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Her Life as
Revealed in
Her Work

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DC146.S7 L3 1926

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PMADAME DE STAEL

HER LIFE AS REVEALED IN HER WORK
1766-1800

A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY
OF A MIND AND SOUL

BY

DAVID GLASS LARG, M.A.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY

VERONICA LUCAS

 

NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF

1926PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE DEVONSHIRE PRESS, TORQUAYPREFACE

(Written in English by the Author for the English
Version)

Tue later Madame de Staél is well enough known to
readers of early 19th century memoirs: in person,
stoutish, somewhat rough-featured and high-com-
plexioned, with extraordinary flashing black eyes ;
in dress, startling, a green turban swathed round her
head, a general tendency to over-decoration; in
manner, autocratic, a trifle stagey, punctuating her
phrases with a piece of paper, rolled in the fashion of
a wand and wielded eloquently by her right hand.
Thus she came to London in 1813, hated by Napoleon
and therefore welcome, already in good repute amongst
our blue-stockings, and disposed, on slight provo-
cation, to give readings of her great work, De l’Alle-
magne, the manuscript of which had evaded the
Napoleonic police and fled with its author, by way of
Russia and Stockholm to the “ Isle of Saints.”
Madame de Staél was known as a great talker,
dramatically indiscreet, confounding the Prince of
Wales and Samuel Rogers in her interrogations, in
short, the most notorious European exponent of the
since much developed art of button-holing. She was
avoided or sought after according to the various
characters of her potential victims and according to
their moods. Bryon, like Goethe some years earlier,
did both. Those who cultivated her were impressed
by the extraordinary vivacity and good sense of her
conversation, and no less by the atmosphere of energy
which she radiated.
The present reputation of this lady rests upon the

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PREFACE

report of her contemporaries and upon the some
seventeen volumes of her collected works. Between
these two no greater contrast could be imagined. The
1820 edition, rushed out to catch the market after the
death of Madame de Staél, is still, in the absence of
others, the best. It is unpleasantly austere in aspect,
clumsy to handle, imperfectly edited, and quite
incomplete. In short, to the casual loiterer in a
library, more like the gravestone of some forgotten
Continental “ Swan of Lichfield,” than the literary
testament of a lively mind. These works indeed half
succeeded, towards the middle of the nineteenth
century and before the advent of informed criticism,
in destroying the original Madame de Staél and in
substituting for her in the popular imagination the
sawdust dummy of a femme savante. In their present
state, it is plain that they are in the nature of a sunken
prop, almost as much a danger as an aid to her
reputation.

Madame de Staél’s works ought, of course, to be
able to stand by themselves and represent their author
adequately to posterity. But the fact is, they mis-
represent their author and require sympathetic
interpretation. They were intended, on the one hand,
as SO Many actions, interventions in the circumstances
of the time ; and to understand them, nothing short
of a minute knowledge of the time will suffice. On
the other, each is a circumstantial revelation of the
state of Madame de Staél’s soul at a given moment ;
and again one has to be familiar with the moment in
the intimate sense, to read intelligently and with
pleasure. A pamphlet and a confidence is a definition
that describes any one of Madame de Staél’s works
with complete accuracy. One can leave the question
of art aside: by that standard they fail, and there
need be no question of inviting the plain reader to a
literary feast which will probably disappoint him.

One can only hope, in the way of reasonable
advocacy, to show what has happened to produce this

 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
  

V1LlPREFACE

strange disparity between the historical legend and
the literary fact. Chénedollé has explained exactly,
how De la Littérature was composed. The subject!
of the chapter in progress was thrashed out in con-
versation in the evening and written up the following|
day. It is thus with all Madame de Staél’s works
they are the cold record of the morning after. The!
electricity, to use a word she favours, has gone out of
them; the very language has changed. In con4
versation it was terse, epigrammatic, flashing ; written,
it is comparatively flat, full of the clichés and dull
abstraction of the time. If Constant, instead of
labouring over that too cunning masterpiece, Adolphe,
had been content to play Eckermann to Corinne, both
he and she would have had a better chance of
immortality.

Something may be gleaned from her letters. Pre-
sumably, those she wrote to Constant were indeed
burnt and, if so, it is a great pity. Her letters rank
next to the lost spoken words in artistic value.
Many of them have been published, a large number by
the late Count d’Haussonville ; some quite recently
by the Countess de Pange. But these publications
are unfortunately scattered. A chronological edition
would do a great deal to “ re-electrify ”” Madame de
Staél and might even electrify the public. Somehow,
at any rate, one has to invert the process of time:
the morning after has to be made the evening before.
One must destroy the printed word and listen to her
voice: the print is sheer loss. Hers is, if anything,
an oral art, into which one has to insert the missing
half of the dialogue. To do this requires more than
documentary evidence, though one cannot have too
much of that, especially of the internal kind. The
effort of reconstruction must, in the last instance, be
a work of psychological imagination. To the curious,
the game is well worth while. Intimacy grows in a
subtle, unnoticed way until we find ourselves experi-
encing the privileged torments of her familiars,

1XERTL a

  

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
X TENTATIVE ACTION. POLITICAL WRITINGS,

, OT ge Ro A
XI WINDING UP THE CRISIS. FIRST PHASE.
THE INFLUENCE OF PASSION ON IN-
DIVIDUAL AND NATIONAL HAPPINESS,

 
   
   
    
  
 
     
   
    
   
   
   
  

1795-1796 - 14
XII POLITICAL INTERVENTION. NEW  AT-

TEMPTS AT ACTION. A SCHEME FOR A

CONSTITUTION, 1796-1799 . : = 228

XIII WINDING UP THE CRISIS. SECOND PHASE.
HER WORK ON LITERATURE, 1799-1800 257

APPENDIX A: VERSE BY MADAME DE STAEL

QUOTED IN THIS VOLUME . 5 Or,
APPENDIX B: AUTHORITIES CONSULTED . = 8 OZ
APPENDIX C: ADDITIONAL NOTES . ; TS

INDEX ; , 7 330BOOK I

THE QUEST OF HAPPINESS
1766—1795CHAPTER 1
CHILDHOOD AND FORMATION OF CHARACTER

“Tr seems as if Madame de Staél was always young,
but had never been.a child,’ said Madame Necker de
Saussure.

Among the numerous biographers of Necker’s
daughter, Madame Necker de Saussure is by no means
the worst.

She began by disliking her cousin.

Then gradually learning to know her better, without

lever slipping into a position of idolatry she ‘acquired
|a solid respect for her talent.

But in learning to love her she did not cease to know
her through and through. Her affection had a
maternal element, in that it was constantly alive to
the weaknesses as well as the charms of the loved one.

Could she have remoulded her cousin she would
have arranged for less youthfulness and indiscreet
impetuosity in the years of maturity, and for a more
child-like childhood.

Her researches into the family annals have only
produced one anecdote of little Germaine’s childish
days.

It seems that the child was always amusing herself
by making kings and queens out of twisted paper,
And these were tragedy-kings and queens BARS!
from drama and not from life.

It is thought that this habit was the germ of a
well-known trick of Madame de Staél’s maturity of
keeping a piece of twisted paper between her fingers,
with which she constantly fidgetted, using it as a little
switch or wand.

3MADAME DE STAEL

And Madame Necker de Saussure would shew us
from this illustration how childhood, youth and
maturity were all merged into one.

Madame de Staél’s other biographers have been’
quick to adopt this theory, so that if little has been
written of Germaine Necker’s childhood, it is because
there was no childhood to write of.

It is easy enough to light on the moment when the
girl becomes a woman, as mature a woman as she will
ever be. But one can see far less of the earlier
transitions.

From the very first we are to know her as a young
girl who is no longer a child and looks as if she never
had been one.

Upon the arrival of Mlle. Huber, who was to be a
companion to her, Germaine, then aged about eleyen
(she was born on 22nd April, 1766), went into
transports of joy.

She gave vent to her emotion in a discourse vibrating
with eloquence, which made a very great impression
upon her listener.

“She never played with me as a child would,”
writes Madame Rilliet-Huber, as Mlle. Huber after-
wards became. ‘‘She began to enquire at once
about the lessons I should give her ; whether I could
speak any foreign languages and whether I often went
to the theatre. When I told her that I had only been
to the theatre three or four times in my life she burst
into an exclamation and promised me that we would
often go together to the Comédie-Frangais, adding
that when we came back we must write out a short
account of the piece, noting any points which struck
us ... and that she was always accustomed to do
that—and then—she added that we must write to
each other every morning.”

This is an unusual first interview witha child of eleven,
and one can well believe that Madame Rilliet-Huber
retained a permanent memory of its surprising quality.

4

er eeCHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER

She is certainly not a liar and her memory“was a
good one.

And as something to go on with, here is one
characteristic of her childhood which Madame Necker
de Saussure has not noticed. The two friends were
to write to each other every morning.

This is a foreshadowing of the “‘ petite poste”? which
was to divert the author of l’Allemagne in her leisure
hours during her idyllic retreat at Fossé (summer
1810), which was also to perturb the clownish young
squires of the neighbourhood when they came to pay
their respects to the celebrated and persecuted lady
of the manor.

The precocious child, however, was not the precursor
of a woman of learning. No one has ever maintained,
for instance, that Madame de Staél had an exceptional
memory, or that she made use of it for the storing of
her brain with knowledge outside the average grasp.

The contrary would be nearer the truth.

She was naive in her admiration of the erudite
Swiss historian, Jean de Muller, who, she assures us,
cherished the six thousand years of the worlds’ known
history in a perfectly ordered sequence in his brain,
side by side with a complete glossary of the names
of the villages and notabilities of his native land.

Such a prodigy left her confounded: and with
reason.

“To keep her attention fixed for a long time always
wearied her, and from this, it is all the more surprising
that she could have reached the heights she did reach.

‘“‘ An extraordinary acuteness took her to her end
by leaps and bounds. She accomplished without
hard work.” *

Nevertheless, Germaine’s mother made serious
efforts, during the first thirteen years of her daughter’s
life, to stabilize this too mercurial intelligence, by
means of solid education.

*See Note. Appendix C: Additional Notes.

5MADAME DE STAEL

“| taught her languages,” she reminds her husband
in a letter, “‘ and I took special care that she should
speak her own with facility. I cultivated her intelli-
gence and memory by reading the best books with her.
I was her companion on her walks.”

It was her mother who provided her with the
charming and intelligent girl from Geneva whom
Germaine greeted so enthusiastically as her future
companion and governess.

The only result of this apparently laudable zeal was
that Germaine fell into low health, and was sent with
Mlle. Huber to recruit at a country house of her
father’s at Saint-Ouen, where, by a liberal interpre-
tation of the orders of the famous Doctor Trochin, the
two girls dressed as nymphs and gave themselves up
to the pleasures of rustic life.

It was at Saint-Ouen that the seeds were sown of
Germaine’s unbounded affection for her father, which
was to endure to the end of her life; for Necker
himself found it advisable to retire from time to time
to reinforce himself for his political cares, in a peaceful
and patriarchal atmosphere on his country estates.

Madame Necker’s system, which had not been so
successful as that of the pastor of Crassier, was not
taken up again.

In her opinion, to which she gave voice later, her
daughter’s education, brilliant as it may have appeared,
was nothing like what her mother had desired for her
or had received herself, and in point of fact, it is doubt-
ful whether Madame de Staél was as well educated as
her mother.

An element was now introduced into the plan of
education even further from the theories of Jean
Jacques than Madame Necker’s had been; and of
which, it seems obvious, that lady did not foresee the
immediate and lasting consequences.

Germaine was allowed to attend the conversational
meetings, in her mother’s drawing-room in the Rue de

6

hae. | Se SSS LETCHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER

Cléry, of that rear-guard of philosophers from whom|
Bonstetten was to receive a wretched impression of
dwindled force. 3

According to Madame de Genlis, who had a great
idea of herself as a pedagogue: ‘‘ Good books and
the solitude of her own room would have been better
for the child.”

What had been sown was duly reaped.

For a short time the future author of so many
observations on the art of conversation, was content
to keep silence, though her brilliant eyes betrayed
the acuteness with which she took in every detail,
and her silent lips seemed indeed to speak.

The next move was, by general consent, the
formation of a circle round the stool where Germaine,
by her mother’s instruction, would sit in the most
correct of attitudes.

The author of L’Histotve des deux Indes took her by
the hands and “‘ began to discuss things with her as
if she had been five and twenty,” seriously urging
the brilliant child to produce an essay upon the Edict
of Nantes.

This education in public brought in its train certain
dangers which Madame Necker was not long in
perceiving.

It was in vain that Germaine obeyed her mother’s
instructions to the letter, or took shelter behind her
father, who never spoke, and listened even less; she
was dragged out into publicity.

‘They delighted in drawing her out, kissing her,
and in exciting the little imagination, which was
already aflame.

“The men of the most striking ability were need
who were resolved to make her talk. They enquired)
into the extent of her reading, recommended new|
books to her and gave her genuine taste for study by|
conversing with her on every subject under the sun.” *!

* See Note. Apendix C.

7.MADAME DE STAEL

Madame Necker, however, who knew a great deal
about the personality of philosophers, and was always
more or less mistrustful of them, was alarmed lest
they should develop in her daughter an immoderate
craving for the pleasure of the moment, for the dis-
tractions of society, and at the same time a vanity
which, in principle at any rate, might easily result
from the intellectual superiority which these philoso-
phers and wits, entirely free from maternal solicitude,
delighted to set in action.

Intellectual superiority apart, it was undeniably
a bad thing for a young girl to become accustomed to
a permanent court of men around her, even old ones ;
to grow up believing that this was everyday life, that
it was the natural thing for everyone to render her
homage and to concern themselves with her to the
exclusion of others.

How different it had been when her mother wasa girl!

She had been through the discipline of poverty
before she knew wealth.

Madame Necker could not see her daughter adopting
the exacting airs of a great lady without anxiety,
wishing for her the beneficent discipline of her own
straitened girlhood.

This anxiety was certainly not unfounded.

The gallant Marmontel, once composer of couplets
in honour of the mother, was now constructing very
similar ones for the daughter.

‘‘'There was not a man who came to the house,”
said the Vicomte d’Haussonville, basing his authority
on family documents from Coppet, “‘ who did not pay
homage to her under the various names of Louise,
Milaine or Aglaé.”

Guibert diverted himself in such time as he could
spare from himself as a misunderstood hero, by
writing allegorically in her honour with the same pen
which had served him to celebrate the glory of the
King of Prussia. For example:

8CHILDHOOD) AND (CHARAGCT BK

“ Zulmé is only twenty years old and she is a
priestess of Apollo! She is the favourite of the divine
one and he receives her incense with more favour than
that of others.

‘‘Her hymns are the most dear to the god.

‘“¢ Among the throng of sacred girls came one... .
Can my heart ever forget the sight ?

‘Her great dark eyes were alight with genius.

“Her hair, black as ebony, fell round her shoulders
in waving locks; her features were marked rather
than delicate ... in all her moving presence you
could not but divine a coming destiny beyond that
of her sex.

‘Thus should we portray the Muse of Poetry, or
Clio, or Melpomene !

“¢< There she is! There she is!’ we cry when she
appears, and our breath comes short and stifled !

“ T gaze and I listen in transports.

‘¢ She has that which is more than beauty.

‘‘ What variety and play of expression in her face!

‘¢ What delicate modulations in her voice !

“What perfect harmony between thought and its
utterance |

‘She speaks! and if I do not catch her words, her
inflexions, her gestures and her eyes convey all her
meaning to me.

‘She pauses! and her last words echo on in my
heart, and I read in her eyes those words which are
unspoken yet.

‘“ She ceases! and the temple rings with applause !

‘“¢ She bows her head in modesty ; the long lashes
creep down over those eyes of fire and thus the Sun
is veiled |! ——”

We shall meet this portrait again in fiction only
slightly modified and coming from the pen of the girl
to whom it was dedicated. It appears in her story
of Zulma.

92 ia
om 8

  

MADAME DE STAEL

In the meantime we cannot be surprised that
Madame Necker (whose daughter recognised the real
worth of this anxious thought for her future) believed
it her duty to oppose this avalanche of flattery with
the full weight of her authority, for authority she had,
and she used it at this time against this incessant
feeding of Germaine’s vanity, to which she was
prematurely exposed, ill-defended by a character
which obviously had too little stability, though it
could never be called a light one.

We find traces of the maternal preoccupation in

letters exchanged at this period, between the mother
and daughter.
_ Thus referring to a party of visitors at Saint-Ouen,
whom Germaine believed to be there on her account,
Madame Necker assures her daughter that “no one
came specially to see you. They all went first to
Saint-Denis, went on to the Duc de Gévres and
finished up with you fo see the garden.”

Again and again in the mother’s letters there are
more or less evident allusions to the marked taste for
society which Germaine betrayed, of which her mother
begged her to disencumber herself before it was too
late.

“I recommend you,” she wrote on 15th May,
1779, ‘‘ to give yourself up to all the rural tastes which
make a sweet and simple thing of life. It is no waste
of time to be building up one’s health and forming the
habit of appreciating simple joys at their true worth,
which end by disgusting people with the display of
town life, and remain within their reach under any
conditions and at any age.”

“You must make a habit,” she repeats in the letter
of roth June already quoted, “‘ of passing several days
in succession in solitude and thoroughly well occupied.
You know quite well that far from opposing any
innocent pleasure of yours I encourage it in every way,
and yet I am fully persuaded that when people arrive

IOCHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER

at the point of being unable to do without pleasure
they are no better than slaves, and what is more,
incapable of doing anything great... or even,
anything good.”

The daughter was not very rebellious for she could
not help appreciating the value of her mother’s
advice.

She reproached herself for her “ frivolous ways,”
and tried to excuse her incessant relapses into the same
faults.

She applied herself very conscientiously to her
studies, made a careful commentary of the text of
L’Esprit des Lois and read at the same time her
father’s Comte-vendu (1781), on which she was deter-
mined to congratulate the author solemnly, in an
anonymous letter.

It is probable that Madame Necker felt less approval
for the plays which Germaine wrote at this time and
acted in the garden with Mlle. Huber.

But if these dramatic efforts were not of the type
to please a compatriot of the author of La Letire sir les
Spectacles, we seem to feel that Germaine rendered
her plays invulnerable to maternal criticism by
incorporating in them all the moral precepts of her
mother.

This is what we glean, at any rate, from a certain
play’ described in the Correspondance Littérarre of
September, 1778, which does not seem to have
survived.

After a flattering preamble addressed to M. Necker,
“ whose decrees cover him with glory and will make
France eternally proud of his administration,” while
his wife ‘‘ gives evidence of her public spirit by found-
ing an alms-house,” Meister, who was then editing the
Correspondance under the egis of Madame d’Epinay,

and was paid to have a good opinion of his patron and
his family goes on to a eulogium of the daughter :
“ Their daughter, a child of twelve, who gives evidence

OTeMADAME DE STAEL

of ability beyond her years, amuses herself by writing
little plays.

““ She has just produced one in two acts, entitled:
The Drawbacks of Life in Paris, which is not only
astonishing from a child of her age, but is better than
those it is modelled on.

‘The characters consist of a mother who has two
daughters, one who was brought up to the ‘ simple
life? in the country ; the other in all the ostentation
and fever of the capital.

“The latter is the favourite daughter, thanks to
her brains and her pretty engaging ways, but the
mother, falling into misfortune through the loss of a
law-suit, immediately discovers that it is the rustic
maiden who chiefly deserves her tenderness and respect.

‘“ The scenes of this little drama hang well together,
the characters are well-sustained and the development
of the plot is full of natural grace and interest.”

Doubtless literary fashion of the moment largely
accounted for the subject of this little play, concocted
by Germaine as an anodyne for her mother.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had died or committed
suicide that very year (most people incline to the
theory of suicide) and little Germaine had already
vowed an ardent cult to the author of La Nouvelle
féloise, which was equally sincere (though ardent ina
different fashion) as that which she vowed to
Montesquieu.

Ihe Drawbacks of Life in Paris might well be a
juvenile expression of this veneration, but at the same
time it is perfectly evident that a more intimate
thought is interwoven in this background of literary
Suggestion, and that no other than the lesson inces-
santly inculcated by Madame Necker, that it is better

and safer to prefer country life to town life.

We shall see later on, that this hypothesis is con-
firmed by examination of Madame de Staél’s first
literary works,

IZCHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER

Penitence, however, which rushes into print, may
be suspect from the maternal point of view, not only
as being not very efficacious, but as tending to confirm
in the penitent an inordinate preoccupation with self.
Madame Necker might well suspect that the pleasure
of literary composition was a driving force in the
matter which more than equalled the desire to correct
faults of character.

She therefore begged her daughter not to acquire
a habit of lip-service, and on 11th June, 1779, she
writes :

“You are very clever at twisting all the silly things
you have said to me so that they do not seem so bad.
But a loving mother can see through all that and
would much prefer a frank avowal to the subteriuges
of self-love. However that may be, we will leave the
past at that, and try to think that [ may hope great
things of you for the future; and if you want me to
believe in the genuineness of your exaggerated
expressions of affection you have a simpler method
at your disposal than all the French language can
afford you. You have only to do in my absence all
that my affection recommends you, for your moral
and physical well-being.”

But the outcome of it all was that Madame Necker’s
influence was soon to become quite secondary, not so
much on account of circumstances, as of the natural
antagonism between the natures of mother and
daughter.

An incident which appears in the family papers
published by d’Haussonville, served to enlighten the
mother as to the almost complete bankruptcy of her
moral influence.

In 1784 she formed the idea of marrying her
daughter to a young and brilliant Englishman, na
other than William Pitt, whom the Neckers had met
at Fontainebleau. |

From Madame Necker’s point of view it was the

3RTT DY RE Na SS 2 TURE LT

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

MADAME DE STAEL

most desirable of marriages, since it had the double
advantage of assuring the future of her daughter,
who, as a Protestant, could not hope for an alliance
with any of the great Catholic families of France, and
at the same time of consolidating the political position
of her husband by giving him a future Prime Minister
of England as son-in-law.

Madame Necker could revel in contemplation of
this delightful combination of advantages which was
far from being indifferent to Necker himself.

It only remained to prepare the ground and to bring
together the parties principally concerned in the most
decorous manner possible.

But to the consternation of her mother, who had
already built up a whole future of dreams upon this
hypothetical basis, Germaine flatly refused, and
displayed a tenacity of resistance which left her mother
utterly defeated.*

It was a bad crisis, but the mother had to give way.

It affected her health, which was never robust, and
believing herself dying she wrote a last letter to her
daughter which was never delivered, because Madame
Necker did not die after all, but it is most curiously
expressed and shall be quoted :

“Yes,” she writes with suppressed emotion, “ you
see me now on that verge which separates life from
eternity—I stretch out one hand to life and one to
eternity to attest both to the existence of God and
to the happiness which comes from goodness alone.

“I wished you to marry Mr. Pitt. I wanted to
confide you to a husband of great and noble character ;
I wished also for a son-in-law to whom I could confide
your poor father, one who would appreciate the worth
of this legacy.

“You refused me these satisfactions.

‘ But I pardon you if you will render the service
which this marriage would have brought about.

*See Note. Appendix C.

14

  

SS. ea eS | ee
Ao irae = Se i TN i a ace HN
ee i ealCHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER

“Tt isa great task. In this life my whole devotion
has been for your father, for | look upon you as a part
of him.

“You see, then, that you must take my place with
him.”

This last recommendation was fairly superfluous,
and it must be looked upon as an indulgence in self-
abnegation on the part of the invalid, who was only
too much aware of the enthusiastic affection which
bound the girl to her father and was shared to the
same degree by him.

“Monsieur Necker,” says the discreet Madame de
Saussure, who glides as lightly as possible over this
somewhat painful chapter in the family history, “ was
more struck every day by his daughter’s ability,”’
who, on her part, ‘“‘ would dare anything to obtain a
smile from him.” It was not long before a certain,
comradeship developed between them in which
Madame Necker could not be included. |

“Only the fear of losing the first place in her
husband’s affections,”’ continues Madame de Saussure,
‘could have given a place to jealousy in Madame
Necker’s lofty soul. If her daughter had surpassed
her in her own line, she could have associated herself
with success due to her own teaching ; she could have
believed that it was herself that her husband loved in
her daughter. But she could claim no credit to herself.
Her daughter’s pre-eminence seemed entirely due to
nature. M. Necker absolutely delighted in her original
intelligence, which had no model and no equal.

“Madame Necker was bound to feel vexation and
impatience and her disapproval obscured from her
the fact that it was the rivalry which galled.”

Whatever attitude Madame Necker took up, it is
clear that Germaine had passed into the moral
guidance of her father for good and all, a guidance
which had the advantage of being more indulgent and
less hampering than his wite’s.

15; ¥ S e a _— er . a » ERA at ea RN a ee Se: Ml eas. = i i i is ‘
It. Nae ee aa I ate t nde ee 1 ST TAT PEI I ELE, NID a ere ee
Vo i ee ~ (ee) ae te * d

  

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MADAME DE STAEL
We should like to believe that Necker had a full

sense of his paternal responsibilities and that he “ was
not prodigal in his admiration,” and that he took as
much notice of his daughter’s bad qualities as of her
good ones.

Madame de Staél was not wrong when she declared
that there was in her father an “‘ incredible acuteness ”
which enabled him to see his daughter exactly as she
was and rendered dissimulation on her part absolutely
unavailing.

But it was not difficult to read a soul as transparent
as Madame de Staél’s, and Ministers of State have not
always much leisure to bestow on moral guidance in
private life.

The truth was that the brilliant Germaine enchanted
him, and all the more because of her unmeasured
admiration of the paternal abilities, which she brought
home to him on every possible occasion.

Here she was only following her mother’s example,
but doing it with her own inimitable wit and charm.

It would have been difficult for a man less vain than
Necker not to betray his satisfaction at this homage,
and not to repay it in kind.

The malicious De Feletz described at the beginning
of the nineteenth century the ridiculous side of this
family “ mutual admiration society.”

‘* Was it not indeed a singular spectacle,” he says*
~ to see this family together: M. Necker always
admiring Madame Necker; Madame Necker pros-
trated before M. Necker; M. Necker enchanted by
Madame de Staél; Madame de Staél in ecstasies
before M. Necker, and every one of them unrelaxing

* Jugemenis Histoviques et Litevaire, 1840, p. 352. Madame de Stael’s
answer to de Feletz appears in Du Caraciéve de Madame Necker, pola:
‘‘ In answer to this observation, which is flippant in the face of death,
I shall only say: Yes, we are a family whose members praise one an-
other. Yes, we love each other and felt a need of saying so, and dis-
daining ever to notice the attacks of our enemies, to use our abilities
against them, we left them to beat against a rock of pride and lofty
character, of which I alone am the sad but faithful survivor.”

16CHILDHOOD) AND CHARACTER

in their efforts to implant in the souls of others the
transports which held sway in her own, or in his
own.”

The picture is not much exaggerated.

The Necker family was not in this respect an
ordinary family.

In thus admiring each other publicly the members
of it seemed to have no suspicion that they might
shock the susceptibilities of onlookers.

Madame de Staél’s son-in-law, the Duc de Broglie,
who was, for that matter, a great admirer of her talent,
could not restrain himself from observing that Madame
de Staél had done some injury to the memory of her
illustrious father . . . by disposing a malicious and
ungrateful public to speak of him as the Athenians
spoke of Aristides.

Madame Necker’s Mélanges, published under her
husband’s supervision, contains a “ pen-portrait ” of
the benevolent editor, in which there is no parsimony
in the use of laudatory adjectives.

But Germaine was able to go one better without
offending the modesty of the head of the family.

Both portraits having been submitted to him, he
refused to choose between them, but according to his
‘daughter, “he admires my mother’s very much but
mine is the more flattering.”

While admiring her father Germaine believed herself
to resemble him.

A journal which she kept at this time contains the
following reflection :

“Ah! certainly, though my character is much less
like mother’s than father’s, I love her with a tenderness
which might seem to be the warmest I am capable of,
were it not that a stronger feeling does exist in me.”

This is an opinion which she repeats more than
once.

Later when she had become Madame de Staél and
met Gibbon, her mother’s old admirer at Coppet, she

17ee NG ila Ra laa a i ree ees lala Daath i ce ka
7) .

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 

MADAME DE STAEL

asks herself whether she, Madame de Staél, could have
resulted from the union of those two.

“IT answered in the negative, and that without my
father J could never have come into the world.”

In Du Caractére de M. Necker she writes: ‘1 may
be inferior to my father in every way, but there is a
great and unmistakable likeness between us.’*

She is quite sure of being her father’s daughter.

And it leaks out in her biographical sketch of him,
which she converted into a history of the French
Revolution, that had she not been born his daughter
she would have liked to be his wife.

“About twenty years elapsed,” she writes,
‘“ between his arrival in Paris and his marriage, and
during these years his work so absorbed him that he
did not indulge in any of the pleasures of life.

“Sometimes when we were alone, he would talk
to me of this period of his life, the thought of which
touched me profoundly: those days, when I imagined
him so young, so attractive and so much alone, those
days in which our destinies might have been joined
for ever had we been created as contemporaries.”

Her father was, in her eyes, the very type of an ideal
husband, a man whose high abilities did not over-
weight domestic affections.

On reaching her own maturity she never ceased to
envy her mother this good fortune which she herself
never enjoyed :

“She met the right man and spent her whole life
with him. Peace be to her ashes. She deserved far
more than I to be happy.”

In the meanwhile she was acquiring early—one
might almost say from the cradle—the habit of riches.

Where money was concerned she shewed nothing

*One might dispute this: If Madame de Saussure is to be believed,
the mother must have transmitted to her daughter, with the blood,
“an ardent soul, strong impressions, enthusiasm for everything great

and beautiful, a keen taste for wit, for all talents and all distinction ’—
which is a great deal.
18CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER

of the parvenu; her worst enemies have never
reproached her with that.

But the opulence of the paternal mansion became
translated into a sense of security in well-being which
endowed the girl with two things, afterwards regret-
fully lost by the woman: a great and tranquil confi-
dence in life, whose opening scenes had been so
auspicious, and an innocent egoism made up principally
from an imperative necessity for Joy.

She learnt from it also to attach a certain importance
to herself.

Necker was a great deal more than a financier.
During the rapid formation of his daughter’s character
he was a very popular and much sought-after man, if
not a great Man.

Madame Necker’s salon was not only the meeting-
place of eloquent and disinterested philosophers, it
was thronged with political parasites as well, whose
equivocal smiles were not gauged at their real signifi-
cance by the young Germaine.

On the day of Necker’s dismissal, a green cockade
(the colour of his livery) was worn in the streets of
Paris, and two hundred thousand armed men had his
name on their lips.

With regard to the parental egis Madame de Staél
exclaims later in life:

‘““ Dear protection of the generation before us! Dirs-
interested love! Love which always makes us feel that
we ave young, that we are loved, and that the world ts
still our own to do what we like with !”’

Notice that during this early youth there is not a
single love adventure.

In 1776, Germaine accompanied her father and
mother to London.

This was to exchange the philosophers and wits
of Paris for the philosophers and wits of London,
among them, no doubt, Gibbon, and the Francophil)
Horace-Walpole. |

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MADAME DE STAEL

On her return to France she studies nature in the
copses round her father’s country-house at Saint-
Ouen.

Later, in the spring of 1784, she spends a few months
at Lausanne, at the Chateau of Beaulieu, where she
makes the acquaintance of the smart young men of
the town, receiving the same sort of notes that her
mother had received twenty years before, and she
throws herself into the gaieties natural to her age with
more ardour than enjoyment.

At Coppet, towards the end of the same year, she
remarks on the appearance of an enemy which she
had already begun to dread: ennui.

She was not at this time quite a normal girl. She
had become eccentric in her ways.

The balance bestowed by an active life was not
there. She was consumed by a need for action which,
finding no outlet, was driven inward, to gnaw at her.

Her nerves were on edge.

She had palpitations at the sight of celebrated
personages ; she would burst into tears when anyone
praised her parents.

One day, in 1782, Madame Necker took her daughter
to call on Madame de Genlis, who read aloud to them
something from her répertoire.

This is her report of the girl :

“Germaine,” she says, ‘“‘ astonished me and did
not please me. She cried a great deal, made loud
exclamations as I read, incessantly kissed my hands,
and is altogether a most embarrassing person.”

Everyone was impressionable in those days and,
God knows, Madame Necker, herself, did not lag
behind in that direction.

But Germaine was hyper-sensitive.

some of her letters touch the high-water mark of
sheer nonsense.

Yes, maman,” she writes, “if I were to spend a
thousand years gazing at you I should be jealous of

20

)CHILDHOOD AND CHAKACRET

one single moment when you turned away from
ime.

Her mother begged her
senses.”

But all in vain.

Madame Rilliet-Huber limits herself to the observa-
tion that her pupil was sometimes “ unique, adorable,”
and sometimes ‘“‘ detestable.”

In 1785 this disturbing young person was on the
eve of marriage.

She amused herself by analysing herself. Instead
of simply living, she exasperated her own sensibility
by minute observation of it, and did it to such good
purpose that she fell really ill.

She was in a high fever all through the month of
November in that year.

The journal which she was keeping at this time,
of which we only know a few fragments published
by dHaussonville in his Salon de Madame Necker,
is an extremely interesting document even in its
fragmentary condition.

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THE JOURNAL, 1785

SHE does not keep the diary in order to record the
little events of daily life, and there is very little
mention of nature.

She does confer “an honourable mention” on a
sunset, having cast a vague and abstracted glance at
it while strolling in the park at Saint-Ouen with her
father.

No doubt there were weightier matters to be
discussed between them.

Then a “ fearful storm,” with thunder and torrents
of rain, reminds her that the tempests of the human
soul are reverberated and prolonged in that sympa-
thetic Nature ‘“‘ which was made for man.”

She is completely absorbed by one agonizing
problem, the Necker family . .. which includes
Germaine and her destiny.

One word from her mother sufficed to set all this
anguish in motion, a word which she let fall, no doubt,
when feeling more ill than usual and a prey to melan-
choly, a word which suddenly revealed to Germaine
a possibility, the bare suggestion of which froze her
blood, the possibility that the Necker family might
soon be broken up by the death of one of its members.

This idea of the imminence of death took possession
of her morbid imagination; she returns again and
again to the contemplation of it, passes from resigna-
tion to terror, is even afraid to go to sleep, because
sleep closely resembles inexorable death in her
imagination.

She writes in the journal :

22

¢THE JOURNAL, 1785

“What an image of disgust and terror death in
general evokes. The idea of one’s own death does not
make quite that impression. Consoling hope and
tender regret are aroused by that thought because it
is difficult to realize annihilation for oneself, and one’s
soul frees itself in advance from the body which Time
will destroy.

“ But the death of a person one loves!

“Oh, God! If these ideas are so dark to one’s
mind, what would they be to one’s heart !

‘“ Think of being forced to see the ministers of death
lay hands on the beloved !

‘ To the music of funereal hymns they would snatch
away all that is left, the dear body that one would
struggle to revive with the force of one’s despairing
cries. The tolling bell would swing in time to the
rhythm of feet moving to the tomb-side; and then
silence . . . still more awful silence would tell the
terrible truth that all was gone for ever.”

One can easily follow the whole small brain-storm
in action as it took place. The vague general
conception of death is exchanged for a realistic
nightmare that is almost hallucination, and almost
involuntary.

Sensibility and imagination are accomplices: one
acts upon the other, and a vicious circle is set up
which keeps her in a state of perpetual excitement—
unhealthy excitement.

One can well understand that this girl came to fear
solitude, and at all hazards sought out the special
atmosphere which set her radiant, sparkling gaiety in
full play ; amused herself by amusing her father and
by making Mlle. Huber laugh or cry; and went
constantly to balls.

For some people, any road will serve if it takes them
away from themselves.

But the téte-a-téte which she dreaded was bound
to return at intervals.

23Sade Ria hn RN eda a i al

MADAME DE STAEL

She had to be alone in the night, and when she
woke in the mornings; and it is worth remarking
upon that it was at these moments that the diary
was written.

It was not a case of plaintive and elegiac melancholy
like Madame Necker’s.

In the daughter’s case sensibility always became
converted into feverish energy which only assumed
the form of melancholy when Germaine was con-
demned to inaction; but all through life, with her, it
was a sort of “ possession,’’? and completely mastered
all her faculties which she used as instruments for
agitating herself when they could not find any
legitimate vent.

There is also a deliberate intention in the journal
of putting herself to the test.

This insistence on the idea of death is partly
voluntary.

Indeed, for anyone who is dominated by:an unruly
nervous system, the only method of finding deliverance
is to exhaust it. It was partly in order to master her
idée fixe that Germaine abandoned herself to its power.

She challenges this haunting image of death, evokes
it in its most repugnant details, plans out a painful
future which will have to be cut short by suicide, not
because she thinks for a moment that her future will
be like this, still less because she really proposes to
‘take her own life, but in order to have done with fear
by its absolute exhaustion.

She does not lack courage, the courage which, as she
says, is rooted in her sensibility, which, when all is
said and done, is moral courage.

Of physical courage she never had very much.

Her moral courage and impetuous idealism were
allied to a feminine timidity, the timidity which is in
generalisation associated with her sex, and this was
naturally accentuated by the entirely sheltered
conditions of her life as a young girl.

24PTE JOORNAE, 1785
She had, besides a decided appetite for pleasure,

something of the epicureanism which hung in the very
atmosphere she breathed, which her youthfulness
had naturally absorbed.

All this could not but result in a sort of internal
warfare, a state of perilous moral equilibrium most
disturbing to anyone who was intellectually aware of it.

She feels that her being is divided, and that this
was owing to the exaggerated sensibility which
permeated every fibre of her, to her torment as well
as to her joy.

The more conscious she becomes of this interior
duality, of this extraordinary combination of strength
and weakness which is within her, the more she
struggles to compensate for the disparity in such a way
as to liberate her energies for action.

She tries to use her strength to conquer her weak-
ness, to annihilate the latter and thus to bring into the
domain of the conscious, the deeply and vexatiously
instinctive movements of the soul, to which she so
often fell a victim.

A writer’s art doubles his being. It creates a
society of two. He is no longer alone.

But for anyone with Germaine’s imagination it also
provokes crises and exaggerates their magnitude.

The exaggeration is so excessive that you may well
believe you are reading a romance in the journal.

She has no sooner taken up her pen to describe one
feeling, which may well be genuine and move her
deeply, before this feeling suggests another feeling,
less intimately part of her, but born in her mind,
connected with a link to the first feeling, mentally
appreciated by her, and therefore, she believes also,
deeply felt.

Sensibility glides on, leaving an oily trail, and the
reader is soon incapable of distinguishing between
the feelings that Germaine had, and the feelings that
she thought she, had.

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MADAME DE STAEL

The young author springs from rung to rung of her
ladder of neat phrases, and the confession ends by
being an exercise in rhetoric, an exercise which is
constantly interrupted by abrupt plunges into reality.

She really does not know what her own aim is: to
confess, to make amends, or to practise the literary
art?

Fler excuse is, that she is incapable of deciding
where reality ends and where fiction begins: what
she has read dives in her, and reality is, for her, always
veiled in a haze of distance which makes it unreal.

The impression received is, none the less, a bad one.

The journal is so much like poor fiction, that one is
much tempted to go one’s way disbelieving in it.

Any faith that we may put in it is the faith of
indulgence.

We read Germaine for the sake of Madame de Staél.
And one cannot avoid an uneasy feeling.

This is not the work of a young soul—at any rate
the soul is not young enough: it has the false air of
borrowed maturity.

Why does not this child tell us simply and naively
what she has in her heart ?

She serves up a hash of Prévost and Jean-Jacques.
As for talent, there is not much to be discovered unless
one brings a fair amount of good will to the task.

Those ministers of the dead! Funereal chants!
Tolling bells! What are they but the most common-
place elements of melodrama ?

The methods of literary expression, too, seem very
poor, when they should at all costs have a certain
originality in order to bolster up the writer’s sincerity.

Here and there an image starts to light which is as
battered and insignificant as an old scarecrow which
has done duty in a field for a long time.

And yet ... character illuminates the whole!

The vague miscellaneous style is the same old hack
mounted by every quill-driver of the eighteenth

26THE JOURNAL, 1785

century, but already one is forced to see that this
rider is a dashing one!

She rides so fast that she will ride her mount to
death.

The page is thick with exclamation marks ; thought
is a racing torrent, though not a deep one, and surely
the heart gallops too.

How clearly one can see her flinging herself upon
the pen, and writing as if in one continuous lightning-
streak until she has reached the conclusion of her
thought ; then see her go off without an instant’s
pause to ask herself whether she has expressed
precisely what she had to say, and to assure herselt
that her phrasing is satisfactory.

But Germaine is not always looking within. She
has more mundane visions than those of malady and
death.

In a more careful style, making use of calculated
subtleties, she attempts the pen-portraits then so much
in vogue, in her journal.

Even if we did not possess her numerous portraits
of her father, that of her friend, Madame de Beauvau,
in her journal, would enlighten us as to her own idea
of her task as a moralist.

We are told that “‘ Madame de Beauvau had a
simple nature, a very reasonable intelligence, facility
rather than real grasp, the presence and manners of a
great lady ; but in this she seems only to shew herselt
as she naturally is, and fails to see others as they are ;
consequently she has just the same manner for all
classes; I do not mean the same mode of address,
for that would mean a stupid confounding of people
she was dealing with.”

In juxtaposition with this precious bit of affectation
we must place one of those essays in synonyms, a
society whim which had been made the fashion by a
book by Abbé Roubaud.

Immediately after her marriage Germaine sent off

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MADAME DE STAEL

to the faithful Meister the manuscript in which she has
dissected herself into four in order to demonstrate in
what manner a feature differs from an excresence, and
the truth from candour.

She deals with Madame de Beauvau by the same
method and the following verdict is delivered on the
delicate subject as to whether or not she loves her
husband :

“There are women who love their husbands more
than she does, but then these women announce that
they love them more than they really do, and as the
amount added on to their genuine love cannot be
calculated, though loving more, they really love less
than Madame de Beauvau! ”

This kind of subtlety is obviously and absurdly
in-de-stécle; and we permit ourselves to doubt
whether it sheds any light on the character or anything
else.

There is a total absence of malice in the portrayer,
but in any case, Madame de Beauvau only serves as a
spring-board for a young and agile intelligence which
absolutely needs to bound about; and needs also to
put out feelers.

The search is pushed home, so to speak.

Germaine analyses Madame de Beauvau in com-
parison with herself.

Thus she arrives at the conclusion that this lady is
not so intelligent as herself: it is not expressed in so
many words, but it is easily understood.

It is noted that though Madame de Beauvau is “ no
fool in character-reading,” she is “ not sufficiently
alive to the ridiculous side of things.”

That, of course, “ puts everyone at ease with her.”

Fler sensitiveness “is not ardent, not deep, but it
exists, is genuine, lasting and of good quality.”

Finally—her mind itself leaves something to be
desired.

Kind, sensitive, intelligent and good, yet Madame

28THE JOURNAL, 1785

de Beauvau gives evidence of a tendency “ to discuss
cookery and housekeeping,” instead of resting from
those subjects when she can, by taking refuge in
“the pleasures of eloquence and gaiety,” instead of
“ soaring like a goddess from height to height.”

We do not say that Germaine is not stating a truth
here.

She was never malicious, but she was full of mischief.

One feels that if she had let herself go without
compunction in this vein she could have portrayed
Madame de Beauvau so well that she would have
emerged ‘‘in the round.”

In conversation she would fling these portraits
about by the handful, portraits which only lived in
the memories of those who heard her talk.

It is a great pity that they had no more durable
form, for to-day one would give much (some people
would give half of her serious work) to obtain a com-
plete collection of the “ good things ” she flashed off

in conversation.

If we are to believe internal evidence, this journal
was meant to reach other eyes but her own. It was
not her fault if no one else saw it.

She counts on one reader at least—her father.

The better to fire his curiosity, she writes an
epigraph from his own works on the first page, and
beneath that :

“Turn the page, Papa, if you dare, after having
read this epigraph. Ah! you have so secure a place
in my heart that you ought not to envy me this one
little intimacy with myself that I keep to myself.”

It was a very feminine ruse.

After that she had only to make use of her usual
untidiness, leave the mysterious note-book flapping
open on the arm of a chair, and to wait until the
methodical Necker came to pick it up with a view
to putting it away.

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MADAME DE STAEL

He might have read curious things in it, which
concerned him closely.

For one thing, his daughter comments on the
religious work that he is writing.

But above all he should have dwelt on the passage
treating of the grave question which was giving rise
to much debate in himself, the question of his own
future.

He was out of office. Should he remain in retire-
ment at Coppet, or shoulder his way to the front of
public affairs again?

“ A fine sort of retirement for my father—a desert
in a republic, after having served a King! What a
position for a proud heart! How splendid it would
be if he were sent for and begged to take the reins of
the French Government again !

“Then he could accept or refuse at his own good
pleasure.

“ “As for myself... well ...I fret over it a
great deal. Iam mortally afraid that he might choose
to spend the whole of his life on his estates here !

“Oh! may he forgive me... but I shudder to
think what it would be like if the door was shut for
ever upon us three! ”

It is quite clear what the daughter wants. She
wants to live.

She urges her father to win renown instead of
shutting himself up with his invalid wife.

She debates the problem for a whole page, or rather
she produces upon paper the pros and cons of a
discussion which is, for her, already closed.

Sometimes she speaks for her father and sometimes

she expresses her own point of view with extreme
precision.

The alternations are quite amusing.

She calls her case: “ Putting myself in the place
of another.”

The fact is, that it is much more like lifting the

30THE JOURNAL, 1785

existences of other people bodily into that of her own,
and primarily that of her father.

To bring matters to a point, this instinctive habit
was the cause of the semi-rupture between Madame
Necker and her daughter.

The mother refused absorption on principle and
through native obstinacy ; the father succumbed.

Germaine’s natural force, the impetuous movement
of her being, separated the husband and the wife, the
one all admiration of her power, the other deeply
deploring her failings.

But this egoism was absolutely unconscious and
instinctive.

Instead of trying to hide, it comes boldly into the
open.

Just read a certain passage in which the sophisti-
cated young person imagines herself attacked by small-
pox, and on the point of death.

“You would be obliged to deny yourself the
company of those you love best, deny yourself the
only fascination of death, that of bestowing a last
proof of tenderness, which makes this fatal moment
so solemn and so touching.

“You could not even speak to them in this last
moment, when every word rings out as a great truth.

“That last moment of the dying surely unites in
one all the sensations of joy, fruition, and possession
to be felt in a lifetime.”

It is a singular subject, but her attitude is still more
SO.

‘“‘ Also I loathe this accursed sickness because it
disfigures. Distorted by the disease, your face could
no longer express your thought.

“Your dimned eyes would be unable to see the
most beloved face in order to revive their failing light
from it.

“You could not distinguish the last tender looks
bent upon you in the death agony.

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MADAME DE STAEL
“When words had failed, you could no longer make

your eyes speak for you. You could not draw down
upon your heart the hand of the adored one, to make
its dying flutter felt.”*

This is the death of a Julie, in the limelight, in the
middle of a stage.

She believes that in this fashion she is giving her
whole self. But her pity for the supposed mourners
round her death-bed is really pity for herself.

She is deluding herself.

She thinks she is submitting, but instead of that,
she is dominating.

And domination is for her something quite delicious,
a unique delight.

In any case, the form of this confession displays
her inalienable bent for society.

And that, no doubt, is one of the reasons why the
journal was not kept up.

Germaine never kept it for very long; at most
during the months of July and August, 1785, and even
then, it was only kept in irregular fashion.

It was only kept for the want of something better to do.

She abandoned it as soon as marriage gave her
more scope in every way.

As years passed on and the whirlpool of life left her
no respite (not that she would have done anything
but loathe a respite), she never resumed the keeping
of a journal.

Her so-called Memoirs are quite a different matter ;
it is work created by circumstance quite as much as
by herself.

For the moment life calls her.

She is determined to make her first appearance at
the side of a father before whom the whole of France
lies prostrate.

At the same time she must have a husband; a man
to give her his name and to rescue her from virginal
seclusion.

* See Note. Appendix C,
32THE JOURNAL, 1785

She is no longer very exacting about the personal
nature of the candidate.

So, in order to shake herself free from home restraint,
in order to step out boldly into the future, she gave her
consent to marriage with a Swedish baron, who is no
other than Madame de Boufflers’ “ little de Staél.”CHAPTER III

FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS: DRAMA

1786-1787

GERMAINE was married on 14th January, 1786, and
thus became Swedish Ambassadress in Paris.

In the month of June, 1787, she gave birth to a
daughter, who did not long survive.*

The fact of her pregnancy prevented her from taking
full advantage of the whirl of pleasure into which she
might otherwise have plunged at will.

Still imperfectly emancipated from the habits of
the Necker family, and taking comparatively little
interest in her husband, she fell] upon her pen and
began to write plays and novels as a means of occupy-
ing the time on her hands. It is almost certain that
the three novels: Histoive de Pauline, Mirza, and
Adélaide et Théodore, which first appeared in her
Recueil de Morceaux Détachés (1795), were composed
at about this time, immediately after her marriage.

Madame de Staél assures us airily that they were
all written before she was twenty (see Preface, edition
1795), and before the French Revolution burst upon
the world, which proves nothing, because at the
aeinnine of the French Revolution she was twenty-
three.

Let us attempt to deal with such facts as we can
get hold of,

* For the date of this child’s birth consult Geffroy’s Gustave ITI.
et la Cour de France, Vol. Il., page 444.
1787, Madame de Staél refers LO}:
into the world.” In another lett
daughter,

In a letter of 20th May,
' the child which I am soon to bring
er of June, 1787, she speaks of her

34It will be shewn that Mirza must have been written
in 1786. Addélaide et Théodore, as the most ambitious
of the series, probably came last.

The Histoive de Pauline, which shews more striking
ability than the other two, was probably conceived in

1785.

But these three stories all deal with the question
of marriage, to which Madame de Staél gave serious
consideration as a subject of urgent importance until,
two years after her own marriage, in 1788, she gave

it up as a bad job.

The same subject forms the basis of two plays
printed in her Guvres of 1820, bearing the dates of

1786 and 1787.

The first of these dates belongs to Sophie ou les
Sentiments Secrets, and the second to Jane Grey.

This is just what we should have expected. In
Sophie we can easily trace the hand of an unmarried
girl. It has artlessness, both in construction and

idea.

Jane Grey betrays a firmer hand, a warmer tem-

perament.

Madame de Staél also wrote an historic tragedy
during her youth, called Montmorency ; but this most
probably belongs to the year 1790, and the manuscript
remained buried in the tower of the archives at Coppet

If we except the Synonymes sent to Meister, and
a little story called Folle de la Forét de Senart, produced
by the fashion for madness, which followed the fashion
for synonyms, we shall have the sum total of the
apprentice-works, making every possible allowance
for error, and for the discoveries which future research

may bring to light.

All these are grouped round the moral crisis of
marriage, accomplished or seen in perspective.

Strange to relate, in spite of the intimate nature of
the source of her works, Madame de Staél was always

ready to read them aloud.

39

DRAMA 1786-1787eR a OR ER See a Eis a ici OTA:

 

VER DAVE WDE SIT AE i

If we may believe Madame de Saussure, the young
reader ‘‘ had incredible success.”
Her critics had fallen in with the family custom.

The tragedy-kings and queens did not fail to found
a family.

Saint-Beuve remarks that Madame de Staél had
her marionettes, just as Goethe had his, but those of
|Madame de Staél were not able to “ put on immor-
jtality.”

As we know, Germaine, the child, had proceeded
from making paper puppets to the creation of puppets
in drama, with the collaboration of Mlle. Huber, and had
presented them either to an imaginary audience or to
an equally indulgent audience consisting of her family.

Then came real visits to a real theatre with her
parents ; serious discussion of the plays she witnessed,
in which Marmontel, Grimm, and Voltaire’s “monkey,”
Laharpe, all participated.

Mlle. Clairon herself, a little faded, but still a stately
figure, used to return the Necker’s hospitality by
declaiming pieces from her répertoive after supper.

But beyond all this, the theatre was Germaine’s
blissful short-cut to life.

It was better than life. It was life with the boredom
left out: life with its pace accelerated . . . in fact

. the ideal life. It was life reduced to the terms
of a moral problem, it was emotion staged in a lovely
setting, where it might blossom to an exquisite
completion.

It was a continuation of that existence of the salons,
which was the only one she knew, but made finer.

In the first place emotion was more concentrated,
more poignant, the play of mind rapid and held well
in hand ; and enveloping the whole, was there not that
delightful unique sensation of luxury and refinement
which was all the more entrancing because it was
fictitious and fleeting ?

30DRAMA _ 1786-1787

Long before she knew the delight of being the most
popular hostess in Paris, she had carried all her
unsatisfied curiosity to the theatre.

Later, the theatre was to be her refuge from
importunate reality, from the sad necessity of being
bored. But it helped the young girl to embrace the
life she longed for; to which she already stretched
out with all her avid senses.

It seems, however, that it was some time before
Madame de Staél perceived how little talent she
possessed for the dramatic art.

Madame Necker de Saussure speaks of “ very
imperfect sketches which were never to get into print.”

But these sketches certainly were printed, and
that not owing to editorial inadvertence, but by order
of Madame de Staél herself in 1790.*

In January, 1791, she gave a reading of them at
the house of Cazenove d’Arlens, at Lausanne. At
that time she was so far from recanting the follies of
her youth that she commissioned Rosalie de Constant
to set the lyric in Sophie to music, a commission
willingly accepted.

The rather affected utterances in the preface of
1790 should not be taken too seriously.

She makes a disdainful face at her own Sophie,
evidently placing Jane Grey on a higher level.

She says that she has decided to print Sophie in its
original form in spite of the faults in style; first
because she only means to let friends see it ; and
secondly because “‘ to.go back on one’s thoughts, to
alter the expression of emotion in cold blood, is such a
painful task that effort must necessarily shew through
any success in it,” and there is no denying that this is
good reasoning.

¢

* We have not seen the edition of 1790. The preface of it is
reproduced in Vol. 17 of the Oeuvres, with the text of Sophie and
Jane Grey. It was evidently limited to very few copies. The Manuel
spece Ae by M. G. Lanson also mentions an edition of Sophie dated
1786.

37, v2 MeL

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
 

MADAME DE STAEL

In dealing with Jane Grey she does not feel the need
of so much excuse.

The preface opens seriously with a few observations
on the use of historical subjects which are, by the way,
in perfect agreement with observations on the same
subject towards the end of her career.

“ I preter historical subjects to pure f fiction. Names
illustrated_ by_ our memories capture. interest_in
advance ; probability cannot be questioned when
one works from the truth; and imagination, instead
of leading thought astray, recreates real experience
of the past, and holds up the great lessons of that past
to contemporaries.”

She believes that, as far as she is concerned, “‘ his-
torical events have been exactly followed in the trasedy
of Jane Grey ” (she does not dream of calling it a mere
sketch), and though she has relied on Rowe for her
conception of the character of Pembroke, she has
borrowed nothing else in her treatment of the subject
from the English author.

This seems to indicate that Madame de Staél
retained the illusions proper to a literary novice for
at least four or five years.

In addition to this, if we take Jane Grey alone, there
are two thousand lines in verse, which is perhaps not
an overwhelming amount, but it is a great deal for
Madame de Staél, who did not compose more verse
than that, during the whole of the rest of her life.

The verses are bad, and that is all that need be said
of them.

But Germaine’s diary has already made known to
us her literary method.

We are prepared for the use of the first adequate
word that comes to her; we know how repugnant
it is to her impatient character to revise her work
When it is simply a case of writing tolerable
prose.

The inevitable conclusion we come to is, that she

38

 

  

eS | ah a enDRAMA _ 1786-1787

must have made considerable efforts in composing
Sophie and Jane Grey.

Nor need we be astonished at it.

These compositions are the fruits of natural ambi-
tion, which, at a given moment, had a certain intensity.

Youth always begins with high aims.

Madame de Staél wanted “‘ to leap from height to
height.”

French tragedy offered a form for the full realization
of her ideal; the literary realization of it, a picture
without shadows, where all the contours were noble
and clearly defined.

Although Sophie is not called a tragedy, and has
only three acts, the play is none the less enwrapped
in a brooding atmosphere of classical abstraction.

If by any chance you expect from it an example ot
the bourgeois drama of pre-Revolution days, you
would be undeceived by a glance at the list of
characters.

Necker’s daughter did not belong to the school of
Sebastian Mercier.

The action takes place between the Comte de
Sainville ; his wife; Miss Sophie Mortimer, born, it
is true, in the land of melodrama, but of good family
and blameless reputation ; and Lord Henry Bedford.

There is also a footman who ‘“‘ blows in” half-way
through the play as a bearer of love-letters.

He is not mentioned in the cast.

It is a Society piece.

To avoid any misconception on that point, the
castle is “‘ seen in the distance,” and the action all
takes place in the idyllic setting of an English garden,
between a funeral urn near a cypress tree on one side,
and a closed summer-house on the other.

Nothing is to be seen of the outside world but a
small glimpse of the high road, through the iron scroll-
work of a manorial gate.

Jane Grey is still more classical.

39oy, a a 5 4 i bie oe wR ieee Td ‘ sige aS as BS ee | ™

 
   
 

MADAME DE STAEL

It is, in the author’s intention at any rate, a ereat
tragedy in five acts.

It is bad tragedy, but such as it is, it lives. It is
complete: the unity of place is rather disturbed in
the last two acts, but Voltaire has been guilty of that ;
on the other hand, that she may not offend against the
unity of time, Madame de Staél has cut Rowe’s play
into two pieces (she only really makes use of the
second half) and compresses the nine days of the
unhappy Jane’s brief reign into a period, of which the

uration is not precisely stated, but may pass, at need,
as not exceeding the recognised limit.

At the same time the scenes only limp along, and
no one would maintain that there is unity of style.

Without losing our sense of proportion, we may
say that it is an example of cause and effect.

The Court of Louis XIV. produced the genius of
Racine for tragedy.

The park at Saint-Ouen and the salon in the rue de
Cléry produced the idealising imitations of young
Madame de Staél.

She has no fear.

She marches into the temples of art, just as she
marches straight on into life.

In 1789, in her Eloge of Guibert, she lets the public
into the secret, the inmost secret of tragedy :

“ The writer who can move the public holds the real

secret of the tragic art: the vest can be acquired.”

Madame Necker did not approve of Sophie, but she
kept her reasons for disapproval to herself.

It is the story of a guardian, a married man, and a
father, who falls in love with his girl-ward and nobly
hides his love, while she on her side is entirely ignorant
of the ravages his passion is producing, and cannot
account for the mysterious melancholy which is
consuming herself.

Stage guardians in love with girl-wards had begun

40DRAMA _ 1786-1787

in the latter half of the eighteenth century to lose their
ridiculous and fractious character, and were sharing
the ascending fortunes of another type, up to then
usually butts in comedy, the legion of poor tutors to
girls of good family.

Taken as a morality, there is nothing in Sophie
which does not conform absolutely with the “ Test ot
Virtue” model, which bred with incredible rapidity,
both in drama and romance of the period, in which
virtue, on condition of giving this term all the elasticity
which it was then endowed with, was always more or
less indemnified.

