Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864




There is nothing to indicate Madame Recamier's sentiments toward the
wife of her friend, except a significant passage in one of
Chateaubriand's letters:--"Your judgments are very severe on the Rue du
Bac.[D] But think of the difference of habit. If you look upon her
occupations as trifles, she may on her side think the same with regard
to yours. It is only necessary to change the point of view."

Madame de Chateaubriand died in February, 1847, from the effects of
dieting. A few months after her death her husband offered himself in
marriage to Madame Recamier, who rejected him. "Why should we marry?"
she said. "There can be no impropriety in my taking care of you at our
age. If you find solitude oppressive, I am willing to live with you. The
world, I am confident, will do justice to the purity of our friendship,
and sanction all my efforts to render your old age comfortable and
happy. If we were younger, I would not hesitate,--I would accept with
joy the right to consecrate my life to you. Tears and blindness have
given me that right. Let us change nothing."

We have heard this refusal of Madame Recamier's urged as a proof that
she did not love Chateaubriand; but when we consider their respective
ages at the time, this objection has little weight. Chateaubriand was
seventy-nine; Madame Recamier seventy. The former was tottering on the
brink of the grave. He had lost the use of his limbs, and his mind was
visibly failing. Madame Recamier was keenly sensible of the decay of his
faculties, though she succeeded so well in concealing the fact from
others that few of the habitual visitors at the Abbaye recognized its
extent. The reason she gave to her friends for refusing him was
undoubtedly the true one. She said that his daily visit to her was his
only diversion, and he would lose that, if she married him.

The record of these last years of Madame Recamier's life is
inexpressibly touching, telling as it does of self-denial, patient
suffering, and silent devotion. To avert the blindness which was
gradually stealing upon her, she submitted to an operation, which might
have been successful, had she obeyed the injunctions of her physicians.
But Ballanche lay dying in the opposite house, and, true to the noble
instincts of her heart, she could not let the friend who had loved her
so long and well die alone. She crossed the street, and took her place
by his bedside, thus sealing her own fate, for all hopes of recovering
her sight were lost. Her health also was extremely delicate; but, much
as she needed quiet and repose, she kept up her relations with society
and held her receptions for Chateaubriand's sake. But both their lives
were fast approaching to a close. Chateaubriand died on the 4th of July,
1848. For some time before his death he was speechless, but kept his
dying eyes fixed upon Madame Recamier. She could not see him, and this
dark, dreary silence filled her soul with despair.

Madame Recamier shed no tears over her loss, and uttered no
lamentations. She received the condolences of her friends with
gratitude, and strove to interest herself in their pursuits. But a
deadly paleness, which never left her, spread over her face, and "the
sad smile on her lips was heart-breaking." Sightless and sad, it was
time for her to die. Madame de Stael and Montmorency, the friends of her
youth, had long since departed. Ballanche was gone, and now
Chateaubriand. She survived the latter only eleven months. Stricken with
cholera the following summer, her illness was short, but severe, and her
last words to Madame Lenormant, who bent over her, were, "_Nous nous
reverrons,--nous nous reverrons_."

