Germaine de Staël

“ Still people, and especially English people, have so many non-literary things to think of, that it may not be quite unpardonable to supply that conception of the life of Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baroness of Stael-Holstein, which is so necessary to the understanding of Corinne, and which may, in possible cases, be wanting. ”

“ And wander'd here the wretched ones, like ghosts
On wasted shores of the eternal stream,
Sighing to reach the other far-off land.
Did they not ask in their long solitude
Of silence, of all nature, of the sky,
Star-shining?—and from the deep sea, one sound.
One only tone of the beloved voice
They never more might hear.
Mysterious enthusiasm, Love!
The heart's supremest power;—which doth combine
Within itself religion, poetry,
And heroism. Love, what may befall
When destiny has bade us separate
From him who has the secret of our soul;
Who gave us the heart's life, celestial life. ”

“ Yet there are griefs which our consoling sky
May not efface: but where will grief convey
Noble and soft impressions to the soul,
As it does here?
Elsewhere the living cannot find them space
For all their hurrying paths, and ardent hopes ”

“ The soul retires within itself, and seeks
To gather round itself its failing fire.
From my first days of youth, my inward hope
Was to do honour to the Roman name;
That name at which the startled heart yet beats.
Ye have allow'd me fame, O generous land!
Ye banished not a woman from the shrine!
Ye do not sacrifice immortal gifts
To passing jealousies. Ye who still yield
Applause to Genius in its daring flight;
Victor without the vanquished,—Conqueror,
Yet without spoil;—who, from eternity,
Draws riches for all time.
Nature and Life! with what deep confidence
Ye did inspire me. ”

“ Its homage is religious, and the wings
Of thought but serve to draw more near to thee.
Religion has no limits, and no bonds;—
The vast, the infinite, and the eternal,
Never from her may Genius separate. ”

“ CHANT OF CORINNE AT THE CAPITOL.* [1]
Cradle of Letters! Mistress of the World!
Soil of the Sun! Italia! I salute thee!
How oft the human race have worn thy yoke.
The vessels of thine arms, thine arts, thy sky! ”

“ His light, sweet gaiety is like nature's smile,
And not the irony of man.
Raffaële, Galileo, Angelo,
Pergolese; you! intrepid voyagers,
Greedy of other lands, though Nature never
Could yield ye one more lovely than your own;
Come ye, and to our poets join your fame:
Artists, and sages, and philosophers,
Ye are, like them, the children of a sun
Which kindles valour, concentrates the mind,
Develops fancy, each one in its turn ”

“ The person who in all England appears to have been the best match, conversationally, for Madame de Staël was Sir James Mackintosh, who, perhaps, gave the best of all descriptions of her when he said, "She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation. She has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular if, in society, she were to confine herself to her inferior talents—pleasantry, anecdote, and literature, which are so much more suited to conversation than her eloquence and genius." ”

“ She spent the nights sitting up with her maid, listening for the tramp of the horse which was to bring the gendarme and his message. But the gendarme did not arrive; and, worn out with her terrors, Madame de Staël bethought herself of her "beautiful Juliette." That loving and devoted person assured her of a kind welcome at St. Brice, a place about two leagues from Paris. Thither Madame de Staël went, and, finding there a varied and agreeable society, was for the time being cured of her fears. Hearing nothing more about her exile, she persuaded herself that Napoleon had changed his mind ”

“ He was a philanthropist as well as a philosopher, and Madame de Staël in later years once made rather a bitter allusion to this fact. As time went on, and Napoleon's star blazed brighter, De Gérando was unable to resist the general infection of idolatry; moreover, he had accepted a post under the new Government, and the withering blight of officialism fell to a certain extent on his spirit. "There is too much philanthropy in his friendship," wrote Madame de Staël to Jordan. "One is afraid of being treated by him like a pauper." ”

