NEW FACES AT COPPET.
Some remarkable people had already begun to cluster round the Châtelaine
of Coppet. De Gérando, Sismondi, Camille Jordan, Madame de Krüdener,
Madame Récamier—all are interesting names. Camille Jordan, who was
introduced by De Gérando, appears to have been taken up at once with
characteristic ardor by Madame de Staël. His _Vrai Sens du Vôte
National sur le Consulat à Vie_, published in 1802, was just the kind
of trumpet-call to which she always responded. Straightway her letters
to him became frequent, and full of the excessive fervor and flattery
which distinguished all her protestations of affection. Oddly enough,
Madame de Krüdener, not yet a priestess, but a most decided coquette,
appears to have exercised a rather perturbing influence upon these new
relations. Madame de Staël writes that she would have liked to send
Jordan a ring containing a lock of her hair, and formerly the property
of her husband, but she is restrained by the recollection of Madame de
Krüdener’s fair tresses, for which, as she learns, Camille entertains a
lively admiration. Another letter contains an invitation to him to join
her and one or two other friends in a journey to Italy, coupled with a
playful hint that in such scenes he might find her society more agreeable
than the lovely blonde’s. Camille not responding in the way desired,
Madame de Staël betrays some wounded feeling. She had thought that when
once she had admired Jordan’s writings so much, everything must be in
harmony between them. She had been mistaken. She would take refuge in
silence. Nevertheless she is not silent; and Madame de Krüdener’s name
reappears. Madame de Staël is willing to admit that she is a remarkable
person, but objects that she is always talking of persons who have killed
themselves for love of her. Then Jordan is summoned to say if it be true
that he is in love, not with Madame, but with Mademoiselle de Krüdener?
She has nothing but a Greuze-like face to recommend her, and if _she_
has enthralled him then why has he not fallen a victim to every young
girl of fifteen? Nevertheless, if he really be in love, and will confess
it, Madame de Staël will set herself to study Mademoiselle de Krüdener
better, with a view to loving her herself if she prove indeed worthy of
Jordan’s affection.
In reading all this, one is forced to the conclusion that a more
emotional woman than Madame de Staël never trod the earth. Every human
creature, perhaps, has one unsolved, it may be insoluble, riddle in his
life—one mystery of feeling which nobody fathoms. More especially is
this true of women who live so much in sentiment; and supremely true
of a woman like Madame de Staël. That ineffable something in her which
nobody seems to have guessed while she was living, of which Byron felt
the presence in her without divining the cause, was the passionate and
unappeasable desire to be loved. All men who had dealings with her appear
to have misunderstood her in so far that they believed her to be more
dominated by her head than her heart—instead of understanding that,
in her, head and heart were the systole and diastole of a temperament
surprisingly forcible but not essentially strong. Or, if they did learn
to comprehend her better at last, it was when she was no longer young,
and feeling of a certain sort had become, alas! ridiculous. As long as
she was entitled to feel and to suffer they made almost a reproach to her
of the intellectual superiority which they could not deny, and cast her
back upon her own thoughts for happiness.
Madame de Krüdener, on one occasion, arrived at the complacent conclusion
that Madame de Staël was jealous of her. Not jealous of her beauty
and golden locks, which was conceivable, and might have been true, but
jealous of her literary fame! _Corinne_ jealous of _Valerie_! It is true
that _Corinne_ had not yet seen the light, while _Valerie_ had not only
appeared, but had met with great success. So great an authority as St.
Beuve pronounces Madame de Krüdener’s novel to be a thing of joy, a work
to be read thrice, “in youth, in middle life, and in old age.” But it is
possible to have many intellectual qualities, and yet remain at such an
immeasurable distance beneath Madame de Staël that nothing but vanity
could scale the height.
Moreover, Madame de Krüdener’s meaner self had not been a stranger
to the immediate and surprising triumph of her work. She was always
intriguing, and intrigued to some purpose when her novel was on the eve
of publication. She ran about to all the _fournisseurs_ in Paris, asking
them for bows _à la Valerie_, caps and gowns _à la Valerie_.
They heard the name for the first time, but naturally proceeded to call
a variety of articles by an appellation presumably so fashionable, and
the success of the novel was assured. Madame de Krüdener, promptly and
conveniently oblivious of the sources of this sudden triumph, allowed
herself to become somewhat intoxicated by it, and wrote to a friend
that the “dear woman” (meaning Madame de Staël) was jealous of her.
