THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL
Each century, or sometimes each generation, is distinguished by someespecial interest among those who are given to fancies--not to callthem fads. Thus, at the present time, the cultivated few are taken upwith what they choose to term the "new thought," or the "newcriticism," or, on the other hand, with socialistic theories andprojects. Thirty years ago, when Oscar Wilde was regarded seriously bysome people, there were many who made a cult of estheticism. It wasjust as interesting when their leader--
Walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily In his medieval hand,
or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guyed him asBunthorne in "Patience."
When Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense,"muscular Christianity" was a phrase which was taken up by manyfollowers. A little earlier, Puseyism and a primitive form of socialismwere in vogue with the intellectuals. There are just as many differentfashions in thought as in garments, and they come and go without anyparticular reason. To-day, they are discussed and practised everywhere.To-morrow, they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of somethingnew.
Forty years before the French Revolution burst forth with all itsthunderings, France and Germany were affected by what was generallystyled "sensibility." Sensibility was the sister of sentimentality andthe half-sister of sentiment. Sentiment is a fine thing in itself. Itis consistent with strength and humor and manliness; but sentimentalityand sensibility are poor cheeping creatures that run scuttering alongthe ground, quivering and whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy,which they do not at all deserve.
No one need be ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to theblade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand,is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, infact, all humbug, just as sentiment is often all truth.
Therefore, to find an interesting phase of human folly, we may lookback to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era ofsensibility. The great prophets of this false god, or goddess, wereRousseau in France and Goethe with Schiller in Germany, together with ahost of midgets who shook and shivered in imitation of their masters.It is not for us to catalogue these persons. Some of them were greatfigures in literature and philosophy, and strong enough to shake asidethe silliness of sensibility; but others, while they professed to begreat as writers or philosophers, are now remembered only because theirdevotion to sensibility made them conspicuous in their own time. Theydabbled in one thing and another; they "cribbed" from every popularwriter of the day. The only thing that actually belonged to them was ahigh degree of sensibility.
And what, one may ask, was this precious thing--this sensibility?
It was really a sort of St. Vitus's dance of the mind, and almost ofthe body. When two persons, in any way interested in each other, werebrought into the same room, one of them appeared to be seized with arotary movement. The voice rose to a higher pitch than usual, andassumed a tremolo. Then, if the other person was also endowed withsensibility, he or she would rotate and quake in somewhat the samemanner. Their cups of tea would be considerably agitated. They wouldmove about in as unnatural a manner as possible; and when they left theroom, they would do so with gaspings and much waste of breath.
This was not an exhibition of love--or, at least, not necessarily so.You might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallantsoldier, or a celebrated traveler--or, for that matter, before aremarkable buffoon, like Cagliostro, or a freak, like Kaspar Hauser.
It is plain enough that sensibility was entirely an abnormal thing, anddenoted an abnormal state of mind. Only among people like the Germansand French of that period, who were forbidden to take part in publicaffairs, could it have flourished so long, and have put forth such rankand fetid outgrowths. From it sprang the "elective affinities" ofGoethe, and the loose morality of the French royalists, which rushed oninto the roaring sea of infidelity, blasphemy, and anarchy of theRevolution.
Of all the historic figures of that time, there is just one whichto-day stands forth as representing sensibility. In her own time shewas thought to be something of a philosopher, and something more of anovelist. She consorted with all the clever men and women of her age.But now she holds a minute niche in history because of the fact thatNapoleon stooped to hate her, and because she personifies sensibility.
Criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophywhich was not her own. It is seen that she was indebted to the brainsof others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth inDelphine and Corinne; but as the exponent of sensibility she remainsunique. This woman was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, usually known asMme. de Stael.
There was much about Mile. Necker's parentage that made herinteresting. Her father was the Genevese banker and minister of LouisXVI, who failed wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances ofFrance. Her mother, Suzanne Curchod, as a young girl, had won the loveof the famous English historian, Edward Gibbon. She had first refusedhim, and then almost frantically tried to get him back; but by thistime Gibbon was more comfortable in single life and less infatuatedwith Mlle. Curchod, who presently married Jacques Necker.
