The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

The last letter written by the dying author to her friend concluded with the words, "All that is left of me embraces you." The survivor paid the pious rites of affection to the departed, with the devotion which had marked their whole relation. And when, years afterward, on the loss of her property, Madame Récamier betook herself to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, in her humble chamber, where she was more sought and admired than ever in her proudest prosperity, the chief articles to be seen, in addition to the indispensable furniture, were, as Chateaubriand has described the scene, a library, a harp, a piano, a magnificent portrait of Madame de Staël by Gerard, and a moonlight view of Coppet. Madame de Staël had once written to her, "Your friendship is like the spring in the desert, that never fails; and it is this which makes it impossible not to love you." Death caused no decay of that sentiment, but raised and sanctified it. Her translated friend now became an object of worship; and she devoted her whole energies to extend and preserve the memory of the illustrious writer.

The self-forgetting sympathy of Madame Récamier, and the magical atmosphere of loveliness she carried around her, obtained for her many warm friendships with women. Foremost, by far, among these was that with Madame de Staël. But others also were very dear. The widow of Matthieu de Montmorency was extremely attached to her, wrote her touching letters, and took every opportunity to see her. Madame de Boigne, too, was joined with Madame Récamier in a relation of respect and affection truly profound and vivid. This lady was greatly distinguished for her beauty as well as for her voice, which was compared with that of Catalani. She was much impressed by the noble behavior of Madame Récamier at the time of her husband's bankruptcy; and, by her delicate attentions, secured the most grateful love in return. Their earnest and faithful affection lasted until death. A novel, entitled "Une Passion dans le Grande Monde," in which Madame de Staël and Madame Reeamier are the two chief characters, was left for publication by Madame de Boigne at her death. It was published in 1866.

One of Madame Récamier's sweetest friendships was with the accomplished and charming Elizabeth Foster, Duchess of Devonshire, the fame of whose exquisite loveliness traversed the earth. The duchess said of her friend, "At first she is good, then she is intellectual, and after this she is very beautiful," a striking compliment, when spoken, in relation to an admired rival, by one who was herself so dazzlingly gifted. The order of precedence in her charms, however, was differently recognized by men. They were subdued successively by her beauty, her goodness, her judgment, her character. The Duchess of Devonshire had known all the romance and all the sorrow of life. Her experience had left upon her a melancholy which attracted the heart almost as quickly as it did the eye, and lent to her something pensive and caressing. Although a Protestant, she had formed, during her long residence in Rome, an entire friendship with the Cardinal Consalvi, who was the prime-minister and favorite of Pope Pius VII through his whole pontificate. These two beautiful women, as soon as they met, felt, by all the laws of elective affinity, that they belonged to each other. The death of the Pope was followed, in a few months, by that of his minister and friend. During the illness of Consalvi, Madame Récamier shared all the hopes, fears, and distresses of the duchess. And when the fatal event had befallen, and the cardinal was laid in state, and the romantic and despairing woman would go to look on her dead friend, she accompanied her, deeply veiled, through the crowd, and knelt with her, amidst the solemn pomp, in tears and prayer, beside the unanswering clay. The duchess was struck to the heart by this irreparable loss. All that a devoted sympathy could yield to soothe and sustain, she received from Madame Récamier. And when, soon after, unable to speak, she lay dying, she silently pressed the hand of this faithful friend, as the final act of her existence.

Madame Récamier retained to the last her enviable power of inspiring affection. Madame Lenormant says that the Countess Caffarelli found her, in her age and blindness, watching by the death-bed of Chateaubriand. Drawn by her singular goodness, she sought to share with her in these holy cares. She thus became the loving and beloved associate of the final hour. This admirable person worthily closes the list the rich and bright list of the friends of Madame Récamier.

