Madame de Staël

Contents

Chapter Page

I. Youth — Character — First Writings AND First Appearance before the World 7

II. The Revolution — "Reflections upon THE Peace" — The "Essay on Fiction" 42

Chapter I

Youth. — Character. — First Writings and First Appearance before the World.

1 766-1 789.

ONE who knew MADAME DE Stael intimately and was thus enabled to gather at first hand the Incidents of her Hfe, namely, Madame Necker de Saussure, has said : " Her works are, so to speak, in an abstract form the memoirs of her life." Madame de Stael herself said as much : '* When one writes to satisfy the inspiration that possesses the soul, one's writings will involuntarily reveal every shade of one's manner of living and thinking." Thus I propose seeking the inspiration of Madame de Stael's works by studying the events of her life.

Our earliest impressions of the external world become, unconsciously to us, the prism by which everything is afterward colored.

With Chateaubriand, it was the gloomy soHtudes of Combourg, the heavy mists skirting the ocean and bounded only by the forests through which the storm-winds whistled. With Lamartine, it was the hills of Milly, a country home with quiet neighboring paths, a soft and filmy sky, a dim and fleeting horizon, a pious childhood at a Christian mother's knee. With Madame de Stael, it was in private life the scenes of a happy home, and in public those of a salon which was the meeting-place of the best intellects of the time, — where jest and inspiration followed each in turn ; where all literary questions and all the problems of the universe were discussed, and where, as a contemporary has remarked, they discoursed endlessly upon '^the great truths of Nature, the immortality of the soul, the love of liberty, and the charms and dangers of the passions." A house like her parents' was always her ideal of home ; happiness in marriage was her Utopia, and to reign over a salon was the ambition of her life«

M. Necker came of a family of Irish origin, which turning Protestant removed first to Germany and then to Geneva, though through his mother he was allied to the French proscripts of Louis XIV. He was born a citizen of the Swiss Republic. On reaching manhood, and

Youth, 9

after a severe course of classical study, he turned his mind to the study of finance. This led him to Paris, where he entered upon his career of publicist and financier. Madame du Deffand once accused him of interminp-ling; metaphysics with everything that he said, and it is a fact that his writings are tinged with it. But he put none of it into his bank, which was prosperous. He acquired a large fortune, and established a reputation by his eulogy of Colbert, crowned by the Academy in 1773. Necker loved popularity and aspired to power, — popularity, because he believed that the general opinion could not err; power, because he thought himself capable of accomplishing in the interest of humanity the reform of public affairs. To his ambition he united the sincerity of a philanthropist i the gravity of a Calvinist softened by the homilies of the Vicaire Savoyard; much kindliness in his private relations; haughtiness in his political intercourse ; a mixture of tenderness for the human race and of disdain for the individual ; large and systematic, though abstract views upon affairs in general ; and uncertainty, rigidity, and minutiae in action. He was not born a minister.

He had neither the force nor the judgment necessary to statecraft. He misunderstood lo Madame de StdeL

Richelieu, he misjudged Mirabeau, he did not comprehend Bonaparte. He had a noble heart and an estimable character, but his was not a soul of fire. The Revolution passed him by. But he achieved under the old regime a success surprising for a Genevese, a Protestant, a tradesman, and a plebeian, who was forced, we may say, upon the King's council by the suffrage of the most enlightened men of France, and who became popular in the most dissolute city in the world, among the people most rebelHous to the commonplace virtues and the creeds of Geneva. He owed this as much to his fortune as to his merits. His bank helped him to interest in his reputation the men who at the time dispensed glory and rewards ; he entertained philosophers at his table, and his salon was one of those which governed the French mind.

