arriving in January, 1792, and in the summer of that year he joined
the growing train of _émigrés_ to England. For eight years he toiled
and starved in London, and returned to Paris in 1800. His passport
bore the name of "Lassague," and he posted, in company, as far as
Porte de l'Étoile. Thence he went on foot down the Champs Élysées,
finding none of the silence and desolation his fancy had pictured,
but, on either hand, lights and music. On the spot where the
guillotine had stood he stopped, provided with the proper emotions. He
crossed Pont Royal, then the westernmost bridge, and betook himself to
lodgings in Rue de Lille, in an _entresol_ of one of the dignified
mansions, that seem still to stand aloof from their _bourgeois_
neighbors. From here, he stole out to his meals, hiding his face
behind his journal, in which he had been reading impassioned praise of
the new book, "Atala," and listened to the other guests speculating as
to the unknown genius who had written it. The picture is to be
cherished, for it is the only known portrait of Châteaubriand, modest
and shrinking. He had brought the manuscript of "Atala" to Paris in
his pocket, and had sought long before securing a publisher. The book
found a public eager for novelty. It came in a period of sterility in
letters, when all the virility of France had been spent in her
colossal wars, and the new century was alert to greet the serene
light of science and literature. That came from all points of the
horizon, but the resplendent figures of these years were Madame de
Staël and Châteaubriand.
These two had nothing in common, but they were not inimical, and
Châteaubriand was one of the minor lions at Madame de Staël's
receptions. For this was a little earlier than 1803, when a more
beneficial air than that of Paris was ordered for her by the First
Consul, whom she bored. This "cyclone of sentiment" must have bored
Mr. Pitt, also, when she visited England during the Terror; for he
seemed to think that the lady did protest too much about the absence
of an equivalent in English for the French word "_sentiment_," and he
replied: "_Mais, Madame, nous l'avons; c'est 'My eye and Betty
Martin.'_" And when she got to Germany she bored Goethe, not only with
her sloppy sentimentality, but with her shapely arms, too lavishly
displayed. There could be no sympathy between the woman, who, in
Sainte-Beuve's words, "could not help being even more French than her
compatriots," and the stuff of whose dreams was a union of the
theories of the dead and of the newly born centuries; and
Châteaubriand, the hard-headed opponent of every revolutionary idea,
who pompously labelled himself "a Bourbon by honor, a Royalist by
reason, and still by taste and nature a Republican"!
A year after his "Atala," in 1802, his "Génie du Christianisme" had
placed him, in the estimation of his country and of himself, on a
literary throne level with the military throne of Bonaparte. The
rhetorical fireworks of this book, corruscating around the Catholic
Church, lighted up the night of scepticism, when worship had been
abolished and God had been outlawed. Yet, as he poetized beyond
recognition the North American savages in his "Atala," so now he
prettified the sanctuary and "gilded the Host." The First Consul,
welcoming any aid in his scheme to use the Church for his own ends,
sent the author to the legation at Rome. We have seen his return.
After this, he moves about Paris, lodging, for a while, he says, "in a
garret" offered him by Madame la Marquise de Coislin, a stanch friend
and stanch Royalist. "Hotel de Coislin" may still be read above the
doorway of the stately mansion that faces Place de la Concorde, at the
western corner of Rue Royale, and aggressive Bourbonism speaks from
its stone pillars and pediment. His garret there was no squalid
lodging. On his return from the Holy Land in 1807, Châteaubriand
planted the Jerusalem pines and cedars of Lebanon he had brought back,
in the garden of "_Vallée-aux-Loups_," a little place he then
purchased near Aulnay, on the south of the city. Here, while the
Empire lasted, he passed years of quiet content, with his wife, his
plants, and his books, but writing no more romance after 1809. In
1817, having a town residence, and finding himself too poor to keep
this country place, he sold it, and new buildings cover the site of
his cottage and garden.
