Rival French courts; the experiences of a lady-in-waiting at Sceaux, at Versailles, and in the Bastille

Introduction

The heroine of the following pages was without wealth, without position, without influence, at least as these are counted in the circles in which she moved ; she could not bestow great favours upon her friends, nor awaken even small fears in the heart of her enemies. Yet her Memoirs, when they appeared a few years after her death, were greeted with an eagerness, read with a glow of interest which few writings have called forth.

Madame de Sevigne, the Due de Saint-Simon, whose eyes had seen more and that more clearly than is given to most mortals to see, were never read, as authors, by their contemporaries. Nearly forty years elapsed after Madame de Sevigne's death before her letters. Memoirs in matter if not in form, were published and circulated ; more than a hundred years had heaped their dust upon Saint-Simon's ruthless portraits before they were revealed to the public ; but scarcely three years had passed after Madame de Staal's death,

before Paris began to turn over eagerly the

V a 2.

vi INTRODUCTION

leaves of her newly published Memoirs. They were in all hands, her name was on all lips. . . .

"Yes, all the women think so, but all the men do not ..." said Troublet, sweeping all Paris into his answer to an ill-natured remark upon the topic of the hour. The remark had come from Fontenelle ; he was then close upon his hundredth year, and his soul had dried within him. " I am sorry for her," he had said of Madame de Staal, whom he had counted among his friends, "this is written with agreeable elegance, but it was not worth writing at all."

Posterity has not sided with Fontenelle ; over and over again, from women whom time and distance have rendered impartial, as well as from men endowed by heaven with natural fairness, we hear these spontaneous expressions of delight which a truly human document cannot fail to call forth. Madame de Staal has a sense of humour deliciously companionable, a charming directness most unique in that time of meandering periphrases, a philosophy so true and so discerning that it holds and fascinates.

" It seems to me," says Sainte-Beuve, " that the Memoirs of Madame de Staal should be re-read at the beginning of each winter, at the end of autumn, beneath the November trees to the sound of the falling foliage."

INTRODUCTION vii

Yes, a certain note of sadness runs all through these Memoirs, and yet they read like a fairy tale — but a fairy tale with a human ending: joy declines through its pages, as it declines through the human years, as the sun declines through the autumn to the winter. There is a sudden turn of the wheel of fate, and instead of "living happily ever after " the heroine meets unhappiness face to face, and hears its footsteps dogging her own for ever on the unexpected path into which she has been forced.

Her childhood and her youth had been encompassed with joy and love and adulation ; like a veritable little queen she had seen all who approached her acknowledge her sway, forestall her desires, extoll her decisions, and she had taken it as a matter of course. Her grace, her wit, her wisdom had been to her like so many magic wands — then the unexpected happens, and the young queen wakes up one morning to find herself a waiting maid ! How does she bear herself under such crushing conditions ; how does she draw from her very servitude the elements of the triumph which she is to accomplish, the greatest triumph, immortality in the minds of men ? that question stimulates for ever the imagination, as one turns over the pages of Madame de Staal's Memoirs.

It is true she lived at a time peculiarly charged with dramatic possibilities ; the last years of viii INTRODUCTION

Louis XIV.'s reign, the first years which followed his death were perhaps more fraught with passion than any other time in French history. The fortress of absolutism and of tradition was crumbling down, the walls had fallen, and there lay revealed to eager and passionate eyes avenues endless and unexplored. But fate had enclosed Madame de Staal Delaunay within a magic circle in which all eyes were resolutely closed to realities. While the rest of France was coming fast into its natural inheritance; a sane desire to test the efficacy of thought by the efficacy of deeds, the little court of Sceaux, where Madame de Staal lived, persisted in treating thought as a futile plaything, and jangled words as a court jester jangles his bells, for the mere pleasure of hearing them tinkle. Madame du Maine, " queen of Sceaux " as she liked to hear herself called, masqueraded through life, a be-ribonned shepherdess, a nymph, a goddess, as fancy prompted, and forced into her masquerade all those who came into contact with her. She also dragged them with her into a conspiracy, which has its place in history, yet savours more of a comedy than of a political undertaking, dragged them incidentally into prison, and having herself emerged from a " cruel " captivity without having learned anything therefrom about the realities of life, she went back unchanged to her absurdities.