In Sophie virtue is triumphant.

It was not merely the greater or less proportion ot
morality in the play which disturbed Madame Necker.

The story seemed to her to brush very close to
certain secret feelings and states of mind in the Necker
family, and though not identical, had a resemblance
to the conditions which had resulted in an uncom-
fortable and unacknowledged antagonism between
herself and her daughter.

Germaine, we must understand, had not given way
to embellishing her artless plot with the ordinary
trappings of romance.

The Count, who loves Sophie passionately, keeps
a bust of her in the mysterious summer-house of which
he alone holds the key.

As he cannot openly adore Sophie, he adores her
bust.

Sophie, who manages to get access to the summer-
house, finds her bust there, and is suddenly enlightened
as to the whole situation.

As she does not secure the door when she leaves the
summer-house, the Countess also discovers its secret.

This leads up to the final crisis.

Everybody makes a clean breast of it.

The only struggle in the case is as to which of them
shall be the most self-sacrificing.

ATee EA Toe ee Ba A a eH Saag ek

MADAME DE STAEL

The only obstacle to getting out of the difficulty is
the immeasurable generosity of everybody.

Finally the Count cuts the Gordian knot by insisting
on sacrificing himself.

His sacrifice is to accept Sophie’s sacrifice, for the
girl leaves his home, laden with this aggravated
burden of her miseries.

Failing the bust and an anonymous letter which
falls conveniently from the clouds at the right
moment, nothing would ever have been cleared up,
and all three characters, Sophie, the Count and the
Countess, must inevitably have been consumed to
ashes by their silent passions.

The action we may see is without plan or construc-
tion, but it is stiffened by the thesis, which is the
sanctity of marriage.

The parts played by the husband and wife are
ambiguous.

At first, by their separation, they form points of the
world-old stage triangle, which confronts the Countess
with a younger rival.

And afterwards in their reunion they become the
defenders of, and even the apologists for, an institution
which has nearly suffered catastrophe at their hands.

Tue Count (to Sophie)*

* Believe me, that your joy’s so much my care,
That Pll not spare myself to bring it you:
That joy that worthy mating brings a maid.

Pl bind your marriage-knot with ties of love.

God! How I know the value of such fate!

Oh! happy those whom Fate has led along

Two paths that meet and bring them face to face,

That glorying both in Love Invincible,

That draught they both shall drink without
remorse,

* The originals of all the verses quoted in this volume appear in
Appendix A,
42DRAMA 1786-1787

And taste Love’s sharpest bliss in innocence !

Spring wreathes theiy future with green leaves of
hope,

For when our years begin to flee away

And take with them our youth’s desire of life,

And Time leads swiftly to eternal Night,

What joy is leit? Oh, happy mortal then,

Who has and holds his dearest wish for ever!

For him Life shews a separate face, and Time ;

His days go by like days of mated doves,

And all his future holds his present hours,

When every passing moment bears a joy.

Ah! from the chain of days that makes his year,

Another’s destiny might snatch but one,

And wear it as a jewel it cannot match.

If this is true for man, how tar more true

It must be, then, for woman. You are free!

Therefore may hope for this, and may not dare

9)

To fling such fate away ..---

SOPHIE:
‘Yes. There lies happiness !

Oh! words my very heart’s core echoes back !
I do adore them... know them for the truth.”’
It is not by chance that these lines rise somewhat

above the general mediocrity of the rest.
The measure is Grmer and they breathe inward

conviction.

The same note rings 0
lifts up her voice aiter t
married state.

ut later on where the Countess
he Count in praise of the

THE CountTESs :
““ How rarely, Sophie, youth can truly weigh

The blessedness of happy ties 1n life !
Yet one day you may know the bitterness

Of pining in a loveless solitude,

43MADAME DE STAEL

Of wandering unheeded through the world

Not the first care of any human heart !

Once man has suffered this, sure that his pain
Will draw no tears from any mortal eyes,

How reckless must he be of his own end !
Unlov’d, uncherished! Who can love himself ?
Then one behind the other, lifeless days

Tread on each other’s heels and pass away !
Ah! Sophie! Never trick yourself to think
That joy is sown after youth flies away.

Joy’s fountain in our age springs from the past !
We were uncherished but for those we’ve loved.
And only by the planting of our youth,

We pluck the flowers of love through all our years.
That heart we won in youth is still our own

By memories which blossom as new Joys.”

The object of all this in the piece is to bring the
mournful Sophie to put an end to her misfortunes by
marrying Lord Henry Bedford, who has hovered
about through three acts as Sophie’s attentive
shadow.

In principle Sophie cordially endorses all the praise
bestowed on marriage by her guardian and his wife.

One would say that Germaine was preaching herself
a little sermon.

Marriage, she reiterates, is a sacred and beneficent
institution, which women especially should uphold.

But in the play Sophie does not marry Lord Henry.
She simply goes away.

Which means that between love and loveless
Marriage, she chooses love, even unhappy love,
without troubling herself to reconcile the principles
she accepts with the action she performs.

Sophie, we therefore feel, must be one of those little
persons who believe that principles have no place in
private life.

There is no mistaking the gist of the play.
44

SR SS gr hreeeeeer
oThough they are all made
three characters are unmistakably portraits, smudged
and sketchy enough, but still portraits of the three
members of the Necker family.

No doubt the portraiture is involuntary, but it is none
the less interesting to discover it there. We must all
use the materials we have, and at the time of writing
Sophie, Germaine had no real psychological knowledge
of anybody but her father and mother.

It is just the contrary of the method of procedure
in her journal ; there, fiction was mixed with reality ;
here, reality strikes through the fiction and you get
more of the truth than you expect.

Without being able to explain the precise reason
of it, Sophie strikes you as the most important

character.
No one ever tells her to

contemporary of his.

It is also indicated that Sophie’s charms act upon a
wider circle than that shewn to us. She is declared
to be the despair of numerous suitors, of whom Lord
Henry Bedford is given us as a specimen.

Everyone in the play is full of melancholy and
sensibility, but in these regions Sophie outshines them

all.

Her melancholy is blacker, her sensibility is more

vibrating and impetuous.

And though a curious mixture, she is a charming
creature, more natural, more spontaneous than the

other characters.

45

‘ platitudinarians,” the

‘run away and play.”
On the contrary, the elders treat her with an
exceptionally courteous deference, even their remon-
strances are framed with respectful consideration.
Sophie has “‘ enchanting eyes,” which accords with
the fact that Germaine’s eyes were her greatest beauty.
She is the subject of the Count’s secret pre-
occupation; he does not love her with a playful
elderly affection, but with passion, as if she were a

DRAMA _ 1786-1787MADAME DE STAEL

She has never been really a child, and in com-
pensation she seems to have preserved more of the
freshness and artlessness of childhood than other
young girls.

It is a matter of education and temperament.

We will quote once more.

‘¢ The sad and solitary life she led
In childhood, bit like acid on her mind.
From her first years she lost all child’s belief
In happiness. Perhaps her heart was stirred
Too early and too keenly for its good.
She suffered . . . but therefrom she blossomed more
Into a sweet inimitable grace.
So in the bloom of early spring she kept
Still the white candour of the bursting bud ;
And the up-growing of this purity
Told of the power of nature in her soul.”

In the case of the Countess, sensibility is well
shepherded by reason.

Let us suppose the maternal admonitions of Madame
Necker incorporated as the qualities of a good and
charming woman and we get the Comtesse de Sainval,
who, from being “ a simple fragile child,” has become
a most amiable and devoted woman, who is neglected.
She has already plaintively described the state of
desertion upon earth:

““ . . . wandering unheeded through the world.”

The invalid Madame Necker often adopted that
tone.

But the author insists more upon the good qualities
than the defects of this character.

Beneath the austerity which the Countess affects
because she has been taught “to keep a constant
guard upon herself, for excess of tenderness only
repels,” a mother’s heart is hidden, which does not

to rude shocks.

46DRAMA _ 1786-1787
THe Countess:

‘“‘ Believe me, more than ever you are dear !
Your rival has a mother’s heart for you.”

The mutual admiration of the two women has its
explanation in the lofty virtues of the Count, who is
far from being anybody or nobody. He is a “ very
gentil parfitte knighte,” quite as much annoyed as
anyone else that he has failed to love his wife as he
ought to love her, and generally comporting himself
in a difficult situation with all the delicacy expected
of a man of irreproachable honour. But that is not
all.

We are shewn very little of him in the aspect of
unfaithful husband ; rather one is made to look upon
him as a man who resists temptation without appearing
to wish to succumb.

An important point to note is that Sainval is a great
man, and recognised as such.

He is full of maxims, and his great sagacity has been
applauded beyond the frontiers of his own country.

One of the proudest scions of an English house,
Rossel (presumably Pitt), would not have felt that he
was stooping in allying himself with so distinguished
a Frenchman.

As Sophie and the Countess are both prevented
from doing justice aloud to their idol, the former in her
character of ingénue unconscious of her love, the latter
on account of her Britannic principles, the amiable
Bedford always “ out of office,” and no doubt delighted
to have something to say, bursts out into sonorous
panegyric :

“Oh! you whom all are forced to love with ardour,
For whom cold Reason’s self lights up with fire,
Whose happy diverse gifts where’er you rule,

ind France with England, one in praise of you!
A man whose nature cannot lay him low!
Restrained in love, nor harsh in virtue’s quest,

47eae ee - =
a oe
Pig ay cea

ro ce

lg ee
a. ee

Me
a
: “

’ \

MADAME DE STAEL

Possessing all those gifts from Nature’s store
Seeming opposed, but crowning you the more,
Though warring with each other. . . .

All prejudice lies prostrate at your feet.”

This is exactly the note on which Germaine, in
person, chants the praises of the Minister of Finance.

Towards the end of Chapter IV. of her Lettres sur
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Madame de Staél makes this
allusion to her father:

“IT saw that the most amazing genius was allied
with the purest of hearts and loftiest of souls; I saw
that neither passions nor faults of character could
lead astray the very sublimest qualities with which
a man has ever been endowed.”

In the composition of Sophie, theme, action,
characters were all taken by Germaine from herself
and her surroundings.

No use whatever has been made of inventive
imagination.

There is not enough of it to make this drama of
family life fit for production on the stage.

To have a root-idea, acute feelings and models to
draw from will not suffice for the creation of drama.

There is no doubting the portraiture, but the
likenesses are not good ones.

They are feeble efforts at creation, scrawls left in
soft wax by the semi-automatic gestures of a young
intelligence.

As a play it is nothing ; as a human document it is
of capital importance.

JANE GREY

There is an interval between the composition of
Sophie and of Jane Grey of which it is difficult to
determine the precise duration, but it was a time of

48DRAMA _ 1786-1787

great importance in the life of the young married
woman.

There is no doubt that her education proceeded
rapidly.

Madame de Staél was now given many opportunities
of finding her own level accurately; of knowing
herself.

Her character deepens and takes definite shape.

The first conclusion arrived at from this self-
knowledge was the acknowledgment of her marriage
as a failure.

One may read this between the lines of Jane Grey.

In proportion as happy marriage appears to her
more and more as a mirage, the more firmly is she
attached to it as an ideal, the more she excites herself
on the subject of this rare felicity which can fill a
woman’s whole life and render her indifferent to all
the catastrophes which can possibly menace her
outside it.

Like Sophie, Jane Grey is the history of a sacrifice.

That lamentable chapter of English history which
has afforded Rowe an opportunity of encouraging the
detestation of Catholicism in his compatriots, has
undergone a singular transformation in the hands of
Madame de Staél.

The moral pointed by Rowe*, disappears altogether.
The religious question, which is very important from
the historical point of view, and very useful as dramatic
material, is reduced to a few Voltairian observations
in which Lady Jane Grey commits herself philo-
sophically into the hands of God and of the English
people, especially the English people, for the solution
of the vexatious problems which beset her.

* See Vol. 7 of Bell’s British Theatre, which contains Rowe’s play.
This is probably the text used by Madame de Staél. Vol. 7 was
published in London in November, 1776. The Neckers had already
returned to Paris. AsfarasI can discover there was no representa-
tion of Jane Grey while the Neckers were in London.

49Ni oT RAM ie Eo eee as LO

MADAME DE STAEL

It was evidently not as a martyr of the Protestant
faith that Lady Jane Grey interested her co-
religionist.

Madame de Staél sees her only as a young wife
whose rare happiness is violently interrupted, and as
one might express it ... sanctified, crowned by
death.

She maintains that she and Jane Grey are exactly
alike in temperament: such is the resemblance that
Madame de Staél tells us in the preface that she is
“ transported ” by it.

As they are of the same age she feels that Lady
Jane’s youthfulness is “an encouragement” to her
own ; and there is the same combination of strength
and weakness in their characters, there are the same
studious tastes, for Jane reads Plato, just as Germaine
reads Montesquieu; the same reserves are made in
favour of the heart which at all costs is to take
precedence of the head.

To quote Jane in Scene IV., Act II.:

“Ah! how we must dread the sublime gift of

genius if it forbids us the happiness of love.”

There is also the same admiration of England, for
Madame de Staél “‘ makes Jane a present of her own.”

Only Germaine’s weaknesses, her wild exuberance,
and equally violent depressions, are absent here,
though they are shewn in Sophie.

Only greatness is to be depicted here.

Jane is invested beforehand with the high seriousness
of her destiny.

She might be a sister of Germaine’s, who had
absorbed Madame Necker’s precepts better than
Germaine.

Madame de Staél does not pity Jane. She never
dreams of such a thing. She envies her.

‘I should like to have been able to rouse such an
admiration as I feel for her . . . ” she says in the
preface.

50DRAMA _ 1786-1787

What she particularly admires is very well defined
in one of her cousin’s discriminating bits of criticism.

‘“‘ The heroine’s position presents the author’s very
ideal of felicity from the first: marriage with her
hero, whom she loves to adoration ; all the joys which
are at the disposal of a great intelligence ; and in the
future a brilliant or a baleful fate ... but either
way, a6 . glony |

This felicity is in no way destroyed by death.

On the contrary, Madame de Staél considers death
at the zenith of great love as the apotheosis of a
woman’s life.

JANE:

“Time might have brought a changing fate !
Time might have taught the words ‘ too late.’
Too late for love; Time turns the page!

Too late for all but frozen age.

We shall not die by inches, in such fashion !
We, you and I, will die unrobbed, and whole .
And the last sigh of all our burning passion
Shall slip out with each soul... .”

GUILDFORD:

‘““Oh sweetheart! Blind my eyes with passion !
Blind my eyes . . - that so they may not see
Onrushing horror, that is yet to be.”

Far from attempting to soften the horror of the
death-scene, Madame de Staél strains her slight
resources to the utmost to make the climax of the
drama poignant.

She makes it evident that Lady Jane Grey was
the living symbol of all feminine beauty, truth and
goodness.

Like Sophie she reigns over all hearts, even that of
the shaggy old wolf, Northumberland, whom the

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“ee BF

   

MADAME DE STAEL

author, fresh from the perusal of Macbeth and Hamlet,
has endeavoured to invest with Shakespearean
ruggedness.

Her husband adores her just as she adores her
husband: and Pembroke, who, in this play carries on
the role of Lord Henry Bedford, is irresistibly drawn
into her orbit.

No less than Sophie, Lady Jane dominates everyone
around her.

It is she in this case who tunes all her admirers up
to the pitch of self-sacrifice.

Pembroke devises a means of helping Jane to escape
from prison, gains access to her cell as a confessor, and
begs her to escape in his monkish habits. Jane
despatches this too-accommodating confessor to her
husband’s cell, where he is languishing alone in
another part of the prison.

He escapes, but learning that his wife is to go to the
block he returns, and is executed after her.

Pembroke, in his turn, attempts to commit suicide.

From this play, one would say that Jane would
have been much disappointed if this opportunity of
great death had been taken from her.

She deliberately blocks all issues, and mounting the
scaffold at the end, gives to the whole world a spectacle
of supreme sacrifice, a revelation of the boundless
force of love in the heart of a woman, who knows that
she is loved.

 
   
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
   
   
 
 
 
   
 

JANE:
“My only love! That soul of passion, ours,
That wove our marriage-wreath with all love’s
flowers,
Tastes our felicity with too much bliss,
To live without an anguished heart, in this,
The onslaught of misfortune. .. .

For mortal love is dread of sacrifice ! ”

52DRAMA 1786-1787

This exaltation is significant.

This is love d la Jean Jacques Rousseau, theoretic,
nostalgic, warming itself at the smouldering ashes of
the great flames of love in the past.

What the author possesses is marriage without love.
What she dreams of, is the association of love and
death; the sacrifice of life to the infinite reality of
love.

Having taken up writing for the theatre quite
seriously, Madame de Staél changes her mind,
abandons the attempt without any fuss and never
returns to it.

In 1806 she threw herself into the production of
other people’s plays with the greatest enthusiasm,
and amused herself in clearing up the confusion of a
stage setting or in choosing and designing costumes.

She turned actress herself.

From time to time she would dash off a little piece,
sometimes comic, sometimes sentimental, and would
introduce it into the programme of the evening.

But it was usually done to give her children a lesson
in elocution by making them act with her.

It was to be understood that her serious aims were
elsewhere, and that she only turned to the theatre to
amuse herself. Bee)

This abstention was partly’due to the absence of
much creative impulse.

Madame de Staél was never very successful in
breathing life into her work.

But there is obviously another reason.

Already, without wishing it or perceiving it, she
has only one subject : herself.

For that, the unyielding frame which must surround
a theatrical piece, was a nuisance to her. This is why
she turned quite quietly to the use of more fluid
forms.*

* See Note. Appendix C.

53Ti Aer oy PRT LTTE c Ss |

 

IV

  

CHAPTER

FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS: THE NOVELS

1786-1787

Tue drama-form imposed a salutary discipline on
Madame de Staél, constraining her to enclose her
exuberant personality within its limits and shackling
her vein for improvisation in chains, for the deadly
““ forced labour” of French versification.

She fully compensated herself for all this restraint
by pouring out the whole contents of her heart and
brain simultaneously into some prose romances, of
which three survive.

No doubt there were others, but it is doubtful
whether we need regret the loss of them.

L’Histoire de Pauline, Mirza, and Adelaide et
Théodore give us a good idea of the successive stages
of Madame de Staél’s moral development at this time,
and make her interesting physiognomy sufficiently
well-known to us; while their literary qualities do
not encourage us to wish that she had perpetrated any
more compositions of this mature.

Indeed, Madame de, Staél not only takes advantage
of the more elastic form she is using to spread out in
every direction, but she also permits herself to borrow
right and left.

The unfavourable opinions formed on reading
Germaine’s journal are here realized and surpassed.

That absolute freedom in her literary education
to which Sainte-Beuve has made a charming allusion*

* «“T imagine her in her schoolroom under the eye of her mother,
who is sitting with her: Germaine is walking up and down, and
whenever she advances towards her mother she reads the volume
of her task, and, while walking away from her, snatches a moment
for the sentimental romance, some novel of Madame Riccoboni’s,
perhaps, which is engaging her attention at the moment. Portraits
de Femmes, p. 89.

54THE NOVELS 1786-1787

seems, from its first fruits, to have had a deplorable
effect upon her.

It seems to have been demonstrated more than once,
that the worst preparation for novel-writing is novel-
reading.

Between Germaine and the face of Life which she
proposes to describe, there is the huge tumble-down
structure of all the trash she has read surreptitiously
or otherwise.

In L’ Histoire de Pauline, which is the feeblest of the
three, she accomplishes that tour de force of arriving
by way of imitation (imitation of Madame Riccoboni
and de Baculard) at that unconscious but finished
example of caricature which constitutes the romantic
school of writing.*

This mixture of sincere feeling and uncritical
imitation is not the least curious element in her
fiction.

It is strange to see this woman of great intelligence,
for she is already that, hanging her flabby forms with
the faded garlands of romantic fiction, and that
without the least repugnance, indeed, with evidence
of artless joy in it.

She is satisfied with very little as literary material.
For originality she relies on the fashion of the moment.
It is not that which interests her. Madame de Staél
wrote because she wanted to write about love.

That is the main revelation of these stories.

She is in love with love.

She is the first victim of all the lovers she creates.

She is curious about the passion, and until some-
thing better turns up she will know it by writing about
it, as hitherto she has known it by reading of it.

L’ HISTOIRE DE PAULINE

Just at this period the question of the slave-trade
first came into prominence,

* See Note. Appendix C.

>)MADAME DE STAEL

Bernadin de Saint-Pierre had been heralded as a
great man after the appearance of the first series of
Etude de la Nature.

Madame de Staél had this in mind when she
borrowed from the author of Paul et Virginie (who had
given a reading of this work in her mother’s salon)
one of those “ burning climates” where man “is
solely occupied in some barbarous pursuit of gain.”

Pauline, for that is the orphan-heroine’s name,
is ‘‘ beautiful as the day,” charming and sensitive,
all of which does not exempt her from complete neglect
on her husband’s part.

Before long she had no idea what to do with her
time, “or her gay disposition,’ which turns to
melancholy and vents itself like that of Sophie, in a
plaintive little song.

After this, one evening at a ball, she abandons
herself to the passion of a young man who dies
shortly afterwards in France, not however without
having received from his “‘ passionate mistress ”’
some very long letters, where the young and
tender soul of the writer is depicted in a very strange
style, a soul which “ unites the characteristics of
childhood with those of riper years.”

But Pauline, in spite of her natural chastity, gives
herself once more, and this time without the “‘ excuse
of love,” before she is reclaimed for the path of virtue.

What Madame de Staél wishes to point out, is that
in point of fact the poor child has never left it.

Selfish men have taken advantage of her innocence.

lf we find Madame de Staél insisting upon this point,
it is because she has learnt, and is learning every day
since her marriage, what the men who surround her,
are really like in their relations with women.

She is shocked by the meaninglessness of the
appellation, “a man of honour,” which is lavished

on those who are honourable in all transactions but
those with women.

56

pea | 3 Te mee p
a ae Pose id SaTHE NOVELS 1786-1787

Pauline’s seducer “‘ passed as a man of honour
because he had never been cruel and dishonourable
except to women.’’*

So that we see that one theme of the book is the
injustice of the male sex to women; the other is
marriage.

Pauline goes to France.

She beats Sophie and Jane Grey hollow in attractive-
ness.

Her person emanates such a powerful seductiveness
that one day, walking along the esplanade at Havre,
she finds herself suddenly surrounded by all the young
men of the town, who exclaim with one voice:

‘“* How beautiful she is!”

Just then Fate ushers upon the scene a certain
Colonel Edouard de Cerney, “‘ whose long drooping
lashes lend a certain gentleness, and even shyness, to
the otherwise martial characteristics of his face.”

He breaks through the crowd, rescues the embar-
rassed girl from all this importunate admiration, and
conducts her to a stand, from which she can witness
the manceuvres of his dragoons unmolested.

After this, events move with extreme rapidity.
A dragoon is thrown from his charger. Edouard, in
rushing to save him, is himself knocked down and
trampled under the horses’ hoofs.

Consternation reigns in the troop.

The colonel is carried into a house near-by, in an
inanimate condition; there, surgeons examine his
injuries and reassure the regiment which is besieging
the door.

The junior officers in their turn, reassure Pauline.

But plunged in a prolonged reverie, she hardly
notices that she is surrounded by something like a

¢

* Even here there is, perhaps, some literary suggestion. The
publication in 1780 of Rousseau’s Amours de, Milord Edouard had
set the fashion for virtuous and repentant courtisans, as well as
letting loose the idea that virginity is no virtue.

mh,RE Bi Mea Tie as ta |

MADAME DE STAEL

score of young officers, drawn to her by her aura of
irresistible attraction.

Edouard having recovered, and knowing nothing
of the sorrows of Pauline’s past, proposes marriage
to her.

He himself is characterised by a quality singular
“in his country and at his age,” he “‘ observes the
strictest austerity in the conduct of his private life.”

In her presence he discourses unceasingly on female
virtue, which does not fail to embarrass the girl, whom
he believes to be one of its most perfect examples.

Fearing for the future, Pauline heroically repels his
advances, and only yields when she discovers him in
the posture of Saint-Preux or of Gloucester, preparing
to put an end to his misfortunes kneeling on a rock
which projects into the sea, “‘ with dishevelled hair,
and in an attitude of despair.”

She marries him and courts death when chance
makes her husband aware of her “ fatal dissimulation.”

While dying she explains the moral of the story.

Happiness in marriage is a rare and perfect joy.

One either has it completely or not at all.

It depends on the equilibrium of the most delicate
shades of feeling.

It is a form of perfection which never undergoes
decay.

In marriage sins may be forgiven, but not deception,
for without candour how can there be understanding ?

Between husband and wife, the most fatal and quite
the stupidest mistake is deception.

 

MIRZA

The principal theme of L’Histoive de Pauline, the
injustice of men to women, is taken up again and
elaborated in Mirza.

In Mirza it is no longer a case of general injustice to
the generality of women, but of injustice to a woman,

58THE NOVELS 1786-1787

apart from her kind; a woman who thinks, or, if you
like, a woman of genius.

The setting is very much like that of L’ Histoire de
Pauline, but is treated in a more detailed manner.

Bernadin has been studied to more purpose ; we are
no longer gasping in the “‘ burning climate ” of nowhere
in particular, but in Senegal.

Madame de Staél had gleaned some reliable in-
formation about this colony from M. de BoufHers,
who, at that moment, in November, 1786, was on the
point of returning there with the object of starting
sugar culture.

Ximéo, the hero of Mirza, follows the example of
M. de Boufflers (whose humanitarian zeal was much
admired by Madame de Staél) by shewing the natives
how to emancipate themselves from white tyranny by
means of free trade.*

In Mirza the matter of the story is so very personal
an affair that there is far less of the romantic element
than in Pauline.

One begins to feel that Madame de Staél has made
real strides in the art of writing.

The less there is to invent the more sure of herself
she is, and therefore the more readable.

Mirza was not a beautiful woman.

Gibbon tells us that “‘ Germaine’s fascination pro-
ceeded far more from mental than physical beauty.”

This is exactly the case with Mirza.

“Her grand figure, enchanting eyes, and the

*See the third budget of news addressed by Madame de
Staél to Gustavus III., 4th November, 1786: ‘The Chevalier
de Boufflers is just going back to Senegal; a fine example, for it
needs strength of mind to leave Paris for Senegal. He has a project
for the establishment of sugar-culture, and to employ the African
natives in free cultivation of this commodity, which is the cause of
all their misfortunes. . . Unfortunately, the negroes are incredibly
lazy if left free—which is the white man’s excuse. ... Yet, details
M. de Bouffler has told me of slave-existence are quite ex-
Cruciating. i

Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour: ‘‘ This passage fixes the date of
Mtrza as the end of 1786,”

29Re aa Ae a

MADAME DE STAEL

brilliant animation of her face, left love nothing to
desire, as to beauty of feature.”

Mirza is a poet “‘ who loves to dream on the moun-
tains ” and at the same time sings the praise of liberty
and the horror of all slavery.

For all her superiority of mind she is very much a
woman.

She aspires to full knowledge of love: which can
absorb the whole of life and by its own power alone
brings happiness to every instant of the day.

Ximéo is the desired lover who undertakes to teach
her what she knows already: ‘“ that intellectual
pleasure is not enough,” and that “ only ecstasy which
includes the emotions can suffice to all the faculties
of the soul.”

Mirza loves, and abandons herself to being loved.

Indeed, she loves more than she is loved, for mental
power in her case, fans the flame.

In spite of a certain ascendency which she attains
over Ximéo, his passion cools, as hers burns more
fiercely.

Before long he deserts her to marry a gentle girl of
his own tribe, who is ravishingly beautiful, and
possesses the appeal of the feminine in the grace, and
real weakness of fibre which may be dominated by
any man.

Poor Mirza is dashed from the heights of joy to the
depths of despair, being numbered among those
passionate souls who must be at one extreme or the
other.

She commits suicide, and Ximéo, prevented by an
oath from following her example, drags the burden of
his remorse to the end of his days.

One would say that Madame de Staél had dis-
covered what would thenceforth and for ever be the
great and tormenting problem of her own life. She
is already working it out on paper, twisting and
turning it. But she cannot find the solution,

60THE NOVELS 1786-1787

Already her mind is leaving the problem of her
marriage in the lurch, to launch itself into one that is
far more complicated.

Since leaving her sheltered existence at home she
has perceived that women need something more than
great intelligence and mental power to attract and
hold men; and that these qualities in women may
even be looked upon as drawbacks by men.

The acquisition of this knowledge was very dis-
turbing to her, as she felt the need of the love and
admiration of men.

She has had a vision of the man who will some day
hold her captive: he is beautiful as Apollo Belvedere
(see Léonce in Delphine) and he will fascinate her by a
strange mixture of strength and weakness, which
combines the grace of a stripling with the courage of a
warrior.

She even sees how he will treat her.

Ximéo already sketches the gesture of Oswald in
Corinne ; of Fernand in the little story of Zulma ; and
of Léonce in Delphine.

With a glance which “disposes of her soul alto-
ecther,” and that soul formed entirely of lofty and
sensitive passion, he becomes the docile instrument of
his tribe, or family—call it society.

When he is not under the immediate personal
magnetism of his beloved one, who, in his presence
can maintain her ascendancy, he is ready for any
depths of treacherous submission to the droning
admonitions of society.

ADELAIDE ET THEODORE

Madame de Staél’s curiosity about Senegal did not
long survive the departure of the Chevalier de Bouflers.

Even while listening to his descriptions she was
astonished that anyone could prefer an island full of
black men to Paris.

61MADAME DE STAEL

She entirely failed to grasp the significance of
Bernadin’s precise and vivid detail, or at any rate she
did not pay more than passing attention to it.

Even in taking inspiration from him she had no
thought of imitating him where he was really original.

As a matter of fact, the exotic had very little
fascination for her.

If, later on in 1795, she indicates without describing
a wild setting on the banks of the Orinoco for Zulma
it is because she had most excellent reasons for
transporting this story which reveals so much, out of
Europe.

Henceforward, without recanting the romantic
faith altogether, she tries to bend it to her own
purposes.

Letting her pen run on, dwelling only on what
interested her, and refraining from burdening her
imagination with invention for which it was little
fitted, she brings us into her own circle in Paris, and
quite quietly, hardly noticing where she is going, she
starts on a new road which turns out to be the road
leading to the greatest triumphs of her literary career.

Adélaide et Théodore is the “ novel of manners” in
embryo. Not that Madame de Staél had any definite
intention of adopting this form, for we may question

whether she had ever defined to herself the nature of a
novel at all except in agreeing with Madame de Genllis
that it was something which contained a moral.

But this is the first time that we meet her in litera-
ture as a society woman: the first time that we hear
the echo of her laughter or the sharp explosions of her
epigrams, or the shimmering cascade of acutely
mischievous observations which she lets fall ; and we
hear at the same time, though slightly muffled, the
plaintive note of a woman who is not happy in her
marriage, the sighs of a soul unsatisfied and craving.

We move in a little group of secondary characters
who are perfectly distinct and recognisable.

62

a A SA hc eh

eeTHE NOVELS 1786-1787

Orville, Adélaide’s guardian, a selfish old confirmed
bachelor, bored by his responsibility, is finely drawn
in a few strokes, with a bold, sure touch which takes
us by surprise.

He is “ a taking man, easy to get on with, but of so
volatile a nature that it would be difficult to fix his
attention for a quarter of an hour, even to save half
his fortune for him.

“This made him an amusing man to meet.

“His distinctive quality had been called irrespon-
sibility in his youth, and now that age was drawing
down upon him, was dubbed a philosophical outlook.

“The results were the same, only the name was
changed. He never took action in anything evil, or
anything very difficult, but from want of moral
stamina he easily slid into both.

‘He was not a man witha system . . . either of
morality or immorality.

“He nearly always set his face against anything
customary, anything profound, anything which was
dificult or required effort to carry it out.”

This was another example of a man of honour
towards the end of the “ ancien régime” bearing and
exterior altogether irreproachable, charming to get on
with, but morally inaccessible and impossible to hold
or tie down to anything.

Madame d’Orfeuil, to whom Orville confides his
ward to be chaperoned, is a woman of thirty; ‘She
believed herself to be still wildly in love with her
husband who had deserted her, or, rather, being
excessively pious, she had never dared to lose hold on
this passion for fear of being seized by another.”

M. de Liniéres, a good man, but as stupid as it is
possible to find in France, is the kind of husband to
whom guardians like Orville (who know the world
well enough to have a huge respect for stupidity) give
their wards in marriage when they are determined ta
get rid of them decently.

63MADAME DE STAEL

There is nothing banal in this gallery.

The portraits we feel certain are drawn from life,
much in the same fashion that the ambassadress
described the originals when she met them in her
social life.

The only pity of it is that, having drawn them, the
author hangs them up on the wall instead of letting
them move and breathe like living beings.

The sketch has some difficulty in turning into a
real live person.

Yet from time to time the breath of life is there.

We know that before his marriage with Germaine,
the Baron de Staél was very well received at Court,
especially by Madame de la Marck, Madame de
Luxembourg, the Countess Jules de  Polignac,
Madame de Chalons, Madame de Gontaud and others.

Old Madame de Boufflers loved him “ as a son.”

No doubt Madame de Staél was only too well
acquainted with these ladies.

One cannot but suspect that she took some of them
as models for the circle of old scandal-mongers which
surrounded the impatient youthfulness of Adélaide :

“ Orville’s women friends were very attentive to
Adélaide, and every one of them by way of proving
her interest undertook to direct some portion of her
toilet.

“They gave her advice which was neither good nor
bad, they left her conduct to chance, but they were
very much concerned about the well-being of her
amour-propre, because they keenly desired success for
her.

“When women of a certain age are not jealous ofa
young person, they are vain for her, and any success
of her’s must somehow have emanated from their
influence if they are to see her with any pleasure.

“ Adélaide’s brain was set in a whirl by all the
novelty round her.

‘She wanted to talk about love.

* See Note. Appendix C.

64THE NOVELS 1786-1787

‘““ The ladies replied to her questions by saying that
the best way of inspiring love was to avoid bright
colours if you were dark or pale ones if you were fair.”

The psychology here is not deep, but it is acute,
and we cannot avoid noticing the attitude of the
observer.

It is not devoid of impertinence.

Where wit is concerned this young woman is very
cocksure ; perhaps too much so.

But it is more a destructive than a constructive
talent.

The positive ability to dump down a complete
man with all his physical attributes before our eyes
is lacking.

Positively the only detail in Adélaide et Théodore
which betrays the slightest attention to things seen is
the description of Adélaide in a condition when “ her
heart beat so violently that her dress rose and fell
with the palpitation”; and this image has already
been used in exactly the same words in “‘ La Folle de
la Forét de Senari”’ as follows:

“|. but at this moment the winding of a horn
resounded through the forest and at the sound of it she
was seized with convulsive trembling all over; her
heart beat so violently that her dress rose and fell
se asslete.”

This is not reassuring, as the image is slightly
ludicrous for use even on one occasion ; to have used
it twice is a confession of weakness.

In other respects Adélaide turns out to be nearly
related to Mirza and Pauline.

Brought up in the country by an ultra-sensitive
woman, like Sophie, she has chiefly learned to be
sentimental and excitable and to read novels. She is
also genuinely pious.

She is snatched from her solitude to be delivered
up to a husband aged sixty, M. de Liniéres.

65MADAME DE STAEL

M. de Liniéres has had an interview with Orville in
which he declares “ that he has a large income, that
he has reached the age of sixty, that he is very much
in love with Orville’s niece and will marry her in a
week’s time.”

Adélaide’s guardian “is struck by the general
suitability of this arrangement,” and gives a rapid
and eager consent.

Only Adélaide is in despair for the interview of the
two elderly gentlemen has “ robbed her of romance.”

The day after her marriage she writes to her aunt
that “they have done for her future, that the
happiness of loving is for ever forbidden her and
that henceforth, knowing neither happiness nor mis-
fortune, she will be indifferent to everything.”

This was not exactly Germaine’s point of view on
the eve of her marriage.

But Madame de Staél had adopted sentimental
objections to the marriage of convenience since,
objections which she had not raised in her own case,
at a time when she felt decidedly that her very next
step must be marriage; though they began to
acquire an elegiac and retrospective importance
during the first year of her union with de Staél.

However that may be, she had written to her
mother in an early morning note on her wedding-
day :

“‘ To-night I shan’t be coming home to you. This
is the last day I shall live through, the same as all the
time before it.

“ Making a change like this costs me a great deal,
I can tell you. It will be difficult for me to take up
an entirely different existence, and fear of the unknown
makes me feel worse about the whole things
Every moment I foresee regrets <9. ands what

then 4.2 2 Wall happiness come afterwards ... ?
Will it come now and then Ao te Wall it never
COMe nt. ae

66

Rs Ee A ce” aac a Tt a eT =THE NOVELS 1786-1787

* Death is the end of all this . . . and are you sure
that there is a future life #”

This certainly bears some resemblance to Adélaide’s
complaint.

Adélaide becomes afraid of being left alone “‘ with
the most boring husband in the world.”

She goes out a great deal, and learns the art of
“bombinans in vacuo,” like other good members of
society.

Above all she wishes to escape her own thoughts by
plunging into a whirlpool of gaiety.

Having an adaptable character, well dosed with
frivolity, she soon forms the ineradicable habit of life
in the social world.

M. de Liniéres has the good taste “ to shuffle off
this mortal coil” ; he dies.

All is not lost for Adélaide.

She bounds eagerly into the unknown and meets
Théodore. He is the embodiment of her dream.

Adélaide’s education has had a puzzling effect on
her character which appears to be simultaneously
serious and frivolous.

“ The sight of a beautiful stretch of the country-side
would set her dreaming, but the sound of a violin sent
her scampering back to town.”

At the same time any lightness in her character
is absolutely inoffensive and in no way compromises
the really good qualities of the charming young
widow.

Let us note down these good qualities :

«, . her sensibility, kindness and candour were
unalterable, and her faults, which she frankly admitted,
served to placate the envious and gave her friends a
chance of chaffing her ; which was always amusing, and
always well received.”

It is true that in 1786 all Paris knew that the
Swedish Ambassadress was an original and unaccount-
able person who would come to call without a hat, and

67MADAME DE STAEL

had been obliged to retire and adjust her dress when
she was presented at Court.

Madame de Staél seeks to conceal her own connec-
tion with this confession by giving Adélaide “a gentle
delicate face” and “ fair hair,” accompanied by “a
dazzlingly fair skin.”

The expression of this charming face betrayed
duality of character, “extreme vivaciousness” is
corrected by “an expression of romantic tender-
Hesse

Adélaide is not a widow for nothing.

From the moment that she meets Théodore “ the
extreme curiosity which she felt about such famous
abilities mastered every other idea in her mind.”

It is an absolute “ possession,” and Théodore is
quite pleased about it.

Théodore is the perfect wooer, as well as being the
most intelligent man in the world.

‘* Nothing ever kept him away from Adélaide.”

“His whole time was at the disposal of her com-
mands”; for Adélaide thinks nothing of love which
is less than this.

Yet he did not make his declaration.

Adélaide could not understand it.

“They were both free and there was no obstacle
between them.”

Sick of waiting, the imperious girl questions her
aunt: “ Will you never have something to say to me
from the Comte de Rostain ? ”

She feels that she must possess his heart or die.

As we might have foreseen, she does possess it.

She and Théodore are secretly married.

Suddenly she gets a perfect mania to see Paris.

Madame de Staél knew what an imperious feeling
this may be.

Adélaide starts for the capital.

Parisian society welcomes her not only with pleasure
but with applause, like that which rang through the

68THE NOVELS 1786-1784

temple after the hymns of the priestess Zulma, but it
was roused in the first place by her beauty.

She has nothing more pressing to do than to engage
in a duel of mind with her husband, and Théodore is
delighted to ‘‘ show off and bring out ” his wife.

Adélaide not only loves dancing (a very normal
taste), but she likes shining in conversation (which is
perhaps not quite so normal) and she must have a
husband who helps her to do it (which is not normal
at all.)

But the book must have an ending.

Out of generosity, not vice, for the giddy girl has
none in her composition, Adélaide compromises herself.

She compromises herself very innocently, only so
far involved as to be obliged to infringe the compact
of candour which must exist between husband and
wite.

Théodore’s jealousy is inflamed.

Flere is an end to married happiness. Théodore
takes poison and Adélaide follows his example.

The moral is the same as that of L’Hestoire de
Pauline :

“Once you allow yourself to practise concealment
with the man you love, you will find the effect upon
yourself quite incalculable.

“ Explanations, complaints and reproaches may be
wiped out to leave no trace, but silence devours the
heart on which it is imposed.”

To this is added a commentary reflected from
Madame Necker’s old admonitions to the small
Germaine, to love “ those innocent pleasures which
end by disgusting you with the fever and display of
town life.”

The juxtaposition is not without importance.

It would not be just to take it as a mere literary
echo with no meaning attached to it.

On the contrary, if the evidence in these three
Stories does not deceive, it is clear that the first

69 FMADAME DE STAEL

experience of life in Paris caught Madame Necker’s
daughter at a disadvantage in some ways.

There is no question of revolt or of anger, but there
is a conflict of impressions.

She does not like the affected cynicism of the
manners and morals, especially those of the men ; she
does not like the brainless frivolity of the women nor
the malice hidden under pretty manners.

But she does like the quick, frank spirit ; the jolly
sense of being perpetually on the go; the excitement
which lighted rooms, humming with talk, inject into
the veins of women; she does like all this, though
apologising as if for a sin or a weakness, for in prin-
ciple she still upholds the Puritanism of her mother.

From a literary point of view these artless stories
have one merit in common and that is face.

The writer’s impatience is at least as great as the
reader’s.

That is why, though dangerously near to evoking
boredom, they escape that peril.

From the point of view of material they are all
stories of unsuccessful marriage.

And the strange thing is that they never ought to
have been that.

The couples love each other and suit each other.

But Fate is unkind, and particularly unkind to
this sublime institution.

It seemed to Madame de Staél in 1786 that the
chances are all against happy union.

A featherweight will crush the flower of this rare
and exquisite variety of happiness.CHAPTER V

MADAME DE STAEL AT VERSAILLES AND IN PARIS

Ir was not long before the Swedish Ambassadress
became a personage in upper, and upper-middlc-
class society in Paris, differently appreciated, but
universally known and talked about.

She had been formally presented at Court on
January Ist, 1786, about a fortnight after her wedding.

She had dined that very day, one of a party of
twenty-four, at the most magnificent banquet with
which an ambassadress was ever honoured at the
Court of France, presided over by the Princesse de
Chimay, one of Marie-Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting.

For the first six months it was a giddy rapture.

She abandoned herself to it, intoxicated by the
exquisite sensation of being a very great lady indeed,
feted by the cream of society in the leading capital of
Europe.

M. de Vergennes entertained her at dinner at the
same time as the Spanish Ambassadress and gave
them each an arm to lead them to dinner in order to
avoid the embarrassment of choosing between them.

On February 13th, at a reception of the Academy
for her friend and admirer Guibert, who declaimed an
emphatic discourse, the incident occurred which she
has related in Adélaide et Théodore, the whole dis-
tinguished audience greeted her arrival with applause.

At the Queen’s balls, which were very brilliant that
season, while her husband handled the new shekels
that his marriage had provided him with in the
card-room, she was lost in admiration of the great
“ winter-garden,” where she said, “ you could taste

7X:MADAME DE STAEL

all the joy of summer and the country,” and at the
same time, the exquisite luxury of a surperfine
civilisation which her young senses absolutely refused
to condemn.

It was there, no doubt, in the enchantment of those
shaded lights, harmonious chords and floating per-
fumes, that Necker’s daughter (who had been ordered
to keep the principles of her Swiss education to
herself whatever happened) allowed the powdered
courtiers to whisper in her ear jests and inuendoes
of a certain snaky coldness, such that she was never
quite certain whether she was horrified or fascinated
by them.

She had a real consciousness of emancipation and
keenly enjoyed being her own mistress at last, and she
took advantage of it to let herself drift a little.

It was a question of being in the mode.

She did not want to be taken for a country cousin.

Being an ambassadress she was obliged to be a
great deal in Court circles.

When at Fontainebleau, she supped three times a
week with Madame de Polignac, three times a week
with the ill-fated Madame de Lamballe, and once a
week in the Royal private apartments.

In town, as the dictates of fashion command the
luxurious to concern themselves with the poverty they
have helped to create, she took part in so-called
charity functions where the victims of the system of
government were invited to attend in order to describe
their sufferings in detail.

Four or five times a week in the rue Bergére, or at
the Swedish Embassy in the rue du Bac she received a
perfect host of guests, some drawn by their curiosity
to see the latest thing in ambassadresses ; others,
scenting Necker’s imminent return to office.

Her lavish hospitality was rather that associated
with bankers’ daughters.

Even the Queen was slightly shocked and begged

72dl WisixgSadULiOas ~ ZUNID) JON) IRAURIES

her to be more moderate, upon which Madame de
Staél really touched by what she considered a delicate
attention from the Queen, reduced the number of her
entrées to sixteen, and thought she was doing marvels.
All this was not enough for her indefatigable vitality.

She wrote quite at random, with no fixed plan, and
in her odd moments, plays and novels, verse and prose,
all by fits and starts, and principally as an outlet for
the overflow of her emotional life which poured out
like a torrent perpetually in spate.

Every three months, having taken over from
Madame de Boufflers the duty of sending a budget to
the King of Sweden, she fashioned a report of society
doings for the royal eye, copiously watered with
epigrams, spiced with scandal and heavy with flattery
which was not over-delicate, addressed to one who
was the controller of her husband’s fortunes.

At first she takes a good deal of pleasure in it.

But in the long run by dint of describing this life
as busy as the life of a hive, in which yet there was
nothing done, she begins to perceive the emptiness,
and having first made it a duty to write as a Parisienne,
we soon find her making excuses for it, finding her own
little jokes and bits of malice very petty, and not
likely to be at all appetising, especially when read a
week after they were written.

Before six months were over she was disillusioned
and was asking herself where all this was going to lead
to; of what use was this perpetual féte and what she,
Baronne de Staél, Swedish Ambassadress and
daughter of Necker, was to do with herself in this
particular bedizened galley ?

‘“ Society in Paris,” she wrote in her second budget
of news, “‘ gets more and more insipid. One loses
even the desire to shine, and if we had not the desire
to win at play I do not know what would keep us alive
at all.”

If Paris loved her, Versailles, though she did not
13MADAME DE STAEL

lose her taste for the charm of its bygone elegance,
could not fail to seem corrupt and imbecile as far as
society was concerned.

From this judgment only the Queen is excepted.
She has hearty praise for the goodness and charming
manner of Marie-Antoinette (November, 1786).

She respects the King largely because she never sees
him, and is disposed to believe all the good she can of
him.

But the courtiers seemed to her pitiable creatures :
always ready to pose, terribly circumspect and
jealous, with ill-furnished minds and cold hearts.

They paid her in her own coin.

From her very first appearance at this Court,
where, according to the Duc de Coigny, it was better
to be vicious than ridiculous, she was the object of
much ridicule.

It could hardly have been otherwise.

Necker’s reputation at Court was that of being “a
very starchy sort of Cagliostro, with stiff, disagreeable
manners.”

Her mother was called “the governess,” who
“must have been soaked in a bucket of starch.”

Even if Madame de Staél had been the most
fascinating débutante who ever appeared, she could not
have got off unscathed.

And she was not really beautiful, though she had
beautiful eyes ; she only lighted up to real beauty as
she grew animated in conversation.

At her very presentation she was the victim of just
the sort of misfortune one would expect for her.

While making her third curtsey she ripped some of
the trimming off her dress, and would have been in
sore embarrassment at the famous banquet for
twenty-four if the Queen had not come to the rescue
by sending her to the royal apartments to repair and
refit.

This affair was duly commented on at the Duchesse

74ALE VERSATLEES, AND: TN ZAKS

de Bourbon’s, and the whole clique present, decided
pleasantly, that M. de Staél, so perfectly at home in
his position, had little cause for congratulation in his
bride, who had shewn herself to be awkward, con-
strained, and out of place in the courtly atmosphere
of Versailles.

Marie-Antoinette was of the same opinion, or was
on the high road to it.

Things had begun to take a bad turn for Germaine
in 1787.

The Queen betrayed her unfavourable attitude,
when pressed by Madame de Staél to intervene with
the King in favour of Necker, who had been exiled
in May for having published his Mémoire Justificatef
without permission.

Deeply hurt, Madame de Staél imposed upon her
husband an attitude of wounded dignity and reserve.

All to no purpose.

The day after Necker was nominated Controller-
General, Madame de Staél visited the Queen, arriving
at the same moment as the niece of the Archbishop
of Lens; and she immediately perceived from the
welcomes accorded to them, that the Queen much
preferred the retiring Minister, to the Minister who had
just come into office.

This time the Ambassadress was resigned to it.

Though preserving perfect loyalty to the person of
the Queen, she vowed herself, her husband and the
Embassy, to the service of Necker.

She arrogated to herself before all Paris, and, under
the very nose of Versailles, a sovereignty which Marie-
Antoinette was powerless to dispute with her, the
sovereignty of mind.

Later on, after the two days of October 5th and 6th,
1789—above all after the deplorable adventure of
Varennes—Madame de Staél had a revulsion of pity,
which became, in the month of June, a passion of
remorse and sacrifice.

79MADAME DE STAEL

She offered to give up anything, even her own life,
to save the royal family from the horrible danger
which threatened it.

The answer was, that the King and Queen would
accept of nothing from Madame de Staél.

This tacit disapproval was no doubt largely political
in origin, but it was also partly personal.

We have not the slightest doubt that in the presence
of the Queen, Madame de Staél was awkward and
constrained.

She found herself deprived of all her weapons ;
always weapons of assault.

She was almost incapable of silent deference, and
the nervous constraint may well have expressed itself
in all her limbs; it was such a horrible trial to her
that it could not fail to be evident in her demeanour.

The same thing went on with lesser personages,
who also stood on their dignity.

Madame de Boufflers’ comments on the wife of her
“little de Staél” are far from flattering.

She was really shocked at so much assurance in so
young a woman.

She concludes from it, that though she had good
principles (and here is another witness to the respect-
ability of Madame de Staél’s moral principles at the
outset) she seemed to have very little knowledge of
the ordinary usages of society.

Madame de Boufflers is also displeased because
Germaine talks so much, and she concludes from this
that the “ new ambassadress has been quite spoilt by
flattery of her abilities.”

Madame de BoufHlers makes this observation in a
letter to Gustave III., and was perhaps spurred on
by a certain eagerness to point out the defects of his
new correspondent to the King of Sweden, but
considering who she was, and what her obvious
limitations must have been, we must allow that she
kept within the rights of a ceremonious old cat of a

70ZaltE WAGIKSZUALILIGS, ~ AURYID) ION JBAUSIES

society woman, quite unable to perceive, or allow for,
the unconscious boldness of genius.

Towards the end of 1786 M. and Madame Necker
de Saussure came to renew acquaintance with their
celebrated cousin, in her new guise of great lady.
The opinion of these provincials was exactly that of
Madame de Boufflers.

Writing her Notice in later years, and conscientiously
describing those encounters of the mind in which
Madame de Staél so often floored her opponent “‘ as
she went along,” winning the support of everyone
present, Madame de Saussure too often forgets how
much she then disliked her cousin ; for, as years went
on, Time slowly but surely converted her mistrust into
solid friendship.

In 1786 she was very little inclined to bow before
a mind which only made her conscious that she had no
mind to speak of herself.

The same thing is to be observed in the case of
Charles and Rosalie de Constant.

The former, when supping with the Swedish
Ambassadress, at about this time, felt himself to be
a horribly insignificant person, “‘ a miserable creature,”
only fit to be asked rapid questions by people who do
not wait for the answer.

The conversation round him touched on actors,
men of letters, and political personages of the day,
while he was sitting quite mum and certain that he
was taken for a ‘‘ perfect fool.”

So it is not surprising that he went home and vented
his bile by whispering abuse of his hostess as a pedantic
upstart.

Rosalie’s opinion, which comes to the same thing,
is an even more considered one, and it should be
understood that these are witnesses who have stated
their immediate impressions with perfect frankness
and precision.

‘Her abilities are too much above other people’s

Ul.SORT RTT Ry i

  

MADAME DE STAEL

to allow her to bring their’s forward, or even to allow
them to have any atall ...” oragain ... “ When
she comes into the room nearly everybody else
becomes a mere spectator.” We hear the same note
from Gouverneur Morris: On the 30th October, 1789,
after calling on Madame de Staél, he writes: “ The
conversation too brilliant for me.”

On the 4th November, of the same year, another
call takes place, and he comments as follows : “ Mental
gymnastics of the highest order. I am not agile
enough to take part.”

For that matter the agreement is no less striking
on the question of manners and way of dressing.
Already in 1784, Miss Berry, passing through
Lausanne, had noticed that Germaine’s licence in
these matters had shocked all English youth, pre-
sumably of either sex.

In 1786 Madame de Saussure criticises the almost
vulgar magnificence of her dress, and agrees with
Madame de Boufflers in pronouncing her untutored
in the ordinary usages of society.

All these opinions are too spontaneous and too
naturally-delivered to be suspect.

Except that of Gouverneur Morris, 27th March,
1879 (who expresses the same opinions very crudely by
saying : “‘ She looks like a servant”), they were all
delivered before the publication of her Lettres sur
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and are, therefore, very little
coloured by party-spirit, if at all.

Taking everything into consideration, we do not
find complete disillusionment in her new circle, but
though she was paramount in it, she was not felt to
fuse and belong.

Madame de Staél’s critics were, to tell the truth, all
perturbed, some more and some less, by the formidable
amount of force which emanated from her very
presence.

It is that which is at the bottom of their uneasiness.

78

 

  

eS eeAl ViERSAVUEE ES “ANN TIN ARS:

They are disconcerted at finding so much invading
and encroaching force in a woman.

As for herself, she is not happy because she has not
found a channel for this force.

She is not so happy as she thought she would be.

She is perfectly aware that she is not so well thought
of in Paris society as in the bosom of the Necker
family.

But, so far, these are mere pin-pricks which she
hardly feels. When the first intoxication is over she
resumes her réle of her father’s ally.CHINE TERY V1

LETTERS ON THE CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF JEAN-
JACQUES ROUSSEAU—I1788

MADAME DE STAEL, in concurrence with Meister,
concocted a little myth about the circumstances of
the publication of Letives sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
which Sainte-Beuve was kind enough to repeat in
1835, in his Portraits de Femmes, and so it passed into
the regions of received beliefs.

This is what Meister said himself in January, 1789:

‘ The work which we have the honour to announce,
although printed, is not yet destined for the public,
indeed, rt is not destined for the public at all. We have
to announce the Letterys of Madame la Baronne de
Staél, on the Works and Character of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, a small volume in-12, of 140 pages.

“Only twenty copies have been printed, which have
only been confided to friends, and with infinite pre-
cautions against further publicity.

“We do not think we shall be betraying her secret in
trying to give you a little information as to the most
interesting details of a production which we should
have considered valuable, whoever the author had
been.

“It is impossible not to admire the work still more
when we learn that it is the fruit of the unoccupied
moments of a young woman of twenty, surrounded
by all the illusions proper to her age, all the pleasures
of the most brilliant section of society in town and
at Court, and by all the homage drawn to her by her
father’s reputation and her own celebrity.”

Meister had learnt his lesson well, but surely his
pen made a side-slip when he wrote “is not yet

SOJEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

destined for the public” ... but then, see how it
recovers its equilibrium to inscribe the words:
“indeed is not destined for the public at all.”

We see it all! This is a work dashed off by a
society woman, a great lady, in her leisure moments,
amid a thousand surrounding distractions, in which
circumstances she has managed to note down her
thoughts on a subject of public interest rather rapidly,
and without attaching much importance to them,
distributes her works among intimate friends entirely
for their pleasure.

The Second Preface, which was written in 1814, and
appears with the Lettres in the 1820 edition of the
(Euvres, adds :

““ The Letters on the Works and Characters of J. J.
Rousseau, were written in the first year of my entry
into society; they were published without my
knowledge, and this was the starting-point of my
literary career.”

All this is serious, as there seems not the smallest
effort at sticking to the truth.

The 1788 edition was certainly anonymous.

But then we light on some such passage as this :

“The man whom posterity will salute as a many-
sided genius (as his own time does), the man whom
destiny and my affection allow me to call father. . . .”

Who could mistake the note?

Even without a signature it could only be from
the hand of Necker’s daughter.

Moreover, it is quite certain that the work was not
published without the author’s permission.

Otherwise we can only suppose a grave breach of
confidence on the part of one of Madame de Staél’s
friends, to whom a privately printed copy had been
given—and also that Madame de Staél made no
protest at the time, and waited until 1820 to refer to it.

Is that likely ?

Notice that the public edition appeared in 1788.

SIMADAME DE STAEL

Now if the Lettres were written in the first year of
Madame de Staél’s marriage, in 1786, as she herself
affirms, the text itself proves that it was not given its
final form until after the appointment of Necker as
Controller-General in September, 1788; and every-
thing points to December, 1788, as the probable date
of issue of the private edition announced by Meister.

Therefore, if the date of the public edition is not
faked, which is always possible, both editions must
have appeared at once.*

It is quite certain that there were two separate
editions. Meister’s was 140 pages in length, and the
other 123 pages.

Madame de Staél did not make use of twenty early
copies of the published edition, but all this being as it
evidently was, only shews that in courting publicity
for the first time, she took precautions to guard herself
against a rebuff.

* First let us consider Auguste de Staél’s comment on the famous
passage which begins: ‘“‘ You great nation, soon to call an assembly
for the consideration of your rights...” He says that “ this
invocation . . . was published six months before the opening of the
States General, in 1789; therefore, six months after May, 1789.”
If we may rely on this evidence the public edition must then have
appeared in December, 1788; or, on the other hand, if Madame
de Staél’s son only uses the word “‘ published ” loosely, he may refer
to the private edition.

As Meister announces the latter in January, 1789, the last con-
jecture seems the probable one.

Now to compare the passage which concludes Letter IV.:

. . Arise, O Rousseau! Arise from your ashes! And may your
life-giving prophecies inspire the man who departs from all evil
in quest of perfection ; the man whom France has named her tutelary
spirit, who, in her enthusiasm for him, sees only his duty towards
her—the man, whom all must aid and abet as they would aid and

fe

abet the common weal, etc... .” with the letter of Madame de
Staél to the King of Sweden, the day after Necker’s nomination
(Sept. 4th, 1788): ‘‘ Sire, under other circumstances I should have

felt great joy in making you aware of my father’s nomination, bué
he goes on hoard a vessel so nearly wrecked already that all my admtira-
tion for him hardly suffices to give me confidence in his success.”
(Geffroy, II., 87).

One would affirm that, except for the difference in tone, the first
on a note of harangue, the second of official diplomatic communi-
cation, the sentiments expressed are identical.

It, therefore, seems to me a legitimate conclusion that the private
copies were issued very shortly before the published edition in
December, 1788, 8

2JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

The circumstance which drew her into her literary
career was the real and immediate popularity of her
work.

