MADAME DE STAËL’S SECOND MARRIAGE.
Madame de Staël arrived at Coppet in a condition of despair, which
she partially solaced by writing to Madame Récamier and thanking her
again and again for the constancy of her friendship. Evidently many
of her friends had already dropped away, or she fancied they had.
Perhaps she wearied them a little with her lamentations, for one knows
that silence was never her forte. But all at once a happy change came
over her. Sismondi, writing to the Countess of Albany, mentioned the
transformation, and spoke of their friend with admiration for her
new-born but to him inexplicable courage. She had given up literary work,
and no longer alluded to her afflictions; and yet, in spite of that,
her gaiety was great and her conversation as charming and sparkling as
ever. Sismondi doubtless considered that Reason—his beloved Reason was
at last asserting its sway over “Corinne’s” excitable imagination. He
must have been greatly surprised a long time afterwards when he learnt
that the magician was Love. Years previously, when Sismondi had himself
been in love in his decorous fashion, and had reproached Madame de Staël
for a want of sympathy in his trouble—a want which he had not expected
in the author of _Delphine_—she said to him: “I have never loved that
I have not felt in myself two persons—one who laughed at the other.”
But when she made that answer she was young and restless, and, like all
great and burning minds, claimed from life a destiny too radiant to be
ever realized. Now she was middle-aged; she had drunk of the waters of
bitterness and known some of the tragic awakenings of passion; she had
experienced an immeasurable sorrow in the loss of her father; she had
become familiar to satiety with the triumphs of the world; and was,
as she wrote to Madame Récamier, “wearied of suffering.” In short the
moment had come when the one imperious cry of her soul was for peace.
In such a state of mind what seems ridiculous becomes possible, and the
spirit of mocking youth in Madame de Staël, which once could laugh at
the passionate half of her nature, was buried with most of her hopes and
almost all of her illusions.
It was shortly after her return to Switzerland that, going to Geneva
to spend some little while, she first met Rocca. He was twenty-three,
she was forty-five; but that disparity of years did not prevent his
conceiving for her a most romantic passion. He was extremely handsome—a
fact to which Frederica Brun and Byron alike bear witness, and was
further interesting through having been wounded in the war in Spain,
and so badly that his health was never restored. He was the son of a
Councillor of State in Geneva, and descended from a noble Piedmontese
family which had emigrated to Switzerland during the persecution of the
Protestants. He had some culture and considerable intelligence; was
even something of an author; and, finally, was a splendid horseman. He
was wont to ride a magnificent black Andalusian steed, and performed
unheard-of feats of jumping and galloping under the windows of the house
in Geneva where Madame de Staël was staying. These varied attractions
finally proved irresistible to the object of his homage, and before
the year 1811 a secret marriage took place. Why it was a secret is one
of those mysteries which has never been satisfactorily cleared up. One
explanation is that Bonaparte, out of hatred of Madame de Staël, would
order Rocca, who, of course, was in the French army, away on service.
But if this had been the real reason, it was sufficiently strong to have
rendered any further explanation unnecessary. Nevertheless, a very good
authority, the authoress of _Coppet et Weimar_, gives two other reasons:
one that Madame de Staël would “never have consented to give up the
aristocratic name which she had made so illustrious”; the other, that the
world would have turned such a marriage into ridicule. In this connection
it is worth while to state that Constant has given Madame de Staël’s
unwillingness to change her name as a reason why she would not consent to
an open marriage with him.
The union with Rocca seems to have been a very happy one; but inasmuch
as it passed for years in the eyes of everybody for a connection of
another nature, there is no doubt that it brought Madame de Staël into
some discredit. Many of the guests at Coppet admired Rocca, but Sismondi,
for one, disliked him extremely. Sismondi, however, was not unfrequently
disposed to be rather severe on Madame de Staël and her guests; he even
carped a little at the lovely Juliette. “She (Madame Récamier) has put in
a fleeting appearance here,” he wrote in August, 1811. “She is full of
kindness and graciousness towards Madame de Staël, and is not less pretty
than two years ago, and yet I am glad that she is going; for whenever she
is present, all true conversation is destroyed. She always beguiles her
neighbor into low-toned _tête-à-tête_ talk. Her small airs and graces
weary me, and her intelligence—for she is intelligent—in no way profits
the public.”
