Madame de Lamartine was born at the palace of St. Cloud, and passed her childhood there with Louis Philippe, sharing the lessons and sports of the Orleans children. All her earliest recollections were connected with St. Cloud, its fountains, and broad alleys, and velvet lawns, and lovely park. Many years after (in 1813), she tells in her journal that, being at Paris, her son drove her to St. Cloud in a cabriolet, and she thus writes of her visit: “This is the place where I passed so much of my childhood when my mother was bringing up the Duke of Orleans’ children. I was very happy there. I left when fifteen years old, and had not seen the place since, though I longed to, for I retained a delightful remembrance of it. I walked all over the park with Alphonse and Eugénie, pointing out tree after tree where I played when a child. I wished to see our apartments once more, but it was impossible, as they are occupied by the Empress Maria Louisa.”
When fifteen years of age, Alix des Roys was nominated by the Duke of Orleans to a vacancy in the noble Chapter of Salles, where she was placed under the protection of the Countess Lamartine de Villars, a canoness of that chapter. The Chevalier de Lamartine, visiting his sister, fell in love with the beautiful Alix, who is said to have resembled Madame Récamier, and, instead of embracing that semi-monastic life, she ultimately married him, March 6, 1790.
We can imagine the contrast between her life in the maisons de plaisance of one of the wealthiest princes in Europe, and that she afterward led in a plain country residence a hundred miles from Paris, and in limited circumstances. She afterward alludes in her journal to this change: “In my childhood I imagined it impossible to exist unless at court, in a palace like the Palais Royal, or the park at St. Cloud, where I lived with my mother. Now, O my God, I wish to be content in every place where thy will places me!”
But her new home was not without its attractions for a nature like hers. Leaving the banks of the Saône where it winds among the fertile hills of Mâcon, and going toward the old Abbey of Cluny, where Abélard breathed his last, the traveller, turning aside into a winding mountain-path, comes after an hour or two to a sharp spire of gray stone towering above a group of peasants’ houses. Beyond these, nestling in a hollow at the foot of a mountain, is Milly, familiar to every reader of Lamartine. Five broad steps lead to the door, which opens into a corridor full of presses of carved walnut containing the household linen. From it doors open into the various apartments, and access is had to the one story above. The mountain almost insensibly begins its ascent directly back of the house. Its slope is luxuriant with vines, on which depended mainly the subsistence of the family. A small garden is in the rear of the house, with its vegetables and flower-beds and clumps of trees, and its secluded “Alley of Meditation” where Madame de Lamartine walked at sunset, saying her rosary and giving herself up to holy recollections.
She seems to have taken Milly at once to her heart. She affectionately calls it her Jerusalem—her abode of peace. She often said to her son: “It is very small, but large enough if our wishes and habits are in proportion. Happiness is from within. We should not be more so by extending the limits of our meadows and vineyards. Happiness is not measured by the acre, like land, but by the resignation of the heart; for God wishes the poor to have as much as the rich, that neither may dream of seeking it elsewhere than from him!”
And again she says: “If people were convinced that, by submissively receiving all the difficulties of the position in which they are placed, they would be at peace everywhere; they would allow themselves to be sweetly guided without anxiety by circumstances and the persons to whom they owe deference. Since I decided on this, I have been infinitely more happy. There was a time when I wished everything to yield to me, and absolutely subordinate to my will. I was then incessantly tormented about the present and the future. I often saw afterward it would have been a misfortune to have had my own way. Now I abandon myself to the Infinite Sovereign Wisdom, I feel at peace exteriorly and interiorly! God be praised for ever! He alone is wise, and should overrule all!”
Poor woman, she had enough to try her flexible will. Her husband’s elder brother, who, according to the ancient régime, was regarded as the head and guide of the family, was not disposed to give up his rights. He was unmarried, and particularly fond of interfering in the domestic regulations of the family whose future prospects somewhat depended on him, particularly those of Alphonse, who was to perpetuate the name. Another brother, the Abbé de Lamartine, lived further off, and was, of course, less tempted to interfere, but seems to have given his voice on extraordinary occasions. And then there were two unmarried aunts whom Madame de Lamartine seems to have been attached to, and whom in her charity she calls saints, but very trying saints they were with their strictures on her dainty ways, her careful dress, and her indulgence to her children. To do them justice, however, they all seem to have been sincerely anxious for the prosperity of the family.
Madame de Lamartine brought up one son and five daughters, concerning whom she gives many interesting details in her journal. The daughters appear to have been lovely in person and character. Their brother has given a delightful description of them in his Nouvelles Confidences, which is confirmed by his mother’s journal.
But M. de Lamartine makes a very strange mistake in saying his mother derived her notions of educating her children from the works of Rousseau (particularly from Emile) and St. Pierre, whom he calls “the favorite philosophers of women because the philosophers of feeling,” and “whose works,” he says, “she had read and admired.”