THE first species of exclusively female friendship is that which
exists between mother and daughter. The maternal tie of organic
instinct and moral guardianship on the one side, and the filial tie
of respect, dependence, and gratitude on the other, form the ordinary
connection of mothers and daughters. In exceptional cases, these
bonds of affectionate protection and pious love are lifted out of the
faded commonplace of custom by deep mutual appreciation and sympathy,
broadened and brightened into a friendship emphatically worthy of the
name. The sight of a mother and a daughter thus happily paired is
beautiful and holy. And there are far more examples of it than the
world knows.
Probably, the best representation of this union is the one afforded
by Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Grignan. These celebrated ladies,
among the most brilliant of the long roll of distinguished French
women, were possessed of every charm of person and spirit,
fascinating grace, dignity, intelligence, accomplishments, purity,
and generosity. In their early years, they were inseparable. They
hung on each other's looks and motions. The wish of the mother was
the instinctive law of the child. The beautiful image of the
daughter, loved to the verge of distraction, seemed gradually to
occupy the whole being of the mother. For, as Madame de Sévigné
successively lost her idolized husband and her most endeared friend,
the unhappy Fouquet, the maternal instinct seemed to take up into
itself all the baffled or bereaved passions, and, magnified and
vivified by the appropriation, to transform itself into a friendship
which almost annihilated her individuality, beneath the ideal stamp
and transfused impression of that of her daughter. The pain of
parting from her was like the anguish of tearing the soul out of the
body. During the period of their separation, memory took the place of
sight; ideas, of actions; correspondence, of conversation. She
constantly writes to the absent one, and seems to live only for this.
Every observation, reflection, emotion, finds a place in the tender
and immortal record. She spares no pains to make her letters
interesting to the receiver. She writes, "I shall live for the
purpose of loving you. I abandon my life to that occupation." It is
affecting to note the agitation of the mother at every ruffle on the
life of the daughter. In tracing the thoughts, feelings, events, that
vibrated across the relation between them, one can hardly escape the
conviction, that the soul of the younger friend was ideally
superimposed on the self-abnegating soul of the elder friend, and
governed it, as the mental processes of a magnetized person are said
to be superseded by the personality and states of consciousness of
the magnetizer. A single passion has seldom so consistently ruled a
being as the affection of Madame de Sévigné for her daughter; and it
was returned by the latter with all the fervor of which her less
ardent nature was capable. The collection of letters in which the
sentiment and its manifold workings are enshrined, created, as
Lamartine says in his eloquent sketch, a new species of literature,
and formed an epoch in authorship. "The genius of the hearth held the
pen, and the heart flowed through it. The literature of the family,
or confidential conversation written out, began. It is the classic of
closed doors."
This friendship had an earthly close worthy of its progress. For,
when Madame de Grignan was attacked by a dangerous and lingering
malady, her mother watched incessantly by her bedside, as she had
formerly watched by her cradle. After three months of sleepless care,
she had the joy of seeing the beloved patient return to life; but she
had given her own in exchange. "Intense affection alone seemed to
have enabled her to retain existence until the convalescence of
Madame de Grignan, when it fled, having fulfilled its last object
upon earth. She expired in the arms of her daughter, and surrounded
by her weeping grandchildren. Her last glance fell upon the being
enshrined in her soul, and restored to health by her care. She was
interred in the chapel of the Chateau de Grignan. But her letters are
her true and living sepulchre. Grignan holds her body; but her
correspondence contains her soul."