Madame Necker had her share in the laborious work of her husband's success. She was the daughter of a Protestant minister, and was filled with the instinct to good works, in the Christian sense of the word. Charity carried to excess was to her a salutary exercise. She was refreshed by it. The life of the world was always to her an artificial life; yet she loved company, she wished to love It, and made It a duty to appear a brilliant member of it. She

Youth, 1 1

was at once diverted by it, bewildered, constrained, exalted, and oppressed; she was at last worn out by it. Her mind was remarkably cultivated ; but the flight of her spirit was constantly trammelled by scruples upon the articles of faith. She was singularly susceptible, nervously impressionable, even passionate, in her legitimate attachments, but with a continual self-control and a sort of secret prompting to austerity. In spite of her taste for beautiful speculations of the sentimental and subtle kind, in spite of her pride of holding open house to celebrated men and of her desire to contribute to the reputation of an adored husband, she had an indescribable reserve and affectation amid a society into which she had not been born. She was a Genevese exiled among the Parisians, a Christian astray among the faithless, loving them without believing in them, listening to them without approving of them, blaming them without hoping to convert them. She suffered in the noblest qualities she possessed, — her rectitude of heart and her upright judgment. She longed for another and a purer atmosphere, that of her native mountains, but she was too enervated to endure it. She wrote to a friend : " Surely one might be and ought to be happier elsewhere than here ; but then one must never have felt the fatal charm which without giving happiness poisons forever all the other channels of life."

Such is the environment amid which Germaine Necker was born, April 22, 1766, and was brought up. She was a child of astoundingly precocious intellect and heart, and at the same time of a gay temperament. She was Necker's joy. If he kept her in a hot-house, it was in order that she might expand there. The hot-house was not enough for Madame Necker, and she attempted to add thereto an ingenious and subtle educational apparatus. It was her dream to make of her daughter a masterpiece of maternal art, knowing all things, and pious notwithstanding; of an enthusiastic imagination, yet modest in discourse and irreproachable in conduct; very pure yet at the same time very fascinating; having all the glitter of life, all the pleasures the world can give, yet without pride of life or frivolity. She wore out her soul in trying to realize this ideal. The child developed on her own part a prodigious genius which overreached all limits. She burst the mould. Madame Necker's plan of education went to increase the lumber of pedagogic Utopias. The environment carried everything before it.

From the time when Germaine could think.

Youth, 1 3

she reasoned ; she soared as soon as she could move. At eleven years of age she appeared at the receptions seated on a little stool at her mother's feet, wide awake but silent. The silence which she maintained during these years sufficed for the rest of her life. She listened to Raynal, Thomas, Grimm, Bufifon, Morellet, and Suard, who took much notice of her, and amused themselves with watching the expressions which their discourses produced upon her mobile countenance. The theatre occupied a large place in their conversations. Marmontel and La Harpe discussed it continually, and declaimed dramatic selections. Mademoiselle Clairon was often present. Germaine profited by these lessons ; she accompanied her parents to the play, and made extracts from pieces. Very soon she began to compose pieces for puppets, of which she managed the strings herself; her own conceptions of life always carried a suggestion of this. At fifteen years of age she made a resume of '' L'Esprit des Lois," and drew up an essay on Necker's " Compte Rendu." Raynal asked her to give him for his compilation called " Deux Lides " an article on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. She read everything she could lay hands on, preferring novels, however, and of these the most exciting. There is no saying at what age she fell upon Rousseau. He became her first idol. The rape of Clarisse became one of the events of her childhood. She herself says, " Werther made an epoch in my life." Werther melted and captivated her; Lovelace dazzled, frightened, and fascinated her for a long time. *' What interested her was what made her weep," reports one friend. The sight of a celebrated man made her heart beat wildly. Discerning praise of her father caused her to burst into tears. She was seventeen years old when she asked the aged Marechale de Mouchy, '' Madame, what do you think of love ? " Such was the tone of her conversations and the course of her reveries. She fell ill. '' She may go mad, perhaps," said Tronchin, ''but she will certainly be very unhappy."

Such was the development of her mind, which was one of the most receptive and expansive ever seen ; possessed with an insatiable avidity to know everything and the capacity to take it all in ; having not merely intelligence, but sympathy, a sort of divination of the thoughts of others, and an '' instantaneous inspiration," or what amounted to that, in her own ideas ; apprehending and inspired, moreover, not by reflection, but in a flash, or, as it were, on the wing. There was no interval between thought and speech ; the thought was born and quickened by speech itself. '' Conversation was her inspiration and her muse," remarks one who best understood her and who has analyzed her most keenly. She lived in a state of perpetual expansion and improvisation.

