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

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




The friendship between these women was highly honorable to both, though
the sacrifices were chiefly on Madame Recamier's side. She espoused
Madame de Stael's cause with zeal and earnestness; and when the latter
was banished forty leagues from Paris, she found an asylum with her.
Among the few fragments of autobiography preserved by Madame Lenormant
is this account of the first interview between the friends.

"One day, which I count an epoch in my life, Monsieur Recamier arrived
at Clichy with a lady whom he did not introduce, but whom he left alone
with me while he joined some other persons in the park. This lady came
about the sale and purchase of a house. Her dress was peculiar. She wore
a morning-robe, and a little dress-hat decorated with flowers. I took
her for a foreigner, and was struck with the beauty of her eyes and of
her expression. I cannot analyze my sensations, but it is certain I was
more occupied in divining who she was than in paying her the usual
courtesies, when she said to me, with a lively and penetrating grace,
that she was truly enchanted to know me; that her father, Monsieur
Necker.... At these words, I recognized Madame de Stael! I did not hear
the rest of her sentence. I blushed. My embarrassment was extreme. I had
just read with enthusiasm her letters on Rousseau, and I expressed what
I felt more by my looks than by my words. She intimidated and attracted
me at the same time. I saw at once that she was a perfectly natural
person, of a superior nature. She, on her side, fixed upon me her great
black eyes, but with a curiosity full of benevolence, and paid me
compliments which would have seemed too exaggerated, had they not
appeared to escape her, thus giving to her words an irresistible
seduction. My embarrassment did me no injury. She understood it, and
expressed a wish to see more of me on her return to Paris, as she was
then on the eve of starting for Coppet. She was at that time only an
apparition in my life, but the impression was a lively one. I thought
only of Madame de Stael, I was so much affected by her strong and ardent
nature."

The sweet serenity of Madame Recamier's nature soothed the more restless
and tumultuous spirit of her friend. The unaffected veneration, too, of
one so beautiful touched and gratified the woman of genius. Still, this
intimacy was not unmixed with bitterness for Madame de Stael. But it
troubled only her own heart, not the common friendship. She continually
contrasted Madame Recamier's beauty with her own plain appearance, her
friend's power of fascination with her own lesser faculty of
interesting, and she repeatedly declared that Madame Recamier was the
most enviable of human beings. But in comparing the lives of the two, as
they now appear to us, Madame de Stael seems the more fortunate. If her
married life was uncongenial, she had children to love and cherish, to
whom she was fondly attached. Madame Recamier was far more isolated.
Years had made her entirely independent of her husband, and she had no
children upon whom to lavish the wealth of her affection. Her mother's
death left her comparatively alone in the world, for she had neither
brother nor sister, and her father seems to have had but little hold on
her heart, all her love being lavished on her mother. She had a host of
friends, it is true, but the closest friendship is but a poor substitute
for the natural ties of affection. Both these women sighed for what they
had not. The one yearned for love, the other for the liberty of loving.
Madame Recamier was dependent for her enjoyments on society, while
Madame de Stael had rich and manifold resources within herself, which no
caprice of friends could materially affect, and no reverse of fortune
impair. Her poetic imagination and creative thought were inexhaustible
treasures. Solitude could never be irksome to her. Her genius brought
with it an inestimable blessing. It gave her a purpose in
life,--consequently she was never in want of occupation; and if at
intervals she bitterly felt that heart-loneliness which Mrs. Browning
has so touchingly expressed in verse,--

"'My father!'--thou hast knowledge, only thou!
How dreary 't is for women to sit still
On winter nights by solitary fires,
And hear the nations praising them far off,
Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of love,
Our very heart of passionate womanhood,
Which could not beat so in the verse without
Being present also in the unkissed lips,
And eyes undried because there's none to ask
The reason they grew moist,"--

in the excitement and ardor of composition such feelings slumbered,
while in the honest and pure satisfaction of work well done they were
for the time extinguished. Madame Recamier, though beautiful and
beloved, had no such precious compensations. She depended for her
happiness upon her friends, and they who rely upon others for their
chief enjoyments must meet with bitter and deep disappointments. Madame
Recamier had great triumphs which secured to her moments of rapture.
When the crowd worshipped her beauty, she probably experienced the same
delirium of joy, the same momentary exultation, that a _prima donna_
feels when called before an excited and enthusiastic audience. But
satiety and chagrin surely follow such triumphs, and she lived to feel
their hollowness.