A second edition appeared in 1789, and an English
translation in the same year.*

Champcenetz, by order of Rivarol, drew up a
retort.

The Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau “ responded to the
movement of the day” as Sainte-Beuve remarks,
which means that their very defects, the emphatic
style, the extraordinary mixture of abstract ideas
with practical politics, the obviously acute and sincere
personal feeling which enveloped the whole, were
warmly welcomed by a Pre-Revolution public.

But it was not a case of vague communion or a con-
fluence of sympathies. It was a case of an appeal and
a response.

Rousseau, from beyond the tomb, was just then
assuming the guise of a political personage, and in
Madame de Staél’s work he is adroitly enrolled under
the banner of Necker, to whom, in spite of the very
slight agreement of their basic ideas, he is obliged
to lend the support of a vague sentimental idealism.

The appeal to France as a nation is enforced by;
an appeal to the elect of the nation “io form a league
of Genius against the forces of Envy.” You see very,
well where all this is leading. It is the daughter in
support of the father, rallying France to his banner]
and forcing the nation to partake liberally of her own!
unshakable confidence in him.

What the book really amounts to is a politica
action; at any rate, that is what the author ed
it to be. Let us agree with Sainte-Beuve that it was
begun in 1787, although there is absolutely nothing
in the text to authorise this supposition; on the
contrary, there is evidence which makes it more

reasonable to suppose that the Lettres were begun in

¢

* Letters on the Works and Character of J. J. Rousseau, London,
1759, in-12, British Museum,MADAME DE STAEL

1788, if it is admitted as proved that she was still
working on them after September, 1788.

Let us concede, then, that she made an early start
on the task of knocking her work into its final shape,
and also that she started simply with the idea of
writing a panegyric on Jean-Jacques, after the
fashion of the day, and of shewing it only to friends
who shared the cult, it is none the less evident that
her purpose was deflected by the pressure of circum-
stances and that the work ended by being a channel
for the immediate preoccupations of her mind.
Necker is about to make a supreme effort to save the
ship of state: the engagement has begun: the am-
bassadress can no longer hold her hand: she flings
her bomb.

And this is what Madame de Staél calls her entry
into a literary career!

We should rather have said that she was deserting
literature in favour of politics.

In any case, that is how she became an author,
as the word was interpreted in those days; and she
did it with her eyes open, or, rather, the real truth is
that she was constrained to it by destiny, in obedience
to an imperative inner necessity. If the Lettres had been
a failure, she would simply have made another start.

It was the natural and inevitable unfolding of her
being.

She had passed by successive stages from the little
auditorium which contained only the family circle,
and was quickly opened out to hold a wider one,
that of Paris society, whom she held breathless by
her wit, though she was apt to bore it when she gave
one of her readings.

At last she came to the great final audience: the
public. And just in proportion as her development
advanced, so did she acquire more and more conscious-
ness of her power, and more and more need and care
for the suitable employment of it.

34JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

But on entering for good upon this public life,
which was as well suited to her character as to her
genius, Madame de Staél carries with her an illusion
of sacrifice.

See how she writes of it in 1785: “My father is
tight! Women were not made to have careers like
men! To struggle against men and to excite in them
a jealousy so different from that which passion
brings them! A woman should have no care for her
personal gifts, but should stake her all on the object
of her love.”

One would say from this that she had indeed
resolved to make a central sun of love, whose rays
were to create a warm beneficent atmosphere around
her, from which all her inspiration and her very
reason for existence was to be derived.

As for a literary career, that is to be a secondary
consideration; she will only take it up to amuse
herself and a little circle of intimate friends.

This might be called one of Germaine’s Dreams.
It was also a dream of Madame de Staél for a time.
For Germaine it was a particular aspect in the great
general problem of securing happiness.

In 1786, in the very year of her marriage, she invents
the problem of Mirza, the woman of genius who dies
because love has failed her; to whom it is said:
» Mirza . . . how I pity you! Intellectual pleasure
is not enough! Only ecstacy which includes the
emotions of the heart can satisfy all the faculties of
the soul.”

In the following year, that of the birth of her first
child, she writes in Jane Grey :

“Ah! how we must dread the gift of genius,
If it forbids the happiness of love ! ”

And here in the Lettres we find her excusing and
explaining the pessimism of Jean-Jacques, because
‘“ Genius torments the possessor of it”; and again,

85 GPON OT ey ERS PL ETT TE

Fak NE a ee
ag re

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  

MADAME DE STAEL

“Tt is perhaps only at the expense of happiness that
the extraordinary successes of genius can be won.”

She brings the echo of this cry from book to book,
until almost at the end of her career, when she sums
up the immense burden of suffering that she has
carried through life in a well-known passage, of which,
however, too often, only the end is quoted:

“Tt is right to exclude women from political and
municipal affairs: nothing 1s more opposed to their
natural vocation than anything which throws them
into rivalry with men and glory itself can only be to
woman a splendid mourning over her lost happiness.’”*

In 1785 the note is lyrical; in 1810 it is elegiac,
but the same feeling is carried through the interval
of years. It remains constant.

There is always present a dull pain, an unconquer-
able regret, which from time to time looks backword
to deplore the past.

It is the regret of a woman who almost curses the
day she vowed herself to the arid rewards and per-
petual mortifications of public life, and condemned
herself to contests with men on the same footing as
themselves ; it is the pain of a woman who projects
herself for consolation into an irrealisable dream of
domestic happiness and loses herself in the mirage.

The sincerity of the feeling is beyond doubt: how
should it not be sincere since it is natural ?

But let us compare her words with her actions.

Can we believe that in 1788 Madame de Staél made
a fatal error of judgment or that she was in any way
the victim of circumstances

Quite the contrary. What she did was not done
by chance. She repeats it, and each time the gesture
is bolder and more determined.

Hardly is the Revolution over before she takes up
her pen to address the great public without any beating
about the bush.

* From /’ Allemagne, Edition Garnier, p. 524.

86JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

When Napoleon recommends her forcibly to re-
enter the soothing obscurity of private life, she
dedicates to him the strongest measure of hatred of
which her generous nature was capable.

She was free in 1802, when her Swedish husband
died to make the marriage of her dreams at last.
But she preferred to write Delphine and keep her
liberty. She never ceased to lament the literary
career that she had entered upon. But she took
good care to remain in it. Her demon was her
master. As early as 1788 she had a longing for fame.
With the author of Corinne the instinct and thirst
for glory preceded the consciousness of her genius.

Even when still a child, she had struggled with
all the might of her small being towards the unique,
irreplaceable bliss of that reward.

Applause “ played on her heart-strings” like the
sound of martial music.

Towards the end of her life, ill and prematurely
exhausted, she wrote quite naturally something that
seemed to her an ordinary, incontestable truth:,
“ The only desire of genius is for glory,” and she|
completes the thought with some words which might
well have borne her signature in 1788, “and glory
can only spring from public opinion.”

It is for that reason that the bust of Washington
by Houdon, which she saw in 1786, did not please her
very much:

“ It is the coldest face I ever saw in my life,” she
writes. “One would say that Washington was not
keenly interested in anything and was quite indifferent
to fame. He is like a doctor who does not believe in
medicine.”

By a chance, which is not a chance perhaps, the
Seconde Preface to the Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau
one of the last documents to which Madame de Staél
put her hand, contains a passage which reads like
the last will and testament of her spirit. There,
after the untoward opening that we have quoted, we

87MADAME DE STAEL

read this curious continuation to the remarks on the
adoption of a literary career:

““T should certainly not say that I regret it, for my
literary career has brought me more joys than
SOIrows.””’

And with less emphasis :

‘“‘ This talent no doubt has its drawbacks like all
the fine things of life, but these drawbacks seem to
me far preferable to the nullities of a limited in-
telligence, which either depreciates those heights
from which it is withheld, or affects to feel and under-
stand where it can do neither. Finally, if we consider
its effect upon ourselves alone, an added intensity of
life is always an increase of happiness ; it is true that
grief has a sharper grip upon minds of a certain power,
but when all is said and done, there is no one who
would not thank God for an added faculty.’’*

This makes us certain that on the very edge of
death Madame de Staél does not conceive of her
life, cannot conceive of her life otherwise than it
has been. She could not have been happy without
fame.

 

The Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau do not tell us anything
very new about him, or anything that would not have
been discovered without Madame de Staél’s research.
His influence was then almost a mania with some
people, and young Madame de Staél, with her special
susceptibility to generous enthusiasm, was doing
something perfectly natural in writing her book,
something which anyone of the innumerable feminine
readers of La Nouvelle Héloise would have done, if
goodwill had been the only necessity for the produc-
tion of it, something which would have been natural
to almost any woman of her world and generation.

She is not conforming to her surroundings by writing
this book; not exploiting them, she is simply the
natural expression of them.

* See Note. Appendix C.

88JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

There has hitherto been no authorized panegyric
of her great man, and she wants to supply the
deficiency.*

It seems to her that an important gap needs filling.
She believes in panegyrics. To her there is no shade
of ridicule attached to them.

She even feels some pride in following the accepted
tradition in this respect.

In her exordium, for there is one, she compares the
slow elaboration of Jean-Jacques’ thought to nothing
less than the ordering of chaos and the creation of the
world.

At the same time, there is an intimate bond between
Madame de Staél and her subject.

Of course, we are not certain of it, but it seems very
probable that Necker, who did not easily rid himself
of objections to the whole race of women-writers,
even when confronted by his overwhelming daughter,
must have tried to dissuade her from undertaking
any such task which might well be too much for her
untried strength and expose her incapacity to mockery.

It is possible that this is what is referred to in a
passage in the first preface which says :

‘“ Perhaps even those who have been kind enough
to foretell future success for me will reproach me
for prematurely attempting a task beyond even such
power as I may hope to enjoy some day.”

Whatever the origin of this idea, Madame de Staél
brushes it impatiently aside. “How could one
possibly consent,” she cries, ‘‘ to put off the expression
of urgent feeling to an indefinite future ? ”’

Madame Necker de Saussure discerns the nature of
the urgent impulse. She writes on this question:
“Madame de Staél felt the need of opening out her
own soul. The urgent impulse was less concerned
with Rousseau than herself.”

But she deliberately chose Rousseau and not
Voltaire. She was free to choose, and she choose

* See Note. Appendix C.

89MADAME DE STAEL

Rousseau because she felt that he was especially her
subject; not so much in virtue of their common
Swiss origin, (for enthusiasm for Switzerland burns
very low in Madame de Staél for the moment), nor
because she had inherited the cult from her family
over and above the general admiration, but because
she felt that they were sister souls.

Rousseau, who can sublimate his emotion in ideas
without ever losing his way or contradicting himself,
helped Madame de Staél to unravel her own soul as
none other could have done.

That is why we can perceive very clearly from
Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau what Madame de Staél
was in 1788, what she thought, what she felt, and
what she might in all human probability become.
From Madame Necker de Saussure, who affirms that
in this work Madame de Staél “is already astonish-
ingly herself,” and Sainte-Beuve, who sees “ presages ”
in it, all her future commentators, including Faguet
and Sorel, are in agreement in letting us know that
this work brings us to the brink of her maturity ;
Faguet estimating that “the Lettres already give us
the measure of her powers,” and Sorel that “it is an
avowal, it is almost a programme for her own life.”
But Madame de Staél had already said all that there
is to be said on this subject.

‘Many celebrated writers,” she says in the middle
i her chapter on Héloise, “‘ have put the germ of all

?

their future works into their first work.

“People begin by thinking of everything at once,
praising everything in review, before submitting to a
system, or following a route.

“Tn youth, thought is a tumultuous affair.

“We probably have within us then all the rdeas that
\we shall ever have, but it is still chaos within us,
_As we range our ideas in order during the passing
| years, to the eyes of others we seem to have more of
'them than we had.

goJEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

“ Finally, we find ourselves able to dominate them,
to bring them under the yoke of reason, and their
power is thereby vastly increased.”

Is not this the history of her own mind ?

At any rate, it is obvious from the first that she
loves ideas.

It looks as if she loved them for themselves, apart
from any conclusions they might lead to.

She even seems to love ideas more than thought.

Her thought is complete, pre-existent, indestruct-
ible; it is not very original, indeed, healthy and
commonplace.

But her ideas are vivacious, graceful and well-
made. ‘There is coqwetry in her mental processes.
It is evidently impossible to her to state an idea
without putting some of her own ideas into it. When
she is simply in agreement, she throws it off with that
flourish of the wrist which belongs to a past-master.
But she generally manages not to be in agreement.

Then she bows very low indeed, like the most
courtly duellist, in recognition of Jean-Jacque’s
facility for instantly absorbing ‘‘ the subtlest and
most remote affinities or analogies.”

Two considerations bother her somewhat.

She knows that she is very young; and she loves
her antagonist.

She is almost timid in attack, at any rate, for her ;
she is almost afraid of beating him only too well.

But the temptation is too much for her; it is not
an opportunity to throw away; she must give
herself the joy of combat with the great logician
though the next minute she will throw her arms round
his neck. There is already something more than
the impertinent turn of wit which belongs to her
role as a society woman under her exuberant joy in
ideas.

Thought for her is not a destination, it is a point of
departure.

OIMADAME DE STAEL

Her ideas are made to defend this determination
that she leaps off from, without giving us an idea
how this determined thought was conceived.

She is already at her conclusion when she starts.
It is categoric, has the clear definition of a doctrine,
the unbending nature of a dogma.

With a certain elaboration in her manner of doing
it, she rejects everything of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
that is purely negative.

She agrees with him as to the original bent to virtue
in human nature. But she wants to make out that
man retains it.

Neither does she wish the natural curiosities which
resulted in the foundation of society to be ungraciously
denied. The thirst for knowledge is and ought to
be an instinct not to be suppressed, she says; it is
useless for a disillusioned philosopher to try and way-
lay the seeker on the road by saying to him: ‘‘ Don’t
go any further! I have been all the way, and I am
coming back to tell you all that the journey is not
worth while on any account whatsoever! ”’

Can we possibly imagine a condition of human
affairs in which human seekers will satisfy their
curiosity in ‘‘ the experience of others ? ”

It is inconceivable to Madame de Staél, and to
most of us. Where Jean-Jacques was wrong, or
mistaken, was in seeking the fabulous Golden Age
in the past, she thinks. He was right to go in quest
of the Golden Age. But, why in the past? Why
look for it where it could no longer be of any use?
The Golden Age ought to be in the future. It is an
aim and not a memory.

Very adroitly, with a perfidious logic which is very
feminine, she invites the reader to admire ‘“ the
subtlety with which Rousseau follows the progress
of men’s ideas.”

In his discourse on the inequality of conditions,
“what admiration he rouses for the first footsteps

Q2JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

of the human mind, and what amazement at the con-
catenation of circumstances which brought the human
mind to take those steps.

“ See him trace the road of human thought, making,
as he composes his story, an effort of intellectual
imagination, of abstract creation, which far surpasses
any composition, based on events and images, given
us by any of the poets.”

This is, perhaps, not the mind of J. J. Rousseau,
but it certainly is the mind of Madame de Staél.
The past is all in flux towards the present ; the present
is not standing still, but marching; marching on to
the future.

“The thread of Ariadne leads on from the first
steps to the last.”

That seems clear, certainly, if not proved.

The pessimism of the work seems eccentric to
Madame de Staél. She feels that she need not insist
much on that. Rousseau makes it so evident. But
it 1s curious, and intensely interesting, to find that
while condemning it as thought, she defends the
inner genesis of it. She does not want to “give
away ’’ this generous soul by means of her own logic
(which she believes unassailable), she does not want
to deliver up his grandiose chimeras to the facile
laughter of minds which are blindly and vulgarly
rationalistic.

This pessimism, she explains, is only an extension
of the usual melancholy of genius: unwarrantable,
it is true, but understandable.

To Rousseau it was given “to experience the
anguish which his gifts (the gifts of genius) compelled
him to experience to a greater extent than anyone
before or since.”

Though just now she assailed his philosophy, she
insists that this anguish, which is his excuse, is also
a great glory.

To his inner feelings she accords all the rights

93MADAME DE STAEL

which she refused to his general philosophy, even
the right to suicide. Genius, she says, is an exception
to every rule, and it is by thus consulting the heart
that it draws inspiration.

One is entitled to question the results, but not
the means by which they are attained.

Only those who know how genius goes to work,
how, in the case of genius, thought blooms out of
emotion, have a right to specify the code by which
genius is to be judged.

Who and what was Rousseau? A disillusioned
idealist ; a man who believed too implicitly in the
goodness of man, and had been forced by man himself
to recant his faith.

Up to the time of his disillusionment, he was an
optimist, one who made the mistake of abandoning
himself to an optimism of exaggerated sensitiveness
and delicacy, little calculated for hard wear, instead
of training it to robust resistance.

Quite carried away by her sympathy, Madame de
Staél goes so far as to say that she is almost ready to
believe with Jean-Jacques Rousseau “that one
cannot long contemplate the destinies of man without
sinking into melancholy.”

Another step and she will be flatly contradicting
her own philosophy.

But this is a momentary effect of contagion, and
we must not exaggerate the importance of it. But
the paradox is strange, nevertheless.

She goes so far as to approve of suicide* ; and she
is continually sympathising with melancholy and dis-
illusionment.

 
    
  
 
  
  
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
 
  
  

* Faguet, speaking of her “rage against suicide which inspired a
separate work on the subject in her youth, and made her alter the
climax in Delphine,” is rather too eager to prove his Madame de
Staél a perfectly lucid person and all of a piece. The eminent critic
seems to have deduced her anger at the idea of suicide from her faith
in progress. It is tiresome for him that the said “rage’’ never
existed, but it never did. As for the book against ericidel written
in her youth, it never was in existence either.

94JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Thus we find her condemning Rousseau’s thought
and upholding the emotions which inspired it. Or
we may put it another way: Rousseau’s thought
was emotionally, but not intellectually, valuable}
to her.

Or we may put it still another way: she feels, as
Rousseau does, but thinks otherwise.

And yet again, she wishes that thought and emotion
should not be separated, and in Rousseau they are not
separated. She defends this pecularity of Rousseau’s
and thus she is led to make a declaration of principle
on this important subject, which is none the less
precise for being implicit.

It is a question of nothing less than the conception
of reason.

She despised those ‘‘ mediocre minds” which
“delight in confronting the errors which may spring
up in the development of original thought by a genius,
with the brief triumph of their commonplace though
incontestable ideas.”

Notice that she is not allowing her own ideas to
triumph over the grandiose errors of the master.

She is engaged in defending the whole nature of
Rousseau’s mental processes: reason, as he under-
stood it.

Jean-Jacques believed that ecstasy is the only road
to the eternal verities.

Madame de Staél confirmed it with all the power
that was in her. “To find truth,” she says, ‘“ you
have only to follow the impulse from your soul.”

She prefers the exaltation, even the delirium, of
genius to the cold logic which unlocks a bloodless
heart.

She goes one better than that. See her denmiciony
of genius: “This particular alliance of thought aud
emotion 1s precisely what genius is: tt cannot extst\
am any other form.”

The highest form of reason is, so to speak, not

95MADAME DE STAEL

reason in its purest unmixed form. It is reason
which has been made supple, has been illuminated,
has been freed for flight by deep and passionate
emotion. And, far from seeking to establish a tyranny
over emotion, in emotion it acknowledges the source
from which it sprang.

This is evidently the basis of the sympathy between
Rousseau and Madame de Staél, and it explains why
she glides so lightly over the surface of his systems.
She found the whole explanation in the man’s per-
sonality ; and that sufficed for her. But she explains
too much by it.

She is right enough as to his mental processes ;
but she is going too far when she congratulates Jean-
Jacques on the eloquence of his style. “ Jean-Jacques’
style,” she says, “‘ seems like the very voice of his soul,
communicating to mankind the great truths with
which it is laden,” and ‘‘ it plays on the soul as on an
instrument.”

That is the secret of style, and eloquence is the
vehicle of reason.

Thereupon she flies off to imagine that the very
crown of Rousseau’s literary career would have been
to harangue the delegates of the nation at the coming
assembly of the States General. Utterly losing her
bearings for the moment, she includes the solitary
dreamer in her programme.

‘‘What an inspiration for talent is the hope of
being useful! What a different outlook when
thought, instead of being perpetually forced back
upon itself, can look forward to an aim and convert
itself anto an action.

“‘ Such happiness would repay the troubles of a life-
time. Such a man would lose jimself in a fruition
of his whole being which put him in communion with
humanity. Arise,O Rousseau! Rise up from your
PINES Lg a 5 Cle.”

This is the end of ends, the final achievement,

96JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

the apotheosis which Madame de Staél imagines for
Rousseau : to become a member of Necker’s “ claque.”’

The gesture has significance, and firstly because of
its unconsciousness of impertinence.

In spite of her undeniable piety as Rousseau’s
commentator, Madame de Staél does not journey into
the past to find the precious traces of genius: she
expects them to come to her in the present, and wants
to utilise them in her réle of commentator of her
father’s career.

At the same time, she is perfectly aware that, even
dead, Rousseau does not lend himself to her scheme ;
there are difficulties.

As she thinks over the perpetual inaction of
Rousseau’s life, her admiration is inevitably tinged
with disdainful pity.

Surely he is too much like one of those placi
savages who sit on the banks of the Orinoco watchin
the water flow by, and consider their time very we
spent! She is too intelligent not to understan
the necessity for these solitary reveries, and too much
a woman not to be seized with maternal solicitude
at the thought of the inspired man “ walking through
life like a blind man,” one “ who must be led like a
child and listened to as an oracle.”

In theory she accepts the peculiarity of those
‘whose lips are touched,” who exist to show forth the
might of the gods on high; generally the simplest
of men.

Nevertheless, it is just there that Rousseau escapes
her. She can tolerate his errors of thought better
than his laziness.

She can understand the pessimism of the acutely
sensitive philosopher better than the egoism of the
artist. The idle, unresisting sensuality of the artist
is utterly lacking in her, and so is the capacity for
dethroning reason, for abandonment to sensation.

She is not a pagan. She has ardour and warm

97CHILD Hood -

COUNTRY AIME

MADAME DE STAEL

blood, but her senses and her mind never become
disconnected.

The beauty of a sunset sky does not escape her,
but it has a message to her soul, a message “ of
virtue, hope, and kindliness.” That is to say, a
message in which sentiment, reason, and the senses
are all jumbled together with a result which is vaguely
moral.

Even certain airs in music are “‘ connected with the
condition of the soul” for her.

Reason always intervenes and interprets.

Beauty makes no more than a passing appeal to
her senses and becomes dissolved in ideas.

One would really say that the description of fine
scenery pleases her better than the scenery itself.
She delights at a distance through the mediation of
words, in that Swiss scenery which is so sympathetic
a setting “for great passions.” “Those piercing
rocks which threaten the sky,” ‘ those boundless
lakes,” ‘‘ those boiling torrents.”’

And when she is in Switzerland she is bored to death,
and hardly troubles to look out of the window.

‘| As for solitude, there is a fashion for it, but it is a

| fashion which she is not going to follow!

And she is practically sure that all Jean-Jacques’
craziness was due to an excess of contemplative
solitude.

She judges by herself; alone in the bosom otf
Nature, she finds herself utterly unemployed, with
all her vibrating intelligence thrown back upon itself
to a degree which completely upsets her nerves so
that only a good hour’s incessant chatter will restore
her equanimity. It must be understood that Madame
de Staél does not emphasise the points of difference
between herself and her idol. Only she cannot help
seeing, and letting others see, that they are there.
And then, too, the points of divergence are no more
remarkable than the points of sympathetic contact.

98JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

These, too, are fundamental. She is ready to be
conciliatory on everything which does not concern
doctrines and intellectual principles.

She does not drop too heavily upon the apologist
for the past, although this attitude perturbs her.
But she refuses to compromise on the question of
the character which explains and determines it.

She would have liked to remould Rousseau, making
him more useful, more active, and as this is im-
possible, she simply tries to make him useful in spite
of himself by draping him in a political garment
hung with the placards of 1788.

As in her case, faith in human progress is
spontaneous, is the transposition of the authentic
gesture of her nature into the domain of thought,
so in Rousseau’s case the pessimism of his convictions
is to be traced back, to the relative egoism, the un-
alterable calibre of his personality.

Admitting that for him character and mind are
one, Madame de Staél does not pause before the mind,
but presses on to the inmost fortress, the heart.
That is her point of attack.

In the name of emotion she calls on him to bestir
himself to act.

Here we have the essence of them both: emotion
is the driving force of mind in both, but it leads
Madame de Staél into action, while Rousseau remains
in contemplation always.

In this comparison of pupil with master by the
pupil, the only quality she was obliged to leave
in the background, more or less, is her own ability
as a woman of the world.

In her chapter on La Nouvelle Héloise, however,
she finds means of letting us know that she has erad-
uated in wit and social knowledge in the capital,
and that she is a mistress of both.

She writes: “Claire’s wit seems to me to lack
grace, and its taste is not to be depended on. To

99MADAME DE STAEL

attain perfection in this direction you must have
acquired in Paris that sort of instinct which instantly
rejects without reasoning about it, anything that the
severest and subtlest examiner would not pass.

You may judge whether a feeling is genuine, or an
opinion just at the tribunal of yourself, but you
must have long experience of society life to be able
to judge beforehand how a joke will be received.”

It was this sort of thing which exasperated Madame
de Staél’s Swiss friends.

One can hardly perceive the faint shade of this
feeling in the warm colours with which she paints
the master; but it is there.

Madame de Staél is not sorry that she is more
witty than Rousseau.

She notes that there is “something republican ”
in his style, which now soars above and now plunges
below the sublime. He does not sufficiently under
stand that terms of speech exist on different levels,
that there are different ranks even among words.”

Rational and sentimental, a woman of mind and
a woman of action, an optimist in public, a pessimist
in private ... do not these various contradictions
make a sufficiently complicated creature of so young
a woman ?

Now add a light coating of snobbishness ; a trans-
parent varnish, painted all over her and not obscuring
the more important qualities. And yet again the
somewhat theatrical ways of the Germaine of the
diary, which are persisting still.

We cannot help seeing that this young personage
is curiously poised in life in a leaning attitude; she
is leaning eagerly forward, stretching out to the
future ; she is quite as much a movement as a woman.

Such was Madame de Staél on the threshold of
her life, thirsting for action . . . and for happiness.
It remains for us to watch her at work, wrestling
with reality, ripening and meeting disillusionment.

IOOJEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The years 1786 and 1787 had not been unhappy

ones. In those early days the sensation of freedom
acquired and prestige won, was enough to bear her
up through anything.

And then she had her baby.

She does not definitely come into collision with the
moral problem of her marriage until 1788, at a time
when she was just finishing the Lettres suy Pee,
Rousseau,

In this problem Madame de Staél’s case seems a
tragic one.

She is fighting her way in a blind alley ; she hesitates
between two irreconcilable and indispensable forms
of happiness.

Her femininity is quite undeniable.

Madame Necker de Saussure, who first makes her
acquaintance about this time, was rather shocked
at the very mild enthusiasm with which her cousin,
in her opinion, attended to her maternal duties.

But although there is only one allusion in the
Lettres to this infant daughter, the rest of Madame
de Staél’s life, in which care for her children’s future
played so prominent a part, formally forbids any
estimation of her as a neuter quantity, half man,
half woman.

On the contrary, her observations on Emile, in the
Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau, point to an inverse con-
clusion.

It becomes evident that the superiority of her
abilities, far from making her less a woman, makes

her more a woman, feminine to eXcess; given to
exaltation on the subject of womanly virtues:
emotional sensibility, tenderness, loving submissive-
hess ; and it also makes her too exacting in the quest
for happiness.

Happiness in marriage . . . she told herself this
in advance . . is “an earthly paradise.”

This is no mere phrase to her.

IOIPIE TRIAD ORT we =
r ae tay (oh aca Ni ase tecah oe pi ac as) > ee

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   

MADAME DE STAEL

Later on it surges up again and again as a sort of
refrain : it is actually a claim which she makes on life.

She wants this happiness to be a peaceful idyll ;
even more of an idyll than the Necker marriage.

She wants it to supply a need of peace and con-
solation; the same need that she attributes to Jean-
Jacques, to supply also a craving for constant and
assured sympathy, “so that I may not be driven in
upon myself.” ‘This dread is a form of fatigue felt

i by those agitating personalities who are actually

capable of fatiguing themselves, and are always longing
“ to lose themselves in another being.”

But her youth craved love, and we have already
been shewn what sort of love it craved.

Not the placid affection which sustains the conjugal
placidity of the typical married pair, but esctasy,
ecstasy which is to be permanent and kept alive at the
same intensity by an unending series of climaxes ;
which create alternately “a divine sadness” and
“ slorious abandonment.”

From this passion which means sacrifice as well as
supreme triumph in the woman, all the other virtues
ought to spring. “ It prepares the soul for virtue,”
sometimes “it creates those virtues which are
prescribed by religion and morality.”

The man’s part, it seems, is to be more or less a
passive one: he allows himself to be adored. But
love is woman’s whole existence. The fate of the
passion lies in the woman’s hands.”

We can easily perceive that this is her own problem
and that her husband counts for nothing in it. She
is unhappy, so unhappy.

Towards the end of her life she wrote:

“In an unhappy marriage there is a yuthless power
of inflicting pain which surpasses every other pain wm
the world.”

Her anguish breaks out on every other page of
the Letters sur J. J. Rousseau -

I02JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
“ How happy that being who has never had to

respond, in relations, not springing from the affections :
who has never had to submit except gladly out of
love ; and from whom no one but the authors of that
being ever had the right to claim a right which cannot
be yielded willingly from the heart’s deep tenderness.”

“But how happy Emile was in being preserved
from combat with self, and preserved from cruel
situations in which society is in direct opposition to
nature.”

“Who, without withering pain, can lose the un-
thinking kindliness of early youth, the laughing
hopes, the sweet trustfulness, the complete confidence
in life of those days ?

‘Where is the sensitive soul which can close up
its heart and see all the colours of imagination turn
to drab, without immense reeretiy

There is no denying that there is a crisis here.

The smiling hopes of happy young Germaine are
already beginning to droop; her kind heart is no
longer blind, her complete confidence in life is already
shaken.

We certainly ought to be on our guard when
faced with this sensibility which takes pleasure in
the spectacle of its own grief, and enjoys the very
things which stir its tears.

We notice a false note in Madame de Staél’s descrip-
tion of her visit to Jean-Jacques’ tomb.

“I did not scatter flowers on this sad tomb; I[
stood beside it for a long time with tears in my eyes ;
I moved away from it in silence, but unable to with.
draw myself from the memories it had called up.

“Oh, you, who are happy in this world, do not come
here to insult his shade |

“Leave to misfortune one refuge where it is not
pursued by the spectacle of joy!”

We must draw our own conclusions from this. This
young woman’s griefs are seldom quite free from pose.

103MADAME DE STAEL

Her suffering has not the instinct to hide, of
real suffering; on the contrary, she is consoled if
she feels that she is observed.

That, however, does not prevent the feeling itself
from being deep and sincere.

She had given full consent to her marriage; she
had even chosen to embark on it.

But she had consented with her mind on anything
but the part that a wife plays in a marriage ; she
had consented, thinking of her father and his career,
thinking of the charming prospect of a permanent
establishment in Paris, thinking of escape from the
meddlesome supervision of her mother. The acces-
sories of marriage had fascinated her.

She had married de Staél in order to extend her
sphere of action, bringing to the marriage certainly a
less cynical outlook than her husband did, though
not quite to be exempted from cynicism, herself.

No doubt the first disillusionment was forced on
her by the birth of her child, a symbol of reality
which there was no getting away from ; of reality ina
union which she would rather have considered a
mere matter of appearances.

But “little de Staél” is never to count again ;
his wife sees to that.

From that time forward she treated him simply
as a pawn at the service of her father ; she supervised
his duties as ambassador, even going to the length
of dictating his dispatches, to such good purpose
that one fine day he found himselt dismissed, for
having followed his wife’s opinion instead of his
king’s during the first years of the Revolution.

There is no doubt that he was a poor creature,*
who had been pushed into his position entirely by
influence; quite capable of executing Gustave III.’s
little commissions in Paris, of picking up engravings
and engaging dancers for him.

He would have done better to hire out his mediocre

* See Note. Appendix C.

104JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

talents at the little Court of some German prince,
where he was not so certain to be ousted in com-
petition.

He could never take root in Paris, and had no
moral support but his vanity and his insignificance.
The great disaster of his career was his marriage to a
woman who looked down on him.

At the very moment when, having sown his wild
oats, he was disposed to settle down into domesticity,
to avoid getting into debt (his only vice) and to get
as comfortably stout as he chose at the side of his
life-companion as the years rolled comfortably by,
just at this turning-point in his career, she broke with
him for good, and sent him packing.

In 1789 she was treating him publicly as if he had
no say at all in the matter of her conduct, and this
attitude was not affected, but most genuine.

Gouverneur Morris once observed to Madame de
Staél that her husband “ was madly in love with her,”
which was not far from the truth from the time
that she would have nothing more to do with him.

She answered “that she knew it only too well,
and that it was a source of distress to her.”

Now Gouverneur Morris was a mere acquaintance
whom she was bent on making useful to her father,
and to whom she was in no way obliged to make
confidences of this kind. Nevertheless, she did
make them, and in English, so that her husband
should not understand, because he was present at
dinner when this conversation took place.

In justice to de Staél, he must be excnerated in
this affair. He was no doubt an instrument of fate ;
but he went through a pretty bad experience.

But long after Madame de Staél had ceased to
take her husband seriously, she remained very serious
indeed about marriage as an institution. De Staél
was nothing to her, but marriage was still practically
sacred in her eyes.

105MADAME DE STAEL

That was a tradition, almost an instinct, of her
family in her.

She does not torment herself on the question of
whether or no she would betray her husband if tempta-
tion were sufficiently strong.

That was never her problem.

If need be, she would simply go her own way to
satisfy the pressing cravings of such an individuality
as hers.

But marriage? Can she trample under foot her
own exquisite dream of the ideal union indispensable
to happiness ?

And happiness? Would she lose it for ever if she
stifled the voice of her conscience, or would she lose
it for ever by not seizing it when it seemed to offer
itself in a new shape ? *

Following her usual custom, she works out her
problem on paper ; and it is Jean-Jacques who helps
her.

Rousseau “ believes in love,’ which he sees as she
sees it, both “ passionate and serene,” an ideal aspira-
tion, eternally unsatisfied.

Rousseau was one of those men who burst into
exaltation over anything they have not got. A man
‘who was only impassioned over illusions.” This
was also her case.

When reading La Nouvelle Héloise she felt so
much enthusiasm that she could never mention the
subject without a fresh outburst of this enthusiasm.

She imposed on herself the duty of considering it
‘as if her heart was already an old one,” for fear
that her enthusiasm should be attributed more to
the state of her own mind than to the power of the
author.

When she closed the book she felt as if an incident
in her own life had been closed. ‘‘ Oh, how sad it is
to finish a book which is as interesting as something
in one’s own life!” She had said the same thing

* See Note. Appendix C,
106JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

about Clarisse, and, indeed, she needed very little
encouragement for the feat of j jumping bodily into the
skin of any heroine who was “sensitive and good,
unhappy and passionate,” and the heroines of her
day were generally of that type.

But in the case of Héloise she feels that the book
might have been written expressly to fit her case;
the situation is so strikingly like her own.

La Nouvelle Hélotse, she tells us, is not a trick
of the imagination, or simply a picture of the times ;
“jt is a great moral problem set in action and turned
into drama.”

It is moral because it deals with love, and for that
reason it must specially interest women; indeed,
“it was written for them.”

It is a study of the workings of a woman’s
conscience.

Saint-Preux is only introduced to give some sort
of form to the problem which is thus rendered less
abstract, more striking.

After a few amiable words about him, Madame
de Staél puts him on one side. She then attacks
the essence of the book straight away.

The case of conscience and the great moral problem
are presented as follows :—

‘““ He has given us the case of a woman marriec
against her will, feeling nothing but respect for her
husband, carrying always in her heart a joy apart
from him ; love for another man.

‘“ Her whole life is spent far from the whirlpool of
society which might have brought forgetfulness of
both husband and lover: society which prevents
any real thought or feeling from gaining dominion
over us” (the editor of 1820 might have struck out
that us), “which simply extinguishes great passion
in the multiplicity of small things, and reduces us
to calmness through confusions and repose by means
of incessant tumult” ... (notice how she under-

7MADAME DE STAEL

lines for herself the points of contrast between her
ae and Julie’s).

*¢ Julie passes her life in absolute seclusion, alone
in the country with M. de Wolmar, close to Nature,
tuned up by Nature to an appreciation of all her
moods and inspirations.

‘““ Rousseau shews us Julie under these conditions,
making her own happiness out of her own goodness ;
happy in her plans for her children’s upbringing,
happy in the effect of her good example on those
around her, happy in the consolation of her faith
in God.

““This is a different happiness from that which I
described just now ” (she had just been dwelling on
the extraordinary bliss of a really happy marriage) ;
“there is melancholy in it, and one may very well
shed tears over it! But it is really made for fleeting
lives like our own. We can leave it when we must
without any shattering regret.

“It is a happiness of habit and custom, and we
may feel that it is truely our own, unspoilt by any
fear or any reflection; im fact, it is the happiness
am which the souls of the pious find all the delights
which love holds out to others; it is the presentment
of this condition of mind and soul which makes this
Stony a) moraliome... + a

Certainly! We can see quite well what is happen-
ing. Making use of the story, Madame de Staél is
preaching to herself just as she used to preach to herself
in Sophie and The Drawbacks to Life in Paris. It
is a little sermon on resignation to unhappiness,
and respect for the holy estate of matrimony. How
can anyone say that such a bookis not a moral
one?

Look at the man’s profound respect for conjugal
affection !

Look at his reverence for the bond which is our
destiny |!

ro8JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

How anxious he is to prove that our true happiness
lies there, even the happiness of those who have
known delights elsewhere.

Notice, she says, that this is not the sermon of a
professional preacher. This man who preaches virtue
and resignation to unhappily married women is
himself a victim of passion.

“Is he a stranger to passions? Is their empire
unknown to him? MHas he not the right to speak
to passionate souls teaching them what sacrifices
belong inevitably to the might of passion ?

“When Rousseau shews us that Julie, the most
passionate of women, has been able to find happiness
in doing her duty up to the very end of her life . . .
was he not right to speak ? ”

She is beginning to define the great moral problem
precisely. The case of Julie is especially applicable
to those women who are the élite of passion. But she
becomes still more definite.

It had been said that this would be a bad book
for unmarried girls.

Rousseau himself had advised that it should be
withheld from them.

But is that really the important point? For
girls before marriage have no moral responsibility,
she says.

“It is our custom to educate young girls in con-
vents. There is no fear that this novel would put
them against a marriage of convenience. What
choice have they? Everything in their education
tends to suppress emotional liberty. The ambition
and stability of character of their parents have
undertaken all responsibility for them.”

But that does not seem the real problem to her.
Take the same girl two or three years after marriage
with a man who does not interest her.

This disillusioned young woman is the person to
beware of! She is in one sense her own mistress

109MADAME DE STAEL

now; she is free, though in bondage! This is the
time to supervise her choice of books!

What usually happens in a case like this ?

“ Acting on the bizarre principles in use, men wait
until she is married to make love to her!

“The whole atmosphere in which she lives has
been changed.

“Everybody scoffs and jokes about the things
they used to hold up as the objects of her deepest
reverence ! ”

‘“‘This is the moment when she ought to read
Héloise”? ; and Madame de Staél tells us why:

“By reading the letters of Saint-Preux, they will
find out how far their admirers are from really loving
them! They will realise how sacred the marriage-
bond is. They will appreciate the true importance
of duties which may seem trivial, and what happiness
may be derived from the performance of them even
when they are entirely devoid of the charm of any
emotion.”

Those are the pros; and here are the cons.

One of the letters in Héloise touched Madame de
Staél “‘inexpressibly.” It is that which describes
Julie’s death. She writes :

“Perhaps it is not as touching as I thought, but
often a word responding to our very heart’s core, a
situation calling up memories and chimeras of our
own, gives us the illusion that the author is the cause
of this effect of his work: but Julie confessing to
Saint-Preux that she has never conquered her love
for him, Julie, whom I considered cured, shewing
me a heart more deeply wounded than ever, giving
evidence of the happiness of relaxation after intoler-
able strain, and of the abandonment which Death
authorizes and then cuts short; Julie, uttering those
sombre words, ‘ Good-bye, Good-bye, for ever,’ with
an emotion which was meant to be bliss in her life,
all this crowned with the inevitability of Death which

IIOJEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

gives all speech at such a moment so solemn and
genuine a character” (in her diary Germaine used to
write: ‘so tremendous a note of truth”’) ** crowned
with that dominating idea of complete supreme
serenity... . allthis, 3.) every, word of, the letter
fills my soul with the most poignant emotion.”

Up to this point the demonstration, personal as it is,
will hold water.

The reader will agree that such a work, Madame de
Staél’s own case in the abstract, would have a good
moral effect. And as long as the objective truth
and the subjective application of it run side by side
without colliding with each other, we can hardly
distinguish one from the other.

But suddenly one word too much knocks down the
whole edifice of the argument for the moral, revealing
to us that it is only a personal impression that we
are dealing with, which has endeavoured to be some-
thing that it never was, or rather, has no idea what it
really is.

Julie, who gives up her whole being to her lover
once more on her death-bed, is anything you like,
but she is not a moral person.

If she is that, then she was not so when she sacrificed
herself to her husband.

You can take your choice between the two
moralties: that of the individual, or of society, but
you cannot have them both. Madame de Staél
wants to have them both at once, or alternately ;
the happiness which is found nowhere outside marriage
and the tragic, unconquerable passions of unauthor-
ized love.

She is right in believing that Jean-Jacques attempts
this impossible combination in this book, and that
is why she finds in it a unique satisfaction for herself,
a moral which satisfies by turns the special pressing
cravings of her very special individuality. And
that is why her attempt to prove La Nouvelle Héloise

PTTMADAME DE STAEL

a useful moral lesson for all, only succeeds in revealing
the special condition of her own soul at that time.

Her unconsciousness and artlessness are such that
she touches up several details in order to make
Julie still more like herself in spite of the facts.

She considers that Julie was too passionate and
went too far before marriage, while, after marriage,
she is too tame.

Madame de Staél could have wished that Julie
were “ only guilty through her heart.”

She cannot reconcile herself to that seduction before
marriage. It shews a want of tact in Jean-Jacques,
who, obviously, did not know how the great world
behaves.

And then it lends an ambiguous tinge of repentance
to Julie’s attitude, which confuses the issues.

By way of retaliation, Julie’s resignation after
marriage is too complete. She really seems almost
happy! The moral lesson would have been more
overwhelming “if Julie had offered us for all time,
not as the ancients have it, the spectacle of virtue at
grips with misfortune, but virtue wrestling with passion
which is still more terrible. ma

Another thing which wounds her is Julie’s power of
dissimulation. No doubt she was on the horns of a
dilemma.

Fortunately, even Rousseau saw that Julie must
be relieved of the responsibility of carrying on this
deception, and he charges Claire “with the duty
of dissuading Julie from confessing to M. de Wolmar,
so that Julie is able to keep all the charm of her passion
sweet, and seems rather to have been managed on
this point than to be capable of calculated deceit.”

To Madame de Staél, Julie seems too much inclined
to mount a rostrum, especially for a person who has
her own reason for a penitent attitude, on a lower level.
“Her continual sermons to Saint-Preux are out of

place.”
II2JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

She does not understand how far the beloved man
is above all moral considerations. What is worse—
and Madame de Staél is quite right here—by scolding
her lover she loses her own rights to indulgence.
‘““The excess of their passion was its excuse, and
only by insisting on its overwhelming violence could
she diminish the immorality into which that love had
led them.”

Not only did the thinker lead the novelist astray
when he borrowed Julie’s pen to express his ideas,
but being a man he was quite unable to make use
of certain delicacies of feminine tact which a woman
would have made use of. ‘‘ The proprieties, the
modesty of even a guilty woman are lacking in several
of the letters.”

Madame de Staél might have added that Julie,
the lecturer, is rather too mannish for the rest of
her character. To quote Taine, who puts it very well :
“She gives us dissertations, twenty pages long, on
subjects as various as duelling, love, and duty, display-
ing logic, talent and phraseology which would do
honour to a professor of moral science.”

This ill-accords with the ideals of Rousseau, an
avowed enemy of the learned woman.

Did he not declare to someone in this very book,
La Nouvelle Héloise, “ that unless a woman was five
and a half feet high, and had a bass voice and a beard,
she had better keep out of the masculine pose.’’*

Strange to say, Madame de Staél does not press
her point any further.

On the contrary, if we turn to her observations
on the passages in Emile, which treat of Sophie’s
education, we shall see that she hesitates and is in-
clined to parley and come to terms.

She does not approve of a preaching Julie, nor does
she admire a wholly domestic Sophie :

“In countries where public opinion is the only
power which shakes off tyranny, the applause and

* See Note. Appendix C.
ehMADAME DE STAEL

support of women form one more motive for rivalry
in men, which it is important to preserve.”

Realizing that here she is almost in opposition to
herself, she does not dwell on the subject, but cuts it
short by observing that since Jean-Jacques believes
in love, she has his support. But there is further sup-
port needed, for, to tell the truth, Rousseau has not
altogether understood Madame de Staél’s peculiar case.

Before giving up the attempt, she tries to drag
a small concession from him on this point at any
rate: “though he may deny that women are ever
endowed with the mighty power of mind, and ex-
traordinary faculty for concentration which belongs
to genius, for their weaker nervous systems are in
opposition, and their minds are so incessantly slaves
to their hearts”? (a precious scrap of revelation that)
“at least, do not let him accuse them of incapacity
to portray the passion of love.”

The result of all this retouching is the substitution
of Madame de Staél for Julie by degrees. But the
exchange made, the moral of the book is quite as
ambiguous as ever.

The problem is fought out to a finish; and it is
certainly Madame de Staél’s problem.

But she does not seem to have drawn any principle
of guidance for her own conduct from it ; it does not
help her to solve the problem of her own conscience.

She cannot approve of a Julie who can stoop to give
herself before marriage.

But what then?

Will she rank herself with the “‘ good ones” who
are content with happiness, which is really not
happiness, because they do not regret it if they lose
it; or does she claim “the bliss which love holds
out to the others ?”

Which is going to win, love or marriage ?

Enigma! She slips away from a decision. That
is to say, she leaves it to destiny.

II4CHAPTER VII
THE STORM, 1789-1792

Ar the very moment that life begins to teach this
spoilt child that even involuntary impertinence has
a long price, and that a witty tongue is not a gift
which sustains friendships, at the very moment, too,
when the King of Sweden’s correspondent (her
thirst for gaieties quenched) admits to a feeling
of satiety in her social whirl, events themselves
undertake to create a diversion.

Already in the budgets to Sweden of 1786 and
1787 we are able to perceive the first pulsations of
that wider life, the sphere of the “ citizeness,” that
she neither could nor would suppress in herself. It
was beyond her strength to do so.

In spite of the definite intention to conform to
the necessary official tone, she fastens eagerly on
anything in this purposeless existence which is out
of the common and appeals to the power of the mind.

She has a total lack of comprehension of the static
or gyrating existence of a courtier; she becomes
more and more scornful and amused at the spectacle.

A whole chapter of Court life is summed up for
her in the tactics of the duc de Fleury at Fontaine-
bleau, who would sit in the front of the box if he
was told the play was going to be a bad one, so that
to sleep through it was a proof of good taste, while
he would take a seat in the background and sleep out
of sight, if he were told that the piece was a good one.

Madame de Staél was certainly more at home in
Paris, where the public applauded the plays which
were hissed at Versailles, out of pure °° cussedness.”

Just at that time the case of the three rakes was

II5MADAME DE STAEL

being discussed everywhere, in the salons and by the
man in the street Madame de Staél relates it to
Gustave III., adding comments of her own which
clearly separates her attitude to the coming Revolu-
tion from that of the jeunesse dorée, who are
determined to enjoy both the advantages of patrician
blood and of plebeian philosophy. She writes:

‘A thousand deaths on the battle-field do not
revolt us as one case of injustice does.

“The criminal law of France often leads the judge
into error, and it is devoutly to be wished that public
opinion will enforce changes in it.

“< Conversation in society is no longer unprofitable

lsence public opinion is formed and declared in that way.

}

|Words have become actions.”

This is her own part in the matter foreseen. Her
task is planned out.

With regard to warrants for arrest without formu-
lated accusation—another reference to facts of the
moment—she reminds this king who was soon to
fall by the hand of an assassin, that no king lasts for
ever, that ministers come and go, and that it would
be advisable, surely, to base justice on something
more dependable than the virtue of particular persons.

Another time she is listening to a man who has
served a term of imprisonment in the Bastille, who
recounts the misery of the long monotonous nights
and days, and plays in the interludes of his story on
a pipe fashioned from an elder-tree wand. He
makes her weep and shudder as he evokes the memories
of a suffering which she considers the most atrocious
that human cruelty can devise.

Still, this is only a prelude, in which Madame de
Staél is joining in a chorus, her voice being one of the
faintest in the choir, so far.

But the current bearing her on is already a strong
one: the most diverse minds are in the stream before
her, joining in a strange anonymous movement. It

I16

aTHE STORM

really seems as if events had taken upon themselves
to direct men.

Madame de Staél submits, like all the rest, really
believing that these events could be guided to a satis-
factory finish.

In the middle of 1787 she suffered a serious reverse :
Necker’s exile was coincident with nearly the whole
period of her first pregnancy.

She was not heard of for a whole year until her
father was recalled as Controller General in 1788,
At the end of 1788 the die was cast.

She recognised that the Court was the enemy.
She turned to the public and launched her veiled
appeal to it in the Lettres sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Fragile and delicate, not really recovered from her
collapse in 1785, Madame Necker was completely
eclipsed in this formidable explosion of personality
and energy, and seeing in it the consummation of the
alliance of father and daughter, which she had always
been trying to ward off, she sank into a premature
old age, complaining that in this world “the old
age of women . . . isonly bearable . . . on condition
that they do not take up any room, do not make any
noise, do not demand any service, on condition that
they render all the service that is expected of them,
and actually have no existence except for the good
of others.”

The movement of the stream had indeed become
accelerated, and the different eddies were now dis-
tinguishable.

On the 4th May, 1789, twelve hundred deputies
of France (among which the members of the third
party were to be remarked by their black coats and
cocksure appearance) went in procession to the
church of Versailles to hear Mass on the eve of the
opening of the States General.

In the month of June the States General became
the National Assembly.

117ST ge Ret ke tad

  

 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

MADAME DE STAEL

A few weeks later Necker received the King’s
command to leave France at once without any
demonstration, and he set out for Brussels, followed
by his daughter, on the 13th July. On the 13th and
14th of July the Revolution exploded in Paris, and
the destruction of the Bastille took place. Necker
was recalled. It was the zenith of the Swiss banker’s
career: “the last prosperous day of my life,” says
Madame de Staél.

Surging round the Hotel de Ville, packed into the
windows and swarming on the roofs, was an enormous
crowd assembled to acclaim the victim of the Court,
the “just man” Necker, who stepped out on to the
balcony to proclaim peace in the ranks of all French-
men, with Madame de Staél almost fainting with JOY;
at his side.

That very evening Mirabeau, moving about among
the sub-divisions of the parties, succeeded in ex-
tinguishing the flame of enthusiasm : and before
long, under the very eyes otf Madame de Staél, watch-
ing and listening in the gallery of the Salle du Jeu
de Paume, this Cataline, quietly and without haste or
vehemence, achieved the ruin of her Cicero, managing
at the same time to subjugate and fascinate her by
an eloquence to which she was compelled to render
homage. For ideas had become more important
than persons. Madame de Staél, alternately inflamed
by ecstasy and anguish, leant breathlessly over the
twelve hundred arbiters of the fate of France, burning
with philosophical ardour as she watched the old
abuses crumbling to dust, yet seized with unconquer-
able doubt before the edifice of words which was
destined to be the new basis of a new nation.

It was a moment unique in Time.

Even the bloody days of the 5th and 6th of October
did not suffice to break the spell ; nor the lugubrious
re-entry of royalty escorted by a multitude in-
toxicated with carnage, whose ferocity was contrasted

118THE STORM

with the mild sunny tranquillity of a mellow autumn
day.

Nor was the spell broken by the deviations from
justice of the new legislature, which was beginning
to sacrifice liberty to the phantom of an impossible
equality, and was sinking gradually into Jacobinism.
It was a curiously complex charm, more complex
than Madame de Staél knew herself, for did not
Talleyrand fall under its sway to no less a degree than
herself, and for quite different reasons ?

Perhaps, at bottom, this charm consisted in the
confusion of principles, in the liberation of the various
egoisms which were brought into collision in this
universal streaming forward, in which every talent
saw a chance of developing itself into a career.

However that may be, Madame de Staél was fully
under its influence, even after an interval of twenty
years.

She pauses a moment, in her relation of the events
of the Revolution, to tell the foreigners who flocked
to Paris when the Napoleonic menace was at length
laid low, that the French society of the moment,
which they appeared to admire, was nothing to that
of twenty years before.

" Foreigners can have no idea of the much vaunted
charm and brilliancy of Paris society if they have not
been in France for twenty years.

“ I can truthfully affirm that society has never been
so brilliant and so serious altogether, as it was during
the first three or four years of the Revolution, counting
from 1788 to the end of W/O

In the eyes of Madame de Staél the epithets,
brilliant and serious, distinguished French society of
this period from all that preceded or came after it.

It was brilliant enough before the destruction of
the Bastille, but, existing in idleness, it was also
superficial.

Serious, it certainly was, during the fifteen years

* See Note. Appendix C.

11gMADAME DE STAEL

of Napoleon’s domination, but too serious, with a
seriousness which was calculated.

Now in 1788 and the years immediately preceding
the Terror, “ the power of liberty ” joins forces “* with
breeding, with aristocracy.”

And this power and this breeding were united in
the same persons : either it was some man of the third
party, whose abilities had raised him above his class,
or a nobleman more concerned with his talents than
his privileges.

These people constituted an elect body of intelligence
and it was a thousand pities that by some unqualifiable
misfortune, it was not entrusted with the government
of France.

Madame de Staél’s obvious réle was to be the mother
and adviser of the elect, to try and increase the
number of them (by bringing together the cleverest
men of opposite convictions at her dinners) and to
launch the most important questions boldly in her
salon.

Women thus had a part in the destinies of the
nation, and it was no negligible part.

“ All conversation at their houses was directed by
them . . . the discussions on public affairs were toned
down by their tact and were enlivened with a great
deal of wit and merriment.”

Never had France been so brilliant with wit and
mind ; it was the last spurt of a flame that was dying
down :

‘Tt was the last time, and in some ways the first,
that society in Paris was able to give a full display of
the communion of great minds with one another ; the
noblest pleasure which human nature may enjoy.”

And for the third time in Chapter XVII. of her
Considerations, when she is dealing with Society in
Paris at the time of the Constituent Assembly, the
same refrain of infinite regret surges up:

“ Anyone who lived through those days will admit

I20RTE STORM

that there has never been so much vitality, mind and
wit gathered together before or since.”

Madame de Staél was the life and soul of it, intoxi-
cated by all this political eloquence (which Gouverneur
Morris rejoices over in his letters to Washington), this
brilliant conversation, which she felt to be as valuable
to the nation as it was delightful to herself, when her
father resigned for the third and last time, and
retired to Coppet on the 8th September, 1790, to
meditate in peace over the strange freaks of fortune.

He had been arrested on the road to Coppet, and it
was necessary for his daughter to intervene before he
was allowed to proceed on his way.

Her letter to the President of the Assembly, instinct
with suppressed indignation, is curiously interesting to
read.

Only a fortnight before this event Madame de Staél
had given birth to a son.

She had been prepared for her father’s resignation,
but this last shock of discovering the colossal ingrati-
tude of the nation, now hurling insults at its fallen idol,
struck her a knock-down blow.

Writing with a hand which trembled with rage and
physical weakness, she requested “ that the Assembly
would be so good as to reconsider the matter of her
father’s arrest that very morning.”

She insisted that the state of his health would admit
of no delay.

““ That ts the only consideration that I put forward.”

From this very moderation we can gauge the depth
and painfulness of the feeling which moved her.

It is the crumbling of a whole world for her; the
tearing of a great gash in the sky-blue veils, which had
hung round her youth in sheltering folds.

Madame de Staél was mistaken when she included
the years between 1788 and 1791 as one solid block of
experience in her life.

After this crushing disillusion she was no longer the

I21MADAME DE STAEL

privileged favourite of fortune, reaching out with all
her might to embrace life ; she was a woman who had
known misfortune, and was unafraid, though warned
now what to expect.*

For a moment, perhaps, she lost her bearings.

She hastened to Coppet to join her father.

During this, the first phase of her public life, besides
the Lettres sur Jean-Jacuges Rousseau she had only
written the tragedy of Montmorency and the Eloge of
her friend Guibert who died in May, 1790.

Neither of these works was then published.

But the Eloge was printed by the editor of 1821 and
turns out to be documentary confirmation of much
that occurred before the writing of Lettres sur
Jean Jacques Rousseau, besides being the logical
continuation of that work.

In this defence of a character whose faults were
plainly visible to Madame de Staél, there is a a generosity
and loyalty in friendship for which she must receive
due honour, even if examples of this virtue in the good
lady of Coppet had been less numerous and striking
than they are.

This work lets us in for a strong dose of that “‘ pathos
overdone,” to which all students of Madame de Staél
rapidly become accustomed. It must be accepted as
the defect of her qualities.

It is not that which interests us in the Eloge de
Guibert.

Neither can we agree with Sainte-Beuve who finds
boldly original political thought ” in it.

The political views in question are obvious enough
and, as things turned out, evidently did not contribute
much to the solution of revolutionary problems.

She is equally afraid of any “tyrant”? who may
emerge from the general confusion (Montmorency, in
which Richelieu appears as an enemy of liberty was
inspired by this idea) and of the “agitator” or
demagogue.

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   

* See Note. Appendix C.
I22

a TE Br ae
eee eRe SNe fe eS alTEE SRO,

As a counterblast to either, she is in favour of “a
great alliance of literary and business abilities.”

It is an idea of her’s that we have already met
several times before, that an elect body of intellectuals
should govern the land.

In this way men of letters would find practical
employment.

‘ If this were so the writer’s talent would no longer
be isolated, but in direct communication with his
actions, his whole life.”

This remark,was not thrown off by chance.

It is a precise expression of her attitude towards
politics and literature at this time.

It was foreshadowed in the Lettres sur Jean-Jacques
Rousseau : now we see it crystallised to a conviction.

And besides it is not a pose. It is an instinctive
gesture.

Without intending it, she puts the theory into
practice: and poor Guibert has his turn, just like
Rousseau.

The Eloge visibly assumes the form of a political
manifesto: the author of Tactique appears in it as a
Republican before that label had come into existence ;
and as a concocter of tragic dramas, which breathe
a fiery spirit of democracy anticipated.

Again, the whole thing ends in rallying the subject of
the work to the banner of Necker.

The origin of the friendship, to which Madame de
Staél thus raises a monument, was to be found “ in
M. de Guibert’s deep admiration for my father.”