Sismondi sometimes visited Madame de Staël herself with criticism not
less captious, although he was generally vanquished in the end by her
heroism and her charm. During the summer of 1811 she was in a very
restless and unhappy mood, which often drew forth his censure.
The conviction of the extreme disfavor with which Napoleon regarded her
was now widely spread, and one of its results was a real or fancied
falling-off of friends, which wounded her exceedingly. To nothing was
she so sensitive as to any failure of affection, and the ardor with
which she sought to defend herself from blame was caused not so much
by offended self-love as by slighted feeling of a more amiable kind.
Just about this time she wrote to Camille Jordan a very characteristic
letter. Its tone was indignant, for Jordan, always rather cold and
repellent, had evidently stung her by some censure of her conduct.
Apparently also, he had sought to justify himself for not coming to see
her, for she assured him that she had never dreamed of blaming him, nor
entertained a thought against his loyalty. She quivered under a shaft
which had struck more deeply home, and in one sentence made an allusion
applying apparently to Rocca. She owned that being placed, as it appeared
to her, on the highest pinnacle of moral dignity, she had felt some
wonder at the fact that Jordan, “indulgent towards the inconceivable
conduct of Girando,” should have reserved all his wrath for an unhappy
woman who, “while resisting all attacks and defending her children and
her talent at the risk of happiness, security, and life,” had allowed
herself to be momentarily touched by the self-sacrificing chivalry of a
young man. Her anger was but fleeting, and a few months later she wrote
as affectionately as ever to Camille, who, perhaps, for once had been
shaken from his prudent calm by her fiery words, and had calmed her by
protesting unaltered regard.
This year of 1811 was fruitful of sorrow. Mathieu de Montmorency and
Madame de Récamier were both exiled immediately after a visit paid by
them to their illustrious friend. According to Madame Lenormant, the
writer of _Coppet et Weimar_, as well as to Madame de Staël herself, the
letter from the Minister of Police which conveyed the order of exile to
Mathieu de Montmorency distinctly signified that friendship with the
mistress of Coppet was the cause of his disgrace. Sismondi, however,
who showed himself incredulous, and to a certain extent unsympathizing
throughout all these circumstances, when writing to the Countess of
Albany, was concerned to correct such an impression, and declared that
not only had the Prefect of Geneva and the Minister of the French Police
disclaimed the idea as unfounded, but he himself had never seen that
anybody was in the least compromised by going to Coppet. Nevertheless,
in a very short time Schlegel was ordered to quit the Château on the
preposterous plea that he had pronounced the _Phædra_ of Euripides to be
superior to that of Racine! Madame de Staël went to Aix for the sake of
her youngest son’s health, but at the end of ten days was recalled by a
letter from the Prefect, who advised her not to venture more than two
leagues from Coppet. Very naturally she was irritated to the last degree
and often deeply distressed at all these incidents. The exile imposed on
Mathieu de Montmorency and Madame Récamier caused her the greatest grief,
more especially as she never doubted but that unwittingly she was the
cause. She had other causes of suffering also in her health at the time,
and doubtless was far from being as brilliant as of yore.
Circumstances (she had a son by Rocca in 1812) condemned her to an
isolation which fretted her almost beyond endurance; and Sismondi, not
possessing the key to the situation, was aggrieved at her sombre mood
and nervous irritability. He wrote that he sometimes “bores himself”
at Coppet (O Ichabod!); and he was induced to take refuge with sundry
amiable persons at Geneva who soothed his wounded self love.
