That must indeed have been a thrilling life--a life of startling
dramatic interest--which covered the period occupied by the career of
Madame de Stael, even had the person living the life been but an obscure
observer of passing events. For the time was big with the most
astounding things the world has known in these later centuries. But to a
person like the daughter of Necker, with intellect to comprehend the
prodigious events, and with the power oftentimes to influence them to a
greater or less extent, the wonderful drama which was then enacted upon
the stage of France must have appeared as of even overwhelming
importance. It must have dwarfed individual life, until one's own
personal affairs, if they would press upon the attention, seemed
impertinence, to be disposed of as quickly as possible, that one might
give every thought and every emotion to one's country. She saw the
commencement and the close of that great social earthquake which
overthrew the oldest dynasty in Europe; she saw the rise, the
culmination, and the setting of Napoleon's meteor-star; she witnessed
the return of the Bourbons after their long absence, and the final death
in defeat and exile of her dreaded enemy--the great soldier-Emperor--on
the rocky ocean isle. This series of events is not to be paralleled for
magnitude and meaning in any period of modern time, and Madame de Stael
was something more than a spectator during much of the great
miracle-play.
Her father, Necker, was the Controller-General of Finances under Louis
XVI., and a man worthy of honor and long remembrance, although he was
called during those perilous times to a work he was unable to do, and
which perhaps no man could have done. The corrupt and meretricious court
had brought France, financially as well as morally, to a point where no
one man, had he been ever so great and so noble, could save her--could
even retard the period of her ruin. Necker made a noble struggle, but
was overborne by fate; and had his genius been even more commanding than
it was, he would doubtless have been thus overborne. History tells us of
many greater statesmen than he, but of few better men. Disinterested
almost to a fault, stainless in his private character as well as
unquestioned in his public integrity, truly religious in a time given
over to atheism and impiety, conscientious even to the smallest matters
in public as well as private life, and moderate when everything about
him was in extremes,--well might Madame de Stael be proud of her father,
and fond to effusion of his memory.
Her mother was a woman to be held in reverent remembrance. She was both
beautiful and accomplished, possessed of fine talents, as well as
spotless character. She had been engaged to Gibbon in her youth, and the
attachment between them was a strong one. But the marriage was prevented
by his father; and, after a long period of mournful constancy, she
married M. Necker, and took her place among the great ones of the earth.
The friendship between herself and Gibbon was afterwards very tender and
sacred, although she was a faithful and devoted wife to Necker, and
really warmly attached to him. Necker, on his part, was her worshipping
lover to the end of his life.
The daughter of such parents could scarcely fail to be remarkable in
some way. It is not from such sources that the mediocrities are
recruited. But the child was utterly unlike her parents, and never
showed much likeness to either in after life. Her genius was
unquestioned even from her precocious babyhood, and she was the wonder
and admiration of all the brilliant circle of her father's friends. Her
temperament was most vehement and impulsive, and her vivacity a wonder
even to the Parisians. She seemed to know everything by intuition, and
made light of the hardest tasks which could be given her. The streams of
her childish eloquence seemed to flow from some exhaustless fountain.
The celebrated men who were her father's guests were never weary of
expressing their astonishment at her powers of conversation.
Gibbon, the Abbe Raynal, Baron Grimm and Marmontel were among these
friends, and they undoubtedly did much to stimulate the childish
intellect, although Madame Necker, troubled at the precocity of her
darling, frowned upon all attempts to unduly excite her mind. But great
themes were constantly discussed in her presence; the frivolity of the
old _regime_ was being rapidly displaced by the intense earnestness of
the men of the new era, and the most momentous questions of life and
death, of time and eternity, were the subjects of the conversations to
which the young genius listened with such rapt attention. Doubtless it
was in listening to these profound discussions in her earliest years
that she acquired that confidence which in after years never deserted
her, but which always led her to believe that she could save both her
country and the world, if people would only let her manage things in her
own way. Charles X. used to tell the story of her calling upon him,
after the return of the Bourbons to France, and offering him a
constitution ready-made, and insisting upon his accepting it. He says:--
"It seemed like a thing resolved--an event decided upon,--this
proposal of inventing a constitution for us. I kept as long as I
could upon the defensive; but Madame de Stael, carried away by her
zeal and enthusiasm, instead of speaking of what presumably
concerned herself, knocked me about with arguments and crushed me
with threats and menaces; so, tired to death of entertaining,
instead of a clever, humble woman, a roaring politician in
petticoats, I finished the audience, leaving her as little
satisfied as myself with the interview."
