The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

He was one of the earliest to discern and to proclaim Madame de Sévigné's exquisite superiority of mind, disposition, and manners, and to pay reverential court to her. Lamartine gives this account of the friendship that ensued—an account not less instructive than interesting: "His admiration, his worship, which sought no return, gained him admittance to her house, where he was regarded as one of the family, and became a necessary appendage. Madame de Sévigné, at first charmed by his wit, afterward touched by his disinterested attachment, concluded by making him the confidant of her most secret emotions. Every heart that beats warmly beneath its own bosom seeks to hear itself repeated in that of another. Corbinelli became the echo of Madame de Sévigné's mind, soul, and existence. He participated in her adoration of her daughter. At Paris, he visited her every day: he sometimes followed her to Livry; and, when absent, corresponded with her frequently.

"The dominion which his friend exercised over him was so gentle, that he experienced no feeling of slavery while submitting 'implicitly to the rule of her tastes. So absolute was her empire, that, when she became a devotee, he became a mystic: he followed her, as the satellite accompanies the planet, from the worldly gayeties of her youth, even to the foot of the altar, and the ascetic self-denial of Port-Royal. He survived her, as though he had survived himself, and lived to the extraordinary age of one hundred and four years, animated to unusual life by his gentle and amiable feelings. Such was Madame de Sévigné's principal friend. If his name were erased from her letters, the monument would be mutilated." La Rochefoucauld, whose reputation the indignant eloquence of Cousin has so damaged, was the object of an admiring friendship, of which he was not worthy, from Madame de Sévigné and Madame de la Fayette. But of all the friends to whom the ardent, imaginative, faithful heart of Madame de Sévigné attached itself, no one, after her husband and her daughter, held so commanding a place as Fouquet, the unfortunate minister of Louis XIV. Fouquet must have had rare traits, besides his acknowledged greatness of mind, to have won such a pure and unconquerable affection. Cast down from power, disgraced, closely imprisoned for fifteen years in the fortress of Pignerol, scoffed at by those who had fawned on him in his prosperity, and forgotten by nearly all whom he had befriended, never did Madame de Sévigné forget him, or cease, for one day, her efforts to alleviate his condition— cheering him with letters, and toiling to secure his liberation. D'Alembert had a long and sedulously improved friendship with Madame du Deffand, of whom Henault said, "Friendship was a passion with her; and no woman ever had more friends, or better deserved them."

There was a basis for this eulogy; but it needs much qualification. She and D'Alembert prized each other's society highly, and passed much time together. But jealousy and exaction are tenacious occupants, easily recalled to the heart even of an aged and friendly woman. When D'Alembert formed a closer friendship with Mademoiselle Lespinasse, the young and charming companion of Madame du Deffand, the latter imperiously dictated the renunciation of the new friend as the condition of retaining the old. The superiority of temper, genius, and worth in Mademoiselle Lespinasse did not permit D'Alembert to hesitate; and she repaid him with memorable fidelity. The affectionate and dependent girl was harshly driven out. In her anguish, she took laudanum, but not with a fatal result. D'Alembert then called Du Deffand an old viper; but his friend checked him, and would never allow any abuse of her former mistress, much less herself indulge in vituperation of her. When D'Alembert was attacked by a malignant fever, she went to his bedside, and nursed him day and night till he was convalescent. Marmontel says, "Malice itself never assailed their pure and innocent intimacy." She afterwards formed an attachment, of the most romantic character, to the young Spanish Marquis de Mora, who reciprocated her affection with impassioned ardor. He died while on the road to join her; and she was not long in following him into the grave, though, in the mean time, a still stronger passion for Guibert had weaned her from D'Alembert. The fervent tenderness of the latter for her remained unaltered, and he was inconsolable at her departure. On hearing of her death, Madame du Deffand said, "Had she only died fifteen years earlier, I should not have lost D'Alembert." Her letters are famous in the literature of love. Sir James Mackintosh says, "They are, in my opinion, the truest picture of deep passion ever traced by a human being." Margaret Fuller writes, "I am swallowing by gasps that cauldrony beverage of selfish passion and morbid taste, the letters of Lespinasse. It is good for me. The picture, so minute in its touches, is true as death." Madame de Staël had many devoted friendships, as would naturally be expected from the overwhelming wealth and ardor of her nature. Affinity of genius and a common love of liberty drew Benjamin Constant and her into intimate relations; and she maintained for years still closer relations with the all-knowing, all-cultured August Schlegel, whose devouring egotism and ever-sensitive vanity put all her patience and generosity to the proof.

