upon her introduction to society was as brilliant as her friends could
desire, though the effervescence of imagination and youthful spirits
sometimes led her to commit breaches of etiquette, which might have been
fatal to the success of a less accomplished debutant. At the age of
twenty, in 1786, she married the Baron de Stael Holstein, ambassador of
Sweden at the court of France. He was much the elder, and the matter
seems to have been arranged by her parents, with her acquiescence
indeed, but without her heart being at all interested in the connexion.
And we trace the effect of her ruling passion, love of her father, in
the Baron de Stael’s engagement not to take her to reside in Sweden,
without her free consent. During a large portion of their married life
they were separated from each other by the baron’s absences from France;
but when age and sickness weighed him down, she hastened to comfort him,
and his last hours (in 1802) were soothed by her presence and watchful
care. By this marriage Mad. de Stael had four children, of whom only a
son and a daughter survived her: the latter became the wife of the Duc
de Broglie; the former inherited his father’s title, and has won for
himself a creditable place in the literature of the age.
At the beginning of the revolution, Mad. de Stael watched the new
prospects opening 011 her country with joyful anticipation: but she was
shocked and disgusted by the ferocious excesses which ensued. Her love
of liberty was too sincere to let her justify the policy, or join the
party of the court, but, with an admirable courage, she used the
powerful influence of her talents and her connexions to save as many as
possible of the victims of that frenzied time. She arranged a plan for
the escape of the royal family from the Tuileries; and after the death
of Louis XVI., she had the boldness (for so it must be called) to
publish her ‘Défense de la Reine.’ It needed all the author’s tact and
ingenuity, as well as eloquence, so to plead the queen’s cause, as, on
the one hand, not to compromise the dignity of her innocence, and, on
the other, not to aggravate the rage of those who clamoured for her
destruction.
Having passed safely through the Reign of Terror, Mad. de Stael hailed
the establishment of the Directory in 1795, as the commencement of a
settled government. Through life she devoted a large portion of her
attention to politics, which she designated as comprehending within
their sphere, morality, religion, and literature; and at this period
especially, while her fame in literature was not yet established, and
the ardent enthusiasm of her temper was unchecked by misfortune, she not
only took an eager interest in the course of affairs, but exerted her
powers to gain some influence in the direction of them. Her brilliant
conversation drew around her the ablest and most accomplished men of the
French capital; and in Paris, where the public opinion of France is
compressed into a narrow space, wit or beauty have always had an
influence unknown to the more sedate nations of the north. To this
period of her life belong the treatises,—more interesting as specimens
of her genius, than important for the truth of her theories—‘De
l’Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur des Individus et des Nations,’
published in 1796, of which only the first part, relating to
individuals, was completed; and ‘De la Littérature considerée dans ses
Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales,’ published in 1800: subjects,
it has been truly said, which demand the observation and study of a
whole life. It is not on these, therefore, that her fame is based. But
the latter has the great merit, according to the testimony of Sir James
Mackintosh, of being the first attempt to treat the philosophy of
literary history upon a bold and comprehensive scale.
But she could not aspire to “direct the storm,” without running some
danger of being caught in it; and it is probable, as indeed she herself
admits, that if she had foreseen the troubles which political influence
was to bring upon her, she would have been well pleased to resign all
pretension to it. At the end of 1799, Bonaparte rose to power on the
ruin of the Directory. That remarkable man inspired Mad. de Stael from
the first with an indescribable fear and dislike, which she has
expressed throughout her very interesting work, entitled ‘Dix Années
d’Exil;’ and as she saw at once the danger to which the cause of
rational liberty was exposed by his ambition, and feared not to express
her sentiments, her house became the focus of discontent. Benjamin
Constant, then one of her intimate associates, having prepared and
communicated to her a speech to expose the dawning tyranny of the First
Consul, warned her that, if spoken, it would necessarily be followed by
the desertion of the brilliant society which she loved, and by which she
was surrounded. She replied, “We must do as we think right.” It was
accordingly pronounced on the following day, on the evening of which her
favourite circle was to assemble at her own house. Before six o’clock
she received ten notes of excuse. “The first and second I bore well
enough, but as one note came after another, they began to disturb me. I
appealed in vain to my conscience, which had bidden me resign the
pleasures which depended on Bonaparte’s favour: so many good sort of
persons blamed me, that I could not hold fast enough by my own view of
the question.” And she says just before, with her usual candour, “If I
had foreseen what I have suffered, dating from that day, I should not
have been resolute enough to decline M. Constant’s offer to abstain from
coming forward, for the sake of not compromising me.” The speech was
followed by an intimation from Fouché, that Mad. de Stael’s retirement
from Paris for a short time would be expedient.