So impalpable was the attraction that brought the world to the feet of
Madame Recamier that it is interesting to analyze it. It did not lie in
her beauty and wealth alone; for she lost the one, while time blighted
the other. Nor was it due to power of will; for she was not great
intellectually. And had she been a person of strong convictions, she
would never have been so universally popular. As it was, she pleased
equally persons of every shade of opinion and principle. Her instinctive
coquetry can partly account for her sway over men, but not over women.
What, then, was the secret of her influence? It lay in the subtile power
of a marvellous tact. This tact had its roots deep in her nature. It was
part and parcel of herself, the distinguishing trait in a rare
combination of qualities. Though nurtured and ripened by experience, it
was not the offspring of art. It was an effect, not a cause,--not simply
the result of an intense desire to please, regulated by a fine intuitive
perception, but of higher, finer characteristics, such as natural
sweetness of temper, kindness of heart, and forgetfulness of self. Her
successes were the triumph of impulse rather than of design. In order to
please she did not study character, she divined it. Keenly alive to
outward influences, and losing in part her own personality when coming
in contact with that of others, she readily adapted herself to their
moods,--and her apprehension was quick, if not profound. It is always
gratifying to feel one's self understood, and every person who talked
with Madame Recamier enjoyed this pleasant consciousness. No one felt a
humiliating sense of inferiority in her presence, and this was owing as
much to the character of her intellect as to her tact. Partial friends
detected genius in her conversation and letters, and tried to excite her
to literary effort; but other and stronger evidence forces us to look
upon such praise as mere delicate flattery. A woman more beautiful than
gifted was far more likely to be gratified by a compliment to her
intellect than to her personal charms, as Madame de Stael was more
delighted at an allusion to the beauty of her neck and arms than to the
merits of "L'Allemagne" or "Corinne." But if Madame Recamier did not
possess genius, she had unerring instincts which stood her in lieu of
it, and her mind, if not original, was appreciative. The genuine
admiration she felt for her literary friends stimulated as well as
gratified them. She drew them out, and, dazzled by their own brilliancy,
they gave her credit for thoughts which were in reality their own. To
this faculty of intelligent appreciation was joined another still more
captivating. She was a good listener. "_Bien ecouter c'est presque
repondre_," quotes Jean Paul from Marivaux, and Sainte-Beuve said of
Madame Recamier that she listened "_avec seduction_." She was also an
extremely indulgent and charitable person, and was severe neither on the
faults nor on the foibles of others. "No one knew so well as she how to
spread balm on the wounds that are never acknowledged, how to calm and
exorcise the bitterness of rivalry or literary animosity. For moral
chagrins and imaginary sorrows, which are so intense in some natures,
she was, _par excellence_, the Sister of Charity." The repose of her
manner made this sympathy more effective. Hers was not a stormy nature,
but calm and equable. If she had emotion to master, it was mastered in
secret, and not a ripple on the surface betrayed the agitation beneath.
She had no nervous likes or dislikes, no changeful humors, few unequal
moods. She did not sparkle and then die out. The fire was always kindled
on the hearth, the lamp serenely burning. Some women charm by their
mutability; she attracted by her uniformity. But in her uniformity there
was no monotony. Like the continuous murmur of a brook, it gladdened as
well as soothed.

It was probably these sweet womanly qualities, together with the
meekness with which she bore her honors, that endeared her to her
feminine friends. All her life had been a series of triumphs, which were
not won by any conscious effort on her part, but were spontaneous gifts
of fortune,--

"As though a shower of fairy wreaths
Had fallen upon her from the sky."

Yet her manner was entirely free from pretension or self-assertion.

It is not one of the least remarkable things about Madame Recamier, that
one who had been so petted from childhood, so exposed to pernicious
influences, should have continued unspoiled by adulation, uncorrupted by
example. The gay life she led was calculated to make her selfish and
arrogant, yet she was to an eminent degree self-sacrificing and gentle.
Constant in her affections, she never lost a friend through waywardness,
or alienated any by indifference. It has been prettily said of her, that
she brought the art of friendship to perfection. Coquettish she
was,--seldom capricious. Her coquetry was owing more to an instinctive
desire to please than to any systematic attempt to swell the list of her
conquests. She had received the gift of fascination at her birth: and
can a woman be fascinating who has not a touch of coquetry? It was as
natural in Madame Recamier to charm as it was to breathe. It was a
necessity of her nature, which her unnatural position developed and
fostered to a reprehensible extent. But while she permitted herself to
be loved, and rejoiced in the consciousness of this power, she never
carried her flirtations so far as to lose her own self-respect or the
respect of her admirers. She was ever dignified and circumspect, though
gracious and captivating. To most of her lovers, therefore, she was more
a goddess whom they worshipped than a woman whom they loved. Ballanche
compared her to the solitary phoenix, nourished by perfumes, and
living in the purest regions of the air,--

"Who sings to the last his own death-lay,
And in music and perfume dies away."

It is a singular fact, that the men who began by loving her passionately
usually ended by becoming her true friends. Still there were exceptions
to this rule, exceptions which her biographer does not care to dwell
upon, but which the more candid Sainte-Beuve acknowledges, giving as his
authority Madame Recamier, who was fond of talking over the past with
her new friends. "'_C'est une maniere_,' disait-elle, '_de mettre du
passe devant l'amitie_.'" The subtile and piquant critic cannot resist
saying, in regard to these reminiscences, that "_elle se souvenait avec
gout_." Still, pleasant as her recollections were, she often looked back
self-reproachfully upon passages of her youth; and Sainte-Beuve, though
he calls her coquetry "_une coquetterie angelique_," recognizes it as a
blemish. "She, who was so good, brought sorrow to many hearts, not only
to indignant and soured men, but to poor feminine rivals, whom she
sacrificed and wounded without knowing it. It is the dark side of her
life, which she lived to comprehend."