INTRODUCTION ix

For fully twenty-five years longer she afforded the France of Voltaire and of the Encyclopedists the astonishing spectacle of a topsy-turvydom, where all played at being something which they were not, and strove night and day to outdo one another in futilities. Madame du Maine did it from choice, and her courtiers were hypnotised into it with or without their consent. As a representative of the " divine " right of the greater to impose their whims upon the smaller, Madame du Maine is indeed unsurpassed.

*' If you wish," says Sainte-Beuve, " to study in a perfect specimen, and as if under the microscope, the dainty egotism the fantastic and coquettish despotism of a princess of the blood in the olden time, and the artless impossibility in which she lived of conceiving any other existence in the world than her own, go to Sceaux, there you will see these gross defects in miniature, just as we see gold-fish moving in the sunshine in a transparent bowl."

It is that " transparent bowl " which Madame de Staal Delaunay holds up to our eyes, and upon it she brings to play most skilfully the light of her humorous wisdom and philosophy. She lived in the atmosphere of Sceaux, yet was not of it ; though she breathed it day after day, its narcotic properties could not dull her

X INTRODUCTION

clear vision nor drug her independent spirit. She is that rare exception among exceptions : an insider capable of taking an outsider's point of view. She has been much read, much discussed — the details of her life not mentioned in her Memoirs have been supplied by enthusiastic biographers. One rather unaccountable error seems to have slipped into most of these biographies ; started by one, repeated by the others, it gave rise to a good deal of controversy : the date of Mademoiselle Delaunay's birth has been stated over and over again as 1693, and according to that she would have been barely eighteen when she entered Madame du Maine's service — What ! said sceptic readers, a girl of eighteen, inexperienced, impressionable, delicately nurtured is suddenly called to fight life at most cruel odds and bears no apparent marks of its blows ! The "indelible mark of the waiting-maid," as she herself calls it, is stamped so early upon her character, yet her dignity rises above it as a tall lily rises undefiled above the swamp in which it is rooted — impossible ! there is some falsification ! — womanlike, Madame de Staal Delaunay has tampered with her dates ! Upon closer inspection one realises, however, that there has been no voluntary error of date in the Memoirs. Mademoiselle Delaunay does not state with any precision the year of her birth ; moreover the

INTRODUCTION xi

fact that certain historical events are mentioned by her as contemporary with certain circumstances of her life might have prevented the initial error. It is now commonly thought that Mademoiselle Delaunay was not in her nineteenth but close upon her twenty-sixth year when she entered Madame du Maine's service. She was ready to unravel the bewildering complexity of elements which were to make up her life at Sceaux, and although the sum total of it all was to be sadness, it was also to be fullness and richness of experience. It was given to her to taste of the bitterness and of the joy of life, of its futility and of its fervour ; to her was given, moreover, that gift of expression which is the true liberator of the soul.

" She saw true," says Sainte - Beuve, in the charming chapter which he devotes to her, " and it was given to her to transmit to us what she saw. If she missed more than one gift of fate, she at least had those of mind, language, and taste. Some of her least sayings have come into the circulation of society and have added to the riches of the mind of France. More than that — by her noble conduct during a miserable conspiracy, she has won a place in all future history. How many statesmen who think themselves great men and who are striving all their lives, do not obtain as much ! "

Contents

CHAP. PAQE

I, AT THE CONVENT OF SAINT-SATJVETJR ... 1

n. THE MAKQtnS DE SILLY 8

Chapter I At The Convent Of Saint- Sauveur

In the year 1684 an obscure French artist named Cordier Delaunay emigrated to England, in the hope of finding there the sustenance, if not the fame, which his work had not brought him in France. His efforts did not meet with success ; he was never able to send for the young wife whom he had left behind him in Paris, but in that same year, 1684, his name was rescued from oblivion through the birth of his second daughter, the future Madame de Staal Delaunay. Her charming Memoirs, in which that most modern element, the power not to take one's self too seriously, mixes so naturally with eighteenth - century sensibility, are among the most refreshing documents of a century famous for picturesque contrasts.