The person at whom this accusation was levelled probably never heard
of it. She certainly would never have divined it; and, the little
difficulty about Jordan once overcome, she appears to have found Madame
de Krüdener’s society more than tolerable. Indeed they ended by becoming
affectionate friends; but that was after the authoress of _Valerie_ had
undergone the mystic change which transformed her from a flirt into a
priestess.
She had always been immensely admired, and had not preserved a spotless
reputation. But she had one of those emotional natures in which a
restless vanity, love of novelty, a morbid sensibility and an excess of
imagination, combine to produce religious fervors.
Standing at a window in Riga one day, she saw an old admirer drop dead
at the very moment that he was lifting his hat to salute her. This event
made on her one of those terrifying and ineffaceable impressions which
in regenerate circles is known as “a call.” She plunged into mysticism;
became the exponent of a new dogma, and finally claimed for herself the
gift of prophecy. People were, of course, not wanting to declare that her
predictions had in several instances been verified; and, her personal
fascination remaining always great, she now acquired an enormous
influence. Her extreme self-abnegation and boundless charities increased
her reputation for sanctity, and she even succeeded in bringing down on
herself a satisfactory amount of persecution. In Paris superstition was,
as always, rife. The days were not yet so remote when Philip Egalité
had gone to question the devil in the quarries of Montrouge; and men
were barely more than middle-aged who in their first youth had looked
on the brazen brow of Cagliostro, and felt their blood agreeably frozen
by the Comte de St. Germain’s casual mention of personal experiences
three hundred years old. But little more than thirty years previous to
Madame de Krüdener’s “revival” Mesmer had seen numbers of the fairest
and many not of the stupidest heads in Paris gathered round his famous
_baquet_. A little later the _illuminati_ had been credited unveraciously
and to their scant honor, with a share in the sanguinary priesthood of
Robespierre, and finally Mademoiselle Lenormand had shuffled the cards of
prophecy at the instance of Napoleon himself. Into this strange world, so
exhausted and cynical, yet excited, impulsive, and thirsting for novel
emotions, the Northern Sybil, with her strange, pale face and shining
eyes, came like a wandering star.
But all this was subsequent to our first meeting with her at Coppet, when
she was still fairly young and singularly pretty, and the gold in her
tresses owed as yet no fancied splendor to the aureole of inspiration.
Madame Récamier, the charming Juliette, was a far more normal, but a not
less attractive person. Châteaubriand’s memoirs have made her famous, but
he was among the latest of her many swains. Her path through life was
strewn with conquests, and she had offers of marriage by the score. They
continued up to the age of fifty-one, when the author of _Réné_ laid a
heart which was hardly worthy of her at her feet.
Three generations of Montmorencys adored her; a German prince of royal
blood urged her to divorce her husband in order to marry him; and Lucian
Bonaparte was among the most ardent of her slaves. Ampère the younger,
at twenty, fell in love with her, she being then forty-three; and
Châteaubriand addressed her as “_très belle et très charmante_” when
she was seventy and blind. The little Savoyards turned round in the
streets to look at her, and when they did so no longer she knew that her
marvellous beauty was on the wane. But the fascination of her grace,
her goodness, her unfailing tact and delicate intelligence survived her
loveliness; and the men who knew her still worshipped her for years after
fresher charms had attracted the eyes of the multitude. She was not a
politician, but her friendship with Madame de Staël gave her decided
opinions, and she incurred the anger of Napoleon by declining to be
_Dame du Palais_ to one of his sisters. It was said, however, that what
specially raised his ire was that a throng which on one occasion had been
assembled to do homage to him, so far forgot his presence, when Madame
Récamier appeared, as to have eyes only for her.
Finally Constant, the inexplicable, unhappy, brilliant Constant, sought
the peace which he had never found in anyone in a tardy passion for her.
He sought in vain, for she treated him as she treated all men, with a
kind and gracious indifference which her unique fascination robbed of
all its sting. She influenced his political conduct—not altogether for
good, as it turned out in 1814, when Napoleon returned from Elba. Vague
hints at a rivalry before this date between her and Madame de Staël are
to be found in some of the correspondence of the time, but they are
contradicted by the tone of Madame de Staël’s letters to her _belle
Juliette_, and by Madame Récamier’s own rare discretion.