But she lacked self-government, concentration, and patient thought. It fatigued her to apply herself to these. She advanced by great wing-strokes ; never creeping over an idea, yet turning it out with rare skill. She would not take the trouble to learn anything thoroughly. She knew nothing of that spiritual discipHne which produced the strong and healthy grace of a Sevigne, the natural yet grand style, the simple way of expressing herself better than any one else, the command of language renewed at its sources and always the most precise when most original. Her mind revolted against the leading strings of Port Royal ; her tongue could not endure the curb of Condillac. She did not understand submission either to method or grammar. Her aspirations were always beyond her ideas ; her heart, for analogous reasons, was very often far above her words and acts.

This ardent, passionate, but straightforward heart, prodigal of gifts and confidences, eager for change, impatient of examination, and generous above all things, was also largely endowed with intelligence. '' I have many faculties for happiness," said Corinne. Germaine Necker was too eager both for happiness and knowledge, and too insatiable. She stopped at no obstacles amid her outbursts of affection, either within herself or without. She took no account either of the hindrances offered by the outside world, or of contradictory sentiments, or of any of the misfortunes of life which wear and tear the passions to tatters. Indeed all her sentiments turned to passions, and all her passions to storms. ''Her devouring imiagination," which grasped at everything around her, first seized upon herself; it was the lever by which she moved souls ; it held complete sway over her own soul, which never knew tranquillity. Later she said, " My imagination is like the tower of Ugolin."

Nevertheless she had at bottom a good sense and a moral soundness which sustained her in time of tempest. If she could not at all understand that others felt differently from herself, her own sentiments were at least sincere. This sincerity was the measure which she applied to herself most scrupulously. When the vertigo of emotion was past, she resumed her equilibrium and judged herself. Her examinations of conscience rendered her singularly perspicacious and just These, while edifying to her, gave her little consolation. Her clear-sighted analyses were for the most part a refinement of torture. But as she was naturally kind, her self-torture heightened her sense of pity.

We must note here, at the beginning, these singularities of her character, for her genius is born of them. Her life was the product of her tumultuous and troubled sentiments; her writings are the result of her self-judgment and her pity. As she advanced in life and considered her existence from a higher standpoint, she drew from her own trials a higher and purer moral. Whatever failed her in her own destiny she completed in her books. It is thus that her rich and virile works are brought forth amid a career of troubles, agitations, and sometimes weaknesses.

Happily for her and for those around her, she felt it an absolute necessity to be amused. She had a large and easy good-nature, and when her heart was not otherwise engaged, a charming freedom in all her relations.

*' Corinne was very gay in spirit. She appreciated the ridiculous with the keenness of a French woman, and portrayed it with the imagination of an Italian, but she joined to it a kindly feeling. One never saw in her anything of malice or hostility; for in every case it is coldness which offends, while, on the contrary, a lively imagination is almost always kind." And here is Delphine : '' Well-chosen expressions and movements always natural, a gayety of spirit and a melancholy tinge of sentiment, excitability and simplicity, enthusiasm and energy ! What an adorable mixture of spirit and candor, of sweetness and strength ! Possessing to the same degree all that could inspire admiration in the profoundest thinkers, all that could set at ease the most commonplace minds, if they are kindly disposed and hope to find that same tender quality in the gentlest, noblest, most seductive and naive forms."

It is thus she paints herself, and thus she would appear upon the theatre of the world. She can conceive neither of glory nor happiness outside that theatre. There she interests herself in everything, — sentiments, politics, art, literature, and philosophy; but to the rest of the universe she is indifferent. She has no liking for the promenade ; Nature for her is dull ; meditation wearies her; retirement terrifies her; solitude fills her with horror. She has her vulnerable spot, and her vampire is ennui. Society, which is the delight of her life, is also

Its necessity. Only in Paris does she find herself at ease and comfortable.