At last Madame de Staël—inconsolable for the loss of Schlegel’s society,
panting to escape beyond the narrow limits of Coppet, where her sons had
no career before them, and her daughter no chance of marrying, and she
herself was harassed by hints and admonitions from the Prefect at every
turn—resolved upon escape. She was informed through Schlegel, who was in
Berne at the time, that if she would even now write something in praise
of Napoleon her fate would be considerably mitigated. It is no slight
credit to her that, agitated and ill as she was, she firmly declined.
Nothing, indeed, at such a moment could have been more courageous than
her refusal, for she was torn with a thousand fears at her impending
journey. The passport would have been an insuperable difficulty, as
the permission to go to America, once accorded, had now been withdrawn
from her; entrance into Italy was also denied, and the Government was
determined that she should not take refuge in England.
Yet to England she was resolved to go. The only route open to her was
through Russia and Sweden. Through her friend the Grand Duchess of Weimar
she obtained a passport, which was to be handed to her in Vienna. All
this took months to settle, and it was only on the 23rd of May, 1812,
that she was at last able to start. It was necessary to leave in such a
way as not to excite the attention of the lynx-eyed Prefect of Geneva.
The eve of her departure she wandered about the park of Coppet a prey
to the utmost grief. She had been unwilling to return there at one
time, but now she was heart-broken at having to bid a long, perhaps
a last, farewell to the tomb of her father and the scenes associated
with his memory. To her, both by nature and system, such a parting was
particularly poignant.
At 2 o’clock on the afternoon of the 23rd, she got into her carriage,
announcing that she would return for dinner. Only two of her servants
were in the secret. Albertine, Auguste and Rocca were with her; her
second son was to follow in a few days, and join her at Vienna with
her baggage. For the present, all the necessaries which the travellers
absolutely needed were stowed away in the pockets of Auguste and Rocca;
Madame de Staël and Albertine only carried fans.
The escape thus ingeniously planned was carried out with a success that
it is quite pleasant to read of, even to this moment. The police never
awoke at all to the fact of the flight until the luggage followed the
fugitives, and then Madame de Staël was beyond their reach. History
draws a veil over the feelings of the Prefect.
At Berne, Schlegel joined the party, and Auguste de Staël separated
from it, in order to return to Coppet to see after things there. The
travellers pushed on, but, because of Madame de Staël’s health, in no
great haste, through Switzerland and the Tyrol. Her one haunting fear all
this time was that in Bavaria an agent of the French Government might
have preceded her with an order for her arrest. The abject subservience
of the German Governments at that time to Napoleon made it very likely
that in such a case passports would be so much waste-paper.
Vienna was reached in safety, and there Madame de Staël at first
determined to remain three weeks, while a courier was despatched to Wilna
to obtain the Russian passport from the Emperor Alexander. The first
ten days of her sojourn were marked by cloudless pleasure. Security had
returned to her; and, after her late repression, varied chiefly by the
Prefect of Geneva’s solemn exhortations, it was a real delight to find
herself in the midst of a society where Napoleon was frankly abused. But
the Emperor and Empress of Austria were at Dresden, and the official
mind, left to itself, soon became frightened at the idea of sheltering
the dangerous authoress. Spies were stationed at her door, and cropped
up, like poisonous fungi, with silent rapidity along her path. Moreover,
an order had arrived for the arrest and return of Rocca as a French
officer—the fact of his wounds and inability to serve being waived in
the interests of persecution. At this point one pauses to ask _why_,
after all, Madame de Staël herself was not arrested. There seems but
little doubt that the obsequiousness of the Austrian police would have
been equal to the task. Perhaps Napoleon shrank from the odium of such a
proceeding; perhaps he was, in reality, rather glad to be rid of Madame
de Staël. This would agree with a well-known conversation which he had
held four years previously with Auguste de Staël, who, going to him to
plead for his mother’s recall, was told, with insolent, good-humored
contempt, that the whole of Europe, except France, was open to her;
that she would not be imprisoned, as then she might have some cause to
complain, but that she alone could be unhappy when allowed to wander at
will through every capital of Europe except Paris.