The first years of little Mademoiselle Delaunay were spent at the convent of Saint - Sauveur d'Evreux in Normandy, where, through the

2 AT THE CONVENT OF SAINT-SAUVEUR

introduction of some influential friends, her mother had been admitted as a non-paying da7ne pensionnaire. The abbess, Madame de la Rochefoucauld, was a sister of the famous Due de la Rochefoucauld, author of the pessimistic " Maximes," and the fact that the abbess was an exclusive lover of dogs may be taken as an indication that she shared in some measure her brother's misanthropy. She had made of her apartment a home for homeless dogs. The lame, the blind, the weak, the aged filled it with whinings and with barkings, and with deep canine sighs of contentment and resignation ; the place was theirs, and human invaders were warned to tread cautiously, for fear of infringing upon superior rights.

The child, who had found a shelter in the convent too, had lived there two years with her mother, and was four years old before her baby helplessness had been allowed to come into collision with lame paws and battered tails. In consequence the abbess hardly knew her, at a time when the other religieuses were already her devoted slaves. It happened then that one day she was asked with her mother to dine in Madame de la Rochefoucauld's apartment.

Very carefully, with serious baby intensity, she steered through the dangers against which she had been warned, when lo ! there was a loud howl, and

CHILDHOOD 3

the abbess' face assumed an expression of awe-inspiring sternness. The little girl stopped short, very much frightened, and some one whispered in her ear " II faut demander pardon." With childish equity, the offender walked straight to the offended — dog though he was — and asked his pardon in regretful, well- chosen language. Everybody laughed ; she was already famous all through the convent for her wonderful choice of words, this little four-year old pleader, but the abbess had never noticed it before ; this time she loved her for it and remained her friend from that day onward.

The child had need of friends indeed. Very soon her mother had to leave her, in order to accept the post of governess to the Duchesse de Ventadour's daughter, and shortly after Monsieur Cordier Delaunay died in England. His little daughter had never seen him, and her later comment on her childish grief at the news of his death does not sound emotional. " Je ne me souviens plus d'ou mes larmes partirent," she says in her Memoirs.

Madame de la Rochefoucauld proved a very good friend to the little orphan ; but better friends still were two ladies then staying at the convent, Mesdames de Grieu, whose affection seemed to have amounted to extravagant devotion. " They were unoccupied," as Madame de Staal Delaunay explains in her Memoirs, analysing the situation

4 AT THE CONVENT OF SAINT-SAUVEUR

with her customary balance, " and loved me with the vehemence which solitude and listlessness are apt to give to all feelings." Madame de Grieu, former abbess of Saint-Jouarre, and her sister were awaiting in the convent of Saint Sauveur the issue of the quarrel between Louis XIV. and the Holy See, concerning the right of nominating abbesses for the " Urbanist " convents. The quarrel lasted long, and when at last, after five years, Madame de Grieu took possession of the convent of Saint Louis in Rouen, she adopted the child who had filled with interest the empty days of her interregnum.

At Saint Louis, little Mademoiselle Delaunay held absolute sway : she lived in the abbess' private apartments ; four nuns, and with them Madame de Grieu's unwilling nieces, were bidden to wait upon her, and a pension which the abbess derived from private sources was spent almost exclusively on the child's education, entrusted to numerous and expensive tutors. As they passed in and out of the convent gates, these masters, who were part of the luxury lavished upon the abbess' protegee, were no doubt followed by many a disapproving glance and gesture of the good nuns ; but they must have been immensely gratified with their pupil, who, at the age of thirteen, studied " passionately " the philosophy of Descartes and " amused " herself by anticipating his deductions, in order to

THE FIRST LITERARY SUCCESS 5

ascertain whether she had rightly grasped his meaning !