This "dark side" suggests itself. It is impossible to read the record of
Madame Recamier's conquests without thinking of women slighted and
neglected for her sake. The greater number of her admirers were married
men. That their wives did not hate this all-conquering woman is strange
indeed; that they witnessed her triumphs unmoved is scarcely credible.
For, while French society allows great laxity in such matters, and a
domestic husband, as we understand the term, is a rarity, still French
wives, we imagine, differ very little from other women in wishing to be
considered a first object. Public desertion is rarely relished even
where there is no affection to be wounded, for it is not necessary to
love to be jealous. But whatever heart-aches and jealousies were caused
by Madame Recamier's conquests, they do not appear on the surface. In
her voluminous correspondence we find tender letters from husbands side
by side with friendly notes from their wives. Her biographer parades the
latter with some ostentation, as a proof of the friendship these women
entertained for Madame Recamier. That they respected her is evident;
that they loved her is not so apparent. Mere complimentary notes prove
but little. He must be but a superficial judge of life who draws decided
conclusions simply from appearances. Madame Lucien Bonaparte might
invite Madame Recamier to her _fetes_; but the consciousness that all
her world knew that her husband was _epris_ with her beautiful guest did
not tend to make her cordial at heart. Madame Moreau, young and lovely,
might visit her intimately, and even cherish friendship for her; but she
could scarcely be an indifferent spectator, when the great General
demanded a white ribbon from her friend's dress as a favor, and
afterward wrote to her that he had worn it in every battle, and that it
had been the talisman that led him on to victory. Nor is it probable
that Madame de Montmorency and Madame de Chateaubriand, unloved wives,
saw without a pang another woman possess the influence which they
exerted in vain. But, if they suffered, it was in secret; and, moreover,
they did justice to the character of their rival. Madame Recamier's
reputation was compromised neither in their eyes nor in the eyes of the
world. Society is seldom just to any woman whose career in life is
exceptional; but to her it was not only just, but indulgent. When we
reflect upon her peculiar position, so exposed to injurious suspicions,
the doubtful reputation of some of her associates, the character for
gallantry possessed by many of her avowed admirers, it seems scarcely
possible that she should have escaped calumny. The few scandals caused
by some of her early indiscretions were soon dissipated, and she lived
down all unpleasant rumors. She, indeed, seemed to possess some
talisman, as potent as the magic ring that bewitched King Charlemagne,
by whose spell she disarmed envy and silenced detraction. This attaching
power she exercised on every person who came within the sphere of her
influence. Even the gossiping Duchess D'Abrantes has only words of
respectful admiration for her. The preconceived prejudices of Madame
Swetchine, whom Miss Muloch numbers among her "Good Women," vanished at
a first interview. She wrote to her,--"I found myself a captive before I
dreamt of defending myself. I yielded at once to that penetrating and
undefinable charm which you exert even over those persons to whom you
are indifferent." Madame de Genlis, equally prejudiced, was alike
subdued. She made Madame Recamier the heroine of a novel, and addressed
letters to her full of affectionate admiration and extravagant flattery.
"You are one of the phenomena of the age," she writes, "and certainly
the most amiable.... You can look back upon the past without remorse. At
any age this is the most beautiful of privileges, but at our time of
life it is invaluable." Madame Lenormant, even more enthusiastic, calls
her a saint, which she certainly was not, but a gracious woman of the
world. Some acts of her life it is impossible to defend. They tarnish
the lustre of an otherwise irreproachable career. Still, when we think
of the low tone of morals prevalent in her youth, together with her many
and great temptations, it is surprising that she should have preserved
her purity of heart, and earned the respect and love of the best and
wisest of her contemporaries. No woman has ever received more universal
and uniform homage, or has been more deeply lamented. Her death left a
void in French society that has never been filled. The _salon_, which,
from its origin in the seventeenth century, was so vital an element in
Paris life, no longer exists. That of the Hotel de Rambouillet was the
first; that of the Abbaye-aux-Bois the last. "_On se reunit encore, on
donne des fetes splendides, on ne cause plus_."

* * * * *

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN.