Recalled to active life by the Restoration, Châteaubriand posed as one
who was more Royalist than the King, with a mental reservation of his
platonic fancy for a republic. He was a pretentious statesman, none
too sincere. His pamphlet, "De Buonaparte et des Bourbons," had been
worth an army to the cause, said Louis XVIII., who placed him in the
Chamber of Peers, and in 1822, after a short stay at the Berlin
Embassy, in the Ambassador's residence in London. Lording it there, in
all "the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power," he recalled his former
years of obscurity and privation in London streets, and began his
"Mémoires d'Outre Tombe." In writing about himself he was at his ease,
feeling that he had a subject worthy of his best powers, and these
memoirs have little of the inflated and fantastic mannerisms of his
romances about other people. As to the rest, they are a colossal
monument to his conceit and selfishness. Dismissed suddenly and
indecently by Louis XVIII., from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Châteaubriand was made Ambassador to Rome on the accession of Charles
X., in 1828. He refused to recognize the younger branch of the
Bourbons in 1830, and when the crown was given to Orleans, he strode
out of the Chamber of Peers, and stripped himself of his peer's robe,
with great theatric effect. Appearing no more in public life, he was
active in pamphlets and in the press as an opponent of the new
royalty, which would lead to a republic, he predicted.
"_Châteaubrillant, Vicomte de, Rue de l'Université 25_," is his
address in the _Bottin_ of 1817; a record of interest in its
antiquated spelling of his name, and because this is the house, on the
corner of Rue du Bac, which we shall visit later with Alexandre
Dumas. This three years' lease expiring in 1820, he removed to the
fine old mansion, where he gave reception to young Victor Hugo, to be
described later, at No. 27 Rue Saint-Dominique. Its site is covered by
the modern building numbered 197 in Boulevard Saint-Germain, whose
southern side, just here, replaces the same side of Rue
Saint-Dominique, as has been already told. He kept other town
addresses, to which we need not follow him, during his absences on
diplomatic duty. From 1827 to 1838 we find him and Madame de
Châteaubriand in their retired home, in the southern outskirts of the
city. Their 84 Rue d'Enfer is now 92 Rue Denfert-Rochereau, the old
street name thus punningly extended, in homage to the heroic defender
of Belfort.
The dingy yellow front of the long wall and the low building is broken
by a gate-way, and within is a small lodge on the left, wherein sits a
woman in the costume of a sisterhood. She permits entrance into the
cottage on the right, and you are in Châteaubriand's small _salon_,
the remaining portion of the cottage being now in possession of the
Institution des Jeunes Filles Aveugles, alongside. His portrait in
pencil, and a water-color sketch of his wife, hang on the wall. Her
face shows the boredom and patience that were put into it by her life
with this man of irascible genius and of frequent infidelities. She is
buried behind the altar of the chapel of the Marie-Thérèse Infirmary,
which she founded and carried on, in the devoutness that dwelt in her
soul for the Church, whose appeal to him was in its artistic
endowments. A portion of the revenue that supports this institution
comes from the sale of chocolate, made first to her liking by her
_chef_, and made after his rule ever since. As Soeur Marie shows you
out from the salesroom, alongside this little reception-room, you see
the group of trees in the circular lawn, that was planted by husband
and wife; on the farther side are the dilapidated buildings of their
day, now used for the chocolate _fabrique_; behind the great court
rise the walls of the Infirmary for aged and invalid priests.
Châteaubriand had known, while in Kensington during his exile, many of
the impoverished _curés_ who were, like himself, refugees from the
Revolution; and some of them had followed him here, and had become
domesticated pets of the household, together with the big gray cat
given him by the Pope. To them and their successors in poverty and
illness, he bequeathed this comfortable retreat.
There is an episode of these years that shows a kindly side of
Châteaubriand, that he seldom allows us to see. He was suggested for
the presidency of the republic, adventured by the political clubs for
a year or two after the unwelcome accession of Louis-Philippe.
Châteaubriand did not join the plotters, but he was arrested, along
with many of them, and locked up for two weeks or so. Now, when the
Bourbons had put Béranger in prison, in 1828, Châteaubriand had been
one of the many sympathizers who had flocked to the cell of the
courageous singer. In 1832 the rôles were reversed, and Béranger came
in, from his cottage in Rue de la Tour-d'Auvergne, to visit the
imprisoned statesman. And after Châteaubriand's release, he wrote a
charming letter to Béranger, thanking him for that token of
fellow-feeling, and begging him not to "break his lyre," as the
veteran _chansonnier_ had threatened to do, and urging him to go on
"making France smile and weep; for, by a secret known only to you, the
words of your _chansons_ are gay and the airs are plaintive."
Béranger's songs touch no chord now, their plaintiveness is
commonplaceness, his philosophy has no loftiness, his sentimentality
is of the earth earthy, and his lyre is, to us, a tinkling
hurdy-gurdy.