Perhaps something of this kind may have influenced Napoleon in banishing
her from the Empire.
Necker himself idolized his daughter, and was naturally very proud of
her youthful triumphs, while she in turn made him her one hero among
men. Throughout life her devotion to him continued, and she wrote of him
as one might write of a god. She frequently lamented that he had been
her father and not one of her own generation, that there might have been
a man of her time worthy of the love which she could have lavished upon
him. The fervor of this devotion, although it seems unnatural, belonged
to her intensely impulsive temperament, and in her case we must make
some allowance for the excesses of her passionate expressions of
affection. Although she talked much and in the grandest manner of love,
even when young and unmarried,--which is a very indelicate thing to do
in the eyes of the French,--she did not appear to have any youthful
romance of a serious sort. She had a great reputation as a wit and a
genius, but few admirers who could be classed as lovers. Many men were
her friends, and she was much sought after; but she was far from
beautiful, which goes a great way in matters of the heart, and many
disliked the manner in which she trampled upon the conventionalities,
while doubtless many others objected to her strong-mindedness and the
aggressiveness of her opinions.
She made a marriage _de convenance_ at the age of twenty, apparently
without much thought of love upon either side, and entered upon her new
career with all the confidence which characterized her. Baron de Stael
was a man of good character and noble birth, an _attache_ of the Swedish
Embassy, and, as she had money enough for both, the match was regarded
favorably by her friends. Although the Baron was a handsome man and of
pleasing address, one, it seems, who might have touched a maiden's
heart, Mademoiselle Necker, it is said, never made even a pretence of
love, but took the whole affair as a matter of business. It was
necessary that she should be married,--it is only thus that French women
achieve their independence,--and this man would do as well as another;
that seemed to be all there was of this remarkable occurrence.
Remarkable in our eyes, but of the usual sort in the eyes of the French.
For domestic happiness she seemed to care little. The excitement of
Parisian society was her heaven, and into this she entered with all the
ardor of her nature. Her marriage had given her every freedom, although
it does not appear that she was much restrained before,--for a French
girl; and she dashed into the whirlpool of the gayest society in the
world with a sort of intoxication. Her vivacity and enthusiasm knew no
bounds, and she held her own little court in every assembly, at which
the envious and unnoticed looked askance. She was regarded as a
dangerously fascinating woman, although personally she was so entirely
unattractive.
For three years she enjoyed her triumphs to the utmost. Then came the
earthquake which dissolved the fair fabric of her dreams. The Reign of
Terror began, and Paris was in the wildest ferment. Of course, she was
in the very midst of those exciting events, and her influence was of
moment in the terrific crisis. Her position gave her influence, and she
worked with all the strength and enthusiasm of her nature to aid the
escape of her friends and to succor the endangered. All the powers of
her remarkable mind were put into active service, and she seems never to
have thought of herself. To be sure, she was as inviolable as any one
could be considered in that fearful time, but she had a rare courage and
unbounded fortitude, and would have worked as she did even at personal
hazard. She prevailed upon the ferocious Revolutionists to show mercy in
some cases where they were bound to have blood. She concealed her
friends and even strangers in her house, and she used all the powers of
her marvellous eloquence to turn the tide of revolution backward. But it
was in vain. Her father was deposed, her friends were murdered, her king
was slain, all of her society were under surveillance, she herself
everybody thought in danger, but she would not leave her beloved Paris.
Her husband was in Holland, and thought she was subjecting her children
to needless peril; but she still had hope that somehow she might be
useful to her country. The sublime confidence which she had in her own
powers did not desert her. She saw the streets flow with blood, one
might say,--for the murders of the Revolutionists were of daily
occurrence,--but it was not until all hope of being of use was gone that
she took her children to England.
Here a little colony of French exiles were already established, and she
became at once the centre of the group. She pined in the exile and
mourned with ever-increasing sorrow for her country. Her interest in the
events of the time was cruelly intense, and burned out her life. M. de
Narbonne, whose life she had saved, was one of her consolations in the
dreadful exile, as was the friendship of Talleyrand and of Benjamin
Constant.