She soon had an opportunity of putting her dialectical talents to a practical use, and that in the defence of Madame de Grieu's interests against those of a rival abbess, nominated to Saint Louis by the Archbishop of Rouen. Madame de Grieu was then in a very difficult position : the murmurs of the gossiping nuns had swelled to the proportions of a rebellion, and the abbess was accused of spending the revenues of the convent on her nieces and her adopted daughter.

There were no grounds for this accusation ; the convent of Saint Louis was wretchedly poor, and even the wisest of administrations had failed to raise it to a state of prosperity, but not one sou of its revenues had been put to private or illegal use. Unable to prove her integrity, but determined to stand her ground, the abbess at last proposed to give up the temporal administration of the convent and the living which she herself derived from it, undertaking to depend entirely on her private income.

Many negotiations were necessary to arrive at

a satisfactory agreement, and when this was reached

at last, the legal advisers of the abbess were obliged

to own that the most conclusive arguments in the

case had come from the pen of a girl of fourteen —

little Mademoiselle Delaunay. Her talents had,

a2

6 AT THE CONVENT OF SAINT-SAUVEUR

by this time, won her more than mere technical admiration. The Memoirs mention among others a certain Monsieur Brunei who besieged her with love sonnets, which, however, seem to have made very little impression upon the recipient, and which certainly remained unanswered. In spite of rebuffs, and driven by an infatuation which thirsted to communicate itself, Brunei introduced to her a friend who speedily became a rival. It was a certain Abbe de Vertot, an impecunious and enthusiastic bookworm, the terror of all booksellers, whose books he thumbed rapturously from morning till night, without ever being able to buy them. The books now profited by his being in love ; but not so the booksellers, for their ears rang with the praises of Mademoiselle Delaunay's genius and charms, while the books lay unheeded on the counter. It may have been during one of these rhapsodical but one-sided conversations that the famous Monsieur de Fontenelle, staying at Rouen for a few days, pushed open the door of the bookshop, and, after listening for a while in his usual deliberate manner, decided that Madame de Grieu's young p7'otegee must be worth knowing. At any rate his voice joins the chorus of her praises about that time, and no weightier admiration could have been won than that of the feted author of " La Pluralite des Mondes." Mademoiselle Delaunay does not, however, seem to have attached

A SLACKENING ESCORT 7

much importance to the tribute of his appreciation ; she was then very interested in some friends who Hved near the convent gates, and to whom she paid daily visits, very interested also in a relative of theirs, a Monsieur de Rey, who, after each visit, never failed to offer her his hand to escort her back to Saint Louis. The length and breadth of a public square lay between the house in question and the convent gates, and as Monsieur de Rey and Mademoiselle Delaunay sauntered through it observant onlookers might have noticed that at first they skirted the outer edge of the square, lengthening the road to the utmost. As the days went by, however, the couple steered more and more towards the diagonal crossing line, until at last the convent gates were reached with astonishing alacrity. " Calculate the quantitative difference between a ' square ' and a ' diagonal ' affection" — Mademoiselle Delaunay set herself that problem which she had helped to illustrate, and shed no tears over its solution !

Chapter II

A CONVENT, in spite of its liberal attitude of two hundred years ago, would hardly seem the best possible school wherein to gain a knowledge of love, but Mademoiselle Delaunay's natural understanding of its laws and vagaries developed quite independently of her surroundings.

Of the vague stirrings of her young imagination before she meets the man whom she will love passionately to the end, she tells in a charming tone of amused detachment ; and here and there, shining like little crystal drops of wisdom, are reflections which, collected and classified, would make an excellent "guide to love." " The heart hardly ever fails to rebel against any demands which it could not reciprocate" is her summing up of the hesitations and rejections awakened in her by the courtship of Monsieur Brunei. He was, as she describes him

" a man of exquisite discernment, possessed of much knowledge, yet lacking in those graces

NEW SOCIAL INTERESTS 9

which are only acquired in society, and which please more readily than do more sterling advantages. It interested me," she owns a little later on, "to unravel his real thoughts and feelings about me, but if he expressed them too clearly and seemed to expect some return, I felt a great distaste for him."

