The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

The open secret of the wonderful influence which Madame Swetchine exerted on all who came in contact with her, of the extreme reverence and love with which they regarded her, was, therefore, the incomparable power, sincerity, generosity, and gentleness of her character. But to appreciate this truth, and learn the lesson it conveys, we must analyze the case more in detail. The distinguished friend who has written her life says,

"The most remarkable peculiarity of the character of Madame Swetchine was, that all the qualities, all the virtues, and all the powers were distributed in perfect harmony. She was in the same degree enthusiastic and sensible, because her reason was equal to her imagination: she thought as deeply as she felt. However often a man in mind, she always remained a woman in heart; and her personal abnegation was neither feigned nor studied. As exempt from envy as from ambition, she lived first in others, then in public works; only thought of herself after being occupied with everybody else; and great as was her dislike of egotism, never needed to rebuke it because she found such a rich joy in the opposite sentiment. Her disinterestedness reconciled others to her superiority."

Her faith stood so firm in the whirlwind of opinions, that she needed not to bolster it by bigotry. To the friends, who once murmured against her too great tolerance, she replied, "Of what use is it to live, if one is never to hear any thing but his own voice?" Her compassion and her patience were unconquerable. Nothing could draw from her the slightest sign of vexation or weariness. One of her constant visitors, for fifteen years, was a woman universally detested for her outrageous temper and her bad manners. The announcement of her name was the signal of dismay and dispersion. But the saintly hostess invariably gave her an affectionate reception; and to all the attempts made to induce her to cast off the obnoxious guest, she said, with a smile, "What do you wish? All the world avoids her; she is unhappy, and she has only me." This woman died of old age; and, during her last days, Madame Swetchine went often to see her, and passed long hours beside her death-bed.

The face of Madame Swetchine, without being handsome, was remarkably expressive; and the inflections of her singularly rich and strong voice were exactly modulated to every thought and feeling of her soul. Destitute of egotism herself, she showed an invariable tolerance for the egotisms of others, and her management of them was a marvel of magnanimous considerateness and soothing skill. The unrestrained frankness of her affection, the intimate confidences she imparted, the noble grounds she assumed to be common to them and her, the tender compliments she was ever paying them with all the skill of a sincere heart, were irresistible. She writes to the Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, "Reply to all my inquiries; especially speak to me of yourself. I long to be relieved from the punishment of your reserve." Some persons would deal with souls as carelessly as if they were pieces of mechanism; handle hearts as they would handle groceries. Madame Swetchine was unable to contemplate without awe, or treat without scrupulous delicacy, a human spirit seeking to open and show itself to her as it was in the eyes of God.

In addition to all this, she had an amazing knowledge of the mysteries of human nature and the experience of human life. She said she had traversed the whole circle of passions and affections, and was a true doctor of that law. "Reading in my own heart, I have learned to understand the hearts of others: the single knowledge of myself has given me the key of those innumerable enigmas called men." She avowed herself an instinctive disciple of Lavater, and said, "The expression of the face is the accent of the figure." Her biographer says that her insight amounted almost to divination. A word, a gesture, a look, a silence, hardly noticed by others, was to her a complete revelation. She had the science of souls, as physicists have the science of bodies. While the ordinary man sees in a plant merely its color or its outline, the botanist discerns, at first sight, all its specific attributes. Such was the power of Madame Swetchine: one lineament, one trait, enabled her to recognize and reconstruct a whole character. There is no luxury greater than that of unveiling our inmost souls where we are sure of meeting a superior intelligence, invincible charity, generous sympathy, and needed support and guidance. All this was certain to be found in Madame Swetchine. She had no rivalry, no envy, no desire to eclipse any one, no bigotry or asperity; and the aged, the mature, and the youthful, alike came with grateful pleasure under her empire. Women, usually little accessible to the influence of another woman, were full of trust and docility towards her. Loving solitude, plunging into metaphysics as into a bath, she yet took great delight in the beauty, freshness; playfullness, and hopes of girls just entering society. Her taste in every thing belonging to the toilet was known to be fine and sure: they loved, when in full dress for company, to pass under her eyes; and she deeply enjoyed admiring and praising them, at the same time pointing out any thing ill-judged or excessive. Not unfrequently, the same ones, who, in the evening, in their glittering array, had paused on their way to the ball, would return in the morning, and sit with her, face to face, in communion on far other and graver matters. Sick and erring hearts showed themselves to her in utter sincerity, while, with unwearied sympathy and adroit wisdom, she poured on them, drop by drop, the light, the truth, the life, they needed. No one can tell to how many she was a spiritual mother, her direction all the more welcome and efficacious that she was not a director by profession, but by instinctive fitness.

