MADAME DE STAEL.
Anne Louise Germaine Necker, the celebrated daughter of a celebrated father, was born at Paris, April 22, 1766. In her earliest years she manifested uncommon vivacity of perception and depth of feeling; and at the age of eleven, her sprightliness, her self-possession, and the eager and intelligent interest which she took in all the subjects of conversation, rendered her the pet and the wonder of the brilliant circle which frequented her father’s house. Necker himself, though he delighted in promoting the developement of his daughter’s talents, was a watchful critic of her faults: “I owe,” she said, “to my father’s penetration, the frankness of my disposition, and the simplicity of my mind. He exposed every sort of affectation; and, in his company, I formed the habit of thinking that my heart lay open to view.” She repaid his care and tenderness by a passionate and devoted affection, such as scarcely seems to belong to the relationship which existed between them. Throughout his life, the desire to minister to his pleasure was her first object, and his death threw a permanent shade of melancholy over her spirit.
Madlle. Necker paid the usual price of mental precocity, in its debilitating effects upon her bodily constitution. At the age of fourteen, serious apprehensions were entertained for her life; and she was sent to St. Ouen, in the neighbourhood of Paris, for the benefit of country air, with orders to abstain from every species of severe study. Thither her father repaired at every interval of leisure; and being withdrawn from the strict line of behaviour prescribed by her mother, who, having done much herself by dint of study, thought that no accomplishments graces could be worth possessing which were not the fruit of study, she passed her time in the unrestrained enjoyment of M. Necker’ssociety, in the indulgence of her brilliant imagination, and the spontaneous cultivation of her powerful mind. This course of life was more favourable to the developement of that poetical, ardent, and enthusiastic temper, which was the source of so much enjoyment, and so much distinction, than to the habits of self-control without which such a temper is almost too dangerous to be called a blessing. Her character at this period of life is thus described by her relation and biographer, Mad. Necker de Saussure: “We may figure to ourselves Mad. de Stael, in her early youth, entering with confidence upon a life, which to her promised nothing but happiness. Too benevolent to expect hatred from others, too fond of talent in others to anticipate the envy of her own, she loved to exalt genius, enthusiasm, and inspiration, and was herself an example of their power. The love of glory, and of liberty, the inherent beauty of virtue, the pleasures of affection, each in turn afforded subjects for her eloquence. Not that she was always in the clouds: she never lost presence of mind, nor was she run away with by enthusiasm.” In later life her good taste led her to abstain from this lofty vein of conversation, especially when it was forced upon her: “I tramp in the mire with wooden shoes, whenever they would force me to live always in the clouds.”
Endowed with such qualities, theeffectwhich Madlle. Necker produced upon her introduction to society was as brilliant as her friends could desire, though the effervescence of imagination and youthful spirits sometimes led her to commit breaches of etiquette, which might have been fatal to the success of a less accomplished debutant. At the age of twenty, in 1786, she married the Baron de Stael Holstein, ambassador of Sweden at the court of France. He was much the elder, and the matter seems to have been arranged by her parents, with her acquiescence indeed, but without her heart being at all interested in the connexion. And we trace the effect of her ruling passion, love of her father, in the Baron de Stael’s engagement not to take her to reside in Sweden, without her free consent. During a large portion of their married life they were separated from each other by the baron’s absences from France; but when age and sickness weighed him down, she hastened to comfort him, and his last hours (in 1802) were soothed by her presence and watchful care. By this marriage Mad. de Stael had four children, of whom only a son and a daughter survived her: the latter became the wife of the Duc de Broglie; the former inherited his father’s title, and has won for himself a creditable place in the literature of the age.
At the beginning of the revolution, Mad. de Stael watched the new prospects opening 011 her country with joyful anticipation: but she was shocked and disgusted by the ferocious excesses which ensued. Her love of liberty was too sincere to let her justify the policy, or join the party of the court, but, with an admirable courage, she used the powerful influence of her talents and her connexions to save as many as possible of the victims of that frenzied time. She arranged a plan for the escape of the royal family from the Tuileries; and after the death of Louis XVI., she had the boldness (for so it must be called) to publish her ‘Défense de la Reine.’ It needed all the author’s tact and ingenuity, as well as eloquence, so to plead the queen’s cause, as, on the one hand, not to compromise the dignity of her innocence, and, on the other, not to aggravate the rage of those who clamoured for her destruction.
