Prosper Mérimée has told us that his friend and master, Henry
Stendhal-Beyle, was wedded to the old-fashioned theory: a man should
not be in a woman's company longer than five minutes without making
love; granting, of course, that the woman is pretty and pleasing.
This idea Stendhal had imbibed when a soldier in the Napoleonic
campaign. It was hussar tactics of the First Empire. "Attack, attack,
attack," he cries. His book De l'Amour practically sets forth the
theory; but like most theoreticians, Stendhal was timid in action.
He was a sentimentalist--he the pretended cynic and _blasé_ man of
the world. Mérimée acknowledges that much of his own and Stendhal's
impassibility was pure posing. Nevertheless, with the exceptions of
Goethe and Byron, no writer of eminence in the last century enjoyed
such a sentimental education as Stendhal. At Weimar the passionate
pilgrim may see a small plaque which contains portraits of the women
beloved by Goethe--omitting Frederike Brion. True to the compass of
Teutonic sentimentality, Goethe's mother heads the list. Then follow
the names of Cornelia, Kätchen Schönkopf, Lotte Buff, Lili Schönemann,
Corona Schröter, Frau von Stein, Christiane Vulpius--later Frau von
Goethe--Bettina von Arnim, Minna Herzlieb, and Marianne v. Willemer;
with their respective birth and death dates. Several other names
might have been added, notably that of the Polish _pianiste_ Goethe
encountered at Marienbad. The collection is fair-sized, even for a poet
who lived as long as Goethe and one who reproached Balzac with digging
from a woman's heart each of his novels. To both Goethe and Stendhal
the epigram of George Meredith might be applied: "Men may have rounded
Seraglio Point. They have not yet doubled Cape Turk."
The wonder is that thus far no devoted Stendhalian has prepared a
similar _carton_ with the names and pictures of their master's--dare
we say?--victims. Stendhal loved many women, and like Goethe his
first love was his mother. For him she was the most precious image
of all, and he was jealous of his father. This was at the age of
seven; but the precocity of the boy and his exaggerated sensibility
must be remembered--which later brought him so much unhappiness
and so little joy. A casual examination of the list of his loves,
reciprocated or spurned, would make a companion to that of Weimar.
Their names are Mélanie Guilbert-Louason, Angela Pietragrua, Mlle.
Beretter, the Countess Palffy, Menta, Elisa, Livia B., Madame Azur,
Mina de Grisheim, Mme. Jules, and _la petite_ P. The number he loved
without consolation was still larger. Despite his hussar manœuvres,
Stendhal was easily rebuffed. It is odd that Goethe's and Stendhal's
fair ones, upon whom they poured poems and novels, did not die--that
is, immediately--on being deserted. Goethe relieved the pain of many
partings by writing a poem or a play and seeking fresh faces. Stendhal
did the same--substituting a novel or a study or innumerable letters
for poems and plays. He believed that one nail drove out another;
which is very soothing to masculine vanity. But did any woman break
her heart because of his fickleness? Frau von Stein of all the women
loved by Goethe probably took his defection seriously. She didn't kill
herself, however. He wounded many a heart, yet the majority of his
loves married, and apparently happily. Stendhal, ugly as he was, slew
his hundreds; they recovered after he had passed on to fresh conquests;
a fact that he, with his accustomed sincerity, did not fail to note.
Yet this same gallant was among the few in the early years of the
nineteenth century to declare for the enfranchisement, physical and
spiritual, of woman. He was a _féministe_. But, in reality, his theory
of love resembled that of the writer who said that "it was simple and
brief, like a pressure of the hand between sympathetic persons, or a
gay luncheon between two friends of which a pleasant memory remains, if
not also a gentle gratitude toward the companion." I quote from memory.
It was at Rome that he first resolved to tell the story of his life.
In the dust he traced the initials of the beloved ones. In his book he
omitted no details. His motto was: _la vérité toute nue_. If he has not
spared himself, he has not spared others. What can the critics, who
recently blamed George Moore for his plain speech in his memoirs, say
to Stendhal's journals and La Vie de Henri Brulard? Many of the names
were at first given with initials or asterisks; Mérimée burned the
letters Stendhal sent him, and regretted the act. But the Stendhalians,
the young enthusiasts of the Stendhal Club, have supplied the missing
names--those of men and women who have been dead half a century and
more.
De l'Amour, Stendhal's remarkable study of the love-passion, is
marred by the attempt to imprison a sentiment behind the bars of a
mathematical formula. He had inherited from his study of Condillac,
Helvétius, Tracy, Chamfort the desire for a rigid schematology, for
geometrical demonstration. The word "logic" was always on the tip of
his tongue, and he probably would have come to blows with Professor
Jowett for his dictum, uttered at the close of a lecture: "Logic is
neither an art nor a science, but a dodge." Love for Stendhal was
without a Beyond. It was a matter of the senses entirely. The soul
counted for little, manners for much. A sentimental epicurean, he
is the artistic descendant of Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, both by
tradition and temperament. Stendhal fell into the mistake of the
metaphysician in setting up numerous categorical traps to snare his
subject. They are artificial, and yet bear a resemblance to certain
Schopenhauerian theories. Both men practised what they did not preach.
