The traveller resumed his journey, reading his pamphlet to beguile the tedium of his way. Although written by a Protestant in a cold, unsympathizing, matter-of-fact way, the essential charm of its mere record of youthful self-devotion laid a powerful spell upon him. His artistic enthusiasm, his heart, his piety, were all touched and aroused. Just emerging in sorrow from one of the most trying ordeals of the battle of life, with repelled longings and disappointed hopes, his pent-up youthful energies were now seeking some outlet for escape, some fresh field of action. Uncertain what this field, this outlet, might be, he had vowed that, with the choice before him of several different objects to pursue, he would decide for that which was the most Catholic. He had found it. “To S. Elizabeth he would,” in his own words, “sacrifice his fatigue and his hopes.” He would write her life, and strive to place on record its touching story—at once a tender love-legend, a page of mediæval romance, and the hallowed tradition of a saintly career. At the first stopping-place he left the diligence, and, taking a return carriage, went immediately back to Marburg.
This traveller, this young stranger, was Charles, Count de Montalembert, peer of France. His sudden impulse, his enthusiastic vow, were not as words written in water. To what would at this day seem to many an inconsiderate, quixotic rashness, succeeded the deliberate realization of an undertaking full of labor and difficulty. He ransacked libraries, sought out chronicles, legends, and popular traditions, read old books and long-forgotten manuscripts, and travelled far and wide throughout Germany, wherever a locality offered the attraction of the slightest association with the name of S. Elizabeth. The charm and fascination of his theme grew upon him with every additional [pg 435] fact he learned regarding her. Beginning at the famous old castle of Wartburg, where Elizabeth came a child, the daughter of a race of kings, from distant Hungary, he made a veritable pilgrimage, taking for his route the itinerary of his heroine's life—to Kreuzburg; to Reinhartsbrünn, where, a young wife and mother of twenty, she parted in anguish from her husband, a crusader setting out for Palestine; to Bamberg, where she was driven by persecution; to Andechs, to Erfurth, and finally to Marburg, “whither,” as he says, “he returned to pray by her desecrated tomb, and to gather with pain and difficulty some remembrance of her from the mouths of a people who have renounced with the faith of their fathers the regard due to their benefactress.”
Bow down your heads, O generation of stockbrokers and speculators in provisions and railway shares, to the memory of this Montalembert, who, in the flower of his youthful manhood, for years went up and down the world with an idea in his head and heart!
But this book, this life of S. Elizabeth. you object, was, after all, a mere pious legend of dubious trustworthiness? On the contrary, it was a work of the highest value, even judged by the severest canons of historical criticism. Its introduction alone is sufficient to make the work classic. Sainte-Beuve, high academic and critical authority, calls it majestic,[186] and reviewers of all nations have contributed their verdicts of approval.
This was Montalembert's first literary production—a success, as it deserved to be, worthy forerunner of his yet greater work, The Monks of the West, and the first-fruit of a splendid literary and oratorical career, whose main inspiration was always drawn from the sources of Catholic truth and Catholic faith.
Montalembert died in March, 1870, leaving a name and a reputation which for all time to come will remain one of the proudest illustrations of France.
We are fortunate in already having an admirable memoir of his life,[187] written by one of the most distinguished women of England. It cannot but be gratifying to all who cherish the memory of Montalembert that the task should have fallen into the hands of one so eminently capable as Mrs. Oliphant. Personally intimate with his family and on terms of friendship with his wife (née Comtesse de Merode), thoroughly familiar with the language, modern history, and politics of France, and the successful translator of The Monks of the West, it would have been difficult to find a writer better fitted, in knowledge and in sympathy, to record the life of Charles de Montalembert. Let us add here that, for reasons which the intelligent reader may easily divine, we are glad that the biography has been written by a Protestant. Although to a Catholic reader it would be more pleasant to read a life in which nothing could be found which is not in perfect harmony with the spirit of faith and loyalty toward the church, yet, for the public generally, the testimony of a fair and candid Protestant in respect to certain very important events in the career of Montalembert will be more free from the suspicion of bias, and therefore of more value in establishing the fact of his essential devotion [pg 436] to the Holy See to the end of his life.
We trust that the ladies of Sorosis and of the various wings and vanguards of the grand army of “The Rights of Women” will not take offence if we endeavor to compliment Mrs. Oliphant by saying that we especially admire the style in which her memoir is written, for a tone and quality which—turn whither we may—we cannot otherwise describe than as “manly.” Making due allowance for the almost inevitable partiality of the biographer for his hero, there is a directness, a solidity, a sound common-sense view of practical questions, and an absence of mere sentimentality, all eminently to her credit and in admirable keeping with the dignity of her subject. Mrs. Oliphant's modesty, too, equals her ability. Referring to her translation of The Monks of the West, she tells us: “We are sorry to add, to our personal humiliation, that Montalembert was by no means so much satisfied with at least the first part of the translation. He acknowledged that the meaning was faithfully rendered; ‘but,’ he wrote, ‘I cannot admire the constant use of French or Latin words instead of your own vernacular. My Anglo-Saxon feelings are wounded to the quick by the useless admission of the article the or a; and by such words as chagrin instead of grief, malediction instead of curse, etc.’ The proofs of the translation came back from him laden with corrections in red ink—a circumstance which communicated to them a certain additional sharpness, at least to the troubled imagination of the translator; and the present writer may be perhaps allowed here to avow in her own person that up to this present moment, when she happens to have the smallest French phrase to translate, she pauses with instinctive alarm, hastily substituting freedom for liberty when the word occurs; and will cast about in her mind, with a certain sensation of fright, how to find words for authority, corruption, intelligence, etc., in other than the French form.”
Charles Forbes René de Montalembert was born in London on the 15th of May, 1810. His father was a noble French emigré; his mother, the daughter of James Forbes, an Englishman of distinction. The first nine years of his life were spent principally in England under the immediate care and in the personal companionship of his maternal grandfather, and, dating from this period, the English language was always to him a second mother tongue. At the age of fourteen we find him at the college of S. Barbe in Paris. The fact may be discouraging to many young gentlemen of the present day now at school and in sad possession of a class of ideas too generally accepted, to the effect that men become useful and distinguished by reason of the possession of some unaided special gift rather than by study and the laborious acquisition of knowledge—we say the fact may be discouraging to them, but nevertheless it remains a fact that the young Montalembert laid the foundation of his future distinction as a man of letters, an archæologist, a great orator, a great writer, an eminent political leader, and the ornament of the Chamber of Peers, in close, unremitting, laborious application to his studies while at school. After he had completed his college course and entered society, we find him writing to a friend: “It is usual to say that youth is the time for the pleasures of society. I look upon this opinion as a complete paradox. It seems to me, on the contrary, that youth should be given up with ardor to study, or to preparation [pg 437] for a profession. When a young man has paid his tribute to his country; when he can appear in society crowned with the laurels of debate or of the battle-field, or at least of universal esteem; when he feels entitled to command respect, if not admiration—then is the time to enter society with satisfaction.”
Soon there came for him the period of illusions perdues, which, commencing with the entrance into life of every intelligent and ambitious young man, accompanies him with more or less persistence to the edge of the grave. Young Montalembert spent some time in Sweden, at whose court his father was the ambassador of Charles X. On his return to France, he wrote an article upon that country which M. Guizot, the editor of the Revue Française, advised him to cut down to half its length. He complied, sent in his abbreviated article, and the editor suppressed the best portion of what remained!