When the young Breton officer walked through Rue du Mail first in
1787, his gaze might have turned, as our gaze turns to-day, to two
striking façades in that street: that of No. 7, built by Colbert,
whose emblematic serpents are carved high up in the capitals of the
heavy columns; and that of No. 12, as stolid as the other is
fantastic, its heaviness not lightened by the two balconies, and their
massive supports, on the wide stone front. It was erected in 1792 by
Berthault, the architect whose work we see at Malmaison and in the
Palais-Royal. Châteaubriand might well have been attracted by this
house, for it was soon to shelter the woman who became later the
lasting influence of his life.
In 1793, at the very top of the Terror, Jacques Récamier brought to
this house his bride not yet sixteen, who had been Mlle.
Jeanne-Françoise-Julie-Adélaïde Bernard. Here they lived for five
years. Their house is unaltered as to fabric, and the original heavy,
circular, stone staircase still mounts to the upper floors. These are
now divided by partitions into small rooms, and the lofty first story
is cut across by an interposed floor; all for the needs of trade. The
ceiling of the grand _salon_ retains its admirable cornice. Like other
mansions on the south side of Rue du Mail, this Récamier house
extended, behind a large court, now roofed over with glass, through to
Rue d'Aboukir, where its rear entrance is at No. 11. On the first
floor of this wing, in the oblong ceiling of a small room, is a deeply
sunk oval panel, that holds a painting of that time, in good
preservation.
From here Jacques Récamier, just then wealthy, removed to the newest
fashionable quarter of which the centre was Rue du Mont-Blanc, now Rue
de la Chaussée-d'Antin, whose No. 7 covers the site of his magnificent
mansion. It was then a street of small and elegant _hôtels_, each in
its own grounds, and M. Récamier bought the one that had belonged to
Necker, and had been confiscated by the State. He bought also the
adjoining house, and rebuilt the two into one. Its furniture,
fittings, bronzes, and marbles were all especially designed for this
new palace of a prosperous financier. Here was the scene of those
balls that were the wonder of Paris during the Consulate and the early
years of the Empire. The costumes of the period, both for men and
women, were picturesque in cut and coloring. Among the guests shone
Caroline Bonaparte, later to marry Murat, the youngest of the sisters
and most resembling her great brother in face and character. M. and
Mme. Récamier spent their summers in a _château_ owned by him in the
suburbs of Clichy; and to it every man of note in the State and the
army found his way. Napoleon said he, too, would be glad to go to
Clichy, if the fair _châtelaine_ would not come to court, and sent
Fouché to arrange it, but with no success. She fought shy of Napoleon,
the man and the Emperor, as Madame de Staël itched for his attention,
personal and political. Nor did Madame Récamier like his brother
Lucien, who languished about her, to the ridicule of his equally
love-lorn rivals.
His justification, and that of all her other adorers, speaks from
David's unfinished canvas in the Louvre. Yet this shows only the outer
shell of her loveliness; within was a lovely nature, simple and
kindly, sympathetic and loyal, that made her generous in her
friendships with men and women, and devoted to the welfare of her
friends. The single passion of her life was her passion for goodness.
Her modesty kept her unconscious of her attractions of mind and body,
and thus she held, almost unaware, the widest dominion of any woman of
her day. The Duchess of Devonshire put it daintily: "First she's good,
next she's _spirituelle_, and after that, she's beautiful." And so, as
we come to know her, we learn infinite respect for the woman, who
"with an unequalled influence over the hearts and wills of men,
scorned to ask a favor, and endured poverty and ... exile, which fell
with tenfold severity on one so beloved and admired, without
sacrifice of dignity and independence."
[Illustration: Madame Récamier.
(From the portrait by Gros.)]
Comparative poverty, hurried by the Emperor, came in 1806, and the
town house and the _château_ were sold, along with her plate and
jewels. In 1811 she was exiled from Paris on the pretext that her
_salon_ was a centre of Royalist conspiracy, and she passed the years
until the Restoration in the south of France, in Italy, and in
Switzerland with her beloved Madame de Staël.