In her youth, the first wish of Madame Récamier was the wish to please; and she was, no doubt, a little too coquettish, not enough considerate of the masculine hearts she damaged, and the feminine hearts she pained. The Duke de Laval said, "The gift of involuntary and powerful fascination was her talisman." Not, sometimes, to make a voluntary use of that talisman, she must have been more than human. As years and trials deepened her nature, she sought rather to make happy than merely to please. She always cared more to be respected than to be flattered, to be loved than to be admired. Admiration and sympathy were stronger in her than vanity and love of pleasure: reason and justice were strongest of all. Her judgment was as clear, her conscience as commanding, her sincerity, courage, and firmness as admirable, as her heart was rich and good. When Fouche said to her, in her misfortunes and exile, "The weak ought to be amiable," she instantly replied, "And the strong ought to be just." Her exquisite symmetry of form, her dazzling purity of complexion, her graciousness of disposition, her perfect health, her desire to please, and generous delight in pleasing, composed an all-potent philter, which the sympathy of every spectator drank with intoxicating effect. She discriminated, with perfect truthfullness, the various degrees of acquaintance and friendship. She made all feel self-complacent, by her unaffected attention causing them to perceive that she wished their happiness and valued their good opinion. Ballanche tells her, "You feel yourself the impression you make on others, and are enveloped in the incense they burn at your feet." Wherever she went, as if a celestial magnet passed, all faces drifted towards her with admiring love and pleasure. By her lofty integrity and her matchless sweetness and skill, as by a rare alchemy, she transmuted her fugitive lovers into permanent friends. Her talents were as attractive as her features: little by little her conversation made the listener forget even her loveliness. Saint-Beuve says, "As her beauty slowly retreated, the mind it had eclipsed gradually shone forth, as on certain days, towards twilight, the evening star appears in the quarter of the heaven opposite to the setting sun." Her voice was remarkably fresh, soft, and melodious. Her politeness never forsook her: with an extreme ease of manner, she had a horror of familiarity, as well as of all excess and violence. Her moderation of thought, serenity of soul, and velvet manner, were as unwearying as reason and harmony. Without pretence of any sort, she hid, under the full bloom of her beauty and her fame, like humble violets, modesty and disinterestedness. At the time of her death, Guizot, when a distinguished American lady asked him what was the marvel of her fascination, replied, with great emotion, "Sympathy, sympathy, sympathy." She had none of that aridity of heart which regular coquetry either presupposes or produces. Deprived by destiny of those relations which usually fill the heart of woman, she carried into the only sentiment allowed her, an ardor, a faithfullness, and a delicacy, which were unequalled; and the veracity of her soul, joined with her singular discretion, gave her friends a most enjoyable sense of security. Ballanche called her "the genius of devotedness;" and Montalembert, "the genius of confidence."

From the most dangerous and deteriorating influences of her position she found a safeguard in active works of charity. Her pecuniary generosity, in her days of opulence, was boundless. She seemed to feel that every unfortunate had a right to her interest and her assistance. "Disgrace and misfortune had for her," avowed one who knew her entirely, "the same sort of attraction that favor and success have for vulgar souls; and under no circumstances was she ever false to this characteristic." The fine taste she had for literature and art, the great pleasure she took in their beauties, the natural grace and good-will with which she expressed her admiration, furnished precisely that kind of incense which authors and artists love to breathe. Old Laharpe, who, in her young days, had derived the deepest delight from her attention and praise, wrote to her, "I love you as one loves an angel." The readiness with which the word "angel" rises to the lips of her friends is striking. Almost every one of them applies the word to her on nearly every occasion. Madame de Krudener writes to her, "I shall have the happiness, I hope, dear angel, of embracing you to-morrow, and talking with you." All seemed instantly to recognize something angelic in her expression. It was in her disposition as much as in her appearance, apparently in the latter because in the former, as Ballanche said to her, "In your thought, taste, and grace will ever be united in one harmonious whole. I am fascinated at the idea of so perfect a harmony, and want the whole world to know what I so easily divine. It will be your mission to make the intrinsic character of beauty fully understood; to show that it is an entirely moral thing. Had Plato known you, he need not have resorted to so subtile an argument. You would have made him alive to a truth that was always a mystery to him; and that rare genius would thus have had one more title to the admiration of the world."

