BENJAMIN CONSTANT AND MADAME DE STAËL
Next, though they do not become interesting until a somewhat later
date, we may mention the Constants: Rosalie de Constant, the witty
little hunchback whose sentimental correspondence with Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre has recently been published, and her more famous cousin,
Benjamin Constant de Rebecque, the story of whose love for Madame de
Staël has recently been revived.[5] That is another story which will
be here in its proper place.
Benjamin was a man of many love-affairs; 'Constant the inconstant'
was the name that women called him by. He was the son of a Swiss
soldier of fortune, and had a cosmopolitan education at Oxford and
Edinburgh, in Belgium and in Germany. In his youth he held the
post of Chamberlain at the Court of Brunswick, where he acquired
distingished manners. He was brilliant, though shallow, and there
was something Wertheresque about him.
Born in 1767, he was married, in 1789, to the ugliest of the Duchess
of Brunswick's maids of honour. He said afterwards that he had
married her for no particular reason that he could remember, but that
his reasons for divorcing her were clear enough. After his separation
from her, he consoled himself by an intrigue with Madame de
Charrière--a Dutch lady, married to a Switzer, residing at Colombier,
near Neuchâtel, and known as the authoress of several sentimental
novels. It was an affair that could hardly have lasted long in any
case, seeing that the lady was twenty-seven years older than her
lover. As a matter of fact it came to a quick end when the lover met
Madame de Staël.
The details of that meeting are curious. Being at Lausanne, Benjamin
Constant set out to call on Madame de Staël at Coppet. His relatives
already knew, and he was interested to make her acquaintance. It
happened that he met Madame de Staël on the road, driving from
Coppet to Lausanne. He stopped the carriage and introduced himself.
She invited him to get in, and drove him back. Finding his company
agreeable, she pressed him to stay to supper with her. He did so,
and was farther rewarded by an invitation to breakfast with his
hostess on the following morning.
It was to Madame de Charrière herself that Benjamin Constant first
confided the impression that Madame de Staël had made upon him.
'It is the most interesting acquaintance that I have ever made,'
he wrote. 'Seldom have I seen such a combination of alluring
and dazzling qualities, such brilliance, and such good sense, a
friendliness so expansive and so cultivated, such generosity of
sentiment, and such gentle courtesy. She is the second woman I have
met for whom I could have counted the world well lost--you know who
was the first. She is, in fact, a being apart--a superior being, such
as one meets but once in a century.'
Having read that, Madame de Charrière knew that she had passed for
ever out of Benjamin Constant's life. His own writings give us a
glimpse of the early days of the new intimacy. Two passages from his
diary, the second supplementing the first, supply the picture. Thus
we read, on one day:
'I had agreed with Madame de Staël that, in order to avoid
compromising her, I should never stay with her later than midnight.
Whatever the charm of her conversation, and however passionate my
desire for something more than her conversation, I had to submit to
this rule. But this evening, the time having passed more quickly
than usual, I pulled out my watch to demonstrate that it was not yet
time for me to go. But the inexorable minute-hand having deceived
me, in a moment of childish anger I flung the instrument of my
condemnation on the floor and broke it. "How silly you are!" Madame
de Staël exclaimed. But what a smile I perceived shining through her
reproaches! Decidedly my broken watch will do me a good turn.'
And the next day we find the entry:
'I have not bought myself a new watch. I do not need one any more.'
For a time the affair proceeded satisfactorily, no serious cloud
appearing on the horizon until the death of M. de Staël. Then, of
course, Madame de Staël was free to marry her lover, and Benjamin
Constant proposed that she should do so. But she would not. One
reason was that she did not wish to change a name that her writings
had made famous; another, and perhaps a weightier one, that, though
she loved Benjamin, she had no confidence in him--'Constant the
inconstant' was inconstant still. Though he loved Madame de Staël,
he loved other women too. His intimacy with Madame Talma, the actor's
wife, was notorious, and was not the only intimacy of the kind with
which rumour credited him. Altogether, he was not the sort of man
whom any woman could marry with any certainty that he would make her
happy.
So Madame de Staël refused to marry Benjamin Constant, and with her
refusal their relations entered upon a fresh and interesting phase.
Henceforward the story is one of subsiding passion on his part,
and very desperate efforts on hers to fan the dying embers of his
desire. Again and again he tried to break with her; again and again
she overwhelmed him with her reproaches, and brought him back, a
penitent slave, suing for the renewal of her favour. The time when
these things happened was the time when her salon at Coppet was
at the zenith of its renown. The story is told for us by Benjamin
Constant himself, in his 'Journal Intime,' a diary not written for
publication, but published, long after his death, in the _Revue
Internationale_,[6] in 1887.
The tone, at first, is that of a man whom lassitude has overtaken
after elegant debauchery. Benjamin Constant is only thirty-seven,
yet he already feels himself an old man, whose powers are failing,
who is no longer capable of strong emotion, or even of taking an
intelligent interest in life. He writes, in fact, as if he were very
tired. When something happens to remind him of his old attachment to
Madame de Charrière, he writes thus:
'It is seven years since I saw her--ten since our intimacy ended. How
easily I then used to break every tie that bored me! How confident
I was that I could always form others when I pleased! How clearly
I felt that my life was mine to do what I liked with, and what a
difference ten years have made! Now everything seems precarious,
and ready to fly away from me. Even the privileges that I have do
not make me happy. But I have passed the age of giving up anything,
because I feel that I am powerless to replace anything.'