Just beyond the Boulevards de la Madeleine and des Capucines, which
show the line of the rampart levelled by Louis XIV., and along the
course of its outer moat, a new street had started up at the end of
the eighteenth century, and was completed in the early years of the
nineteenth century. It began at present Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin,
and ended at the Church of the Madeleine, then in course of
construction; it was built up in the best style of that period, and it
was named Rue Basse-du-Rempart. That untouched section, to the west of
Rue Caumartin, shows us the admirable architecture of the early Empire
in the stately fronts, that shrink back behind the boulevard in
stony-faced protest against its turmoil. Eastwardly from Rue
Caumartin, the northern side of Boulevard des Capucines has trampled
out nearly the whole of the old street. The stones of Place de l'Opéra
lie on the site of the modest house, at 18 Rue Basse-du-Rempart, taken
by M. Récamier after his first business reverses, and occupied by him
during his wife's exile; and the florist's shop, under the Grand
Hôtel, is on the spot of their stately residence at No. 32 of the
same street, after her return and until 1820. In that year, his
fortune regained, he moved farther west in the same street to a more
sumptuous home at No. 48. This house has been happily saved for us,
and is now numbered 18 of Boulevard des Capucines; one of the three
structures of the old street, which stand back from the line of modern
frontage, and lower than the level of modern paving. The present No.
16 is the Récamier coach-entrance, and the huge stabling in the rear
is built on the Récamier gardens. Their house preserves its
wrought-iron balconies, and within is the circular staircase mentioned
in her "Mémoires." Down these stairs, for the last time, she came in
1827, leaving M. Récamier to his disastrous speculations, which had at
last swallowed up her own fortune, and drove to the Abbaye-aux-Bois.
There was her home until her death in 1849.
The venerable mass of the convent is in sight behind the railed-in
court at No. 16 Rue de Sèvres. One portion that we see was built in
1640 for the "_Annonciades_," and from them bought by Anne of Austria,
in 1654, for the sisterhood of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, who had been
driven from their convent near Compiègne by the civil wars of the
Fronde. That wing which was burned in 1661 was speedily rebuilt, and
forms part of the structure before us. Convents had then, and have
still, rooms and apartments which are let or sold to lone spinsters
and widows, and to "decayed gentlewomen who have seen better days."
This Abbaye-aux-Bois, during the Bourbon Restoration, "when the sky
had no horizon," was a favorite retreat for fashionable _dévotes_,
mending their reputations by a temporary retirement. The life there is
pleasantly described in the early letters of Mary Clarke--later Madame
Julius Mohl--who lived there with her mother. M. Bernard, the father
of Madame Récamier, had bought one of its grandest apartments for his
daughter, after the first bankruptcy of her husband. When she came
here it was occupied, and she rented a shabby upper floor for two or
three years, and then went down to her own apartment on the first
floor, to which she added another in the rear of the same floor. It
is in the western wing, of modern construction, with windows on Rue de
Sèvres, and on the terrace that overlooks the garden, now shorn of a
goodly slice by Boulevard Raspail. We know all about this _salon_,
famous for twenty years, the roll of whose frequenters holds every
illustrious name in France during that period, as well as those of
many charlatans and bores.
[Illustration: The Abbaye-aux-Bois.]
It is reported that Madame Récamier and Châteaubriand met first, in
the earliest years of the century, at the receptions of Madame de
Staël. Whenever they met to become mutually attracted, this attraction
grew in him until it became the dominant sentiment of his life. With
all his elevation of soul and his breadth of mind, he had no depth of
feeling. "I have a head, good, clear, cold," he wrote; "and a heart
that goes jog-trot for three-and-one-half quarters of humanity." The
other one-eighth was Madame Récamier, and she outcounted all the rest
of the world in stirring such heart as he had. "You have transformed
my nature," he tried to make her believe, and he may have believed it
himself. Sick with conceit as he was, spoiled by flattery, morbid from
introspection, her companionship lifted him out of his melancholy and
raised him into serenity. As for her, so long as Madame de Staël
lived, she had no other affection to spare for anyone, and perhaps
this incomparable creature never gave to Châteaubriand more than
homage to her hero, tenderness to the isolated man, and medicine to a
mind diseased. He may well have written, toward the last: "I know
nothing more beautiful nor more good than you."