In the spring of 1800, Bonaparte’s absence upon the campaign of Marengo,
and the publication of her work on literature, brought Mad. de Stael
again into fashion. From that time until 1802, she remained undisturbed,
and divided her time chiefly between Paris, and her father’s residence
at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva. In the latter year (in which she
published ‘Delphine’) her intimacy with Bernadotte caused the First
Consul to regard her with suspicion, though the dread of being banished
from the delights of Parisian society had taught her prudence. “They
pretend,” he said, “that she neither talks politics, nor mentions me;
but I know not how it happens, that people seem to like me less after
visiting her.” Prudence, or the warning of her friends, detained Mad. de
Stael at Coppet during the winter of 1802–3: but when war broke out, and
she thought that Bonaparte’s attention was fully occupied by the
proposed descent upon England, she could not resist the thirst of
conversation which always drew her to Paris. She did not venture to
enter the city; but she had not been long in its neighbourhood, when she
was terribly disconcerted by a peremptory order not to appear within
forty leagues of the metropolis. She candidly avows that “la
conversation Française n’existe qu’à Paris, et la conversation a été,
depuis mon enfance mon plus grand plaisir.” The rest of France,
therefore, had no attraction for her, and she determined to visit
Germany. Weimar was her first place of abode, where she became
acquainted with Goethe, Wieland, and Schiller, and, under their
auspices, commenced her study of the German language and literature. In
1804, she proceeded to Berlin; but she was suddenly recalled to
Switzerland by the illness and death of M. Necker.
To this most painful loss Mad. Necker de Saussure attributes a deep and
beneficial influence on her friend’s character. It inspired a melancholy
which perhaps never was entirely dissipated, it raised her thoughts to a
more exalted strain of meditation, and gave vigour and consistency to
those reverential feelings, which before were perhaps hardly definite
enough to be termed religion. At this time she composed her account of
the private life of M. Necker, of which B. Constant has said, that no
other of her works conveys so good a notion of the author. Shortly after
she visited Italy for the first time. The grand and solemn remains of
antiquity harmonized with the melancholy of her mind; and in this
journey was developed a love of art, and, in a less degree, a taste for
scenery, of which up to this time she seems to have been strangely
deficient. The fruit of her travels appeared in ‘Corinne,’ written after
her return to Coppet in 1805, and published at Paris early in 1807,
which raised her to the first class of living writers. Mad. Necker de
Saussure says, in the strain of high panegyric, “Il n’eut qu’une voix,
qu’un cri d’admiration dans l’Europe lettrée; et ce phénomène fut
partout un événement;” and Sir James Mackintosh, who read it in India,
in a translation, says, “I swallow Corinne slowly, that I may taste
every drop. I prolong my enjoyment, and really dread the termination.”
Dictated by the same leading idea as ‘Delphine,’ but far superior in
depth and truth of sentiment, as well as eloquence, and genuine poetic
ardour, it was also free from the moral objections to the former novel.
Each heroine, according to the lively author first quoted, is a
transcript from the author herself. “‘Corinne’ is the ideal of Mad. de
Stael; ‘Delphine’ is her very self in youth.” A similar idea occurred to
Mackintosh,—“In the character of ‘Corinne,’ Mad. de Stael draws an
imaginary self—what she is, what she had the power of being, and what
she can easily imagine that she might have become. Purity, which her
sentiments and principles teach her to love; talents and
accomplishments, which her energetic genius might easily have acquired;
uncommon scenes, and incidents fitted for her extraordinary mind; and
even beauty, which her fancy contemplates so constantly, that she can
scarcely suppose it to be foreign to herself, and which, in the
enthusiasm of invention, she bestows on this adorned as well as improved
self,—these seem to be the materials out of which she has formed
‘Corinne,’ and the mode in which she reconciled it to her knowledge of
her own character.... The grand defect is the want of repose—too much,
and too ingenious reflection—too uniform an ardour of feeling. The
understanding is fatigued, the heart ceases to feel.”