“ For a French woman to write the life of Madame de Staël is certainly a happy privilege, since France boasts the honor of her birth, though she is among those minds that belong to the entire world, and her whole sex should call her sister with a noble pride, which they may cherish with perfect safety. Madame de Staël descends to posterity with merits so great and so various, that few besides herself you claim a part of her title. Her fame is spotless, a true child of genius, but free from its aberrations. ”

“ The hidden centre of that dual self cannot be revealed to us; but what we do know is sometimes so grand and always so great that we can afford to be indulgent when reduced to conjecture.
In 1791, after having paid a visit of condolence to her father at Coppet, Madame de Staël had returned to Paris, and made her salon the rallying-point for the most distinguished Constitutionels. Conspicuous among these, in principles although not in name, was De Narbonne, described by Madame de Staël herself as "Grand seigneur, homme d'esprit, courtisan et philosophe." ”

“ Villemain has left a record of the evening of the 18th March 1815, which he passed in the salon of the Countess Rumford, and where he met Madame de Staël. Several famous, and to us now familiar, personages were present—Lafayette, Constant, Jaucourt, Cuvier, Sismondi, and Lemercier among others. Every moment somebody arrived with news of the advancing hero. Madame de Staël came late, and instantly attracted the general attention to herself. She [193] was overwhelmed with sadness, but more for France even than for herself. ”

“ Those once worn in the heart;—those once sustain’d
Upon a hero's arm.
Before you is Sorrento:—dwelling there
Was Tasso's sister, when the pilgrim came
Asking asylum 'gainst the prince unjust
From humble friends: long grief had almost quench'd
Reason's clear light, but genius still was left.
Yet kept he knowledge of the things divine,
When earthly images were all obscured.
Thus shrinking from the desert spread around
Doth Genius wander through the world, and finds
No likeness to itself; no echo given
By Nature ”

“ If some chance tide, more happy, floats to shore.
The grave is in the port; and destiny,
In thousand shapes, heralds the close of life
By a return of happiness.
Thus the ill-fated Tasso, whom your praise,
O Romans! 'mid his wrongs, could yet console,—
The beautiful, the chivalric, the brave,
Dreaming the deeds, feeling the love he sung,—
With awe and gratitude approach’d your walls,
As did his heroes to Jerusalem.
They named the day to crown him; but its eve
Death bade him to his feast, the terrible!
The Heaven is jealous of the Earth ”

“ Napoleon treated all such amiable theories as mere sentimentalism. If occasionally sensual from love of excitement, he was essentially passionless, and looked upon women as toys, not as sentient beings. He hated them to have ideas of their own; he liked them to be elegant, graceful, and pretty. He was brought into contact with Madame de Staël—a woman overflowing with passion, energy and intellect, large of person, loud of voice, careless in attire. She had generally found her eloquence invincible, and he meant nothing to be invincible but his system. ”

“ The edge of grief is blunted thus, and turn’d,
Not by a harden'd heart, a wither'd soul,
But by a yet more perfect harmony,—
An air more fragrant,—blending with our life.
We yield ourselves to Nature with less fear—
Nature, whose great Creator said of old,—
"The lilies of the vale, lo! ”

“ But he was invariably drawn back to her by the spell of her goodness. He appears as a rock of strength amid all the sparkling, moving, changing tide of ideas and feelings that rippled, dashed, recoiled, and returned unceasingly in every hour of the sojourn at Coppet. His steady sense and calm judgment bring out into sharper contrast the unrest of Constant; the flashing splendour of Madame de Staël; the dreamy refinement of Mathieu de Montmorency; the fantastic charm of Madame de Krüdener, and the unfailing grace of the lovely "Juliette." ”

“ She hoped, she said, that amid such multifarious occupations he would not have leisure to conceive any objection against her establishing herself within a few miles of Paris, near enough, in fact, to enjoy the society of such friends as would not be too much in awe of the potentate to pay her occasional visits. She further deluded herself with the notion that Napoleon would shrink from the odium of exiling a woman so well known as herself. Such a hope shows how simple Madame de Staël could still be at times. ”