The current opinion concerning Madame de Staël, that she was an exacting and disagreeable woman, is unjust. Schiller, who shrank from her impetuous eloquence, and Heine, whose reckless satire depicts her as going through Europe, a whirlwind in petticoats, both do her wrong. William von Humboldt, who knew her well, pronounces a glowing eulogy on her exalted traits, and says that Goethe, from prejudice and ignorance, was very unjust to her. Madame Mole says, "Women are not half grateful enough to Madame de Staël for the honor she conferred upon her sex by taking up the noble side of every question, armed with her pen and her eloquence, and never once calculating what the consequences might be. As time goes on, and details sink into insignificance, she will rise as the grand figure who withstood Bonaparte at the head of six hundred thousand men, with Europe at his back. His vanity was such that he could not bear one woman should refuse to praise him; for that was her only guilt." She was capable of the utmost magnanimity and disinterestedness. Every exalted sentiment struck a powerful chord in her heart. She lived in justice, freedom, beneficence, love, aspiration. The friendship of Matthieu de Montmorency, the most intimate and devoted of all her friends, is enough to prove her exalted worth, making every abatement for her acknowledged foibles. This chivalrous nobleman came, in his youth, to America with Lafayette, and fought for the new Republic. Although one of the foremost members of the aristocracy, it was on his motion in the Constituent Assembly that the privileges of the nobility were abolished. Sympathy in opinions and in the generous strain of their characters was the basis of a connection between him and Madame de Staël, that constantly grew in strength with the trials to which it was subjected, and was not severed even by death. When his brother, ardently loved, fell under the axe of the Revolution, it was her delicate sympathy, her ingenious and indefatigable goodness, that first soothed his anguish, assuaged the horror that threatened his reason, and prepared the way for religion and peace. And in turn, when she was exiled by Napoleon, Montmorency journeyed to Switzerland to visit her, at the risk of being banished himself, as he immediately was. "Matthieu, the friend of twenty years, is the most faultless being I have ever known." "How could he think I should tarry in Germany, when, by leaving it, I had a chance of seeing him? All Germany could not pay me for the loss of two days of his society." No unkindness, suspicion, or ignobleness of any sort, ever interrupted or mixed in the affection of these high friends. When Montmorency died, suddenly, in church, years after the death of Madame de Staël, the daughter of the latter, the Duchess de Broglie, instinctively exclaimed, on hearing of the event, "Ah, my God! I seem to see the grief of my poor mother." The prejudice in England and America against friendships between men and women has operated considerably to lessen their frequency, still more to keep them from public attention when they do exist. Undoubtedly, many a charming English woman, many a charming American woman, in her time the centre of the social circles of fashion, letters, and politics, has been surrounded by a company of friends as devoted at heart as those who have gathered with more public homage about the famous dames of France and Germany. Such groups will be called to mind by the English names of Mrs. Montagu, Lady Melbourne, Lady Holland; the American names of Mrs. Madison, Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Seaton, Mrs. Schuyler, and many others. But, since, with the most of these latter, the details have not been taken from the category of private property, by publications of memoirs and journals, it would be impertinent to single them out for personal mention, even where it is possible.

Magdalen Herbert, mother of George Herbert, befriended Dr. Donne in his distresses, ministering to the wants of his family with generous delicacy, and comforting him by her society. His discernment of her wit and piety, her gracious and noble disposition, combined with his gratitude to make him her fast and fervent friend. His conversation, together with that of Bishop Andrews, whose renown Clarendon and Milton unite to swell, appears to have given Lady Herbert great delight. Lasting evidence of the impression her character and kindness made on him is found in his verses and letters addressed to her, and in the funeral sermon which, with many tears, he preached for her. He says in verse, in her advancing age,

No spring nor summer beauty has such grace
As I have seen on an autumnal face.

And he gratefully writes to her in his quaint prose, "Your favors to me are everywhere. I use them and have them. I enjoy them at London and leave them there, and yet find them at Mitcham. Such riddles as these become things inexpressible; and such is your goodness." There was a choice, ever-comforting, and sacred friendship between the great John Locke and the excellent Lady Damaris Masham, the only daughter of that ornament of the English Church, the learned and benignant Cudworth.