Having walked about eight miles since we struck the beach, and passed
the boundary between Wellfleet and Truro, a stone post in the sand,--for
even this sand comes under the jurisdiction of one town or another,--we
turned inland over barren hills and valleys, whither the sea, for some
reason, did not follow us, and, tracing up a hollow, discovered two or
three sober-looking houses within half a mile, uncommonly near the
eastern coast. Their garrets were apparently so full of chambers that
their roofs could hardly lie down straight, and we did not doubt that
there was room for us there. Houses near the sea are generally low and
broad. These were a story and a half high; but if you merely counted the
windows in their gable-ends, you would think that there were many
stories more, or, at any rate, that the half-story was the only one
thought worthy of being illustrated. The great number of windows in the
ends of the houses, and their irregularity in size and position, here
and elsewhere on the Cape, struck us agreeably,--as if each of the
various occupants who had their _cunabula_ behind had punched a hole
where his necessities required it, and according to his size and
stature, without regard to outside effect. There were windows for the
grown folks, and windows for the children,--three or four apiece: as a
certain man had a large hole cut in his barn-door for the cat, and
another smaller one for the kitten. Sometimes they were so low under the
eaves that I thought they must have perforated the plate-beam for
another apartment, and I noticed some which were triangular, to fit that
part more exactly. The ends of the houses had thus as many muzzles as a
revolver; and if the inhabitants have the same habit of staring out of
the windows that some of our neighbors have, a traveller must stand a
small chance with them.

Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted houses on the Cape looked
more comfortable, as well as picturesque, than the modern and more
pretending ones, which were less in harmony with the scenery, and less
firmly planted.

These houses were on the shores of a chain of ponds, seven in number,
the source of a small stream called Herring River, which empties into
the Bay. There are many Herring Rivers on the Cape: they will, perhaps,
be more numerous than herrings soon. We knocked at the door of the first
house, but its inhabitants were all gone away. In the mean while we saw
the occupants of the next one looking out of the window at us, and
before we reached it an old woman came out and fastened the door of her
bulkhead, and went in again. Nevertheless, we did not hesitate to knock
at her door, when a grizzly-looking man appeared, whom we took to be
sixty or seventy years old. He asked us, at first, suspiciously, where
we were from, and what our business was; to which we returned plain
answers.

"How far is Concord from Boston?" he inquired.

"Twenty miles by railroad."

"Twenty miles by railroad," he repeated.

"Didn't you ever hear of Concord of Revolutionary fame?"

"Didn't I ever hear of Concord? Why, I heard the guns fire at the Battle
of Bunker Hill." (They hear the sound of heavy cannon across the Bay.)
"I am almost ninety: I am eighty-eight year old. I was fourteen year old
at the time of Concord Fight,--and where were you then?"

We were obliged to confess that we were not in the fight.

"Well, walk in, we'll leave it to the women," said he.

So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an old woman taking our hats
and bundles, and the old man continued, drawing up to the large,
old-fashioned fireplace,--

"I am a poor good-for-nothing crittur, as Isaiah says; I am all broken
down this year. I am under petticoat-government here."

The family consisted of the old man, his wife, and his daughter, who
appeared nearly as old as her mother,--a fool, her son, (a
brutish-looking, middle-aged man, with a prominent lower face, who was
standing by the hearth when we entered, but immediately went out,) and a
little boy of ten.

While my companion talked with the women, I talked to the old man. They
said that he was old and foolish, but he was evidently too knowing for
them.

"These women," said he to me, "are both of them poor good-for-nothing
critturs. This one is my wife. I married her sixty-four years ago. She
is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an adder, and the other is not
much better."

He thought well of the Bible,--or at least he _spoke_ well, and did not
_think_ ill, of it, for that would not have been prudent for a man of
his age. He said that he had read it attentively for many years, and he
had much of it at his tongue's end. He seemed deeply impressed with a
sense of his own nothingness, and would repeatedly exclaim,--

"I am a nothing. What I gather from my Bible is just this: that man is a
poor good-for-nothing crittur, and everything is just as God sees fit
and disposes."

"May I ask your name?" I said.

"Yes," he answered,--"I am not ashamed to tell my name. My name is ----.
My great-grandfather came over from England and settled here."

He was an old Wellfleet oysterman, who had acquired a competency in that
business, and had sons still engaged in it.