Another fine example of a noble and glowing friendship between a
mother and her daughter is furnished by Madame de Rambouillet and
Julie d'Angenne. They were equally endowed with loveliness of person,
attractiveness of mind, elevation of character, and perfection of
manners. They were the magic centres of every circle in which they
moved together. When the plague, of which all Paris was in terror,
seized Madame de Rambouillet's youngest son, she nursed him; and
Julie shut herself in the room with them till the boy died. The sweet
harmony of their souls and intercourse was unmarred, unalloyed, in
life and in death. Some mothers make slaves of their daughters; some
are slaves to them; some even find rivals in them. Some are prevented
from forming friendships, by tyranny on one side or by
insubordination on the other; by selfishness there or by
heartlessness here. Envy, vanity, fickleness, spite, festering
incompatibilities of character, often prove fatal in these veiled and
intimate relations. But when the characters of mother and daughter
are happy accords, or accurate counterparts, rich, lofty, ardent, and
disinterested, the solidly assured friendship which results, is a
felicity scarcely inferior to any known on earth. The example of such
a relation between Mrs. Browne and Mrs. Hemans was charming. Its
inexpressible preciousness to the sensitive soul of that sweet
singer, every reader of sensibility, who traces the numerous
allusions to it in her letters and poems, will recognize with
emotion. There is much in the relation between a mother and the wife
of her son to create peculiar interest and love. And they, allowing
for exceptions of an opposite character, become the warmest friends
in unnumbered instances. A better example can hardly be desired than
is furnished in the sweet pastoral tale of Hebrew Scripture. What
passage in literature is more pervaded with the pathetic charm of the
affection of the early world than the story of Naomi and her widowed
daughter-in-law, Ruth, the Moabitish ancestress of David and of
Jesus? Ruth said, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go; and where
thou lodgest I will lodge; and thy people shall be my people, and thy
God my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I he buried.
The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and
me." So they two, Naomi and Ruth, went till they came to Bethlehem;
and there did they sojourn together until the end.
All the near ties of kindred, by the closeness of association and
sympathy naturally consequent on them, must often prove the fostering
occasions or incentives of warm and lasting friendships between those
whom they draw together. In thousands of families there is an aunt
who becomes to her nieces a friend only less intimate and trusted
than the mother herself. Such was the case with Mrs. Barhauld and her
brother's only daughter, Lucy Aikin. In a multitude of families there
are likewise cousins bound to each other by bonds as numerous and
glowing as those of sisterhood. So, too, there are countless examples
in which a wife and the sister of her husband grow into the most
ardent sincerity of friendship. An interesting instance of this union
is celebrated by Pliny in his famous panegyric of Trajan. Pliny says
it is a wonder for two ladies of the same quality to dwell in the
same place, without feuds or contention. But he declares that Plotina
and Marciana, the wife and the sister of Trajan, never disputed over
the right of precedence; but had the same intentions, and followed
the same course of life; nay, were scarcely to be distinguished as
two different persons.
Mrs. Hemans writes, on the eve of the removal of her brother George
to Ireland, "I fear I shall feel very lonely and brotherless, as I
have always been one of a large family circle before. I could laugh
or cry when I think of the helplessness I have contrived to
accumulate." And then she adds, with reference to her sister-in-law,
"In her I shall be deprived of the only real companion I ever had.
She is to leave me on Saturday next; and I am haunted by those
melancholy words of St. Leon's guest, the unhappy old man with his
immortal gifts, Alone! Alone!"
THERE is also another unspeakably important class of womanly
friendships; namely, those subsisting between sisters. In the fourth
book of the Aeneid, Virgil powerfully paints this union in the
example of Dido and Anna. Scott has drawn an impressive picture of
such a friendship, in the characters of Minna and Brenda Troil; and a
still more affecting one in the story of Jeannie and Effie Deans.
Thrown into constant intimacy, with an endearing community of
inheritance, duties, and associations-multitudes of sisters must
become ardent friends. The failure of that result, in consequence of
base qualities, irritating circumstances, or cold and meagre natures,
is a great misfortune and loss in a household: the fruition of it is
a blessing worthy of the most earnest gratitude of its subjects.
Perhaps there is no species of friendship more sure to elude
publicity. It plays its undramatic part in domestic scenes, avoiding,
rather than asking, the notice of the world. We need not wonder, that
there are so few examples of it sufficiently exciting and public to
induce the historian or biographer to narrate their stories.
Hannah More and her four sisters were a group of happy friends, who
kept house together for more than half a century. The union of Hannah
and Martha was especially one of entire admiration and fondness. In
Wrington churchyard the remains of the five sisters rest together
under a stone slab, enclosed by an iron railing, and overshadowed by
a yew-tree.