Moreover, although Constant first saw Madame Récamier at Coppet in
1806, and confided to her those grievances of his against Madame de
Staël, which just then were rising to exasperation point, it was only in
1813, when she called upon him to defend the interests of Murat at the
Congress of Vienna, that he fell in love with her. The correspondence
which ensued between them does more honor to her than to him. Leaving
aside the questionable nature of his passion, he allowed himself to
speak of Madame de Staël with a fractious mistrust which, even if
transitory, could have come from nobody with a more deplorable grace.
The basis of the sentiment appears to have been jealousy of Madame de
Staël’s influence over her devoted friend. Such a jealousy was as futile
as paltry; for it would have needed a more witching tongue even than
Constant’s to have shaken the loyalty of the loving Juliette. To gratify
a request of hers he wrote some fragments of memoirs and sketched a
portrait of Madame de Staël which, besides much praise, contains some
furtive sarcasm at her inexpugnable belief in herself—that large quality,
too grand to be called conceit, which, according to Constant, amounted to
a cultus and inspired a “religious respect.”
It is interesting to record that the first time Châteaubriand ever saw
Madame Récamier was at Madame de Staël’s. He had gone to thank the latter
for having occupied herself about his recall to France. He found her at
her toilette, talking eagerly, and twirling in her fingers, as usual, a
little green twig. Madame Récamier suddenly entered, dressed in white.
From that moment Châteaubriand was so absorbed in her that he had no
longer any attention to bestow on her eloquent friend. This was in 1800.
He did not see her again for twelve years. Benjamin Constant, in the
“portrait” already mentioned, has left an account of Madame Récamier and
Madame de Staël, which gives a very good idea of both of them, and is
specially interesting as coming from such a source. He relates that, at
the first interview between them, Madame Récamier felt very shy. He says:—
Madame de Staël’s appearance has been much discussed, but a
magnificent glance, a sweet smile, and an habitual expression
of kindness, the absence of all minute affectation and of all
embarrassing reserve, flattering words, praise a little direct
but apparently dictated by enthusiasm, an inexhaustible variety
in conversation, astonish, attract, and reconcile almost
everybody who approaches her. I know no woman, and even no
man, who is more convinced of her immense superiority over the
whole world, and who renders this conviction less oppressive to
others. Nothing could be more charming than the conversations
between Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier. The rapidity of
the one in expressing a thousand new thoughts, the rapidity
of the second in seizing and judging them; on the one side a
strong and masculine intelligence which unmasked everything,
on the other a delicate and penetrating mind which understood
everything. All this formed a whole impossible to render for
those who did not enjoy the privilege of witnessing it.
Madame de Staël scattered golden rain of the frankest and sincerest
praise over Madame Récamier every time that she addressed her. “You are
exquisite,” “you are beautiful,” “you reign as a queen over sentiment,”
are among the sentences that stud every other line of her letters.
Another of her female friends was she whom she named the “sweet Annette
de Gérando,” the wife of the author of _The Signs and Art of Thinking
in their Mutual Relations_, the _Origin of Human Intelligence_,
the _Comparative History of Philosophic Systems_, etc. He was a
philanthropist as well as a philosopher, and Madame de Staël in later
years once made rather a bitter allusion to this fact. As time went on,
and Napoleon’s star blazed brighter, De Gérando was unable to resist the
general infection of idolatry; moreover, he had accepted a post under the
new Government, and the withering blight of officialism fell to a certain
extent on his spirit. “There is too much philanthropy in his friendship,”
wrote Madame de Staël to Jordan. “One is afraid of being treated by him
like a pauper.”
But in the summer of 1801 all this was still in the future, and harmony
and wit reigned at Coppet. Sismondi about this time appears on the scene;
discreet, observant, serene, reasonable, he conceived for Madame de
Staël a friendship which remained moderate in expression and sincere in
feeling to the last. He was not as much dazzled by her as many, and saw
her failings clearly. Occasionally she even wounded his quiet self-love,
and once or twice, when very restless and excited, she offended him. But
he was invariably drawn back to her by the spell of her goodness. He
appears as a rock of strength amid all the sparkling, moving, changing
tide of ideas and feelings that rippled, dashed, recoiled, and returned
unceasingly in every hour of the sojourn at Coppet. His steady sense and
calm judgment bring out into sharper contrast the unrest of Constant; the
flashing splendor of Madame de Staël; the dreamy refinement of Mathieu de
Montmorency; the fantastic charm of Madame de Krüdener, and the unfailing
grace of the lovely “Juliette.”