M. Necker's money made his daughter a very celebrated "catch." Hermother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliantbeyond description, and yet was tottering to its fall. The rumblings ofthe Revolution could be heard by almost every ear; and yet society andthe court, refusing to listen, plunged into the wildest revelry underthe leadership of the giddy Marie Antoinette.
It was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegantforms of luxury, and met the cleverest men of that time--Voltaire,Rousseau, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Volney. She set herself to be themost accomplished woman of her day, not merely in belles lettres, butin the natural and political sciences. Thus, when her father wasdrawing up his monograph on the French finances, Germaine labored hardover a supplementary report, studying documents, records, and the mostcomplicated statistics, so that she might obtain a mastery of thesubject.
"I mean to know everything that anybody knows," she said, with anarrogance which was rather admired in so young a woman.
But, unfortunately, her mind was not great enough to fulfil heraspiration. The most she ever achieved was a fair knowledge of manythings--a knowledge which seemed surprising to the average man, butwhich was superficial enough to the accomplished specialist.
In her twentieth year (1786) it was thought best that she should marry.Her revels, as well as her hard studies, had told upon her health, andher mother believed that she could not be at once a blue-stocking and awoman of the world.
There was something very odd about the relation that existed betweenthe young girl and this mother of hers. In the Swiss province wherethey had both been born, the mother had been considered rather bold andforward. Her penchant for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventuresthat have been told about her. She was by no means coy with thegallants of Geneva. Yet, after her marriage, and when she came toParis, she seemed to be transformed into a sort of Swiss Puritan.
As such, she undertook her daughter's bringing up, and was extremelycareful about everything that Germaine did and about the company shekept. On the other hand, the daughter, who in the city of Calvin hadbeen rather dull and quiet in her ways, launched out into a gaiety suchas she had never known in Switzerland. Mother and daughter, in fact,changed parts. The country beauty of Geneva became the prude of Paris,while the quiet, unemotional young Genevese became the light of all theParisian salons, whether social or intellectual.
The mother was a very beautiful woman. The daughter, who was to becomeso famous, is best described by those two very uncomplimentary Englishwords, "dumpy" and "frumpy." She had bulging eyes--which are notemphasized in the flattering portrait by Gerard--and her hair wasunbecomingly dressed. There are reasons for thinking that Germainebitterly hated her mother, and was intensely jealous of her charm ofperson. It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter'sclevern
ess, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end,than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate,the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father theaffection which her mother neither received nor sought.
It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage wasarranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who thenrepresented the court of Sweden at Paris. Many eyebrows were liftedwhen this match was announced. Baron de Stael had no personal charm,nor any reputation for wit. His standing in the diplomatic corps wasnot very high. His favorite occupations were playing cards and drinkingenormous quantities of punch. Could he be considered a match for theextremely clever Mlle. Necker, whose father had an enormous fortune,and who was herself considered a gem of wit and mental power, ready todiscuss political economy, or the romantic movement of socialism, orplatonic love?
Many differed about this. Mlle. Necker was, to be sure, rich andclever; but the Baron de Stael was of an old family, and had a title.Moreover, his easy-going ways--even his punch-drinking and hiscard-playing--made him a desirable husband at that time of Frenchsocial history, when the aristocracy wished to act exactly as itpleased, with wanton license, and when an embassy was a very convenientplace into which an indiscreet ambassadress might retire when the mobgrew dangerous. For Paris was now approaching the time of revolution,and all "aristocrats" were more or less in danger.
At first Mme. de Stael rather sympathized with the outbreak of thepeople; but later their excesses drove her back into sympathy with theroyalists. It was then that she became indiscreet and abused theprivilege of the embassy in giving shelter to her friends. She wasobliged to make a sudden flight across the frontier, whence she did notreturn until Napoleon loomed up, a political giant on thehorizon--victorious general, consul, and emperor.
Mme. de Stael's relations with Napoleon have, as I remarked above, beenamong her few titles to serious remembrance. The Corsican eagle and thedumpy little Genevese make, indeed, a peculiar pair; and for thisreason writers have enhanced the oddities of the picture.
"Napoleon," says one, "did not wish any one to be near him who was asclever as himself."
