The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

Secretary Soymonof, aware of the precarious tenure by which the dependents of the court held their prosperity, was anxious to secure for his daughter a trustworthy protector, and a handsome position in the future. He cast his eyes on his personal friend, General Swetchine, a man of an imposing aspect, a firm character, a just and calm spirit, who had had an honorable career, and was held in high consideration. Sophie accepted, with her usual deference to her father's wishes, the husband thus chosen, although he was twenty-five years older than herself. It cost her many a secret pang; for she was already in love with a young man of noble birth and fortune, with rare qualities of mind and a brilliant destiny. She knew that her affection was reciprocated. But, from a sense of filial duty, she silently renounced him; and, when he in turn resigned himself to another marriage, she became the warm and steadfast friend of his wife. This painful renunciation, in the introspective reflection, and the dissolution of romantic dreams to which it led, was the first of those earthly disenchantments, which, shattering and darkening the empire of social ambition, transferred her interest from material pleasures and hopes to the imperturbable satisfactions of religion.

The second blow quickly followed. Only a few days after that marriage which her father thought promised so much security and consolation to his old age, the Emperor Paul, in a cruel whim, suddenly banished him from Petersburg. Retiring to Moscow, the galling sense of his disgrace, the separation from his darling daughter, together with a frigid reception by a friend on whom he had especially relied, plunged him into the deepest grief. A terrible attack of apoplexy swept him away. At the dire announcement, Madame Swetchine sunk on her knees; and, in the spiritual solitude, unable any more to lean on her father, turned with irrepressible need and effusion to God.

General Swetchine was made military commandant and governor of St. Petersburg. At the head of a splendid establishment, his young wife found herself in the highest circle of the most brilliant society in Europe; for at that time the Revolution had banished the noblest families of France, and their headquarters were in the Russian capital. Madame Swetchine always possessed, in remarkable union, an earnest desire for action and companionship, and a strong taste for solitude and meditation. She managed her life so skilfully, that both these inclinations were largely gratified. With many of the most high-toned and accomplished persons whom she met, both of the Russian nobility and the French emigrants, she formed earnest and lasting relations of mind and heart. The most refined, pronounced, and impressive characters in St. Petersburg, between the years 1800 and 1815, were embraced in her friendships. Her leisure hours were scrupulously and eagerly devoted to self-improvement. She engaged in a wide range of literary, historic, and philosophical studies; making copious extracts from the books she read, patiently reflecting on the subjects, and setting down independent comments. The progress she made was rapid, and soon rendered her a notable woman.

Paul, full of lugubrious visions and suspicions, one day disgraced General Swetchine by removing him from office. But this official dismission did not entail banishment, and was followed by no loss of social caste. The general and his exemplary wife continued to live amidst their numerous friends as happily as before. The interchange of literary and philosophic ideas shared the hours in their attractive parlor with the revolutionary and reactionary politics of the time. The profound attachments, stamped with reverence and the rarest truthfullness, which in those years united many admirable persons with Madame Swetchine, were frequently reporting themselves, under far other circumstances, in a distant land, half a century later.