Before the publication of ‘Corinne.’ Mad. de Stael had ventured into the
neighbourhood of Paris. The book contained nothing hostile to Napoleon;
but the new wreath of fame which the author had woven for herself
revived his spleen, and she soon received a peremptory order to quit
France. This was a bitter mortification. We have mentioned her ruling
love of conversation: and to her Paris was the world; beyond its limits
life was vegetation. “Give me the Rue du Bac,” she said to those who
extolled the Lake of Geneva; “I would prefer living in Paris on a fourth
story, with a hundred louis a year.” The chief studies of her exile were
German literature and metaphysics. In the autumn of 1807 she visited
Vienna, where she spent a year in tranquil enjoyment, soothed by the
respect and admiration, and gratified by the polished manners and
conversation of the exalted circles in which she moved, and undisturbed
by the petty tyranny which, in her stolen visits to France, always hung
over her head. In 1808 she returned to Coppet, to arrange the materials
for her great work on Germany. Having devoted nearly two years to this
task, she went to France in the summer of 1810, the decree of exile
being so far relaxed, that she was permitted, as before, to reside forty
leagues from the capital. Her principal object was to superintend the
printing of her work, which was to be published at Paris. After passing
safely, though with many alterations, through the censorship, the last
proof was corrected, September 23. Scarcely was this done, and 10,000
copies struck off, when the whole impression was seized and destroyed.
Mad. de Stael fortunately was enabled, by timely warning, to secrete the
manuscript. This blow was accompanied by an order to quit France without
delay. America, which she had expressed a desire to visit, and Coppet,
were the only places offered to her choice: an attempt to reach England,
which was her secret wish, would have been followed by immediate arrest.
She chose to return to her paternal home. There the Emperor’s
persecution, and her hatred of him, reached their height; and though not
to be ranked with the graver offences of tyranny, his treatment of her
was of a most irritating character, and unbecoming any but a low-minded
despot. It was intimated that she had better confine her excursions to a
circle of two leagues; her motions were watched, even within her own
house; to be regarded as her friend was equivalent to a sentence of
disgrace or dismissal, to any person dependent on the government; her
sons were forbidden to enter their native country; M. Schlegel, their
domestic tutor, was ordered to quit Coppet; and worst of all, her two
dearest friends, M. de Montmorency and Mad. Recamier, were banished
France for having presumed to visit her. These, and more trifling
delinquencies are set forth with most stinging sarcasm, in her ‘Ten
Years of Exile.’
Harassed beyond endurance, she resolved to make an attempt to escape
from these never-ending vexations. But whither to go? She could not
obtain permission to reside elsewhere; and if Napoleon demanded her, no
continental power, except Russia, could give her an asylum. To obtain a
conveyance to England was impossible, except from some port to the north
of Hamburg; and to reach that distant region, it was necessary to
traverse the whole of Europe, in constant danger of being intercepted
and detained. After eight months of irresolution, she found courage and
opportunity to make the attempt; and quitting Coppet secretly, she
reached Berne in safety, obtained a passport for Vienna, and hastily
traversing Switzerland and the Tyrol, arrived at the Austrian capital,
June 6, 1812. But this was neither a safe nor pleasant resting-place.