Mary and Agnes Berry, who were such widely courted favorites, in the
most intellectual society of the time of their ardent friend, Horace
Walpole, dwelt together, for over eighty years, in entire and fervent
affection: and they now sleep side by side in their grave at
Petersham.
The three wonderful sisters, Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte, were
joined by uncommonly deep and intense bonds. Their strange, fervid
personalities; their solitary, melancholy lives; their tastes and
pursuits; their joys and triumphs, were held in common. Writing to
her best friend, Charlotte says, "You, my dear Miss W., know, as well
as I do, the value of sisters' affection to each other; there is
nothing like it in this world, I believe, when they are nearly equal
in age, and similar in education, tastes, and sentiments." In another
letter, written after she had lost both her sisters, she says, "Emily
had a particular love for the moors; and there is not a knoll of
heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a
fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant
prospects were Anne's delight; and, when I look round, she is in the
blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon."
Let any one, who would understand what these rare natures felt for
each other, read the memoir of her two sisters, prefixed by Charlotte
to "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey."
In 1846, Margaret Fuller wrote an account of a visit she had just
paid to Joanna Baillie, whom she had long honored almost above any of
her sex. She says, "I found on her brow, not, indeed, a coronal of
gold, but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight
of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation which her
thoughts have received. We found her in her little calm retreat, at
Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from
distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older
than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose
character, and their mutual relations, she has, in one of her last
poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and
tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline." This
admirable, semi-biographical, semi-psychological poem was addressed
by Joanna to her sister Agnes, her dear, life-long companion, on one
of the latest anniversaries of her birthday. It is an interesting
fragment in the literature of the friendships of sisters.
THE friendship of woman with woman, outside of the ties of blood, is
pictured with varying degrees of fidelity in the works of many
romance writers and novelists. One of the most glowing delineations
of it, also one of the most famous, is given by Richardson in the
character of Clarissa Harlowe. Jane Austen, in her "Northanger
Abbey," treats it with great insight, in the relations of Catherine
Morland, Isabella Thorpe, and Eleanor Tilney. Miss Edgeworth's
"Helen" is likewise full of it: both its sympathies and its
antagonisms are forcibly depicted. Helen Stanley is Lady Cecilia's
double, her second self, her better self. Lady Katrine Hawksby is
such an acidified piece of envy, so jealous of all her sex, that
"every commonly decent marriage of her acquaintance gives her a sad
headache." That there is truth in this bitter stroke cannot be
denied; but there is truth as well in the extreme opposite. Many a
girl, with a sublime self-renunciation, stifling an agony sharper
than death, has given up a lover to a friend, in silence and secrecy.
Women are capable of any sacrifice, and their grandest deeds are
hidden. Could any woman capable of voluntarily withdrawing herself,
in order that her friend might marry the man they both loved, be
capable of boasting of it, or willingly letting it be known?
Mrs. Barbauld gives a beautiful description of pious friendship in
her hymn beginning,
How blest the sacred tie that binds
In union sweet according minds!
How swift the heavenly course they run
Whose hearts, whose faith and hope, are one!
Their streaming tears together flow
For human grief and mortal woe;
Their ardent prayers together rise
Like mingling flames in sacrifice.
Pictures of female friendships, in all their glory and tragedy, their
ecstatic fusions and heroic sacrifices, their bitter jealousies and
inversions, abound in the great dramatists, who are the crowned
expositors of human nature. Auger, Secretary of the French Academy,
in his "Philosophical and Literary Miscellanies," has an excellent
little essay entitled, "The Friendships of Women among themselves
compared with the Friendships of Men among themselves; Difference of
the two Friendships, and the Causes of that Difference." The essay,
though not adequate, is true and suggestive. Charles Lamb's poem of
"The Three Friends, "--Mary, Martha, and Margaret--is an extremely
truthful and effective description of female friendship, its fervor,
jealousy, estrangement, generosity, and restoration.