The first time she met a man of really polished manners, the social instinct in her leapt up and exulted, and she imagined that her heart was touched. It happened in an old Normandy chateau, very lonely and dull, where she was visiting a young convent friend.

" I had only met there a few country squires," she says, "who had not at all attracted my attention, when the chevalier d'Herb . . . came to call. He was asked to join in a game of cards, after which he went away, promising to return for a longer visit a little later."

Meanwhile Mademoiselle Delaunay made a discovery which seemed rather perturbing to her.

" I discovered," she continues, " that I desired his return ; I thought over the reasons which I could have for that and finally explained to myself that he was a witty man, a man with social cleverness whose company one must naturally desire in a place as lonely as this was. Then, on examining more closely upon what I had based my opinion of his wit, and on trying to remember what I had heard him say, the only words of his which I could recall were 'gano, trois matadors' — and 'sans prendre.' "

After that she was perhaps not quite unprepared for the disillusion which was to follow, and she closes the episode by remarking quite cheerfully : *'When he came back and spoke at greater length, the wit with which I had endowed him so gratuitously vanished entirely."

It was at that same chateau, the Chateau de Silly in Normandy, that she met the man who was to colour and control the whole of her emotional life. The young Marquis de Silly was not at the chateau when Mademoiselle Delaunay first stayed there as the guest of his sister, but he was rarely absent from their conversations. His extreme selfishness had in fact a rare power of creating in others a total absorption in his interests ; but of this the ardent young girl, ready for worship and seeking it, could know nothing yet. Besides, recent circumstances had contributed to lend still more interest to his personality. He was a soldier ; he had fought bravely, had been taken prisoner at the battle of Hochstadt * and sent to England. There he had remained for some time, but,

"owing to the climate of that country," as Mademoiselle Delaunay reports, "he had been threatened with consumption, and had obtained

* Better known as the battle of Blenheim, 13th August 1704.

FIRST LOVE 11

leave to return to France on his parole ; the Paris doctors had advised him to go to Normandy to breathe his native air. Monsieur de Silly had spent his life in the best society and on a very agreeable footing. I had heard so much about him that I w^as very impatient to make his acquaintance."

However, Mademoiselle Delaunay had to wait till the return of the summer, for Monsieur de Silly could not be expected to endure the dullness of a winter in the country ! The wished-for day arrived at last, and she went back to Silly full of anticipations.

"The son of the house was expected," she writes, "and all were already full of him. He arrived ; everybody went to meet him. I went like every one else, but with a little less precipitation, and when I arrived upon the scene, he was already going up the stairs to his apartments. He turned round to give some orders. I was struck by the charm of his expression, and by a certain nobility in his bearing which made him look different from any one I had seen before."

From that ineffaceable moment her love for Monsieur de Silly was to remain the strongest element in her life, and his indifference was but to strengthen her passion.

" He did not invite conversation from any one," she adds, "and sought little intercourse at first. Some books which he had brought with him afforded him companionship, and except at meals, he was rarely seen. But although he seldom took the trouble to speak, he spoke so well and with so much grace that his wit shone in spite of himself."

After this note of infatuation we are glad to find some natural feeling of pique.

"His charms and his disdain stung me to the quick, and his sister who had seen him more sociable was hardly less hurt by it than I was ; this formed the constant subject of our conversations. ..."

And then we hear that one fine day this very disdainful young hero, wandering through a wood, happened to overhear his name and deigned to stop and listen. Behind a hawthorn bush two young girls were hotly discussing a subject of paramount importance to himself — his own personality. He listened to all they said — this time his interest was fettered ; and then he stole back quietly to the house, awaited their return, and told them that he had overheard a conversation, that it had been about himself — "qu'on en avait dit beaucoup de mal, et que ce n'etait pas en riant. On n'a pas envie de rire, lui dis-je, quand on se plaint de vous. ..." O charming mixture of flattery and bold sincerity ! — did Monsieur de Silly appreciate the tone as

"ABSOLUTE HAPPINESS" 13

much as the preoccupation with his character? Be that as it may, henceforth he seemed to find these two neghgeable young women worthy of his society, and Mademoiselle Delaunay had the "joy to see continually some one whose presence was sufficient in itself to cause absolute happiness."