When alluding to the praise of the Chancellor of the
fl épital whose outstanding merit, coupled with genuine
modesty, Guibert had recognised, she says :

“If only character and talent could be judged so
discerningly at the Hépital nowadays ! ””*

Now, if we wish to examine the reasons for the
existence of so many adverse critics of the young
ambassadress, the range and scope of whose criticism

* See Note. Appendix C.
123MADAME DE STAEL

we have already remarked upon, we need only count
the number and observe the quality of the many
allusions to ‘‘ mediocrity’? contained in the Eloge
de Guibert.

It is not the least edifying information to be
obtained from this too much neglected work. We
learn from it that “M. de Guibert combines with
rare talents and wit, certain faculties which are
often combined quite uselessly with mediocrity (a
prodigious memory, etc.); we are told that his
manners, the high carriage of his head, his uncom-
promising tone, “‘ set mediocrity against him” ; “ that
the examples of Scipio and Cesar never have prevented
and never will prevent mediocrity from fixing limits
for genus”; “that the love of favour and power,
the smallness and pettiness of mediocrity, are wiped out
by the real thirst for glory.”

This is taking too high a tone for most people to
swallow comfortably.

Does it not appear that she divides the world
into two classes, one very large and the other very
small: the mediocre and those who are not? Is
it not pushing the theory of the natural supremacy
of mind too far?

If only we could be sure that her criterions were
reliable! But the intelligent people who have re-
mained silent or in the background are simply herded
in with the stupid people.

We begin to understand that Madame de Boufilers
may well have exclaimed at her impertinence, and
that certain high ability, and that not the least
useful for the demands of the times, refused to be
enlisted in the ranks of an intelligentsia so thoroughly
cocksure and so strangely conceived. Madame de
Staél is no sooner at Coppet (she retires there in
October, 1790) than she perceives that she cannot
endure to stay there.

She finds there ‘‘ an infernal stagnation,” a moral

124THE STORM

solitude which the tranquillity of the Swiss landscape
irritates to a frenzy.

And yet she did stay.

She saw that her fast failing mother was almost
made happy by the catastrophe which allowed her
to live out her last days at the side of her adored
husband.

Her father, indifferent and downcast, seeing the
impossibility of re-entering the arena—an impossi-
bility which his daughter would not recognise—had
resigned himself to the task of settling up with
posterity.

Madame de Staél remained with her parents for
eleven months, eleven interminable months, broken
only by one short visit to Paris in January, 1791.

Tormented by two irreconcilable forms of duty,
appealed to by two opposing affections, above all,
unable to see how she could re-enter the political
arena unless under her father’s ezgis, she demobilised
her feverish young energy at the feet of the idol
of her childhood and girlhood, up to a moment
when such a sacrifice became simply impossible to
her and when all persuasion was in vain.

Events were still driving all before them, men, and
opinions too, in Paris.

Mirabeau, whom she had begun by detesting but
had come to look upon as a saviour, was carried off
by death.

On the 21st of June the coach so carefully arranged
for by Fersen bore the King and Queen to Varennes
as the prisoners of their subjects.

The summer passed.

Everyone was going back to town.

This was a moment when Madame de Staél had
never loved the country !

Besides, her baby she knew was making normal
progress. Nothing could hold her any longer. Her
trunks were packed and she rushed back to Paris.

125MADAME DE STAEL

This time she understood that the day for coalition
dinners was past.

During the year of 1791 the clash of ideas had
become deep stifled hatred between persons. Madame
de Staél, who had known plenty of criticism, now
had to wipe away the stains of calumny, especially
those of the royalist press, which fact was extremely
painful to her.

She felt it so much, it aged her so much in spirit
from one day to another, that she could hardly believe
that she was only twenty-four years old.

The Jacobins she felt to be mere rabble, brutes
whom one would pity if they were not such a public
danger; besides, they could never have discovered
how they could wound her except by reading the
Chronique Scandaleuse, the Journal Royaliste, and
other news-sheets of the same tendencies. But the
uncompromising aristocrats knew all about her,
all, from her first curtsey at Court to her words and
actions of that very day; and they concocted things
out of their knowledge which let her see all the
venom and corruption that the polish of society can
conceal.*

To tell the truth, she had given them plenty of
excuse, not only by the flaunting indiscretion of
her manners, those rebelliously equivocal glances
cast at anybody who was somebody (or nobody) in
any drawing-room; not by her purposely cynical
and risky conversation which was quite in the mode,
nor even by flirtations with the Bishop of Autun or
the Comte de Ségur, but simply by the determined
way in which she would mix up her emotions with
her politics.

We can answer for her conduct up to 1788: the
Lettres sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the long
discussion of Julie’s case sufficiently demonstrate that
her own case was still pending.

On the 12th July, 1789, Gouverneur Morris speaks

* See Note. Appendix C.
126LEE SHOT

of M. de Narbonne as Madame de Staél’s “ friend,”
“Vamti de Madame de Staél.”’

She must have conformed about this time to the
influence of her surroundings, must have put into
practice the epicurean morality of a nation in dis-
solution.

At any rate, it is certain that she had not waited
for her father’s final downfall, to become the avowed
mistress of an aristocrat known as an anti-Neckerist.

This is a curious fact and would be psychologically
inexplicable if we did not know that the result of
this connection was to make de Narbonne’s political
outlook considerably more liberal.

Attracted in the first place by the manners and per-
son of this young noble whose richly adventurous past
excited her romantic fancy in advance, Madame
de Staél was no sooner chosen and installed than she
began to lay siege to her lover with all her old notions,
and little by little drew him into the camp of progress.

The mantle of Necker had fallen upon de Narbonne.
He became the centre of the emotional and in-
tellectual life of this young woman in search of a
hero.

She moulded him to her will up to a certain point,
but it seemed so entirely instinctive in him to cling
to the institution of royalty that she was obliged
to yield him that point.

Besides, she was big enough to see that the im-
portant questions of the hour were the collaboration
of reason and conscience and a good understanding
between all fine intelligences and kind hearts. As
soon as she arrived in Paris, she set to work to push
de Narbonne into the Foreign Office, and had the
mortification of discovering that he was not nominated
entirely because of her efforts.

However, in December he was given the post of
War Minister, always an honourable position, and this
made Marie Antoinette remark that Madame de Staél

127MADAME DE STAEL

must be delighted at getting command of the Army.*

There was a general impression that Necker’s
daughter had taken possession of de Narbonne, and
had made a politician of the young rake who had
hitherto existed on allowances from his mother,
which she in her turn squeezed out of Madame
Adélaide by some form of extortion. The aristocratic
party did not hate Madame de Staél the less for her
capture, and Rivarol’s friendship with de Narbonne
did not avail to spare her a single insult.

But, politically, de Narbonne was a lost man, and
not only because both the right and the left wings
detested him, as a constitutional, but because the
other constitutionals were jealous of him for being
preferred to themselves.

During the winter 1791-92, Madame de Staél
was very much taken up with her idea of government
by the éste of the intelligentsia, and was blissfully
happy in having found the means of blending her
political and her emotional life in one.

The dream of combining the power of liberty with
the charm of breeding was realised in the person ot
de Narbonne.

It only remained now to share her happiness, to
give de Narbonne to the nation, or rather, to get him
accepted as one of the arbiters of its destiny.

With this in view, she wrote an article towards
the end of 1791, which appeared in Suard’s and
Lacretelle’s journal, the Indépendants, an article}
which tended to prove that the nation desired a
constitutional monarchy and an extension of the
moderate party.

The proof becomes an affirmation, and the afirma-
tion becomes an appeal.

She repels the accusation of weakness and vacilla-
tion which was always levelled at the moderate party,

* See Note. Appendix C.
+ See Gouverneur Morris, edition quoted, for Talleyrand’s jealousy.
+; See Note. Appendix C.

128RHE \SRORM

and, at the same time, she tacitly admits that the
accusation was founded by urging all those who
realized in themselves ‘‘a coalition of mind and
heart ” to form a strong resistant homogeneous party
of themselves so that the constitutionals should not
be labelled: “an absurd mixture, an inconsequent
alternative of opposite extremes.”

What she understands by the conciliation of
parties is the extension of the centre until it includes
in its sphere all the marked ability of the right and
left wings.

As for the remant, she hurls at them the
most insulting epithet that she knows, that of
“mediocrity ”; they are aristocrats who will not
think “‘on account of their status as noblemen,”
or they are Jacobins, seditious and egoistical people
who do not understand the real meaning of the words
they spue out. Her last word is that “‘ fame and
influence must be sought in the very centre of the
light of wisdom,” and that differences must be healed
in the light of open minds, and hearts which are in
sympathy with one another.

But events were inexorable. They proceeded ruth-
lessly on their way.

In default of a peaceful solution, Madame de Staél
preferred civil war to foreign intervention.

The Legislative Assembly voted for war with
Austria.

On the 2oth June, 1792, the population flowed
into the corridors of the Tuileries and forced the
revolutionary cap on to the King’s head.

On the roth August he was deposed.

The rabble had won.

And that was the end of Madame de Staél’s first
political experience.

It was absolute defeat, and for the moment there
was no appeal.

In this “ triumph of assassins” her one idea was

129MADAME DE STAEL

to snatch victims from them, her one emotion was
pity.

On the very evening of ioth August, while the
massacres were going on, she went through the streets
to assure herself as to the safety of her friends: she
brought de Narbonne, Montmorency and Baumets
to the Swedish Embassy, and a few days later, to her
great joy, she was able to send de Narbonne to England
in company with the German, Doctor Bollmann.

On the night of 2nd September, before her own
departure, she saved the sentimental Lally-Tolendal
and the Chevalier de Jaucourt from the scaffold,
and in trying to rescue the Abbé de Montesquiou,
she almost fell into the clutches of the mob herself,
the mob which carried out the execution of Madame
de Lamballe the very day after.

She escaped, however, thanks to the intervention
of Manuel and of the brewer Santerre, and, seeing
nothing else for it, she took the road for Switzerland.*

She was again expecting a child.

It was this fact which determined her departure.

But in all this there was still no complete and final
disaster for herself.

The world was falling to pieces round her ears,
but she still had the love of de Narbonne.

* See Note. Appendix C.CHAPTER VIII
THE STORM: 1792-1794

Herr own disaster was added to the public disaster
before very long.

This is the dominating fact of the period between
her departure from Paris in September, 1792, and the
publication of her book, Passions in 1796.

Through all that that time de Narbonne was
gradually breaking away ; he was deserting her.

Towards the end of November she had given birth
to another son; this was Albert, the prodigal son,
predestined to misfortune and premature violent
death.

She was only just recovered, when in spite of the
formal disapproval of her parents, all her love surging
up again, she secretly left for England, pretending that
she was going to Geneva.

She arrived in England at the beginning of January,
1793, and installed herself with de Narbonne, at
Juniper Hall, near Mickleham, in Surrey.

But as though even de Narbonne’s company did not
suffice, she gathered round her a circle of constitutional
refugees, amongst others de Narbonne’s ex-rival
Talleyrand, Lally-Tolendal, Montmorency, Malouet
(whose presence was some guarantee of his hostess’s
political integrity), the Chevalier de Jaucourt and the
inevitable Madame de ChAtres.

All these exiles owed either their lives or their sub-
sistence to Madame de Staél, for she had found means
of getting them safely out of France and she supplied
deficiencies to those who had lost all their worldly
goods.

OMeMADAME DE STAEL

De Narbonne was her debtor in both these regards.

Making allowance for the change of surroundings and
the fact that little is known of this episode of Madame
de Staél’s life, we may say that she went on very much
as usual.

She had begun by reassembling her dispersed
courtiers and by re-establishing the electrical atmos-
phere, which was the air she naturally breathed.

She set to work again and began to write a disser-
tation: “Sur le bonheur,” on happiness, inspired by
the spectacle of the terrible sufferings of France.*

In the evenings she would read out extracts from it,
very badly, if we are to believe Talleyrand, who was
irritated by the chanting cadences of her diction.

Or else, she would declaim passages from Taneréde,
with so much pathos, that tears came to the eyes of the
impressionable author of Cectlza.

On other occasions it was the portly Lally who
alternately chanted and intoned, in order to bring
home to the audience the full beauty of his Mort de
Strafford.

She discussed the future with Talleyrand who had
just come from London and was, therefore, to be
besieged with questions ; and with de Narbonne who
was miserably depressed and discouraged.

She insisted that they must have a scheme. She
approved of Talleyrand who wanted “ to fight all those
scoundrels, the Jacobins,” and was even a little cross
with her lover, who seemed to be numbed with
despair.

English society had not made them welcome.
Nobody called.

The execution of the King had raised English
indignation to its highest pitch against the authors of
the Revolution, and Royalists were readily believed,
in England, when they said that Constitutionals and

 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   

* See Madame d’Arblay’s Diary and Letters, page ASS Mt
contains the most touching allusions to their country’s calamities.’

132THE STORM (Cont.)

Jacobins were all to be lumped together in the matter
of guilt and responsibility.

The reason given for not calling on Madame de Staél
was the irregularity of her conduct, but this was only a
pretext.

Anyone who was not a thorough-going Royalist
was put on the index.

Thus isolated, the little circle at Juniper Hall, which
would willingly have shaken off its carking cares b
mixing in the life of a country already extolled by
Voltaire, found itself obliged to be self-sufficing.

The test was no doubt too severe.

Susceptibilities became more acute, and differences
of character became apparent, which had hitherto been
veiled in the cloud of passing events.

Narbonne’s temper became very unequal, sometimes
gay and prodigal of wit, at other times downcast and
taciturn, He began to complain finally that his
mistress was really too careless of the proprieties.

She on her side chaffed him for his little Royalist
prejudices, but uneasiness and reproach forced them-
selves into her jokes.

When all is said, it is difficult to discover what
de Narbonne was really feeling at this time.

He was certainly breaking away from Madame de
Staél, but why ?

According to Sorel it was just the usual course of an
episode in the career of a man who has had many
successes with women.*

But it should be noted that Narbonne is no excep-
tion among the men chosen by Madame de Staél.

There was something feminine in his character and
this is also true of Constant and Rocca.

It was this femininity which brought them together
in the first instance.

Narbonne was witty, susceptible to enthusiasm and
very susceptible to external impressions.

* See Note. Appendix C.

133MADAME DE STAEL

It was thanks to this common basis of their natures
that the connection took place, but do not let us
deceive ourselves. It was never a case of Narbonne
choosing out Madame de Staél and then deserting her:
it was she who took possession of him.

Very possibly the conqueror of so many hearts
believed, in the first instance, that this was another
conquest on his part, and it is just because he was
finally obliged to realize his mistake and to give up
every previous illusion of his masculine vanity, that
he began to chafe in the bonds of her many kindnesses
and to pine for his liberty.

As for Madame de Staél, it is easy to be certain by
studying her actions and her letters, at this time,
that she remained passionately in love with de
Narbonne.

She lavished on him all the love that she could not
give her legal consort, and it nourished itself on the
many acts of generosity which sprang from it.

So strong was this passion that she completely lost
her head over it.

She forgot to make allowances for human nature,
and ignored the simplest psychological observations.

By clinging desperately to her lover she lost
him.

To give one instance of her lack of judgment: she
wished very much to settle in Switzerland with him,
but she went the longest way about to attain her end
by acting with precipitation.

If she had behaved rationally, she would have
remained in Switzerland until she got the desired
permit for her friend to join her there.

That was, indeed, her first intention. She was
negotiating to settle him in the Canton of Berne.

But as the negotiations did not succeed in the
twinkling of an eye, she threw the whole idea to the
winds and rushed off to join Narbonne in England.

This was the way to ruin the whole scheme, and,

134THE STORM (Cont.

indeed, as far as that was concerned, the period of
three months spent in England was all time lost.

She found that she would be obliged to begin
negotiating all over again with less chance of suc-
ceeding in the end.

She went to England, driven by her passion alone.

It seemed to her then that a gulf would open between
herself and her lover if she did not make haste to join him.*

She certainly made herself believe that the object of
her journey was to bring Narbonne back with her and
she fixed May, 1793, as the probable date of their
return, for she hoped that all the formalities in
Switzerland would be concluded then.

When May came she was obliged to go back alone,
apparently because Necker had made up his mind to
cut short this useless prank by stopping supplies.

When the time came to start she was like a woman
who is “dragged from all that is dear to her,” her
tears flowed whenever she tried to speak and choked
her utterance.

Arrived in Switzerland she stated her terms
categorically: if she was to stay there ... there
was a simple way of keeping her; they must allow
Narbonne to join her.

If Narbonne was obliged to stay in England after
the autumn, she would go back to Juniper Hall.

“ There are feelings which, uniting every aspect of
love and friendship, become yourself . . . and more
than yourself! When unheard of circumstances, such
as the Revolution has produced, have welded together
the minds and souls of two people for fully five years,
when those same circumstances have given rise to
mutual dependence, such that it is impossible for
these two people to live apart, when finally everything
known as propriety, and worldly consideration and
advantage has tumbled into a ridiculous heap of
ruins, I do not know what reason he and I would have
to go on living if we were obliged to be separated.

* See her letter to Gibbon, Dec, 28, 1792.

135MADAME DE STAEL

‘‘ Therefore, give up that idea, for I will never hear

Ohitwand: tell me what to do...
Narbonne did not come to Switzerland until the end
of the year.

While waiting, she cheated her weary longing by
becoming the directress of “‘ the trade in human lives,”’
the lives which she managed to snatch from the
guillotine.

This occupation fascinated her, for it proved that
intelligence is always good for something after all.

The chance of saving an innocent man’s life was
something she could not resist, a means of finding a
little happiness in the midst of a tragic existence.

In August, 1793, she published a vibrant appeal for
mercy for the Queen, who had been ordered before
that tribunal which was more like a permanent
insurrection than anything else.

In this appeal, Marie Antoinette, who had detested
her and had collaborated openly in the ruin of her
father, appears absolved from all her sins, a living
symbol of feminine beauty and maternal virtue.

Never in her life had this noble woman plotted
against France, never had this sovereign harboured
sentiments which were hostile to true liberty.

Madame de Staél found herself perplexed. To
whom was her appeal to be addressed ?

She wanted to reach the nation over the heads of
its tyrants and to make the people feel “ that no
human fate could be so deeply plunged in mistfor-
tune” ;. she wanted to tell the people what she felt
herself in knowing that “‘ when you love you cannot
inflict suffering.” But she feared that thus her appeal
would fall short of her desired effect and trying to
conceal her repugnance for it, she turned to the
tribunal in the attempt to find simple incontrovertible
reasons which would penetrate like rays of light into
the sullen darkness of the brains of the judges.

* Letter of Madame de Staél to Gibbon.

136aa leat d Caress a ee

a a

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

THE STORM (Cont.)

She assures them that the cleverest people in
France are only longing for settled peace and that on
condition of its restoration, every Frenchman of every
opinion would hasten to their support.

But that the Queen must be saved, because if she
were sacrificed no one could parley further with the
authors of such a crime.

The tyrants would be annihilated by their own dead
victims.*

The executions went on, however.

The small number of lives that she was able to save
seemed nothing to Madame de Staél compared with
the army of the dead.

She was seized with a perfect horror, once more,
for that detestably tranquil Switzerland with its
perpetually idyllic associations.

She felt that in Paris she could always take advan-
tage of her position as Ambassadress to increase the
number of the rescued.

The success in arms of the revolutionaries, becoming
an apotheosis of crime, even brought her to doubt the
deep instincts of her nature.

She even dreamed of taking refuge in America, and
renouncing all her aims in favour of a life of little
joys: ‘a beautiful climate, music and pleasant
society.” After all, would it not be better neither to
think, feel, nor live any longer.

“To be opposed to the light of human progress is to
be lost, but to go with it now is to lend one’s name to a
history of bloodshed and misery.”

Her joy at Narbonne’s arrival is dimmed by his
news of Gibbon’s death.

She is astonished to think that anyone can perish
independently of the Revolution.

Nature had begun to form a league with massacre as

* Réflexions sur le Pyocés de la Reine, published in the month of
August, 1793, anonymously, but Madame de Staél was known to be
the author.

137MADAME DE STAEL

if the contrast between her beauty and man’s despair
was not already dark enough.

Then, little by little, she came to understand that
Narbonne no longer loved her.

She made herself realise it from the beginning of
1794, and the crisis was soon passed and followed by a
resigned lassitude which did not prevent her from
continuing to lavish a maternal solicitude on her
unfaithful lover.

\ She vented her anger in a novel called Zulma,
\probably after the pen-portrait of herself as Zulmé by
\her dead admirer Guibert, and this work she would
‘read aloud to her friends without any pressing.
Frisching, who was not one of her intimates, remarked
after one of these readings: ‘‘ that the little god,
Cupid, had surely made sad havoc of Madame de
Dtael |

| The novel did not leave any doubt as to that, and all
iher friends knew exactly what to think about it,
giving the allegory its real meaning, in this story of a
woman deserted, who endeavours to find the strength
lof resignation by tearing the traitor to pieces in a book
‘which she writes.

Madame de Staél did, indeed, regain her moral
equilibrium by portraying a faithless lover sacrificed
by the hand of the woman who had loved him too
much ; and by the fury of her disappointed passion she
wound up this episode which, in her estimation, was to
have been eternal.

In this work, the gesture of the Diary repeats itselt
and that of the Passions is anticipated.

In spite of the romantic or exotic setting, which is
deliberately contrived to separate this too eloquent
confession from the person of the author, in spite of a
misleading passage inserted on purpose into the first
preface, which deals with the hostility of the public to
a woman whose only fault has been to love her friends,
it is impossible to miss the real meaning of the story.

138THE STORM (Cont.)

The second preface, which is printed in the Zuvres,
is much more candid in this respect.

She says, that in order to depict love she must give
us the spectacle of the most acute misery and a study ofa
most passionate soul: that to do this she has been
obliged to observe the ravages of love “ in an untamed
soul, wedded to a cultivated mind” ; “the faculty of
judging adds a great deal to any form of misery, for tw
detracts nothing from the powers of sensation in the
being.”

This is Mirza’s case all over again, with something
added, and that something is the calm ot despair which
has given the sufferer power to analyse her own pain.

‘T have chosen a situation in which there is both’
calmness and anguish at the same time, in which the|
unfortunate victim is able to observe herself and to)
describe what she has felt.”

The generalisation, which follows immediately upon}
this, clearly proves that the said observation was not}
made in cold blood. |

“When misfortune is irrevocable, the soul regains
enough composure to allow of thought, though feeling
never, never ceases.” |

The last phrase in the preface contains the unmis-
takable avowal: “this work of mine which more than
any other proceeds from my soul.” |

Zulma is the story of her connection with de Nar-
bonne, except for the catastrophe ot the Revolution.

Here we find her first admiration from a distance,
which so speedily turned to love; her quick sub-
mission to his seductive charm, which enclosed the
Sovereignty of genius as if in a lovely casket ; we
find too the comradeship of those days of danger in
common, exile, the fear of death for her beloved ; it is
all there.

Would you know what passed in her soul when, on
the evening of 1oth of August, not knowing 1
de Narbonne was still alive, Madame de Staél ran

139WADAMIE DE “STABLE

alone through the blood-stained streets, restraining
herself even from hoping, as a propitiation to Destiny ?
Here it is =

“One day news was spread abroad that Fernand
had fallen in the fight : wandering through the horrors
of carnage, sights never seen by me before, did not
leave the slightest imprint on my memory, for I was
looking for him and the fearful images of death were
meaningless to me except as an obstacle which inter-
posed themselves between him and me.

“‘ After many hours search, worn out with fatigue,
I fell down to rest at the foot of a tree; there, in the
grip of a misery so violent that all my vital processes
were swallowed up in this one pain, I tried to calm
myself by a resolution, formed long ago, that I would
never survive Fernand.*

“© What is there in his death,’ I said, ‘ from which
mine would not deliver me ?’

‘* But the one instant that I should have to live through
to learn that he was dead was more terrifying to me in
utself than the whole of eternity.

“I could not foresee rest in the grave that the loss
of him would commit me to.

“My mind had never been able to conceive of absolute
annihilation and whatever form of existence I might
enter into, I knew that I should bear with me the burden
of this awful pain.

“Sunk in motionless despair, examining my soul
with ferocious acuteness . .. suddenly ...I saw
him coming to me. Great God! It was not life, it
was Heaven which opened before me then!

“In one instant I felt every imaginable contradic-
tory sensation of which the human soul is capable.

“It was he! My soul gave way under the weight of
indescribable bliss.

* About the time of the roth August Madame de Staél began to
CaIry poison on her person. At least, that is what Fersen alleges,
and adds that she moved to the camp of Arras in order to be near
de Narbonne.

I40THE STORM (Cont.

‘“ He who has lived through a moment like this has
devoured a whole long life in that one moment, and for
me time no longer exists.

“Yes, oh God! at this very moment plunged into the
very abyss of human misery, I thank You for the gift of
life to me, because of that one moment.”

It is easy to reconstitute the rest of the true story
if we brush aside the trappings of romance and re-
establish the chronology of events.

“There came a day when calumny made you
distrustful of Fernand ; you accused him of negotiating
with the enemy and of plotting to deliver you into the
enemy’s hands; you condemned him to death;
my resourceful love outwitted you and rescued
him.

““T followed Fernand into the desert where your
cruel decree forced him to linger for a whole year.”

“Though rejected by his country ... a woman
surrounded Fernand with all the tender joys of love.
In the desert, he was still a sovereign ; he saw happi-
ness and a whole existence hang on one look from him ;
power and glory were restored to him by my ardour
and complete yielding.

““ My love was his shield from the injustice of man
as it tried to attack him in his thoughts.

““In my heart he read himself . . . he loved me
mee benlivieds A 5 4 24

And yet, afterwards, he deserted her.

“Fernand suggested an absence of a few days from
me. I opposed this resolution. I complained of tt
bitterly. No, I did not demand rights from Fernand on
the strength of my benefits to him. It was the memory,
the deep impression of my own feeling which forced me
to belseve in my empire over him.

““Té seemed to me that I carried such a power and
weight of love within me that it must dominate him,

that a man loved with such a strength of passion could
nevey dream that he was free.”

I4IMADAME DE STAEL

m7 The historical setting is to be picked out by means of

me) contrast.

| Remembering the homilies directed against herself
and the persecution by calumny which had been the
price of her diason with de Narbone, Madame de Staél
makes Zulma plead her case before the tribunal of the
assembled nation.

She tells them that “ love is above law and man-
made opinion” ; that it is “the truth, the flame, the
essential stuff, the prime idea of the moral world” ;

Ht that, ‘“‘ Heaven itself has not the right to condemn it.”

The tribunal upholds Zulma. There is another in
the story.

It is a model tribunal; the very opposite of the
revolutionary tribunal. It seems to consist of seven
old men, chosen at hazard, who, fearing to constitute

themselves instruments of Divine vengeance, retire
for a week, after pronouncing the death sentence, to

deliberate over it, seeking for any possible chance ot
commuting it.

The deliberation is held in complete silence, in mute
contemplation of misfortune and death, and the old

| | men shed tears over this peril for another which they
7 do not share.
Finally, they are won over by the eloquence of the
prisoner, Zulma, and join with the multitude which is
determined to crown her.

Misfortunes accumulate, public and private, they
are hardly distinguishable from one another any
longer.

Madame Necker’s soul slips away, lulled by gentle
music and hovers as a light evanescent cloud above
poor Jacques Necker, then disappears.*

The property of the author of Mémoire pour la
défense du vot was confiscated.

In June Madame de Stael was obliged to break her
friend Montmorency’s heart by the news of the death

* See Note. Appendix C,
I42THE STORM (Cont.)

on the scaffold of his brother, the young Abbé de
Montmorency. Danger threatened his mother and
his wife’s mother as well.

She would have been glad to draw her cloak over
her own head and to await death in that posture
herself. But she could still wage war with the Terror
with what money she had left as her weapon, and
despair sharpens cunning.

There was a man called Jacques Treboux who
offered up all his own heroism in the name of this
mission of mercy.

If the guillotine took its toll every day, if the
unhappy Princesse de Poix was obstinate in her refusal
to be rescued, many fine lives did escape from the
massacre owing to the operations of the rescue workers
whom Madame de Staél organised and directed.
Among these we may count the Princesse de Broglie,
Malouet’s wife and daughter, the Vicomtesse de Laval,
the Abbé de Damas and many others.

And while in Paris as the last victim of bloody
fanaticism, even beauty was assassinated, the Lake
of Geneva still smiled its ironic smile of flowering June,
and did not cease smiling even when Revolution
knocked on the town gates.

What was to be done? Thought was no longer
worth while! For if one had been certain that it was
worth something, then its impartiality would have
been an insult to suffering.

Those who lived then were in the presence of “a
phenomenon in monstrosity,” which is no longer
human aud paralyses the mind with its monotonous
horror.

It is a descent into Hell, circle by circle, deeper and
deeper still, into a darkness which grows more opaque
and yet more opaque.

Then something curious happened.

Madame de Staél composed a lyrical poem, born
from the intensity of her pain.

143MADAME DE STAEL

She was to do the same thing in 1805, but that was
partly done in order to pass the spirit of Italy through
her own personality.

This time she was experiencing a check to all her
faculties. It was the immobility, accepted as the only
refuge from grief, which was to bring her soul to com-
mune with itself. She sings of her suffering, instinc-
tively, to bring it consolation, to put it to sleep, to
sublimate it and make beauty of it.

Sainte-Beuve saw clearly what she was trying to do.
For poetry is the language of all supreme suffering
which it sublimates to its own sovereign forms of
beauty, creating beauty from evil, flowers from mud.

If by any chance Madame de Staél had been a born
singer, this is the moment which would have revealed
the fact. But she was not.

L’Epitre au Malheur is a poor thing, just a melo-
dramatic description of two lovers at the foot of the
scaffold, whose tragic insignificance is exaggerated by
Madame de Staél’s inability to give her story its true
proportions.

And yet the soul of Madame de Staél is in it, for
this poetical dissertation on unhappiness in the
abstract, which becomes a political apostrophe and
resolves itself into a most complete intimate revela-
tion, has hardly less psychological and documentary
value than the story of Zulma.

She gives us once again, in the exordium, the feeling
which flows incessantly from her pen at this time
which is inspired by the contract of imperturbable
nature with the miserable passion-wracked existence
of man.

“Often to cool my weary, fevered eyes
I gaze where the majestic water lies,
The Lake with her great Mountains, and I gaze
On those great shapes, reflected down, that brood,
In endless calm, on shining plenitude.

144ee

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 

THE STORM (Cont.)

Often I cry: ‘ Is man in all his days,

Never to come to knowledge of this peace ?
Is he, alone, ungranted this release

From the deep throbbing of a stormy heart,
And in the natural order, held apart ?’ ”

We may hold what opinion we choose of the poetical
talent displayed here, but it is impossible not to notice
how closely Madame de Staél has approached true
romantic inspiration.

The equation of Lamartine is certainly embodied in
this passage, and it has not been dragged in to set the
correct current in motion, but exists as the result of
something deeply felt.

Madame de Staél no longer ignores the harmonies—
or the dissonances—of nature.

For the moment she is the more occupied with the
dissonances, but she is beginning to be conscious of
both, not by the eyes alone, but by the vibrating
sensation of all her woman’s nerves.

This is an advance.

There is something even more disconcerting to follow.

We will pass over some passages somewhat
laboriously composed, and find ourselves confronted
by lines with a real promise of lyrical development.

““O Grief ! O Grief ! France founds your empire now !
We struggled bitterly . . . but we must bow
Beneath your yoke. How should we find escape,
Where even Reason takes a torment’s shape ? ”

She should have continued in this vein. But when
she goes on to trace the lasting effects of grief, we
perceive immediately that the spurt of pure flame has
died down.

We get a succession of commonplaces, of which the
pace increases in proportion to the writer’s ability to
win back the customary stride of her prose, through
all the difficulties and hindrances of versification.

145

I ae Sa
= tan

7, ) 'MADAME DE STAEL

‘* Barbarians . . . nor death, nor history
Can give your vileness all its vile deserts !’

?

Our expectation has been disappointed.

But since the elegy has died away let her now give
rein to her indignation !

The rhetoric suddenly collapses and is modulated
for the relation of the body of the poem.

‘“ No guilt was his, of even those new crimes
Left undefined by the tyrannic times.

With her he loved, he lived in secrecy. .. .”

Finally, however, she returns to her own confession.

From the general she inclines, more and more, to the
particular.

After deploring the errors of the refugees who made
exile bitterer than it need have been by refusing to
drop old grudges (her excommunication by the
extremists on her father’s side was not the least of her
woes at this unhappy period), Madame de Staél, by a
natural transition of thought, passes to the little
colony of the faithful who were united round her at

Mézery.*

‘“ Other good hearts there were to vengeance sworn,
Whose each affection had its partner grief.
Helpless to save the old or latest-born,

Their love for these was torment past relief.”

* We see by what follows that L’Eptive aw Malheur was almost
certainly written in June, 1794, and from the indications of Kohler,
who is always very precise about Madame de Staél’s visits to the
Chateau of Mézery, near Lausanne. The work alludes to Madame
Necker’s death, which proves that it cannot have been written
before the end of May. Then the allusions to ‘‘ happy Helvetia,”
“ your tranquil peace, my country!’”’ would not be appropriate
after the revolution of July. Do not let us be answered that we
must not rely too much on vague indications in the text. That is
Madame de Staél’s literary method from first to last: evolution
towards generalisation, which must be traced back to its source.
But there is nothing against the theory that she began the poem at
Nyons and finished it at Mézery. (See Kohler, page 173).

146THE STORM (Cont.)

She is thinking particularly of Montmorency mourn-
ing under a cruel blow and still ignorant of the fate
reserved for his mother.

And in writing the third part she is deeply occupied
with that feeling of impotence before the misery of
others which takes the very life out of her sympathetic
soul. That is not all:

“For Envy’s furies may
Lead still the chase, even at misfortune’s height !
See all the world lie in a ruined heap,
And calumny will perch there at the top
To mock at tears! Have you not known the power
Of that rank poison ? Oh! you, who do defend
Fair freedom’s faith, and are declared the foes
Of all extremity. Oh! exiles from your home,
One little blemish in your purest thoughts
Implacably returns as chastisement.
To prejudice, all thought is culpable !
And he who reasons well must needs be he
That soonest doth betray ! ”

Her conscience is not at rest.

Some of the responsibility for this bloody record
has been laid at her door.

Ever since 1792 she had been, in Malouet’s perfectly
sincere phrase, ‘‘ remorseful.”

In 1800 she is still concerned with it.

“One day, only one day, when one perhaps lent
support to thoughts, words, or resolutions which led
to cruelty and suffering is enough to torment a life-
time, to destroy in the depths of one’s heart both the
feelings of calm and of universal beneficence which lead
one to expect a friendly welcome in the hearts of all
men.”

In the Epitre we now come to a dozen verses, full of
personal revelations, relating to the absence of
Narbonne, who was not to return until August, and

147MADAME DE STAEL

whose ungrateful attitude added secret pain to all her
other sorrows; unattractive projects for voluntary
exile in America, the fabulous country of liberty,
which seemed so very far away; death which had
snatched wife from husband, breaking up the “ holiest
of all marriages,” the marriage which had inspired her
girlhood’s enthusiasm for matrimony as an institution,
that which seemed to her indissoluble, because of her
father’s and mother’s indestructible affection for one
another.

‘¢ Life is parting us from love ;
Like the spent and homing dove,
The soul is drawn across the sea
To virgin soil where souls are free.
Only Nature does not change,
Daily, nightly, in her range.

But death and evil passing by
Are pitiless to tear or sigh.

Holiest marriage is the last

To wither in their nipping blast.
Love is faithless, friendship light,
I, bowed in the common plight,
And nourishing a secret pain,
Must weep again, must weep again.”

The feminine note in this does not appear by
chance. It is to be found in the Recweil of 1795 and
is repeated in the Guwures.

Madame de Staél makes a point of letting us see that
she is writing from her own experience, above all
insisting on the moral solitude which was an exas-
peration to her griefs and set her apart from her
companions in misfortune.

And yet in her lowest depths of grief Madame de
Staél derives a certain satisfaction, and one might
say, a legitimate moral compensation in observing
her own suffering with attentive eyes.

148

cay er EE hs ERS)
Sa i a ir,THE STORM (Cont.)

The attitude of grief, of the woman who has drawn
her drapery over her head and waits in silence, strikes
her imagination and subtly flatters her sensibility.

This is why we must neglect no effort to fill in gaps
in the biographical picture, in order to establish the
truth of this period of her life.

It appears that, for a time at least, Madame de
Staél was forced to abandon all continued work by
the disarray of mind and nerve into which manifold
and appalling shocks had driven her.

But she never resigned herself to lying fallow.

On the contrary, the more circumstances withheld
her from taking an active part in the affairs of France,
the more her urgent need for action expressed itself
in her immediate surroundings, the more was her
curiosity arrested by men and things that were near
her.

Thus we find her in the spring of 1794, before the
death of her mother and the composition of L’ Epitre
au Malheur, prepared to enter into coquettish relations
with Lavater, sending the great physiognomist a copy
of her Réflexions sur le Procés de la Reine.

Soon afterwards, when at Ziirich, she arranged a
meeting with Lavater, who found himself embarrassed
by a téte-a-téte which rapidly became a monologue.

When she had departed he emitted a philosophic
wish :—

“That witty and sensitive intellects were also
endowed with strength and calmness.’’*

Lavater may have believed that Madame de Staél
had come to Ziirich on purpose to see him.

In reality, as we know from others, she had been
obliged to cajole the authorities of Ziirich and to make
use of all her small fascinations on the inhabitants of
the town, to get permission to settle there with
Talleyrand, who had been driven out of England in
company with other exiles and friends.

This pre-occupation, the anxiety she always felt for

* See Note. Appendix C,
I49 IeMADAME DE STAEL

the safety of her friends, her untiring activity in saving
victims of the Terror, her daughterly attentions to her
father, her responsibilities to her children which she
certainly did not entirely neglect, the low condition of
her whole being, which was quite as much due to
imprisoned energy as to the fearful shocks she had
lived through (all the while forcing her idealism to
survive them) . . . none of all this prevented her
from sending out new shoots of living green in all
directions.

She did not go to Ziirich on purpose to see Lavater,
but once there she could not dream of going away
without seeing him.

Her emotional or intellectual curiosity, which ever
it might be, was never for a moment denied its
satisfaction.

Even her friends were amazed by the variety of her
interests and the extraordinary unconsciousness of
the driving-force which impelled her forward at this
time, when her faculties were not in full play.

Those unpleasant persons who said that her
practical sympathy was less a virtue than a satis-
faction to her need of activity, were not altogether
wrong.

It is that same need which explains her adventure
with the Swede, Ribbing, if adventure there were.

Everyone cried out upon the indiscretion of it!

Madame de Saussure and Mathieu de Montmorency
formed a league for the protection of Madame de
Staél against herself, a mission which Mathieu imposed
upon himself all through her lite without effecting
anything thereby.

‘“ Why in the world should she not meet Ribbing ? ”
she asks.

She really could not understand the horror of her
friends or the consternation of her husband, who was
just beginning to build up the structure of a new
future with touches of infinite caution.

150THE STORM (Cont.)

“ Really,” she thought, “ the prudence of average
human beings is unbearable.’*

What is the harm of having Royalist friends, even
if you are in favour of a Republic, she was forced to
ask herself, under the rule of the Divectoive which had
turned her out of France.

She wanted to be in touch with the whole world
quite irrespective of party, with all intelligent people
and opinion.

It was thus that she began to give her attention to
the first addresses of young Benjamin Constant.

Narbonne had fallen a victim to a determined siege
from his former mistress, Madame de Laval.

Gently and insensibly he regained the sphere from
which the Revolution and Madame de Staél had, for an
instant, snatched him away.

Once the Terror was past, he settled down in Paris
with Madame de Laval in a little house in the rue
Roquépine, where no one would set foot twice who
wished to hear Madame de Staél well spoken of.

A place in Madame de Staél’s affections was, there-
fore, vacant once more.

By a chance in which she could not fail to see a
special dispensation of Providence, the man and the
opportunity came together.

One day she learnt that at last Robespierre had met
the fate he deserved, the fate he had forced on so many
others,

Was the Terror vanquished then ?

Would France re-open ?

Would humanity resume its interrupted march of
evolution to inevitable destinies ?

If the answer was yes . . . why then she could
live the year 1789, all over again, with Benjamin
Constant instead of Louis de Narbonne.

*See a letter to Nils von Rosenstein quoted by Souriau in his
Idées Morales de Madame de Staél.

| See Note. Appendix C,

151'

a —

eeBOOK II

THE BALANCE-SHEET OF DISASTER
A FRESH START

1795—1800CHAPTER Ix

AFTER THE CATASTROPHE. EXAMINATION OF

CONSCIENCE, 1794-1795

WueEn the Terror came to an end, Madame de
Staél felt the necessity of recovering possession of
her real self, then, of moving once more in the world,
a world which was so much changed that it was quite
as much unknown to her as the world in which she
had made her début in 1786. Like everyone else,
she was stunned and incredulous for a moment.

The news of the fall of Robespierre must have
reached her at Lausanne on the 3oth or 3Ist of
July, 1794.

She felt, of course, profound relief, but the “ in-
expressible joy” described in her Considerations
does not burst out in a letter she addressed a few
days later to her friend, Princess Henin.

The unexpected event came upon her whilst deep
in intrigue.

She was just on the point of at last effecting the
release of the rebellious Madame de Poix and Madame
de Simiane; and suddenly no more news from
Paris came through to her. Her agents must have
altered their tactics.

A few prisoners had indeed been released, and
it was easy to predict that, as Robespierre’s successors
could not shed more blood, they would shed less.

But there was a long step between that and any
conclusion that all was once more for the best in the
best of all possible worlds.

She never dreamt of that, but was full of hope
that her agents in Paris had not been taken in by
fallacious optimism.

ce

155MADAME DE STAEL

‘ T cannot think,” she wrote, “ that our friends can
have changed their opinions owing to this faint ray
of hope; such ludicrous confidence would make me
rage with despair.”

She is still of this mind by the end of the year.
Constant’s presence did not contribute to her peace
of mind, though the admiration that he lavished on
her comforted her wounded vanity.*

She was fascinated to the last degree by his type
of intelligence, but his physique, a short-sighted
blonde, inspired her with a physical repugnance
which she had difficulty in overcoming, all the more
because the woman in her was weary and worn out.

She was in no hurry to yield him all that de Nar-
bonne had possessed.

However, in the spring of 1795 her resistance
gave way.

Constant played a whole drama of despair, with
great vigour, using threats of suicide ; and in the
end was able to note a discreet mention of his triumph
in his Journal Intume.}

On the eve of her departure to Paris, while Necker,
afraid that he would lose his daughter as well as
his wife, begs her “ to curb her ambition,” she sent
her Epitre au Malheur to the printers, together with
the three novels, L’Histoire de Pauline, Mirza and
Adélaide et Théodore, besides an essay on fiction
which she had just produced.

She adds two explanatory notes, one which serves
as a foreword to her poem, the other in order to make
it known that her Essai sur les Fictions was written
later than her novels.

The tone of these notes is most significant. She
is still hesitating between hope and fear. In the

* At the opening of their liason Constant said that: “ Madame
de Staél is a being apart from others, one of those superior beings who are
not to be met with more than once in a century.” Letter of Constant
to Madame de Charriére, 21st Oct., 1791.

¢ See Note. Appendix C.

156Al TERS MLE CATASEROR EE

first she asks whether “‘ one may safely regard one’s
gtiefs as memories ? ”

In the second she admits that misfortune has taken
out of her by exhaustion almost as much as it has
put into her by development of her faculties.

“The overwhelming nature of events which
surround us impresses us so deeply with the nullity
of thought in general, the impotence of personal
feeling, that, having lost our way in life, we can no
longer even find the right road for hope to take,
nor discover what is to be the driving-force to excite
effort, nor what principles will henceforth guide public
opinion through the errors of party spirit, or what
will constitute the new dazzling inspiration to urge
men on to glory in any career.”

This passage is taken from her Recueil de Morceaux
Détachés, and it expresses exactly what was going on
in her own mind.

She had lost her bearings in life.

She was nearing the age of thirty, and it seemed
a great deal to her.

She felt that she was already ageing.

Not time, but grief, terrible and unexpected grief,
had worked its will on her, leaving her impregnated.

She was afraid that it had left her so changed that
she could not recognise herself.

She was afraid that the exuberant optimism of
her young days was gone for ever, and that she
had entirely missed the happiness which life can
either give or withhold.

Her whole mind was bent upon the consideration
of this vital point.

Thinking over her past life, she decided that she
had never had complete happiness, but that she had
been much nearer it in her youth than she was at
this time.

Nowfit seemed to her that she had begun the
descent of that fatal slope which leads quietly and

157MADAME DE STAEL

monotonously to the grave, that is to say, that she
was facing imperceptible decay.

No! That she did not and never would accept!
With all the might of her being and all the energy
of her ripened womanhood, avid for life, she
brushed away the vision with which she had dallied
complacently in her childhood.

She would remake the foundations of her life, she
would remake her life itself and never ask of life
more than it would give her, if only she might keep
life, might dive, and so drive from her, by action, the
haunting vision of final inertia.

This problem had occupied her seriously during
the last years of the Revolution and had then inspired
the idea of her book on the Passions, from which the
Essai sur les Fictions first took shape.

The marks of this crisis of her being appear in
everything Madame de Staél wrote during this post-
Revolution period.

Her two masterpieces—the Passtons, 1796, and
De la Litérature—are the two great milestones on
the road to which this crisis led her, and they cannot
be considered apart from each other. Already, in
1793, before her secret grief had added its burden
to those shared with the community, Madame de
Staél had felt that the problems raised by the Revolu-
tion were intimately connected with her personal
happiness.

She considered herself in some sort responsible
for the conduct of public affairs.

She was the daughter of a Minister; she felt that
she owed it to herself and to the nation to shed some
light on the causes of the disaster. At the same time,
she sorely needed some means of employing her
time and energy until, the Terror having been laid
low, she could resume her natural position as political
Egeria in Paris.

On her arrival in England there is not the slightest

158ALE Ke WEE) "CAVA S TER OP EEE

doubt that she soon came across Godwin’s book,
Enquiries concerning Political Justice and rts influence
on general virtue and happiness, which had not long
been published. This was the very angle at which
she had been regarding the problem herself.

What had perished in the French cataclysm was,
in the very first place, the happiness of millions of
individuals, whether famous or obscure; a whole
nation had suffered as she had suffered.

The political problem was in reality a moral
problem.

The obvious cause of the explosion was that which
undermines and destroys individual happiness :
passion.

And then again, in order to judge precisely of the
problem, it must be given its right position in history,
freed from false perspective which would bring it too
near; it must be held at a distance, considered
objectively.

Thus Madame de Staél found means to combine
two problems under the same aspect, the problem
of happiness and that of the destiny of France. She
made one problem of it in her own mind, one unique
problem, for it was unique to her. Satisfied with
her conception, she hastened to work it out, telling
herself that evil was still in activity and must speedily
be suppressed.

So it was that in the spring of 1793 Madame de
Staél set herself to a great work, both of synthesis
and analysis, which she called De l’Influence des
Passions sur le Bonheur des Individus et des Nations :
Study of the Influence of Passion upon individual and
national happiness. She set to work almost gaily.

She admits immediately that historical synthesis
would pre-suppose actual knowledge that she did not
possess.

She would have had to work at it very seriously
and she meant to.

159

- Sener nist
oMADAME DE STAEL

But as she was always thirsting for results, she
breaks into the analytical side of her scheme to begin
with, and writes essays on the passions of man,
which she submits to her guests at Juniper Hall for
criticism.

It would be hazardous to state definitely that there
are no remnants of these first sketches in Les Passions
as we know it to-day. But there cannot be very
many.

And the reason for that is that she did not progress
far with the work at that time, and soon broke off
altogether for a period of several months. The causes
for this sudden discouragement are not difficult to
discover. There are two: first, the Terror. She
had never even dreamed that the existence of such
ferocity was possible in human beings. She was
almost disabled by it, and became incapable of
sustained mental effort owing to the paralysis of
mind which the vision of such suffering entailed.

She writes in the introduction to the Passions :

“Tt would not have been to my credit if I had
been capable of pursuing this work during the Reign
Of enrone

And again, in the preface to her Réflexions sur la
Paix: ‘During the bloody reign of Robespierre,
when each new day brought a fresh appalling list
of victims, I could do nothing but long to die myself.

. I should have reproached myself for mental
effort which was independent of this all-absorbing
pain.”

But if Narbonne had not deserted her at this critical
moment, she would soon have regained her equili-
brium.

It was the personal sorrow, added to all the rest,
which beat her down.

As she revived little by little, the important point
was not so much the saving of the nation as the rescue

of herself.
160

7

ee ok
5ABER (iil CALASHROPREE

First, she must build up the ruins of her own life,
and sew up the rents in her poor lovely garment of
happiness, torn to ribbons by the passing years.

And so the work wandered away from the
theoretical to the personal.

The second part, political and historical, is dis-
missed to an indefinite place in the future, and it is
with that in her mind that Madame de Staél quietly
affirms that she had been incapable of sustained
thought during the Terror.

She worked at the first part during the opening
months of 1794.

In her treatment of the chapter on love, the very
dryness of the analysis betrays the existence of her
own mortification; insensibly she glides into a
personal narration, veiled autobiography, and relates
the exact circumstances of the betrayal in Zulma.
We discover this from the first preface to that story,
which also exists to explain why the first part of the
Passions was not published at the same time as
Zulma.

“In my solitude of the last two years I felt the
necessity of fixing my mind on some abstract idea
which could drag it from contemplation of the horrors
of reality.

“Torn and wounded by the spectacle of every
species of misery, my mind turned naturally to the
contemplation of happiness, as on a stormy tide,
which is carrying you further and further from the
shore, your thoughts cling desperately to the memories
of dry land.

“The Influence of Passion on individual and
national happiness is the subject with which I propose
to deal,

“This short episode is taken from a chapter on
Love which the work includes ; the work, as a whole,
as planned in a more philosophical vein, but I hardly
know whether I can or will carry out my project as

IOIMADAME DE STAEL

originally designed, or whether I should dare to publish
it even if it were ever completed.

““ Those days are past when I expected a kind recep-
tion, whatever I did or wherever I went, and | have
been robbed of the confidence I then possessed,
which sprang from my own certainty that I had never
wronged a single human being, nor missed a chance
of being useful to friends, acquaintances, unknown
persons, and even enemies.”’

This means that she had planned to write a
philosophical treatise, but had been gradually drawn
into writing about herself, and that more frankly
than ever before.

When she read over what she had written, she was
really alarmed.

She had given herself away completely to a public
which might be hostile !

Jeers and insults would rain upon her bruised soul }

It would be more prudent to sound public opinion
by publishing Zulma first, and decide afterwards
whether she could risk the ampler confession of the
Passions.

This was what she did.

Zulma appeared and did not make any stir except
in the circle immediately surrounding the author ;
other people had other things to think about. The
experiment was, therefore, a failure, but Madame
de Staél lost no time in turning to other things herself.

She had written this confession mainly in the
interests of her own moral hygiene. Whether pub-
lished or not, she felt enormously the better for
having written it.

She had been forced to find some means of making
life endurable, and writing took her mind off the
immediate pre-occupation of her wounded soul. But
she had also read a great deal; far more than she
had ever done before.

Without any plan, and jumbled together, she

162Aor ot eae Cs ee Deer Vege

iT

ee eee ae

  

APE IiHEr CATASPROPEHE

turned over the leaves of Virgil, Homer, Spenser,
Milton, Butler, Swift and Montesquieu. It was a
daily discipline which she had ordered for herself,
and at first she found it very irksome.

She was seized with fits of impatience and depres-
sion, she, who could never sit still for a quarter of
an hour.

But at last, by the exercise of will power, she
began to feel the benefit of this discipline.

Though ravaged by passion, her soul began to find
a little peace.

Thus she arrived at the conclusion that literature
is salutary in its effects, that it can even deaden the
passions and tends to disengage the soul from the
tyranny of a fixed idea.

She knows that this is the case.

While still hesitating over the great question of
whether or not to publish the confession, this strikes
her as a new truth (so clearly has it been demonstrated
to her) which it is her duty to communicate to others.

In this way she was brought to compose and
publish a little offshoot of the great work on the
Passions, which treats this crisis in her life objectively.

The convalescent tells us all about her recovery
before publishing the account of her malady. She
gives her little work the serious title of Essai sur les
factions.

THe Essay on Fiction

This essay is a jewel of feminine thought and a
precious morsel of autobiographical revelation.

[t contains something very like a theory of romance
which proves that Madame de Staél’s curiosity took
that direction rather than any other, but which also
proves that her reflections on literature are not yet
very deep or very disinterested.

Torn from the network of feelings which inspired

163MADAME DE STAEL

it, the literary theory appears lifeless and a little
ridiculous.

Madame de Staél had her own reasons for discussing
the novel rather than drama or poetry. She had
wished to escape from life in books. Having made
the attempt, she knows quite well how this is most
easily done.

‘< Human life,” she says, “ seems so well calculated
or happiness, that simply by a happy arrangement
cof memories, images and created figures, we may
eather together the happiness which is scattered over
ie face of the earth ... and thus overcome .. -
fall the miseries of destiny.”

Of all creative works of imagination she considers
a good novel the most efficacious in this respect.
| She lays it down as a principle that good novels
\are those which pass insensibly from lite into fiction
‘or fiction into life.

 

| “Tf the reader can feel . . . that but for a change
lof names... the story is that of herself) 7 275, OF
himself . . . ” then the novel is a good one.

The novel must be a prolongation of life, and one
must be able to glide from one into the other,
absolutely without let or hindrance. According to
her, the reader is the criterion. The reader desires
as few obstacles as possible.

It seems to Madame de Staél that there are two
classes of fiction which, far from making the desired
transition easy, make it dificult; and they are
historical novels, and those which deal in maryels
which put a strain on the imagination.

She disposes of the first class in three pages. His-
torical novels, she says, are simply importunities,
if not impertinences, which come between history
and your own mind (books such as Annecdotes de la
Cour de Philippe Auguste).

For the most part, these novels consist of a series
of licentious episodes, the chronicle of scandal born

164ee

  

AFTER THE CATASTROPHE

posthumously, undertaken with the object of reducing
heroes to the common measure of humanity, works
which soil the noble canvases of history quite use-
lessly.

Noble characters are taken from history, ‘“and/
though not necessarily disfigured, they are strippe
of all that made them mortal in order that their
apotheosis may be contrived.”

Then there are the drawbacks of the marvellous
school of fiction: Madame de Staél will have nothing
to do with them either, and she is surprised at any
reader who is capable of swallowing any such
puerilities in the quest for life.

To do so, men must become children, and phil-
osophers must step down into the throng to play the
hide and seek of allegory.

Referring to Spenser’s Faery Queene, she says:
“It shews weakness of intellect if a reader requires
concrete images in order to understand abstract
ideas.”

And then, further on: “An idea or a feeling is
seldom or never present in its full force when it can
be expressed by an image.”

According to Madame de Staél, the foundation of
the literary art is moral analysis.

“In addressing man she wants to draw out all the
great effects of the character of man.”

“One may explain all astonishing phenomena by
a series of moral causes.”

In support of this she quotes cases: “‘ What we
admire in Milton’s Satan is the man. . .”; “ What

>
remains of Achilles is his character . . .”; ‘* What
we want to forget about Renand’s passion for Armida
is the magic mingled with her fascinations which
havergiven| birth to it... .”
What she finds tiresome, on the contrary, is the
intervention of some god in the course of the narrative

which, by breaking the fine web of psychological
105 M

Pens Saal pen erased —
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ee

 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

MADAME DE STAEL

interest, breaks up the attentive reader’s curiosity also.

“Mythological intervention is far too arbitrary.
There is at one and the same time too much certainty
and too much uncertainty about it.... We may
be certain that a god will intervene, but we never
know when the intervention may take place. Why
spoil the reader’s pleasure in this way ? The passions
of men will give us phenomena, metamorphoses, and
miracles enough ; they form an inexhaustible myth-
ology which opens wide heavens and digs the pits
of hell for those who know how to interpret
Biren yy

She means that Dante’s Inferno was nothing to the
Gehenna of the Revolution.

Obviously, though life torments her, she has no
wish to leave it.

She impatiently rejects all the literature of
antiquity, because none of the anguish of the
Revolution is reflected in it.

No doubt, these mythological fabrications are very
ingenious, she thinks, and are suitable to the stage,
or would be if anything like them existed in life, if
one did not know that “‘ no passion, no destiny, was
ever joyous yet.”

Life is horrible, but we are interested in nothing
else, according to Madame de Staél. We cannot
break away from it.

If the storms of life sometimes force us to take
shelter in the citadel of the past, we do not wish to
find its walls so thick that it is impossible to hear
the dull, muffled shock of the waves that break against
them, nor the howling of the tempest which never
dies away.

This, then, is literature as it ought to be; it should
take the form of fiction, but fiction which we have
already defined negatively.

It must not deal with the past, as the present is,
she thinks, obviously more interesting.

166ALTER HE: CARASEROREE

It must not lead the reader astray by gratuitous
obscurity (example Hudibras) or by esoteric form-
ality such as mythology.

According to Madame de Staél, of all literary
forms, the novel is that which best represents life.

Stage conventions prevent drama, either comedy
or tragedy, from being absolutely realistic. Life is
not condensed, does not express itself in violent
contrasts, is not theatrical in fact.

In a play it is impossible to depict a passion with
the full development of passions in real lites, beysit
ambition, love, or hatred.

The theatre only deals with climaxes.

In a novel we may weave the actual tissue of life.

True enough! The theory is well stated, and
after that we are not surprised that Madame de Staél
claims the very highest consideration for the novel
thus conceived.

“ Such a novel, of which some examples exist, is
the very finest production of the human mind.”

It is a document which holds the same position
to individual life as that of history to national life,
and it, therefore, has equal dignity with history.

Now let us see what follows.

It is, by the way, extremely important to avoid
any misunderstanding here, for the significance and
authority of words, in space, is strictly in proportion
to the severity with which they are controlled.

She is going to deal with a type of fiction which
she calls ‘‘ natural.”

As soon as the definition of it begins to take shape
from the limbo of the commonplace, we perceive
that she is cramping and confusing herself, in a
manner which rouses anxiety.

In the first place, this fiction (a picture, or slice
of lite, whichever you prefer) is to depict “all the
inner movements of the soul, in which events are
more or less arbitrary symbols.”

167MADAME DE STAEL

This is a serious restriction, but it is not the only
one. If souls are to be dealt with, it must be with
the object of curing and fortifying souls.

Thus it is not simply by conveying a picture of
life that fiction is moral ; the picture must be adapted
and corrected to bring the moral home.

Now for an example:

We all know that moral treatises fail in their effect
because nobody reads them.

\ Memoirs are in the same case, which is yet slightly
different.

| They are too much like life itself; not eloquent

| or dramatic enough.

“We must add to the truth a sort of dramatic effect
which does not make it unreal, but which makes it tell out
of the picture because of this subtle stress which has been
laid upon tt.