Grace Aguilar has written a work expressly on the subject of Woman's
Friendship. Though not a work of a high order, it possesses
considerable interest as a tale; and, as a treatment of the theme, it
is full of sincere feeling and discriminating observations. In Lady
Ida Villiers and Florence Leslie we have a picture of a pair of noble
friends, proof against every trial. The black-hearted falsehood and
hate of Flora Rivers form an effective foil; and, incidentally, there
are many telling strokes and sidelights on the relations of women to
each other. "It is the fashion to deride female friendship," Grace
Aguilar says: "to look with scorn on those who profess it. There is
always to me a doubt of the warmth, the strength, and purity of her
feelings, when a girl merges into womanhood, looking down on female
friendship as romance and folly." The subtile and masterly knowledge
of the characters of women, their weaknesses and their strengths, is
not the least of the charms of that consummate work of art, "The
Princess" of Tennyson. Blanche, Melissa, Ida, Psyche, in their
unions, Two women faster welded in one love Than pairs of wedlock, in
their jealousies, quarrels, aspirations, sorrows, are psychological
studies full of delicate truth. Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"
discusses many of the same topics, in a manner characteristically
contrasting with Tennyson's, but marked by all her own
conscientiousness, power, and care. Lady Waldemar, Marian Erle,
Aurora Leigh, with the unsparing censures, magnanimous thoughts, and
burning aspirations strewn through this profound and massive work,
are lasting lessons for all womankind. It seems to have been much
easier for most of the critics of this great work to feel its
artistic faults, its jarring metre, and cumbrous forms, than to
appreciate the transcendent nobleness and wisdom wrought into it from
the soul of its creator.
School-girl friendships are a proverb in all mouths. They form one of
the largest classes of those human attachments whose idealizing power
and sympathetic interfusions glorify the world and sweeten existence.
With what quick trust and ardor, what eager relish, these susceptible
creatures, before whom heavenly illusions float, surrender themselves
to each other, taste all the raptures of confidential conversation,
lift veil after veil till every secret is bare, and, hand in hand,
with glowing feet, tread the paths of paradise Perhaps a more
impassioned portrayal of this kind of union is not to be found in
literature than the picture in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," which
Shakespeare makes Helena hold before Hermia, when the death of their
love was threatened by the appearance of Lysander and Demetrius:
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us, O! is all forgot?
All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles ccreated both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides; voices, and minds
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem:
So with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
And will you rend our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
Romantically warm and generous as the friendships of school-boys are,
those of school-girls are much more so. They are more purposed and
absorbing, more sedulously cultivated and consciously important.
School-girls often have their distinctly defined and well-understood
degrees of intimacy--their first, their second, their third, friend.
Thus a thousand little dramas are daily played, full of delights and
woes, of which outsiders, who have no key to them, never so much as
dream. Probably no chapter of sentiment in modern fashionable life is
so intense and rich as that which covers the experience of budding
maidens at school. In their mental caresses, spiritual nuptials,
their thoughts kiss each other, and more than all the blessedness the
world will ever give them is foreshadowed. They have not yet reached
the age for a public record or confession of their pangs and
raptures; so these dramas are for the most part only guessed at. But
keener agonies, more delicious passages, are nowhere else known than
in the bosoms of innocent school-girls, in the lacerations or
fruitions of their first consciously given affections. A startling
illustration has come to the knowledge of the writer just as he is
penning these words. Two girls, about sixteen years old, attending a
private school together, in one of the chief cities of the United
States, formed a strong attachment to each other, and were almost
inseparable. The father of one of the girls, for some reason, had a
dislike for the other, and forbade his daughter to associate with
her. The two friends preferred death to separation. They took
laudanum, and were found dead in each other's arms. What element of
romance or tragedy ever known, is not every day experienced, all
about us, under the thin disguise of commonplace?
No doubt there is often something a little grotesque or laughable in
these youthful relations. An anecdote will illustrate it, and, at the
same time, convey the corrective moral. There were a couple of
school-girl friends, each of whom loved to do and experience whatever
the other did or experienced. One of them accidentally set fire to
the window-curtains in her chamber, and the house came near being
burned down. She wrote word to her friend of the dangerous accident.
The other at once proceeded carefully to set fire to the curtains in
her chamber, so as to be just like her friend in everything.
One may well reprove, with a complacent smile of superiority,
the folly of the act; but the sentiment underneath should never be
ridiculed.