Nearly all the oyster-shops and stands in Massachusetts, I am told, are
supplied and kept by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is
still called Billingsgate, from the oysters having been formerly planted
there; but the native oysters are said to have died in 1770. Various
causes are assigned for this, such as a ground frost, the carcasses of
black-fish kept to rot in the harbor, and the like; but the most common
account of the matter is,--and I find that a similar superstition with
regard to the disappearance of fishes exists almost everywhere,--that,
when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the neighboring towns about the
right to gather them, yellow specks appeared in them, and Providence
caused them to disappear. A few years ago sixty thousand bushels were
annually brought from the South and planted in the harbor of Wellfleet
till they attained "the proper relish of Billingsgate"; but now they are
imported commonly full-grown, and laid down near their markets, at
Boston and elsewhere, where the water, being a mixture of salt and
fresh, suits them better. The business was said to be still good and
improving.

The old man said that the oysters were liable to freeze in the winter,
if planted too high; but if it were not "so cold as to strain their
eyes," they were not injured. The inhabitants of New Brunswick have
noticed that "ice will not form over an oyster-bed, unless the cold is
very intense indeed; and when the bays are frozen over, the oyster-beds
are easily discovered by the water above them remaining unfrozen, or, as
the French residents say, _degele_." Our host said that they kept them
in cellars all winter.

"Without anything to eat or drink?" I asked.

"Without anything to eat or drink," he answered.

"Can the oysters move?"

"Just as much as my shoe."

But when I caught him saying that they "bedded themselves down in the
sand, flat side up, round side down," I told him that my shoe could not
do that, without the aid of my foot in it; at which he said that they
merely settled down as they grew; if put down in a square, they would be
found so; but the clam could move quite fast. I have since been told by
oystermen of Long Island, where the oyster is still indigenous and
abundant, that they are found in large masses attached to the parent in
their midst, and are so taken up with their tongs; in which case, they
say, the age of the young proves that there could have been no motion
for five or six years at least. And Buckland, in his "Curiosities of
Natural History," (page 50,) says,--"An oyster, who has once taken up
his position and fixed himself when quite young, can never make a
change. Oysters, nevertheless, that have not fixed themselves, but
remain loose at the bottom of the sea, have the power of locomotion;
they open their shells to their fullest extent, and then suddenly
contracting them, the expulsion of the water forwards gives a motion
backwards. A fisherman at Guernsey told me that he had frequently seen
oysters moving in this way."

Some still entertain the question whether the oyster was indigenous in
Massachusetts Bay, and whether Wellfleet Harbor was a natural habitat of
this fish; but, to say nothing of the testimony of old oystermen, which,
I think, is quite conclusive, though the native oyster may now be
extinct there, I saw that their shells, opened by the Indians, were
strewn all over the Cape. Indeed, the Cape was at first thickly settled
by Indians on account of the abundance of these and other fish. We saw
many traces of their occupancy, after this, in Truro, near Great Hollow,
and at High-Head, near East-Harbor River,--oysters, clams, cockles, and
other shells, mingled with ashes and the bones of deer and other
quadrupeds. I picked up half a dozen arrow-heads, and in an hour or two
could have filled my pockets with them. The Indians lived about the
edges of the swamps, then probably in some instances ponds, for shelter
and water. Moreover, Champlain, in the edition of his "Voyages" printed
in 1613, says that in the year 1606 he and Poitrincourt explored a
harbor (Barnstable Harbor?) in the southerly part of what is now called
Massachusetts Bay, in latitude 42 deg., about five leagues south, one point
west of _Cap Blanc_, (Cape Cod,) and there they found many good oysters,
and they named it _Le Port aux Huistres_ (Oyster-Harbor). In one edition
of his map, (1632,) the "_R. aux Escailles_" is drawn emptying into the
same part of the Bay, and on the map "_Novi Belgii_" in Ogilby's
"America," (1670,) the words "_Port aux Huistres_" are set against the
same place. Also William Wood, who left New England in 1633, speaks, in
his "New England's Prospect," published in 1634, of "a great
oyster-bank" in Charles River, and of another in the Mystic, each of
which obstructed the navigation. "The oysters," he says, "be great ones,
in form of a shoe-horn; some be a foot long; these breed on certain
banks that are bare every spring-tide. This fish without the shell is so
big that it must admit of a division before you can well get it into
your mouth." Oysters are still found there. (See, also, Thomas Morton's
"New English Canaan," page 90.)

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