The Emperor was in attendance on his son-in-law at Dresden; and the
Austrian police thought fit to pay their court to Napoleon, by following
up the example of annoyance which he had set. Mad. de Stael, therefore,
hastened on her route to Russia, through Moravia and Gallicia, honoured
all the way by the especial attention of the police, on whose happy
combination of “French machiavelism and German clumsiness,” she has
taken ample revenge in her ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ She crossed the Russian
frontier, July 14, and in the joy of having escaped at last from the
wide-spread power of Napoleon, she sees and describes every thing in
Russia with an exuberance of admiration, which the position of the
country at that moment, and the kindness which the writer experienced,
may well excuse. The French armies had already crossed the Vistula, and
the direct route to St. Petersburg being interrupted, she was obliged to
make a circuit by Moscow. After a hasty survey of the wonders of that
city, she continued her route to St. Petersburg, where she was received
with distinction by the Emperor and his consort. But England was still
the object of her desires, and towards the end of September, she quitted
the metropolis of Russia for Stockholm. There, during a winter-residence
of eight months, she composed the journal of her travels, to which we
have so often referred; and in the following summer she arrived in
London.
She was received in the highest circles of our metropolis with an
enthusiastic admiration, which no doubt was rendered in part to the
avowed enemy of Napoleon, as well as to the woman of genius. Sir James
Mackintosh, in his journal, gives a lively description of the manner in
which she was _fêted_. “On my return I found the whole fashionable and
literary world occupied with Mad. de Stael—the most celebrated woman of
this, or perhaps of any age.... She treats me as the person whom she
most delights to honour. I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as
one orders beans and bacon: I have in consequence dined with her at the
houses of almost all the cabinet ministers. She is one of the few
persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would
be universally popular, if in society she were to confine herself to her
inferior talents—pleasantry, anecdote, and literature, which are so much
more suited to conversation than her eloquence and genius.” A very
characteristic observation was made by the late Lord Dudley—“Mad. de
Stael was not a good neighbour; there could be no slumbering near her,
she would instantly detect you.”
The publication of her long-expected work on Germany maintained the
interest which Mad. de Stael had excited, during the period of her
residence in England. It is comprised in four parts,—on the aspect and
manners of Germany,—on literature and the arts, as there existing,—on
philosophy and morals,—and on religion and enthusiasm. For an analysis
of it we may best refer to the elaborate criticism of Mackintosh, in the
Edinburgh Review, No. XLIII, who gives it the high praise of “explaining
the most abstruse metaphysical theories of Germany precisely, yet
perspicuously and agreeably; and combining the eloquence which inspires
exalted sentiments of virtue, with the enviable talent of gently
indicating the defects of men and manners by the skilfully softened
touches of a polite and merciful pleasantry:” and of being “unequalled
for variety of knowledge, flexibility of power, elevation of view, and
comprehension of mind, among the works of women, and in the union of the
graces of society and literature with the genius of philosophy, not
surpassed by many among men.”
After the restoration of the Bourbons, Mad. de Stael returned to France.
She stood high in Louis XVIII.’s favour, who was well qualified to enjoy
and appreciate her powers of conversation; and he gave a substantial
token of his regard by the repayment of two millions of francs, which
the treasury was indebted to her father’s estate. At the return of
Napoleon, she fled precipitately to Coppet. She was too generous to
countenance the gross abuse lavished on the fallen idol; and some sharp
repartees, at the expense of the time-servers of the day, seem to have
inspired Napoleon with a hope that he might work on her vanity to enlist
her in his service. He sent a message, that he had need of her to
inspire the French with constitutional notions: she replied, “He has
done for twelve years without either me or a constitution, and now he
loves one about as little as the other.”
Concerning the last three years of her life, our information is very
scanty. She had contracted a second marriage, with M. Rocca, a young
officer, who, after serving with distinction in the French army in
Spain, had retired, grievously wounded, to Geneva, his native place. For
an account and apology for this much-censured and injudicious connexion,
the date of which we have not found specified, but which should seem to
have been previous to her flight to Coppet, since Rocca accompanied her
on the occasion, we must refer to Mad. Necker de Saussure. It appears by
her statement (and this is a material consideration in estimating the
extent of the lady’s weakness), that though she must have been more than
forty, and the gentleman was twenty years younger, she had inspired
Rocca with a devoted and romantic passion. “Je l’aimerai tellement,” he
said to one of his friends, “qu’elle finira par m’épouser,” and he kept
his word. A less distinguished woman might have contracted a marriage in
which the disparity of years was greater, at a slight expense of
wondering and ridicule; but probably Mad. de Stael felt that the eyes of
the world were upon her, and that any weakness would be eagerly seized
by her enemies; and, perhaps, had a natural dislike to resign a name
which she had rendered illustrious. She judged ill: the secrecy was the
worst part of the affair. The union, though generally believed to exist,
was not avowed until the opening of her will, which authorised her
children to make her marriage known, and acknowledged one son, who was
the fruit of it. The decline of M. Rocca’s health, which never recovered
the effect of his wounds, induced her to take a second journey to Italy
in 1816. At that time, her own constitution was visibly giving way. She
became seriously ill after her return to France, and died, July 14,
1817, the anniversary of two remarkable days of her life. These were,
the commencement of the French revolution, and the day on which, by
entering Russia, she finally escaped from Napoleon. M. Rocca survived
her only half a year. He died in Provence, January 29, 1818.