A harrowing instance of the suffering consequent on the overstrung
feelings of girls is furnished by Margaret Fuller in the story of
"Mariana," a vivid autobiographic leaf inserted in her "Summer on the
Lakes." Much precious wisdom is learned, many cruel scars are
received, in these sincere, though often fickle, connections--these
inebriating preludes to the sober strain of existence. There is a
touch of sadness in the thought that the earliest friendship of youth
must so frequently fade and cease. But there is comfort for that
sadness in the knowledge that the fair flowers of April are but
precursors of those which June shall fill with the richer fragrance
of a more royal fire.
Oft first love must perish
Like the poor snow-drop, boyish love of Spring,
Born pale to die, and strew the path of triumph
Before the imperial glowing of the rose,
Whose passion conquers all.
Some of the conditions for friendship between women are furnished in
a high degree in the secluded intimacy of conventual life, with its
stimulus of solitude and religious romance. Under such circumstances,
Madame Roland, in her youth, had an ardent union with Angélique
Boufflers. She had likewise a precious friendship of this kind with
the two sisters, Sophie and Henrietta Cannet. Her description of the
sisters' arrival at the convent, of the sensation which they made,
and of her own love for them, is extrernel, graphic and spirited. Her
letters to them, extending through many years, and reaching in number
to near two hundred and fifty, give us one of the best record of the
value and joy of a friendship whose parties, b: freely unbosoming
themselves to each other, assuage every pang and double every
delight.
Among the crowds of nuns, young ladies of noble families and refined
education, early set apart to this mode of existence, with all their
glowing sentiments and dreams undispelled by the cold touch of the
world, the inviting and innocent vent of sisterly love must often
have been welcomed as a heavenly boon, and improved with enthusiasm.
Also a deep affection, mixed of many choice ingredients of authority,
dependence, admiration, sympathy, and tenderness, must frequently
have sprung up, and been nourished to an intense development, between
Lady Superiors and their pupils, Abbesses and nuns. The relation of
Mother Agnes Arnauld and Jacqueline Pascal exhibits an instance. The
correspondence and memoirs of Madame de Chantal afford many striking
examples. In the Order of the Visitation, founded by her, and whose
outlines were drawn by St. Francis of Sales, the element of Christian
friendship plays a large part. The Lady Superior has an aide, a
sister chosen by herself, to admonish and warn her of her faults, and
to receive all complaints from those who might feel that she had
wronged or aggrieved them. The duty of the directress of the novices
is to exercise them in obedience, sweetness, and modesty; to clear
from their minds all those follies, whims, sickly tendernesses, by
which their characters might be enfeebled; to instruct them in the
practice of virtue, the best methods of prayer and meditation; and to
give them a wise and patient sympathy and guidance in every exigency.
Madame de Longueville and Angeliaue Arnauld formed an impassioned
friendship, worthy of mention as one of the richest on record--after
the conversion of the former, and her retirement from the world.
Unquestionably, if, at the waving of a wand, all the secrets of
conventual life, of the female religious orders, could be revealed, a
host of friendships would swarm to light, many of them as pure as
those which link the white-robed angels. Yet, in affirming this, one
need not be supposed ignorant of the meagre and repulsive phase of
the life sometimes led in the convent, its mechanical ritual, its
cold rules, and its irritating espionage.
The unions of heart formed between queens, princesses, or other great
ladies, and their favorite maids of honor or their chosen companions,
when these happen to be especially congenial, compose a still further
class of female friendships. They are very frequent, and are
especially attractive, on account of the scenes of rank and splendor,
conspicuous romance and tragedy, amidst which they occur. Kadidasa,
in his "Sakoontahi," that exquisite picture of ancient Hindu life,
shows us the beautiful akoontaltl, constantly accompanied by her two
confidential friends, Priyamvada and Anastiya. In the biographies of
royal houses, it is a common occurrence to meet with an unhappy queen
who was so fortunate as to find refuge and consolation for the
sorrows inflicted on her by an unfaithful or cruel husband, in the
ever-ready sympathy of some attendant, some true and loving woman of
her court. In the annals of courts, the examples of jealousies and
quarrels, of confidants turning rivals, and of maids undermining and
ousting their mistresses, are also unhappily frequent. So, for
instance, Maintenon displaced her patroness, Montespan; so Anne of
Austria, after years of utter devotion, successively alienated her
self-forgetful friends, Madame de Chevreuse, Mademoiselle de la
Fayette, and the incomparable Mademoiselle de Hautefort; so did the
unhappy Marie de Medicis, after half a life-time of lavished
fondness, forsake her faithful Eleonora Galigäi, and turn against her
in the cruel selfishness of misfortune and danger.