And yet there is something in her which even there is stifled and tries to burst forth. She places the source of happiness in enthusiasm, but she seeks this happiness in a realm where all is shifting sand or barren waste. Her character rebels against the conventionalities and prejudices of the world, as her mind rebels against scholastic methods and the common usages of language. She aspires to reign in society, but she hopes to dispense with the first condition of such a reign ; namely, etiquette, the art of mastering oneself in ruling others. Her nature repudiates not only hypocrisy and worldly strategy, but even simple discretion and that prudence which one may call the spirit of tact in conduct. She knows no longer interval between thought and action than between thought and speech. '' Your character," said a friend who knew her well, " is incapable of enduring the annoyances that one provokes by the endeavor to shine in the world of society."

This dread of dulness or of emptiness, if one may put it so, this thirst for amusement, this eagerness to shine and to please, joined to an impossibility of self-restraint, throws her into perpetual inconsistencies. She has a vigorous and impetuous soul, but she manifests all a woman's weakness. She says of Delphine: ** Although the breadth of her spirit gives her independence, yet her character nevertheless needs support." Germaine was carried away by her heart and her genius, at the very start, at one bound, without regard to possibilities ; afterward face to face with resistance, '' her quick discernment of the true, the real, flashed a sudden illumination upon her, and at the same time pierced her like a sharp spur ; the reaction was immediate; and too frequently contempt of the precaution to cover her retreat and hide her transition made her the jest of envious and malicious mediocrity." These internal strifes, says the most authoritative and most respectful of witnesses the Due Victor de Broglie, ''made her existence tempestuous; her family life passionate, ardent, and tumultuous." They at last destroyed her health, which had been unsettled by continual commotion since her earliest years.

These fundamental contrarieties of character are plainly manifested in the two objects of worship which filled Germaine's youth, — the first, which lasted to the end of her life, the beneficent worship of the domestic hearth, the home of Necker ; the other a foreign idol, a cult of insidious mysteries and poisonous perfumes, from which she detached herself by degrees, but which never entirely ceased to trouble her: I mean the worship of Rousseau. Both Necker and Rousseau talk much of virtue and promise happiness : but Necker finds happiness in virtue, and it is to this happiness that the disposition of Germaine invites her; Rousseau finds virtue in happiness, and to this sophisticated virtue Germaine is attracted by her imagination.

At the point where we now take up her history, near her twentieth year, she is still dreaming of it; but the dream which disturbs her is the same which will continue to trouble her through all the metamorphoses of life, — to be loved, as she would herself love, in an incessant ecstasy of her whole being, in a glorious felicity irradiating her whole life. At nineteen she wrote in her journal : '' A woman should have nothing in herself, but should find all her joy in what she loves." At thirty she confessed to a friend : '' I trusted everything to love. In youth every sentiment springs from that." At forty she makes Corinne say: *'In seeking for glory I have always hoped that it would cause me to love." After Germaine had attained this glory, she perceived that without love it is but vanity, and concluded : " Glory itself can be, for a woman, only a loud and bitter cry for happiness." Ambition, for her, could never be more than a surpassing desire to please, and a current having its source in love. But she desired the more passionately to appear brilliant as she realized her lack of beauty. She lacked — and she knew it only too well — the outward graces, those mute and ineffable charms which through the eyes find their way irresistibly to the heart.

Her admirers have portrayed her as a muse, lyre in hand. She is Clio or Melpomene, " the most notable priestess of Apollo, the favorite of the god, whose incense is to him the most agreeable of all. Her large black eyes sparkle with genius; her hair, ebon-hued, falls upon her shoulders in waving ringlets; her features are more pronounced than delicate; one perceives in her something more than the common destiny of her sex." Yes, but of this destiny one perceives no trace whatever. Take away from the portrait the mythological attributes and the allegorical background, and you shall see a person of medium stature, rather stocky, not quite deficient in grace and ease, but without that lightness and nymph-like elegance which was the ravishing type of the beauty of that day immortalized by David and Gerard in the portraits of Juliette Recamier and Madame Regnauld de Saint-Jean d'Angely,