In a letter to her adopted daughter, she says,--"I hope you will be more
happy than I have been"; and she confessed to Sainte-Beuve, that more
than once in her most brilliant days, in the midst of _fetes_ where she
reigned a queen, she disengaged herself from the crowd surrounding her
and retired to weep in solitude. Surely so sad a woman was not to be
envied.

Another friend of Madame Recamier's youth, whose friendship in a marked
degree influenced her life, was Matthieu de Montmorency. He was
seventeen years older than she, and may with emphasis be termed her best
friend. A devout Roman Catholic, he awakened and strengthened her
religious convictions, and constantly warned her of the perils
surrounding her. Much as he evidently admired and loved her, he did not
hesitate to utter unwelcome truths. Vicomte, afterward Duc de
Montmorency, belonged to one of the oldest families of France, but,
espousing the Revolutionary cause, he was the first to propose the
abolition of the privileges of the nobility. He was married early in
life to a woman without beauty, to whom he was profoundly indifferent,
and soon separated from her, though from family motives the tie was
renewed in after-years. In his youth he had been gay and dissipated; but
the death of a favorite brother, who fell a victim to the Revolution,
changed and sobered him. From an over-sensibility, he believed himself
to be the cause of his brother's death on account of the part he had
taken in hastening the Revolution, and he strove to atone for this
mistake, as well as for his youthful follies, by a life of austerity and
piety. While his letters testify his great affection for Madame
Recamier, they are entirely free from those lover-like protestations and
declarations of eternal fidelity so characterise of her other masculine
correspondents. He always addressed her as "_amiable amis_", and his
nearest approach to gallantry is the expression of a hope that "in
prayer their thoughts had often mingled, and might continue so to do."
He ends a long letter of religious counsel with this grave warning:--"Do
what is good and amiable, what will not rend the heart or leave any
regrets behind. But in the name of God renounce all that is unworthy of
you, and which under no circumstances can ever render you happy."

Adrien de Montmorency, Duke of Laval, if not so near and dear a friend,
was quite as devoted an admirer of Madame Recamier as his cousin
Matthieu. His son also wore her chains, and frequently marred the
pleasure of his father's visits by his presence. In reference to the
family's devotion, Adrien wrote to her,--"My son is fascinated by you,
and you know that I am so also. It is the fate of the Montmorencys,--

"'Ils ne mouraient pas tous, mais tout etaient frappes.'"

Adrien was a man of wit, and he had more ability than Matthieu. "Of all
your admirers," writes Madame de Stael, in a letter given in
Chateaubriand's Memoirs, "you know that I prefer Adrien de Montmorency.
I have just received one of his letters, which is remarkable for wit and
grace, and I believe in the durability of his affections,
notwithstanding the charm of his manners. Besides, this word durability
is becoming in me, who have but a secondary place in his heart. But you
are the heroine of all those sentiments out of which grow tragedies and
romances."

Other admirers succeeded the Montmorencys. The masked balls, fashionable
under the Empire, were occasions for fresh conquests. Madame Recamier
attended them regularly under the protection of an elder brother of her
husband, and had many piquant adventures. Prince Metternich was devoted
to her one season, and when Lent put an end to festivity, he visited her
privately in the morning, that he might not incur the Emperor's
displeasure. Napoleon's animosity had now become marked and positive. On
one occasion, when three of his ministers met accidentally at her house,
he heard of it, and asked petulantly how long since had the council been
held at Madame Recamier's? He was especially jealous of foreign
ministers, and treated with so much haughtiness any who frequented her
_salon_, that, as a matter of prudence, they saw her only in society or
visited her by stealth. The Duke of Mecklenburg, whom she met at one of
the masked balls, was extremely anxious to keep up her acquaintance. She
declined the honor, alleging the Emperor's jealousy as reason for her
refusal. He persuaded her, however, to grant him an interview, and she
appointed an evening when she did not generally receive visitors.
Stealing into the house in an undignified manner, the Duke was collared
by the _concierge_, who mistook him for a thief. This ill-fortune did
not deter him, however, from visiting her frequently. Years after, he
wrote,--"Among the precious souvenirs which I owe to you is one I
particularly cherish. It is the eminently noble and generous course you
pursued toward me, when Napoleon had said openly, in the _salon_ of the
Empress Josephine, that he 'should regard as his personal enemy any
foreigner who frequented the _salon_ of Madame Recamier.'"