Catherine Picard was the beloved companion of Blanche of Lancaster.
Her sister, Philippa Picard, was the favorite of Philippa, queen of
Edward the Third. She was so attached to her mistress, that she kept
her lover, the immortal Chaucer, waiting for her hand eight years,
until the death of the queen set her free. Catherine Douglas, maid of
honor to the Lady Jane Beaufort, wife of James the First of Scotland,
showed her love for her queen by a deed which history and song will
never forget to celebrate. When the assassins were forcing their way
into the royal chamber, Catherine thrust her beautiful arm into the
stanchion of the door, as a bolt, and held it there till it was
broken.
Mary Stuart was blessed with the society of four maids of honor,
lovely girls of rank, about her own age, named for her, and appointed
from childhood to be her companions. Their names were Mary Flemming,
Mary Seton, Mary Beton, and Mary Livingstone; and they were called
the Queen's Marys. Through her unhappy fortunes, imprisonments and
all, they remained with her, and ardently loved her, whatever her
errors may have been. With the exception of Mary Seton, who, on
account of illness, had withdrawn to a convent in France, they
accepted, for the sake of supporting and comforting her, even the
anguish of witnessing her execution.
The attendants of Queen Elizabeth, on the other hand, detested her.
When, in her age and ugliness, she would no longer look in a glass,
it is said they used to amuse themselves with powdering her cheeks,
and rouging her nose. Elizabeth, as a woman, no doubt hated Mary for
her fascinations more than, as a queen, she feared her for her
political pretensions; and, in spite of every justifying argument, it
must be said, that she treated her with cruel treachery. In their
earlier days, Elizabeth sent Mary a most rare diamond ring as a
pledge of her friendship, and accompanied it with earnest promises of
aid and sympathy. Aubrey describes this ring as consisting of
separate parts, which, united, formed the device of two right hands
supporting a heart between them, the heart itself being composed of
two diamonds held together by a spring. The Queen of Scots, in her
final distress, dispatched this token to Elizabeth by a trusty
messenger, and in return was ordered to the block. Mrs. Jameson
eloquently thinks, we must feel that the scale was set even, when we
remember how Mary was loved, how Elizabeth was hated, and died at
last in loneliness, writhing on the floor like a crushed spider.
However much to be regretted, it is yet natural that the powerful
facts and logic of the later historians, like Froude, should find our
prejudices so stubbornly set in favor of Mary, and against Elizabeth.
They will change slowly; but I suppose they must, in a large degree,
change. Sarah Jennings, famous as that Duchess of Marlborough whom
Pope so fearfully satirized under the name of Atossa, having been
selected as lady in waiting of Queen Anne, was immediately taken to
her bosom. The queen asked no subserviency: "Afriend is what I most
want," she said. They laid aside all titles, and addressed each other
as equals under the assumed names of Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Morley.
This lackadaisical relation subsisted for several years. At length
Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman disappeared in the Queen and the
Duchess. The familiarity and arrogance of "Queen Sarah" became
insufferable to Queen Anne, and the quondam friends parted as
irreconcilable foes. Swift says of Queen Anne, that she "had not a
sufficient stock of amity for more than one person at a time." She
would always have a favorite, now, Miss Jennings; afterwards, Miss
Hill, better known as Lady Masham, the earnest friend of Locke; then,
somebody else.