The "_chemin des vaches_" of the sixteenth century became a country
road by the passage of the drays that carted stone, from the Vaugirard
quarries to the ferry on the southern shore, for the building of the
Tuileries. The Pont Royal of Mansart has taken the place of the wooden
bridge built above that ferry, and the ferry has given the name to
that road, now Rue du Bac. Along its line, on both sides, _seigneurs_
and priests took land and built thereon. There are yet, behind the
huge stone blocks of houses, immense tracts of grounds and of
woodland, unsuspected by the wayfarer through the narrow, noisy
street. One of the most extensive of these open spaces is owned by the
Seminary of the Missions Étrangères, whose church is near the corner
of Rue de Babylone. For two bishops, who had charge here in the time
of Louis XIV., were erected two houses, exactly alike without and
within, and these are now numbered 118 and 120 Rue du Bac. In the
latter in the apartment on the ground floor, M. and Mme. de
Châteaubriand installed themselves in 1838; having left their cottage
and its domain in Rue d'Enfer, to the needy priests there. Here, in an
angle of the front court, are the low stone steps that mount to their
apartment.
[Illustration: Portal of Châteaubriand's Dwelling in Rue du Bac.]
Its dining-room and a chapel, arranged by them, gave on this court.
The chapel has been thrown into, and made one with, the dining-room,
but this is the only alteration since their time. His bedroom, and
that of his wife--with her huge bird-cages behind--and the _salon_
between the two rooms, looked out on their garden, and beyond it on
the vast grounds of the Missions Étrangères. The enchanting seclusion
was dear to him in these last years, during which his only work was
the completion and touching-up of his "Mémoires d'Outre Tombe." Select
extracts from the manuscript were sometimes read by him to the group
that assembled in the drawing-room at the _abbaye_, between four and
six o'clock of every afternoon. The hostess sat on one side of the
fireplace, her form grown so fragile that it seemed transparent for
the gentle spirit shining out, like a radiant light within a rich
vase. Châteaubriand "pontificated" in his arm-chair opposite, toying
with the household cat, the while he tried to listen to the lesser
men; "a giant bored by, and smiling pitifully down on, a dwarf world,"
is Amiel's phrase. When Châteaubriand spoke or read, it was with
sonorous tones, and with attitude and gesture of a certain
stateliness. He was always an artist in all details. His costume was
simple and elegant. Short of stature, he made himself shorter by his
way of sinking his head--"an Olympian head," says Lamartine--between
his shoulders. Under his thick-clustering locks rose a noble forehead,
power shone from his eyes, pride curled his lips--too often--and his
expression gave assurance of a glacial reserve.
The day came when he found himself too feeble for the short walk
between his house and the _abbaye_. Then his friend came to him. She
and Madame de Châteaubriand had been sufficiently friendly, but that
good lady gave her days to her prayer-books, and to reading her
husband's books; which she never understood, albeit she had the finest
mind of any woman he had known, he always asserted. She died in the
winter of 1846-47, and her body was carried to the Infirmary, the care
of which had been the occupation and the happiness of her later years.
Jacques Récamier, when in mortal illness in 1830, had been brought to
his wife's rooms in the _abbaye_, at her request and by special favor
of the Mother Superior, and there he had died.
And now, Châteaubriand offered marriage to Madame Récamier, and she
refused what she might have accepted, could it have come a few years
earlier. "But, at our age," she asked, "who can question our intimacy,
or prevent me taking care of you?" She was prevented only by the
cataract that slowly blinded her, and she sat by his bedside,
helpless, while Madame Mohl--who had remained Mary Clarke until the
summer of 1847--wrote his necessary letters. That sympathizing woman,
one of the few congenial to him, had only to come down from the
apartment she had taken on the third floor of this house, overlooking
the gardens; the apartment which she and her learned husband, Julius
Mohl, made the social successor of the Récamier _salon_, through many
years. Châteaubriand's death took place on July 4, 1848. He had lived
to see the Orleans throne, which he hated, overthrown as he had
foretold by the republic, which he did not love. His faithful lady
stood by his deathbed, with Béranger, equally faithful to old friends,
old customs, and old clothes, clad as we see him in his statue of
Square du Temple.
Châteaubriand's funeral service, attended by all that was best in
France, was solemnized in the Church of the Missions Étrangères, next
door, and his body was laid in a rock of the harbor of Saint-Malo.
Madame Récamier went back to her now desolate rooms. On May 10, 1849,
she drove over to the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, on a visit to her
niece, whose husband, M. Lenormant, was its librarian and had his
apartment there. That night she died in that building, in a sudden
seizure of cholera.
THE PARIS OF HONORÉ DE BALZAC
[Illustration: The Court of the Pension Vauquer.]
THE PARIS OF HONORÉ DE BALZAC[1]