Madame Swetchine enjoyed friendships of extraordinary strewth and preciousness with the Countess de Nesselrode, the Princess Galitzin, Madame de Saint Aulaire, the Duchess de Duras, the Marchioness de Lillers, Madame Craven, the Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, and many other women of noble natures and rich interior lives. The record of their intercourse is an imperial banquet for the mind and heart of the reader. The study of it must make ordinary women sigh for envy and shame over their own cold relations, outward ambition, sterile experience, and suspicious caution. Madame Swetchine writes, "I have long made over all my invested capital to the account of those I love: their welfare, their hopes, are the income on which I live." The Duchess de Duras writes to her, "I love you more than I should have believed it ever would be possible for me to love, after what I have experienced. I believe in you, I who have become so suspicious. I rely on you with entire security, whatever happens." Again she writes, when her friend is absent in Russia, "I miss you every moment. Return, return. Your chamber is ready, and that of Nadine. Come, come, dear friend: life is so short, why lose it thus?" Madame Swetchine held such a high place in the esteem of her friends, because she was so serene, so wise, so steadfast, so kind, so pure, that she soothed and strengthened all who came near her. One of her friends expresses this in saying to her, "No society pleases and agrees with me like yours." She always acted on her own aphorism, "To bear faults, to manage egotisms, is an aim perhaps best accomplished by a skilful dissimulation; but the true ideal is to correct faults and to cure self-love."

The best example, in a relation with one of her own sex, of that sentiment of friendship which was such a pervasive need of Madame Swetchine's nature, and which she experienced so profusely, was her connection with Roxandra Stourdza, a Greek maiden of great beauty and genius, born at Constantinople. Originally brought together at court, when the latter was maid of honor to the Empress Elizabeth, they formed an enthusiastic attachment, which, for half a century, largely constituted the richness, consolation, and joy of their lives. The monument of it preserved in their correspondence possesses extreme interest and value, and must secure for it a prominent place among the few historic friendships of women. The oriental Roxandra was the object of an admiration truly romantic from her friend, who seemed always to see her seated on an ideal throne, and to address her as some queen of Trebizond. Saint-Beuve says, the refined and exalted affection between these two young persons, living in the artificial world of the Russian court, and each throwing back, in her own way, the mystic influences derived from the sky of Alexandria, affected him as the exciting perfume exhaled by two rare plants nourished in a hot-house. It is unimaginable what lofty, exquisite, and mysterious sentiments they exchange. Their naked souls and minds, with all their workings, are visible in these ingenuous and crowded letters, as in a glass hive we can study the industry of bees. Saint-Beuve affirms, that the later difference in their religion, the Countess Edling always remaining in the Greek communion, Madame Swetchine becoming a zealous Catholic, finally made ice between them; and that, when the countess came to Paris to visit her old friend, she complained of finding coldness and reserve. Probably there was something in this, but not much. The friendship will be best revealed by citing, from the parties themselves, some of its characteristic expressions.

The letters of Roxandra have not been published; but, in those of Sophie, both souls are clearly reflected. For, as M. de Falloux says, Madame Swetchine never Ised hackneyed language, never repeated for one what he had first thought for another. She placed herself, with a skill, or rather a condescension, truly marvelous, at the point of view of those with whom she conversed; and she would never have so easily ended by bringing them to herself, had she not always begun by going to them. This habit was so familiar, this movement so natural to her, that, at the close of every correspondence, we have before our eyes the physiognomy of the correspondent as distinctly outlined as the physiognomy of the writer:

"Did you believe me, my dear Roxandra, when I mechanically said, on leaving you, that I should write to you only after five or six clays? I knew not what I said at the time. If you begin to know me a little, you have seen that I could never hear so long a silence. La Bruyere has said, How difficult it is to be satisfied with any one! Ah! well, my friend, I am satisfied with you; and, were it not for my extreme self-distrust, which nourishes so many inquietudes, I should be almost tranquil, almost happy, almost reasonable. My friend, this moment I receive your letter: how can I thank you? Ah! read my grateful heart; and sometimes tell me, that you wish to keep it, in order that it may become worthy of you." "I feel so deeply the happiness of being loved by you, that you can never cease to love me." "I need to know all your thoughts, to follow all your motions, and can find no other occupation so sweet and so dear." "My heart is so full of you, that, since we parted, I have thought of nothing but writing to you." "I see in your soul as if it were my own." "Dear Roxandra, you are every way a privileged being: you unite the advantages of the most opposed characters without any of their inconveniences." "My attachment for you will, without doubt, be a consolation; but that word, when not unmeaning, is so sad that I desire my friendship to fulfil higher offices. I often envy characters whose impressions are slight and transient. The sponge passes across the slate, and nothing is left. Perhaps such a nature best agrees with man, whose pleasures are for a moment, whose pains for a life. Adieu, my friend! How many times already that word has filled my heart with grief! Take good care of yourself; hasten to God; and, when the struggle is too severe, beseech grace instead of combating." "It seems to me that souls seek each other in the chaos of this world, like elements of the same nature tending to re-unite. They touch, they feel themselves tallied; confidence is established without an assignable cause. Reason and reflection following, and fixing the seal of their approval on the union, think they have done it all, as subaltern ministers regard the transactions of their masters nothing until they have been permitted to sign their names at the bottom. I fear no misunderstanding with you; and my gratitude alone can equal the perfect security with which you inspire me." "I must show myself to you absolutely as I am." "I know of no pleasure more alluring than a sweet and confidential converse which begins with an interchange of ideas, and ends with one of sentiments. This I have found in our intercourse." "It seems to me that your good angel is very busy about you, and is covering your thorns with some few flowers. How I should like to be charged with the visible execution of this charming mission!" "When near you, I breathe the atmosphere of calmness and depth, which agrees with me: although I have not the rages of King Saul, there is in the sound of your voice something, I know not what, that reminds me of the effect of the harp of David." "Never was there a goodness more compassionate and penetrating than yours. Yours are the words that seek pain at the bottom of the soul in order to soothe it. How well you possess that divine dexterity which applies balm to wounds almost without touching them!" "My friend, I have met nothing sweeter, more consoling to love, than you. The admirable simplicity of your character, its steadiness, its frankness, have a charm which more than attracts: it fixes." "We must carry, untouched, to the gates of eternity the deposit each has confided to the other."

The above extracts give some idea of the warmth and preciousness of the surpassing friendship, but no idea of the high and varied range of intellectual and religious interests that entered into it. "I always," Madame Swetchine writes, "have your little ring on my finger. This symbol, fragile as all symbols, will outlive me; but I grieve not for that, since I am sure that the sentiment which makes me prize it so highly will survive it in turn." Dora Greenwell says, "The letters of Madame Swetchine are full of an intimate sweetness that has something in it, piercing even to pain, like the scent of the sweet-brier." We are reminded of this when she writes, "If life were perfectly beautiful, yet death would be perfectly desirable." Also again, when she writes to her Roxandra, "What is the pen, sad signal of our long separation, after the pleasure of flinging myself on your neck, and pouring my soul into yours through a deluge of words?" The two friends often indulged the sweet dream of passing their last years together, preparing; each other for the passage equally dreaded and desired, advancing arm in arm and heart in heart towards the unknown. The dream was not destined for fulfilment. But Madame Swetchine had the great joy of seeing her favorite nephew one of the Gargarin boys whom she loved so fondly in their childhood married to Marie Stourdza, the niece and sole heiress of her friend. The only words we have seen from Roxandra herself are worthy of the eulogies paid her, and would seem to justify the highest estimate of her character. She says, "May we all contribute, by our life and our death, to the great thought of God, the re-establishment of order and of truth among men!" And again, amid the alarming revolutions that were shaking all Europe, she says, "We are witnessing the grand judgment of human pride."