But if this explanation be accepted, it becomes difficult to account for
the later persecutions of Madame de Staël at the hands of the French and
Swiss police. Could it be that Savary and his underlings, through excess
of zeal, interpreted their instructions with liberal severity and that
Napoleon was not responsible for every individual act, but only for the
angry hatred which promised approval of each and all of them?
However this may be, Madame de Staël’s fears were not long in reasserting
themselves. Too impatient to wait for the passport, she started with
her son and daughter for Galicia, having extracted from a friend the
promise of hurrying after her as soon as the expected paper arrived. In
her _Memoirs_ she admits that this was a mistake; for at Vienna she had
friends to intercede in her favor, while in Galicia there was no shield
between herself and the servility towards France of inferior officials.
As a consequence she was driven along her route by the unceasing
admonitions to “move on” of the police. Her immediate goal was Lanzut—the
home of her friends Prince and Princess Lubomirski. Here she was to meet
Rocca, who had also proceeded on his way, but disguised. At some point of
the road her passport reached her. This was a ray of light; and a letter
from Madame Récamier, which overtook her somewhere near Olmutz, was
another. But, as a rule, her sensations were all gloomy. The discomforts
of her journey through such a country and under such circumstances
increased her sadness, to which the finishing touch was put by the aspect
of the desolated countries, and of the overtaxed, starving populations
withering beneath the Napoleonic blight, and mingling curses on the
oppressor with prayers to heaven for relief.
These tragic pictures were ludicrously, but by no means reassuringly
relieved by the sight of placards, in the various towns where the
passports had to be examined, which ordained that Madame de Staël was to
be submitted, wherever she appeared, to the surveillance of the police!
At Lanzut she had been informed that she was not to stay more than
twenty-four hours. This, however, was previous to her receiving the
Russian passport. With that to show, she hoped for more indulgence.
The hope was vain, for at Lanzut a police agent presented himself, having
received orders from his chief, the Governor of the district, to see that
Madame de Staël did not remain more than eight hours at the Lubomirski’s
Château. And when she left, he followed her carriage in a calèche, thus
causing her much alarm lest Rocca, on joining them, should be recognized.
Fifty leagues of Austrian territory had still to be traversed. The
police agent, who is described as carrying out his instructions with a
most vexatious pertinacity, quitted the travellers at the limit of his
“circle”; but Madame de Staël says that grenadiers were still found
posted along the route to observe her, and she did not breathe freely
until she found herself on Russian territory. Even there she could not
allow herself to feel quite secure, for Napoleon’s huge army—destined by
its apparent power and its oncoming doom to typify the falling might of
France—was hastening by forced marches to Moscow; and Madame de Staël,
to avoid meeting it, had to reach St. Petersburg by a circuitous route.
Her terror of being arrested and imprisoned still abode with her; she
was evidently convinced that the Emperor was furious with her for having
escaped his clutches; and she began seriously to consider what she would
do if any portion of the army threatened to overtake her. Her plan was to
hasten on to Odessa, and thence proceed to Greece and Constantinople.
Fortunately, her companions succeeded in persuading her that she could
travel by post much faster than an army; and partially calmed, she at
last gave herself up to some enjoyment of the scenes and people around
her. Her _Dix Années d’Exil_, always vivid, becomes from this point a
charming book. She is a little too optimistic, and indulges, as usual,
too much in generalization, but seizes on salient points with swiftness,
and describes them with remarkable force.
She was delighted with her reception by the nobles and the Imperial
family. Of the Czar she speaks with a fervent admiration that later
generations have not shared. He had the facile amiability and
conventional philanthropy of a sovereign who finds his benevolent
theories so constantly crossed by circumstances as to release him, in
most instances, from the responsibility of applying them. But any promise
of political reform and any appeal to general principles of excellence
found so ready a response in Madame de Staël’s own heart that, especially
where a monarch spoke, she ceased to be severely critical.
According to Galiffe, she met in Russia with immense social success, and
enchanted everybody. He, personally, found her much improved since the
days of her brilliant, but too self-asserting youth.