Madame Recamier was to feel yet more severely the effects of the
Emperor's displeasure. In the autumn of 1806 the banking-house of
Monsieur Recamier became embarrassed, through financial disorders in
Spain. Their difficulties would have been temporary, had the Bank of
France granted them a loan on good security. This favor was refused, and
the house failed. While the decision of the bank was yet uncertain,
Monsieur Recamier confided to his wife the desperate state of his
affairs, and deputed her to do, the next day, the honors of a large
dinner-party, which could not be postponed, lest suspicion should be
excited. He went into the country, completely overwhelmed, and awaited
there the result of his application. Madame Recamier forced herself to
appear as usual. No one suspected the agony of her mind. She afterwards
said that she felt the whole evening as though she were a prey to some
horrible nightmare. In contrasting the conduct of the husband and wife,
Madame Lenormant is scarcely just to the former. Acutely as Madame
Recamier dreaded the impending ruin, it could not be to her what it was
to her husband. A fearful responsibility rested upon him. The failure of
his house was not only disaster and possible dishonor, but the ruin of
thousands who had confided in him. A strong intellect might well be
bowed down under the apprehension of such a catastrophe. Women, too, are
proverbially calmer in such emergencies than men. To them it simply
means sacrifice, but to men it is infinitely more than that.

When the blow fell, Monsieur Recamier met it manfully. He gave up
everything to his creditors, who had so much confidence in his integrity
that they put him at the head of the settlement of liquidation. Madame
Recamier was equally honorable. She sold all her jewels. They disposed
of their plate, and offered the house in the Rue Mont Blanc for sale. As
a purchaser could not immediately be found, they removed to the
ground-floor and let the other stories. This reverse of fortune involved
more than personal sacrifices. Madame Recamier was both generous and
charitable, and had dispensed her benefits with an open hand. She had,
with the aid of friends, founded a school for orphans, and had numerous
claims upon her bounty. To be restricted in her charities must have been
a sore trial. Further mortifications she was spared, for she was treated
with greater deference than ever. Her friends redoubled their
attentions, her door was besieged by callers, who vied with each other
in showing sympathy and respect. Junot was one of her firmest friends at
this crisis. Witnessing, in Paris, the attentions she received, he spoke
of them to the Emperor, when he rejoined him in Germany. He was checked
by Napoleon, who pettishly remarked that they could not have paid more
homage to the widow of a marshal of France fallen on the field of
battle.

Junot was not the only general of the Emperor who was concerned at her
reverse of fortune. Bernadotte, whom Sainte-Beuve numbers among her
lovers, and whose letters confirm this idea, wrote to her from Germany,
expressing his sympathy. Madame de Stael was sensibly afflicted. "Dear
Juliette," she writes, "we have enjoyed the luxury which surrounded you.
Your fortune has been ours, and I feel ruined because you are no longer
rich."

Another anxiety now weighed heavily upon Madame Recamier. Her mother's
health had long been failing, and the misfortunes of her son-in-law were
more than her shattered constitution could bear. She died six months
after the failure, leaving her fortune to her daughter, though her
husband was still living. To the last she was devoted to dress and
society. Throughout her illness she insisted upon being becomingly
dressed every day, and supported to a couch, where she received her
friends for several hours.

After Madame Bernard's death, her daughter passed six months in
retirement, but, her grief affecting her health, she was induced by
Madame de Stael to visit her at Coppet. Here she met the exiled Prince
Augustus of Prussia, nephew of Frederick the Great. We find in the
"Seaforth Papers," lately published in England, an allusion to this
Prince, who visited London in the train of the allied sovereigns in
1814. A lady writes, "All the ladies are desperately in love with
him,--his eyes are so fine, his moustaches so black, and his teeth so
white." Madame Lenormant describes him as extremely handsome, brave,
chivalric, and loyal. He was twenty-four when he fell passionately in
love with Madame de Stael's beautiful guest, to whom he at once proposed
a divorce and marriage. We give Madame Lenormant's account of his
attachment.