Having passed safely through the Reign of Terror, Mad. de Stael hailed the establishment of the Directory in 1795, as the commencement of a settled government. Through life she devoted a large portion of her attention to politics, which she designated as comprehending within their sphere, morality, religion, and literature; and at this period especially, while her fame in literature was not yet established, and the ardent enthusiasm of her temper was unchecked by misfortune, she not only took an eager interest in the course of affairs, but exerted her powers to gain some influence in the direction of them. Her brilliant conversation drew around her the ablest and most accomplished men of the French capital; and in Paris, where the public opinion of France is compressed into a narrow space, wit or beauty have always had an influence unknown to the more sedate nations of the north. To this period of her life belong the treatises,—more interesting as specimens of her genius, than important for the truth of her theories—‘De l’Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur des Individus et des Nations,’ published in 1796, of which only the first part, relating to individuals, was completed; and ‘De la Littérature considerée dans ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales,’ published in 1800: subjects, it has been truly said, which demand the observation and study of a whole life. It is not on these, therefore, that her fame is based. But the latter has the great merit, according to the testimony of Sir James Mackintosh, of being the first attempt to treat the philosophy of literary history upon a bold and comprehensive scale.
But she could not aspire to “direct the storm,” without running some danger of being caught in it; and it is probable, as indeed she herself admits, that if she had foreseen the troubles which politicalinfluence was to bring upon her, she would have been well pleased to resign all pretension to it. At the end of 1799, Bonaparte rose to power on the ruin of the Directory. That remarkable man inspired Mad. de Stael from the first with an indescribable fear and dislike, which she has expressed throughout her very interesting work, entitled ‘Dix Années d’Exil;’ and as she saw at once the danger to which the cause of rational liberty was exposed by his ambition, and feared not to express her sentiments, her house became the focus of discontent. Benjamin Constant, then one of her intimate associates, having prepared and communicated to her a speech to expose the dawning tyranny of the First Consul, warned her that, if spoken, it would necessarily be followed by the desertion of the brilliant society which she loved, and by which she was surrounded. She replied, “We must do as we think right.” It was accordingly pronounced on the following day, on the evening of which her favourite circle was to assemble at her own house. Before six o’clock she received ten notes of excuse. “The first and second I bore well enough, but as one note came after another, they began to disturb me. I appealed in vain to my conscience, which had bidden me resign the pleasures which depended on Bonaparte’s favour: so many good sort of persons blamed me, that I could not hold fast enough by my own view of the question.” And she says just before, with her usual candour, “If I had foreseen what I have suffered, dating from that day, I should not have been resolute enough to decline M. Constant’s offer to abstain from coming forward, for the sake of not compromising me.” The speech was followed by an intimation from Fouché, that Mad. de Stael’s retirement from Paris for a short time would be expedient.
In the spring of 1800, Bonaparte’s absence upon the campaign of Marengo, and the publication of her work on literature, brought Mad. de Stael again into fashion. From that time until 1802, she remained undisturbed, and divided her time chiefly between Paris, and her father’s residence at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva. In the latter year (in which she published ‘Delphine’) her intimacy with Bernadotte caused the First Consul to regard her with suspicion, though the dread of being banished from the delights of Parisian society had taught her prudence. “They pretend,” he said, “that she neither talks politics, nor mentions me; but I know not how it happens, that people seem to like me less after visiting her.” Prudence, or the warning of her friends, detained Mad. de Stael at Coppet during the winter of 1802–3: but when war broke out, and she thought that Bonaparte’s attention was fully occupied by the proposed descent upon England, she could notresist the thirst of conversation which always drew her to Paris. She did not venture to enter the city; but she had not been long in its neighbourhood, when she was terribly disconcerted by a peremptory order not to appear within forty leagues of the metropolis. She candidly avows that “la conversation Française n’existe qu’à Paris, et la conversation a été, depuis mon enfance mon plus grand plaisir.” The rest of France, therefore, had no attraction for her, and she determined to visit Germany. Weimar was her first place of abode, where she became acquainted with Goethe, Wieland, and Schiller, and, under their auspices, commenced her study of the German language and literature. In 1804, she proceeded to Berlin; but she was suddenly recalled to Switzerland by the illness and death of M. Necker.