"No," adds another, "Mme. de Stael made a dead set at Napoleon, becauseshe wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody, even ofthe greatest man who ever lived."
"Napoleon found her to be a good deal of a nuisance," observes a third."She knew too much, and was always trying to force her knowledge uponothers."
The legend has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty tobe acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction thatthe conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. Itis, perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whetherNapoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior tothis rather comic creature, even though at the time many people thoughther a remarkable genius.
In the first place, knowing Napoleon, as we have come to know himthrough the pages of Mme. de Remusat, Frederic Masson, and others, wecan readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier wouldsit at dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the wholeceremony into twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine and a cupof coffee, and then being interrupted by a fussy little female whowanted to talk about the ethics of history, or the possibility of a newform of government. Napoleon, himself, was making history, and writingit in fire and flame; and as for governments, he invented governmentsall over Europe as suited his imperial will. What patience could hehave with one whom an English writer has rather unkindly described as"an ugly coquette, an old woman who made a ridiculous marriage, ablue-stocking, who spent much of her time in pestering men of genius,and drawing from them sarcastic comment behind their backs?"
Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion, but hewas most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated bypedantry. Consequently, he found Mme. de Stael a good deal of anuisance in the salons of Paris and its vicinity. He cared not theleast for her epigrams. She might go somewhere else and write all theepigrams she pleased. When he banished her, in 1803, she merely crossedthe Rhine into Germany, and established herself at Weimar.
The emperor received her son, Auguste de Stael-Holstein, with much goodhumor, though he refused the boy's appeal on behalf of his mother.
"My dear baron," said Napoleon, "if your mother were to be in Paris fortwo months, I should really be obliged to lock her up in one of thecastles, which would be most unpleasant treatment for me to show alady. No, let her go anywhere else and we can get along perfectly. AllEurope is open to her--Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg; and if she wishesto write libels on me, England is a convenient and inexpensive place.Only Paris is just a little too near!"
Thus the emperor gibed the boy--he was only fifteen or sixteen--andmade fun of the exiled blue-stocking; but there was not a sign ofmalice in what he said, nor, indeed, of any serious feeling at all. Thelegend about Napoleon and Mme. de Stael must, therefore, go into thewaste-basket, except in so far as it is true that she succeeded inboring him.
For the rest, she was an earlier George Sand--unattractive in person,yet able to attract; loving love for love's sake, though seldomreceiving it in return; throwing herself at the head of everydistinguished man, and generally finding that he regarded her overtureswith mockery. To enumerate the men for whom she professed to care wouldbe tedious, since the record of her passions has no reality about it,save, perhaps, with two exceptions.
She did care deeply and sincerely for Henri Benjamin Constant, thebrilliant politician and novelist. He was one of her coterie in Paris,and their common political sentiments formed a bond of friendshipbetween them. Constant was banished by Napoleon in 1802, and when Mme.de Stael followed him into exile a year later he joined her in Germany.
The story of their relations was told by Constant in Adolphe, whileMme. de Stael based Delphine on her experiences with him. It seems thathe was puzzled by her ardor; she was infatuated by his genius. Togetherthey went through all the phases of the tender passion; and yet, atintervals, they would tire of each other and separate for a while, andshe would amuse herself with other men. At last she really believedthat her love for him was entirely worn out.
"I always loved my lovers more than they loved me," she said once, andit was true.
Yet, on the other hand, she was frankly false to all of them, and hencearose these intervals. In one of them she fell in with a young Italiannamed Rocca, and by way of a change she not only amused herself withhim, but even married him. At this time--1811--she was forty-five,while Rocca was only twenty-three--a young soldier who had fought inSpain, and who made eager love to the she-philosopher when he wasinvalided at Geneva.
The marriage was made on terms imposed by the middle-aged woman whobecame his bride. In the first place, it was to be kept secret; andsecond, she would not take her husband's name, but he must pass himselfoff as her lover, even though she bore him children. The reason shegave for this extraordinary exhibition of her vanity was that a changeof name on her part would put everybody out.
"In fact," she said, "if Mme. de Stael were to change her name, itwould unsettle the heads of all Europe!"