The whole atmosphere of the house favoured the expansion of her feelings.

" It was so much in the air," she says, " to be wholly absorbed in him, that I could follow my inclination to it, without making myself conspicuous. However, my actions were sometimes so marked, in spite of myself, that they could not fail to carry conviction. One day, for instance, I had given him a purse which had just been sent to me from my convent, and he threw his own into the hands of one of his mother's maids who was not among the least of his admirers. Whether I wanted to have that purse or merely wanted to prevent the other from having it, I caught it in the air before it reached its destination, and that in the presence of the old Marquise de Silly, a very grave and stern woman. ..."

Thus Mademoiselle Delaunay gloried, womanlike, in throwing all prudence to the winds, as a small tribute to her love. Monsieur de Silly, on the other hand, exercised all that male caution which is so conspicuous whenever passion has not been roused. The Memoirs strike a little note of irony on that subject.

"The fear of giving me an opportunity to explain myself made Monsieur de Silly very careful not to remain alone v^^ith me. I was very determined, on my part, not to say anything to him ; yet I desired passionately that meeting which he avoided so studiously, and when I had fully understood the reason of his circumspection, I wished even more fervently to have with him some private conversation which would reassure him and make him understand how far I was from forgetting what I owed to myself."

After that charming little outburst of youthful dignity, she tells, with a smile of humorous retrospection, how the interview came to pass.

" One day, as we were starting out for our usual walk. Mademoiselle de Silly, not feeling very well, decided to remain at home. The old Marquise, anxious to provide entertainment for her son, asked me to go with him. We walked as far as a big meadow, some distance away. He was walking without speaking, much more embarrassed than I was ; this little triumph gave me courage to speak, and I remarked upon the beauty of the fields ; — but this topic not seeming yet distant enough from the subject I wished to avoid, I left mere earth for the heavens, soared across the entire planet system and firmly did 1

PAINS OF JEALOUSY 15

hold my ground in those transcendental regions, until we got back to the chateau."

It was a small triumph, but her first taste of the "bitter-sweet herb of self-mastery" ; and after long years had passed, she still remembered the austere joy with which it had filled her young soul. " I experienced," she says, "that delicious exultation which is unknown to those who cannot master the impulses of their heart."

There were less exalted moments to recall also : she saw Monsieur de Silly flirt with rivals, and she was outrageously jealous. One of these rivals had over her the advantage of having travelled in England and in Germany, and thus, being a woman with whom a man of the world could compare experiences ! Mademoiselle Delaunay resented this bitterly, but to hide her jealousy she made exaggerated advances to her rival ; she made all the mistakes which a woman of her temperament and of her inexperience would have made, but she never attempted to pull her hero down to her own erring level by owning to any imperfections in his conduct !

And then the end of her visit to Silly drew near, and shortly before that the departure of the young Marquis, heralded by the arrival of mysterious letters and packets which caused many secret conferences between mother and son, and great heart-burnings to the young girl who was excluded from the conversations.

"I perceived," she writes, "that something which was of great importance to him was being discussed, and that he meant to say nothing of it to me. This seemed to me an insult ; I no longer spoke to him, and hardly answered when he spoke to me. He noticed my displeasure, without understanding the reason of it, and as he felt real friendship for me, he wished to clear up matters and to appease me. He stopped me, therefore, one day, when I was about to enter the Marquise de Silly's apartment. I was crossing very hurriedly a hall in which he was wandering ^bout aimlessly, and I pretended not to see him ; but he came up to me, stopped me, and made me sit down by his side, saying that he wished to talk to me. He spoke with so much charm and feeling, made up so well for the lack of confidence which had offended me, appeared so touched by my grief, so flattered by its cause, that I never felt more satisfied with him, and more comforted about the power which he had gained over me."