In 1833, the celebrated Count Joseph de Maistre was accredited from France to the Russian court. He was then about fifty, a man of pure life, rare genius, and fervent enthusiasm; familiar with the world, with the human heart, and with the loftiest ranges of sentiment and learning. His zeal for the Catholic Church was extreme. Madame Swetchine, at this time, without being at all a devotee, was a sincere member of the Greek Church. She was already familiar with the great minds of all ages and lands; and, at this particular period, was earnestly studying modern philosophical controversies, comparing the ideas of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel with those of Descartes, Pascal, and Leibnitz. Despite the difference in their points of view, and the many other contrasts between them, these two remarkable persons the thoroughly trained master, in whom the gifts of knowledge, eloquence, faith, and finesse, were accumulated; and the meditative, earnest, consecrated young woman of twenty-one had no sooner met than they felt the parity and harmony of their souls. They formed an exalted friendship, full of solace and happiness to them both, a friendship charged with the most important results on the destiny of the woman, since it led to her conversion from the Greek Church to the Catholic, and gave a deep religious inspiration and stamp to her entire subsequent life. Such minds have a thousand lofty topics of common interest to talk of; and they frequently visited each other, exchanging thoughts with ever-deepening confidence and esteem. "The cold countenance of the Count de Maistre," Madame Swetchine writes to her dearest female friend, "conceals a soul of profound sensibility. Without praising me, he often says pleasing things to me." At another time, she humorously writes to the same friend: "The Princess Alexis and I have been to spend an evening at the house of the Count de Maistre. From deference to the duties of hospitality, he would not suffer himself a single moment of sleep. He rose with the palm of victory out of this terrible struggle of nature and politeness; but who can tell at what a cost?" She said that great griefs had purified his ambition, and lent a strange interest to him, elevating and aggrandizing his character. He set an extreme value on her friendship; and wrote to her, that he should never spare any pains to preserve in its integrity what he felt was an infinite honor to him. He wrote to his friend, the Viscount de Bonald, that he had never seen so much moral strength, talent, and culture, joined with so much sweetness of disposition, as in Madame Swetchine. On their separation, by a residence in different countries, De Maistre gave her a magnificent portrait of himself, on the frame of which he had written four verses, adjuring the happy image, in answer to the call of awaiting friendship, to fly, and take its place where the original would so gladly be. This portrait she kept prominently hung in her parlor as long as she lived. In one of his letters to her, he writes: "My thought will always go out to seek you: my heart will always feel the worth of yours." The memory of this first great friend continued to hover over her life to the end. In her last days, generously offended by what she thought the unjust strokes in the portraiture of De Maistre, presented by Lamartine in his "Confidences," she took up her pen in refutation, and wielded it with telling effect. This eloquent vindication of her old friend, when he had been dead nearly forty years, was one of her latest acts, and truly characteristic of her tenacious fidelity of affection.

The enthusiasm shown by the Count de Maistre for the Roman Catholic Church awakened a deep interest in Madame Swetchine. This interest was greatly enhanced by the admirable examples of piety and charity set before her in the lives of several of the French exiles in St. Petersburg, with whom she had contracted friendships. Especially was she impressed and attracted by the amiable virtues of the Princess de Tarente, the devout elevation of her character, and the triumphant sanctity of her death. Madame Swetchine at length resolved to make a deliberate examination of the claims of the Roman Church, and to come to a settled conclusion. Providing herself with an appropriate library, acompanied only by her adopted daughter Nadine, in the summer of 1815, she withdrew to a lonely and picturesque estate, situated on the borders of the Gulf of Finland. Here, through the days and nights of six months, she plunged into the most laborious researches, historical and argumentative. The result was, that she became convinced of the apostolic authority of the Roman primacy, and avowed herself a Catholic. Soon after this conversion, the Jesuits were ordered to leave Russia. Indignant at an order which she regarded as unjust, she openly identified herself with the cause of these proscribed missionaries. The machinations of the political enemies of General Swetchine had made his situation disagreeable to him; and, when he saw those enemies gaining credit, his pride took offence, and he determined to leave the country. Madame Swetchine's passion for travel and observation combined with her new religious faith to make this removal less unwelcome than it would otherwise have been.

The close of the year 1816 found her established in Paris, where, with the exceptions of a year in Russia, and a couple of years in Italy, she was to reside until her death. The Bourbon nobility, now recalled to France, and reinstated in power, repaid the generous kindness she had shown them in St. Petersburg, by giving her a hearty welcome, and lavishing attentions and affection on her. Her deep interest in charitable institutions soon brought her into intimate and most cordial relations with De Gerando. Baron Humboldt and the Count Pozzo di Borgo, among the earliest to become her friends, were assiduous visitors at her house; and, in the salon of the brilliant Duchess de Duras, where she was quickly appreciated and made to feel at home, she became acquainted with the most interesting and commanding minds of France at that time, such as Chateaubriand, Remusat, Cuvier, Montmorency, Villemain, Barante. These persons have all testified, in turn, to the great impression her character made on them.