“ Born in 1766, Madame de Staël was then in the zenith of her genius—we will not say beauty, since she was never beautiful. A passionate admirer of her father, who was only a mediocre man, whatever else may be said for him, she had followed his fortunes, and emigrated with him, although the position of her husband as Swedish ambassador insured her safety.
But she soon returned to Paris, when she drew up a plan for the escape of King Louis XVI., and in 1793 addressed the revolutionary government in the queen's defence, when the latter was brought to trial. ”

“ Schlegel, Constant, Sismondi, were all there, as well as Bonstetten, himself, and Madame Necker de Saussure, now more than ever devoted to her cousin. Madame de Staël had also a new visitor, Müller the historian, whose learning was stupendous, and who wrangled from morning till night on subjects of amazing erudition with Schlegel. The mistress of the house, although far from being the equal of the two combatants in learning, sometimes rushed between them with her fiery eloquence, like an angel with a flaming sword; but most of the society were reduced to silence. ”

“ Finally Constant, the inexplicable, unhappy, brilliant Constant, sought the peace which he had never found in anyone in a tardy passion for her. He sought in vain, for she treated him as she treated all men, with a kind and gracious indifference which her unique fascination robbed of all its sting. She influenced his political conduct—not altogether for good, as it turned out in 1814, when Napoleon returned from Elba. Vague hints at a rivalry before this date between her and Madame de Staël are to be found in some of the correspondence of the time ”

“ A woman who was less essentially noble would have assuredly accepted the overtures that were more than once made to her, and would have purchased her peace with Napoleon by burning a few grains of literary incense on his altar. But though, in a life of more than common vicissitude and temptation, Madame de Staël was betrayed into great weaknesses and into some serious faults, she never lost her sense of the dignity and integrity of literature, and her works are singularly free from unworthy flattery as well as from unworthy resentments and jealousies. ”

“ She alluded sadly, and at some length, to all her sufferings again in this letter, and reminded him that he wrote thirteen years previously to her from America, "If I must remain even one year longer here I shall die."
One is not much surprised to divine from subsequent circumstances that this appeal produced no effect. Amiable, and even pathetic as it was, Talleyrand was not the man to be moved by it. Like Napoleon, to whom he perhaps showed it, he would be likely to think that Madame de Staël's "exile" was singularly mitigated. ”

“ For when writing of her to Frederica Brun, he says: "Her goodness is extreme, and nobody has more intellect; but that which is best in you, in her does not exist. She lacks feeling for art, and sees no beauty except in eloquence and intelligence. She has more practical wisdom than anybody, but uses it more for her friends than herself."
Frederica Brun herself came to Geneva about this time, and has left enthusiastic descriptions of Madame de Staël, of Necker, Madame Necker de Saussure and Madame Rilliet-Hüber. She also bore testimony to Madame de Staël's devotion to her children. ”

“ A Government which, deprived of organized armies, money, or traditions, confronted with a European coalition, and weighted with the responsibility of crime, had conquered its enemies in the field, and made its will respected from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, was exactly of a kind to fascinate a born combatant like Constant. He arrived eager to be initiated into that strange world; longing to find himself in the salons of Madame Tallien, Josephine Beauharnais, and Madame de Staël. ”

“ Madame de Staël's appearance has been much discussed, but a magnificent glance, a sweet smile, and an habitual expression of kindness, the absence of all minute affectation and of all embarrassing reserve, flattering words, praise a little direct but apparently dictated by enthusiasm, an inexhaustible variety in conversation, astonish, attract, and reconcile almost everybody who approaches her. I know no woman, and even no man, who is more convinced of her immense superiority over the whole world, and who renders this conviction less oppressive to others. ”

“ No woman ever breathed who was less envious than Madame de Staël; but, on the other hand, what woman's intellect was ever so unapproachable? At the time, however, of her first acquaintance with Constant, her literary reputation was still to make, and it is not to be wondered at, consequently, if Madame de Charrière felt more inclined to question than agree when informed that this restless female politician was a being of so superior a sort that her like could not be met with once in a century. ”