"Three months passed in the enchantments of a passion by which Madame
Recamier was profoundly touched, if she did not share it. Everything
conspired to favor Prince Augustus. The imagination of Madame de Stael,
easily seduced by anything poetical and singular, made her an eloquent
auxiliary of the Prince. The place itself, those beautiful shores of
Lake Geneva, peopled by romantic phantoms, had a tendency to bewilder
the judgment. Madame Recamier was moved. For a moment she welcomed an
offer of marriage which was not only a proof of the passion, but of the
esteem of a prince of a royal house, deeply impressed by the weight of
its own prerogatives and the greatness of its rank. Vows were exchanged.
The tie which united the beautiful Juliette to Monsieur Recamier was one
which the Catholic Church itself proclaimed null. Yielding to the
sentiment with which she inspired the Prince, Juliette wrote to Monsieur
Recamier, requesting the rupture of their union. He replied that he
would consent to a divorce, if it was her wish, but he made an appeal to
her feelings. He recalled the affection he had shown her from childhood.
He even expressed regret at having respected her susceptibilities and
repugnances, thus preventing a closer bond of union, which would have
made all thoughts of a separation impossible. Finally he requested,
that, if Madame Recamier persisted in her project, the divorce should
not take place in Paris, but out of France, where he would join her to
arrange matters."

This letter had the desired effect. Madame Recamier concluded not to
abandon her husband, and returned to Paris, but without undeceiving the
Prince, who started for Berlin. According to her biographer, Madame
Recamier trusted that absence would soften the disappointment she had in
store for him; but, if this was the case, the means she took to
accomplish it were very inadequate. She sent him her portrait soon after
her return to Paris, which the Prince acknowledged in a letter, of which
the following is an extract:--

"_April 24th_, 1808.

"I hope that my letter of the 31st has already been received. I
could only very feebly express to you the happiness I felt on the
receipt of your last, but it will give you some idea of my
sensations when reading it, and in receiving your portrait. For
whole hours I looked at this enchanting picture, dreaming of a
happiness which must surpass the most delicious reveries of
imagination. What fate can be compared to that of the man whom you
love?"

When Madame Recamier subsequently wrote to him more candidly, the Prince
was astonished. "Your letter was a thunderbolt," he replied; but he
would not accept her decision, and claimed the right of seeing her
again. Three years passed in uncertainty, and in 1811 Madame Recamier
consented to meet him at Schaffhausen; but she did not fulfil her
engagement, giving the sentence of exile which had just been passed upon
her as an excuse. The Prince, after waiting in vain, wrote indignantly
to Madame de Stael, "I hope I am now cured of a foolish love, which I
have nourished for four years." But when the news of her exile reached
him, he wrote to her expressing his sympathy, but at the same time
reproaching her for her breach of faith. "After four years of absence I
hoped to see you again, and this exile seemed to furnish you with a
pretext for coming to Switzerland. But you have cruelly deceived me. I
cannot conceive, if you could not or would not see me, why you did not
condescend to tell me so, and I might have been spared a useless journey
of three hundred leagues."

Madame Recamier's conduct to the Prince, even viewed in the light of her
biographer's representations, is scarcely justifiable. Madame Moehl
attempts to defend her. She alleges, that, at the time Prince Augustus
was paying his addresses to her, he had contracted a left-handed
marriage at Berlin. Even if this story be true, there is no evidence
that Madame Recamier was then acquainted with the fact, and if she had
been, there was only the more reason for breaking with the Prince at
once, instead of keeping him so long alternating between hope and
despair. In speaking of him to Madame Moehl, Madame Recamier said that he
was desperately in love, but he was very gallant and had many other
fancies. The impression she made upon him, however, seems to have been
lasting. Three months before his death, in 1845, he wrote to her that
the ring she had given him should follow him to the tomb, and her
portrait, painted by Gerard, was, at his death, returned to her by his
orders. Either the Prince had two portraits of Madame Recamier, or else
Madame Lenormant's statements are contradictory. She says that her aunt
sent him her portrait soon after her return to Paris, and the date of
the Prince's letter acknowledging the favor confirms this statement. It
is afterward asserted that Madame Recamier gave him her portrait in
exchange for one of Madame de Stael, painted by Gerard, as Corinne.

The next important event in Madame Recamier's life is her exile, caused
by a visit she paid Madame de Stael when the surveillance exercised over
the latter by the government had become more rigorous. Montmorency had
been already exiled for the same offence. But, disregarding this
warning, Madame Recamier persisted in going to Coppet, and though she
only remained one night there, she was exiled forty leagues from Paris.