Madame Swetchine formed with a large number of men of rare excellence and accomplishments ardent and lasting attachments, which were the greatest comfort to herself, and administered invaluable inspiration and happiness to them. Among these, particular mention should be made of her confessor, the pious and venerable Abbé Desjardins; her brother-in-law, Father Gargarin; Moreau; Turquety; Montalembert; and, at a later date, De Tocqueville, who writes to her, "The friendship of such as you are, imposes obligations." Another expression of De Tocqueville must not be omitted here: "Let me thank you for your last letter. It contained, as all your letters do, proofs of an affection which consoles and strengthens me. I never received a line of your writing without being sensible of this twofold impression. The reason is, I think, that one finds in you a heart easily moved, in connection with a mind firmly fixed upon abiding principles. Here is the secret of your charm and your sway. I want to profit more than do by your precious friendship. It distresses me that I succeed so ill." She was one of those few natures able to forget themselves, take an enthusiastic interest in others, and devote unwearied pains to further their interests, sympathize and aid in their pursuits, calm, refine, enrich, and bless their souls. She sustained the ideal standards, and raised the self-respect, of every one who enjoyed the honor of her regard. Accordingly, no noble man could be intimate with her without grateful and affectionate veneration. M. de Maistre said of her, "More loyalty, intellect, and learning were never seen joined to so much goodness." The Viscount de Bonald said, "She is a friend worthy of you; and one of the best heads I have ever met, effect or cause of the most excellent qualities of the heart with which a mortal can be endowed." The poet Turquety sent her an exquisite poem, descriptive of herself and of his feelings towards her. She wrote in reply, "Before thanking you, I have thanked God for giving your heart such an impression of me, unworthy of it as I am. The illusion which arises from affection is another grace, I had almost said another virtue. Your accent has a persuasive sincerity; and faith, when it is vivid, believes in miracles." And then she thus delicately indicates her objection to the publication of the verses: "I condemn this charming flower to enchant only my solitude; but this is the better to gather its fragrance, and it will survive me."

An invaluable friendship also existed between Madame Swetchine and Alexander the Emperor of Russia, one of the most interesting and romantic characters of modern time, of whom she said to Roxandra Stourdza, "Already above other men, by his glory; by the influence of religion, he will be above himself." When the famous mystical Madame de Kriidener appealed to him, in the name of virtue and of religion, to be true to his own better nature, he burst into tears, and hid his face in his hands. As she paused apologetically, he exclaimed, "Speak on, speak on: your voice is music to my soul." She obtained a great influence over him. He had likewise an enthusiastic attachment for Napoleon; and Madame de Kriidener called them respectively the white angel and the black angel. His sensibility to all generous sentiments, all thoughts of poetic height and richness, was extraordinarily tender and expansive. He was often known, in the overwhelming re-action of his emotions, convulsed with tears, to leap into his carriage alone, and drive out into the solitary country or forest. Such were the exalted traits of his character, and his many beautiful deeds, that Madame Swetchine felt her natural relations of duty and submission transmuted into those of vivid admiration and devotion. "I fully sympathize," she writes to her earliest bosom- friend, "with the vivacity of your admiration for our dear Emperor. What a happiness to be able to eulogize with truth! Let us hope we are in the aurora of a most beautiful day for Russia. How pleased I am at having always seen in his soul that which this day shows itself with a glory so fair and so pure! He is a true hero of humanity. He seems in his conduct to realize all my dreams of moral dignity; and I find, at last, in this union of religious sentiments and liberal ideas, the long-sought resemblance of the type I carry in my mind, and which has hitherto been qualified as fantastic, the creation of a too sanguine imagination. In him we see, that, even on the throne, in the wild tumult of all interests, of all passions, one can remain man, Christian, philosopher; pursue the wisest and most generous plans; and carry into his actions every thing that is beautiful, from the highest justice to the most touching modesty."

Alexander testified his respect and regret, when Madame Swetchine departed to reside in Paris, by asking her to be his correspondent. The correspondence was continued until his death, ten years afterwards. The Emperor Nicholas, on his accession, restored to Madame Swetchine all her letters; and she allowed an eminent statesman, in 1845, to read the whole collection. After her death, no trace of it was to be found among her papers. It must possess an intense interest; and it is to be hoped that it still exists, and may yet one day see the light.