“It is the painter's art exactly. He does: not
alter things. He heightens their power of attacking
sensibility.”

She adds: ‘‘ The multiplicity of detail in even
some famous novels is quite unbearable.

‘““The author admires his own realism, but does
not understand that anything which detracts from
the interest destroys the only truth of fiction, the
ampression that tt makes.”

From this we learn that even novels have ** dramatic
conventions,” which must not be infringed.

We may admit this. But another criterion has
been added to the first.

A good novel is one which produces a moral effect
in the reader without exciting his impatience.

Not only must he be able to lose himself in it, but
he must be able to derive instruction from it.

Who must? Who is this reader? What is his
identity ?

Are there not as many readers as there are in-
168

—_

“YB ey
~ALEK ete CAMA STORO IEE

dividuals, and as many different tastes and needs
as there are persons ?

This is not so, in Madame de Staél’s opinion.

In normal times, she thinks, individuals do differ
as to their tastes and needs, but under the stress of
common misfortune, all decent people are alike.

What was needed in 1795 was a novel capable
of taming the bestial ferocity of the Jacobins. She
writes :

‘““We may one day find that we owe to powerful
fiction the certainty that never again will the nation
number among its people, beings whose moral character
forms one of the most incomprehensible moral
problems that ever existed. The gradation of the
known to the unknown is broken off long before we
can arrive at the power to conceive the motives
which have guided the actions of the assassin-
executioners of France.

It is evident that no human influence, no fleeting
impression of pity, no flexibility of mind has ever
been developed in minds like these by any circum-
stance whatsoever, or by any written work, since
they remain capable of such unvarying cruelty so
utterly divorced from all impulses of nature ; cruelty
which has given mankind its first conception of
mental activity which disdains all limits, a complete
conception of crime.”

Therefore, she thinks, a new form of fiction is
urgently needed to tame these savages. It never
strikes her for an instant that there is a grave dis-
proportion between the remedy and the disease.

She seriously proposes to prevent future revolutions
by supplying the right kind of fiction to the potential
authors of revolutions.

And why not? Nothing will shake the founda-
tions of personality so effectively as a strong current
of sympathy.

If that is once set up, anything else becomes

169——

MADAME DE STAEL

possible. Good novels should lead insensibly to
‘“‘ refined heroism ” ; to a transcendent moral idealism
which leaves mere sense of duty lagging far behind.

There would be nothing toilsome in this climbing
the heights. It would be a pleasure; it would be
accomplished on the wings of emotion . . . and the
activity of emotion “‘ may be described as the physical
pleasure of the soul.”

Then, again, in the interests of the unfortunate
patient, it would be necessary to give the new type
of novel a breadth and amplitude which has never
existed in fiction before.

And here Madame de Staél brings herself to make
a tremendously generous concession.

Up to that point she had only prescribed for the
nation the same medicine as that which had benefited
herself.

But she recognises that she must alter the dose
for the nation, and give it not only love, but all the
passions, ‘“‘ ambition, pride, avarice and vanity,”
which may be exploited by authors “ who pique
themselves in knowing the inmost secrets of the human
heart.”

But Madame de Staél cautiously refrains from an
exact indication of the contents of this novel of all
the passions. She rather confounds it, as is quite
natural after making such a sacrifice, with the type
of novel in which there is little or no love, the
philosophical romance, such as Tom Jones, which she
hardly distinguishes from Godwin’s Caleb Walliams,
although the type is entirely different.

We can easily understand how this “ grande
amoureuse ” reconciled herself, in 1794, to the novel
which does not deal with love.

She had not emerged from what was, in a sense, a
nervous collapse; she feared the passions let loose
by the Revolution, and, still more, she feared the
passion which had made such ravages in herself.

170

 

¢ALi: WEE CARA STOP Eis

It is a question of getting through life at all bear-
ably, rather than a question of making oneself as
sensitive as possible to life.

Life will make itself felt all right !

There is nothing to fear in that direction.

To Madame de Staél at this time it seemed that
everything which detaches one from life and engenders
neutrality and peace of mind, is good.

Fielding’s detached and ironic attitude of mind,
which always suggests him to us as cool and smiling,
seemed to her an example to be recommended to
all passionate characters.

She recommends this attitude all the more insis-
tently because she knows she is herself incapable of
adopting it.

It must be clearly understood that this was only
a theory of the moment, which vanished and left no
trace, in anything that Madame de Staél wrote after
this period.

Delphine and Corinne are decidedly not novels
which ignore love, still less are they novels of all the
passions.

In 1800 she laid down a formula, “ that from the
power of loving, one may draw an endless power of
making pictures and situations without ever ex-
hausting curiosity in the source of them.” She was
then only repeating an inner conviction which emerges
in her treatment of Adélaide et Théodore.

But she did not wait until 1800 to state that the
novel which ignores love is not the novel which
commands the most voluntary and sincere homage.

In vain, from time to time, she tries to put a limit
upon herself, and to stifle her deep instincts; they
always blaze out again.

After having duly extolled the philosophic romance,
that of all the passions, she goes on to say that, aiter
all, the noblest passions derive from the passion of
loye, the master-passion; and that, therefore, in

autINFELUENCE

|

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  

MADAME DE STAEL

dealing with love the author embraces a large part,
and certainly the best part, of life.

To Madame de Staél it is indisputable that:
“enthusiasm in friendship, devotion tn muasfortune,
honour for parents, passionate affection for children,
do not and cannot exist in hearts which have nerther
felt nor pardoned passionate love.”

“ Respect for duty may be felt, never any charm
or fascination in its accomplishment by anyone who
has not loved with all the power of his or her being,
by anyone who has never once lost himself or herself
in another.”

L’Essat sur les Fictions thus ends on a contradictory
note, in which, by one hasty movement, the woman
of feeling upsets the elaborate structure which the
woman of action has laboriously built up. The
woman of feeling has found consolation in reading
romances.

The altruist in her, felt it her duty to communicate
this fact to the world at large, or to those who had
most need of it.

But Madame de Staél found her scheme irrealizable.
For herself the best escape from life was a passionate
love-story. But a love-story would be no use for
reforming revolutionaries. She strikes it out and
elaborates a scheme for a novel which she could
never read herself.

Then, in order to get out of the difficulty, she
throws off the responsibilities which she had so
rashly shouldered and ranges herself, not with the
majority, whose passions need calming, but with a
little company of elect and passionate souls who
would continue to study Werther and the Lettres
Portugaises, and, above all, La Nouvelle Héloise,
‘a work which stands unique in the whole world.”

These breviaries of passion stand between the
passionate elect and their inevitable solitude.

“Let ardent and passionate souls enjoy these

172AFTER THE CATASTROPHE

works, for they cannot make themselves understood
in the world as it is.

“The feelings which rack them are almost incom-
prehensible to, and unceasingly condemned by the
majority.

“They would believe themselves alone in the world,
and might end by detesting the natures which set them
apart were rt not that these few passionate and bitterly
sad works of genius are as a voice in the desert, affording
some of the sunshine of happiness which the passionate
may not find in the world as tt is.”

She fears love. But her only consolation is in
dreaming of love. She does not push the paradox
to the length of recommending the revolutionaries
to cure themselves by passion. The paradox is still
there though. If these mistaken souls had formed
part of the elect, if they had had more passion,
instead of less, there would never have been a
Revolution.*

* See Note. Appendix C.CHAPTER X

TENTATIVE ACTION. POLITICAL WRITINGS,

1794-1795

MapAameE DE STa#u’s inclination to believe in the peace
naturally increased with the duration of it.

There was not only her own life, but the life of
the nation to be reconstructed.

From her point of view, it would be a crime for
decent people to abstain from intervention, through
pessimism. or pusillanimity, or to neglect any oppor-
tunity for vigorous support of the peace. Before
publishing her Recueil she had brought out a pamphlet
entitled “ Réflexions sur la Paix addressees a M. Pitt
et aux Francais.”

“A truce has been accorded us,”’ she writes in her
preface to this; ~ there are no more massacres, and
the campaign is about to close.”

This was a moment to seize, an opportunity for
the whole of France.

‘OQ France, O land stained with crime and blood-
shed! All thinking Europe has long hesitated on
the brink of pronouncing you accursed. Should
this cessation of hostilities only serve the cause of
injustice, the shame will fall on France.” She
wanted to act. But she was still sceptical.

Her unfailing faith in “ the irresistible advance of
the light of reason ” did not prevent her from keeping
account of the facts, and was not strong enough to
overcome the mistrust with which the formidable
““ phenomenon ” had inoculated her.

She had so often hoped for immediate rehabilitation
before, and had so often been disappointed, that her
optimism had finally learnt how to defend itself.

174LOLIDTICAE. VWiREEIMES

There is nothing of note in the Réflexions but this
attitude of mind, and, as to any other political
suggestion, the work may be described as a sort of
“amplification of Mallet du Plan.?*

The attitude is entirely peculiar to Madame de
Staél. She demands peace. ‘“ The whole tired land
groans for peace! ”

She had already made the same demand when
she wrote her Réflexions sur le Proces de la Reine
in 1795, and she demands it again, giving reasons
why she should receive satisfaction. She reminds
the English that “ France by herself is stronger than
the whole of Europe combined ; that as long as France
was opposed by foreigners, she would fight and con-
quer, and her government would go forward under
the impulsion of the very blows which were aimed
from outside to check its march.”

fe . that if peace be not concluded this year,
it is impossible to foretell to whom France will refuse
it next winter,” and she adds, as a post-script, the
practical advice that Pitt should be replaced by Fox.

However, on turning to France, she found herself
up against the same problem which had faced her
when she was writing on the case of the Queen,

France must be addressed through the Committee
of Public Safety, who had the army in command
and was all-powerful, for good or ill.

She does not conceal her horror of the crimes of
the Terror, but she makes it clear that the Liberal
party is disposed to collaborate in the foundation
of a Republican constitution.

Referring to the danger of chastisement which
the demagogues might fear to draw on themselves
by any premature abandonment of power, Madame
de Staél hastens to say that “The crime was too
great to be avenged, and that the sufferers are too

completely exhausted to be capable of feeling re-
vengeful.”

* This is Sorel’s opinion, op. cit. page 54.

17)MADAME DE STAEL

Let the army be licenced, and extremists either
of the Royalist or Popular party excluded from
all deliberations on the founding of the new state,
and let practical means of realizing it be arrived at
by means of an appeal to reason. The important
thing for the moment she considered to be the securing
of real peace. She wanted the negative advantages
of the truce preserved and consolidated, the negative
advantages of “ being able to live without the horror
of seeing everything dear to you offered up as a
sacrifice, to live without being robbed of fortune,
liberty and life.”

Above all, the fanaticism of formulas was to be
avoided.

A system which was not anarchical was the para-
mount need of the moment, a system based on reason
and circumstance, whether it be a republic like
America, or a constitutional monarchy like England.

This work does not shew any sign that Madame de
Staél wants to out-step reality.

Her whole case is the yearning for peace, expressed
after her usual fashion as logical argument. Her
manner of setting out the case does not make any
pretensions to originality, or to the lighting of beacons
in the historical landscape of political thought.

She does urge action. And her last word is the
most important one.

If she is to act she must be allowed to re-enter
France, for she is not prepared to create a French
Republic while residing in Switzerland.

She paints a lurid picture of the dangers to the
new republic which might be constituted by a horde
of needy and despairing members of it, congregated
in exile beyond its borders.

The exiles were not all of the same description,
but she wanted them all recalled, including “ the
small number of those really guilty towards their
country, the whole crowd which it is absurd for the

176BOM CAIL WiRTIRMNGES

country to exclude in its own interests; the women
who were naturally terrified into flight ; and, finally,
those who started as firm friends of liberty, who only
deserted the country when it became the empire of crime,
thereby escaping almost certain death under a govern-
ment which you cannot but recognise yourselves as a
tyranny.”

Having made this announcement, and M. de
Staél, not yet divorced, having been re-established as
Swedish Ambassador in Paris, thanks to a certain skill
in intrigue, she decided to take the bull by the horns,
and to install herself once more in their great house in
the rue du Bac.

She left Lausanne on the 15th May, and arrived
in Paris on the 25th.

She was accompanied by Constant.*

Once in Paris she was alive again, and began to
think positively and constructively.

Her Réflexions sur la Paix addressees a M. Pitt
et aux Francais had, however, arrived in Paris at
about the same time as herself, and, far from pro-
ducing the effect she desired on the Convention, it
let her in for strict supervision by the police.

The Convention had only absorbed the essence of
her pamphlet, that is to say, the recommendations
as to the repatriation of the exiles.

It was known through Barthélemy, French Ambas-
sador in Switzerland, that this was not a question
of purely academic interest to Madame de Staél,
that she was thinking of personal friends in the first
place, such as Matthieu de Montmorency, Narbonne,
Jaucourt, whom, much against her will, she had left
at the frontier.

The Convention was, however, desirous of remaining
on good terms with M. de Staél, who was not only

* See P. Gautier, Le Premiey Exile de Madame de Staél (Revue des
deux Mondes, Vol. 33, page 899). In the following pages we have
assembled much of the information given in M. Gautier’s admirable
article to which the greater part of our knowledge of the facts of this
period is due. But we have made our own interpretation of the facts,

To ,———

MADAME DE STAEL

an Ambassador, but a democrat to his finger-tips,
and in high favour with the Committee of Public
Safety.

It, therefore, seemed enough to warn his wife,
through the Press, that all her actions were under
observation.

Madame de Staél’s republicanism, although of
recent growth, was quite genuine.

But this time it was less a question of principles
than of persons.

She would have liked to accord a general amnesty
to all the demagogues and all the members of the
Convention, without exception, but on condition
that they made no further appearance in public
affairs.

It was not exactly, as M. Paul Gautier has it,
that she wanted a Republic formed of monarchists.

She wanted a government of educated persons,
of gentlemen, which is a different matter to govern-
ment by monarchists.

She piqued herself on running her salon as a centre
of conciliation, and, as she was still fascinated by
the charm of aristocratic breeding, many of the
nobles who had already slipped back into France
rubbed shoulders there with rough-and-ready Jacobins,
who tried to catch the aristocratic tone, and travelled
further away from it than ever, by reason of the ill-
humour they betrayed over their failure to do so.
But, added to the fact that the real Royalists still
looked upon her with extreme disfavour, she was now
no longer an inexperienced girl on the threshold of
life, and had learnt to see the real man through
his envelope.

A Royalist who still clung to the principles of the
Fourteenth century was worth no more in her eyes
than a Lebon or a Carrier.

Her attitude, which was perfectly logical and com-
prehensible, though personal, again drew on her the

78RODTICAE VWiRIRINES

detestation of the two extreme parties, and Louvet’s
party, the so-called Republican party, not under-
standing what she was driving at, simply regarded her
with mistrust.

Seeing that the Convention continued to hold the
leading strings, Madame de Staél employed all her
arts to win its favour. She bombarded the members
of it with invitations to dinner, attended its sittings
most assiduously, and made love in particular to the
Commission des Onze, who were appointed to frame
the new constitution. But as all her tactics had only
one aim, that of “ getting rid of the men who had
ruled during the Terror,” and as Madame de Staél
was not completely made up of discretion, and as she
never ceased to destroy any prestige which she won,
by immediately employing it to repatriate exiles who
could only embarrass the government, she got nothing
out of all her trouble but the irritation it provoked.

The first climax was arrived at towards the end
of June.

Benjamin Constant had made a first political
appearance with considerable flourish by attacking
the Convention (which, instead of being wiped out,
was perpetuating itself by imposing a percentage
of its members on the new government), and then
withdrawing his attack.

It was suggested to M. de Staél that his wife would
greatly benefit by a visit to the country. But
having serious business on hand, she refused. She
was exerting herself to get permission for Talleyrand
to re-enter France through the intervention of Marie-
Joseph Chenier.

The deputy Legendre got wind of this intrigue,
and denounced Madame de Staél as a “ Siren,” and a
“ go-between of emigrés.”

M. de Staél, who was present at the sitting, quietly
left the chamber without protest.

His wife, after having assured herself that Talleyrand

179MADAME DE STAEL

would be allowed to return, herself retired to Matthieu
de Montmorency’s estate at Saint-Gratien to compose
a considered declaration of her political principles.

From the Constitutional that she had been in 1792,
she had become a protagonist of Republican ideas.

She had made this transition quite easily, gliding
noiselessly from one thing to the other without any
jerks or bumps, and without the slightest twinge in
her political conscience.

In a second pamphlet, called Réflexions sur la Paix
intérieure, she takes pains to demonstrate that all
“ Royalist friends of liberty quite conscientiously
convert themselves into “ Republican friends of law
and order.”

“ Are the Constitutionals to be accused of betraying
their opinions and their party in supporting the
Republic ?

“No, they are only following their principles to a
logical conclusion .. . the founders of the constitu-
tion of 1791 ought to be the defenders of the con-
stitution in 1795.”

The end is the same, only the means to reach it
have been changed.

Only “ limited intelligences ” pique themselves on
never changing their opinions. Those who move
easily, and by right, in the domain of thought, cannot
fail to be aware that thought has mobility, and
insists on adapting itself to circumstances. She
told the moderate Royalists that they ought to
perceive ‘‘ that France can gain immediate peace
in a Republic, while armed force is the only road to
Constitutional Monarchy,” or, to put it differently,
“ the only road to Constitutional Monarchy would be
another return to the stupid arbiter of force.”

And what would be the result? The Convention
would relapse into Jacobinism. Were not the un-
happy Vendéens and the Royalists, who were being
massacred at Quiberon, tending in that direction.

r8oOPOLITICAL WRITINGS

Surely, surely, all reasonable people must agree
that civil war would be a grotesque disaster, a piece
of insensate folly in a position where the partizans
of a limited monarchy, and those of a proprietary
republic, ought to meet at all those points which
unite men and their feelings, principles and interests.

Madame de Staél displays a great deal of practical
sense in her argument.

What she says amounts to a recommendation
to Royalists to let themselves go with the stream
for a time, and to reach their end on a slanting
course.

If a king is really necessary, time will bring
forth a king, in the form of an addition to the magis-
tracy, not in the form of a conqueror.

Her argument when she attacks principles is weaker,
and this is natural, because her own principles were
so very flexible, and she found it difficult to under-
stand that anyone could attach much importance
to matters of pure formality.

She has no idea of betraying the Republican party
when she dazzles the eyes of moderate Royalists
with a vision of their own ideas of evolution.

She does not feel that she is exacting a great
sacrifice from the Royalists either, when she invites
them to cast off their Royalist opinions for the moment
and step down to mingle with Republicans.

The feminine suppleness of her intelligence is
exasperated by the rigidity of men’s minds.

In her eyes the “royalism” of the Royalists
is a mere trifle, which could be hidden away—at
any rate, for a time—in the interests of France as a
whole.

Her suppleness of mind is decidedly not that of a
cynical opportunist, however.*

If she cannot be labelled either Royalist or Repub-
lican, it is not that she despises the puny proportion of
human thought and accepts its inevitable relativity,

* See Note. Appendix C.
181 Nx
iSlig tllis Nein

 

MADAME DE STAEL

but rather that she passes to the logical conclusion and
estimates that a political constitution does not exrst for rts
own benefit.

To Madame de Staél the political constitution,
whatever form it takes, exists to secure a tranquil, free
and intelligent life for all members of the nation.

She insists that France, whether Royalist or
Republican, shall be governed by the most intelligent
Frenchmen !

Thus we see that she has never budged !

It is exactly the same thought as that of 1789,
presented in the form which the circumstances now
ordain.

In the Réflexions sur la Paix intérieure, the idea is
more categoric than ever.

It is a refrain which appears in different modulations
on every page:

“< The ignorant shout for liberty ; only the enlightened
can give it them.”

In a nation where all illusions subsisting on difference
of rank have been done away with, is not the power ot
analysis and reason the only authority that can be
established ?

Should not breeding and intellect combine to form
a natural aristocracy which would be very favourable,
both to the prosperity of the nation and the well-being
of the intellectuals ?

‘But see! What a need there is of re-populating
the country with men distinguished alike by their

talents and their virtues. What a desert is our
country for those who thirst for glory! etc.
Cte: 3

Then comes her last word :

‘But the first stride towards liberty can only be
made by those of the nation who are the most dis-
tinguished for their virtues, their talents and even for
the consistency of their opinions.”

However, the Monarchists in Paris had made use of

1&2LOLITICAL WRITINGS

the elections to strangle the infant Hercules of the
Republic in his cradle.

Barras employed young Bonaparte to purge the
sections. It was on the sth Vendémiaire (5th
October), 1795, that the Committee of Public Safety,
recovering a little authority in the action, finally
ordered Madame de Staél to leave Paris before ten
days were up, as she had persisted in giving shelter to
Royalists who only scorned her sage advice to join the
Republicans.

She had returned at the height of the elections to
canvass any Royalists who would listen to her.

She never unpacked her electoral manifesto,
Réflexions sur la Paix entérieure, preferring at the last
moment to substitute the electrical power of her
spoken word.

The Réflexions were not printed until 1820.
On 21st December, she set out for Coppet.~
eal

CHAPTER Xa

WINDING UP THE CRISIS. FIRST PHASE. THE INFLU-
ENCE OF PASSION ON INDIVIDUAL AND NATIONAL
HAPPINESS, 1795-1796

No doubt Madame de Staél was annoyed at being
driven out of Paris in this way; but she took it in
very good part.

In the first place she had taken her Benjamin with
her, and she had begun to love him most enthusiasti-
cally. His devotion and admiration supported her
from day to day.

And then her departure was not altogether against
her will: she really wanted time to reflect upon
herself and upon events.

Events did not worry her much. The truce was
still holding good and that was the essential point.

The members of the Convention who were to be
passed into the new government in vain opposed the
émigrés, they were all dismissed just the same, after a
very short delay.

It was only a question of waiting until the ground
was cleared.

Then one could begin to build.

In the meanwhile, in order to set herself free for
this future of useful action, she considered it her best
course to press her research into passion to its conclu-
sion and thus to shed light upon her own inner being.

The fact was that the research was already made,
and the conclusions drawn.

She knew, in the depths of her own mind, that she
had made too exacting a claim on life and that the only
step necessary for the enjoyment of a little real
happiness was to exact a little less.

But this was still hazy within her.

184WINDING UP THE CRISIS

And she did not really want to admit it either.
This reluctance shows us more clearly than any other
illustration could do, the clash of her mind wjth her
instincts.

As was habitual with her, to get this subject clearly
visualised, she must work it out on paper.

Added to that, the public must be shown what to
think of her, how to estimate her. She had been
rash. Paris had electrified and rejuvenated her, had
given back all the sparkle of her wit and not a little of
the sparkle of her impertinence of 1786.

Instead of working for victory underground, she had
tushed out into the open, completely forgetting her
programme of concealing herself behind Constant, who
still enjoyed the privileges of being unknown in the
political world.

She had gone too far with her letters to deputies,
her visibly interested coaxing, well spiced with
mischief, if not with contempt.

With an eye to the future it behoved her to use
prudence at once in order to correct the bad impression
she had left behind her, and to substitute a better one,
more just and more complete.

The political world was afraid of her ability ; it was
alarmed by the way she went to work; she was
represented to the public as an abnormal and
dangerous phenomenon.

Well, she would let them all see how far they were
mistaken !

She would prove that she was indeed a woman, in
spite of her commanding mind, and would prove
that she was the first person to suffer through that
mind.

She would expose her own weakness before passion,
the laceration of her own heart by betrayal, the stupor
it had thrown her into and her final renunciation.

The public, always so eager, so willing, to believe
calumny, might go so far as to believe the truth.

185MADAME DE STAEL

The Directoire might allow itself to be persuaded
that it had attached too much importance to appear-
ances and that, after all, this acutely sensitive woman
was more dangerous to herself than to the government.

It would only be the truth.

She only had to bring what she had already written
up-to-date, to develop it and to keep the central
conclusion of her multifarious reflections intact.

She worked without intermission and towards the
end of June, 1796, she had finished the book.

She worked so rapidly because she felt that she was
being held in quarantine at Coppet, so to speak, and
she wanted to get away.

She added a preface to the work.

“ Condemned to celebrity among those who do not
know me personally, I feel it due to myself that I
should be judged by my writings.

“1 have been ceaselessly slandered, and though I
am unwilling to draw attention to myself, I have been
obliged to yield to the hope that by publishing the
fruits of my meditations, I shall be able to give some
true idea of my habits of lite and the nature of my
character.”

She did not think it necessary to inform the public
that this book of confession belonged to the year 1794,
rather than 1796, and that she had already, and
from that time forward, given to the problem a
solution in fact, which differed from the solution she
arrives at in the book.

But, indiscreet as usual, she involuntarily lets the
public perceive, or, at any rate, lets the attentive
reader perceive, that she is once more struggling in the
dangerous but delicious snares of love.

And quite involuntarily also, she lets her irre-
pressible optimism override the general attitude of
disillusion in the work.

At the same time she does not want to seem to be
thinking only of herself.

1806WINDING OP) iH CRISES

It was not thus that the problem first presented itself
to her mind.

The re-birth of Madame de Staél is inseparable in her
mind from the re-birth of France.

The two problems go hand-in-hand.

But the book on France is not written, is not even
sketched out, and she cannot wait for that to publish
the other.

But it is impossible also to sever her thought in two,
and to hand over to a malign public a volume which is
obviously all about herself and, therefore, denies the
existence of the altruistic thought which also has very
real existence.

The public must be informed at once of the whole
scope of the work she has planned out.

One day, in the dim future, she will examine
the problem of national happiness in the light of
history.

But, before attacking this formidable problem, she
decided to formulate the conclusions which that task
would inevitably reveal, in an Introduction to the
present work.

And for that matter, as this work proceeds, we find
the unity of the thought asserting itself.

The personal problem is a moral problem, and the
moral problem is the basis of the political problem.

Politics and the confession go hand-in-hand, as
feeling and action always do with the author.

THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE WORK.

If we efficiently consult the history of the world we
are bound to discover that, at all times, the happiness
of nations has been compromised either by the absence
of, or the excess of liberty ; by despotism on the one
hand and by anarchy on the other.

Political well-being is to be found between these two
extremes,

187MADAME DE STAEL

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  

Now let us apply this impartial conclusion to the
French Revolution.

Despotism stands for the Royalists and anarchy for
the Jacobins.

Royalists and Anarchists are, therefore, equally
dangerous extremists.

To second either party would be to prolong the
Revolution.

The Republicans stand mid-way between the two.

They are the true friends of liberty.

Having weighed in the balance the respective
merits of the hereditary system and of Republicanism,
they have concluded that “ everything is in favour
of France remaining a Republic.”

This last lesson, drawn from the world’s history, 1s
not only singularly lucid and singularly applicable to

ost-Revolution France, but may also be seen to
differ hardly at all from the conclusion arrived at by
Madame de Staél, by the light of her own reason, in
1795, when contemporary circumstances inspired her
with the idea.

There is something to add, however.

The Introduction goes on to state that liberty is not
everything. It must be an indispensable condition
for happiness, but only because it leaves the individual
free to make the most of his faculties.

Liberty in little countries like Switzerland is of little
use to anybody. Talent languishes there.

“Tn the small, obscure states, art makes no progress ;
literature is not brought to perfection either by the
emulation, which excites eloquence, or by that possi-
bility of making multitudinous comparisons which
alone can form taste.”

This acts as a depressant on people of genius who are
compelled to reside in such places for “it would be
easy to prove that it is in men’s very nature to tear
themselves out of obscurity if they can; that they
gather together in order to multiply mental shocks ;

188VVIOSUDIONG (O92 hala (CIKIESIES

that they make conquests in order to extend their
power, 27 a word, that wishing to excite the action of their
faculties to the utmost, to roll back the boundaries of the
human mind to its limits, they invoke by common accord
all the circumstances which tend to bring about these
results .”’*

Now for happiness. Peace alone will not ensure it.

Liberty is only a preliminary.

Madame de Staél had enjoyed both peace and
liberty and had been, none the less, mortally unhappy.

Her father considered it strange that, after having
imperiously demanded peace, his daughter had re-
turned hot-foot to Paris where no peace was to be
found.

The history of the world not only proves that
the French Revolution must conclude rationally, not
only that France must assure “ the independence of
Republics,” but that this independence must be
accompanied by “ the splendours of Art, Science and
Literature.”

The government to be appointed, whatever it calls
itself, must be an organisation which promotes the
service of humanity by genius.

‘“We must provide a government which will create
opportunity of emulation for genius and put restraint
upon all mere party faction ; it must be a government
which can offer a great man an aim that ts worthy of him,
and it must discourage the ambition of usurpers of
meaner attainments. 5. <

This is the positive programme, precise as thought,
but vague as a programme, though it does not
vary.

It applies to the future and, indeed, Madame de
Staél intends that all her unwritten second part shall
contrast with the first part by being less theoretic,
more positive, more optimistic.

The remainder of the political thought of the
Passions is retrospective, a commentary on the

* See Note. Appendix C.

189MADAME DE STAEL

immediate past which reads like the moral history of
the French Revolution reviewed by Necker’s daughter.

It is also a commentary on the whole matter seen
from within : the French Revolution is dealt with as a
terrible manifestation of human passions.

The political phenomenon is traced back to its moral
source, to the oddly constituted beings who exploited
it and carried it to the point of depravity.

Two things are necessary to the formation of a
despot. In the first place, with regard to himself, he
must be ambitious, that is to say, a cold calculator,
instinctively circumspect, spontaneously and without
the least effort egoistic, possessing just enough
intelligence to be a cynic and to act as such.

After that, in order that this despot may impose
himself on humanity, anarchy must have enchained
real thought and made it impotent; the fanaticism
of party-spirit engendering envy, vengeance, crime
(a brood of inter-related vices, a nest of vipers), must
have substituted brute-force for the prestige of rational
thought.

Anyone will admit that envy, vengeance and crime
do not make for happiness. Madame de Staél is not
original there. But according to her all these passions
find their source in ambition and party-spirit.

The hierarchy is a novel one and we are curious to
see how Madame de Staél establishes the claim.

The two chapters on ambition and party-spirit are
long ones ; they act as the buttresses of the commen-
tary.

Ambition pre-supposes calculation: it is a “ harsh
and sombre passion,” embodying “‘ a kind of contempt
for the human species,”’ an egoism “‘ which parches and
desiccates the soul.”” The worst adventure which can
befall this passion of scheming mediocrity is to
encounter genius in its path.

A struggle must then be enacted in which ambition
is condemned beforehand to bite the dust.

190WEEN DING: WP VISE VCRUIES IES:

‘The mind of an ambitious person is always on
the stretch to discover any symptom of superior talent
about him. He experiences both the pain and the
humiliation of this pre-occupation and in order to
arrive at the destination of his hopes, he must con-
stantly reflect upon the limited nature of his own
powers.”

The really impossible alliance, the most antithetic
combination which one could possibly imagine, would
be that which attempted to bind these two contradic-
tory inspirations together.

It goes without saying, according to Madame de
Staél, that a man given up to ambition has not genius.

Madame de Staél does not even dream of such a
paradoxical hypothesis.

But she considers that a man of genius, though he
would never live for ambition, might temporarily
lower himself to the methods of ambition, might
condescend to intrigue, calculate and to deceive
humanity in the interests of his quest for the happiness
of mankind.

And that would be followed by two sets of
consequences.

In the first place, the man of genius would make
himself horribly unhappy in the process, and would
‘feel real anguish” over his temporary use of dis-
simulation for ‘‘ no one can defy his own nature with
empunity *? ; and secondly, if he did not succeed, if his
calculation and deception brought forth no fruit, they
would have accomplished nothing, but the proving to
the eyes of the world that genius can lie and deceive
like the common herd and “‘ can we imagine a heavier
misfortune than to have been given a reputation utterly
at variance with our real selves ? ”’

Here we have a conception of genius and ambition
which proceeds from really original thought and is
related to a particular period, that of the Revolution,
and to a person whose opinions are too peculiar to

IQIMADAME DE STAEL

herself to be automatically in agreement with those of
the world in general.

‘In time of revolution nothing but ambition can
succeed. And what an ambition! To be swept on
among the foremost in the current of the whole
affair . . . to rush like the Gadarene swine down a
steep place . . . once started, there is no stopping
... you may see the abyss ahead, but what of
that! . . . to try and avoid it would be more perilous
than to defy it.... Some people think that they
use influence in a Revolution, that they act and effect
something . . . but each man is simply one pebble
more, sent rolling down the slope by the wheels of the
car of Revolution. et

People of intelligence have hung back from the
first. Ambitious men swarm on to the Car, enjoy the
unaccustomed eminence for a moment, are jerked off
and crushed under the remorseless wheels which go
grinding on.

We know who those ambitious men are... . they
are Marat, Danton and Robiespierre.

This is the French Revolution seen in one light.

The other aspect treated by Madame de Staél is that
of party-spirit, the origin of all evils, beginning in envy
and vengeance, and travelling through every stage to
that final depravity which is sheer love of crime.

It is a passion which “‘ could easily replace dram-
drinking,” an intoxication which is worse, because
more dangerous than the physical one.

It has absolutely no relation to the mind.

It is a fanaticism which levels everything, a fever
which obliterates individuality by confounding the
most diverse temperaments into one medley.

After absorbing this poison, man is incapable of
mental sight, hearing, or understanding.

He is horribly stiffened into a paralysis of mind of
which he cannot rid himself even if he would.

The principle which he would force down every

192Fa ST
4 ae

ee ee a et

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

WINDING UP THE GRISIS

man’s throat is the whole dogma of his party, neither
more nor less, and that, in season and out of season,
but especially out of season, when the pressure can
effect nothing but injury to the cause.

There is not the slightest doubt that this pheno-
menon is closely related to the physical order.

“Violent bodily exercise, a furious onslaught
utterly uncontrolled, imparts a sensation of keenncss
and vigour to the whole person which acts as a potent
intoxicant.

The same thing happens after an onslaught of
thought, delivered from all bonds, intent only on
furious advance to the most extreme opinions.

“ Yes,” repeats Madame de Staél in the chapter on
Crime, “‘ it is a physical sensation transported into the
region of moral phenomena.”

We have only to remember the gestures and whole
attitude of Robespierre in the tribune, especially the
convulsive movements of his hands !

All the orators of Demos unchained, roved restlessly
up and down, from one end of the tribune to the other,
exactly like wild beasts in their cages.

Party-spirit then is nothing but fanaticism.

Ambition is calculated egoism.

Welded together they took the shape of the
Terror.

That is for Madame de Staél the ultimate explana-
tion of the perversion, and the abortion, known as the
French Revolution, which was the work of fanatics,
maddened by the promptings of small ambitious men.

This is the history of 1792-1794 in a nut-shell.

From the historical point of view it is an immense
simplification.

The leaders of the Revolution are unanimously
relegated to the category of ambitious men.

The mob which they drove along, hardly knew what
it did want, but whatever that was, the mob wanted it
fanatically, that is to say owing to the paralysis of

BOSMADAME DE STAEL

 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
    
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

mind, fanaticism, which is a devastating passion
occupying a unique position apart from all others.

The net result of all this was that intelligent and
active people were condemned to a long period of
enforced idleness.

That is Madame de Staél’s real grievance.

Let us examine the essence of this party-spirit which
she withers with her contempt.

It is really the attitude of mind diametrically
opposed to her own.

It is intolerance instead of intellectual curiosity.

It is the eternal obstacle which is always obtruding
itself between herself and the realisation of her really
fine theory of government by the élite of brains and
personality.

And what is ambition as Madame de Staél sees
Lt?

It is the sort of ambition which she has not got and
is incapable of having.

Take two persons, the ambitious man, and the
fanatic, as she sees them in the Passions, and let us
suppose that the Swedish Ambassadress grants them
an interview. What would be the result ? A stand-
still! Absolute defeat !

The fanatic would ignore the bait and would not
bite. He would not enter into a discussion or, if he
did, it would take the form of a monologue, after the
manner of Condorcet, which would not suit Madame
de Staél at all. He is an impassioned being, but not
reasonably impassioned ; his passion is not the passion
of thought which burns a clear flame in the head,
and gives light, but not heat.

He is a perfectly irrational being. His reason is
immovable, because of the paralysis of his rigid mind,
which she tries in vain to shake.

Her encounter with the ambitious man would be
still more unsatisfactory.

He would smile and parry the attack, giving her the

194WINDING UP’ “THE CRISIS

irritating enigma of his discretion in return for the
enthusiastic candour of her onslaught.

How many and many a time had Madame de Staél
been through that experience! How often she had
met these two irreducible personalities in real life !

She had met the man of circumspect ambition at
Versailles first, when she made her début after her
marriage.

The fanatic had ruined her coalition dinners, the "95
series, as well as the ’89 series.

She could get on very well with any other type of
man, and it did not matter to her whether they were
virtuous or vicious men, for she was not concerned
with that, but was always questing for what interested
her in human beings.

She was complaisant towards the ordinary egoism of
man which is quite compatible with all the air of being
a jolly good fellow, considered desirable in their
intimates by Madame de Staél and the majority
of us.

But the dangerous, dried-up, calculating egoist !

No! And his victim the fanatical. automaton !

Never !

Both those types were the antithesis of herself.
She distrusted them profoundly, instinctively. And
though she might try to reassure herself by predicting
that the hour was at hand when rationality would
prevail, she was afraid of those two forces which
fascinated her by their mysterious potency, a potency
which was not at her command.

She roamed round and round the two enemies
untiringly, seeking for a joint in their armour, which
always repelled her and yet always attracted her to
fresh efforts.

In these forces she loses her key to humanity. She
is not herself ; and yet the forces are always there to

prove that humanity does succumb to their malign
power.

195MADAME DE STAEL

Soe Her criterion fails her. How to explain it? She
aa is baffled.

Sm i) If these enemies, combined, were to set out on the

me march once more, she really does not know what

would become of her in a world that she thought she

knew through and through.

For the Terror had taught her that the assault of
the human brute could paralyse her, not with fear,
but with incapacity to understand; could tear the
very elements of her prestige from her grasp, and
\ reduce her (for whom action was life itself) to in-
coherent hysteria.

.

THE PERSONAL PROBLEM

This is the personal problem :

a ‘You start in life, let us say, determined to con-

4 . secrate it to winning the love of your friends and the
approval of the public.

“ You feel that you have never done enough for
those you love; never given them sufficient proof
that you could not do without them ; that the daily
tasks of daily life cannot satisfy the glowing soul
that is in you, your need of devoting yourself, of giving
yourself up to the service of others.

“ You sketch out a future which includes all those
with whom you have formed ties; you are all the
more certain that these ties will last for ever, because
you know yourself incapable of ingratitude; you
know that gratitude has rights, and you believe
more fervently in friendship that is based on the tics
of gratitude than in any other on earth.

‘Everything else is a means. That is an end.

“You also desire public approval, but it seems to

you that the existence of your friends is guarantee
! enough for that.
“Have you not exerted yourself right and left

196

pr pees eRe ENE bee Od

odWINDING OP THE. (GRIESHS
for them? And they know it. They will tell other

people how nice you are.

“Surely, truth and genuine feeling must win in the
end! It cannot but be recognised! The innumer-
able proofs which flow from truth must finally blot
out calumny !

“Your speech, your voice, your tone, the very air
you breathe, all seem to you to bear the imprint of your
real self ; and you do not believe that you could be
misjudged for long. With this complete confidence
in everything and everybody, you hoist all sail for the
voyage on the sea of life.

“ All that you know, all that you have been told
of the unpleasant natures and dispositions of a great
part of humanity is classed as history in your mind,
just like all the moral experience of others which
you have been told about, but have not experienced.

“It would never enter your head to apply one of
these general ideas to your particular experience.
Everything which happens to you and surrounds
you must surely be an exception: your mind will
have no influence on your conduct ; anyone who has a
heart listens to the inner voices, the voices of the heart
and obeys them alone. That which you have never
felt may be registered by the mind, but can never direct
your actions,

“But at twenty-five years of age” (Madame de
Staél excuses herself the avowal of a few more),
‘at the very moment when the full stature of the
being has been attained, a cruel change comes into
your life; it is no longer considered that your whole
future is before you, in many ways your die is cast,
and men begin to consider whether it will profit them
or not to throw in therr lot with you.

“ It they see less advantage than they had hoped
for, if their expectation is ever so little disappointed,
when they decide to desert you, they bestir themselves
to give colour to the wrong they are about to do

197 Oeset

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

MADAME DE STAEL

you; they search out a thousand faults in you to
account for and absolve the greatest of all in them-
selves; those friends who make themselves guilty of
ingratitude, attack you to justify themselves. They
deny your devotion and accuse you of being too
>| exacting. They assemble all sorts of contradictory
| | theories in the effort to wrap your conduct and their
| own in a haze of uncertainty, which each man can
explain in the way that best suits himself. What
misery this brings to the heart which only longed to
vitae exist for others and finds itself betrayed! The loss
| of the dearest affection of all does not prevent you
d from feeling the smallest slight of your least valued
friend. ‘That one, as well!’ you think painfully,
and the last tie that is broken gains a value that it
never had in earlier days.

‘Then the public which had shewn you favour
also begins to lose its indulgence; it likes success
which it has foreseen; it becomes the adversary of
success of which it is not the cause; it goes back on
what it said before; it destroys what it formerly
| encouraged, and this injustice of public opinion may
| cause you suffering a thousand times in a day.

‘Any particular individual who turns and rends
you is not worth regretting, and yet you suffer acutely
from the accumulation of all the details of this painful
process which unrolls slowly before your eyes, and,
though already certain that you will have to see it
out to the painful end, you suffer through every
painful stage of the journey.

“ Finally, your heart withers under this cruelty, and

| beautiful life becomes discoloured and drab.

“ Vou fall into errors yourself out of dusgust with
life, which horrify you as much with yourself as wrth
others, and discourage you im your system of making
for perfection in everylhing, the system that you were
so proud of. You lose your bearings and can no longer

I3h

find your way.”

_————-
tS
4

* See Note. Appendix C.

198

—— -
ae Sa

Si ss 2

esiWENIDING “UPB. TORASIS

This is the history of Madame de Staél’s own life.
This history seems to her curious enough, the problem
it embodies important enough to merit long re-
flection.

She generalises in order to reflect more efficiently.

She has got to find a working solution of the painful
problem in which the two equations are herself and
life.

She must take care that there are no slips made,
and she must view the matter objectively and with
clear sight.

While subjecting herself to scrutiny, she holds
herself at arm’s length, and endeavours to be anony-
mous, a stranger and a phenomenon to herself. When
the work is concluded, she confesses that she herself
was the object of her observation.

“ [ wrote it with the object of rediscovering myself
beyond all these multitudinous misfortunes, with
the object of freeing my faculties from slavery to
my emotions, of raising myself into an abstraction
which would allow of my analysing the painful con-
dition of my soul ... and to generalize from the
experience already collected in my mind.”

This is what she wanted to do, but she could not
succeed.

The problem is a personal one, otherwise it has
no existence.

In order to generalise, the abnormal elements
would have to be withdrawn, and it is precisely
because it concerns an abnormal person that the
problem exists at all.

Try as she may, Madame de Staél cannot succeed
in generalizing.

Restriction after restriction excludes average
humanity from the arena.

Happy people have nothing to do there. They
represent mediocrity. They have no passions.

Passionate souls must conceive of happiness as

199~

     
   
  
   
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
 
  
  
   
  
   
   

MADAME DE STAEL

“the union of all contraries ”’ ; or, rather, the union
of all the blessings without their corresponding
detraction: “hope without fear, activity without
uneasiness, fame without calumny, love without
inconstancy, imagination which will embellish those
We possess, in our eyes, and wipe out the memory
of those we have lost...”

And the passionate elect, having this conception
of happiness in antithesis, also find that they are on
the brink of a peculiar crisis in human existence :

, . . at this fatal period when the solid earth seems
to slip away beneath our feet, when we feel more
uncertain of the future than when we trod the cloud-
land of childhood, we suspect everything which we
formerly leaned upon, and seem condemned to begin
life all over again with the buoyant hope of childhood
withdrawn, at a time when we should still be rejoicing,
with scarcely one third of the road of life traversed.”

It is at this age that everyone should read the book
of the Passions.

“No one should read it earlier, for I did not begin
it or even conceive it before I reached my present age.”

We see how it is.

She has need of us, of the great public, in order
to carry out her examination of herself; she needs
spectators for the struggle in which she is about to
engage.

The more deeply you enter into the book, the
more resolutely you must endeavour to resist the
flow of its undercurrent, which has a quite terrible
insistence.

You will lay down the book after reading the three
chapters on Love, The Thirst for Fame, and Vanity,
deafened by the vibration of this human machine,
by this monotonous plaint, which seethes with many
varied notes.

The despairing cadence of the autobiographical
introduction is to be heard in each of these three

200WEEN IDIENG UP Ele "6 RUSIS

chapters . . . happiness thirsted for; happiness
lost ; happiness regretted.

A definition of happiness takes shape.

It is “the unattainable,” “every sort of im-
possibility.”

Love and Glory are equally baleful.

Suppose we premise the actual attainment of Fame
atter long toil and heavy sacrifice. There is no
travelling the road to Fame without shedding all the
illusions of youth by the way.

And then suppose you have attained Fame. Its
possession is a perpetual agitation to thought, and
brings fever into action.

"+. a single moment of calm is to be feared ” ;
“the cessation of action would be your greatest
misfortune.”

“The unstable equilibrium of your position
threatens you every instant with a downfall.”

While friends stand on one side and do nothing,
your enemies eagerly watch for the smallest oppor-
tunity of injuring you.

Public favour rarely lasts a man’s life-time. More
often it is for the passing moment. Once an idol
falls, the mob turns on it with jibes.

“The thirst for fame excites the emotions and. the
mental faculties beyond their natural range, but the
return to the normal condition, far from being a
cause of enjoyment, is a sensation like those of
collapse and death.”

There follow statements analogous to these re-
garding love.

In the first place, there is no love but passionate
love.

And love, the passion, embodies much melancholy.
To treat of love Madame de Staél has not troubled
herself to consider the history of the world. She

has her own impressions to consult. She dreams
rather than analyses.

201MADAME DE STAEL

In love it is one chance to a thousand that you are
happy.

You are fascinated by the externals of personality ;
you fall in love with the mind, the person, the enchant-
ing ways of someone, and little by little the humiliating
conviction grows on you that you have given your
love to someone unworthy of it, someone neither
wicked nor cruel, but simply a nullity, “ barren of
deep or acute emotions.” Or again, if he is not con-
temptible, he turns unfaithful, and, while feeling
ourself “‘ that you own emotion must communicate
itself to him,” you learn that he is amusing himself
with a rival, and immediately “ the joyous life of your
being turns to death, a living death.”

‘< Jealousy renders you frantic.”

You long for vengeance and are ashamed of the
longing.

Finally, jealousy repents and “ devours itself,”
and you fall into complete depression.

There remain the chances of life, which are small
things certainly, compared to inner security, but
which, nevertheless, at certain times have the air
of entering into a conspiracy against the life of the
beloved one.

What a career of misfortune !

Only those should enter upon it “ who have enough
resolution to commit suicide if need be.”

Death of soul or body lies in ambush on all the
paths of love.

And especially for women. Love is only an
episode in a man’s life. ‘“’Tis woman’s whole ex-
istence.”’

And this is so in spite of themselves, because of
their very virtues, because they are faithful, tender
and devoted, where man is capricious, hard and
egoistical.

There is no justice from man to woman.

‘“ They may pass as good men in the world, and yet

202

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

pa ew Sa DS Yas

—_WINDING UP TiTE (GRIESES:

cause a woman the most excruciating anguish that
the human heart can endure; they may pass as
faithful and yet betray her; and, finally, they may
have received from a woman the services and marks of
devotion which inalienably bind comrades and brothers-
en-arms, who would be dishonoured wf they were capable of
trespassing against these bonds ; yes, men may recerve
all this from a woman, and fling wt away, sizing rv all
up as her passion ; as tf one feeling, or one gift the more,
diminished the value of the rest.’’*

That is meant for Narbonne.

But let us suppose another baleful possibility.

Let us suppose the existence in one soul of both
these passions, Love and the Thirst for Glory, when
one alone is enough to fill a human existence with
pain.

What can be the result for the unique example
of this malign fate?

Not only the probability of misfortune, but certain
and perpetual pain !

For not only are both these passions baleful, taken
separately, but they are incompatible !

That is what Madame de Staél states in the chapter
on Fame.

“The power of loving with passion is withdrawn
from those who have long been dominated by the
determination to win Fame.

‘The reflections one is obliged to make on men in
general in the course of public life make it impossible
to entertain those illusions which alone can make
one elevate a certain individual to a pinnacle apart
from the rest.”

She repeats it in the chapter on Love.

“Men like to submit their mistresses to the
ascendency of their own abilities, and so they often
hesitate between the boredom they must suffer with an
average woman, and the importunities which are probable
from a remarkable woman.”

* See Note. Appendix C,

203MADAME DE STAEL

And, finally, she devotes nearly a whole chapter
to this consideration, the chapter on Vanity, which
is in many respects the most curious to read and
is, perhaps, the best part of the book.

It begins with a few “ portraits” which, though
more firmly touched in and more biting in satire,
recall the imitations of La Bruyére of her girlhood’s
Journal.

Lycidas, the old bureaucrat who “confides as a
secret what is already printed in the newspapers ” ;
who has a habit of concluding his remarks “ with
a look of tremendous concentration ” ; whose pockets
are stuffed with letters from Ministers which “ com-
ment on the weather,’ and whose chief pride is a
certain ‘“‘ often-repeated diatribe against wit which
is nearly always applauded by the majority of the
company”; is almost certainly to be recognised as
a phlegmatic Swiss acquaintance of Madame de Staél,
who had been uncourteous enough to put his com-
patriots on their guard against the particular line in
which she excelled.

It was not the last time that Madame de Staél
took her revenge in this way.

But for the moment she has more important matters
on hand; she does not insist, but shapes her course
straight for the problem which touches her vitally.

She considers that vanity is women’s own passion.
There is no woman without vanity.

Even in the case of distinguished women, this
petty passion comes between them and everything
they lack and want to have.

“For, whatever the power and range of her mind,
whatever the importance of the affairs that absorb
her, a woman’s face is always either an obstacle or
an object of passionate cult in her life. Men, or,
at any rate, their male natures, have willed it thus.”

This is not the point which interests Madame de
Staél most. The problem of love and fame fascinates

204

¢VWAENIDIING OR. RTE SORISIES)

her so much that in order to get back to it she now
classifies the desire for fame as a form of vanity. A
change of opinion? Oh, no! Just another shade
of meaning attached to the idea. She says:

“Directly women want to participate in more
extended and dazzling operations than those arising
from their gentle arts in the circles about them,
they aim at some success gratifying to vanity.”
This alienates the sympathies of men.

‘““The more men are determined to judge a woman
by the standards of her sex, the more they detest the
idea that she can embrace a career contrary to the
nature of the eternal feminine.” And again:

“Do you think that dazzling success in a woman
as particularly gratifying to her lover ?”’

For “ enthusiasm born of this sort of success does
not last so long as that founded on more ordinary and
frivolous attractions.”

“Criticism destroys the illusions, through which,
to look her best, a woman should be seen.”

‘“Love is more in love with what it gives than
what it finds.”

‘Man piques himself on the superiority of his own
being and, like Pygmalion, he will only prostrate
himself before his own handiwork.”

But could not a woman of genius succeed in eman-
cipating herself from her sex, rejecting homage when
she cannot decide whether it is offered to her as a
woman, or to the “‘ man nature” in her womanhood ?

There is no supposition more vain than this.

“A woman cannot be self-sufficing.

“Even Fame is not enough support for her; and
the unchangeable fragility of her nature, and the
weakness of her position in the social order, has
burdened her with a daily dependence from which
immortal genius could not deliver her.

‘* A woman is not the less a woman, but the more,
when she is a genius.

205MADAME DE STAEL

“She will never quite acquire the stability of a
masculine head-piece.

“If she devotes herself to Euclid, her logic is not
free from emotion.

“Imagination will always be the greatest of her
faculties ; her talents may gain by the fact, but this
vividness of imagination is invariably accompanied
by agitated emotions; her feelings must be swayed
by her illusions.”

“Sensitive and versatile women will always shew
examples of that bizarre combination of error and
exactitude, of that sort of inspiration of the mind
which delivers oracles to the world, while it bungles
personal affairs.”

‘“‘ And their crowning misfortune is to be found in
the petty jealousy to which they are subjected by
reserve behind reserve, of the army of their own sex.”

Those from whom the advantages of a great mind
are for ever withheld will find a thousand little ways
of attacking them when it is a woman who possesses
them.

‘A merely pretty woman hopes to draw attention
to her own advantages by running down intelligence.
A woman who thinks herself remarkable for her pru-
dence and common sense, and never having had two
ideas in her head, wishes to pass as a person who has
rejected everything which is conspicuous by its
absence from her mental equipment, such a woman
will burst out of her habitual mental sterility to cover
with ridicule the woman whose wit colours and
varies the conversation; and mothers of daughters
who judge (and with some reason) that the triumphs
of wit are not likely to advance their daughters in
life, rejoice over the attack on the woman who has
triumphed by her mind.”

Unhappy through Fame! Unhappy through Love!
Doubly unhappy !

It is refined and immeasurable torture which is
206WINDING VOR Tite” CRISIS

constantly renewed if one thirsts, at one and the same
time, for glory and for the love which it excludes.

The lesson is obvious !

One must live humbly apart, avoiding the whirl-
pool of affairs and society life. Above all, avoid
Love like the plague, and re-create an inner tran-
quillity by force of abstinence.

Madame de Staél sees that this is the logical solution.

But will she adopt it ?

Let us see what follows :

What is fame? What is love?

The quest for one or the other is enough to fill
a whole life, and the quest of both together is anguish,
betrayal, death by torture, but it is also life, unique,
palpitating, breathing life.

Next to the sublime height of virtue which makes
a human being rule his conduct by his conscience
(Madame de Staél dismisses this as a sublimity
because she considers it unattainable), the finest
principle which can move us is the thirst for glory.

Given the possession of some marked talent which
you desire to cultivate, you should make a contract
with your country something after this fashion :

‘TI consecrate my talents to your service; my
dominating passion will incessantly incite me to make
a greater and greater number of men benefit by the
happy result of my efforts, my country and my nation
will have rights in the fruits of my labour... the
only price of this devotion that I ask, is that my
country should celebrate it ; let Fame be the expression
of your gratitude.”

Yes, virtue may be its own reward, but that reward
becomes intoxicating when you have filled the universe
with the sound of your name, when you have the
sensation of fulfilling ‘“‘ an existence” outside your-
self.

The soul is filled with pride and pleasure by the con-

stant pressure of a feeling that the thoughts of a
207\

MADAME DE STAEL

great number of men are turned towards you. The
acclamation of the crowd, the thoughts which it
arouses, and the commotion which it excites in you,
stir your soul to its depths.

The paths which lead to this great end are filled
with fascination.

The occupations which stimulate your ardour to
attain the end are joys in themselves.

And of the two sources of fame, “ creative art”
and “ action,” the latter is to be preferred, according
to Madame de Staél.

“The first, which borrows something from the
pleasures of seclusion, participates in its benefits,
but it is not that inspiration which sets alight every
single aspect of this great passion, the thirst for
glory. That is not the dominating genius which at
one and the same time sows, reaps and crowns itself ;
the genius whose compelling energy and overwhelming
courage decides in one instant the fate of empires
and centuries. The genius of action is spared the
delay of tardy justice which long years may bring.
His glory marches close ahead of him, like that pillar
of fire which illumined the advance of the Israelites
by night.

* Celebrity won by literature is rarely contemporary

. 1t 1s not within the scope of such a career to drive
home a complete realization of its power, physical and
moval power ; or to assure itself the exercise of all tts
faculties, as the genius of action does, finally intoxicated
by the certainty of its own incomparable force.”

In the pursuit of glory, action is the winning sphere,
because it is the most immediate in giving fulfilment ;
it leads, not to happiness, but to intoxication, by the
fusion of mind and senses in ecstasy.

But this is nothing to what follows. Love is quite
another matter. In dealing with love, Madame de
Staél is obliged to hold on to her own skirts, which
threaten to carry her away in a hurricane of en-

208WINDING OP TEE IORISIS

thusiasm, borrowed from the time when she was forcing
herself to analyse her idol, Jean-Jacques, with cold
deliberation.

In the pursuit of glory and ambition, in the exercise
of fanaticism, enthusiasm rises and falls; only Love
can fill every instant of life with intoxication.

There is no exhausting this inexhaustible source
of happy ideas and emotions, and while you see and
experience everything through another’s being, the
whole universe is the beloved, in different forms.

Spring, nature, the skies are all regions where he
has passed ; the pleasures of society are his pleasures,
his sayings, his doings. Your own success which
really gratifies you is the praise which he heard, or
the general admiration which added zest to his ad-
miration.

Who talks of virtue? Why, Love ¢s virtue.

Is it not true that real love is “ all sacrifice, kindness,
mercy, and self-forgetfulness.”’

And to define happiness? Love is happiness.

“It is the highest ideal of felicity that the imagina-
tion of man can conceive; a felicity more exquisite
still, almost terrifying in its bliss if the perfect lovers
are united in marriage, which makes it unique, lifted
to a giddy elevation of joy.

‘* And to think that this bliss is within the scope of
human experience, and that almost every living soul
as debarred from it!”

As for the women of genius who are dealt with in
the chapter on Vanity, a few get the better of their
difficulties ; not without experiencing “‘ the inevitable
unhappiness attached to their destinies,” but succeed-
ing in counter-balancing this with the force of their
genius.

“Chance brings a few exceptions. If there are
some souls carried away, either by talents or character,
they will perhaps differ from the general rule and the

palms of glory may one day crown them.”’
209MADAME DE STAEL

And with reference to the burning question of the
incompatibility of love and fame, there is a com-
promise which may save women of sensitive feeling,
who are also determined to have a part in the business
of life.

This is it:

“When their share of public affairs is born of
love for the man who directs those affairs, when
feeling alone dictates their opinions and inspires their
procedure, they are not straying from the road laid
down for them by Nature; they are women, and
they are in love.”

A little further on we light on this passage :

“Perhaps at this very moment of writing I wish
to be loved once more, perhaps at this very moment
I resign my destiny to my love.”

THE SOLUTION

We have seen that, though it is a serious malady,
the patient is not going to die.

Madame de Staél gives the impression that she
suffers far more from too much vitality than too
little.

And we cannot but recognise that she seems to
recount the symptoms with a sort of lingering pleasure,
like some strange patient who does not dislike his
illness.

Of the remedies which she has already tried, three
are quite useless.

They are friendship; filial, parental and conjugal
affection ; and religion.

For Madame de Staél friendship is a sort of offshoot
of love which offers all the same disadvantages and
none of the same compensations.

The ancients have handed down a legend of placid
fraternity which was good enough for the battered
souls of warriors free from all modern complexities.

Ti)WEN DENG LP SRB, (ORUS IS

Such a friendship still exists between “‘ cold-blooded
beings ” who “ consecrate a certain day of the week
to friendship, arrange exactly what amount of influ-
ence it is to have in their own well-being, and perform
all the acts of friendship just as they would perform
ay dintiy.?