To this most painful loss Mad. Necker de Saussure attributes a deep and beneficial influence on her friend’s character. It inspired a melancholy which perhaps never was entirely dissipated, it raised her thoughts to a more exalted strain of meditation, and gave vigour and consistency to those reverential feelings, which before were perhaps hardly definite enough to be termed religion. At this time she composed her account of the private life of M. Necker, of which B. Constant has said, that no other of her works conveys so good a notion of the author. Shortly after she visited Italy for the first time. The grand and solemn remains of antiquity harmonized with the melancholy of her mind; and in this journey was developed a love of art, and, in a less degree, a taste for scenery, of which up to this time she seems to have been strangely deficient. The fruit of her travels appeared in ‘Corinne,’ written after her return to Coppet in 1805, and published at Paris early in 1807, which raised her to the first class of living writers. Mad. Necker de Saussure says, in the strain of high panegyric, “Il n’eut qu’une voix, qu’un cri d’admiration dans l’Europe lettrée; et ce phénomène fut partout un événement;” and Sir James Mackintosh, who read it in India, in a translation, says, “I swallow Corinne slowly, that I may taste every drop. I prolong my enjoyment, and really dread the termination.” Dictated by the same leading idea as ‘Delphine,’ but far superior in depth and truth of sentiment, as well as eloquence, and genuine poetic ardour, it was also free from the moral objections to the former novel. Each heroine, according to the lively author first quoted, is a transcript from the author herself. “‘Corinne’ is the ideal of Mad. de Stael; ‘Delphine’ is her very self in youth.” A similar idea occurred to Mackintosh,—“In the character of ‘Corinne,’ Mad. de Stael draws an imaginaryself—what she is, what she had the power of being, and what she can easily imagine that she might have become. Purity, which her sentiments and principles teach her to love; talents and accomplishments, which her energetic genius might easily have acquired; uncommon scenes, and incidents fitted for her extraordinary mind; and even beauty, which her fancy contemplates so constantly, that she can scarcely suppose it to be foreign to herself, and which, in the enthusiasm of invention, she bestows on this adorned as well as improved self,—these seem to be the materials out of which she has formed ‘Corinne,’ and the mode in which she reconciled it to her knowledge of her own character.... The grand defect is the want of repose—too much, and too ingenious reflection—too uniform an ardour of feeling. The understanding is fatigued, the heart ceases to feel.”
Before the publication of ‘Corinne.’ Mad. de Stael had ventured into the neighbourhood of Paris. The book contained nothing hostile to Napoleon; but the new wreath of fame which the author had woven for herself revived his spleen, and she soon received a peremptory order to quit France. This was a bitter mortification. We have mentioned her ruling love of conversation: and to her Paris was the world; beyond its limits life was vegetation. “Give me the Rue du Bac,” she said to those who extolled the Lake of Geneva; “I would prefer living in Paris on a fourth story, with a hundred louis a year.” The chief studies of her exile were German literature and metaphysics. In the autumn of 1807 she visited Vienna, where she spent a year in tranquil enjoyment, soothed by the respect and admiration, and gratified by the polished manners and conversation of the exalted circles in which she moved, and undisturbed by the petty tyranny which, in her stolen visits to France, always hung over her head. In 1808 she returned to Coppet, to arrange the materials for her great work on Germany. Having devoted nearly two years to this task, she went to France in the summer of 1810, the decree of exile being so far relaxed, that she was permitted, as before, to reside forty leagues from the capital. Her principal object was to superintend the printing of her work, which was to be published at Paris. After passing safely, though with many alterations, through the censorship, the last proof was corrected, September 23. Scarcely was this done, and 10,000 copies struck off, when the whole impression was seized and destroyed. Mad. de Stael fortunately was enabled, by timely warning, to secrete the manuscript. This blow was accompanied by an order to quit France without delay. America, which she had expressed a desire to visit, and Coppet, were the only places offered to her choice:an attempt to reach England, which was her secret wish, would have been followed by immediate arrest. She chose to return to her paternal home. There the Emperor’s persecution, and her hatred of him, reached their height; and though not to be ranked with the graver offences of tyranny, his treatment of her was of a most irritating character, and unbecoming any but a low-minded despot. It was intimated that she had better confine her excursions to a circle of two leagues; her motions were watched, even within her own house; to be regarded as her friend was equivalent to a sentence of disgrace or dismissal, to any person dependent on the government; her sons were forbidden to enter their native country; M. Schlegel, their domestic tutor, was ordered to quit Coppet; and worst of all, her two dearest friends, M. de Montmorency and Mad. Recamier, were banished France for having presumed to visit her. These, and more trifling delinquencies are set forth with most stinging sarcasm, in her ‘Ten Years of Exile.’