Bonstetten was yet another visitor at the château. He was called the
Swiss Voltaire, was eternally young, and even grew younger and more
plastic in mind as the unnoticed years crept over him. He had seen
Madame Necker in Paris when she was still unmarried, and reappeared
in her daughter’s home at Coppet as gay, as smiling, as vivacious and
witty as he had shown himself in the long-vanished salon of Madame
de Vermenoux. He laid himself at Madame de Staël’s feet at once, was
received by her with her usual gracious warmth, and profited by her keen
but generous criticism of his works. Everybody began by gently laughing
at Bonstetten’s incurable youthfulness, and ended by adoring him for it.
He wanted steadiness of intellectual purpose—a “belfry,” as St. Beuve
expresses it; in other words, some central fact of mind round which
all his ideas could rally—but he had plenty of insight, and, amid the
universal eulogium of Madame de Staël’s powers, seems to have been the
first to point out a defect in her which Schiller commented on later. For
when writing of her to Frederica Brun, he says: “Her goodness is extreme,
and nobody has more intellect; but that which is best in you, in her
does not exist. She lacks feeling for art, and sees no beauty except in
eloquence and intelligence. She has more practical wisdom than anybody,
but uses it more for her friends than herself.”
Frederica Brun herself came to Geneva about this time, and has left
enthusiastic descriptions of Madame de Staël, of Necker, Madame Necker de
Saussure and Madame Rilliet-Hüber. She also bore testimony to Madame de
Staël’s devotion to her children. Her eldest son, Auguste, and her only
daughter, Albertine, were destined all her life to solace her by their
love for much that she suffered. She directed the education of both her
boys, but occupied herself especially with that of the girl. She was
accused by some of her friends, even by Sismondi, of not caring very
much for her children; but no word of theirs ever betrayed any sense of
such a deficiency in her. On the contrary, both Auguste and Albertine
always spoke and wrote of her with the utmost enthusiasm.
After spending two summers and one winter uninterruptedly at Coppet,
during which period she wrote and published _Delphine_, the desire to
return to France grew into an overpowering force. Napoleon had now been
declared Consul for life, and was preparing to invade England. She
hoped, she said, that amid such multifarious occupations he would not
have leisure to conceive any objection against her establishing herself
within a few miles of Paris, near enough, in fact, to enjoy the society
of such friends as would not be too much in awe of the potentate to pay
her occasional visits. She further deluded herself with the notion that
Napoleon would shrink from the odium of exiling a woman so well known
as herself. Such a hope shows how simple Madame de Staël could still be
at times. Napoleon was no longer in a position in which blame for mere
details of conduct could touch him, and his career from this moment was
to be one long outrage on public opinion.
Madame de Staël established herself in a country house about ten miles
from Paris. Then there happened a circumstance which she had not
foreseen. In the eighteen months of her sojourn at Coppet, the society
which she knew formerly had grown baser. A whole race of parasites had
arisen, whose real or fancied interest it was to obtain the favor of
Napoleon by denouncing the people whom he detested. A woman, whose name
is suppressed, lost no time in informing Napoleon that the road leading
to Madame de Staël’s dwelling was crowded with her visitors. Immediately
one of her friends warned her that a gendarme would probably be sent to
her without loss of time. She instantly became a prey to anxiety, an
excessive anxiety it is certain, for she was excessive in most things.
