Madame Roland: A Biographical Study

by Ida M. Tarbell

Another real trouble of the moment which Madame Roland notes, though she does not see that she shares it, she expressed to Bancal:

“I have had the opportunity of seeing, since my sojourn here, that it is much more difficult to do good than even reflecting men imagine. It is not possible to do good in politics, save by uniting efforts; and there is nothing so difficult as to unite different minds to work persistently for the same end. Everybody believes only in the efficacy of his own system, and his own way. He is irritated and bored by that of another, and because he does not know how to bend to an idea a little different from his own, he ends by going alone, without doing anything useful. For more than a century, philosophy has been preaching tolerance; it has begun to root itself in some minds; but I see little of it in our customs. Our fine minds laugh at patience as a negative virtue. I confess that in my eyes it is the true sign of the force of the soul, the fruit of profound reflection, the necessary means for conciliating men and spreading instruction, in short, the virtue of a free people. We have everything to learn on this subject.”

Madame Roland’s letters written at this period abound in similar just criticisms on the Revolutionary temper. Her remarkably virile and comprehensive intellect penetrated the real weaknesses of the movement whenever she considered men and measures impersonally. Then she grasped perfectly the meaning of things, and her observations were profound, her insight keen, her judgments wise, and her conclusions statesmanlike.

However discreet Madame Roland may have been at the gatherings in her salon, however silent she may have kept, she gained at this period a veritable supremacy over the group of patriots. There were many reasons for this. She embodied in a sort of Greek clearness and chastity the principles they professed. No one had a clearer conception of the ideal government which France should have; no one expressed more eloquently all this government ought to do; no one idealized the future with more imagination, more hopefulness. No one gave himself more fully to the cause than this woman who would not go to the theatre because the country was in peril; who could not look at pictures; who was ashamed to send Bancal a song in exchange for one he had sent her, because it was not grave enough for the circumstances; who was even “ashamed to write of songs.” She became in a way the ideal Revolutionary figure, a Greek statue, the type of the Republic of which they dreamed.

Her inflexibility was as great a power over her friends. They wavered, compromised, stopped at practical results instead of pushing to ideal ones. She had decision, firmness of purpose, the determination to reach the end, and her influence over them was powerful because of this unyielding attitude. Nothing daunted her. Riot and war were sacred necessities. To die was their duty. Nothing could have been more inspiring than her firmness of purpose, her superb indifference to consequences. This high attitude had something of the inspired sibyl in it. Their “Greek statue” became their prophetess. Her very cruelty was divine. It was the “wrath of the gods,” the “righteous indignation” of the moralist.

No doubt the personal charm of Madame Roland had much to do with her influence. All who knew her testify to her attractiveness. Guillon de Montléon, by no means a sympathetic critic, speaks of “her pleasant, piquant face, her active, brilliant mind.” Arthur Young, who saw her in 1789, describes her as “young and beautiful.” Dumont declares that to “every personal charm” she joined “all merits of character.” Dumouriez, who certainly knew all the beautiful women of his day, found her most attractive, and speaks especially of her taste and elegance in dress. Lemontey says of her: “Her eyes, her head, her hair, were of remarkable beauty. Her delicate complexion had a freshness of color which, joined to her air of reserve and candor, made her seem singularly young. I found in her none of the elegant Parisian air which she claims in her Memoirs, though I do not mean to say that she was awkward.” And he adds, she talked “well, too well.” Indeed, all her contemporaries testify to her brilliant conversation. Tissot tells of her “sonorous, flexible voice, infinite charm in talking, eloquence which came from her heart.” As the tradition in the family of Madame Roland goes, she was short and stout, possessed no taste in dress, and could be called neither beautiful, nor even pretty. However, vivacity, sympathy, and intelligence were so combined in her face, and her voice was so mellow and vibrating, that she exercised a veritable charm when she talked. She herself considered her chief attraction to be her conversational power. In one of the frequent self-complacent passages in her Memoirs, she repeats a remark of Camille Desmoulins, that he could not understand how a woman of her age and with so little beauty had so many admirers, and she comments: “He had never heard me talk.”

The portraits of Madame Roland, of which there are numbers, nearly all show a singularly winning and piquant face. Several good collections of these portraits are in existence. The Coste collection of Lyons contained thirty-three different engravings and medallions of her, and the print department of the Carnavalet Museum and of the Bibliothèque Nationale have both rather good specimens. By far the best collection, however, is in the town museum of Versailles—a recent donation of M. Vatel, a well-known collector of Gironde and Charlotte Corday documents and curios.

MADAME ROLAND.
After a crayon portrait owned by the family.

The only surely authentic portrait of Madame Roland is that facing this page. The original is in red crayon and much faded, but a faithful copy in black, well preserved, bearing the date of 1822, is in the possession of the great-granddaughter of Madame Roland, Madame Marillier of Paris. If one compares this portrait with that of Heinsius at Versailles, he will see that they have nothing in common. Heinsius’ portrait was bought in Louis Philippe’s time, and bore the name of Madame Roland up to 1865, when the placard was taken off because nothing proved that it was she. However, it still figures in the catalogue as Madame Roland, and photographs made after it are sold in all Paris shops. The director of the Versailles Gallery was preparing in 1893 to revise the catalogue, and purposed then to take the necessary steps to establish the authenticity of the painting, but as late as May, 1894, it still was marked Madame Roland. The family do not regard the picture as authentic; one point they make against it is that it is a full-face view, while, according to their traditions, Madame Roland never allowed anything but a profile to be made. It bears no resemblance to other authentic portraits, and is especially displeasing because of the full eyes, and the bold expression. These characteristics, however, Heinsius gave to all his portraits of French women; thus, the portraits of Mesdames Victoire and Adelaide at Versailles are almost coarse in expression, and in striking contrast to the other pictures of them which hang in the same gallery. The best reason for supposing Heinsius’ portrait to be Madame Roland is a sketch owned by the Carnavalet bearing the inscription M. J. Phlipon, gravé par son père à 19 ans, which strikingly resembles it.