Friendship, as Madame de Staél conceives of it,
is a transfusion of enthusiasms, a most ambiguous
emotion, which loses a good deal of any worth it
may possess through sheer ambiguity.

Love can be isolated, or, rather, by its very force
it isolates itself.

While friendship seems like a sort of embryo love
which you never succeed in disentangling from the
web of circumstances; friends are potential lovers
whom you only meet in the street.

Friendship is an unhappy mixture of business and
sentiment, difficult of accomplishment between men,
and almost impossible between women, who are rival
competitors rather than allies by nature, and govern
the actions of every-day life from the point of view
of success in their sex-relations, far more than men do.

Friendship between a man and a woman is rarely
possible or genuine because there is “a natural
exactingness between two people of opposite sex,
which (perhaps without their perceiving it) is demand-
ing with gradually rising insistence, perhaps only in one
party, or perhaps in both, what only passion can give.”

In any case, friendship disappoints one’s demands
on it, and never defines what one may count on.

‘You try to make it suffice for everything, and
become exceedingly discontented at the blank you
feel. Seeking to account for it, you accuse your
friend of a want of warmth, and when you do accom-
plish friendship of mutual intensity, you become
mutually tired of the reciprocal exactions of the senti-
ment, for only love, the passion, can compensate for
loss of independence.”

ZI1~
eat er

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

MADAME DE STAEL

It is this fact which makes family affection negligible
in the pursuit of happiness. One would have expected
to find Necker’s daughter blowing the family trumpet
to celebrate the sense of intimate union which should
bind the members of a family together.

But we find nothing of the sort. This is the frankest
and least romantic chapter in the book.

It is of inestimable value in furnishing evidence
about Madame de Staél’s connection with de Narbonne
from its very beginnings, and also because it addresses
a reproof to parents (managed with regard to paternal
susceptibilities) for the mania for authority which
besets and spoils the affection of parents for their
children.

It is a two-fold evil.

On the one hand, according to Madame de Staél,
the sentiment is of a usurping and invading character ;
on the other, all feelings from the heart pre-suppose
equality.

‘Thus the same principles apply to this form of
affection as to all feelings of the heart, your soul is
sufficiently implicated to make an imperious demand
for reciprocity, and so repose is done for, and un-
easiness begins.”

All the more fatally so because, if in love, the
passion, the rule is that “‘ the one who loves most
encroaches upon the independence of the other,”
parental affection makes pretensions to a sort of
tacit sovereignty, “a veiled dignity,” an authority
which, though it may be innocent and benevolent
enough, cannot escape being irritating.

Affection wilts under such treatment, which is
hostile to its levelling tendencies.

“The heart becomes wounded and withdraws
itself if pretensions to superiority are kept up.”

As the child emancipates itself gradually from
parental authority, the parents can with difficulty
conceal their displeasure, even if the progress is

212WINDING OP THE) (CRUSUS

gratifying, and cannot be expected to conceal it if
the new departures take a direction of which they
cannot approve.

Different generations, in the natural order of things,
being called upon to exist side by side, we find parents
and children, who are united by reciprocal affection,
forgetting how very different their points of view
are and necessarily must be.

The mirror which reverses the objects it presents
does not distort things so much as the ruling spirit
of generation, which relegates things either to the
future or to the past.

There is the same realism and detached analysis
in the observations on conjugal relations which follow,
and which curiously illustrate the curious duality
of Madame de Staél’s nature. Here we are dealing
with the calculating mind which found it possible
to accept the marriage of convenience with the
Swedish diplomat, and which, later, rejected the
idea of marriage with Constant.

“ No one can tell in advance what a lengthy business
one day of married life may be; if we observe care-
fully the varied impressions produced by what is
rightly called life in the ménage (i.e., that which is
managed), we must admit that every instant of the
day bothers and difficulties crop up, which are certain
to destroy any romantic quality in feeling; it is,
therefore, of all ties, the least likely to create or preserve
the finest flower of romantic love.*

~ In order to preserve any peace in this relation,
you must have immense self-control and make use
of strength and self-sacrifice, which resemble a sort
ot monastic discipline far more than the joys of
passion.”

This disposes of the personal relationships. She
how turns to religion. She finds less help than ever
in this direction.

Unwilling to confess frankly her complete in-

* See Note. Appendix C.

213 PMADAME DE STAEL

difference to any dogmatic creed, Necker’s daughter
gets out of the difficulty by assaulting the Voltairean
bugbear of narrow dogma in religion, with her hardest
blows.

Blind devotion is no remedy : it can satisfy neither
heart nor mind.

“People sometimes offer vexatious resistance to
expansive qualities in others ; but religious devotion
is in perpetual conflict with ° natural qualities.’

“Tn so far as these qualities are spontaneous and
involuntary they are incompatible with fixed rules.

“ Religious devotion has great inconveniences for
passionate characters.”

Not that she really confounds religion with creeds.

Just as she observed in her Essai sur les Factions
that the morality of a deep feeling leaves duty far
behind in importance, so she observes here “ that
natural qualities, developed by the principles and
feelings of morality, are vastly superior to the virtues
of religious rule.”

“< True religion is like beauty and genwus. One either
has it, or one has not, and, therefore, can never have it.
There is no more to be said in the matter.”

That is certainly a way of closing the discussion.

“ Passions create moral malady, and because one is
passionate, religion is useless as a eure.

So be it! That is not logic. But it is a way of
arguing which is permissible among the palpable
inconsistencies of life.

Religion certainly was not of any practical use to
Madame de Staél in the solution of her problem.

However, not forgetting the part she must play as
educator of the public, she advises that religious faith
should be employed to fill the gap lett in the energies
of the populace by the end of the Revolution.

Little by little, Madame de Staél is being led to
find in herself alone, the remedies she cannot find

elsewhere.

214This surely is not a bad idea, as the seat of the
malady is herself.

But there is a tremendous obstacle in the way.

Madame de Staél in approaching herself is con-
fronted by Madame de Staél.

It is an extremely delicate situation.

Madame de Staél is prepared to amend her own
character, and Madame de Staél forbids a single
thought against herself,

We are no longer surprised that family ties and
religion were summarily dismissed.

Madame de Staél dismisses Madame de Staél.

The misfortune lies in her own character, but
Madame de Staél forbids her own thoughts to admit it.

If anything, or anyone, should advise her to
moderate her character in any way, above all, to
weaken or lower it, even to procure her a little pleasure,
she would be all furious protestation.

She would no longer be herself.

There would be no problem, but there would be no
Madame de Staél. Thank you!

Then, since other people have something to do with
her griefs by responding very little to her need of living
in their lives, why should she not build up some
fortification against the shocks of life, by erecting a
barrier of the necessary egoism in her own being.

But has she not made it clear that passionate souls
are not egoistic. They cannot be.

An ambitious man is an egoist, because his heart is
cold. But altruism is implied in any passionate soul.
She writes :

‘ Passionate characters are never egoistic. I shall
be told that it is their own happiness which they seek
with so much impetuosity ! So it is, but they seek it
outside themselves ; they will expose themselves to
any risk to obtain it; for their personalities never
contain that combination of caution and sensuality
which calms the soul instead of agitating it.”

215

WINDING UP THE CRISISMADAME DE STAEL

Finally—“ your personality, whether you look upon
it as a blessing or a curse, is entirely independent of
your will.”

Madame de Staél looks upon her own as a mixture of
blessing and curse, but for no consideration would she
have exchanged it for someone else’s.

In short, she is not far from believing that it is the
excess of genuine high quality in her character, which
is the cause of all her misfortunes.

She is unhappy, because she is too good for her
surroundings.

That is why she refuses all external aid.

She will allow no one but herself to meddle with so
great a matter, and she will not allow herself to do
much.

She suggests to herself an appeal to the fundamental
virtue which is in her, that she shall mould herself for
every day life in the likeness of that angel she can be
at moments.

She will make use of her super-moral personality to
effect this change.

This responsibility, which is infringing on the
powers of the Christian religion, she takes upon herself,
fully accepting the Christian ideal for that matter.

She knows the virtues of Christianity. They are
primarily, generosity, kindness and mercy.

She proposes to raise herself to the height of
absolute beneficence, perpetual kindness and mercy,
which are sublime in their disinterestedness.

A whole chapter, the fourth in the section on
remedies, is devoted to the subject of benevolence, and
the book of the Passions winds up with a passage in
praise of mercy, a virtue which is much to be recom-
mended to revolutionaries.

Madame de Staél has only to recall those blessed
intervals in the darkest days, when the news of some

potential victim’s escape and rescue arrived at Coppet.

‘““ How happy is the man or woman |”? she cries, her

216WINDING “ORY THE’ CRISES

“who has

heart still swelling with maternal pride,
saved the life of a man or woman!

‘* The feeling of being useless is done away with, and
weariness with self is all forgotten !

‘* Kindness or benevolence considered in an abstract
manner, is not only the highest virtue from which
(as from love, a special form of it) all the other virtues
are derived, but it procures for sensitive souls all the
same ‘joys of emotion,’ as love, though in a purer
and less dangerous form.”

And here is another aspect of the question which is
not negligible.

When we come to analyse the joys of benevolence
we find that they are closely allied to another source of
peculiar enjoyment, the consciousness of one’s own
power.

Madame de Staél remarks on this twice on the same
page, from which we may conclude that she attaches a
good deal of importance to it.

** Unlike ambition, benevolence demands no return
for its effects, but at the same time it offers us an
opportunity for widening our own lives and for
influencing many others.”

And again lower down:

‘“ However destitute and obscure our position may
be, acts of kindness to others enlarge the possibilities
of that position and the performance of them gives us
at least one attribute of power, influence over others.”

The advantage of this cure is evidently that it suits
the invalid’s character.

She suffers from hyper-sensitiveness.

The right way to deal with that she thinks is not to
attempt to extirpate it, but rather, since it is the
exaggeration of it which is dangerous, to moderate it,
to hold it in a leash.

Characters which have too much ardour would do
well to adopt the habit of “ conceiving of life in a
passive manner,” of telling themselves resolutely that

217

reeMADAME DE STAEL

positive happiness is unattainable, after which they
would be more disposed “ to be satisfied with some-
thing that resembles it.”

Above all, while young and joyous, they should
acquire the habit of believing that unhappiness really
exists and is not only a “ bogey,” used to discipline
naughty children, but a terrific reality, which
endures instead of passing away; whose weight
increases instead of diminishing ; and we must all
bear it alone, whether we would or no, because it is
impossible to talk about it as much as we are forced to
think about it.

‘“ And since passionate souls are poised for the on-
rush forward, they should not attempt to live the past,
present and future in one; the real wisdom for them
is to live like children, who take life, drop by drop, as it
comes ; to live from day to day and to pass down the
river of life with their eyes fixed on the banks, rather
than turned towards the end.”

This “ theory of negative happiness ” is particularly
useful after a love-storm.

This treatment does not pretend to anticipate the
malady, it is retrospective, but certainly does not
consist in elegiac enjoyment of the consequences of the
storm.

The cure consists in renouncing all happiness.

Resignation of this description is bound to be
attended with melancholy .. . well . . . the melan-
choly is not as bad as one expected !

The more utterly one gives way to it, the more
enjoyable it becomes.

Above all there must be no abrupt changes in the cure.

It is the instinct of unhappy people to isolate
themselves, but many find that, instead of alleviating
pain, solitude exasperates it.

‘< The first few moments of abandonment to solitary
contemplation are full of charm, but you would end by
eating your heart out, if you went on in that way.”

218WINDING UR THE” CRISIS

You find that the full force of your grief rushes back
on you, increased by the tranquillity which is in such
painful contrast to the turmoil within.

This then, is the moment to seek distraction.

It is an indispensable intermediate stage in the cure.

But once you can feel sure that you can face a
téte-a-téte wiih yourself, without danger of a relapse,
you will soon arrive at the knowledge “ that solitude is
an inestimable blessing, especially for the philo-
sophical,” and the great tranquillity of Nature herself
becomes a beneficent agent in this last phase of a
passion which resolves itself into quiet melancholy.

Aspect and life in the country are so well adapted
to this state of the moral being, that we are tempted to
believe that Providence desires all men to arrive at it,
and that all things work together to inspire it in men
when they are weary of the struggles of existence, and
ask nothing more of life, but the absence of actual pain.

All Nature seems to lend itself to the feelings he
experiences then.

The sighing of the wind, the roaring of storms, the
strange, sweet potency of a summer evening, the
glitter of white hoar-frost in winter, all lull the soul of
man to mournful peace, which is the consequence of
the events of his destiny, and is the only condation of the
human heart which leaves perfect freedom to the mind for
contemplation.

Ah! if her own case had only been a matter of being
sensitive, or rather hypersensitive.

How easily she could have effected a cure.

If only she could abandon herself to elegiac
contemplation, if she could only succeed in drifting
voluptuously down the river of life, looking only to
left and right, and never to the end! Then there would
be no need to discuss a malady on paper, which would
never have come into existence.

But as she has told us, already, she cannot be happy
without fame.

219MADAME DE STAEL

She is a force, and a force in motion !

Did she wish to come to a standstill, she could not
accomplish it.

Deep in her soul her emotions are in perpetual
strife with her mind.

There is a burden of inner anguish which she drags
with her wherever she goes, which makes her almost
tired of life.

Sometimes she would like to rest, to go away,
heaven knows where . . . to disappear !

And then she knows that she wants to be in action,
to dominate men.

“OQ God!” she cries in the Passions, ‘‘ when chance
has brought about that combination of mind and acute
sensitiveness which is fatal to happiness, do not
abandon those unhappy beings who are given the
power of perceiving and understanding everything,
and are at the same time made to suffer everything.
We who suffer and know ! Uphold our mental powers
to the level of our emotions and inspirations.

‘Give light to our path from the same fire which
consumes us!”

‘““No form of meditation or contemplation,” she
concludes, ‘‘ can give happiness in eternal inertia.”

Then what is to be done?

There is nothing for it but action, the exploitation of
one’s faculties. She knows only too well that the
possession of mind leads naturally to the pursuit of
glory and thence to passion and grief.

That is all she discovers when she seeks a remedy in
herself. She is in a trap.

She is to find unhappiness in idleness, in action, in
herself and outside herself.

The only thing she can do is to patch up a compro-
mise, an adjustment of two irreducible forces which
will allow her to live divided between her two con-
querors.

Torturing sensibility can be reduced to gentle

220WINDING VOPR TEE IGRESES

melancholy if you set about it in the right way, and, in
the same way, a too active intelligence, which is
inimical to peace of mind, may be administered with
more economy and vigilance.

Its rapid currents may be diverted into specially
prepared canals, where they will flow more peacefully
and nearer to one’s own being.

One can think, read and write for one’s own
pleasure, and in that way mind and emotion may be
harnessed to the same yoke.

‘¢ There is a sort of intimate pleasure in the pleasure
of sheer thought and in enriching one’s own mind from
that of others, which is connected with the need for
action and the need of making for perfection in all
things.”

At the same time, Madame de Staél might find
shelter for her tormented soul in the smiling peace of
the garden of philosophy ; she might try to convert
herself into a child of another century and become a
quiet student of the Renaissance period, instead of the
feverish child of the Revolution that she is.

It might be possible—for a short time. For she is
anything and everything by turns.

It is not impossible that she might be able to create
this desired state of truce in herself.

But before that could be attained she would have
to use up her energy, get old, wear herself out, for the
fact was that her malady was derived from a super-
abundance of vitality.

Let us listen to the conclusion of her reflections on
the benefits of study.

‘Whether engaged in reading or writing, you give
your mind the sensation of accomplishing something
which defines its scope and displays its exactitude,
and this agreeable sensation is quite unconnected with
self-approbation. It is actual, like the pleasure of an
athlete in bodily exercise which is in proportion to his
powers.”

221MADAME DE STAEL
Will she stop at that?

The realization of the extent of her own powers,
which she acquires from the easy accomplishment of
intellectual exercises, rapidly produces another sensa-
tion in her, a sensation of movement.

‘It is in making some intellectual advancement
from day to day, that the consciousness of one’s own
moral existence becomes a happy and vital feeling.”

She cannot feel this without wanting to communi-
cate the idea to others, without imagining that other
people also enjoy it, or ought to enjoy it, and so, at the
end of the book on the Passions, we find ourselves led
up to the inevitable complement to personal pessimism
in her case, that is a firm belief in the actual progress
of humanity.

“From the exercise of his mental faculties man
receives an enhanced belief in the immortality of the
soul.”

To put it differently :

“Thought . . . advances by a sort of established
progression . . . whose end is not in sight.”

This is the leaping-off point for her next book : De la
Littévature.CHAPTER XII

POLITICAL INTERVENTION. NEW ATTEMPTS AT ACTION.
A SCHEME FOR A CONSTITUTION, 1796-1799

Wuitst Madame de Staél was drawing up the balance-
sheet of her woes and virtues at Coppet, aimed partly
at the members of the Directoire, those gentlemen
were in Paris, well-content to be rid of her many
importunities, and they were taking rather energetic
measures to block the road of her return.

Madame de Staél had arrived at Coppet at the
beginning of January, 1796, fully intending to work,
but her method of working was always very much
mixed up with her social activities.

She could work in Paris quite as well as at Coppet,
sometimes better, for she had not the smallest need of
isolation to achieve mental concentration.

She only meant to stay with her father for three or
four months.

The Directoire succeeded in keeping her there until
the end of the year.

As was always the case, she furnished them
gratuitously with pretexts.

Desportes, the French resident at Geneva, used to
send reports that she was openly receiving suspects,
who were either emissaries of Condé’s army, or spies in
the service of England.

Her public opinions, too, were ill-defined.

She gave out that she was a whole-hearted
Republican and that she was absolutely loyal to the
Directoire.

But, either at Lausanne, or at Coppet, for she was
always moving about, she welcomed to her house, not
only natives, but exiles of every shade of political

223MADAME DE STAEL

opinion, Royalists as well as Republicans, and she was
certainly rather more cordial to the former than to
the latter.

The Royalists were seen to be “chatting and
laughing with her in the embrasure of a window, while
the Republicans were having a dull time, standing
waiting humbly until their hostess should remember
their existence.”

It was decided in Paris that, taken at her best,
“this woman was a chameleon, indefinable and
incomprehensible in the eyes of the public,” and that,
therefore, “‘ the Directoire would do well to be on its
guard against her.”

When May came, she decided to rejoin her husband,
who had kept his position as Swedish Ambassador in
Paris.

She was making preparations to start when her
agents (for she also had agents) informed her that the
Directoire was taking measures to stop her further
progress at the frontier.

In a way, it was a false alarm. They meant to
arrest her, but they wanted possession of papers which
she was suspected of desiring to carry secretly to
Paris, and did not mean to deprive her of personal
liberty.

At the same time, she learnt that the affair was no
secret, as all the customs officers and police agencies
were in possession of a printed list in which her name
appeared.*

Instead of laughing at this official ineptitude as, no
doubt, she would have done if she had really been
guilty, Madame de Staél nearly suffocated with
indignation.

She wrote to Desportes and she wrote to her
husband. f

The inhabitants of Lausanne and Geneva simply
revelled in the public humiliation inflicted on the
woman who never ceased to make them feel their own

* See Note. Appendix C. t See Note. Appendix C,
224Sas LL r
aca te a ee. eS ) Bis edeenas

    
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
    

POLITICAL INTERVENTION

insignificance, and the Royalist exiles joined heartily
in the same sentiment, for in spite of Desportes’
reports, they detested her more even than they had in
the past.

She felt the affront all the more acutely because
all her political ambition was bubbling up again and
she had lately come to the conclusion that it was her
duty to collaborate with the Directoire and to help on
their cause.

This she gave anybody to understand who would
listen. The Directoire had heard about it, but did
not believe in it and, in any case, did not wish for her
collaboration.

However, faithful to her manifesto, she wrote on
the subject to Constant who had edited, under her
direction, her political declaration ot faith, before he
left for Paris. It was entitled, “ Concerning the
strength of the present government and the necessity of
supporting rt.”

The situation became complicated in the month of
August, after she had sent the manuscript of the
Passions, with the preface which exposed her decep-
tion, to the printers.

M. de Staél arrived one fine day at Coppet deprived
of his ambassadorial functions, and also without means
of subsistence, which did not tend to lessen the
irritation of his legitimate spouse.

He found Constant there, exercising the privileges
of “ husband in office ” which, indeed, did not surprise
M. de Staél, but neither did it sweeten his humour.

There was nothing to be done, but to wait until
the publication of the Passions at last enlightened
the Directoire as to the true character of their
victim.

The book appeared at the beginning of October,*
and in order that it should not pass unnoticed, or fail to
make an effect, Constant took copies to Paris in person,
and Roederer gave it a very favourable review

* See Note. Appendix C.

225MADAME DE STAEL

(though with a dash of inevitable pedantry) in the
Journal de Paris of November 22nd.

It cannot be said that the Passéons regained any
public favour for the author.

The public was indifferent, the Directoire had no

settled policy and had very fixed intentions with
regard to Madame de Staél.

However, the Directoire gave way.

In December, 1776, Constant came to teil her that
the Directoire would consent to tolerate her residence
in France, though this was not to be considered
authorisation.

The conditions were that she was not to get herself
talked about and that she was not to live within eight
leagues of the capital.

She installed herself at Hérivaux in a house recently
acquired by Constant and, without being too punc-
tilious, she disposed herself to live, more or less, the
life that had been required of her, if she came into
France.

She was again expecting a child, and during the last
months of her pregnancy she Supervised some fresh
lucubrations of her political pupil on Les Effets de la
Lérreure and Réactions Politiques, pamphlets which
openly lay stress on the authority of the government,
and which (especially the latter) find a good deal of
fault with the ideas cherished by Madame de Staél.
Réactions Politiques deals with the part played by men
and women of letters in the Republic.

In the month of June, between two conversations,
as it were, Madame de Staél gave birth to a daughter,
Albertine, “who bore a striking resemblance to
M. Benjamin Constant, in feature, colour of hair, and
indeed, in every way, so that no one could mistake the
likeness,”’*

But not for an instant did she move her eagle glance
from the course of political events.

To gather the essence of the situation we have only
* See Note. Appendix C;
220POLITICAL INTERVENTION

to refer to the second volume of her Considérations
sur la Révolution Francaise, and in order to be in a
position to exercise the necessary control, we must
first understand that the chapters dealing with
events preceding and following the 18th fructidor, and,
indeed, the whole of the Considératuons were not
composed simultaneously with events, but a long time
afterwards when implacable history had already
exacted the inevitable consequences from events.

Madame de Staél, however, has only consulted her
memories.

She took notes from a pamphlet in manuscript,
almost weighty enough to be called a volume, which
she had dashed off not long after the climax of the
Revolution, but which remained unpublished and has
never been printed until quite recently.

It is quite clear that she made use of it.

But the pamphlet itself was not written until after
the crisis.

It appears from the Considérations that Madame de}

Staél approved of the national work accomplished by
the Directoire in the first year and a half of its
existence.

The finances of the country were set in order, paper
money was withdrawn, the liberty of the press was
assured, and security for travel re-established.

It was even to be hoped that, little by little, the
persecution of priests and the proscription of nobles
would be abandoned.

She does not offer objections of principle in
opposition to the government.

She considers it an imperfect machine, but it is
capable of improvement. It may be made pertect.

It is only a question of recalling certain revolu-
tionary laws and of making an exact definition of the
attributes of each of the constituent parties.

There are two ways of doing that; intervention
from above and intervention from below.

227

RGGICWATSMADAME DE STAEL

Unfortunately for success in the first method, the
| only member of the Directoire whom Madame de
1 | Staél knew personally was Barras.
' prwectoee | By means of his intervention she got Talleyrand
peak? T Al{fevE | appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs in July, 1797.*
Ne | But they would have nothing to do with her Benjamin.
the S In this direction progress was slow.
Moreover, a breath of reaction stirred and blew
over the country.
Madame de Staél was not sorry to see the Jacobins
reduced to hopeless confusion and dismay
The moderate Royalists, to whom she had addressed
her reflections on civil peace in 1795, were getting more
and more power.
| They demanded the reform of the same abuses
if which had irritated her own sense of justice and,
thanks to the elections, they gradually acquired
considerable power in the Council of the Five Hundred
and seemed inclined to operate according to Madame
de Staél’s ideas.
Added to that, it was a fact that a good number of
them were personal friends of hers.
| | She may have thought that the Directoire would
| die a natural death in this manner.
| Certain passages in the Considévations lead one to
suppose so.
In any case, she counted on the speedy disappear-
ance from the Directoire of those members of the
Convention who had been transferred to it, a dis-
appearance which should take place without any fuss,
and would certainly clear the field for the future.
But the whole-hearted Royalists were too confident.
{ On the 18 fructidor (4th September), General
| Augereau, called in by the Directoire, broke in upon the
Councils and arrested all the flower of the opposition.
It was the end of a reign of tolerance, far too brief.
The proscriptions and condemnations were resumed
| and more forcibly carried out than ever.

* See Note. Appendix C.
228POLITICAL INTERVENTION

The newspapers, hastily taking service under;
tyranny again, denounced Madame de Staél as an|
active anti-Republican.

She understood that explanations would not help|
her, and prepared to retire to Switzerland again. |

Before leaving she had her first interview with the)
youngest and most celebrated general of the Republic,)
who had returned, crowned with laurels, from the}
Italian campaign. |

It was said that “ Bonaparte was a most unusual
type of general, having nothing of the usual revolu-|
tionary harshness in his composition, being tenderly}
in love with his wife, and melting to the ethereal!
beauty of Ossiau in his leisure moments.” ‘“‘ He was|
admired,” said Madame de Staél, by way of excusing |
herself, “‘ because at the moment no one knew what fa
admire.”

And yet, even before 18 fructidor, Madame de Staél|
had written enthusiastic letters to Bonaparte in Italy. |
And why not?

Always on the watch for talent, she could not fail to
be interested in his.

Divining what the future would bring forth,
Talleyrand kept close to this phenomenon, the
incalculable young general.

Through Talleyrand Madame de Staél informed
Bonaparte that Benjamin Constant was a man of high
ability.

As for herself, she felt a slight disappointment in the
first moments of her meeting with Bonaparte.

This was no Narbonne. It was a small, pale,
weary-looking young man.

In talking to him she was strangely ill at ease.

The hero-soul closed itself against her.

Bonaparte was naturally aware that she was not on
good terms with his lords and masters of the Directoire
and behaved accordingly.

But, curious to relate, an emanation of terror

229 QMADAME DE STAEL

passed out of him, communicating itself to her hyper-
sensitive perceptions even when he neither moved
nor spoke.

Seized with ‘‘ a very pronounced sensation of fear,”’
Madame de Staél, for the first time in her life, found
nothing to say.

We may measure her personal force by the fact
that it required Bonaparte to achieve that. By the
same means we may measure his.

She writes: “I felt confusedly that no emotion of
the heart could move him against his will.”’*

She did not, however, immediately withdraw her
admiration, and his reticence only provoked a keener
curiosity in her.

The Directoire was projecting an invasion of
Switzerland on the pretext that the canton of Vaud
must be liberated.

This invasion would have threatened Necker with
death and ruin, as he was on the list of the proscribed,
and his revenue was derived from feudal dues on his
estates.

Shut up alone for an hour with Bonaparte, who this
time “listened kindly and patiently,’ Necker’s
daughter combated the proposed invasion with all the
energy at her command, laying stress on the ‘‘ happy
condition and beauty of Helvetia,” and “ the peace of
it, which it would be criminal to destroy.”

She was wasting her time.

The future Consul merely borrowed a few words
from her rich vocabulary to reply in the name of the
heads of the Republic that the peaceable citizens of
Helvetia must be endowed with political rights.

After which he went on to converse amiably about
“his taste for seclusion, country-life, and the fine
ALES:

Thus, at the end of January, 1798, Madame de Staél
went back to Switzerland to await the danger with her
father and her children.

* See Note. Appendix C.
230POLITICAL INTERVENTION

Her worst fears were soon dissipated as Marshal
Suchet was commissioned by the Directoire to offer
Necker a safe-conduct.

The Marshal made Coppet his staff headquarters
and installed himself there and Madame de Staél was
duly thankful for this God-send in misfortune.

She continued to follow the march of events in
Paris by means of Constant’s letters.

The Jacobins were seething on one side and the
Royalists on the other, and the Directoire, still violent
and despotic, maintained its perilous equilibrium
between them, dealing blows first to right and then to
left.

The muddle, it seemed, was to be indefinitely
prolonged and the ideal Republic was further off than
ever.

Switzerland did not complain very bitterly of the
French proselytes and Madame de Staél’s indignation
was dissipated under evidence.

By the reunion of Geneva with France, Necker
became a French citizen.

This made it all the more urgent to strike his name
off the list of proscribed exiles.

Madame de Staél only waited until the effervescence
of the May elections was past.

These elections were only a coup d’éat on the part of
the Directoire.

She went back to Paris in June, or about that time,
and put her father’s documents into the hands of the
Directoire, where it was decided unanimously that his
name should be struck off the list of the proscribed.

M. de Staél had meanwhile made up his mind
that he would no longer compromise his ambassadorial

prospects by connecting himself further with the
pranks of a woman who was only his wife in name and
now refused to supply him with funds.

He regretfully played his last card. He divorced
her.

231MADAME DE STAEL

Necker was very angry. But Madame de Staél was
far from the day when so small an infliction could
move her in the least.

Judging that she had acquired a right to the name
she had made illustrious, she determined to keep it.

During this year she divided herself between France
and Swizerland, not able to decide where to settle.
She could not see how to attack the problem.

The slightest approach to intervention would have
been dangerous, very dangerous ; and, moreover, she
did not know how to intervene.

In November she was at Coppet, in January at
Geneva, where she attempted to get Constant nomi-
nated as deputy in the Five Hundred.

Finally, she decided to put into a written work all
that she might not carry out in action. She wrote
the pamphlet mentioned above, which remained in
manuscript until quite recently, and was entitled :
| Des Circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la
\Révolution et des Principes quit dowent fonder la
(Republique en France.*

It is an important document which we cannot afford
to neglect.

She begins by excusing herself, or seems to be
excusing herself indirectly, for dealing with the matter
at all.

It was in vain that she had laid down the law in the

Passions that a woman should only enter public affairs
under the direction of the man she loves.
- It did not seem to her that any of the political
writings of the day, including those of Constant (which
certainly embodied her ideas, but in a style which she
did not recognise as her own) could take the place of
those which were formulating in her own mind.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   

* Discovered by M. Paul Gautier in 1899 (see his article in the Revue
des denx Mondes, 1st Nov., 1899) the manuscript was thoroughly
examined and discussed by M. Edouard Herriot in Un Ouvrage Inédit
de Madame de Staél: Les Fragments d’Ecrits Politiques (1799), Paris,
1904; it was printed in its entirety in 1906 by M. John Viénot, (Paris.
Fischbacker, 1906).

232POLITICAL INTERVENTION

‘“‘ Amongst a mass of political writings I found none
which adequately set out my system.”

And further on:

‘¢ A woman, because she is a woman, is exempt from
giving umbrage or incurring suspicion of exploiting
any personal ambition and is, therefore, favourably
placed for telling the truth.”

She excuses nerself also on the ground of the
imminence of danger, the unheard of prolongation of
revolutionary anguish. She writes :

“ Alas! We are all sufferers! Some of us have no
peace of mind left, some are soured for life,

“*Some sink under the weight of their destinies ;
others brandish their lives like the torches of the
Eumenides, in order to shake off sparks which will
light their way, even if they dazzle at the same time.

‘“¢ The future has no precursor.

‘¢ Man wanders in life like some being in an unnatural
element.

‘“‘ His habits, emotions and hopes are all reduced to
confusion. Nothing but his pain makes him recog-
nisable to himself and the continuity of suffering is the
only link between one day and another.”

And further on

“‘Ts the whole course of our lives to be passed in
misfortune ? Was our first youth the only happiness
we shall ever know, and will our blood ever flow
peacefully in our veins again.

“Will the Revolution come to an end during the
lifetime of this generation ? ”’

Two years before, the prospect had been hopeful.
People were beginning to live again.

Then the unhappy 18 fructidor threw everything
back.

“Oh! what a misfortune for France that rash men,
incited by perfidious men, put an end, for an incalcul-
able time, to the advantages which must always result
from a representative system !

233

7 VleetMADAME DE STAEL

““It was because 18 fructidory led to every kind of
misfortune that there never ought to have been any
provocation of men who were not worth the oppor-
tunity given them of upsetting the Republic, or even
of upsetting the Revolutionaries, as some genuine
mediators sardonically observed.

‘Whatever we had done, say some men, the
Directoire was resolved to have 18 fructidor. But
there was no idea of it in the year before, and if the
elections had not gone well for the Royalists, we
should have secured wise successive reform in finance,
justice and good administration this year, like last

ear.”

If, before the month of /ructidor, Madame de Staél’s
political opinions had been mistaken enough to allow
her to believe for a moment that she could exploit a
Royalist success for the furtherance of her own ideas,
she had quickly been disabused.

She wrote this treatise to ensure an ending of this
kind of political movement, one thing fired off after
another, like bullets from the chambers of a revolver.

This irregular legislation only upset judgment and
prolonged the conditions of despotic violence and
anarchy indefinitely.

It was time to return to reliance on principle.

It was time to establish a government founded on
principles which were geometrically true. ©

“IT am searching,” she wrote, ‘“‘ among the actual
circumstances for something which will put an end to
the Revolution; and I am seeking, by contemplation
of the eternal virtues, for the foundation of the
French Republic.” 3

She did not stop at the enunciation of principles,
being of opinion “ that, we have no right to advance a
theory, without expounding how, an our opinion, tt can be
put into practice.”’

The examination having been made, it was then a
question of commenting on the “actual political

234POLITICAL INTERVENTION

circumstances,” of the moment, that is to say, of the
years 1797 and 1798, or to put it more exactly from
September, 1797, to the end of 1798, a commentary
which is supported by a curiously complete revelation
of Madame de Staél’s constructive thought on political
matters.

The same forces are in action as in 1795, but the
disposition of them is not the same.

The Jacobins are disputing every inch of the ground,
but their cause is lost.

The only thing which maintains them in exist-
ence is, by a paradox, the rapid progress of the
opposition.

The Jacobins served to counterbalance the
Royalists.

The only circumstance which could have restored
any power to the Jacobins was the abuse, by the
Royalists, of their newly-acquired advantage.

Incidents like that of the 18 fructidor were doubly
dangerous. They were calculated to give power to
one extreme or the other.

That was the way to lose the Republic’s cause.

Madame de Staél would not have mentioned the
Jacobins at all, were it not for the purpose of giving
them a farewell kick, if we may be allowed to express it
thus, and of making one more definite pronouncement
(since a stupid world persisted in confounding Jacobins
with Republicans) ‘“‘ that the name of Republican
must not be applied to beings whose ignorance, bes-
tiality and total incapacity left theiy vanity no outlet but
crime.

But the danger-point was the Royalist party. It
was impossible to deny the evidence of fact.

“Out of 120 newspapers sold in the streets of Paris,
four were attached to the Directoire, four were
moderate, and 112 were Royalist.

“From these last there poured a stream of invective,

235MADAME DE STAEL

combining all the epigrammatic skill which the ancien
yégime could put into insult with all the scorn
and atrocious vehemence of the new revolutionary
jargon.

“And this invective was poured without stint or
measure upon men of the most diverse nature and
conduct: Benjamin Constant, Saint-Just, Roederer,
Chaumette, Garat and Fouquier-Tinville were all
subjected to it alike and I remember being called a
‘fury,’ or ‘wild woman,’ myself, by these despicable
ranters.”’

At this time the elections regularly imported fresh
contingents of Royalists into the two Councils.

Now, according to Madame de Staél, the Royalists
were building on sand.

They had no majority in the country.

The country completely exhausted, and sick and
tired of politics, would have preferred that the word
politics should never be spoken again. The country
was too weary to form any opinion.

The Royalist proclamations resounded in a vacuum,
so that if that party was building on permanent
victory, it was certain to be disappointed.

It was no good trying to persuade these people of
that, however, for they were “ fanatics in their own
fashion ; Royalists without the restrictions of Catho-
licism, or of the authority of the crown, or of the
traditions of the aristocracy.”

Such people are not to be persuaded of anything.

But the moderate Royalists, whose opinions were
shared by Republicans, except for the question of
establishing a Monarchy, ought to have perceived
their error; they ought to have proclaimed that the
Royalist party was wiped out.

‘“ There is only one way for the Royalists to retain
any power, and that is to purge themselves of any
member who intends to use the party for any parti-
cular end.”

236POLITICAL INTERVENTION

This is a repetition of her recommendation in 1795,
but it is more urgent.

This time it is the Republicans who are to be
intransigent.

It is no longer enough to be simply a Republican ;
you must be “ a Republican determined to break with
the Royalist party.”

There remainéd the Directoire.

Madame de Staél opens a bold and stubborn attack
upon that body with some cajolery.

She does not refuse the members the sacred name of
Republicans ; she regards them as disinterested men
who are pursuing an ideal, in spite of all their errors,
and who, up to 1797, have provided “‘ a period of wise
administration.”

The constitution of the long hoped-for Republic
should be the crown of their efforts.

But stupidly attacked, before anything had been
formulated, they had relapsed into the stupid method
of government by force and had never returned to
more enlightened paths.

The elections had become a mere farce, at which
Republicans amused themselves like a lot of children
playing the game of “ being grown up.”

The tribunals were carrying on the tragedy of
deportation in an exaggerated form.

The press had been muzzled, and allowed nothing
to transpire which did not pass the censor.

Conscription and useless wars in foreign lands were
draining the country of its vitality and preventing any
hope of return to prosperity.

All these things might be comprehensible if it were
only a question of dealing with an army the day before,
or the day after battle.

But it was a question of dealing with a whole
nation, which was crying out for a constitution.

Madame de Staél asks:

““ Who can be called happy in this State ? No one in

237MADAME DE STAEL

all France! I do not believe that there is one man,
either distinguished or obscure, who thinks it worth
while to make any plans one year ahead !

“* Nor is there a man of any sort who is not trying to
realize any independent fortune which he may possess ;
who would not willingly sponge the tablet of his
memory clean as though it were a slate; and would
not, at any moment, change his fate, name, and
existence for that of some inhabitant of America, who
is allowed to live in peace.”

Her conclusion is that “‘ it is extremely pressing that
Republicans should change their methods.”

“The Constitution must be modified in such a
manner that all its resources, cleverly combined, go to
the support of the Republicans, to maintain the
Republic, and afterwards to capture public opinion
by all the means which can establish the direction of it.”

And how was this to be done?

The rest of the work gives an exact explanation of
ut

The most urgent question was the suppression of
abuses: ‘‘ So long as revolutionary measures prevail,
the Revolution will continue.”

The Directoire ought not to defy the will of the
nation any longer, by breaking every election in which
the result is unsatisfactory to itself.

The tribunals should no longer be in the service of
the government, but should freely administer equal
justice to all.

The remains of the revolutionary tribunals should
be done away with at once for ever.

And finally, “Commerce must be _ protected,
enlightened men must be chosen for public service,
the national debt must be respected, and the exiles
unjustly withheld from returning home must be re-

called.”’

But if the Directoire has abused its powers, that was

238

eS see

a—< ——- weer ~t aS — sor - ae eee ans Was

ee, ge eee at ae

io eae
nee

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  

POLITICAL INDERVENTDION

partly because it was placed in the position of being
obliged to govern with a fragment of a constitution, a
supplying the gaps in an imperfect, or rather, a
unfinished organisation with measures suggested by \ He
the urgency of the moment.
Though inadequate their organisation was not in o
itself vicious. a
This is so evident to Madame de Staél that she is
willing to take this organisation as the framework of
the plan of constitution which she sketches out in the
second part.
In the future there should be some form of govern-
ment standing for the Directoire of the past.
It should consist of a Conseil des Anciens and a
Conseil des Cing Cent as before.
The Upper Chamber (Conseil des Anciens) should be{
elected from the Five Hundred for life and an
Executive Committee should be nominated from their
number.
Not only were the members of the Upper Chamber
to be permanent officials, but their moral independence
was to be guaranteed by endowing each of them with a
considerable revenue.
Thus, as we always find two elementary interests in
all nations “ the acquisitive instinct and the conser-
vative instinct,” the new French constitution would
possess a conservative and a progressive body to
balance each other.
If the Upper Chamber should come to disagreement
with the Five Hundred they would have the use of a
suspending veto, in virtue of which they could appeal
to the country for a fresh election of the Five Hundred.
If the country should confirm the attitude of its
most direct representatives, the Upper Chamber
would be obliged to come to terms with the Five
Hundred and through them with the nation.
Never a shirker, she had promised a workable and
positive plan and we see that she has given it to us.

239MADAME DE STAEL

It must be admitted that the plan is a summary one,
and would appear even more so, if described in the
words of Madame de Staél.

Neither is it strikingly original.

Little consideration is shown for the Directoire, or
the Five Hundred, except in the question of the veto.

All Madame de Staél’s enthusiasm is concentrated
on the permanence of the permanent officials and their
complete liberty of action.

We shall soon see why this is.

The permanent Upper Chamber is simply her old
idea of government by the élite of brains and
personality, cropping out again, now transformed into
a Chamber of government and ruling over the destinies
of France by the light of the purest and highest
reason.

To be more precise still she suggests some names:
Condorcet, Sieyés, Roederer, Godwin, in the generation
instore “Sand in her own generation a man whose repu-
tation increases year by year,Benjamin Constant. Others
there are, whom party-spirit would reject, but whom
Reason would welcome with extended hands. These
are the right statesmen for the French Republic.”

It would be difficult to be more explicit.

It is quite clear what she wants. But how will she
get her idea of the ascendency of a “ natural _aris-
tocracy’” accepted by the democrats, or by the
Republic, at any rate?

And then, in extending the field of her demonstra-
tion, she will have to describe her élite more particu-
larly, and to defend them since they are composed ot
much persecuted men. And, asa natural development
of all this, she will have to touch on the ideas which
these men represent, and define their moral starting-
point, which will be the basis of all their actions.

Let us set aside the apology for the elect, for the
moment, and stick to the strictly political theory.

Where, in all this well-organised constitution, is

240POLITICAL INTERVENTION

there any relation to the principles of the French
Revolution ?

It is a government certainly, but is it a Republic !

Everything is flourishing at the top, but will the
populace get its rights ? What has become of national
representation ?

Let us start from the bottom, or rather since for
France, the days of top and bottom are over, let us
start from the dead level of equality, and see where it
takes us.

Madame de Staél has foreseen this objection and
anticipates it.

A really representative government does not repre-
sent individuals, but their interests which are both
moral and material.

It follows that the man who aspires to representing
and directing those interests, must be in a position to
show that he has no other interests than those of his
country, which, in a way, are only an extension of his
own.

The candidate ought to be of independent means
and, as far as possible, above the average in mind and
morals.

Real political equality “ gives power in proportion
to the faculties of the individual, and his influence
over others, and in proportion to his ability for
usefulness.”

“Tnstead of putting ourselves back into the hands
of a hereditary aristocracy, let us entrust ourselves to
the undeniable aristocrats, the natural ones.”

A new element has been introduced into the theory
of government by the éite.

It is no longer a question of mental properties only.

The fine simplicity of the idea has been compromised
or it appears to be.

Why have men of independent means been placed in
the phalanx of genius ?

The answer is two-fold.

241MADAME DE STAEL

Without suspecting it, Madame de Staél, like every-
one else, has fallen under the influence of reaction.

On this question of property, brought into great
prominence by the propaganda of the demagogue
Babeuf, who was executed in 1797, she delivers her
opinions categorically :

“ Property,” she affirms, “is the origin, the foun-
dation, and the guarantee of the social pact.”

It is the only assurance of social stability and,
having experienced five years of Revolution, Madame
de Staél is the more convinced of it.

But there is something further :

‘In France at least, we may always hope that
talent will be given the highest place; but talent is
the exception, and in regard to ability, men are now,
or now think they are, more on one level than formerly
and therefore the mass of constant influence and con-
sideration will rest on wealth. We must not attempt to
fly in the face of this natural order of things.’’*

Talent by itself will always make up the ranks of
the minority, worthy of honour, but not necessarily
thereby, possessing any power.

By associating itself with the holders of property it
will be able to secure a majority, a means of action and
a guarantee of permanence.

And the people ? Authority represents or would like
to represent their interests, but do the masses know
what their interests are?

The people are composed for the most part jo
“a mass of calmly egoistic men who make fun of those
enthusiasts who get themselves talked about, and who
are able to live out their destinies, quite apart from
public affairs, in private concerns and organisations
connected with trade and property.”

‘“ Below these we find the vulgar herd which is
susceptible to nothing but superstition and ranting.”

“The opinion of this inert lump of humanity is
acquired in advance by the man who holds the power.”

* See Note. Appendix C.
242POLITICAL INTERVENTION

How are we to hope or expect that this mass of
stupidity will choose the best men to represent it ?

From 1789 the people have had the power to choose
as their representatives, if they wished to, the very
flower of intelligence in the land.

What happened ?

They preferred to be terrorised by “the most
inhuman souls, the vilest characters, the most limited
intelligences.”

The populace left to itself, created a new aristocracy
as a substitute for the old: ‘‘ a peerage of criminals.”

Then what was to be done ?

And since it was the philosophers and the elect of
the eighteenth century who prepared the way for the
Revolution would not Madame de Staél be leading up
to a fresh catastrophe if she could get her own way ?

To that she replies that the Revolution took place
because *‘ the Republic ran away from its guides, so
to speak.”

Educated in the school of the old tyranny, the
people were lacking in any idea of “ public morality,”
and having attained sovereignty they assumed
despotism.

They had now to be educated

‘““We must hurry on the work of time by all the best
methods of public instruction and re-establish the
ascendency of mind and the institutions.”

Here the circle of Madame de Stael’s political
thought closes up

Her “ elect ” would naturally take upon themselves
the task. Public education is, however, rather a slow
method of amending public affairs and should follow,
not precede, the formation of a national spirit.

“¢ Men of letters are able to carry public spirit further
and more swiftly along, than public education can do.”

Thus she affirms, in conclusion, that there must be
no more delay in putting the power into the hands of
philosophers in order that they may use it to educate

243MADAME DE STAEL

4 on tt" the nation and the nation, once educated, would
naturally maintain the flower of its intelligence in
power.

/ The Government “‘ must encourage thinkers of a
Ly certain order by every species of favour and distinction.
ariel These men, through the medium of a free Press, must

ee enlighten the nation; and the nation, once enlightened,

will naturally demand Republican institutions, public
education, and will itself found these institutions under
State protection.”
\ For men and women of letters are neither more nor
| less “ than the source of all the good that France may
hope for.”

|) Madame de Staél flattered herself that she was in

contact with reality, and she was.

Whatever subject she deals with, her thought
embodies two elements: one constant, unvarying ;
the other capable of adopting itself to the circum-
stances of the moment.

Her mind, so to speak, is able to change its
garments without much affecting its dazzling identity.
Here, side by side with her well-known advocacy
for government by first-class brains and personality
(of which the tone is moderated in accordance with
the circumstances of the day), we find a few observa-
tions applicable to the movement which might have
considerable weight if we took them literally, and if we
did not understand that they are not really attached
to Madame de Staél’s central and permanent idea.
This pamphlet deals with the actual circumstances
of 1798, and Madame de Staél was obliged to pay
attention to that, even if the said circumstances did
not particularly interest her, in the abstract.
She has an opinion on all contemporary questions.
For her it was not only a duty but a pleasure, a matter
Nol of taste and education. But we must not place too
| much reliance on her opinions of things which do not
deeply interest her.

24.4

etre Manune eens

-_POLITICAL INTERVENTION

For example, she is a true lover of liberty. She
does not love it so desperately as she did when
Napoleon had given her experience of the contrary,
but still her love is calm and constant.

But when she is driven by the capricious changes
of the rule of the Directoire to express opinions on
the liberty of the Press, she deals with this important
question in relation to the thoughts which chase
each other through her versatile mind. First, think-
ing of calumnies printed against herself, she declares
that the Press ought to be muzzled; and _ then,
dreaming of a free Press as a superb medium for the
communications of philosophers to the masses, she
declares that it ought to be free.

What are we to conclude? Nothing.

All we need do is to make a note of the caprices
of which her mind was capable, and then we may
forget all about it, as Madame de Staél forgot all
about it.

When reading the last section of the Passions,
written probably during the first months of 1796,
we saw how slight an opinion Madame de Staél
entertained of religious creeds as a means of moral
regeneration, for herself or anyone else.

And here she is two years later vehemently advocat-
ing the adoption of Protestantism as the State
religion, and compulsory religion too, which Catholics
would be brought to accept by being thoroughly
enlightened on “‘ the absurdity of their dogmas.”

What follows is so incredible from such a woman
that we are obliged to read and re-read the words in
order to believe them.

There must be no persecution of Catholics, but the
following would be good methods of dealing with them.

“The Catholic religion, which we desire to destroy,
must be cut off from all distinctions of ambition
and interest, and no priest shall be allowed to hold

public office.
245 RMADAME DE STAEL
‘““Anyone applying for any public office must be

required to make a declaration altogether incom-
patible with the Catholic dogmas.

“‘ In this way we shall weed out from this religion
all honest men who will admit enlightenment, and all
ambitious hypocrites who will be disgusted by the
check on their temporal advancement.

** And, above all, I should insist on the propagation
in France of another faith, by all the means of which
a free state, backed by public opinion, can so easily
dispose.”

Only that! But is not that, massacres excepted,
exactly the same treatment which had been meted
out to Protestantism in France since the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes?

It is a long way from the indifference of the Passions
to the intolerance of this pamphlet ; it forms a whole
inner evolution, extraordinarily rapid and defying
all psychological analysis.

No; not quite that. Madame de Staél is neither
more nor less religious than in 1796. But events
have marched on, and there is no need, as M.
Viénot thinks, to reject opinions declared before this
pamphlet was written, opinions elsewhere well
supported.*

The religious question was certainly put; it was
not put, however, by Madame de Staél, but by
circumstances. Post - revolutionary circumstances
brought it to the fore.

Faith was beginning to revive, little by little, after
the long torment.

The pendulum swings back from ultra-independence

* Des Religious, by Viénot, page 82. M. Viénot’s epitome of this
pamphlet is admirably clear and exact. But as it was our business
to trace the thread of Madame de Staél’s dominating ideas rather than
to analyse detail in the work, we have not used M. Viénot’s commentary
very much. The same might be said with regard to M. Herriot. Who-
ever looks for Republican ideas in Madame de Staél will assuredly find

them. The point is to gauge the importance of them and to determine
their place in the hierarchy of specific “ Staélian ’’ philosophy.

246

a Oper e we ster

—POLITICAL INTERVEN TION

to a need of authority, from revolt to a craving for
submission.

Side by side with the Royalist reaction, there
sprang up a Catholic reaction, which was natural
and sincere enough, though the Royalists tried to
exploit it for their political ends.

The Republicans found themselves taken unawares.
It was clear that this new force would have to be
taken into account, and that there could be no
question of divorcing the secular association of the
Catholic faith from the equally mystic dogma of
royalty in the minds of the people.

Being without a creed, and finding it necessary
to acquire one, the heirs of the “ encyclopedists ”
founded the sect of the Theophilanthropes, and
obtained permission from the Directoire to celebrate
their new creed in the churches of Paris.

It is here that Madame de Staél intervenes.

She begins by protesting that her religious opinions
are sincere and that she is far from sharing the
opinion of those who think that creeds are all very
well for the masses, but superfluous for the intelligent.

Lite is a positive affair, and completes itself naturally
in positive belief.

Those who have been brought up in the Christian
faith instinctively practice the virtues of mercy,
self-sacrifice and delicacy, without being aware that
they owe this to their religious education. We have
all seen the complete calm of the dying. How do
we explain it?

“ By a more or less confused idea, but always the
same, a sensation which brings unexpected repose
into your veins, which touches you and makes tears
of relief fill your eyes; the hope that there is a
refuge beyond all this, beyond life, in some point,
which none can define, of the sentient universe.
Without this refuge, which man calls Heaven, what
would become of human nature? What would be-

247———

” en Ned eee.

= F “leg, ar rf
ee ee

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re

 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

MADAME DE STAEL

come of man under the yoke of man? What would
become of the merciful pitched into a mob of the
cruel ?

“What idea can we have of the perfectibility of the
human spirit unless we can form an rdea of the Absolute
in mental and moral value?”

And this is perfectly sincere.

Religion, or, rather, religious ideas (she makes
the distinction herself) have taken possession of
Madame de Staél, thanks to the native piety of her
mind, which is not naturally revolutionary ; and
also thanks to the acute sensitiveness of her nature.

But all this is only leading up to the essential.
The principle deduced is this :

“< The more power you give to the wills of individuals
the more need there is of some means of raising the
moral life of the community.”

That is why the question of religion comes up
at all.

Madame de Staél does not leave the subject. She
continues :

“Only morality, in conjunction with religious
opinions, will give a complete code for all the actions
of life, a code which unites men im a sort of pact of
souls preliminary and indispensable to all soctal
pacts.”

Conclusion arrived at:

“ Republics cannot succeed monarchies without
a change of the nation’s religion.”

This brings us to the conclusion that Catholicism
must be suppressed (without violence, of course)
simultaneously with the institution of monarchy, and
that another creed must be substituted for it.

Thus, simply because the question is to the fore,
Madame de Staél feels impelled to give her opinion

on it. It is not naturally the kind of question that
she deals with; it is not of the kind which strikes
sparks of passion from her mind; but, since the

248question has been put, she will not shirk answering
it, and so little inclined is she to shirk, even when
not deeply interested, that she will endeavour to find
the best solution for the problem.

Although she was undeniably a woman abreast
with the thought of her day, and felt bound to stipu-
late that nationality should be the basis of the
Republican religion, and bound to admit that Theo-
philanthropy fulfilled this condition, yet that creed
could not satisfy her. If she had thought it advisable
she could have furnished the reason for this repug-
nance. Without expressing it, without perhaps
admitting it in thought, she was forced to feel the
impertinent inefficiency of the new creed.

She felt that this invention, sorely in need of
bolstering up itself, could be of little use to the
Republic, and would ill-support an attack from the
big guns of the ancient faith which it had undertaken
to replace.

She proposes Protestantism as the national faith,
because she says that it is a kind of Theophilanthropy
‘‘ with deeper roots in the past,’ whose more enlight-
ened ministers were engaged in pruning it of any
remnants of dogma which were still attached to it.

‘““Many of these ministers are Socinians, that is
to say, they do not differ from Theophilanthropists
except in the more particular adoption of the in-
comparable morality of the Gospel.”

Its own absurdity is sufficient proof of the slight
importance which must be attached to this fantastic
proposition of Madame de Staél. It would not be
kind to take her seriously. Her scheme for a
constitution shews that she perhaps had less ability
for public affairs than she thought she had, but it is
not ridiculous. The most that can be said against
it is that it has not much significance.

But the religious proposition is a simple piece of
giddiness on her part, an impertinent improvisation

249

POLITICAL INTERVENTIONMADAME DE STAEL

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   

of the spur of the moment which makes pretensions
to being a solution of an eternal problem.

We can now understand that there have existed
men of weighty understanding who have despatched
this woman and all her works to the devil.

There are moments in her remarkable life when
her personal force, combined with her curiosity and
her desire to be useful, only force her into a ridiculous
attitude.

It is then that she seems to give way wildly to the
force of a hidden spring of impertinence, and that
is all we need say in the matter.

But, having said so much, we must try to discover
to what this impertinence is due.

Superabundance of vitality in the first place?
Yes. Too blind a confidence in Reason with a capital
R? Yes. But principally it is due to a momentary
division between the two main elements of her being,
emotion and mind.

This is what she is capable of when her mind is
cut off from her soul.

In order to complete the exposition of her political
theory, it only remained to recommend the éte to
the nation in the chapter called Des Ecrivains: Men
of Letters.

This chapter is rather longer than it ought to be,
because Madame de Staél, having been confined in
the earlier part of the work to a field of action re-
pugnant to her genius for improvisation, Now
compensates herself for all that has gone before, by a
perfect frolic of joy in fields that she knows and
loves.

Although logically this chapter has no place in a
political treatise, it is by far the most important
in the work, precisely because she is happily free of
the limits which the subject really puts upon her,

250ae oe 2
ae Fe ee cael in aaa a So

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  

POLITICAL INTERVENTION

and has returned to matters that she is exceedingly
competent to deal with.

She states that the business of literary men is
pour torrents of light” upon the nation.

But who are they and what ought they to write
about ?

This was a moment of fresh starts.

Were writers to remain exactly what they were
before, or was Republican literature to be quite
distinct from literature under a monarchy?

All men are now citizens, but the men of letters
are the foremost citizens and have the keenest con-
ception of their civic duties.

‘A Republican will write, fight or govern according
to the circumstances and the dangers in which his
country finds herself.”

‘What was formerly meant by the term ‘ man of
letters,’ no longer exists in France; there is no longer
any distinct clan or profession.”

In principle, the body of Republican writers
(which, by the way, is not to be a body) will consist
of persons with gifts very similar to those of Madame
de Staél.

“TI cannot imagine a condition in which the talent
for writing is separable from energy of heart and
mind.”

And yet writers must be classified in two bodies :
First, philosophical writers; and, secondly, writers
of imagination.

The latter will no longer continue to walk blindly
in the way of Voltaire, who depended for his inspira-
tion on the contrast between the institutions of his
day and common sense.

Thus a writer of comedy should no longer confine
himself to the scarification of the ridiculous, but
should try to present a true picture of society. The
aristocrat, by divine right, Tragedy, must also turn
Republican, confining itself to the presentation ot

251

ce toMADAME DE STAEL

¢

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

situations
part.”

Sensibility for all must be the order of the day.
The New Héloise must stand higher than the Héoise
of antiquity. Ossian must be greater than the
Henriade, and Paul et Virginie than Telémaque.

The art of depicting nature which enhances the
pleasures of perception must be borrowed from
England and Germany.

But Republican imaginations must be on their
guard. There is one great danger: the danger of
bad taste; that of democratizing the language which
must remain aristocratic.

In order to avoid this danger, classical authors
must be constantly studied: ‘‘ Racine, Voltaire,
and the works of the Greeks and the Latins, whose
glory will never grow dim.”

Natural language falls into a noble, harmonious
style which produces in us the sort of enchantment
which we derive from exquisite weather, crystal-clear
air, and the dreaming silence of evening which draw
our souls into harmony with the marvels of nature.

All this is not commonplace, perhaps, but the
thought does not appear to be fully developed.

The explanation is rather brief.

Madame de Staél is not in touch with the centre
of her thought.

She has something else to say which seems to her
more important.

She has the first-named category of writers closer
at heart.

The imaginative writers are yet to be born, the
philosophical writers are all round her.

They are her friends.

“Thought is the pearl of greatest price in any
man’s being,” she thinks.

Consequently, the thinker is the greatest of men.
And, above all, in a Republic.