Harassed beyond endurance, she resolved to make an attempt to escape from these never-ending vexations. But whither to go? She could not obtain permission to reside elsewhere; and if Napoleon demanded her, no continental power, except Russia, could give her an asylum. To obtain a conveyance to England was impossible, except from some port to the north of Hamburg; and to reach that distant region, it was necessary to traverse the whole of Europe, in constant danger of being intercepted and detained. After eight months of irresolution, she found courage and opportunity to make the attempt; and quitting Coppet secretly, she reached Berne in safety, obtained a passport for Vienna, and hastily traversing Switzerland and the Tyrol, arrived at the Austrian capital, June 6, 1812. But this was neither a safe nor pleasant resting-place. The Emperor was in attendance on his son-in-law at Dresden; and the Austrian police thought fit to pay their court to Napoleon, by following up the example of annoyance which he had set. Mad. de Stael, therefore, hastened on her route to Russia, through Moravia and Gallicia, honoured all the way by the especial attention of the police, on whose happy combination of “French machiavelism and German clumsiness,” she has taken ample revenge in her ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ She crossed the Russian frontier, July 14, and in the joy of having escaped at last from the wide-spread power of Napoleon, she sees and describes every thing in Russia with an exuberance of admiration, which the position of the country at that moment, and the kindness which the writer experienced, may well excuse. The French armies had already crossed theVistula, and the direct route to St. Petersburg being interrupted, she was obliged to make a circuit by Moscow. After a hasty survey of the wonders of that city, she continued her route to St. Petersburg, where she was received with distinction by the Emperor and his consort. But England was still the object of her desires, and towards the end of September, she quitted the metropolis of Russia for Stockholm. There, during a winter-residence of eight months, she composed the journal of her travels, to which we have so often referred; and in the following summer she arrived in London.
She was received in the highest circles of our metropolis with an enthusiastic admiration, which no doubt was rendered in part to the avowed enemy of Napoleon, as well as to the woman of genius. Sir James Mackintosh, in his journal, gives a lively description of the manner in which she wasfêted. “On my return I found the whole fashionable and literary world occupied with Mad. de Stael—the most celebrated woman of this, or perhaps of any age.... She treats me as the person whom she most delights to honour. I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon: I have in consequence dined with her at the houses of almost all the cabinet ministers. She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular, if in society she were to confine herself to her inferior talents—pleasantry, anecdote, and literature, which are so much more suited to conversation than her eloquence and genius.” A very characteristic observation was made by the late Lord Dudley—“Mad. de Stael was not a good neighbour; there could be no slumbering near her, she would instantly detect you.”
The publication of her long-expected work on Germany maintained the interest which Mad. de Stael had excited, during the period of her residence in England. It is comprised in four parts,—on the aspect and manners of Germany,—on literature and the arts, as there existing,—on philosophy and morals,—and on religion and enthusiasm. For an analysis of it we may best refer to the elaborate criticism of Mackintosh, in the Edinburgh Review, No. XLIII, who gives it the high praise of “explaining the most abstruse metaphysical theories of Germany precisely, yet perspicuously and agreeably; and combining the eloquence which inspires exalted sentiments of virtue, with the enviable talent of gently indicating the defects of men and manners by the skilfully softened touches of a polite and merciful pleasantry:” and of being “unequalled for variety of knowledge, flexibility of power,elevation of view, and comprehension of mind, among the works of women, and in the union of the graces of society and literature with the genius of philosophy, not surpassed by many among men.”
After the restoration of the Bourbons, Mad. de Stael returned to France. She stood high in Louis XVIII.’s favour, who was well qualified to enjoy and appreciate her powers of conversation; and he gave a substantial token of his regard by the repayment of two millions of francs, which the treasury was indebted to her father’s estate. At the return of Napoleon, she fled precipitately to Coppet. She was too generous to countenance the gross abuse lavished on the fallen idol; and some sharp repartees, at the expense of the time-servers of the day, seem to have inspired Napoleon with a hope that he might work on her vanity to enlist her in his service. He sent a message, that he had need of her to inspire the French with constitutional notions: she replied, “He has done for twelve years without either me or a constitution, and now he loves one about as little as the other.”