And so she married Rocca, who was faithful to her to the end, thoughshe grew extremely plain and querulous, while he became deaf and soonlost his former charm. Her life was the life of a woman who had, in herown phrase, "attempted everything"; and yet she had accomplishednothing that would last. She was loved by a man of genius, but he didnot love her to the end. She was loved by a man of action, and shetired of him very soon. She had a wonderful reputation for herknowledge of history and philosophy, and yet what she knew of thosesubjects is now seen to be merely the scraps and borrowings of others.
Something she did when she introduced the romantic literature intoFrance; and there are passages from her writings which seem worthy ofpreservation. For instance, we may quote her outburst with regard tounhappy marriages. "It was the subject," says Mr. Gribble, "on whichshe had
begun to think before she was married, and which continued tohaunt her long after she was left a widow; though one suspects that theword 'marriage' became a form of speech employed to describe herrelations, not with her husband, but with her lovers." The passage towhich I refer is as follows:
In an unhappy marriage, there is a violence of distress surpassing allother sufferings in the world. A woman's whole soul depends upon theconjugal tie. To struggle against fate alone, to journey to the gravewithout a friend to support you or to regret you, is an isolation ofwhich the deserts of Arabia give but a faint and feeble idea. When allthe treasure of your youth has been given in vain, when you can nolonger hope that the reflection of these first rays will shine upon theend of your life, when there is nothing in the dusk to remind you ofthe dawn, and when the twilight is pale and colorless as a lividspecter that precedes the night, your heart revolts, and you feel thatyou have been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth.
Equally striking is another prose passage of hers, which seems less thecareful thought of a philosopher than the screeching of a termagant. Itis odd that the first two sentences recall two famous lines of Byron:
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'Tis woman's whole existence.
The passage by Mme. de Stael is longer and less piquant:
Love is woman's whole existence. It is only an episode in the lives ofmen. Reputation, honor, esteem, everything depends upon how a womanconducts herself in this regard; whereas, according to the rules of anunjust world, the laws of morality itself are suspended in men'srelations with women. They may pass as good men, though they havecaused women the most terrible suffering which it is in the power ofone human being to inflict upon another. They may be regarded as loyal,though they have betrayed them. They may have received from a womanmarks of a devotion which would so link two friends, two fellowsoldiers, that either would feel dishonored if he forgot them, and theymay consider themselves free of all obligations by attributing theservices to love--as if this additional gift of love detracted from thevalue of the rest!
One cannot help noticing how lacking in neatness of expression is thiswoman who wrote so much. It is because she wrote so much that she wrotein such a muffled manner. It is because she thought so much that herreflections were either not her own, or were never clear. It is becauseshe loved so much, and had so many lovers--Benjamin Constant; VincenzoMonti, the Italian poet; M. de Narbonne, and others, as well as youngRocca--that she found both love and lovers tedious.
She talked so much that her conversation was almost always merepersonal opinion. Thus she told Goethe that he never was reallybrilliant until after he had got through a bottle of champagne.Schiller said that to talk with her was to have a "rough time," andthat after she left him, he always felt like a man who was just gettingover a serious illness. She never had time to do anything very well.
There is an interesting glimpse of her in the recollections of Dr.Bollmann, at the period when Mme. de Stael was in her prime. The worthydoctor set her down as a genius--an extraordinary, eccentric woman inall that she did. She slept but a few hours out of the twenty-four, andwas uninterruptedly and fearfully busy all the rest of the time. Whileher hair was being dressed, and even while she breakfasted, she used tokeep on writing, nor did she ever rest sufficiently to examine what shehad written.
Such then was Mme. de Stael, a type of the time in which she lived, sofar as concerns her worship of sensibility--of sensibility, and not oflove; for love is too great to be so scattered and made a thing toprattle of, to cheapen, and thus destroy. So we find at the last thatGermaine de Stael, though she was much read and much feted and muchfollowed, came finally to that last halting-place where confessedly shewas merely an old woman, eccentric, and unattractive. She sued herformer lovers for the money she had lent them, she scolded and foundfault--as perhaps befits her age.
But such is the natural end of sensibility, and of the woman whotypifies it for succeeding generations.