252

“in which any and every man can takea ey en , i 5 = (els ae ————e
pee Rj all ann 7 ed fe eee aa Bs ce Y Pet Rant La ls, SMe PR ak) en
c ie ed | a ; oa eum, 3

- Pe} ea 4 a ne ee ‘ ecu
a ee

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

POLITICAL INTERVENTION

Poets get carried away by their fantasies; their
history in this respect is most disquieting. They |
have always been encouraged by monarchs, as likely |
to be useful to their cause. a

In the same way, men of science lose interest in y
public events, and soldiers are rarely good at steering
a course among them.

But the world’s history shews us that the despot
fears the thinker.

Thinkers created the French Revolution.

‘“‘ Thinkers are, at the same time, independent of |
circumstances and interested in them. They are, it
therefore, very formidable to any form of charlatan. a

‘“ They are the elect amongst the elect. i.

‘“‘ Thinkers, therefore, are in the first rank of the fs
community where equality reigns ! ”

And what positive announcement are these formid-
able critics to make.

It is not so much what they are to say, as what
they are to do.

They are to restore the reign of tolerance, mercy,
generosity, and justice, for an intelligent human
being is also a virtuous human being.

Philosophers are the best of men.

Their virtue will be communicated to the nation
by means of their eloquence (“‘for eloquence is
thought given life’), which will inject their ideas
into the nation’s life-stream, and ‘‘ will convert the
conviction of reason into an electrical impulse.”

And the doctrine that they will preach up and
down the country is to be the perfectibility of human
nature by liberty and mental attainment.

They will do more.

They will prove that this doctrine is a sacred truth
by means of historical facts, whatever may be said
by men utterly disillusioned after living through the
French Revolution.

She feels that it would be impossible to go further

253MADAME DE STAEL

back in history than the invention of the printing-
press, because she demands proofs of her assertion.

But from that moment of increased light, humanity
was able to rest assured “‘ that there would be no more
retrogression.”’

Here we get the two twin ideas side by side in the
same book, the authority of the elect and the per-
fectibility of human nature.

Madame de Staél glides from one to the other
without perceiving it.

For her the two are one, and she sees no occasion
for specifying one as politics and the other as phil-
osophy.

Why should thought and action be divided? They
should march abreast : thought should end in action,
and action should inspire thought.

In saying that men should bow to the leadership
of conspicuous talent, is the same thing as saying
that humanity is capable of being perfected, and that
enlightened intellect is the instrument of progress.

And when you, yourself, are intelligent to a degree
above the average, to believe in human progress
is to wish to be in the advance-guard of that progress
yourself.

So true it is that ‘‘ the being who is conscious of
genius and power finds it impossible not to desire
to exercise it at least once in its mightiest force.”

On political matters, Madame de Staél has said her
last word ; and we find that the last word is no other
than that which she has constantly repeated.

In spite of all her efforts to pin her theory to earth,
the political organization which she succeeded in
proposing resembles nothing but the model which
she had in her mind.

All that she demands of a political constitution
is that it shall give her a place.

And she is a woman; a political scheme based
on government by force, would leave her in idleness,

254POLITICAL INTERVENTION

which was horrible to her. And, on the other hand,
the more the government was based on pure thought
the more obvious would be her place in the scheme
of it, the more she would be able to place her intellect
and her moral idealism at the service of humanity.
That is why she has only one political idea, which
never changes, but sometimes disguises itself in
order to be acceptable to the men and circumstances
of the moment.

This idea only gave expression in a particular
form to the instincts and qualities of her nature.

She can go no further than herself.

Her political thought comes automatically to a
standstill as soon as her personality has fully declared
itself.

Then the only thing to be done is to put the same
idea in a different way, in a dozen different ways.
That is what she is actually doing.

There is great mention of writers and perfectibility
in this political pamphlet because they are really
united as the subject of a great work which she had
had in hand for some time.*

* We know by reference to Chénedollé that Madame de Staél was
working at a book on literature during the winter of 1798 (see Blenner-
hasset, Vol. II., page 388), and it is certain that she was busy with it
much earlier than that.

The manuscript of Des Circonstances was finished at the end of
August, 1799. That means that De la Littévature was begun before
Des Circonstances and finished later.

In other words, Madame de Staél interrupted her great work to snatch
a practical lesson from the times, like her contemporary writers.

This seems certain to us, and confirmed by our analysis of the political
work.

The permanent part of Des Circonstances is certainly derived from
the work on literature, for we must believe that, but for 18 fructidor,
the pamphlet would never have been written.

When M. Herriot wishes us to believe that this accidental manifesta-
tion of Madame de Staél’s mind is the second part of her book on the
Passions (see Section V. of his work), an opinion which is shared by
M. Viénot, we must indicate to M. Herriot that he is absolutely ignoring
the connection which exists between the pamphlet Des Circonstances
and the great work De la Littévature.

We should rather say that De la Littévature, the parent work, is the
second part he refers to. It is surely a misconception to affirm that

255MADAME DE STAEL

The political pamphlet has acquired an imposing
amplitude from the fact of being side by side with so
noble a neighbour. We must recognise this signifi-
cance of the political work without exaggerating it.
It is really a fragment which has strayed away from
her De la Littévature.

Madame de Staél was only developing in De la Littévature ideas which
she had expressed in the preceding year in the political pamphlet, and
to add that she “‘ left the wide field of politics to restrict herself to the
study of literature!!’’ If he had put that affirmation exactly the other
way round we could have admitted it as a true one.CHAPTER XIII

WINDING UP THE CRISIS. SECOND PHASE. HER
WORK ON LITERATURE

1799-1800

Tue Directoire was moribund; the nation was sunk
in inertia.

Royalists and Jacobins continued to abuse each
other with no result.

Nothing was substantiated of the dream-Republic
but the army.

To tell the truth, the Directoire was more than
moribund ; it was dead.

The new Directors who had been elected in 1799
were nobodies, who would gravely discuss their own
health with you, whilst all around them, in the midst
of festivities after the antique, grave Republicans
were making up their minds which of the generals
would be chosen to declare the farce played out ;
was it to be Joubert, Moreau, Bernadotte, or Bona-
parte.

The enfeebled nation bestowed dazzled admiration
on the army, and loudly demanded a military
dictatorship.

Lucien Bonaparte sent accurate reports of every-
thing that was going on to his brother in Egypt ;
for Lucien was an important member of the Five
Hundred.

Madame de Staél was also kept informed.

She was at Coppet, but Constant wrote the news to
her, and she made a descent on Paris in April, with a
view to obtaining more detailed information, but
she was again expelled in July.

' She finished her political pamphlet, Des Czrcon-

257MADAME DE STAEL

stances, in the following month. But, instead of
sending it to press, she reconsidered the matter and
postponed publication.

It is certain that she no longer feared the Directoire.
But she may have been afraid of prolonging its
existence.

As long as the Directoire was in existence, Benjamin
Constant could only deliver his orations at the Con-
stitutional Club.*

She had written in Des Circonstances :

‘“‘ Philosophy having been the principle underlying
the French Revolution, it is by mental power, and
not by the physical force of armies, that a successful
outcome will be achieved.”

And again:

“The generals, considered solely from the point of
view of military attainment, will have much less
influence upon the mental life of France than the
thinkers writing and speaking in their books and
in the tribunes.”’

‘“‘ Every encouragement must be given in France to
the ascendancy of sheer intellect, to fortify the princi-
ples which founded the French Revolution, and to
protect the nation from militarism, which, from
having been a means, may become an end in itself,
far from advantageous to man and deleterious to
manners, customs and laws.”

But she also wrote that : “‘ Bonaparte had revealed
his real bent by his anxiety to be received into the
Institute.”’

Bonaparte was not one of the generals who could
only be considered as a fighting man, for he was “ at
once the most intrepid warrior and the most far-
reaching thinker whom history had yet produced.”
She is thinking of him when she stipulates that there
shall be absolutely no age-limit (either up or down)
for the deputies of her new Constitution, not even
for the permanent body.

* See Note. Appendix C.

258WINDING OP TRHENCKISIS ~ 2nd PHASE

“The welcomers of new ideas and soldiers famous
for their exploits are generally young, and we must
not on that account deprive ourselves of their support
in civil administration. How much we should regret
having fixed an age-limit for immortal deeds when
Bonaparte appeared!”

e cannot mistake the tone here.

The Egyptian campaign had inflamed Madame
de Staél’s imagination and sense of romance, and
she forthwith enrolled him in the number of her
beelect:c

Consider this elegiac phrase in her Considérations :

“ He always headed his proclamations as follows :
Bonaparte, Commander-in-Chief and member of the
National Institute ; one would conclude from that
that he must be an ally of intellect and a protector
of the art of literature.”

How should she not conclude it when he had ordered
a copy of the Passions to be sent all the way to Egypt
to him ?*

In the month of November, Madame de Staél heard
that Bonaparte had just arrived in Paris.

She went off there with all speed.

On the 18 brumaive, while the future Consul and
Emperor was deliberating at the Tuileries, she came
across some postillions and ostlers at the gate of Paris
whom she questioned eagerly.

They told her that the Director Barras had just
passed under a military escort. He was going back
to his country place at Grosbois.

On every mouth she heard the hero’s name. The
name of one man again, instead of the name of an
assembly.

The next day the Cing Cents and the Anciens
met at Saint-Cloud. It was the decisive moment.

Madame de Staél did not leave Paris, but from
hour to hour, Constant (who was posted as observer
at Saint-Cloud) sent her word how things were going.

* See Gautier: Madame de Staél et Napoléon : page I3.

259MADAME DE STAEL

There is no reason to doubt what they were both
wishing for.

““Once he sent mz word that the Jacobins were
carrying the day, and I prepared to leave France
once more.”’

But the very next messenger sent her into the
highest transport of joy. Bonaparte had triumphed.
All roads were, therefore, thrown open to real ability.
It was the victory of the decent-minded.

“There is no doubt that all high-minded people
feared a victory for the Jacobins, and wished Bona-
parte to triumph.”

That was the truth.

Her addition of—“ My own feelings, I must admit,
were very mixed,” is retrospective wisdom.”

The spectacle of the deputies clambering out of the
palace windows to escape the police, still clad in
the senatorial togas, delighted Constant so much
that he made a point of describing it to his friend,
Madame de Staél, who cherished the memory of
it long afterwards.

A commission of fifty members of the two dis-
membered chambers (amongst whom were some
of those who ran away at Saint Cloud) discussed the
scheme for the new constitution under the Master’s
eye.

Every evening the friends of liberty met each
other at Madame de Staél’s and would comment on
these sittings and discuss the points over which they
had taken alarm.

They expected Bonaparte to request the oracle
Sieyés to expound his scheme of constitution which
had long been in the clouds.

Nothing of the kind happened.

Bonaparte only availed himself of a right which
he judged opportune: the right of dispensing with
a formal appeal to the people.

Madame de Staél did not intervene until later,

* See Note. Appendix C,

260en

WINDING UP THE CRISIS; 2nd PHASE

when she presented Constant to the Master, who,
upon representations from his brother Joseph, in-
spired by Madame de Staél, accorded the distinguished
pamphleteer a place on the Tribunat.

In private life Bonaparte was ready to discuss
any and every subject, but in public he never saw
the necessity of thumping out a loud prelude to actions
which he considered indispensable.

From the very beginning of his career he threw
overboard Madame de Staél’s cherished scheme of
government by means of eloquence and reason.
The Tribunat, who were more or less won over to
Bonaparte’s way of thinking, still had not quite
grasped the passivity of the réle he assigned to them.

According to the Consul himself, “there were a
good dozen or dozen and half metaphysicians among
them who were only fit to be drowned.”

Naturally, these were Madame de Staél’s chief
friends, her intimates, the men she regarded as the
nucleus of the future “ elect.”

But Bonaparte naturally only regarded them as
the nucleus of a possibly dangerous opposition, and
he told Madame de Staél, through the medium of
his brother Joseph, that he would prefer to see her
more openly attached to his government, and also
that he was quite disposed to order that M. Necker
Should be repaid the sum which he had lent to the
nation in earlier days.

That was a blunder.

She put on all the armour of the great lady and
replied that it was a question of her convictions not
of her desires.

But it was a question of what she wanted. She
wanted to attach Bonaparte to herself in some
fashion or other, nothing less than that.

That is why she attacked him, seeing no other
way of getting at him at all.

After consultation with his Fgeria, Constant

201 S

  

aNMADAME DE STAEL

sounded the charge by a sarcastic speech in the
Tribunat, which aimed at condemning the precipitation
with which the new legislation was being rushed
through.

Three days later the young orator’s brilliant start
was to have been celebrated at a large reception at
Madame de Staél’s.

The only arrivals were notes of excuse.

On the 1oth the disappointed hostess was quite
out of countenance.

The newspapers made her see how matters stood.
Bonaparte would not yield.

On the contrary, his retort was merciless, letting
loose on the mischief-makers all the fury of both
Royalists and Jacobins which was always ready to
fall upon Madame de Staél. Bonaparte wound up
both parties impartially. They were done with.

The journal called Le Peuple recommended Madame
de Staél to start for Switzerland, and advised Constant
to apply for election to the Swiss Senate. While
the Royalist organ, L’Ange Gabriel, revelled in ex-
posing the artless intentions which lay at the back
of her defiance of the Consul.

“ Benjamin shall be Consul; I shall give the
Finance to Papa; my uncle shall have the Lord
Chief-Justiceship, and I will be General Inspector
of Everything and Everybody, and I shall certainly
lord it over the Institute.”

This was not all. Fouché, the Minister of Police,
requested her attendance at his office.

But, after the wounding insults of the Press, this
interview was quite consolatory.

Fouché did, indeed, let her know that Bonaparte
was perfectly aware who had inspired the defiance
of Constant, but, he added soothingly, that all was
not lost; it was only a question of another little
penitent sojourn in the country, and then everything
would come right again.

262WINDING URY THE CRISIS: 2nd (PHASE

She went away to Saint-Ouen and busied herself
with giving the finishing touches to the manuscript
of De la Littévature, which she counted on, to re-
habilitate her in the eyes of the public and of
Bonaparte, whom she did not despair of softening.
She did not despair of compelling him to be edified
by her labours and personality.

Thus passed the spring of 1800, given up to a mix-
ture of disquietude and hope.

De la Littévature appeared in April.*

DE LA LITTERATURE

In order to arrive at a complete and truthful con-
ception of Madame de Staél from reading her Passions,
it will not suffice to reduce the fluidity and variation
of her life to their several elements.

All the elements are to be found there.

But the proportions are slightly altered by the
weight of circumstance; the pose of the experienced
woman is a little too well carried out and maintained
not to do injury to the real woman’s nobility of soul.
Before the tribunal of her own mind she always
added her optimism to the other qualities.

But, after having analysed her attacks of nerves
and depression, in order to get rid of them, she was
counting on summing up in a complementary work
the opposite condition of mind which always existed
in her as well as the emotional one, and which, in a
way, maintained the equilibrium of her being from
day to day.

However, the public had been obliged to wait so
long for the promised second part of the Passions
that, when it did appear, it was not recognised. It

*In Dix Années del’ Exile, Chap. III., page 213, Madame de Staél
Says “‘ towards spring-time in 1800.’’ A letter of Madame de Staél
to Fauriel, quoted by Sainte-Beuve (Portrait Contemporains, Vol. II.,
p. 486) proves that the book was printed at latest in April. But there
is nothing to prove that it did not appear in March. Moreover, Madame
de Staél returned to Paris at the beginning of February, before the

publication of De la Littérature. Dix Années d’Exile, ed, Gautier, page
13, Note 1.

263MADAME DE STAEL

is even to be doubted whether the author realized
exactly what she was producing when she wrote De
la Littérature.

Circumstances had changed the form which she
intended for the second part of the Passions. In
that work, as an exception contrary to her habit,
she had forsaken thought for action, which was a
practical method of giving the lie to anything which
seems like exaggeration in the subject matter of the
Passions.

But she really had not any formulated plan for
the second part.

She longed, as she had longed in 1796, for one
thing only ; and that was to succeed in giving the
fullest expression to herself.

But that was not a plan, it was an instinct, about
which she could not easily take the public into her
confidence.

It is still the same old question of happiness.

But in De la Littérature it is not a question of the
negative happiness to be found in resignation and
sacrifice, but of the positive happiness which comes
through hopefulness and intelligent action.

When we have fitted the two pieces of the puzzle
together we shall know the whole of Madame de
Staél’s complex being.

The basic subject matter, which she formerly laid
down for the second part, has not been changed.

But its form has been determined by circumstances,
or, to put it more precisely, by political circum-
stances.

The battle-field and the weapons had gradually been
altered.

During the lull of the Directoire the combatants had
time to recognise each other.

Those who had suffered most from the Revolution,
tracing influences back from persons to ideas, hotly
derided the attitude of mind which had led to the

264WINDING UP THE GRISTS 5 2nd PHASE

violent dissolution of established law and order, the
attitude which had characterised the whole of the
Eighteenth Century in France, and especially the
latter half of it.

There was no doubt what the new distribution of
forces would be like.

The philosophers were in the minority, a mere
handful of survivors from the preceding century,
obstinate idealists who still counted on their ability
to weld the future with the past, by simply amputating
the whole revolutionary period from the body of
history.*

In the opposite camp were now to be found not only |
the nation and the Royalists, re-converted to Catho-
licism, but also a new species of philosopher and
thinker who employed the methods of reason to prove
that reason has no supreme authority.

Thus the Considérations sur la Révolution Francaise
by Joseph de Maistre (whom Madame de Staél had
met in Switzerland) and the Théorie du Pouvoir
Politique et Religieuse by Bonald appeared together in
1796, just at the time when the young Chateaubriand
was scribbling the manuscript of his Essai sur les
Révolutions, in London, which gave the world to
understand, when the first volume appeared in the
following year, that Republicans no longer had the
monopoly of thought.

Politics were again being dealt with in philosophical
forms.

The old guard of the philosophers, driven to the
defensive, dropped their schemes for a Republican
constitution and entrenched themselves in their last
ditch.

The various works published on the subject crossed
each other’s paths.

In 1793, Political Justice, by Godwin, the
Rousseauist, arrived from England.

In 1795, Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un Tableau His-

* See Note. Appendix C. t See Note. Appendix C.

265eae

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MADAME DE STAEL

tovique des Progrés de VV? Esprit Humain, was scattered
broadcast over France.

There was clearly suggestion in the atmosphere, and
by that we mean the political atmosphere of the
Directoire interlude, nor do we mean anything
stronger than suggestion.

Although it is called philosophy, the discussion has
not ceased to be bound to its political origin.

The tone and method of politics had been changed,
but they still dominated all minds, all considerations.

That is how Madame de Staél viewed her problem.

That is why she took this mission in high politics
upon herself. She was looking forward to the actions
which must arise out of these circumstances.

But that is not all.

By a happy coincidence the abstract synthesis
corresponds in every point with her personal emotion.

Her first gesture as a writer had been that of an
insurgent against the retrogression of Rousseau’s
thought ; and this gesture simply gave authorisation
to her own instincts.

Ever since, in all her works, the Passions included,
she had never ceased to affirm her belief in human
perfectibility, not as a system of philosophy certainly,
but as daily and necessary inspiration in life.

Her need of political action was descended directly
from this.

We may believe that Madame de Staél showed little
hesitation in embarking on her task.

The atmosphere sharpened her zest in it and actually
seemed to invite her to follow up her first part with a
second.

Also she had no need of Condorcet to point out the
way.

How and why did she feel the perfectibility ot
herself ?

Because of her intelligence and because her intelli-
gence loathed inertia.

266WINDING UP THE CRISIS: 2nd PHASE i
How did she develop her intelligence ? |

Through literature.

Whether she read or wrote she was always aware of \. F
making progress. Yee

In the first place the progress was a reality. (8

And secondly the agent of progress was literature. gs
Had she not stated this in the Essay on Fiction P ae

She affirmed it again in the most unmistakable is
manner in the Passions.

She reiterated it towards the end of her life in the
Second Preface to Letives sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau. a

“In the development and perfecting of one’s mind i
there is never-ceasing activity and hope which 1 i.
unendingly born again. The course of every day life i"
offers nothing in the least resembling it. The down-
ward slope begins too soon for women except as
regards the mind; for it is in the mind’s immortal
nature always to be on the up-grade.”

For Madame de Staél then progress and literature
are one and the same thing, and indissoluble.

You could not write on the one without thinking ot
the other.

The aim of the book is to promote political action.

The case for useful action is the perfectibility of
human nature.

In order to bring out this perfectibility which
produces, and is produced by progress, the best subject
to treat of, is literature, which may alternatively be
called reason or philosophy, or more comprehensively
we may call them all the Light-Bringers.

Any evidence that may be needed must be drawn
from history, and since it is a question of the pertecti-
bility of humanity, from the history of humanity.

It is thus and thus that in the soul of Madame de
Staél, the year of grace 1800, confronts the eternal
verities.

In this work on Literature of 675 pages, “ we are

267MADAME DE STAEL
going to make a survey of the history of the human

mind from the time of Homer up to the year, 1789.”

A

 
  
 
  
  
   
 
  
  
  
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
 
  
 
   

,\ ( Bonaparte is not named in De la Litiévature, but
i \there is far more concern with him in this work ‘than
jthere i is in Des Circonstances, where his name actually
Py ‘appears three times.
| In De la Litiérature_we find a perfect hail-storm of
veiled allusions to him; cajolery alternating with
3 threats, beneath which it is not difficult to discern an
i | offer of collaboration coming froma woman.
‘i Now, she says that any nation must crumble to dust
Hae te when it is composed entirely of admirers of one person ;
N Yeh now, that it is not true that a single star shines more
brightly than a star surrounded by a galaxy of bright
Stars.
wa She recommends that “ the careers of arms, legis-
| lation and philosophy should be welded into one.”
i | Force cannot stand alone.

“If the force of arms reigned alone in a state,
disdaining letters and philosophy, the Light Bringers
would be as much degraded as if they were mere
upstarts in the national scheme of things ; we may be
certain that they would soon be represented by a few
persons of mean attainment commissioned to advertise
the advantages of force, men who would call them-
selves thinkers, in order that they might prostitute
the privileges of mind.”

Philosophers, thinks Madame de Staél, should
inspire not only “‘ respect,” but “ fear,”’ for “‘ generous
eloquence” makes all unjust authority tremble ; just

“philosophy puts a check on the unreasonable
growth of a military spirit,’ and renders it unworthy
of the human race “‘to govern the human race
arbitrarily, despotically and scornfully.”

sti) And here, still vibrating, is the echo of that last
vi te rash effort in the Tvibunat :
| “If words are not eloquent instruction to the

2608> ae aa “ = Ss sess —
” SPhascpies S PORE in Page i rae tt anny ea Pe :

       
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   

WINDING UP Hie ORISIS 2nd PHASE

motives of action, if actions are not consecrated to
the sacred truth of words, memory will only keep an 2
isolated record of words and actions. . B

“The warrior without intellectual enlightenment, ( ’
or the orator who is a coward, cannot take possession ,
of one’s imagination. There remain emotions in one’s ei
being, over which he has no power ; and ideas which ye
retain full power to sit in judgment over him. :

“One faculty which is out of proportion with all the
others seems a peculiarity in nature, while the friendly
re-union of all faculties tranquillizes the mind and
attracts affection. | Hi

‘The moral being of a great man should present
just such an organisation of his faculties, just in this
manner, should they balance one another and com-
pensate for one another, for in characters, as in
government, this sense of balance will alone give a
feeling of repose and stability.”

If we abstract Bonaparte from the scheme of things
these words must mean that the only condition con-
ducive of perfection by means of the Light-Bringers
is absolute liberty.

Without this liberty there will be no government by
the “ elect,’ and without the “‘ elect ” there will be no
enlightenment.

So we find Madame de Staél attacking history, armed
with two immovable convictions with which she is

prepared to fight her way to her end: the first is that

human nature canbe perfected ; the second, that
human nature has never been so near perfection as at
those periods when it has enjoyed political liberty.

We shall see that it will fare ill with facts that are
not in accordance with this double theory.

We are soon told that Roman literature takes a
higher place than Greek, first “‘ because of the national
spirit and patriotic devotion of the Latin people,”
and, secondly, because Roman literature is the more

modern in time.

269MADAME DE STAEL

“The Roman character at its most admirable was
only displayed during the Republic.

“Tf modern Italian literature is not worth much,
it is because the country has been deprived of all
national ideals and political liberty.

“ But if political liberty were declared in Italy, it is
beyond all doubt that the men who already give
evidence of possessing distinguished talents would
carry them very much further.”

We find the same note in connection with Spain :—

“‘ It is in Spanish nature to unite the imagination of
the North with the imagination of the South, all the
grandeur of Chivalry with all the grandeur of the
Onenti =). but >.) monarchy 2... has! stiledarhe
germs of every species of glory.”

Inversely she demonstrates that the great literature
of the North has blossomed to its full florescence under
the zgis of liberty.

Armed with two theories, instead of one, Madame
de Staél, instead of being embarrassed thereby, finds
herself all the better equipped for manceuvring ; and
she does manceuvre with a skill which must have
commanded the admiration of the great tactician
whom she was criticising.

If it is sometimes difficult to find evidence of the
great truth “ which surges up from the abyss of facts
and centuries,” she makes us understand, that it is
because, for the time being, liberty was lacking, that
intellectual forces did not bring progress.

Granted liberty, human progress was simply a
matter of arithmetical progression.

Menander and _Theophrastus “ have the advantage
of a century” over Aristophanes.

~ Modern philosophy has that superiority over Roman
philosophy which one would expect from the mind of
man, who has had two thousand years additional time
for reflection.

“Aristotle lived in the third Greek century and,

270WINDING UP DBHE ORISIS ; (2nd PHASE

consequently, in a century superior to the two preceding
ones in thought.”

Inevitably also, “The century_of Lonis XIV., the
most remarkable of all in literature, is very inferior to
the following one in philosophy.”

We can see clearly that Madame de Staél’s political
mind is unchanged since 1799, except that she is now
on the defensive.

Whosoever shall say Liberty, does thereby imply
Republic.

And if this work, De la Littérature, proves that
France is perfectible, in spite of the French Revolution,
then one would naturally wish to put the matter of
perfecting France into the hands of those who believe
in its perfectibility, the only hands which can bring
the matter to a good end.

Liberty alone will not suffice.

Give liberty without the Light-Bringers and the
only result will be, that everything will descend to the
level of the meanest attainments in the land.

Whosoever shall call for a Republic, calls for an
honoured and responsible body of the elect, as the
final tribunal in the affairs of the nation.

This is the embodiment of the dream of the author of
Corinne ; with the help of liberty and literature, she
will create round herself an ever-widening, ever more
intelligent public, and she will be enthroned in this
France risen new-born from ashes, surrounded by the
members of her élite, just as though she were queening
it in some vast salon.

THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH

We shall be surprised at the sudden appearance in
this book, where literature seems quietly subordinated
to a political idea, of a theory which is really literary,
or rather it is an enormous and powerful synthesis by

271MADAME DE STAEL

which the literature of Europe is classed according to
geographical position in one or other of two main
divisions: the North and the South.

Evidently there is no lack of ideas in this work.

This, at any rate, is an arresting one.

Whence comes this idea? We do not find it in the
Essai sur les Fictions.

There is nothing in Madame de Staél’s literary past
which indicates special interest in literary systems.
Where did she get the idea ? Or, how did she come to
invent it?

We must notice which are the outstanding features
of the system.

What separates modern times from antiquity ?

Not Time but Christianity.

The coming of this new religion, so utterly different
to anything which went before, was the capital fact in
the history of European nations ; it was the peg from
which all their evolution was unwound, and all the
evolution of modern morality.

Now we find that this difference between two
epochs is reproduced and perpetuated to a lesser, but
quite recognisable degree, between the nations which
derive directly from Christianity, those of the North,
and those of Latin origin which keep much of their
Pagan culture under super-imposed Christianity.

This great historical division made by Christianity,
is then confirmed and carried on by geographical
considerations.

Germanic or Northern literature has very different
qualities from Latin or Southern literature.

The master-mind of the literature of antiquity was
Homer : Ossian commands the legions of the North.

Madame de Staél honestly admits her preference for
the latter.

Chateaubriand was much shocked by Madame de
Staél’s idea of linking perfectibility with Christianity.

But she had no difficulty in reconciling the two.

272WINDING WP HE IRISIS = 2nd PHASE

She did not see it as a question of dogma, but
considered the moral results of Christianity as historical
phenomena.

Christianity had created a faculty in modern man
which hardly existed in the Pagan soul, that of intro-
spection, otherwise called Conscience.

Far from being an obstacle to the development of
the philosophical spirit, it added much to that spirit,
developed and defined it ; for what areintrospection and
reflection, but two aspects of the same phenomenon ?

Christianity has given added sensibility to thought.
Moderns use their souls when they think.

After that we are not surprised when we are told
that Northern nations are more Christian than those
of the South, because they profess Protestantism.

~ And, moreover, the potency of Christianity to
bestow new gifts on life, comes from the fact that it
raised the status of women.

Modern society comes direct from the emancipation
of women.

Women live in, on and by emotion. They excel in
the art of fiction, which was unknown to the ancients,
and is essentially modern.

We begin to understand her point of view.

Whoever speaks of introspection implies melancholy.

Introspection, melancholy, sensibility and the spirit
of reflection are all different aspects of the same thing
and may be called quite impartially either Christianity
or philosophy.

It is Christian and modern to find a cause of torment
in one’s own soul and to dig into the cause of one’s
SOrrow.

Thought contributes an important quota to this
state of mind.

Without thought there could be no self-examination.

This modern art has two faces, one grave and
philosophical, the other distraught with passion, or
bowed down with heavy anguish.

273MADAME DE STAEL

Which are the really elect souls on the face of the

earth ?

Those which are ‘“‘ exalted and melancholy.”

A Those which tire quickly of “the finite and the
A{ fleeting,” those which have experienced “‘ all generous
passions.”

: These are the souls which feel ‘‘ that the great deeds
of man owe their existence to his painful sense of the
incompleteness of his destiny.”

The brilliant sunlight, crystal streams and vivid
grass of the South suggests nothing to such souls as
these.

They turn naturally to nature, which is in unison

with their souls, to a landscape which suggests the

1 tragedy of their own lives, to the “ dark and rugged
North.”

The ‘“‘ Northern imagination” is the imagination
which inspires itself in the grandeur of the sea-shore,
in the roar of winds and-in the desolate bleakness of a
lonely heath; it is, in fact, the imagination which
carries the wearied soul onward towards the future,
towards another world, where its quality will be
recognised.

The Northern imagination flies beyond this world,
away through the mists which lie on the northerly
horizons and represent to those souls their difficult
passage from life to eternity.

Thus climate confirms the work of Christianity.

The joyous sunny South encourages gaiety, an

unthinking and child-like Paganism; the cold mists
| of the North drive man in upon himself in order that

he may know himself and suffer.

Although we may not be able to see how Madame
de Staél built up the frame-work of her system, we
instantly recognise the elements of which it is com-
posed from our knowledge of her.

\) This modern literature, that she speaks of, made up
of sensitiveness and introspection, slightly supported

274

4Ba OM en Mg on a
b 4 ee 2 ; . ie ag

   

 

WINDING UP LHE CRISIS; 2nd PHASE

by Christianity, from which all dogma has been
removed, with a dash of rationalistic philosophy and a
dash of feminism, is just what we should have expected
Madame de Staél to imagine or invent.

With her it is a question of creating a new literature.
And she does not at all wish it to be compromised by
association with political ideas which are already out
of date.

But otherwise she is quite unfettered and is, perhaps,
embarrassed by the absolute freedom before her to
take any direction she pleases.

She, therefore, defines the new literature just as she
would like it best, drawing some inspiration from all
the pre-romantic stuff which she devoured in her
stormy youth, which has continued to satisfy her
sensibilities without filling the capacity of her mind.

She only makes one stipulation, and that is that
Republican literature is to be philosophical as well as
emotional and for the rest she relies on the mode.

The mode was for Ossianism.

Ossian, whose fame was obscured for a short timg
by the cloud of the Revolution, was the first Consul’¢
favourite poet.

Quite independently of Madame de Staél’s influence,|
this Celt was in a fair way to be recognised as the!
official bard of New France.

Writers of every branch of literature, except a small
rear-guard of Voltaireans, had fallen under his influ- |
ence; neither poet, novelist nor playwright had
escaped it.

Madame de Staél accepts the fact quite simply.

Ossian had the advantage of being more a vague
legend than anything else. Madame de Staél did not
even try to pluck him out of the Northern mists
which enveloped him and defied analysis.

The vaguer he was, the more suggestive he became,
the less opposition he offered to any imagination
which: only wanted to use him as the starting-point

2795

ag

eeeMADAME DE STAEL

po ae for long wanderings in any regions to which it was

 
   
   
    
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

| drawn.
me bt / There is nothing to prevent anyone from taking
mm) it Ossian as an essentially Christian poet.

| Why not also make him something of a philosopher ?
| As for the forms that he uses they are the loosest
|that could be conceived of, and, therefore, satisty
\Madame de Staél’s one condition for form; that it
Ishall not create an obstacle for full communion of
lsouls.
The wild setting of his works, the winds, the mists,
fal the moss-grown rocks, seem to Madame de Staél to
HAS realise just that harmony between nature and man
| which she, with a good number of her contemporaries,
had approved, as a component element in emotional
4 alt.

The clash between modern and classical art is
inherent in such a general thesis as hers, and if,
knowing how thorny a way is to be trodden here,
she took care not to affirm that literature is perfectible,
she is not the less vehement in her defence of the rights
and the superiority of modern literature.

This attitude is an instinctive one in her case.

It was the only one possible to her.

It is an integral part of a system which seemed
inevitable to her and for the adoption of which she
can hardly have consulted literary history.

It is more likely that she appropriated the idea of
ranging the legions of antiquity under Homer and
those of the modes under Ossian, from the Scotsman,
Blair.*

For the rest, once she had adopted the notion of this
rivalry between epochs, it was natural that her mind
should continue it in the idea of the moral intervention
which must be the result of the establishment of
Christianity.

‘) The originality of Madame de Staél’s system is not in
any one of these ideas, but rather in the mixing, or

* See Van Tieghem, Vol. I., page 225.

270WAIN DING OP” RHE TOCRISIS ” 2nd (PHASE

super-imposing one upon the other, of a number of
ideas which had formerly been independent of one
another.

We can see this in this last aspect of, the question of
North and South.

Since the Seventeenth Century the barbarism of the
North had been the accepted foil, in the manuals of
aesthetes and men of learning, for the elegant and
classical culture of the Latin races, especially of France.

The Anglomania of the Eighteenth Century took the
sting out of this notion, but did not destroy it entirely.
Towards 1760, the North and the South were still
held up as rivals to each other, but it was beginning to
be admitted that the Northern races might possess a
culture of their own which differed from that of the
South, as their characters certainly differed.

Madame de Staél, anticipating a little, imagines for
them the possession of that new art and literature,
which the New France was in search of.

Taking a very small thread of history (the invasion
of the barbarians) to help her, she binds the literary
and historical rivalries together.

This connection is less suggested by facts than
commanded by a keen desire for intellectual symmetry.

This same desire for symmetry makes it necessary
that the whole scaffolding of this literary system shall
contribute to the support of the central thesis.

Thus, the geographical theory with all its subordinate
ideas, the religious theory and all the ideas derived
from it are finally ranged in Madame de Staél’s mind
behind the thesis of the perfectibility of human
nature, although previously all these theories were
merged one into the other, forming a compound, which
also established the perfectibility of humanity.

Looked at fairly, this is not merely the manoeuvring
of a mind bent on clarity and true proportions.

It is not through any caprice that unity runs
throughout the whole.

277 iMADAME DE STAEL

This unity may not have existed in history, in the
facts, and critics of De la Litiérature would have a fine
opportunity of demonstrating that Ossian, discovered
at the end of the Eighteenth Century, could not
preside over an evolution in literature, which had
been accomplished without him.

But history, considered as a series of dates, or a
sequence of events, is non-existent for Madame de
Staél.

It is a repertory of facts trom which certain ideas
and certain logical conclusions related to the facts are
disengaged.

But then, neither has logic the last word.

It is not logic to give readers to understand that
Ossian had philosophical tendencies or sympathies ;
neither is a strong desire that he were a modern to be
called logical.

The unity to which everything in this work refers
back, to which even the rights of intelligence give way,
is that of the personality of Madame de Staél.

Let us reduce her system to its origin, which is a
personality | Make it a man or a woman.

How is this man or this woman composed ?

In the first place it is an original personality, and it
is Nordic, at any rate, it is in some way related to the
North ; its native heath, so to speak, is not in France ;
‘t unites acute sensitiveness with very fine mental
abilities, but they are united in such a fashion that the
two elements become one element by inter-penetration,
and we get an emotional intelligence or an intellectual
soul; they are one and the same phenomenon, and
its range of comprehension 1s absolutely unrestricted 5
this ambiguous instrument is equally comprehensive of
art, religion, or the exercises of pure intellect.

And, little by little, we are simply compelled to
adopt the opinion that the personality is that of a
woman, for, side by side, with the other theses, or
underneath them, there runs the current of a rather

278WAN DING OP THEORISTS Ss” 2nd “PHASE

special thesis, a feminist one, which strange to say, is
able to be positive and negative in the same breath,
and while insisting on the rights and merits of Woman,
it warns Women that the career of literature is very
ill-adapted to their sex.

Can we reconcile all this with logic ?

Or can we even see the necessity that all these
notions should be forced into the same volume ?

It is not possible.

After having explained the system we must begin to
make allowance for its incoherences.

There is only one name, one explanation, one unity,
which covers it all.

Madame de Staél herself.

This subjectivity of hers is at once imperious and
docile.

The atmosphere about it makes it pliant, and the
element of strife in the subject stimulates it.

Madame de Staél is not the scared and solitary
spider, producing its web entirely from its own
substance, which is Taine’s idea of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau.

It is true that she is only receptive of matter from
outside, which is of the same genus as matter which is
already within her.

But that she will receive without repugnance and
without stint.

Once having granted this, there is no outside
influence which we can afford to neglect, for we may
be certain that there was no wave in the sea of con-
temporary life which buffeted her without some
response on her part.

She had obviously read Charles de Villiers’ article
in the Spectateur du Nord, of October, 1799, which
brought the merits of German literature before the
French public.*

* Spectateur du Nord, 1799, Vol. III., pages 324-335. See also on
Charles de Villiers, Isler M., Briefe aus des Nachlass von Charles de

279MADAME DE STAEL

And, speaking generally, it was always thus, that
she supported her literary theory, somewhat perilously
between the most recent and fleeting actuality and the
abiding permanence of her soul.

Only one of those points of support had any solidity.

This is why her scheme is at once bold and feeble,
original and commonplace, significant and puerile.

DETAIL OF THE LITERARY THEORY: THE SOUTH

| The first accident which is bound to happen to the
reader of De la Liitérature is that he loses his sense ot
\Time.
| For Madame de Staél, Time consists of two epochs:
|Antiquity and Modernity. And for her they have
‘nothing to do with chronology ; their significance is
jentirely a moral one.
| Thus, she feels that if the English poet Thomson, is a
modern, Shakespeare is no less so, and Petrarch, in
spite of having been born in a modern country, is not
modern.
| From the way Madame de Staél speaks of them, one
would almost believe that Waller, Cowley, Doune,
Chaucer, Pope, Spenser, Butler and Gay were all
contemporaries of one another.

It is a simple idea which links them ; in her eyes
they all have the same fault.

Little by little, under her guidance, we forget
Antiquity altogether ; it fades away.

The history of literature is now represented by a
flat canvas, which has surface, but no depth, and on
this she ranges the opposing forces as if it were a chess-

board.

Villiers, Hamburg, 1879. Also Witmer L., Charles de Villiers, un
Intermédiare entre la France et l’ Allemagne et un précurseur de Madame
de Staé!, 1908.

The Spectateur du Nord, in 1800, says: ‘We can trace the substance
of M. Charles de Villier’s article to this journal in all that Madame de
Staél says on German literature.” For Madame de Staél’s knowledge
of German literature before 1800, see Sorel. Madame de Staél et la
Cour littéraire de Weimar, page 13; and d’Haussonville, Revue des
deux Mondes, 1 Dec., 1913, p. 552.

280WAN DING UP REE WORISTS 21d (PHASE

There are only two camps, the North and the
South ; and Antiquity is thrown in with the latter.

This injustice is involuntary, but symptomatic, and
makes it easy to predict the issue of this unequal
struggle.

Taking infinite pains (a great indication of the
enthusiasm with which she attacked her task), this
modern woman devotes no less than seven chapters,
in which, after a great demonstration of impartiality
and indulgence, she submits Antiquity of the dic-
tionaries to mitigated condemnation.

For her Antiquity is only the childhood of Man.

In poetry the Greeks had the luck to be the first-
comers. They were the first to imitate nature and to
give animated descriptions of exterior objects.

But in all that we find neither reflection, sensibility,
knowledge of the depths of passions, no hint of
melancholy, according to Madame de Staél.

Her observations on Greek literature are drawn out
to some length, however, and for once in a way she
follows a rigorous chronological order in her commen-
tary, for she is bent on maintaining that there were
stages in this dawn of thought ; and the existence of
Homer does not prevent her from making this
affirmation most tranquilly.

Roman literature, later in time than Greek, and
blossoming most fully in the days of the Republic
(also much esteemed in France, under the Directoire)
is more tenderly handled by Madame de Staél.

But that is a mere question of fine shades.

The central thesis remains intact: the literature
of Antiquity is the work of children, charming and
amiable children it is true, but as such, it cannot
escape having the defects of its qualities.*

 

* According to Madame de Staél, mythology is puerile. She does
not seem able to make any distinction between the nurse’s tales, which
seemed ridiculous to her childish precocity, and the real poetry of
mythology. It is a pity that, after having abused mythology in her
Essai suy les Fictions, she does not tell us her whole opinion of it in
De la Littévature,

281MADAME DE STAEL

 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
   
   
 
 
 
   

She slips a few rapid and acute observations on
Italian and Spanish literature between her chapters on
modern literature.

She couples them together for the excellent reason
that, as yet, she knows very little of the first, and
nothing at all of the second. It is only a very slender
chapter, padded out with declamation.

Spaniards have suffered much political misfortune,
one cannot expect much of them.

Their characters contain “ courageous dignity and
acute sensibility.”

Calderon and Lopez give evidence of high feeling.

Above all, Spaniards know how to love neither
tamely nor with superfluous subtlety, which Madame
de Staél considers the right way to love.

But for the Italians she can find no excuse.

If she had, we should have been able to decide what we really think
about Madame de Staél, especially about Madame de Staél as an artist.

Because she is so ill-disposed to mythology some serious critics have
decided that she was incapable of feeling or understanding poetry.

The conclusion is justified, at any rate for the first period of her
development when her mind was still stiff and arrogant.

And there is no doubt that Madame de Staél never fully appreciated
the use of the image.

Thanks to Chateaubriand she came to tolerate it, and vaguely to feel
its beauty, but she never used it herself and for a good reason. Never-
theless, if the conclusion that she had no response to poetry is based on
the fact of her aversion to mythology, we must point out that Chateau-
briand also passed a theoretic sentence of condemnation on mythology,
and he was never accused of being unresponsive to poetry.

We may suspect that, in Madame de Staél’s case, the opinion was
already formed, and that there was no need to discover that she despised
mythology in order to find out that she was no poet. The fact is, that
in the year 1800, or thereabouts, in a very delicate

mythology was 1n a ve }
Se eee DOE were not yet discovered, but both Bertin
and Parny ha Thivec<n =i

Madame de Staél was quite justified when she formed the opinion
(before Chateaubriand) that the use of Pagan mythology is suspect as a
subject for poetry in Christian countries.

But it is not so much the shock to commonsense which brings Madame
de Staél and Chateaubriand for once into agreement, as their mutually-
felt aversion to libertine poetry. ae

If mythology was looked at askance by serious critics at the beginning
of that century it is because it had been debased for the amusement of
the Salons.

We should do well not to forget this.

Above all, when weighing the opinions of Madame de Staél, we must
never neglect to consider them in the light of contemporary events,

282WINDING UP THE CRISIS] 2nd PHASE

These descendants of the Romans carry their
decadence to the point of laughing at their own
abasement.

‘When we find the successors of the Romans,
although barren of national peace and political
liberty, yet able to comport themselves as some of the
happiest people on earth, we must have a low opinion
of their natural faculties.”

That is what you get from Madame de Staél, when
you have allowed yourself to be beaten by Bonaparte !

She gives a very bad impression of the Italian
character: She says: ‘“‘ They are vindictive, but
nevertheless servile. They are the slaves of women,
but nevertheless know nothing of deep and lasting
sex-emotions. They are miserably superstitious in
the practice of Catholicism, but they do not believe in
the least in the indissoluble alliance between religion
and morality.”

She explains it thus:

“This alteration in the Roman character is due to
religious tyranny and bad government and also to the
burning sun. The same sun burned down upon the
ancient Romans, but his might is no longer combated
‘with the energy of political passions.”

Italian literature has a quality of “ poetic invention”
which is due to the influence of the Arabs. But this
quality is badly compromised by a tendency tO
affectation and preciousness.”’

Those who afford examples of this vice are Ariosto,
Petrarch, Boccacio (who is also immoral) and various
others.

She hardly touches on Dante.

She discerns much sensibility in Tasso; for she
feels his influence in La Nouvelle Héloise, which seems
to modernise him for her and make him sympathetic.

But all this literature is in the same case as Greek
literature.

It only exists to be beautiful.

283MADAME DE STAEL

The very sonority of the Italian language “‘ which
acts as a musical instrument,” is a fault, because “‘ it
lulls the intellect into a dreamy lassitude.”’

Ossian’s music also causes lassitude, but of another
description, “it is the dreaminess produced by
listening too long to the notes of an zolian harp.”

The Italians have no more knowledge of melancholy
than the Greeks.

‘““ Their sensibility is not serious, their grandeur is
not imposing, their sadness is not sombre.”

If Italians do sometimes appear sorrowful, it is
because jhey are struck suddenly by the fugitive nature
of the joys of this life, which are so precious to them.

They have no conception of that other melancholy,
‘“ which is born of a yearning of the soul,” which is the
consequence of the emptiness that the soul discovers
in this life, of the reverie which holds perpetual empire
over the mind, with its incessant disquietude over
weariness of life and ignorance of what death may
hold.”

We can easily see that the judgment is the same
whether she is considering Southern Italy, or the
Greece of Antiquity. Only the examples change.

And it is purely negative judgment.

The weakness which Madame de Staél is imagining
into this literature, which she knows nothing about, is
to serve as a foil to the energy of the Northern litera-
ture which she is going to discuss later.

Take notice, by the way, that France does not
appear in the discussion of the literature of the South,
although she has counted France in with the Southern
nations, because of the period of Louis XIV.

It is curious to observe that she relegates the
chapters on France to the end of the first part, where
they immediately precede those which deal with
French literature of the future.

That is to say that France comes at the edge of the
system which exists solely in the interests of France.

284WALN DING UR TEA CKISES t= 2nd, EASE

There are, indeed, two parts to this book, but the
division does not lie where the eye finds it.

On closer inspection we shall see that the first part
of De la Littérature is taken up to the chapter on |
Germany, and includes that, and the whole subject |
of Northern literature, dealt with both positively | ae
and negatively, with much jeering at the South. | ee

The second part which is the whole of the rest of the | ;
book is consecrated entirely to France of the past,
present, and future.

This was what she had intended from the very |
beginning. |

 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

DETAIL OF THE LITERARY THEORY: THE NORTH

Now we shall see Madame de Staél at grips with
facts.

Practically in this connection the North means
England and Germany.

Germany, so far, was little known, but French
opinion on England was already formulated and had
been during the whole century that it had attracted
curious attention from France.

The tone of her prelude to observations on English
literature, differs somewhat from her general defence
of Northern literature.

In France the literature of the North is commonly,
reproached with a lack of style.

She admits that the objection may be well founded,
even for Shakespeare, whom she is going to discuss
later on.

But for her own part she prefers an imperfect work,
which has great beauties and great failings (for her the
work of Shakespeare falls under this heading), to any
work which is ‘‘ correct, but does not rise above
mediocrity.”

We get a definite impression that she has read (or

285MADAME DE STAEL

what she calls “‘ read”) Shakespeare and she probably
saw his plays acted during her London visit of 1776.

But there is no misunderstanding the note.

She admires him.

As one would expect: “ Shakespeare . . . has the
imprint of the spirit and general colour of Northern
poetry.”

He also anticipates the age of liberty.

Though he did not live in an age of democracy, his
tragedies, far more than Racine’s, are the expression of
a people, which has plunged again and again into
civil war in order to preserve what is the breath of
life to them, their freedom.

We are made to feel vaguely that civil wars must
have fashioned the soul of Shakespeare, though he
ived before them ; or, that he prepared the soul of the

ation for the civil war which was to come half a
century after his death.

Feeling perhaps that she is not on very solid ground,
she passes on to her analysis.

‘“ Shakespeare,” she says, “ has depicted the anguish
of death and the divinity of mercy in an incomparable
fashion.”

He is the “ king of terrors.”

While bringing the portrayal of emotions to its very
highest point, he renders it at the same time so
personal, so intimate that “ your soul 1s carried to the
heights of the master’s emotion without going beyond the
limits of its own range.”

The supernatural element in Shakespeare’s plays
always owes something to philosophy, his are the
“marvels of dreams,” not those of childish and
uninspiring mythology.
| Thus, for example, the witches in Macbeth, are
‘really projections from Macbeth’s own soul where
a frenzied struggle is taking place.

Of all the subjects treated by Shakespeare that
which impresses the author of the Folle de la Forét de

286VENDING UP His GRISIS 3 2nd PHASE

Sénart most is the portrayal of madness caused by
unmerited misfortune.

Shakespeare confirms it by his tragic conception of
love which shows us the course of Eros Anikate ;
passion, grief, madness, or, at any rate, the borders of
madness.

The madness of Hamlet, Ophelia and Lear is in
each case “the delirium of unbearable grief,”
which Shakespeare was the first to render at its most
agonising poignancy, and his rendering constitutes
for Madame de Staél, “ the finest picture in existence
of man’s moral nature when the storms of life have
shattered its powers of resistance.”

These are the beauties which compensate in her eyes
“for some tediousness, some vain repetitions and
much incoherent imagery,” faults which she attri-
butes to the “ignorance of the principles of litera-
ture” prevalent in Shakespeare’s day.

But she picks out other faults which she finds less
pardonable.

In Romeo and Juliet she detects a strong dose ot
Italian affectation. She prefers Othello.

She finds the historical tragedies inferior to the
imaginative tragedies.

And then there is a supreme failing which, after
Voltaire, no one may pass over in silence, Shakespeare
is everywhere far too much “ on the side of the gross-
minded.”

Women had not begun to exercise their influence in
favour of decency in those days.

Hence the comic relief in Shakespeare which suc-
ceeds the tragic scenes “ and produces an unpleasant
impression on men of taste.”

“Hence the play on words, jokes, licentious or
equivocal, popular tales and accumulation of proverbs
in his work.”

Hence those “scenes of horror’? where physical
torment is brought violently and gratuitously under

287

Se Se a ——
ar Or Fo nT Ee aMADAME DE STAEL

the eyes of the spectators, and those misbegotten
creatures like Caliban and Richard III, whose physical
deformity disgusts the sensitive mind and offends the
exacting eye.

These are legitimate observations and normal
enough, though they are certainly more French in
character than Nordic.

But they conceal serious distaste on her part.

Madame de Staél will have nothing to do with
Shakespeare as a writer of comedy.

This soul made for modernity, as Madame de Staél
puts it (but surely she means for all time) merely
condescended to toss off a few comedies which are not
worth dwelling upon and must be taken as a mere
off-shoot of his eccentric genius.

Neither Shakespeare nor England, for that matter,
knows anything about comedy.

How should they ? The North is not gay!

Falstaff is a ‘‘ caricature for the popular mind.”

She does summary justice to the comedies of
Congreve.

She considers that, in the first place, they are not
comedies, or if they are “‘ nothing is more un-English
than English comedy.”

English humour is not composed of gaiety, but of
irony.

It springs in a great measure from misanthropy, and
has a strong tendency to melancholy, an attenuated
melancholy.

From Shakespeare she turns to the other poets.

At the end of the book she says :

‘We love poetry because it responds to grief in
us and to emotions which master us, whether we will
or not.”

Here she says more explicitly:

‘* Nothing ts sweeter to us than to come upon our own
dreams in the course of our reading, and if we try to
recall our favourite pieces in all languages we

288Mee Nn ee — . - 7 ——
th eg ae Pheer RO e  ae ae O e, Jest ee

'

a ea

       
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 

WAIN DUNG (OP DHETICRISTS 2 (2nd PHASE

invariably find that they all have the same character
of melancholy and high inspiration.”

At any rate, that is the general character of English
poetry.

English poets have the art of uniting “ philosophical
reflections with the sensations produced by the a
loveliness of the country.” oe

There is no monotony in their meditations; they
are sad, but it is with a sadness which accords with the
very nature of our beings and our destinies, a sublime
sadness born of solitude. oe

Gray’s Elegy and Goldsmith’s Deserted Village “ are a
full of that noble melancholy which makes the majesty Lf
of emotional philosophy.”

Where can we find more poetic fire than in
Dryden’s Ode to Music ?”

“What passion is expressed in the Letter to |
Heloise ! |

“¢ Above all, what enchantment in the description of ;
love in marriage which we find in the last verses of
Thomson’s first song to Spring !

“What deep reflection is the Essay on Man! Andi
how terrible are Young’s Night Thoughts !”

His “‘ sombre imagination,” gives the general note of
English poetry, though he has intensified it.

The author of Paradise Lost is England’s greatest
intellectual poet ; in spite of his use of the allegory
“‘ which taste deplores,” he understands how to wed
the image with the thought.

But then the English language is more suited to
literature than Italian.

Thanks to the ‘‘ energy’ with which it must be
spoken, the tonic note in its hammer-rhythm, “it
awakens the soul.” ie

The English poets do not pay much attention to
style, but because of their real emotions, like
Shakespeare, they stand excused.

Everything which does not conform in English

289pie

   

MADAME DE. STAEL

 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

poetry to Nordic culture is not really a part of that

culture, but some excrescence.

he Everything which aspires to unthinking gaiety in
f this country vowed to contemplation, is alien to the

national character.

( With the imperturbability of a Sultan in his pride,
4 the ex-ambassadress orders the heads of Chaucer and
| : Spenser to be swept off with one blow of the scimitar.

‘“ Spenser’s Faery Queene is the most wearisome
roduction in the world.”
Butler’s head must go too. He is unfortunate

, enough to prolong his jokes to the point of satiety,

ae and he will make jokes !
i Nal! She also orders the executions of Waller, Cowley and
Doune, who all imitate the Italians.

I" At the same time, England being the country
‘where women are more genuinely loved and liked
than in any other,” it is a natural field for the most
modern form of literature, the novel.

| ““ The existence of Englishwomen ts the cause of the
inexhaustible fecundity of English writers of fiction.”

It is in this “‘ power of loving ” that English writers
“find perpetually new and fruitful inspiration.”

Every nation, she thinks, gets the fiction it deserves.

If France has no romances to compare with English
novels it is because France has not the domestic
virtues of England.

“Tyrannical laws and the grosser desires, or
corrupt principles, have decided the fate of women in
the ancient Republics, in the Orient and in France?

‘In no other quarter of the world are women

| able to enjoy domestic happiness as they enjoy it in
England.”

France is a good place for love-affairs; but in
England, husbands are in love with their wives as
Necker was in love with his.

To cut the matter short, she sees English fiction as
the apotheosis of married lovers.

290NDING UP GBHEVGRISIS 2 2nd PHASE

English romance was the fate which she had not
tasted of and she would hanker after it to the end of her
days.

But what made her regard Richardson as the high
priest of virtuous and idyllic England ?
~ There is little to uphold the view.

The facts lend themselves to an opposite interpre-
tation.

But Madame de Staél always finds her own dreams
in that type of literature.

‘‘ Nowhere are we more sensible of the charm of
that protective love which makes it unnecessary for
the object of it to take any care of herself and concen-
trates the fulfilment of her desires in the unvarying
tenderness and respect of her champion.”

So we find that English novels serve as a sort of
supplement to Madame de Staél’s vast experience by
giving her dream-access to the secret orchard, the
“ sarden enclosed” of perfect love, from which both
her character and her circumstances for ever excluded
her:

Germany already exercised a certain attraction
over her mind and her heart.

That country was still only on the threshold of
history and its literature, only a century old, was vast
in extent and unexplored.

Nothing was finished, nothing had settled form or
fixed intention.

This hypothesis must be given elbow-room; a dream
roves through it, as though it were a poem of Ossian.

Germany may well turn out to be perfectible, for its
inhabitants seem to her “‘ fit for freedom.”

Like a mother scolding a lazy child by pointing out
the industry of his companions, Madame de Staél
threatens France with a possible exodus of the best
French minds to take refuge and to find a “ spiritual
home ” in this new country, where already revolutions

based only on philosophy had taken place.
291MADAME DE STAEL

“If France were destined by some invincible
misfortune to lose her liberty some day, Germany
would be the new centre of light.”

Politically vast, Germany was still a child in leading-
strings.

Her praise implies a shade of protection.

She does not see Germany as a possible enemy of
France, which is the light in which she does see
England, and takes good care not to hand over the
future of intellectual attainment to that country.

Although German literature was only a few years
old, it already had all the characteristics of modern
and Northern literature.

The German mind “ turns towards the contempla-
tion of nature and self-analysis.”’

And wherever there is contemplation, we know that
there will be melancholy.

The Germans excel in “‘ describing painful emotions
and melancholy images.”

‘There is no country where the writers have been
more successful in sounding the depths of men’s
passions, of the sufferings of the human soul or of the
resources in philosophy which can help men to bear
them.”

She has real knowledge of only one example.

But she does not want her embarrassment to be
discovered, and it does not amount to much because
she knows that the Parisians of the day are no better
informed than herself.

She tosses up a little bunch of names, with or
without comment.

Klopstock she has perhaps tried to read, but
without success, since she accuses him of ‘‘ tediousness
and mysticism.”

Schiller she mentions as the writer of tragedies
which must proceed from a vital soul.

Then she passes rapidly and impatiently to
Werther.

292LWAENDING UR TE VCRISTS a) 2nd eas 2

For her the whole of German literature exists in
Werther.

In 1795 she had classed it with La Nouvelle Héloise
and Lettres Portugaises as a miracle of words, which
could only be really appreciated by the elect.

“The reading of such works,” she said, “ was
consolation enough for the sorrows which spring
from high attainments and acute sensibility.”

At that time she did not dwell on it further, but
here, really not knowing anything else about German
literature, she gives a fairly detailed analysis of this
““ breviary of passion,”’ which is the great possession otf
Germany and may be quoted as the equal of master-
pieces in other languages.

“In Werther, a pure and energetic soul succumbs
to the pressure of the social order.

The despair of unhappy love is enhanced by deep
resentment against social sufferings.

Goethe wished to paint the workings of mixed evil,
a being suffering at all the sensitive points of a proud
and tender soul.

This is a malady of soul which is not general.

‘“ Its source is only found in elevated natures.”

Many a blameless being, hunted down by ingratitude
and calumny, must have asked the same question
which Werther answered so tragically.