She bore her exile with dignity. She would not solicit a recall, and she
forbade those of her friends, who, like Junot, were on familiar terms
with the Emperor, to mention her name in his presence. She doubtless
felt all its deprivations, even more keenly than Madame de Stael, though
she made no complaints. Her means were narrow, as she does not appear to
have been in the full possession of her mother's fortune until after the
Restoration. She had lived, with scarcely an interruption, a life of
society; now she was thrown on her own resources, with little except
music to cheer and enliven her. It was not only the loss of Paris that
exiles under the Empire had to endure. They were subjected to an
annoying surveillance by the police, and even the friends who paid them
any attention became objects of suspicion.

The first eight months of her exile Madame Recamier passed at Chalons.
She had for companionship a little niece of her husband's, whom she had
previously adopted. At the suggestion of Madame de Stael, she removed to
Lyons, where Monsieur Recamier had many influential relatives. Here she
formed an intimacy with a companion in misfortune, the high-spirited
Duchess of Chevreuse, whose proud refusal to enter into the service of
the captive Spanish Queen was the cause of her exile. "I can be a
prisoner," she replied, when the offer was made to her, "but I will
never be a jailer."

Though the society of friends offered Madame Recamier many diversions,
she was often a prey to melancholy. The Duchess D'Abrantes, who saw her
here, casually mentions her dejection in her Memoirs, and Chateaubriand
says that the separation from Madame de Stael weighed heavily upon her
spirits. He also alludes to a coolness between the friends, caused by
Madame de Stael's marriage with Monsieur de Rocca. The desire to keep
this connection secret induced Madame de Stael to write to her friend,
declining a proposed visit from her, on the plea that she was about to
leave Switzerland. Chateaubriand asserts that Madame Recamier felt this
slight severely, but Madame Lenormant makes no allusion to the
circumstance.

At Lyons Madame Recamier met the author, Monsieur Ballanche. He was
presented to her by Camille Jordan, and, in the words of her biographer,
"from that moment Monsieur Ballanche belonged to Madame Recamier." He
was the least exacting of any of her friends. All he asked was to devote
his life to her, and to be allowed to worship her. His friends called
her his Beatrice. As he was an extremely awkward and ugly man, the two
might have been termed with equal propriety "Beauty and the Beast."
Monsieur Ballanche's face had been frightfully disfigured by an
operation, and though his friends thought that his fine eyes and
expression redeemed his appearance, he was, to strangers, particularly
unprepossessing. He was, moreover, very absent-minded. When he joined
Madame Recamier at Rome, she noticed, during an evening walk with him,
that he had no hat. In reply to her questions, he quietly said, "Oh,
yes, he had left it at Alexandria." He had, in fact, forgotten it; and
it never occurred to him to replace it by another. Madame Lenormant
relates an anecdote of his second interview with Madame Recamier, which
is illustrative of his simplicity.

"He found her alone, working on embroidery. The conversation at first
languished, but soon became interesting,--for, though Monsieur Ballanche
had no chit-chat, he talked extremely well on subjects which interested
him, such as philosophy, morals, politics, and literature.
Unfortunately, his shoes had an odor about them which was very
disagreeable to Madame Recamier. It finally made her faint, and,
overcoming with difficulty the embarrassment she felt in speaking of so
prosaic an annoyance, she timidly avowed to him that the smell of his
shoes was unpleasant. Monsieur Ballanche apologized, humbly regretting
that she had not spoken before, and then went out of the room. He
returned in a few moments without his shoes, resumed his seat, and
continued the conversation. Other persons came in, and noticing him in
this situation, he said, by way of explanation, 'The smell of my shoes
annoyed Madame Recamier, so I left them in the antechamber.'"

After the death of his father, Monsieur Ballanche left Lyons, and passed
the rest of his life in the society of her whom he worshipped with so
single-minded a devotion.

Madame Recamier subsequently left Lyons for Italy, and the next new
admirer whose attentions we have to chronicle is Canova. During her stay
in Rome he wrote a note to her every morning, and the heat of the city
growing excessive, he invited her to share his lodgings at Albano.
Taking with her her niece and waiting-maid, she became his guest for two
months. A Roman artist painted a picture of this retreat, with Madame
Recamier sitting near a window, reading. Canova sent the picture to her
in 1816. When she left Rome for a short absence, Canova modelled two
busts of her from memory, in the hope of giving her a pleasant
surprise,--one with the hair simply arranged, the other with a veil.
Madame Recamier was not pleased, and her annoyance did not escape the
penetrating eye of the artist. She tried in vain to efface the
unfavorable impression he had received, but he only half forgave her. He
added a crown of olives to the one with the veil, and when she asked him
about it, he replied, "It did not please you, so I made a Beatrice of
it."

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