As a study of character, M. Herriot’s attempt is not very successful. He has failed to make live one of the most living creatures of history; he has set up a statue which no Pygmalion could call to womanhood; he has modelled the effigy of a woman who remains cold and lifeless despite ample evidence of swarming life within. His biography is neither exclusively descriptive nor analytical. He has followed narrative order, and arranged his facts chronologically, but when it is necessary to the understanding of the heroine, he does not hesitate to anticipate actual events or to pass judgment on later actions. Obviously M. Herriot’s effort was to make Madame Récamier part of a whole; her friends, especially toward the latter part of the book, take the floor constantly and leave her out of our sight and away from our thought. If the author had succeeded in permeating his studies of her followers with her influence; if he had left her enough power to be felt throughout the book, whether or not he was dealing with Madame Récamier herself, his study would have been more successful. But, not himself inspired by her charm, viewing the whole period cold-bloodedly and critically, he has been unable to convey Madame Récamier to his readers. The advantage of such analytical examination is that it facilitates judgment.
The great merit of M. Herriot’s book is its judiciality; he often supports his own conclusions by those of others, qualified and sincere. Indeed, this is one of M. Herriot’s most distinguishing traits. Whenever opinions differ, when historians and biographers do not agree, and when interpretation depends upon personal reactions, the author effaces himself and allows events and facts to speak for themselves. The final word has not yet been said of the controversies that were waged in France after Madame Récamier first dazzled le monde, and M. Herriot does not propose to say it. He has set up the period of the Révolution, of the Directoire, the tentative monarchy, the Empire and second monarchy clearly, concisely, specifically. His style is substantial, unadorned and fluent.
A question of the greatest controversy has always been the non-conjugality of the Récamiers. M. Herriot devotes a fifth of his book to discussion of the reasons that have been suggested to explain it. He calls in physicians and psychologists to bear witness and pass judgment; he keeps his ears opened to gossip and to malicious chatter; and he keeps an eye out for any indiscretion behind the curtains of the alcôve, news of which might have trickled through the walls of time. Discussions of personal relations between husband and wife, post-mortem investigations and attempts at unveiling the mysteries that were savagely guarded in life by their participants are in doubtful taste. M. Herriot seems to uphold the thesis that Madame Récamier was her husband’s daughter—an opinion which is defendable since he defends it—but which is too monstrous to be advanced without irrefutable proofs. The idea does not seem to repel him, and he finds explanations and apologies for it. The few documents which are left that tell us how they lived under the same roof he interprets as he chooses. Yet, there is no suggestion of scandal; he is no bearer of oil to throw upon the smouldering embers of her marital fire; he gives the results of his efforts to elicit testimony, to obtain evidence and to submit it to the world’s jury. All that can be said of the situation which existed between Récamier and his wife was that, after all, it was their affair. The fact that they had no conjugal relation may have been due to her physical condition, or to his, or the result of mutual agreement. The only right the biographer would have had to dwell at length on it would be if it had had such bearing on the life of his heroine that it might be taken as the fulcrum of her reactions and behaviour. It did not, in Madame Récamier’s case, despite M. Herriot’s comment that, “perhaps from this medley of abnormal circumstances in which she had been placed, there remained in her suspicion, a leaning toward discouragement, fear of love, a sort of resigned serenity, and the first germ of the coquetterie for which she was so often reproached by those who did not understand its causes.”
She was no more a coquette than any woman would have been in her position. She was not a beauty, but her charm and her finesse were such as to conquer hearts more effectively than any Juno might have done. She had intellectual powers which raised her far above her sex together with an unusual capacity for fidelity, tenderness and sympathy; she hesitated to wound her friends or to refuse them anything in her power and thus she gave permanency to the affection her charm engendered. She was wealthy, sought after and beloved; but her chief asset was goodness. Her admirers and friends, indeed all she admitted to her heart, were unanimous in praising her goodness, her tireless devotion to their pleasures, her constant preoccupation with their pains.