Concerning the last three years of her life, our information is very scanty. She had contracted a second marriage, with M. Rocca, a young officer, who, after serving with distinction in the French army in Spain, had retired, grievously wounded, to Geneva, his native place. For an account and apology for this much-censured and injudicious connexion, the date of which we have not found specified, but which should seem to have been previous to her flight to Coppet, since Rocca accompanied her on the occasion, we must refer to Mad. Necker de Saussure. It appears by her statement (and this is a material consideration in estimating the extent of the lady’s weakness), that though she must have been more than forty, and the gentleman was twenty years younger, she had inspired Rocca with a devoted and romantic passion. “Je l’aimerai tellement,” he said to one of his friends, “qu’elle finira par m’épouser,” and he kept his word. A less distinguished woman might have contracted a marriage in which the disparity of years was greater, at a slight expense of wondering and ridicule; but probably Mad. de Stael felt that the eyes of the world were upon her, and that any weakness would be eagerly seized by her enemies; and, perhaps, had a natural dislike to resign a name which she had rendered illustrious. She judged ill: the secrecy was the worst part of the affair. The union, though generally believed to exist, was not avowed until the opening of her will, which authorised her children to make her marriage known, and acknowledged one son, who was the fruit of it. The decline of M. Rocca’s health, which neverrecovered the effect of his wounds, induced her to take a second journey to Italy in 1816. At that time, her own constitution was visibly giving way. She became seriously ill after her return to France, and died, July 14, 1817, the anniversary of two remarkable days of her life. These were, the commencement of the French revolution, and the day on which, by entering Russia, she finally escaped from Napoleon. M. Rocca survived her only half a year. He died in Provence, January 29, 1818.
Mad. de Stael’s last great work, which was published after her death, is entitled ‘Considérations sur les principaux Événementsde la Révolution Française,’ a book, says Mackintosh, “possessing the highest interest as the last dying bequest of the most brilliant writer that has appeared in our days, the greatest writer, of a woman, that any age or country has produced.” That it was left unfinished is the less to be regretted, because it is not a regular history of the revolution, but rather a collection of penetrating observations and curious details, recorded in the true spirit of historic impartiality, and therefore a most valuable treasure to the future historian. The scope of the book, in accordance with her warm admiration through life of the English constitution, is to show that France requires a free government and a limited monarchy. The catalogue of her works is closed by theŒuvres Inéditespublished in 1820, of which the principal is ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ They are collected in an edition of eighteen volumes 8vo., published at Paris, in 1819–20, to which the ‘Notice sur le Caractère et les Ecrits de Mad. de Stael,’ by Mad. Necker de Saussure, is prefixed.
The leading feature of Mad. de Stael’s private character was her inexhaustible kindness of temper; it cost her no trouble to forgive injuries. There seems not to have been a creature on earth whom she hated, except Napoleon. “Her friendships were ardent and remarkably constant; and yet she had a habit of analysing the characters, even of those to whom she was most attached, with the most unsparing sagacity, and of drawing out the detail and theory of their faults and peculiarities, with the most searching and unrelenting rigour; and this she did to their faces, and in spite of their most earnest remonstrances. ‘It is impossible for me to do otherwise,’ she would say; ‘if I were on my way to the scaffold, I should be dissecting the characters of the friends who were to suffer with me upon it.’” Though the excitement of mixed society was necessary to her happiness, her conversation in a tête à tête with her intimate friends is said to have been more delightful than her mostbrilliant efforts in public. She was proud of her powers, and loved to display and talk of them: but her vanity was divested of offensiveness by her candour and ever-present consideration of others. Of her errors we would speak with forbearance; but it is due to truth to say that there were passages in her life which exposed her to serious and well-founded censure. As a daughter and mother she displayed sedulous devotion, and the warmest affection. Though never destitute of devotional feeling, her notions of religion in youth seem to have been very vague and inefficient. But misfortune drove her sensitive and affectionate temper to seek some stay, which she found nothing on earth could furnish; and in later years, her religion, if not deeply learned, was deeply felt. Of this, the latter portion of Mad. Necker de Saussure’s work will satisfy the candid reader. And though her testimony to the truth and value of religion was for the most part indirect, we may reasonably believe that it was not ineffective. “Placed in many respects in the highest situation to which humanity could aspire, possessed unquestionably of the highest powers of reasoning, emancipated in a singular degree from prejudices, and entering with the keenest relish into all the feelings that seemed to suffice for the happiness and occupation of philosophers, patriots, and lovers, she has still testified that without religion there is nothing stable, sublime or satisfying; and that it alone completes and consummates all to which reason and affection can aspire. A genius like hers, and so directed, is, as her biographer has well remarked, the only missionary that can work any permanent effect upon the upper classes of society in modern times—upon the vain, the learned, the scornful and argumentative, ‘who stone the Prophets, while they affect to offer incense to the Muses.’” (Ed. Review, No. LXXI.)
PALLADIO.