Breathlessly this reader follows the fortunes and
misfortunes of the hero, tasting at the end a supreme,
almost voluptuous pleasure in that pistol-shot which
does herself no harm.

For the rest, Germany has no more taste than
England for anything connected with grace or gaiety.

It was not a good idea for their Wieland to try and
imitate Voltaire by using the form of the philosophical
tale.

The pungent wit and subtly-varied grace of the
master would be difficult for a Frenchman to imitate ;
all the more reason that in a country like Germany,

293 UMADAME DE STAEL

where the “ tribunal of society has little force,” the
attempt is frankly ridiculous.

If German writers need models in order to attain
literary independence, let them turn to English models
which are related to their own. Thus they will run
less risk of defying their own natures.

This is excellent advice. But it severely limits the
fine prospect of intellectual domination which Madame
de Staél had held out to Germany.

We began to ask ourselves whether the literature of
the North, even thus vaguely conceived, can satisly
all the sympathies and all the exactions of this
French Swiss.

 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

FRANCE

It turns out that it is not in Madame de Staél’s
programme to impose the whole of Northern literature
on France. It is possible that she may once have
cherished the idea. But she soon dropped it. She
may have had a Nordic soul, but she certainly had
French brains.

That is why she cannot refrain, as a good French-
woman, from firing a tremendous broadside into the
walls of the Northern fortress before she leaves that
field.

Germany gets off with a few scratches.

But old England, who cannot plead the crudity of
youth, is made to sit, for one last unpleasant quarter of
an hour, on the stool of repentance.

Some of Madame de Staél’s criticisms carry a long
way. We find her remarking on the existence of a
“calculating spirit” in English philosophy and
mentality, a want of disinterested idealism, which
ill-accords with the supposed characteristics of the
Nordic man, such as we have seen discussed in the
foregoing pages.

Paradoxically she affirms that French philosophy,

294

. Pee ere 9 ee

aVWANDING WP Iie (GRISTS:” 27nd 7RBHASE

though it has no less depth, draws more from
imaginative sources than English philosophy.

She points out that the virtuous island, native heath
of Richardson, has never founded a hierarchy of
moralists as immoral France has done in men such as
La Bruyére, Cardinal Retz and Montaigne.

In English literature, the whole genus of memoirs
and confessions, which combine emotions with ideas, is
completely lacking.

In a general way she thinks that English prose
suffers from not being personal enough.

Above all, she considers that English writers are
always sinners in respect of clarity; their style, she
thinks, is neither concise nor precise enough.

‘“ Tf a French writer were to take an English writer’s
ideas he would make a better book of them.”

The-Frenchwoman speaks there.

And we are not surprised when we come to her
comments on the period of Louis XIV. to find that the
defender of the North has changed her tone.

Madame de Staél does not see the literature of the
Rot-Solei’s reign as a forcible and virile art, but rather
as a growth of Court and Salon, all grace and gaiety,
fashioned in exquisite taste, essentially aristocratic in
the sense of the word which prevailed up to the
Revolution.

To tell the truth she looks at the Seventeenth
Century through the Eighteenth Century ; that is to
say, she hardly sees it at all.

Apart from its excellence and purity of form, she
notices nothing about it except that which differen-
tiates it vexatiously from the period of the Encyclop-

pedia ; its political indifference.

It is not a literature of action, and where philosophy
is concerned, the Eighteenth Century outshines it.

Having no aim but the pleasure of intellectual
exercise, it could not vibrate with the energy of the

literature which caused the Throne to totter...

295MADAME DE STAEL
generally speaking the books of that day did not deal

with important subjects, and men of letters lived cut
off from all the active interests of life.

They were withheld from participating in the
principles of government, the examination into
tyrannical dogma and, indeed, anything which might
lead thought into action.

In the Eighteenth Century, on the contrary, it was
recognised that literature was no longer “ only an art,”
but was ‘‘ a means to an end.”

Looking at the question only from an artistic point
of view, Madame de Staél is sincerely of opinion that
far from having lost by this extension of its range,
literature has made an artistic gain by becoming
capable of incorporating a more intense life than
before.

She feels far more emotion on hearing declamations
from Tancréde than from Phédre.

She can no longer find her way about Racine’s
work; he is not of her time.

But with Voltaire she is like a good hostess in her
own house; knowing every corner of it and parti-
cularly knowing where she can be proud of it, and give
her guests most pleasure.

Tancréde is “ like a hero who has really lived; he
is Narbonne, as he would have been, if he had played
his part as he ought to have done.

He is Zulma, turned man and overwhelming a
faithless mistress with his boundless generosity.

‘‘ His is a sublime nature and yet is in harmony with
all good-hearted people.”

Tancréde learning, on the point of death, that his
Aménaide has loved him always, and to the end,
evoked a host of memories in her...

“It seems as if those whom we have loved must be
with us in that uncertain future which lies beyond
this life.’

Oh! youth and Narbonne! Like Tancréde she can

296WINDING: OP RHE (CRISIS 5 2nd) PHASE

almost forget the long road she has travelled since
those days and can almost live her bliss again. . . .

‘* Even if we have lost respect and lost belief in their
love, even if we are deserted .. . still, what cries go
up to the Supreme Being, the Master-mind, entreating
that He will never break the chain of memories which
binds two existences together.”

All the literature of the Eighteenth Century is
sympathetic to her with differences of degree, of
course.

She feels this sympathy at once, without having to
force it In any way.

She would have preferred, no doubt, to find deeper
emotions in it, but she was never troubled by the
exactions of superficial sensibility ; if anything with
which she was in contact lacked emotion, she simply
supplied emotion from her own being.

It seems natural to her, and does not displease her,
that prose should have taken a place above the poetic
forms at this period.

She regards poetry as a preliminary, an almost
physical means of pre-disposing the reader to listen
favourably to the voice of a certain emotion; as a
means of evoking this emotion secretly, by a ruse as it
were.

It annoys her to think of the pleasure which the
spell of verse may give to the ignorant and untutored,
who have no means of analysing their enjoyment and
no idea of its real source.

And from the point of view of the writer, she con-
siders that the poetic form introduces most undesirable
rigidity and constraint.

She never had been able to understand the mania
of the human being for shackling even his pleasures
with laws, rules and dogma.

One could never have a surfeit of emotion and
harmony if expressed in absolute liberty, in the free
measure of prose, which knows no law but an implicit

297MADAME DE STAEL

obligation to facilitate every possible communication
of “‘ life with life”? : prose which is supple to every
indication of the ‘‘ mobile soul,’ which is a gift of
nature and a signal of the existence of conspicuous
talent ; prose, that exquisitely fluid mirror of emotion,
registering every gleam, every shade, every breath
that passes in the soul, is to her, the obvious instrument
for literature with a purpose.

Compared with Seventeenth Century literature
that of the Eighteenth Century has a purpose.

But the whole field had not been covered even so.

After all, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau
contented themselves with being writers.

They would have been much astonished and,
perhaps, not very pleased if they could have seen the
intention of their work carried out.

Voltaire, for instance, “‘ must have been afraid
that he might really overthrow the objects of his
abtacke-

What could he have jeered at, if the Catholic Church
had ceased to exist ?

In this direction Madame de Staél throws off her
allegiance to him.

She rejects all the negative side of the Eighteenth
Century.

She wants action, constructive, creative action.

‘< Philosophy itself,” she says, “is only a frivolous
occupation in a country where the Light-Bringers
have no authority over the institutions.

If thought does not truly contribute to the
amelioration of the lot of man it becomes an
effeminate and pedantic occupation.

The writer who neither influences, nor wishes to
influence the lives of others, cannot stamp his style or
his ideas with the unmistakable seal of character and
force of will.”

We see where she is going to arrive.

Once more the circle has been completed.

298en eee — er Phe. oe

fies ” een = rs " peed Ped . “PBs —

sali air sma: RM Ui apical SR al ME a ty Si ie
.

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

   

VAN DING OP WHE WRISTS 3 2nd PEAS!

Men of letters must take possession of the land of
their birth. Mental ability must rule over France.

Republican literature must concern itself primarily
with the Republic, not furtively, as in the past, but in
the broad light of day with the full approbation of all
the authorities.

MADAME DE STAEL AS POET

The title of her book: Literature considered wn
velation to social institutions, is not the least important
part of it.

This title alone marks a date in the history of
critical literature.

It proclaims a grandiose conception, nothing less
than the association of literature with the general
history of humanity.

Madame de Staél’s opinion on literary matters
might well have been wavering : the condition of being
an amateur has its advantages.

Criticism and literary history were still dealt with
after the old methods of the Seventeenth Century,
at the time when Madame de Staél was producing this
book, and in spite of their fine attention to detail, these
methods had the cumbersome awkwardness of the
scholastic traditions of the Middle Ages.

Quite naively, almost inadvertently, Madame de
Staél broke with these traditions.

She wanted to use literature for her own ends, for
the benefit of humanity and France.

She was the first to associate literature with human
institutions and thus she gets her back against a door
which will presently open, so that the whole literary
activity of the Nineteenth Century may pass through.

But though she finds the door she does not pass

through it herself.
In 1719, Abbé Dubos had made an authoritative

299ine SS ee

   
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
     
  
 
 
   
   

MADAME DE STAEL

declaration that ‘“‘ physical causes determine the
phy

quality of the blood and the brain.”

That just as there was a great physical difference
between the Negro and the Muscovite, so there was a
great difference between their respective arts and
institutions.

This conclusion, which tended to confirm the exist-
ence of relativity in art, and of some “ relation”
between literature and human institutions, had been
accepted by the leading minds of the Eighteenth
Century, including Vauvenarges and Voltaire, but to
the general mind was still, in 1800, a matter of hypo-
thesis.

It remained for some one to prove by examination
and comparison of the European literatures that this
‘relation ” was actually in existence.

A fine work to embark on, but for its accomplish-
ment hard labour was indicated.

Madame de Staél preferred to assume what she
ought to have proved.

It seemed to her that literature must be relative to
something, otherwise it would have been difficult to
show the relation of her book to the French
Revolution.

Her intention of carrying on propaganda leads her
astray from the real quest.

The only “ relation” which she has at heart is that
which she supposed must exist between politics and
literature.

The eternal human institutions, religion and the
various moralities of different nations were all
subordinate to that.

Then she put this supposed relationship between
politics and literature at the service of a political
theory, which was interesting, but not impartial when
related to facts.

This sort of confused thought can only result in
confusion, It was difficult to arrive at any clear

300

SC re ye oe

aTENDING CB Hie ORIUSIS |: 2nd (REASE

conclusion about literature from it. And, in fact, it
was not arrived at.

She did not get further than the hypothesis indi-
cated by the title, and the conclusions that she
reaches are the convictions that she started with.

We have seen that the imposing edifice of this book
rests on somewhat narrow foundations.

In point of fact, the system of De la Littévature is
only an elaborated intuition which is to be taken as a
historical discovery.

If we doubt it, the detail to be found in this appa-
rently rigid frame proves it conclusively.

When we have taken Madame de Staél’s opinions
on Nordic, French and Republican literature and laid
them end to end, we know approximately what the
elements of her poetics are: introspection, passion,
melancholy ; alert and eloquent realism, principally
attached to the solution of political, not personal
problems; elegance, wit, taste, style, and in that
style, impetuous energy and warmth.

It is dificult to conceive of a literature wide enough
in range to contain all that, and it is impossible to
conceive of an impersonal doctrine which would
reconcile all these contradictory claims.

It was not for nothing that Madame de Staél’s
researches led her across the entire field of European
literature. No one literature could satisfy her, she
would have required the* whole world for the full
recognition and expression of herself.

The literary, doctrine of De la Littérature must bear
the name of de Staél. It is entirely relative to herself.

That is to say that there really is no doctrine, which
she herself admits in the second edition of the book.

But in default of a doctrine, Madame de Staél does
not fail to be excessively interesting in herself.

There is no obligation to swallow her personality
whole. It will be enough to take her intellectual
curiousity about foreign literature, her intimate need

301MADAME DE STAEL

of emotional experience, and her preliminary attitude
of sympathetic attention.

These things taken together, make up both an
inspiration and a programme for criticism.

As for artists, as for the real creators of literature,
Madame de Staél has plenty of advice for them, and,
indeed, the whole of the last part of the book is given
up to that advice.

But this last section of De la Littévature has less
significance or substance than the rest.

To arrive at this opinion there is no need to know of
the existence, as Fontanes did, of that other book
which was in preparation on the same subject and
which did appear before long.

This obstinate woman-administrator had taken it
into her head that she would plan out the literary
constitution of New France, in advance, and that
without having devoted to the subject more than a
fraction of her mental power.

This last section of the book is more or less given up
to repetition in positive form of the general ideas ot
the whole book.

An artist after having assimilated and approved
these ideas, if he did approve them, would find himself
just where he was before, asking himself what steps he
was to take for the production of these Republican
tragedies and comedies, and novels with a purpose, for
which the great lady, writing the book, gave no special
recipe.

Madz-me de Staél leaves the artist to the contempla-
tion of his enterprise, merely loaded with a large sack
of theories, without an atom of information as to the
actual difficulties of performance.

To tell the truth, this is not the abstention of
discretion on the writer’s part, due to her great respect
for Art.

She does not use a capital A, and does not conceive
of art as an end, but as a means.

302WAENDING, Ui TE GRISUS 3 2nd VRHASE

She thinks of art as a means of rousing emotion ;
just that: and to create an emotional experience in
others you must supply rt from an emotional experience in
yourself.

And you should be able to glide as easily as possible
from the intention to the result.

So she thinks that poetry is a sort of music, rather
more explicit than music, but giving the same results,
rousing emotion as a caress rouses it, giving a little
impulse to the soul which is thus cast off upon an
ocean of delicious emotional experience where it can
drift at will.

Poetry may have the effect which the long cry of
waves breaking on the shore certainly would have ; or
like a beautiful dying evening, it may dissolve the soul
in the last ecstasy of a twilight of violet and grey and
rose, which are fading away.

If poetry is less operative in this respect than music,
or certain sounds and aspects of nature, she thinks it is
because the technical restrictions involved in all art
come too obviously between the point of departure and
the destination, between the poet and his hearer.

This delays transition and constitutes an unfortu-
nate diversion.

Instead of the two souls, the poet and his hearer
merging together, they are compelled to draw back and
scrutinise each other ; the impulse falls powerless and
owing to this delay, in her opinion, the two souls do
not meet but remain where they started.

It was her own artistic incapacity in this direction
which gave Madame de Staél such a restricted idea of
the power of poetry ; and this incapacity was partly a
matter of education, but was more essentially due to
lack of a natural poetic gift.

Hers is a perfectly legitimate conception of the
value of poetry and does not differ very much from
that of the Symbolists of the end of the Nineteenth
Century.

SS:a ee

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   

MADAME DE STAEL

Like them Madame de Staél will have nothing to do
with clear-cut, vivid images, charged with dramatic
significance.

Such images shock her conceptions of the lyric.

She wants poetry to be satisfying to that side of
herself which complains when she is weary aiter
inordinate self-expression, which aspires to repose and
to tranquillity, which is elegiac in its tendencies and
not active.

She conceives of poetry as a refuge, not a field for
mental exercise, and desires to hear in it, or to think
she hears in it, the notes which are soothing to her
wounded soul.

Poetry, a certain type of poetry, is indispensable to
her art of living, but it need not be poetry in verse.

The type that she was feeling for was created four
years after her death by the author of the Méditations.

It seemed to her that there was a certain hostility
between emotion and the image, especially between
acute emotions and the image expressed at length.

As a principle there is no valid objection to this.

But to Madame de Staél it was an actual truth.

She argues from what is within her and will not
compromise upon any one of her exactions.

The doctrine hardly seems a romantic one, but the
attitude is excessively so.

For the matter of that, it is one of her attitudes.

She had not the slightest intention of spending her
life in complaint and languid repose ; on the contrary
it was her considered intention to make a progressive
reduction of her elegiac and contemplative Ego in
order to free the other side of herself for action more
completely.

It follows from this that she puts poetry and even
meditative, or, as she expresses it, “ philosophical”
poetry (wrongly called intellectual poetry by some
critics who give that name to a sort of hybrid between
poetry and prose) into the second rank of the hierarchy

304

I IP 0 a

!WAINDING C2 iE VORUSTS 2) 2nd VERA SS

of types of literature which would be cultivated by the
most energetic writers of the new Republic.

Whatever pleasure she may derive from poetry, it is
obvious that poetry is not really what she was made for.
Her means lie in eloquence, and her end is action.

It is in the last pages of the last chapter of this book,
consecrated to the future of France, that she proclaims
the one and only principle of her own poetics.

‘“T know how easy it would be to criticise me for
mixing the personal predilections of my soul with the
general subject-matter of this book. But w 1s
impossible to me to separate my ideas from my feelings ;
it is emotion which excites thought and which alone
supplies the mind with a power of deep and rapid
penetration. Our affections must, of necessity, modify
all our opinions.

““ We love some works, because they respond to our
griefs and to memories which master us without our
wish or our knowledge; above all we admire certain
works, because they have the power to stir our moral
beings to their very depths, to their full capacities.

There are cold beings who desire that nothing shall
be presented to their estimation but the perceptions
of pure reason, leaving in the shade all emotional
movements, all regrets and mistakes, indeed all the
flowers of dream which can never arouse their interest.

““T resign myself to their adverse criticism.

‘“* Indeed how could I escape wt ?

“ How can I build a wall between my talents and my
soul ?

“ How can I dismiss what I feel and yet give utterance
to my thought ?

“ How can I impose silence on the feelings which have
intense life within me, and yet give voice to the rdeas
which my emotions have discovered to my mind ?

‘““ What sort of literary work should I produce from
all those denials to the very spark of life in my being ?

“Is it not better to embody in my work all those

395MADAME DE STAEL

failings which are implied in abandonment to one’s
Natures

The literary work which is built on this ambiguous
inspiration is naturally ambiguous in result. We
might foresee that.

Going to work in the same way as the poets of the
Nwits, the Méditations and the Destinees of some years
later, she brought into the world a series of apparently
objective dissertations, which do not seem to have any
other subject than herself.

Reading them, after a lapse of more than a hundred
years, we retrace our steps over the road on which
Madame de Staél’s talent advanced and we find
ourselves at the Source, at the living centre of her
created work which seems dead ; we have found a soul,
her soul which she could not separate from her intellect.

We may say that from this time onward, Madame de
Staél had full knowledge of herself as a woman and a
writer.

That is what her life and her work had given her.

From the year 1800 onward, the impetuous creature
having “‘ put a girdle round the earth,” that is to say,
round herself, was a conscious personality, capable ot
action.

Only some of us ever get to that point, and we must
by no means under-rate the importance of such a
result.

We end on a question !

With her character and her talents, what would she
do next ? What was there left for her to do?APPENDIX A

VERSE BY MADAME DE STAEL QUOTED
LIN REELS Vi OVE CIVIL:

LE CoMTE (A SOPHIE).

(See pages 42, 43).

“Votre félicité, croyez-moi m’est bien chére

Et pour elle je fais tout que je dois faire.

Je vais jusqu’ a vouloir vous donner le bonheur

De trouver un épouse digne de votre cceur,

De former par l’amour les nceuds de Vhyménée.
Dieu! que je sens le prix de cette destinée !

Ow ils étaient nés heureux, ceux que l’arrét du sort
A conduits l’un vers autre, et qui, sans nul remords
Eprouvant de l’amour l’invincible puissance,
Gotitent et ses plaisirs et ceux de l’innocence !
L’espoir dans le printemps couronne I’avenir ;

Mais quand nos jeunes ans commencent a nous fuir,
Cessant de désirer les jours qu’on doit attendre,

Vers l’éternelle nuit le temps semble descendre :

Plus de bonheur pour nous.
Qui possesse a jamais l’objet de tous ses vceux
Voit sous un autre aspect et le temps et la vie!
Ses jours s’écouleront auprés de son amie ;

I] doit dans l’avenir retrouver le présent ;

Un plaisir vif et pur doit marquer chaque instant :
Des jours dont constamment se forme son année,

Un seul embellirait une autre destinée !

Ce que je dis pour nous de méme est vrai pour vous ;
Ce sort pour une femme est sans doute aussi doux :
Vous pouvez l’espérer, vous étes libre encore

Ah! n’y renoncez pas.

a)
.

3°77,

 

   
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   

Que ce mortel heureuxMADAME DE STAEL

SOPHIE.

|
‘Language que j’adore!
| Votre voix retentit jusqu’au fond de mon cceur,

47) Oui, vous avez raison ; oui, c’est la le bonheur.”’

LA COMTESSE.

(See pages 43, 44).

| A votre Age, souvent l’on ignore, Sophie,
Prt Fy D’un lien fortuné la douceur infinie ;
I Mais un jour vous saurez ce qu’éprouve le cceur,
it Quand un vrai sentiment n’en fait pas le bonheur ;
{ Lorsque sur cette terre on se sent délaissée,
Qu’on n’est d’aucun objet la premiére pensée ;
Lorsqu’on peut souffrir, stire que ses douleurs
D’aucun mortel jamais ne font couler les pleurs.
On se désintéresse a la fin de soi-méme,
I, On cesse de s’aimer, si quelqu’un ne nous aime ;
| Et dinsipides jours, l’un sur |’autre entassés,
) Se passent lentement et sont vite effacés.
Ne pensez pas non plus qu'il suffise, Sophie,
De songer au bonheur dans l’hiver de la vie ;
Celui qu’on gotite alors du passé doit venir ;
Ceux qui nous ont aimés peuvent seuls nous chérir.
C’est par le don heureux des jours de sa jeunesse
Ou’on mérite l'amour jusque dans la vieillesse.
Le coeur qui fut 4 nous vit de ses souvenirs,
Et les prend quelquefois pour de nouveaux plaisirs (I).”

(See page 46).

“Cette éducation lugubre et solitaire,
De son impression frappa son caractére :
Elle ne croyait plus dés l’enfance au bonheur,
Et l’on avait trop tot peut-étre ému son coeur.

308AEN DIG TA

Elle en pourra souffrir, mais son charme en augmente ;
Qui saurait imiter cette grace touchante ?

Elle conserve encore, déja dans son printemps,

La vérité qu’a peine on retrouve aux enfants ;

Et dans les mouvements de cette 4me si pure,
On apprend a connaitre, a sentir la nature (I)

)
.

(See pages 47, 48).

“Vous qu’avec passion l’on est forcé d’aimer,
Vous pour qui la raison apprit a s’enflammer,
Et dont l’heureux talent de penser et de plaire,
Unit pour vous vanter la France et 1’ Angleterre ;
Vous que vos qualités w égarérent jamais, '
Vertueux sans rigueur et tendre sans exces ;
Qui possédez enfin ce qui semble s’exclure,
Tous les dons opposés qu’accorde la nature. [
Les préjugés par vous sont tous anéantis. . . ; (1) |

JANE GREY.

(See page 51).

“Le temps aurait pentétre altéré notre sort,
Et notre cceur, un jour glacé par la vieillesse,
Etit de la passion moins ressenti l’ivresse.
Nous mourrous tout entiers ; notre dernier soupir
D’un cceur brulant d’amour peut encore sortir.”’

GUILDFORD.

Ah! De la passion je sens que le délire
Peut m’exalter assez pour méler du plaisir
A Vhorreur que ce jour doit faire ressentir.”’

309

i ee SSMADAME DE STAEL
ue JANE GREY

j ‘Ah! mon unique ami, l’4me passioneé
|) Qui sut unir l’amour aux noeuds de l’hyménée
De la félicité gotita trop la douceur
Pour savoir supporter l’atteinte du malheur.

J

C’est sentir qu’on est deux de craindre un sacrifice.’

"i | From L’EpPiTRE AU MALHEUR.
(See pages 144, 145).

| “ Souvent les yeux fixés sur ce beau paysage,

Dont le lac avec pompe agrandit les tableaux,

Je contemplais ces monts qui, formant son rivage

Peignent leur cime auguste au milieu de ces eaux:

Quoi! dirais-je, ce calme ou se plait la nature

| Ne peut-il pénétrer dans mon cceur agité ?

) Et ’homme seul, en proie aux peines qu’il endure
De l’ordre général serait-il excepté ? ”’

(See page 145).

‘O malheur ! les Francais ont fondé ton empire ;
On luttait contre toi, tu régnes maintenant ;
L’Espoir de t’échapper parait un vain délire
Et la raison n’est plus que le choix du tourment.”’

(See page 146).

‘Barbares . . . non jamais ni la mort, ni histoire
Ne pourront dignement venger tous vos forfaits.”’

310APPENDIX A

~“ Un jeune homme innocent, méme des nonveaux crimes
Qu’une loi tyranique exprime vaguement.

Prés d’Adéle, Edouard vivait obscurément.”’

 

(See page 146).

‘‘ D’autres pleins de vertus, livrés A la vengeance,
Par autant de douleurs comptent leurs sentiments,
Ne peuvent secourir la vieillesse et l’enfance,
Et les plus doux liens sont leur plus grands tourments.”’

(See page 147).
“, .. les fureurs de l’envie
Peuvent poursuivre méme au comble des malheurs :

Sur les débris du monde on voit la calomnie
Seule rester debout, et régner sur les pleurs.
Vous avez ressenti ses atteintes cruelles,

Par ses laches poisons vous étes déchirés,

Vous, de la liberté les défenseurs fidéles,

Et de tous les exés ennemis déclarés,

Echappés a la France, une erreure implacable
Des plus purs sentiments s’appréte & vous punir ;
Aux yeux du préjugé, qui pensait est coupable,
Et qui raisonne encore sans doute vent trahir.”’

 

(See page 148).

“ De tout ce qu’on aimait la vie est separée ;
Sans cesser d’étre, ou craint de ne se voir jamais ;
Vers un monde nouveau notre Ame est attirée,
L’Amérique ou la mort nous promettent la paix.
De la nature enfin le cours invariable
A travers tant de maux ne s’est point arrété ;
La mort, comme autrefois se montre impitoyable,
Et V’hymen le plus saint n’en est pas respecté,

311MADAME DE STAEL

| L’amour peut étre ingrat et l’amitié légere ;

Et sous le poids affreuse des communes douleurs

a yi Nourrissant en secret une peine étrangére,

_ {) Seule, a d’autres chagrins on donne encore des pleurs.”

 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

 

| APPENDIX B

wee AUTHORITIES CONSULTED.

Madame de Staél—
(Euvres Completes (1820).
Sophie ou les Sentiments Secrets. (Play.)
| Jane Grey. (Play.)
Histoire de Pauline. (Early Novel.)
Mirza. (Early Novel.)
Adélaide et Théodore. (Early Nove.!)

L’Histoire de Zulma. (Novel.)
L’Eloge de Guibert.

b Du Caractére de M. Necker.

| Réflexions sur le Procés de la Reine.

L’Epitre au Malheur.
Lettres sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Réflexions sur la Paix addressées a M. Pitt et aux Frangais.
Réflexions sur la Paix Intérieure.
L’Essai sur les Fictions.
Considérations sur la Révolution Frangaise.
De l’Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur des Individus
et des Nations.
Recueil de Morceaux Détachés.
Des Circonstances Actuelles qui peuvent terminer la
Révolution Francaise et des Principes qui doivent
fonder la République en France. (Pamphlet not
printed until 1906, by M. John Viénot.)
| De la Litérature considéreé dans ses rapports avec les
institutions sociales.
L’ Allemagne.
Dix Années d’Exile.Benjamin Constant—
Réactions Politiques.
D’ Haussonville—
Le Salon de Madame Necker.
Madame Necker—
Mélanges.
Madame du Deffand—
Lettres a Horace Walpole.
Kohler—
Madame de Staél et la Suisse.
Madame de Genlis—
Mémoires.
Blennerhasset—
Madame de Staél
Geffroy—
Gustave III. et la Cour de France.
Sainte-Beuve—
Portraits de Femmes.
Portrait Contemporains.
Bell’s British Theatre, Vol. 7 (1776). Rowe—
Lady Jane Grey.
Pariset—

APPENDIX

French Translation of Journal of Gouverneur Morris.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau—

La Nouvelle Héloise.

Amours de Milord Edouard.
Etienne—

Le Genre Romanesque en France.
LT ourneau—

Correspondence Littéraire de Grimm, etc.
Baronne a’ Oberkirch—

Mémoires.
Malouet—

Mémoires.
Rudler—

La Jeunesse de Benjamin Constant.
Faguet—

Politiques et Moralistes du XIXieme Siécle.
Taine—

Ancien Régime.

313MADAME DE STAEL

a }, «| Comte. de Segur—

. ; | Mémoires.

i Roustan—

[ Les Philosophes et la Societé Frangaise au XVIII'*™*
Siécle.

A ot Madame @ Arblay—

| r Diary and Letters.

deel Ritter—
i) Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France.
Viatte—
iy Madame de Staél et Lavater d’ aprés des documents
eee inédits.
\ Souriau—

Mie | Les Idées Morales de Madame de Staél.
Vi Paul Gautier—
Matthieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staél.
Madame de Staél et Napoléon.
| Le Premier Exile de Madame de Staél. (Revue des deux
Mondes, Vol. 33, 1906.)
Baron de Barante—

Souvenirs.
| Godwin—
| Political Justice.
| Chapuisat—
Madame de Staél et la Police.

Madame de Staél et le Résident Deportes.
Van Treghem—
Ossian en France. (Paris, 1917.)
Charles de Villsers—
Article on Madame de Staél in the Spectateur du Nord,
Vol. 3, 1799.
Isler—
Briefe aus des Nachlass von C de Villiers. (Hambourg,
1879.)
W1itmer—
Charles de Villiers. (Paris, 1908.)
Baldensperger—
Goethe en France.Nes

 

APPENDIX C

ADDITIONAL NOTES

Note, Page 5.
Notice, page 39, Vol. I, Ceuvres Completes (1820).
Sismondi was of the same opinion : “ With her, inspiration

was instantaneous ; a whole sequence of ideas presented
itself to her in a flash and she added nothing to it by
further reflection.” (Merlet, Tableau de Littévature fran-
caise, Vol. III, page 272. Note I.)

Note, Page 7.
Quoted from Mlle. Huber. Notice, page 27.

Note, Page 14.
It appears that, after all, the project of this marriage
had never been mooted to Pitt. (See Lecky’s article in
the Forum, April, 1891.)

Note, Page 32.
See a@’Haussonville, op. cit., Vol. II, page 654 a Dike
Corinne whose death was delayed until she had assembled
her friends for a last reading of her verses.

Note, Page 53.

This study of Madame de Staél’s early efforts to write
plays is only concerned with the printed works and is
therefore, limited by the choice made by Auguste de
Staél among his mother’s manuscripts for the 1620
edition of the Guvres Completes.

315ee

ee ae

i he 3 a peas
i a. ee Oe,

MADAME DE STAEL

Two MSS remain at Coppet, both historical tragedies
of which one, Montmorency, was written three years before
Jane Grey. (See letter of Rosalie de Constant to Madame
de Chamiére, quoted by Kéhler, page 122.) The other
play, Jean de Witt, belongs to the Directoire period (1799).
Madame de Staél also wrote a play for the opening of the
States General (1789), a tragedy of which the scene is laid
in Persia and in which, “an enlightened sovereign
advised by a sagacious minister, wishes to bestow on his
subjects all the privileges of liberty and to call together
their delegates in a deliberative assembly.” Count
d’Haussonville, from whom that passage is quoted (Revue
des deux Mondes, March 1, 1913), does not state whether
he is writing from hearsay or whether he has seen the MS,
We must stand excused for not having been able to
consult Mr. Benzon’s work: Madame de Staél og Theatret,
Copenhagen, 1906, but, however good his study lis, it
could not take the place of Madame de Staél’s own text,
which ought now to be printed in its entirety.

For we disagree with Count d’Haussonville on this
question, and believe that it is only by printing all
Madame de Staél’s work, good and bad, that we shall
render the best service to her memory.

We have proved the documentary value of such poor
attempts at literature as Sopfie and Jane Grey.

Madame de Saussure asserts that Montmorency con-
tains “‘some very fine scenes,’ in spite of the stagey
character of the hero, who is “‘ urged to rebellion by an
ambitious woman.”

By writing this piece Madame de Staél drew attention
to her friendship with Matthieu de Montmorency.

On April 13th, Gouverneur Morris, after a reading of
the play given by Madame de Staél herself, notes in his
journal that ‘“‘the character of Cardinal Richelieu is
drawn with a masterly hand.” (Journal of Gouverneur
Morns, translated by Pariset, p. 225.) In any case the
piece cannot be void of psychological interest. This
must also be the case in the Persian tragedy, where the
“sagacious minister’ is certainly drawn from Necker,
and Count d’Haussonville considers that Jean de Witt
is a study of Bonaparte.

316

)= - _ ~ ae a .
6 eS ae I va Nigh al ee
eS, We rk PR eee

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
   

APPENDIZG (€

Note, Page 55.
Madame de Charriére’s judgment is as hasty as it is
categoric: ‘What it all amounts to is merely ...a
little wit, neither apposite nor precise; a lot of fine
writing, but that very disconnected ; and much violent
action on the part of persons of who all die violent deaths
by poison, or from love, anguish, etc., etc. . . . None of
all this succeeds in interesting us, or in moving us in the ,
least... . (Paullieur, Etudes sur Il’ Histoire Littératire
de la Suisse-Frangaise.)

Note, Page 64.

See Geffroy, Vol. I, page 336. In a letter of November,
1776, the Comte. du Creutz tells the King of Sweden that )
M. de Staél has arrived in Paris fully determined to make
his way there ; and “‘is very well-received at Court ; all
the pretty women in Paris would tear my eyes out if I i.
did not exert myself in his interests. Madame de la
Marck and Madame de Luxembourg would have no
mercy on me.”

In a second letter of zoth May, 1778, he adds that
“the Comtesse de Polignac has a very tender feeling for
M. de Staél, and he has been taken up by all the foremost
women, like Madame de Chalons, the Comtesse Diana
and Madame de Goutaud.”’

Note, Page 88.
See also towards the end of Chapter III, Dix Anneées
VExl: “ The talent which gave me fame has always
brought me more joy than sorrow.”

Note, Page 8o.

This is inexact. The Académie announced as a com-,
petition in 1788—a Eulogy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
and Madame de Staél probably had some idea of entering
for it.

317

a SeMADAME DE STAEL

tah (tat Lh Note, Page 104.
ae i M. Paul Gautier does not agree with this. He writes:
a ‘““M. de Staél was a very good man, kind and of excellent
a 4 disposition all round, though in ability not above the
i. { average.” (Matthiew de Montmorency et Madame de
i Staél, page 93.)
i ar But we consider that his moral as well as intellectual
insignificance was proved by the negligible place which
he filled in his wife’s estimation, for she was always
enthusiastic over any mental or moral value. If her
ATA husband had had any mental or moral significance,
oe Madame de Staél would certainly have recognised it.
? But a whole biography might be written on this subject.
een It is very much to be desired that the letters exchanged
| between husband and wife should be published. A
certain number of them, at any rate, have been preserved
at Coppet.

Note, Page 106.

We do not feel that the moral significance of Lettres
sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been exactly estimated.
We must realize not only that it presents a marriage-
problem, but we must also realize exactly what that
problem amounts to.

Lady Blennerhasset is a long way from that when she
authorizes Madame Necker de Saussure’s observation that
the Lettres were composed before Madame de Staél was
‘caught in the storm ”’ (Notice, page 58), in order to make
us believe that they were composed before her marriage.

This interpretation will not hold water, and if one
more proof is desired we have only to refer to the first
edition of the Lettres, in which Madame de Staél, carried
away by her enthusiasm, exclaims on behalf of Emile:
‘Yes, my little daughter, for your sake, I will listen to
Rousseau’s teaching ! ”

This passage was suppressed by the editors of 1820,
as Kohler has pointed out, but was preserved in the

iy Correspondence of Grimm, where the docile Meister
quotes it. (Vol. 15, page 379). Madame Necker de
Saussure would never have alluded to a marriage in her

318

eeAPPENDIX (C

family with so little exactitude or so much indiscretion.
The “ storm,” is, of course, the French Revolution, which,
according to the just estimate of Madame de Saussure,
cuts Madame de Staél’s career into two portions.

For the rest, we may not find ourselves upheld in all
the conclusions we have drawn from the Lettres.

We have entered that mysterious region where truth
is more easily felt than demonstrated.

Note, Page 113.

This bone was probably quite sufficiently picked by
contemporary criticism. But it is doubtful whether the
young Madame de Staél was aware of it.

She certainly never dreamt of putting up a defence
for the mannish type of woman because she knew herself
to be a hundred miles removed from the type.

Posterity, thanks perhaps to Talleyrand’s dictum on
Delphine, and to Madame de Staél’s own mania for
interviewing people, has classed her in the category to
which she certainly does not belong. No one who knows
anything of her life could accept this classification.

Note, Page 1109.

Constdérations, Vol. I, page 370. See also M. Bouilly’s
Sotrées chez Madame de Staél (1833), which refers to the
years 1789 and 1790.

It is difficult to decide how far we may rely on this
little pamphlet by a writer of melodrama. He himself
relies on distant memories. But, at any rate, the portrait
that he gives of Madame de Staél is valuable in itself. He
speaks of her “devouring eyes,” her “blotched com-
plexton”’ and “arid lips,” her “‘ sonorous voice” and
“imperious gestures.”

Note, Page 122.

On Oct. 29th, 1791, Gouverneur Morris notes in his
journal: ‘‘ Her father’s dismissal has caused her acute
suffering.” The moral significance of this crisis in her
life cannot be exaggerated.

319

EIT TT aMADAME DE STAEL

mi Note, Page 123.

| | This comparison was suggested to Madame de Staél
W wid byt by Chénier’s piece, Charles IX, which was first presented
ee at the Theatre Francais on 14th November, 1789. Chénier
ec { drew the character of the Chancellor of the Hépital from
ia Necker.

   
   
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

Yk Note, Page 126.
For a specimen of this see the Journal de la Cour et
de la Ville, especially the numbers of March 1st, March
f 18th, and May 8th, 1791.

Note 1, Page 128.
Letter to Fersen, quoted Blennerhasset, Vol. II, page

97:
| Note 2, Page 128.
The article was entitled: A quels signes peut-on con-
nattre quelle est Vopinion de la Majorité de la Nation.

Note, Page 130.

Considérations, Vol. II, Chap. X, Annecdotes particu-

| liéves. She arrived at Coppet on the 7th September
(P. Gautier, Matthieu de Montmorency et Mme. de Staél,

page II.)
Her passport was made out in the words: “ In con-
sideration of her state of pregnancy.” (Revue des docu-

ments historiques), 1878, page 118.

Note, Page 133.
This is also Sainte-Beuve’s opinion, for he is always
anxious to see Madame de Staél in the best light.

AY Note, Page 142.
Du Caractére de M. Necker: Madame Necker died on
the 15th May, 1794.

320ae ae ace, 3 be eg Pi Pie, a

 

APPENDIZONG

Note, Page 149.

See Revue de Littérature Comparée, Oct., 1923. Article
by M. Viatte. The interview must have taken place on
the 13th and 14th April, 1794. A letter of Lavater’s
(published by Lénac de Meilham), Du Gouvernement des
maurs et des conditions en France avant la Révolution.
(Hambourg, 1795, page 196) tells us that this was not
Madame de Staél’s first interview with Lavater.

Lavater went to Bale on the 2oth July, 1789, on
purpose to dine with Madame de Staél and Necker. (See
Revue de Littérature Comparée, April-June, 1795, page
365. Account of Madame de Staél by Madame la Com-
tesse de Pange.

Note, Page 151.

See Blennerhasset, Vol. II, page 229. For Constant’s
life up to his meeting with Madame de Staél see La
Jeunesse de Benjamin Constant by Gustave Rudler.

Note, Page 156.

»”) c

“Even in novels,’ exclaims Madame de Staél, ‘“‘ we
find no exaggeration of the heights of passion to which
a man may be driven by the fear that his love is not
reciprocated.” (Cuvres, Vol. 5, page 24.)

Evidently she was flattered by Constant’s artifices. We
know from Constant’s journal that she was unable to
conceal her delight when he smashed his watch, because
she told him it was time for him to leave her.

According to Madame de Pange, Constant did fear that
his passion would remain ungratified, up to September,
1795.

idee de Surilly asks in a letter written 6th Sep-
tember, 1795: ‘“‘ Is Madame de Staél still keeping Constant
in despair?” (Revue des deux Mondes, 15 Oct., 1924.
Un Amour de Madame de Staél.)

Note, Page 173.

Sainte-Beuve, in his Portraits de Femmes, assures us that
the Essai sur les Fictions contains all the poetics of

321

Ce ar AR OE EN gs oe ,
a +3 stake aust Bol ee ERMADAME DE STAEL

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
  
  
   

Delphine ; and every one after that, repeated this curious
affirmation without asking whether it was well-founded,
or even asking what the eminent critic meant by his
remark. We have seen that it is impossible to extract
any theory on romantic fiction that will hold water from
this Essay. Madame de Staél is not really thinking of
fiction, but of the Revolution, and even so, she cannot
decide on the best type of fiction for the object in view.

What do the poetics of the Essay consist of ? Is it the
theory that she presents to the Revolutionists or the theory
that she reserves for herself and the passionate elect.

The rest of Sainte-Beuve’s observations shew clearly
that the poetics of the Essay are contained in the pane-
gyric on love-fiction which winds up the Essay. And we
must add that this is flat contradiction of the central
theme and only brought in as a digression.

Is Sainte-Beuve really mistaken or is he using his subtle
psychology to impose on Madame de Staél the real
convictions of her heart, rejecting at the same time all
that with her was only the product of her intelligence ?

The best course would be to avoid discussion of some-
thing which did not exist. At that time Madame de Staél
had no poetics.

We do not find poetics in Delphine, but a woman, the
same woman who had written Adélaide et Théodore nine
years before the Essa sur les Fictions.

It is to be noted that the opinions of Goethe and
Schiller on /’Essat sur les Fictions, though mainly favour-
able, include certain reservations. Goethe, who trans-
lated the Essai for the second number of Les Heures,
1796, notes its “‘ incoherence and feminine want of system.”
Schiller’s remark is that there is “‘ more dazzle than light
Int’

For all this see Joret, Madame de Staél et la cour littér-
atve de Weimar (no date), page 35.

Note, Page 174.

Probably written during the last weeks of 1794, printed
by the Chevalier de Pange at La Neuveville, where he

222OU ta MEARE geek IN ee EN

 

    
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  

APPENDIX -C

had set up printing-works (see Madame de Pange, Un
Amour de Madame de Staél. Revue des deux Mondes, 15th
Oct., 1924, page 832, published in Feb., 1795. Anon,
Kohler, op. cit., page 175).

Note, Page 18i.
See the fine letter of November 24th, 1796, in which she
reveals her attitude towards the Directoire to Alexandre
de Lameth (Revue des Documents Historiques), 1878,
page 120.

Note, Page 189.

‘I must confess that the society of Geneva people is
insupportable to me. Their freedom of speech simply
results in insolence and their impeccable morals in
infinite tedium.

“In any case, a small town 1s the worst scene of action in
the world for exceptional people. Every word they let fall
is destined to be torn to shreds by the gossips. I am sure
that in Geneva, my father and I assume the significance
of the States General in Paris. To create a stir without
winning glory is only an unmitigated nuisance.”

Letter (no date) of Madame de Staél to her husband,
quoted by d’Haussonville. See Revue des deux Mondes,
15th Feb., 1913, page 730.

Note, Page 108.

(Euvres, Vol. III, page 39. The amplitude and reality
of the problem are very well-defined by Matthieu de
Montmorency in a letter of May, 1796. ‘“‘ Her heart and
imagination have so much influence on each other, and
the nobility of her character makes her unable to conceive
of dealings which are well within the region of the possible
for three-quarters of mankind. Her position as to family,
society and more general relationships is so bizarre and
complicated, the present is so tormenting for her, and the
future so uncertain, that I must confess myself beaten
by the problem of it all. I cannot see how she is ever
to lead the quiet life which is so necessary for her.” b
(See P. Gautier, Madame de Staél et Matthieu de Mont- Ss
morency.)

  
     

323MADAME DE STAEL
Note, Page 203.

From the text of the Passions it is easy to disentangle
two threads of which it is impossible to mistake the
significance.

One is an expression of bitterness and disillusion, and
belongs to the past and to Narbonne; the other is
optimistic and confident and relates to Constant and,
therefore, to her present and future.

‘Perhaps at this very moment of writing I am loved
once more, perhaps I have given my destiny into the care
of my love.”

This phrase of hers has an air of being a last moment's
confession, scribbled down just before the manuscript of
the Passions was sent off to the printer.

At that date, the spring of 1796, there was no one but
the assiduous Benjamin, whom Madame de Staél could
reasonably regard as a lover. Constant, who later on was
to lead her through the whole gamut of anguish, was no
more than a postscript to the tragic document of the
Passions.

We must not leave her emotional experiences between
1794 and 1796 unexplored. During this interval the
Passions took definite shape in her mind, and until
recently there has been very little information available
as to this period.

A correspondence recently published by the Comtesse
de Pange in the Revue des deux Mondes, 15th Oct., 1924,
Un Amour de Madame de Staél has filled the gap.

It appears that during these two years, she was trying
to attach to herself as a lover, not Constant, but the
Chevalier Francois de Pange, the ‘‘ beloved friend” of
the unhappy Chénier.

It is quite likely that it was not until the news of his
matriage in February, 1796, burst disastrously over
Coppet that Madame de Staél put away all hope of
winning the heart of this splendid young fellow, and began
to show real favour to the plebeian and unromantic

Constant.

This disappointment cannot have failed to influence
her work at the time ; but she gives very little sign of it,
and the reason is obvious. The experience was not of a

324oe Les

  

ST ah. RA a OER ee a ee
, a ee Fer Pet ae Ee, 3

 

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 

APPENDIX"

nature that a woman is anxious to relate. We are told
that Madame de Staél had indicated that her love was at
the Chevalier’s disposal, and that he had answered by
offering his friendship, even making it a condition that
she was not to try to overstep that boundary.

This, no doubt, accounts for her tart remarks on friend-
ship between people of opposite sex. But we cannot
expect really reliable information as to the actual details
of this episode.

Even if the Chevalier did play the unpleasing part
assigned to him by his descendant, Madame de Staél never
bore him a grudge. After all, he had been very candid
and strictly honourable, and she was the woman to
appreciate it. She may even have been grateful to him
finally for having given her imagination a point of de-
parture, giving her an opportunity for endless dreams
and no opportunity for disillusion.

Madame de Staél admits that in writing her chapter on
Love she consulted her own dreams rather than her
observation of the passion in others, and the vision of the
Chevalier certainly cannot have been absent from the
dreams which inspired those beautiful pages.

The part which Narbonne played, however, in the
chapter on Love, remains intact, for, side by side with the
panegyric of ideal love we find the lament of the deserted
woman, a lament which cannot justly be laid at the door
of the Chevalier de Pange.

When Madame de Staél insists on the moral insignifi-
cance of some men in contrast with their mental and
physical charm, she is undoubtedly thinking of Nar-
bonne, for these observations are only a continuation of
Zulma, a story which is an actual account of her liason
with Narbonne.

The interlude with the Chevalier de Pange, neverthe-
less, throws a curious light upon the moral condition of
Madame de Staél at the time of finishing the Passions.

When in this book she recommends herself not to give
up hope of happiness in love, we know that she is searching
for a love that is not too dissimilar to her first love.

Narbonne, at any rate, had satisfied her parching thirst
for romance.

   

325 YMADAME DE STAEL

She was now demanding (and believed that she recog-
nised in the Chevalier) that combination which, later,
she declared that she saw in the Prince de Ligne: “ Nar-
bonne, with a heart.’ She had had her warning of the
dangers to which her appetite for romance exposed
her.

But she was neither elderly, nor cowardly enough to
take the smallest notice of it. Her incorrigibly youthful
and daring soul always bore her in that direction right
up to the end of her life. Coincident with the affair with
the Chevalier we find a sort of understanding with the
fair-haired Swede, Ribbing, and when he left for America
in the spring of 1796, it gave the Ambassadress “ a cruel
shock,” of which she coquettishly informed the Chevalier.

We may add that this article in the Revue des deux
Mondes considerably simplifies the tangle of Madame
de Staél’s emotional experiences.

If we cannot arrive at knowing the woman herself her
career must remain a mystery. She was wont to snatch,
or try to snatch, just those qualities which pleased her,
from every individual she met just when she needed
them.

It was the balance and sagacity of the Chevalier de
Pange which fascinated her in contrast to her own
tormented soul.

This is perfectly clear from their correspondence. At
the same time, other facets of her many-sided being
responded to Constant and Ribbing, both of whom she
really needed.

In July, 1796, the very month of the Chevalier’s
premature death, there is a half-formed rumour of another
quasi-sentimental indiscretion which her vigilant cousin,
Madame Necker de Saussure, managed to snuff out.
(P. Gautier, Matthieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staél,
page 71.)

In order to complete the catalogue, Talleyrand (before
his fall) must be added, and Matthieu de Montmorency,

whose political conversion throws a doubt upon the nature
of his friendship.

All this may seem to make more of a tangle than ever ;

326_— Pm ae ie Drage s alana 7 es sige a
ste See bg eta Oo 4 AR IO ose IE

    
     
     
  
   
 
    
     
   
 
   
  
   
   
 
   
  
 
 
  
    
  
  
 
 
 

APPEND Xe XG

but as a matter of fact, her own versatility and the many
demands of her nature explain the whole thing,

The two emotional poles in the Passions are Narbonne
at one end, and Constant at the other ; and between them,
a fleeting vision of ideal love with de Pange.

The other little affairs are on a lower plane.

 

Note, Page 213.

See (uvres, page 217. At about this time M.
de Staél announced his wish to retire to Sweden, taking
his wife with him. In order to avert this catastrophe she
was, for the moment, prepared to divorce him, and marry

Constant. (See P. Gautier, Matthieu de M ontmorency
et Madame de Staél, page 181.)

 

Note 1, Page 224.

See Welschinger, La Censure sur le Pre

mer Empire,
1882, pages 163, 325.

 

Note 2, Page 224.

See Revue des deux Mondes, 15th Feb., 1913, article by

d’Haussonville, Madame de Staél 3 Coppet pendant la
Révolution et la Directoire.

 

Note, Page 225.

See uvres, page 228. The first edition was published
in Paris. A second impression in Lausanne.

 

Note, Page 226.
See Mémoires de Barras, quoted by Heériot, of. cit.,

page 72. M. de Staél, as his wife admitted, “‘ comported
himself without any angry expression of opinion, and
even displayed a kindly interest in the situation!”
(See P. Gautier, Matthieu de Montmorency et Madame de
Staél, page 108.)

The birth took place in Paris on the Sth. Consult also
327MADAME DE STAEL

 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
   

the important letter of M. de Montmorency to Madame
Necker de Saussure (14th Dec., 1796), from which it
appears that Madame de Staél was then so much in love
with Constant as to be willing to divorce her husband and
marry Benjamin. Matthieu, who had not foreseen this
development of so intellectual a conjunction, was full of
consternation at the prospect.

In June, 1797, M. de Staél began to suggest divorce,
but Madame de Staél had then changed her mind.

 

Note, Page 228.

See Blennerhasset, Vol. II, page 350. For his stay in
America see the article of M. Baldensperger, Revue de
Paris, 13th Nov., 1924, Le Séjour de Talleyrand aux
Etats-Ums.

 

Note, Page 230.

Considérations, Vol. II, page 206. Compare with this
verses from Jean de Witt, composed by Madame de Staél
in 17097.

C’est anisi que Nassau marche a Vautorité,

Quel augure, Grand Dieu! pour notre liberté !

Je crains son caractere et jusqu’a sa sagesse,

Ce calme inattérable au sein de la jeunesse,

Loui de me rassurer me remplit de tereure,

Son intérét déga seul commande a son coeur.

On ne voit rien en lui qui soit involuntaire,

Chaque pas a son bout, chaque mot son mysteére.

Ses traits qu’a peine vignt aus ont embellis

Par de long souvenir semblent dega flétris,

La vieillesse s’y place a coté de Venfance.”’

The parallel to this is brought to our notice by d’Haus-
sonville, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st March, 1913.

 

Note, Page 242.

Madame de Staél had written in December, 1795:
“Enlightened men are so frequently quite irresponsible
that I see a pressing need fo attaching men of property
to our cause.’ (Letter to the Chevalier de Pange, Revue
des deux Mondes, 15th Oct., 1924.)

328leap coe oe hue ee Ses a i ey ae
Soe A Se PRR ESE ee

   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
 
   
 
   
    
 
 
 
 
   
 
   

APPENDIX

See also Madame de Staél’s letter to Alexandre de
Lameth, 24th Nov., 1796 (Revue des Documents H1s-
toriques, 1878).

In 1798, Necker was trying to invest capital in France,
with his daughter as intermediary. (Revue des deux
Mondes, May ist, 1913.)

Note, Page 260.
On the 25th brumaire, Necker wrote to his daughter :
“ Dearest Minette,

‘“T received your letter of the 2oth. I can well
imagine all the rejoicings in Paris and the part you are
playing in glorifying your hero, etc., etc.”

(Revue des deux Mondes, March ist, 1913.) Madame
de Staél’s letter to Necker seems to have been destroyed.

Note 1, Page 265.
“The philosopher’s flag was now flown over ambu-
lances.”’ See Merlet: Tableau de la Littérature Francais,
Vol. III, page 97.

Note 2, Page 265.
Madame de Staél called Bonald, “ the philosopher of
antiphilosophy.”’

Note, Page 207.

Spectateur du Nord: 1799, Vol. III, p. 324-335. See
also on Charles de Villiers: Isler. Briefe aus des Nachlass
von C. de Villiers (Hambourg, 1879) ; and Witmer, L.

Charles de Villiers, un Intermediare entre la France et
lL’ Allemagne et un Précurseur de Madame de Staél.

The Spectateury du Nord, Vol. 5, said:

“Everything that Madame de Staél knows about
Germany and German Literature is taken from M. de
Villier’s article.”

For her knowledge of German Literature before 1800,
see Jorel: Madame de Staél et la Cour littévaire de Wevmar,
page 13; and d’Haussonville, Revue des deux Mondes,
Ist Dec., 1913, page 552.

329PM

Amours de Milord Edouard
(Rousseau), 57 (note)

Berry, Miss, 78

Bonald, Theorie, 265

British Théatre (Bell), 49
(note)

Chateaubriand, Essai sur
les Révolutions, 265

Comte - rendu (by M.
Necker), 11

Condorcet, Esquisse, 265

Constant, 225, 231 seq.
262

Correspondance Littéraire,
II

Dante, Inferno, 166

De Bouffler, Madame, 76,
78

De Broglie, Duc, 17

De Constant, Charles and
Rosalie, 77, 156

De Genlis, Madame, 7

De Guibert, M., 123

De Guibert, M., 8, 124

De Jaucourt, Chevalier,
130 seq.

De Maistre, Joseph, Con-
sidérations sur la Révo-
lution Francaise, 265

De Narbonne, 127 seq., 131

De Staél, Auguste, 82 (note)

De Staél, Madame

INDEX

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
   
 
   
   
    
   
    
  
   
   
   
     
   

TEVERUR

Childhood, 3 seq.

Idea of her marrying
Wime Pitta) ia

Visited London, 19

At Lausanne, 20

Journal, 22 seq.

Marriage (1786), 34

At Versailles and
Paris, Chap. V.

The French Revolu-
con, Chap=. Ville

Departure from Paris,
131

With de Narbonne in
Surrey, 131 seq.

Seeks to “‘ remake the
foundations of her
life 2158

To England, 158

To Paris, 177

To Coppet, when or-
dered to leave Paris
(1795), 183

Met Bonaparte, 229
Seq.

To Switzerland (1798),
230

Divorced, 231

WORKS:

Recueil de Morceaux

Detachés (Histoire dePauline, Mirza, Adé-
laide et Théodore),
34, 54 Seq., 59 Seq.,
S55) LAS. 157;

Théodore et Adelaide,
35

(Euvres, 35, 148

Sophie ou les Senti-
ments Secrets, 35

Jane Grey, 35 seq.

Montmorency, 35, 122

Synonymes, 35

Folle de la Foré
Senart, 35

Eloge de Guibert, 40,
122

Lettres Jean -
Jacques Rousseau,
78, 80 to 114

Delphine, 87, 94 (note),
17 73) ote)

Corinne, 87, 171

The Drawbacks to Life
in Paris, 108

Réflexions sur le Procés
de la Rewme, 137
(note)

Zulma, 138

Diary, 138

L’Epitre au Malheur,
144

Réflexions suy le Procés
de la Reine, 149

Considérations sur le
Procés de la Reine,
155

Essav sur les Fictions,
156

De la Litévature, 158

de

SUL

>

 

 

 

331

ROGET, SF Pe ORES ER

INDEX

222 seq., 255 (note),

263 seq.

De V Influence des Pas-
sions sur le Bonheur

des Individus et
Nations, 131,
189.seg., 232

E'ssav sur les Fictions,

163 seq.

Réfiexions sur la Paix
addresseés dM. Pitt,

174, 177 sq.

Réflexions sur la Paix
180 seq.
Concerning the strength

of the present Gov-

enterieure,

eynment and
necessity of supp
ing it, 225

Des Circonstances,

Seqg., 255 (note),
Seq.

Literature considered in

velation to socral
stitutions,
Verse quotations,
Seq.
De Villers, C
note
Diary and Letters
Madame d’Arblay),
(note)
Drawbacks of Life in Pa
12
Du Caractére de
Necker, 16 (note)

-» 279;

Du Caractere de M. Necker,

18
Fersen, 140 (note)

Re

159;

299 seq.

and

Madame

  
   
  
   
  
   
  
  
     
   
  
   
    
   
   
  
   
   
  
    
   
   
    
  
 
  
  
 

des

the
ort-

ZB2
257
n-

307

(of
132

vUS,

  

att

!| INDEX
French Revolution, Chap. | Memovzre pour la defénse du

 
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  

| Vie 107 | 4005 WAZ
lp Gautier, P., Le Premier | Malouet, 131
i Exile de Madame de | Milton, John, 165
| Staél, 177 (note) | Montmorency, 131

ri Godwin, Political Justice, | Morris, Gouverneur, 78
Wait 159, 265; Caleb Wil- | Napoleon Bonaparte, 229
4 liams, 170 seq., 261
Gustave III et la Cour de | Necker, Madame, 117
France, 34 (note), 59 | Necker de Saussure,

om (note) Madame, 3, 4, 18 (note),
Ae Huber, Mlle., 4 2G
iy) Ideés Morales de Madame | Pitt, Wm., 13, 14
| de Staél, 151 (note) | Réactions Politiques, 226

Indépendants (Journal), 128 | Rousseau, J. J., 12
Jugements Historiques et | Sainte-Beuve, 80, Portratis
Literaive, 16 (note) | de Femmes, 173 (note)
Lally-Tollendal, 130, 131 | Spenser, Faery Queene, 165

| Les Effets de la Terreure, | Talleyrand, 131, 228

226 | Trochin, Dr., 6

Meister, 11, 28, 35, 80 Viénot, Des Religious, 246
Mélanges, 17 (note)

 

 

 

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