Neither is she Amelie, nor even Corinne ; she is Dido, virgin still, but predestinated to passion. The features are expressive; the complexion dark rather than fresh, yet of a good color, which is heightened by conversation; the shoulders are well shaped, the arms powerful, the hands robust, — the hands of a sovereign and not of a great and sentimental coquette ; a broad forehead ; black hair falling thick and curling over her shoulders ; a strong nose ; a mouth forcibly designed, prominent lips opening wide for life and speech, — the mouth of an orator, with a frank and kindly smile ; all her genius shines forth in her eyes, in her sparkling glances, confiding, superb, deep and sweet when in repose, imperious when lighted by a sudden flash. But to produce this flash the tripod of inspiration must be close at hand. Germaine must speak in order to charm, and must conquer in order to make herself beloved ; the result is an appearance of too much eagerness in her anxiety to please, and even in her kindness. With her, ambition must serve sentiment, but sentiment borrows a degree of uneasiness and greediness from ambition. It is love, as a man conceives of it, — love which rules. She cannot be happy unless she is ruled by the man she loves. In life she must have a guide, in love a master; yet in her life she will be the most unsubmissive, and in love the most despotic, of creatures.

'' What did she find, she who never saw in the object of her choice a sublime protector, a strong and gentle guide, whose glance commands and entreats, and who receives on his knees the right to dispose of our fate?" A friend, '' of the same age, beside whom you must live and die ; a friend whose every interest is your own, whose every perspective is in common with yours, including that of the tomb."

Such is her ideal. It is full of difficulty and. delusion. This romantic marriage she can only imagine in connection with the world she would live in, without which she could not live at all ; but that world, so frivolous and malicious, is it compatible with such a worshipful admiration? What man in it could sustain that sublime character? In the presence of this woman, who would shine so as to be loved, who would be loved only by a man more brilliant than herself, love would be born of the spark struck out by their spirits ; but, the flame once lighted, love would be consumed by it. Before even jealousy could rend it, the rivalry of spirit would have wounded it incessantly.

Read *' Delphine " again ; it is the romance of Madame de Stael's own life. Read especially the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, who is the realization of Delphine, and you shall see how in such hearts the enchantment works. It is at a supper-company of talkers, such as was then in vogue, that Mademoiselle de Lespinasse meets the man who is to take possession of her. In listening to him she feels herself overcome and already carried away. " Yes, you are very kind. I have just re-read your letter. It has the sweetness of Gessner added to the energy of Jean Jacques." And Delphine, after the first interview with Leonce in Madame de Vernon's salon, says : *' I chatted a long time with him, before him, for him. . . . Every word from Leonce added to my esteem, to my admiration. His manner of speaking was concise but energetic ; and when he used expressions that were full of strength and eloquence, one could perceive that he spoke even then but half his thought, and that in the bottom of his heart there still remained stores of sentiment and passion which he declined to waste. With what interest he deigned to listen to me ! Nay, I cannot imagine a more delicious situation: thought stirred by the movement of the soul, the success of self-gratification changed to the joys of the heart, — oh, what happy moments ! "

Here we have the frame and the hero, and we must take account of them if we would understand what distinguishes love in the life and works of Madame de Stael, from the love of Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and George Sand. It is not beside the sounding surf, nor on the shores of the forest-girdled lake, nor upon the promontory of Armorica, nor in the desert where the noisy transports of Chactas are mingled with the noise of the storm, that Delphine and Corinne are carried away by love. The man who charms them is neither the rhetorical Saint-Preux, nor the stormy Rene, nor the gentle Paul, nor Stenio, Jocelyn, or Mauprat, but a man of the world, a successful man, a hero of the Academy, one of the men Lord Nelvil spoke of and admired in Paris, a man of sound learning, of superior talent, having a lively desire to please even more than to be useful, craving the applause of the salon as eagerly as that of the tribune, and living in the society of women for the sake of their praise rather than their love.

