision to rid France of Marat was arrived at by degrees of silent brooding over the evils which beset her native land; at last she felt herself called to some great act which would necessitate the loss of her life. "The time brought forth desperation, intense warmth of feeling, concentrated upon some purpose or object;" the reasoning self seemed to be stifled by the intensity of the emotion. Yet, reason was to conquer in her. When the Girondists returned to Caen and described Robespierre and Marat in the darkest colors, she at once felt moved to put forth all her efforts to rid France of that evil blot—Marat. She was beautiful, strong, and graceful, presenting a most striking appearance. Loved by all, she felt love and devotion only for her country. Desperate and determined, she set out to fulfil her mission. She was a mere expression of the conservative element which acts only when driven by sheer necessity. Her reason impressed her with her duty and circumstances; the time acted upon her mind. "Easy, calm, resigned, she looked upon the angry masses of people who cursed her," confident that she had done her country a service, and proud that she had been the fortunate one to render it. This was her glory, and for this she will be remembered in history.

Possibly the rarest phenomenon in the history of the illustrious women of France is Mme. Récamier, who, by force of her beauty and social fascination, and without intellectual gifts or even wit, won for herself the position of queen of French society, which she held for nearly half a century. The very name of Récamier has come to evoke a vision of beauty, a beauty so well known to every lover of art who has visited the Luxembourg and gazed upon the figure "so flexible and elegant, with head well poised, brilliant complexion, little rosy mouth with pearly teeth, black curling hair, soft expressive eyes, and a bearing indicative of indolence and pride, yet with a face beaming with good nature and sympathy." Her beauty has been considered perfect, but a recent writer has proved this to be an error. M.J. Turquan, in a new volume on Mme. Récamier, is everything but sympathetic to the woman at whom criticism has rarely been pointed. "Quite a contrast to her extraordinary beauty of face," he declares, "were her hands, with big fingers square at the end and having flat nails. The same may be said of her feet, which were not only big, but were without the slightest trace of finesse in their lines." But though Turquan has raised numerous points in her disfavor, they are not at all likely to detract from her unrivalled reputation for beauty.

Critics have made of her a sort of enigmatic figure, supernatural and having only the form of the human. Thus, in Lamartine we find the following description: "The young girl was, they say, a sous-entendu of nature: she could be a wife, she could not be a mother. These are the two mysteries we must respect, but which we must know to have been the secret of the entire life of Mme. Récamier—a mournful and eternal enigma which will never have its words divined,... All her looks produced an intoxication, but brought hope to no heart. The divine statue had not descended from its pedestal for anyone, as though such a performance would have been too divine for a mortal." Her beauty was so marked, so singular, that wherever she appeared—at the ball, the theatre—it caused a sensation; all turned to look at her and admire in subdued astonishment. Her form was said to be marvellously elegant and supple, her neck of an exquisite perfection, her mouth "deliciously small and pink, her teeth veritable pearls set in coral, her arms splendidly moulded, her eyes full of sweetness and admiration, her nose most attractive in its regularity, her physiognomy candid and spiritual, her air indolent and haughty, and her attitude reserved. Before this ensemble, you remained in ecstasy." All this beauty was particularly well set off by an exquisite white dress adorned with pearls—a style she affected the year around.

But her beauty alone could hardly have contributed to the marvellous success of Mme. Récamier, as some critics assert. Guizot, for instance, suspects her nature to have been less superficial than other writers might lead one to suppose. He said: "This passionate admiration, this constant affection, this insatiable taste for society and conversation, won her a wide friendship. All who approached and knew her—foreigners and Frenchmen, princes and the middle classes, saints and worldlings, philosophers and artists, adversaries as well as partisans—all she inspired with the ideas and causes she espoused." Her qualities outside of her beauty were tact, generosity, and elevation of soul, combined with an amiable grace which was unlimited, however superficial it may have been. Knowing how to maintain, in her salon, harmony and even cordial relations between men of the most varied temperaments and political ideas, it was possible for her to remain all her life an intelligent and warm-hearted bond between the élite minds and their diverse sentiments, which she tactfully tempered. Though ever faithful to one cause, she admitted men and women of all parties to her salon. She was moderate and just in the midst of the most arduous struggles, tolerant toward her adversaries, generous toward the conquered, sympathetic to all, and remarkably successful in conciliating all political, literary, and philosophical opinions as well as the passions which she aroused in her worshippers. To these qualities, as much as to her beauty, were due the harmony of her life, the unity of her character—which were never troubled by the turmoils of politics or the emotions of love. She was not wife, mother, or lover; "she never belonged to anyone in soul or sense." Always mistress of her imagination as well as of her heart, she permitted herself to be charmed but never carried away—receiving from all, but giving nothing in return. Her life was brilliant, but there was lurking in the background the demon of sadness and lassitude and the terrible disease of the eighteenth century,—ennui.

Two splendid portraits of Mme. Récamier are left to us: one by her passionate but unsuccessful lover, Benjamin Constant, picturing her as the personification of attractiveness; the other by M. Lenormant, showing that she desired constant admiration: "She lacked the affections which bring veritable happiness and the true dignity of woman. Her barren heart, desirous of tenderness and devotion, sought recompense for this need of living, in the homage of passionate admiration, the language of which pleases the ears." Mme. Récamier, while still a child, seemed to realize the power of her beauty, and even before her marriage in 1793 she would often say, when demanded in marriage: "Mon Dieu! how beautiful I must be already!" A mere girl when married, being only sixteen years of age, she felt no love for her husband, who was her senior by twenty-five years. Soon after the terrible times of "the Reign of Terror" she found herself one of the most beautiful women in Paris, and her husband one of the wealthiest of bankers. The three rival women of the times were Mme. Récamier, Mme. Tallien, and Josephine. The terrible days of the guillotine were succeeded by an uninterrupted reign of pleasure, "when a fever of amusement possessed everyone, and the desire for distraction of all kinds seemed to have been pushed to its limits." M. Turquan states that in the reign of dissolute extravagance, immorality, and gorgeous splendor, Mme. Récamier formed a striking contrast by her simplicity. Her first triumph was at the church Saint-Roche, the most fashionable of Paris, where she was selected to raise a purse for charity. On one occasion the collection amounted to twenty thousand francs, all due to the beauty of the woman passing the plate. She was soon invited by her friend Barras to all the balls and fêtes under the Directorate.

In 1798 M. Récamier bought the house formerly tenanted by Necker, and later established himself in a château at Clichy, where he received his friends, among whom was Lucien Bonaparte, who attempted the ruin of the beautiful hostess, but without success. Napoleon himself attempted in vain to win her to his court as maid of honor and as an ornament, her refusal incurring his anger, especially as she was the height of fashion and courted by all the great men of the age. Through her preference for the Royalists—persisting in her line of conduct in spite of her friend Fouché—she finally incurred the enmity of the emperor. Even the Princess Caroline endeavored to obtain Mme. Récamier's friendship for Napoleon, "but, although the princess gave her loge twice to the favorite, and upon each occasion the emperor went to the theatre expressly to gaze upon her, she remained firm in her refusal, which was one of the causes of the downfall of her banker husband, whom Napoleon might have saved had his wife been the emperor's friend." Napoleon certainly resented her refusal, for when requested to save Récamier's bank he replied: "I am not in love with Mme. Récamier!" Thus, because his wife preferred the aristocracy to the favors of Napoleon, the banker lost his fortune.