She was one of the most gifted, cultivated, and elegant women of her time. The genius and moral worth of Locke are well known to all. Domesticated in the family of Lady Masham for many years before his death, giving her all the advantage of his talents, acquirements, and sympathy, "she returned the obligation with singular benevolence and gratitude, always treating him with the utmost generosity and respect; for she had an inviolable friendship for him." She watched by him in his last illness. He asked her to read a psalm to him. As death approached, he desired her to break off reading, and in a few minutes breathed his closing breath. She wrote the fine sketch of his character published in the "Historical Dictionary." She says his manners made him very agreeable to all sorts of people, and nobody was better received than he among those of the highest rank. "His greatest amusement was to talk with sensible people, and he courted their conversation." The amiable, unfortunate Cowper, the most shrinking and melancholy of men, too gentle and too unworldly for common companionship, was especially fitted for the soothing ministrations and the healing sympathy of women. He was dependent on these friendships, and found his chief happiness in them. But for them, his career would have been as brief as it was wretched; and his name, now haloed with such sadly pleasing attractions, would have had no place in English literature, except in the dark list of madmen and suicides. Who that has read his matchless lines on his mother's picture will not bless the good women who shed so many rays of peace and bliss on his unhappy lot. His cousin, the angelic Lady Hesketh, whose disinterested tenderness lavished grateful attentions on him, with a sweet skill that failed neither in his youth nor in his age, was as a light from heaven on his path through the whole journey. Some touching verses, and innumerable references in his letters, attest his appreciation of her. Mrs. Throckmorton and her husband, in whose grounds he loved to walk, and in whose kindly and refined society he spent so many delightful hours, furnished a healthy relief from the gloom of his austere religion, in the atmosphere of their genial catholicity; and were an invaluable comfort and benefit to him. Lady Austen also, a sprightly and accomplished woman, of intellectual tastes, quick sympathies, and charming manners, whose appearance at Olney "added fresh plumes to the wings of time," was at one period an inexpressible blessing to him. "Lady Austen's conversation acted on Cowper's mind as the harp of David on the troubled spirit of Saul." He christened her "Sister Ann," and wrote cordial verses to her. Constant communications with her withdrew his attention from depressing superstitions, and enlivened his spirits. At her suggestion it was, and under her sustaining encouragement, that he composed the immortal ballad of "John Gilpin," the "Dirge for the Royal George," and his greatest work, "The Task." Love being proscribed by his repeated subjection to insanity, friendship was the resource in which he was thrice fortunate.

Far above all others in the number of his female friends, in importance, must be ranked Mary Unwin, whose name is indissolubly joined with his in the memories of all who are familiar with his plaintive story. Mrs. Unwin, wife of a clergyman, religious after the most scrupulous evangelical type, was first drawn to Cowper by a sectarian interest. They were fated to be friends, as by the striking of a die. "That woman," he soon wrote to Lady Hesketh, "is a blessing to me; and I never see her without being the better for her company." This is the secret of the charm of all true friendship—that it soothes the heart, clarifies the mind, heightens the soul. One feels so much the better for it. Almost penniless as he was, a shiftless manager, assailed by terrible depression and even madness, the Unwins took him under their roof, and gave him a home on the most generous terms. From this time until her death, the friendship of Mary was a necessity to Cowper, the greatest support and enjoyment the hapless poet knew, combining with his native humor and gentleness to combat his melancholy malady with frequent and long victories. In his fits of insanity, she watched and waited on him day and night, defying alike personal hardships and the slanderous remarks of the vile. The only drawback on Cowper's indebtedness to Mrs. Unwin was her jealous wish to restrict him to the society of her own sect of religionists, that harrowing type of piety represented by John Newton. Otherwise, he might have enjoyed much more frequent and prolonged periods of what he cheerily characterized as "absences of Mr. Blue-devil." Lady Hesketh said of her, "She seems in truth to have no will left on earth but for his good. How she has supported the constant attendance she has gone through with the last thirteen years is to me, I confess, wonderful." Cowper himself said, "It is to her, under Providence, I owe it that I am alive at all." With a devotion in which self appeared to be lost, "there she sat, on the hardest and smallest chair, leaving the best to him, knitting, with the finest possible needles, stockings of the nicest texture. He wore no others than of her knitting." After nearly a generation of her fond and sedulous ministering, repeatedly stricken with paralysis, her mind decayed, mute, almost blind, as she sat by his side, a pathetic memento of what she had been, Cowper composed for her that unsurpassed tribute, his exquisite and imperishable lines, "To Mary":

The twentieth year has well-nigh past,
Since first our sky was overcast:
Ah! would that this might be our last,
My Mary!