In 1 78 1 Germaine met the Comte de Guibert. and her ideal was realized. She was fifteen, he was thirty-eight ; but she was strangely precocious in intellectual concerns, and Guibert was surrounded with so bright a halo that his years scarcely told against him. She did nothing but gaze at him as he passed by, and listen to him as he talked in Madame Necker's salon. In the lofty carriage of his head, in his trenchant tones, in the authority gained by success, in the superb presumption of his wellpreserved youth, in the somewhat artificial impetuosity of his spirit, in the very politic reserve of his conduct, there was something quite imposing which struck her fancy. She never suspected the subtle mechanism of this famous artificer of glory. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse wrote to her about this time: *'You would make the happiness of a vain soul and the despair of a sensitive one. I fear that you may have to say one day, ' The thirst for glory has wearied my soul.' " Mademoiselle de Lespinasse tried it and died of it. Germaine Necker tried it in her turn when she demanded of another Guibert, younger and still more brilliant, the virtue, the tenderness, the passion, and the genius with which she had once adorned the hero of her youthful dreams.

These dreams are embodied in her first compositions. She attempted verses, but with little success : the images did not come spontaneously to her mind ; moreover she rebelled against both rhyme and rhythm. Of all the verses she has written I find none worth preserving except the following; these have a passionate and tender tone : —

" You call me your life : call me rather your soul ; I want words that will last for more than a day. Life passes, a breath may extinguish its flame ; But the soul, like love, shall endure for aye." ^

Of the works of this period of her life the following have been preserved : a romantic comedy called " Sophie, or Secret Sentiments," which was printed ; " Jane Grey," a dramatic essay; "Montmorency," a tragedy in manuscript; three novels, namely, "Adelaide and Theodore," which is an outline of " Delphine ; " " Pauline," an imitation of Clarisse; and " Mirza, or A Traveller's Letter," — "an incident founded upon some circumstances in the treatment of the negroes." These are sentimental compositions, or " sensibles," as the author is pleased to term them. Here are a few lines merely to show their tone : " ' Sometimes I have been beloved,' said Mirza. * I have

First Writings. 29

perhaps longed to be susceptible; I have longed to know this sentiment which takes hold upon one's whole life, and itself shapes the fate of every minute of the day.' But Mirza has read (and read too much), and still more has conversed and reflected. ' It has never before,' she says, ' been possible to deceive me, or for me to deceive myself.' * Mirza,' cried Ximeo, * how I pity you ! The pleasures of thought are not enough. Only those of the heart satisfy all the faculties of the soul.' " Nothing whatever in these early attempts proclaims the great writer; but they describe a state of soul, and reveal the woman. This is the principal and indeed the sole interest to be found to-day in the most important of these youthful works, which is entitled '' Letters upon the Writings and Character of Jean Jacques Rousseau." It is a pretentious piece, made up of variations composed by a young virtnosa upon a fashionable theme for a parlor concert. The style is false, taste has changed, amateurism is out of date ; but the work is a declaration, almost a programme of Hfe. Germaine experienced the charm of Rousseau, but she was not entirely captivated by it. It was a shadow which will deepen still more with the years. It marks the line which separates Germaine Necker from the other two literary daughters of Jean Jacques, — Madame Roland and George Sand. Madame Roland is Heloi'se in the flesh; George Sand is Heloi'se raised to genius ; the former has all the virtue, the latter all the poetry, of Rousseau. Germaine Necker is only an enthusiastic reader and an undiscipHned imitator. In fact, she regained her self-possession, and sought inspiration from Rousseau rather than procession. Her style never attained the gravity of "Le Contrat Social " or the enchanting si'mplicity of the *' Confessions," and she appropriated nothing but the rhetoric of '' Emile." To begin with, her inexorable good sense, her political inclinations, and especially the historical taste which experience developed in her, led her far away from Jean Jacques. For a complete understanding of the master she lacked the community of destiny which forms the soul-tie between him and Manon Phlipon or Aurore Dupin. The daughter of Necker had no feeling that Julie or Sophie lived again in herself; she had no inclination to declare herself citoyenne of the republic of the Contrat. His customs, his passions, his politics had no place in her world ; and she twice says as much, in passing the following judgments, one of which shadows forth the future historian, while the other betrays the femme d' esprit : —