Stein was struck with her air of simplicity and goodness, and sought
to convey her great unaffectedness of manner by saying that “she gave
herself no trouble to please”—quite a man’s judgment on a woman, and
curiously inaccurate as a necessary consequence. Madame de Staël was
so intensely interested in every new person who appeared to her at all
distinguished, that she must always have cared supremely to please. But
what Stein probably meant was that she had none of the airs and graces
of worldly coquettes; and very often, when launched in conversation, she
must have been more bent on convincing than seducing.
Madame de Staël passes over in her _Memoirs_ a scene at the theatre,
during her visit to St. Petersburg, which wounded her deeply, and
is related by Arndt. She went with her son and somebody else to the
“Théatre Français,” to see Racine’s _Phèdre_. Scarcely was she seated,
when somebody in the pit denounced her and her companions as French.
Instantly the people rose and clamored for them to be turned out. The
performance was stopped, the actors decamped, and poor Madame de Staël,
sobbing with indignation and grief, was led away. Even then she felt the
insult chiefly as levelled at Racine, and repeated incessantly, “_Oh! les
barbares, les barbares! Oh, mon Racine!_” Arndt was rather astonished at
her taking such a scene so much to heart; but, on reflection, arrived at
the conclusion that German women might be the better for a little of the
same passionate patriotism.
But unpleasant incidents during her stay in the Russian capital seem to
have been few. She visited several institutions, was received everywhere
with politeness and cordiality, and revelled again, as she had done in
Vienna, in listening to the free expression of sentiments that agreed
with her own. Events, however, were progressing rapidly, and, in spite
of the engagement never to sign a peace entered into by the Czar with
Bernadotte at Abo, the battle of Borodino and the taking of Moscow filled
most people with dismay. Madame de Staël, always easily alarmed, thought
that the moment had arrived when she could no longer remain in Russia
with safety, and she set her face towards Sweden, _en route_ for England;
thus quitting St. Petersburg a few days too soon to receive in all its
force the electric shock of learning that Moscow was fired. At Abo, where
she was to embark for Stockholm, she met Bernadotte, now Prince Royal of
Sweden, whom she had formerly known in Paris as an _habitué_ of her own
and Madame Récamier’s salon. Of course he admired the lovely Juliette,
and hastened to inquire after her with an interest which Madame de Staël
straightway conveyed in a letter to her friend—a letter worded, however,
with a caution that reveals the inconceivable difficulty even of private
correspondence in those stormy days.
At Stockholm she was welcomed, according to her son, with “perfect
kindness”; and as she was notoriously enthusiastic about Bernadotte, whom
she unhesitatingly pronounced to be “the hero of the age,” it is probable
that he honored her with a great deal of his confidence. Galiffe (author
of _D’un siècle à l’autre_), who had access to her correspondence from
Sweden with J. A. Galiffe in St. Petersburg, was of opinion that her
influence had a large share in determining Bernadotte to declare himself
against Bonaparte.
She dedicated her _Réflexions sur le Suicide_ to the Prince in a very
complimentary preface, in which she compared herself and her children as
seeking his protection in the same way as Arabian Shepherds take shelter
from a storm “under a laurel”; and went on to assure him that his public
life had been signalized by all the virtues which claim the admiration
of thinkers, and she encouraged him to persevere and remind the world of
that which it had entirely forgotten, namely, that the highest reason
teaches virtue. In contrast to all this praise, it is piquant to learn
that Bernadotte—like so many other practically-minded people—had his
little grumble at his illustrious guest, and talked of the “inconceivable
preoccupation with self,” which by this time had led Madame de Staël to
see in every political move of Napoleon the beginning of some new measure
against herself.
Her oft-professed anxiety about her sons’ future was allayed by the
Prince Royal’s offer to interest himself in Auguste’s diplomatic career,
while Albert was to enter the Swedish army.
One might wonder why this obvious solution of her difficulties had not
presented itself sooner to Madame de Staël, were it not evident that she
had consciously or unconsciously made the most of every circumstance
which could heighten the apparent hardship of her lot.