She returned to France after quiet was restored, and lived in Paris
something after the old way. Then came Napoleon, whom she hated with all
the ardor of her nature, and who returned her hate with interest. He
banished her from France, and would not permit her return during his
entire reign. "She carries a quiver full of arrows," he said, "which
would hit a man were he seated upon a rainbow." It was a purely personal
dislike on his part, and a piece of his most odious despotism to allow
his personal feelings to influence him in such a matter. There are few
things recorded of him more utterly inexcusable than this. She passed
fourteen years in exile,--the best years of her life,--and exile to her
had all the bitterness of death; she could never really live except in
Paris. We hear little of her husband during all this time, but it is
not likely that she derived much consolation from domestic life. She had
no taste for it, and found it the supreme bore. She consoled herself as
much as she could with literature, and wrote those books which,
wonderful and brilliant as they are, all who knew her personally unite
in saying, never did justice to her genius. The gloom of exile was over
them all. She suffered a great variety of petty persecutions at the
hands of Napoleon during all those years, and these added to the
inevitable miseries of her lot.
After the fall of the Napoleonic empire she returned to Paris, and there
passed the remainder of her life. It was at this time that she presented
the constitution to Charles X. She was never remarkable for her taste in
dress, and that Prince thus describes her on that occasion:--
"She wore a red satin gown embroidered with flowers of gold and
silk, a profusion of diamonds, rings enough to stock a pawnbroker's
shop; and I must add that I never before saw so low cut a corsage
display less inviting charms. Upon her head was a large turban,
constructed on the pattern of that worn by the Cumean sybil, which
put the finishing touch to a costume so little in harmony with the
style of her face. I scarcely can understand how a woman of genius
can have such a false, vulgar taste."
It can be easily comprehended how she might have bored the Prince by
pressing upon him at such length her ideas of the reconstruction of the
empire, for she often bored even those who really admired and
appreciated her by the torrents of her talk. She was not witty, but full
of rhetorical surprises, and had boundless stores of information upon
every subject. People do not like to be instructed, nor do they like to
be preached to, even by eloquent lips, and her great conversational
powers often made her dreaded rather than admired in general society.
While she was in Germany Goethe, who must be allowed the capability of
appreciating her, was wont to run away from her whenever he could, and
bore up under her eloquence with rather an ill grace when he could not
escape it. Schiller also, in whom she much delighted, was ungallant
enough to dislike her extremely. On the contrary, Talleyrand and many
other famous Frenchmen seemed never to weary of her, and have handed
down the tradition of her wonderful eloquence to a later generation. It
is probable that her excessive vivacity was more pleasing to the French
mind than to that of the English and Germans, and her lack of repose did
not weary them to the same extent. She retained her friends to the end
of her life, and they were the source of her greatest satisfaction. She
was loyal and devoted in the extreme to all whom she favored with her
friendship, and all such loved her with deep affection. Indeed, it may
be said that human nature was the only thing which much interested her.
She had no love for Nature, and would scarcely take the trouble to see
the Alps when in Switzerland, and said that if she were left to her own
feelings she would not open her window to see the bay of Naples for the
first time, but that she would travel five hundred leagues at any time
to see a great man she had not met before. She cared little for art, and
not much for literature as such, though she had a passion for ideas. Her
ideal life was a life of intellectual excitement,--constant intercourse
with minds of her own order. The improvisations of Corinne give one a
little idea what her conversation was like. Still she has been quoted as
saying that she would have exchanged all her talent for the one gift of
beauty which was denied her.
In the life of William Cullen Bryant we find the following passage
relating to Madame de Stael, occurring in one of his letters; it gives
the last glimpse that we get of the close of her career, and is
interesting also as showing his estimate of a great but faulty woman. He
says:--
"What a life! Passionate, for she was brought up not to control her
passions; almost always unhappy; marrying an old man whom she did
not care for, after being twice refused by young men whom she did
love, and to whom she offered herself, if not formally yet in a
manner not to be misunderstood; forming, after her marriage,
intimate relations with Benjamin Constant, to her father's great
grief; and when he deserted her, marrying, after her husband's
death, a half-dead Italian named Rocca; and finally wearing out her
life by opium-eating."
This marriage with Albert Jean-Michel de Rocca took place at Geneva, and
was for a time concealed from the world, causing some scandal. But her
children and intimate friends knew of it, although much opposed to it.
Rocca was a young Italian officer, just returned from the war in Spain,
with a dangerous wound. He was of a poetic temperament and exceedingly
romantic, and fell violently in love with Madame de Stael, although she
was forty-five years old and he but twenty-three. During the years of
her first marriage she used to say that she would force her own daughter
to marry for love if that were necessary, and it is supposed that at
last she herself made a marriage of real affection. Despite the
disparity of their years, they seemed to be really happy in this
marriage, and her friends were at last reconciled to it. But her
new-found happiness was of short duration,--she being but fifty years
old at the time of her death.
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