She wrote to De Gérando to plead her cause with Talleyrand; she solicited
the good offices of Lucian and Joseph Bonaparte; and finally she wrote
a passionate but dignified letter to Napoleon himself. Then she waited,
in the midst of strangers, and consuming herself with a fiery impatience
that made every hour of fresh suspense a torture. She spent the nights
sitting up with her maid, listening for the tramp of the horse which was
to bring the gendarme and his message. But the gendarme did not arrive;
and, worn out with her terrors, Madame de Staël bethought herself of her
“beautiful Juliette.” That loving and devoted person assured her of a
kind welcome at St. Brice, a place about two leagues from Paris. Thither
Madame de Staël went, and finding there a varied and agreeable society,
was for the time being cured of her fears. Hearing nothing more about
her exile, she persuaded herself that Napoleon had changed his mind,
and she returned with some friends to her own lodgings at Maffliers. It
is probable enough that some officious courtier again drew her enemy’s
attention to her; or perhaps Madame de Staël’s own letter, in which she
spoke of her children’s education and her father’s advanced age, and
betrayed in every line her haunting fear of exile, enlightened Napoleon
as to the tenderest spot in which to wound her. Disliking her as he
did, and irritated by the mere thought of her as he seems to have been,
it would have been highly characteristic of his southern malice to be
decided in his course by the very prayers that should have deterred him.
However that may be, she was sitting at table with her friends one late
September afternoon when she perceived a rider, dressed in grey, pull up
at her gate and ring the bell. This prosaic-looking individual was the
messenger of destiny. She felt it at once, although he did not wear the
dreaded uniform. He was the bearer of a letter signed by Napoleon, and
ordering her to depart within twenty-four hours for any place not nearer
than forty leagues to Paris.
Needless to say, Madame de Staël did not submit without protest, and
represented so energetically to the gendarme that a woman and three
children could not be hurried off with no more preparation than a
recruit’s, as to induce him to allow her three days at Paris in which to
get ready.
On their way they stopped for a few moments at Madame Récamier’s,
and there found General Junot, who, like everybody else, was one of
Juliette’s admirers. Perhaps to please the latter, he promised to
intercede with the despot for her illustrious friend; and he was, as it
appears, so far successful that Napoleon accorded permission for Madame
de Staël to reside at Dijon. As soon as Madame Récamier received this
news she communicated it in a letter to the care of Camille Jordan. But
Madame de Staël never received it, having been driven, as she says, by
daily admonitions from her gendarme—but as Madame Récamier appeared to
think, by her own impatient agitation—away from Paris to Morfontaine.
This was the home of Joseph Bonaparte. Probably pitying her state of
excitement and misery, he invited her thither to spend a few days. He was
just then animated, as far as he dared be, by a spirit of opposition to
his mighty brother; and perhaps—who knows?—was kind to Madame de Staël
as much for that reason as for any other. In any case, nobody in those
days appears to have been profoundly in earnest except Madame de Staël
herself. She could not recover either patience or peace. She was wretched
at Morfontaine in spite of the kindness of her host and hostess, because
surrounded with officers of the Government who had accepted the servitude
against which she rebelled. She knew that her father would receive her,
but the thought of taking refuge at Coppet again was distasteful to her.
She had but just left that place, and to return thither was to resume
habits of which she had tired, and to acknowledge herself beaten.
Probably she longed for a change; and probably enough, also, she was
in that morbid condition of mind in which to do the simplest and most
obvious thing is to rob grief of all its luxury. Finally, she decided to
crave permission through Joseph to betake herself to Germany, with the
distinct assurance that the French Minister there would consider her a
foreigner and leave her in peace. Joseph hastened to St. Cloud for the
purpose, and Madame de Staël retired to an inn within two leagues of
Paris, there to await his reply.
At the end of one day, receiving no answer, and fearing (but why?) to
attract attention to herself by remaining any longer in one inn, she
sought the shelter of another; and is extremely—one cannot really help
thinking needlessly—eloquent in describing her anguish during these
self-imposed peregrinations. At last Joseph’s letter came. He not only
forwarded her the permission to go to Berlin, but added several valuable
letters of introduction, and took leave of her in the kindest terms.
Accompanied by her children and Benjamin Constant, she started, hating
the postillions for their boasted speed, and feeling that every step
taken by the horses was a fresh link in the ever-lengthening and
indestructible chain of which one end was Paris and the other her heart.
What Constant’s feelings were she does not say, and speaks of his
accompanying her as a spontaneous act of friendship. But he had been
exiled as well as herself; and although his desire to go to Germany had
partly determined hers, and neither wished to separate from the other,
there are indications that Constant quitted France as reluctantly as his
companion.
Their relations were already varied by alternate periods of shine and
storm; and although her influence over him was still immense, it had
begun, as was inevitable with such a man, to fret him. And probably some
doubts that were not political, and some sufferings that had their root
in another cause than exile, played their part in the extreme agitation
of Madame de Staël’s mind at this period.