[Illustration: IN THE FOREST OF SAUVABELIN, ABOVE LAUSANNE]
He describes--sometimes with a languid resignation, and sometimes
with a peevish resentment--Madame de Staël's repeated endeavours to
drag him, a more or less reluctant victim, at her chariot wheels.
This is a very typical entry:
'A lively supper with the Prince de Belmonte. Left alone with Madame
de Staël. The storm gradually rises. A fearful scene, lasting till
three o'clock in the morning--on my lack of sensibility, my
untrustworthiness, the failure of my actions to correspond with
my sentiments. Alas! I would be glad to escape from monotonous
lamentations, not over real calamities, but upon the universal laws
of nature, and upon the advent of old age. I should be glad if she
would not ask me for love after a _liaison_ of ten years' standing,
at a time when we are both nearly forty years old, and after I have
declared, times out of number, that I have no longer any love to give
her. It is a declaration which I have never withdrawn, except for the
purpose of calming storms of passion which frightened me.'
So is this:
'A letter from Madame de Staël, who finds my letters melancholy, and
asks what it is that I require to make me happy. Alas! what I require
is my liberty, and that is precisely what I am not allowed to have.
I am reminded of the story of the hussar who took an interest in the
prisoner whom he had to put to death, and said to him: "Ask me any
favour you like, except to spare your life."'
And this:
'A fearful scene this evening with Madame de Staël. I announce my
intention of leaving her definitely. A second scene follows. Frenzy:
reconciliation impossible; departure difficult. I must go away and
get married.'
And this:
'Madame de Staël has won me back to her again.'
Until, finally, their relations gradually going from bad to worse, we
reach this striking piece of eloquence:
'Yes, certainly I am more anxious than ever to break it off. She is
the most egoistical, the most excitable, the most ungrateful, the
most vain, and the most vindictive of women. Why didn't I break it
off long ago? She is odious and intolerable to me. I must have done
with her or die. She is more volcanic than all the volcanoes in the
world put together. She is like an old _procureur_, with serpents
in her hair, demanding the fulfilment of a contract in Alexandrine
verse.'
It was in marriage that Benjamin Constant gradually decided to seek
a haven of refuge from these tempestuous passions. But, though he is
continually touching on the subject in his diary, he generally refers
to it without enthusiasm. Marriage is 'necessary' for him, but there
are objections to every particular marriage that suggests itself.
Sometimes the objections are expressed in general terms:
'Went to a party, where I met several agreeable women. But I am very
unfortunate. In the women whom I might be able and willing to marry
there is always a something that does not suit me. Meanwhile my life
advances.'
Sometimes the objections are particularized:
'Trip to Geneva; called on the Mesdemoiselles de Sellon; saw Amélie
Fabry again. She is as dark as ever, as lively as ever, as wide awake
as ever. How I should have hated her, if they had succeeded in making
me marry her! Yet she is really a very amiable girl. But I am always
unfortunate in finding some insuperable objection in every woman whom
I think of marrying. Madame de Hardenberg was tiresome and romantic;
Mrs. Lindsay was forty, and had two illegitimate children. Madame de
Staël, who understands me better than anyone else does, will not be
satisfied with my friendship when I can no longer give her my love.
This poor Amélie, who would like me to marry her, is thirty-two,
and portionless, and has ridiculous mannerisms, which become more
accentuated as she grows older. Antoinette, who is twenty, well off,
and not particularly ridiculous, is such a common little thing to
look at.'
But Benjamin Constant finally decided to marry Madame Dutertre.[7]
He bought her from her husband, who, for a sum of money, was willing
to divorce her; but it was not without a violent struggle that he
tore himself away from Madame de Staël. Let us trace the story of the
struggle in his diary. Madame Dutertre was an old friend:
'Called on Madame Dutertre, who has improved wonderfully in
appearance. I made advances which she did not repel. The citadel is
to fall to-night. Two years' resistance is quite long enough.
'Off to the country with Charlotte. She is an angel. I love her
better every day. She is so sweet, so amiable. What a fool I was to
refuse to have anything to do with her twelve years ago! What mad
passion for independence drove me to put my neck under the foot of
the most imperious woman in the world!
'We are back in Paris. Joyous days; delights of love. What the devil
is the meaning of it? It is twelve years since I last felt a similar
emotion. This woman, whom I have refused a hundred times, who has
always loved me, whom I have sent away, whom I left eighteen months
ago--this woman now turns my head. Evidently the contrast with Madame
de Staël is the cause of it all. The contrast of her impetuosity,
her egoism, and her continual preoccupation with herself, with the
gentleness, the calm, the humble and modest bearing of Charlotte,
makes the latter a thousand times more dear to me. I am tired of the
_man-woman_ whose iron hand has for ten years held me fast, when I
have a really womanly woman to intoxicate and enchant me. If I can
marry her, I shall not hesitate. Everything depends on the line M.