In the terrible romance of the life of Marie Antoinette, the deserved
friendships and the undeserved hatreds that clustered around the
stately, affectionate, ill-fated queen, are clothed with exceeding
interest. In the memoirs of the Countess D'Adhemar, the most beloved
and steadfast of her attendants, who was equally her watchful servant
and her trusted friend, all the details of these attractions and
aversions may be found, drawn as only a woman would draw them. Madame
Geniis, whose overtures for familiarity were repulsed, plotted
against her with spiteful vindictiveness. Madame Campan, whom the
queen loved and took into her service, in return idolized and sought
to shield and bless her. By far the first, however, in the heart of
the queen, was the Princess Lamballe, a young widow, whose charms of
person and of character made her one of the most universally admired
women of that period. The queen revived for the princess the office
of superintendent of the household, that she might live at
Versailles. Their attachment, based on mutual esteem and tenderness,
and nurtured by many events, grew enthusiastic. It became the fashion
for every lady to have a friend, who accompanied her wherever she
went, to whom morning notes were written, and with whom tea was
sipped, and the evening spent, after the pattern of Antoinette and
Lamballe. The princess showed herself as heroic in devotion to her
friend, amidst the horrible carnival which surrounded the close of
their lives, as she had been modest, gentle, and sympathizing in the
brilliant season that preceded. A few days before the terrible crisis
of the Revolution burst on the head of the queen herself, the
princess, who occupied a room in the palace, adjoining that of her
friend, that she might share all her tears and dangers, was called
for a short time to the Chateau de Vernon, by the illness of her aged
father-in-law. Marie seized the opportunity to write a letter to her
friend, begging her to take care of herself and not return. "Your
heart would be too deeply wounded, you would have too many tears to
shed over my misfortunes, you who love me so tenderly. Adieu, my dear
Lamballe; I am always thinking of you; and you know I never change."
The princess hastened back to the side of her imperilled mistress.
With unfaltering fondness and resolution she clung to her through the
sack which filled the palace with ruins and blood; through the
tedious and brutal examinations in the Assembly; and through the
fearful imprisonment in the Temple, until the jailers violently tore
her from the arms of her sobbing friend. In vain the ferocious
wretches in power strove to wring from her something prejudicial to
the queen. The brave and beautiful woman preferred death; and was
delivered over to the crowd to be murdered. Madame de Lebel, to whom
the princess had been very kind, was going to inquire after the fate
of her beloved benefactress, when she heard the howls of an
approaching procession. She ran into the shop of a hairdresser; and
was quickly followed by one of the mob, who ordered the master of the
shop to dress the head of Madame de Lamballe. The princess was
celebrated for the length and richness of her fine, golden locks. At
this very moment, concealed among their bright, clustering masses,
was found the letter from Antoinette, quoted above. The barber took
the poor, disfigured head into his hands, cleansed the face from
blood, and arranged and powdered the ringlets. The ruffian said,
"Antoinette will recognize it now;" and, replacing it on the point of
his pike, moved forward with the mob to the prison of the unhappy
queen, before whose windows they elevated the appalling trophy, at
the same time shrieking to her to look on it. After this experience,
and others scarcely less revolting, we may well believe that the
high-souled daughter of Maria Theresa welcomed the executioner's axe
as a blessed relief. We see her, clad in the pale royalty of her
personal beauty and grief, refusing insult, moving, in the death-
cart, through the yelling masses of the populace, to her doom, like a
goddess, incapable of degradation, borne in a car above an infuriated
herd of apes, who vainly struggle to drag her down to themselves.
Madame Salvage de Faverolles had a passionate faculty of admiration.
She was fascinated with Madame Weamer, who was not much drawn to her,
though she always treated her with kindness. Her unclaimed affection
at length found its home in Queen Hortense, the daughter of
Josephine, and the mother of Louis Napoleon. She was inseparable from
her, and was called, with a touch of satire or humor, her body-guard.
She identified herself with every enterprise, hope, or thought of her
friend; accompanied her on every journey; watched over her in her
last sickness, night and day, with heroic fidelity; and, after her
death, executed her will in all particulars. The present Emperor of
France has always had the credit of an ardent love for his mother. A
just sentiment of gratitude would seem to require him--if he has not
already done it--to enshrine, with tributary honor, close beside the
ashes of the unhappy queen of Holland, those of Madame Salvage, the
most unwearied and inalienable of all her friends.