(_From Lady Blessington’s Conversations with Lord Byron._)
Talking of literary women, Lord Byron said that Madame de Staël was
certainly the cleverest, though not the most agreeable woman he had ever
known. “She declaimed to you instead of conversing with you,” said he,
“never pausing except to take breath; and if during that interval a
rejoinder was put in, it was evident that she did not attend to it, as
she resumed the thread of her discourse as though it had not been
interrupted.” This observation from Byron was amusing enough, as we had
all made nearly the same observation on him, with the exception that he
listened to, and noticed, any answer made to his reflections. “Madame de
Staël,” continued Byron, was very eloquent when her imagination warmed,
(and a very little excited it;) her powers of imagination were much
stronger than her reasoning ones, perhaps owing to their being much more
frequently exercised; her language was recondite, but redundant, and
though always flowery, and often brilliant there was an obscurity that
left the impression that she did not perfectly understand what she
endeavoured to render intelligible to others. She was always losing
herself in philosophical disquisition, and once she got entangled in the
mazes of the labyrinth of metaphysics; she had no clue by which she
could guide her path--the imagination that led her into her
difficulties, could not get her out of them; the want of a mathematical
education, which might have served as a ballast to steady and help her
into the port of reason, was always visible, and though she had great
tact in concealing her defeat, and covering a retreat, a tolerable
logician must have always discovered the scrapes she got into. Poor dear
Madame de Staël, I shall never forget seeing her one day, at table with
a large party, when the busk (I believe you ladies call it) of her
corset forced its way through the top of the corset, and would not
descend though pushed by all the force of both hands of the wearer, who
became crimson from the operation. After fruitless efforts, she turned
in despair to the valet de chambre behind her chair, and requested him
to draw it out, which could only be done by his passing his hand from
behind over her shoulder, and across her chest, when, with a desperate
effort, he unsheathed the busk. Had you seen the faces of some of the
English ladies of the party, you would have been like me, almost
convulsed; while Madame remained perfectly unconscious that she had
committed any solecism on _la décence Anglaise_. Poor Madame de Staël
verified the truth of the lines--
“Qui de son sexe n’a pas l’esprit,
De son sexe a tout le malheur.”
She _thought_ like a man, but, alas! she _felt_ like a woman; as witness
the episode in her life with Monsieur Rocca, which she dared not avow,
(I mean her marriage with him,) because she was more jealous of her
reputation as a writer than a woman, and the faiblesse de coeur, this
alliance proved she had not courage to _affiche_.--_New Monthly Mag._
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