There was something celestial in her motions, that suggested the undulations of a spirit rather than joints and muscles, and made her soul and flesh one melody. As to her heavenly temper of goodness, there is but one voice from all who knew her. She accorded to the sufferings of self-love a pity and kindness seldom shown to them. She had the sweetest faculty for dressing the wounds of envy and jealousy, soothing the lacerations of rivalry and hate, assuaging the bitterness of neglected and revengeful souls. For all those moral pains, or griefs of imagination, which burn in some natures with a cruel intensity, she was a true sister of charity. To the rest of her winsome gifts she added according to the unanimous testimony of the witnesses this rare and resistless quality, the power of listening to, and occupying herself with, others, the secret both of social success, and of happiness without that success. "She said little," De Tocqueville avers, "but knew what each man's forte was, and led him to it. If any thing was said particularly well, her face brightened. You saw that her attention was always active, always intelligent." Lamartine said, "As radiant as Aspasia, but a pure and Christian Aspasia, it was not her features only that were beautiful: she was beautiful herself." Sarah Austin affirmed, "It was the atmosphere of benignity which seemed to exhale like a delicate perfume from her whole person, that prolonged the fascination of her beauty." And Lemoine declared, in his eloquent obituary notice, "In the hearts of those who had the honor and the happiness of living in constant intercourse with her, Madame Récamier will for ever remain the object of a sort of adoration which we should find it impossible to express." The only fault her friends would confess in her was the generous fault of too great toleration and indulgence. And to dwell unkindly on this is as ungracious a task as to try to fix a stain on a star.

Arrayed in her divine charms; armed with irresistible goodness and archness; enriched with equal wisdom and uprightness, every movement a mixture of grace and dignity; protected by an aureole of purity which always surrounded her; walking among common mortals, "like a goddess on a cloud," she made it the business of her life to soften the asperities, listen to the' plans, sympathize with the disappointments, stimulate the powers, encourage the efforts, praise the achievements, and enjoy the triumphs, of her friends. No wonder they loved her, and thronged around her alike in prosperity and in adversity. To appreciate her character is a joy; to portray her example, a duty. She was a kind of saint of the world.

The single fault which Saint-Beuve finds with the spirit of the society she formed, and governed so long with her irresistible sceptre, is that there was too much of complaisance and charity in it. Stern truth suffered, and character was enervated, while courtesy and taste flourished: "The personality or self-love of all who came into the charmed circle was too much caressed." One can scarcely help lamenting that so gracious a fault is not oftener to be met in the selfish and satirical world. For the opposite fault of a harsh carelessness is so much more frequent as to make this seem almost a virtue. Cast in an angel's mould, and animated with an angel's spirit, her consciousness vacant of self, vacant also of an absorbing aim, ever ready to install the aim of any worthy person who came before her, she was such a woman as Dante would have adored. It seems impossible not to recognize how much fitter a type of womanhood she is for her sex to admire than those specimens who spend their days in publicly ventilating their vanity, feverishly courting notoriety and power; or those who, without cultivation, without expansion, without devotion, without aspiration, lead a life of monotonous drudgery, with not a single interest beyond their own homes.

A certain Madame Ancelot has written a book, in which, doubtless under the pain of some galling memory—she attacks Madame Récamier as a selfish coquette, enamored only of admiration, fame, and power. Her chief weapon, as this woman asserts, was a skilful application of deliberate unprincipled flattery to the pride and vanity of everybody she met. The conduct attributed to Madame Récamier in the odious examples fabricated by this slanderer, would have been insufferably repulsive even to average persons. To persons of such insight, refinement, and elevation as marked all her most intimate associates, it would have been unutterably disgusting. The whole representation, while awakening the indignation of the reader, shows what a degrading caricature noble souls undergo when reflected in the minds of base observers. Contrast with the view of this Madame Ancelot what is said with unquestionable authority, after the intimacy of a lifetime, by the gifted and illustrious Countess de Boigne. "Amidst the overwhelming reverses of her husband's fortunes, I found Madame Récamier so calm, so noble, so simple, lifted so far above all the vain shows of her former life, that I was extremely struck; and I date from that moment the vivid affection which subsequent events have served only to confirm. No portrait does her justice. All praise her incomparable beauty, her active beneficence, her sweet urbanity. Many declare her great talents; but few have discerned, through the habitual ease of her intercourse, the loftiness of her heart, the independence of her character, the impartiality of her judgment, and the fairness of her soul!" These are the words of one absolutely competent to judge, intrinsically incapable of falsifying; and also when death had removed every motive for flattery.