M. Herriot is at his best when he discusses Madame de Staël’s influence over her young friend Juliette. The ex-Premier is by nature and experience better fitted to understand Madame de Staël than Madame Récamier. Her political ideas were akin to his; her mind had many masculine traits, her culture was deep; her talent admitted; her influence sought. She supplies most of the background of the book, and many of the anecdotes with which fortunately the book is sparingly padded.
Now and then M. Herriot paints himself in the picture and all too rarely expresses his ideas of life and human nature. We like to be assured that “Women who are pretty and who can not but know it are neither flighty nor fanciful; they are always self-contained; a prudent reserve accompanies them even in their weaknesses, which are never unconscious.” When he defends Madame Récamier against possible criticisms, he admits that nowhere in her history is there anything that could be interpreted as unworthy of her situation, or that would justify her reputation as a woman given to intrigue. It can not be denied that she opposed at first to the attacks of her admirers a subtle and world-wise fencing; “but men have perhaps an unjustified tendency to label 'coquetterie’ all that which, in a woman, obstacles their pride, or curbs realisation of their desires.”
Characterisations of the heroine are few, and it is obvious that her latest biographer has not sought to make her stand out particularly among her contemporaries. But she does, despite all; she was the shining light around which all the moths swarmed, dazzled by its brilliancy. Most of the characterisations are quotations from contemporary authors, particularly Benjamin Constant, who portrayed a side of Juliette which not all her admirers knew. Speaking of her conduct toward Lucien Bonaparte, he writes, “She was disturbed by the unhappiness she created, angry at her own disturbance, reviving hope unconsciously by the sole aid of her pity, and destroying it by her carelessness as soon as she had appeased the suffering that her passing pity had engendered.” Chateaubriand felt the truth here expressed and made use of most of Benjamin Constant’s material regarding Madame Récamier, but passed over this particular characterisation of the woman he had loved. Sainte-Beuve, far-sighted as he was and gifted with vision, expressed the same idea: “Lucien loves; he is not spurned, yet he will never be accepted. There is the nuance. It will be the same with all the men who will rush to her, and with all those that will follow.... She would have liked to remain in April, always.”
M. Herriot first modelled his heroine and after pedestalling her, proceeded to walk around his statue and survey it. He remodelled here, shortened there, smoothed this surface and softened that line. He treated it as photographers treat their plates. By giving it ample dimension, he has called attention more to the large lines than to the details. When he finished it he set it up in a vast plaza. This bigness of scope enabled him to group about her, as a rich background, the figures of those who were attached to her chariot with ribands of love and of admiration. The list of them is long; they were all intellectuals. Madame Récamier, though kind to every one, never attracted fools or bores, and her salon, which was the chambre d’accouchée of romantic literature, never sheltered a shallow mind, a cold heart or an uninteresting soul.
Only once was Juliette really so consumed with love that she hoped a divorce would free her—to marry Prince Augustus. But there again her compassionate heart took pity on a husband who had lost his fortune and who, despite many gallant adventures, harboured tender feelings for her. Since she could not have Prince Augustus, she would have no one; and from the episode of Benjamin Constant and of Ballanche, whose love was most pathetic and devoted, to that of Chateaubriand, we see Madame Récamier, anxious to please, glad to be able to do it, avid of admiration which was directed to her mind more than to her body, and willing to make any sacrifice to insure the success of a friend, the accomplishment of a plan, the perpetuation of an idea.
The imprisonment of Madame Récamier, during the few days when she was suspected of plotting against the safety of the State, recalls other names whose possessors did not escape as gracefully as she did, but M. Herriot does not allow himself to be distracted. He is telling the story of Madame Récamier and her friends, and he is not hypnotised by the high spots of the tragedy. Neither discursive nor willing to pass judgment, he is the impartial historian, the unprejudiced biographer. That he admires and loves Madame Récamier there can be no doubt, but that is unavoidable, and his love is neither blind nor impetuous; it is a reasoned love, but it is not so engrossing as to exclude criticism and interpretation.