Mad. de Stael’s last great work, which was published after her death, is
entitled ‘Considérations sur les principaux Événements de la Révolution
Française,’ a book, says Mackintosh, “possessing the highest interest as
the last dying bequest of the most brilliant writer that has appeared in
our days, the greatest writer, of a woman, that any age or country has
produced.” That it was left unfinished is the less to be regretted,
because it is not a regular history of the revolution, but rather a
collection of penetrating observations and curious details, recorded in
the true spirit of historic impartiality, and therefore a most valuable
treasure to the future historian. The scope of the book, in accordance
with her warm admiration through life of the English constitution, is to
show that France requires a free government and a limited monarchy. The
catalogue of her works is closed by the Œuvres Inédites published in
1820, of which the principal is ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ They are collected
in an edition of eighteen volumes 8vo., published at Paris, in 1819–20,
to which the ‘Notice sur le Caractère et les Ecrits de Mad. de Stael,’
by Mad. Necker de Saussure, is prefixed.
The leading feature of Mad. de Stael’s private character was her
inexhaustible kindness of temper; it cost her no trouble to forgive
injuries. There seems not to have been a creature on earth whom she
hated, except Napoleon. “Her friendships were ardent and remarkably
constant; and yet she had a habit of analysing the characters, even of
those to whom she was most attached, with the most unsparing sagacity,
and of drawing out the detail and theory of their faults and
peculiarities, with the most searching and unrelenting rigour; and this
she did to their faces, and in spite of their most earnest
remonstrances. ‘It is impossible for me to do otherwise,’ she would say;
‘if I were on my way to the scaffold, I should be dissecting the
characters of the friends who were to suffer with me upon it.’” Though
the excitement of mixed society was necessary to her happiness, her
conversation in a tête à tête with her intimate friends is said to have
been more delightful than her most brilliant efforts in public. She was
proud of her powers, and loved to display and talk of them: but her
vanity was divested of offensiveness by her candour and ever-present
consideration of others. Of her errors we would speak with forbearance;
but it is due to truth to say that there were passages in her life which
exposed her to serious and well-founded censure. As a daughter and
mother she displayed sedulous devotion, and the warmest affection.
Though never destitute of devotional feeling, her notions of religion in
youth seem to have been very vague and inefficient. But misfortune drove
her sensitive and affectionate temper to seek some stay, which she found
nothing on earth could furnish; and in later years, her religion, if not
deeply learned, was deeply felt. Of this, the latter portion of Mad.
Necker de Saussure’s work will satisfy the candid reader. And though her
testimony to the truth and value of religion was for the most part
indirect, we may reasonably believe that it was not ineffective. “Placed
in many respects in the highest situation to which humanity could
aspire, possessed unquestionably of the highest powers of reasoning,
emancipated in a singular degree from prejudices, and entering with the
keenest relish into all the feelings that seemed to suffice for the
happiness and occupation of philosophers, patriots, and lovers, she has
still testified that without religion there is nothing stable, sublime
or satisfying; and that it alone completes and consummates all to which
reason and affection can aspire. A genius like hers, and so directed,
is, as her biographer has well remarked, the only missionary that can
work any permanent effect upon the upper classes of society in modern
times—upon the vain, the learned, the scornful and argumentative, ‘who
stone the Prophets, while they affect to offer incense to the Muses.’”
(_Ed. Review, No. LXXI._)
[Illustration]
PALLADIO.