"Beauty is a promise of happiness," wrote Stendhal, and it was so
effective that Baudelaire rewrote it with a slight variation. The
"crystallisation" formula of Stendhal occurred to him while down in a
salt mine near Salzburg. He saw an elm twig covered with sparkling salt
crystals, and he used it as an image to express the love that discerns
in the beloved one all perfections. There are several crystallisations
during the course of "true love." His book is more autobiographical
than scientific; that the writer gleaned the facts from his own
heart-experiences adds to the value and veracity of the work. As a
catechism for lovers, it is unique; and it was so well received that
from 1822 to 1833 there were exactly seventeen copies sold. But it
has been plundered by other writers without acknowledgment. Stendhal
and Schopenhauer could have shaken hands on the score of their
unpopularity--and about 1880 on their sudden recrudescence.
With all his display of worldly wisdom Stendhal really loved but three
times in his life; this statement may shock some of his disciples
who see in him a second Casanova, but a study of his life will prove
it. He had gone to Paris with the established conviction that he must
become a Don Juan. That was--comical or shocking as it may sound--his
projected profession. Experience soon showed him other aspects. He
was too refined, too tender-hearted, to indulge in the conventional
dissipations of adolescent mankind. The lunar ray of sentiment was in
his brain; if he couldn't idealise a woman, he would leave her. It was
his misfortune, the lady's fortune--whoever she might have been--and
the world's good luck that he never was married. As a husband he would
have been a glorious failure. Mélanie Guilbert-Louason was an actress
in Paris, who, after keeping him on tenter-hooks of jealousy, accepted
his addresses. He couldn't marry her, because the allowance made by
his father did not suffice for himself; besides, she had a daughter
by a former marriage. He confesses that lack of money was the chief
reason for his timidity with women; a millionaire, he might have been
a conquering and detestable hero. Like Frédéric Moreau in L'Education
Sentimentale, Stendhal always feared interruption from a stronger
suitor, and his fears were usually verified. But he went with Guilbert
to Marseilles, where she was acting, and to support himself took a
position in a commercial house. That for him meant a grand passion; he
loathed business. She married a Russian, Baskow by name. Stendhal was
inconsolable for weeks. How he would have applauded the ironical cry
of Jules Laforgue's Hamlet: "Stability! stability! thy name is Woman."
Although he passed his days embroidering upon the canvas of the Eternal
Masculine portraits of the secular sex, Stendhal first said, denying a
certain French king, that women never vary.
He fell into abysmal depths of love with Angela Pietragrua at Milan.
He was a dashing soldier, and if Angela deceived him he was youthful
enough to stand the shock. Eleven years later he revisited Milan
and wept when he saw Angela again. He often wept copiously, a relic
possibly of eighteenth-century sensibilities. Angela did not weep.
She, however, was sufficiently touched to start a fresh affair with
her faithful Frenchman. He did not always enjoy smooth sailing. There
were a dozen women that either scorned him or else remained unconscious
of his sentiments. One memory remained with him to the last--recall
his cry of loneliness to Romain Colomb when languishing as a French
consul at Cività Vecchia: "I am perishing for want of love!" He thought
doubtless of Métilde, wife of General Dembowsky, who from 1818 to 1824
(let us not concern ourselves if these dates coincide with or overlap
other love-affairs; Stendhal was very versatile) neither encouraged
nor discouraged at Milan the ardent exile. So infatuated was he that
he neglected his chances with the actress Viganò, and also with the
Countess Kassera. Madame Dembowsky, who afterward did not prove so
cruel to the conspirator Ugo Foscolo, allowed Stendhal the inestimable
privilege of kissing her hand. He sighed like a schoolboy and trailed
after the heartless one from Milan to Florence, from Florence to Rome.
The gossip that he was the lover in Paris of the singer Pasta caused
the Dembowsky to deny him hope. He was sincerely attached to her. Had
she said "Kill yourself," he would have done so. Yes, such a romantic
he was. She was born Viscontini and separated from a brutal soldier
of a husband. Her cousin, Madame Traversi, was an obstacle in this
unhappy passion of Stendhal's. She hated him. Métilde died at the
age of thirty-eight, in 1825. Because of her he had replied to Mile.
Viganò--when she asked him: "Beyle, they say that you are in love with
me!" "They are fooling you." For this he was never forgiven. It is
a characteristic note of Stendhalian frankness--Stendhal, who never
deceived anyone but himself. Here is a brace of his amiable sayings on
the subject of Woman:--
"La fidélité des femmes dans le mariage, lorsqu'il n'y a pas d'amour,
est probablement une chose contre nature."
"La seule chose que je voie à blâmer dans la pudeur, c'est de conduire
à l'habitude de mentir."