Dutertre takes.'
M. Dutertre, as has been stated, took the line of offering to consent
to a divorce provided it were made worth his while to do so. Madame
de Staël was more difficult to deal with. The first entry which gives
us a glimpse of her feelings is as follows:
'Madame de Staël is back; she will not hear of our relations being
broken off. The best way will be not to see her again, but to wait at
Lausanne for orders from Charlotte--my good angel whom I bless for
saving me. Schlegel writes that Madame de Staël declares that, if I
leave her, she will kill herself. I don't believe a word of it.'
Followed by:
'Unhappy fool that I am; weakness overcomes me; I start for Coppet.
Tenderness, despair, and then the trump card, "I shall kill myself."'
He fled to Lausanne, but--
'What was the good of coming here? Madame de Staël has come after me,
and all my plans are upset. In the evening there was a fearful scene,
lasting till five o'clock in the morning. I am violent, and put
myself in the wrong. But, my poor Charlotte, I will not forsake you.'
Yet he had hardly written these lines when he was false to them.
Madame de Staël came a second time to Lausanne to fetch him, and we
read:
'She came; she threw herself at my feet; she raised frightful cries
of pain and desolation. A heart of iron would not have resisted. I
am back at Coppet with her. I have promised to stay six weeks, and
Charlotte is expecting me at the end of the month. My God! what am I
to do? I am trampling my future happiness under my feet....
'I receive a letter from Charlotte, who is more loving and more sure
of me than ever. Would she forgive me if she knew where I am
and what I am doing? How slowly the time passes! Into what an abysm
have I not hurled myself! Last night we had a dreadful scene. Shall I
ever get out of it all alive? I have to pass my time in falsehood and
deceptions in order to avoid the furious outbreaks which so terrify
me. If it were not for the hopes which I build upon Madame de Staël's
approaching departure to Vienna, this life would be unbearable. To
console myself I spend my time in picturing how things will go if
they go well. This is my Castle in Spain. Charlotte finishes her
arrangements, and makes her preparations secretly. Madame de Staël,
suspecting nothing, sets out for Vienna. I marry Charlotte, and we
pass the winter pleasantly at Lausanne.'
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE BLONAY]
Though this was not exactly how things happened, the marriage was
nevertheless speedily and safely celebrated. But alas! poor Benjamin!
It was now his turn, in the midst of his domestic bliss, to feel the
pangs of unrequited love. Having fled from Madame de Staël, he sighed
for her. His diary is full of his regrets. It is:
'Charlotte is good and sweet. I build myself foolish ideals, and
throw the blame of my own folly upon others. At bottom Charlotte is
what women always are. I have blamed individuals where I ought to
have blamed the species. But for my work, and for the good advice
that I need, I regret Madame de Staël more than ever.'
Or it is:
'A letter from Madame de Staël, from which I gather that, this time,
all is really over between us. So be it. It is my own doing. I must
steer my course alone, but I must take care not to fetter myself with
other ties which would be infinitely less agreeable.'
Or again:
'I have lost Madame de Staël, and I shall never recover from the
blow.'
And the truth was, indeed, that Madame de Staël had ceased to care,
and that another had succeeded to Benjamin Constant's place in her
heart.
His name was Albert de Rocca, and he was a young French officer who
had been wounded in the Spanish wars. His personal beauty was such
that a Spanish woman, finding him left for dead upon a battle-field,
had taken him home with her, and nursed him back to health, saying
that it was a pity that such a beautiful young man should die. His
age was twenty-three, and Madame de Staël's was forty-five. But the
affection that sprang up between them was deep and genuine. 'I will
love her,' he said, 'so dearly that she will end by marrying me.'
And when she protested that she was old enough to be his mother, he
answered that the mention of that word only gave him a further reason
for loving her. 'He is fascinated,' Baron de Voght wrote, 'by his
relations with Madame de Staël, and the tears of his father cannot
induce him to abandon it.'
So she married him, though, for reasons of her own, she insisted that
the marriage should be kept a secret. It seemed to her that a young
husband would make her ridiculous, but that a young lover would not;
very possibly she was right according to the moral standard of the
age. At any rate her husband posed as her lover, and in that capacity
quarrelled with Constant, with whom he nearly fought a duel, and
travelled with her to Russia, to Sweden, and to England, and lived
with her in Paris and at Coppet. But it was at this period, when her
fame was at its zenith, that Madame de Staël wrote: 'Fame is for
women only a splendid mourning for happiness.'
But the end was drawing near. Madame de Staël had lived all her
life at high pressure, and her health was undermined. A lingering
illness, of which the fatal issue was foreseen, overtook her. She
struggled against it, declaring that she would live for Rocca's
sake. But all in vain. She died in Paris in 1817. Rocca himself, who
only survived her a few months, was too ill to be with her. Benjamin
Constant spent a night of mourning in her death-chamber. They buried
her at Coppet amid general lamentations.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] By the present author in 'Madame de Staël and her Lovers.'
[6] It has since been republished separately.
[7] Madame de Hardenberg, divorced and remarried.