Teresa
Guiccioli
had been, in all but name, his wife for just three
years.
years.
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
Willis, in his
Pencilings by the Way, has given an interesting sketch of the countess
and her surroundings, while the younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) has
depicted D'Orsay as Count Mirabel in Henrietta Temple. Willis says:
In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and
mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon
Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture, to my eye, as
the door opened, was a very lovely one--a woman of remarkable beauty,
half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent
lamp suspended from the center of the arched ceiling. Sofas, couches,
ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through
the room; enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in
every corner, and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book,
to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.
All this "crowded sumptuousness" was due to the taste of Lady
Blessington. Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as
Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such
as Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of
letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis. To maintain
this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money,
totaling about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his
different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of
course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived
in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager,
improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings
of his wife.
In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared,
there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon the
thirties--a time which is a very critical period in a woman's emotional
life, if she has not already given herself over to love and been loved
in return. During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had suffered in
many ways, and it is probable that no thought of love had entered her
mind. She was only too glad if she could escape from the harshness
of her father and the cruelty of her first husband. Then came her
development into a beautiful woman, content for the time to be
languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to
her.
When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced;
and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage--a marriage
with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and having
no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction in social
triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit
them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish
hand. But, after all, in a woman of her temperament none of these things
could satisfy her inner longings. Beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity,
imaginative and eager, such a nature as hers would in the end be starved
unless her heart should be deeply touched and unless all her pent-up
emotion could give itself up entirely in the great surrender.
After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied. Her
surroundings wearied her. There was a call within her for something more
than she had yet experienced. The earl, her husband, was by nature no
less restless; and so, without knowing the reason--which, indeed, she
herself did not understand--he readily assented to a journey on the
Continent.
As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence,
where Count d'Orsay was still quartered with his regiment. A vague,
indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a
woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to
the heart. The mere sound of the French officer's voice, the mere sight
of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing
had ever stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to
have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was enough
that they were soothed and satisfied with each other's company.
Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D'Orsay as
did his wife. The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and
to accompany them to Italy. This he was easily persuaded to do; and the
three passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse
among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy. Just
what passed between Count d'Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time
cannot be known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it
is certain that before very long they came to know that each was
indispensable to the other.
The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely
unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet
Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife. He pressed
the match upon the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum
of forty thousand pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen
years of age. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and,
in addition, D'Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.
On the other hand, his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing
more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations
between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter
written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way
of "YOUR D'Orsay. " The manners and morals of the time were decidedly
irregular; yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of
what every one was saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet
in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed
to the marriage with Lady Harriet, who was only fifteen years of age.
This made the intimacy between D'Orsay and the Blessingtons appear to be
not unusual; but, as a matter of fact, the marriage was no marriage.
The unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the
indiscretions of her stepmother was left entirely to herself; while the
whole family, returning to London, made their home together in Seymour
Place.
Could D'Orsay have foreseen the future he would never have done what
must always seem an act so utterly unworthy of him. For within two years
Lord Blessington fell ill and died. Had not D'Orsay been married he
would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he was
bound fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no
divorce court in England, and since he had no reason for seeking
a divorce, he was obliged to live on through many years in a most
ambiguous situation. He did, however, separate himself from his childish
bride; and, having done so, he openly took up his residence with Lady
Blessington at Gore House. By this time, however, the companionship of
the two had received a sort of general sanction, and in that easy-going
age most people took it as a matter of course.
The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady
Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d'Orsay was accepted
in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore
House, and there they received all the notable men of the time. The
improvidence of Lady Blessington, however, was in no respect diminished.
She lived upon her jointure, recklessly spending capital as well as
interest, and gathering under her roof a rare museum of artistic
works, from jewels and curios up to magnificent pictures and beautiful
statuary.
D'Orsay had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had
come to Lady Blessington from her husband. He was a skilful painter, and
he practised his art in a professional way. His portrait of the Duke of
Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other that had
been made of him. The Iron Duke was, in fact, a frequent visitor at Gore
House, and he had a very high opinion of Count d'Orsay. Lady Blessington
herself engaged in writing novels of "high life," some of which were
very popular in their day. But of all that she wrote there remains only
one book which is of permanent value--her Conversations with Lord Byron,
a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of the brilliant poet.
But a nemesis was destined to overtake the pair. Money flowed through
Lady Blessington's hands like water, and she could never be brought to
understand that what she had might not last for ever. Finally, it
was all gone, yet her extravagance continued. Debts were heaped up
mountain-high. She signed notes of hand without even reading them. She
incurred obligations of every sort without a moment's hesitation.
For a long time her creditors held aloof, not believing that her
resources were in reality exhausted; but in the end there came a crash
as sudden as it was ruinous. As if moved by a single impulse, those to
whom she owed money took out judgments against her and descended
upon Gore House in a swarm. This was in the spring of 1849, when Lady
Blessington was in her sixtieth year and D'Orsay fifty-one.
It is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the
wreck of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore
House Mr. Madden, Lady Blessington's literary biographer, has written:
Numerous creditors, bill-discounters, money-lenders, jewelers,
lace-venders, tax-collectors, gas-company agents, all persons having
claims to urge pressed them at this period simultaneously. An execution
for a debt of four thousand pounds was at length put in by a house
largely engaged in the silk, lace, India-shawl, and fancy-jewelry
business.
This sum of four thousand pounds was only a nominal claim, but it opened
the flood-gates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors. Mr. Madden
writes still further:
On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The
auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of fashion.
Every room was thronged; the well-known library-salon, in which the
conversaziones took place, was crowded, but not with guests. The
arm-chair in which the lady of the mansion was wont to sit was occupied
by a stout, coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily engaged
in examining a marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of which
were modeled from a cast of those of the absent mistress of the
establishment. People, as they passed through the room, poked the
furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of
various kinds that lay on the table; and some made jests and ribald
jokes on the scene they witnessed.
At this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value.
Pictures by Lawrence and Landseer, a library consisting of thousands
of volumes, vases of exquisite workmanship, chandeliers of ormolu, and
precious porcelains--all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical
prices. Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that
the hour had struck, and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither
Count d'Orsay had already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a
boot-maker to whom he owed five hundred pounds.
D'Orsay very naturally went to Paris, for, like his father, he had
always been an ardent Bonapartist, and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had
been chosen president of the Second French Republic. During the prince's
long period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay, who had
helped him both with money and with influence. D'Orsay now expected
some return for his former generosity. It came, but it came too late. In
1852, shortly after Prince Louis assumed the title of emperor, the count
was appointed director of fine arts; but when the news was brought to
him he was already dying. Lady Blessington died soon after coming to
Paris, before the end of the year 1849.
Comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed. Yet one may quote
some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her
"Night Book. " They seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only
for a little while, and that deep down in her heart she had condemned
herself.
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is
always influenced by his head.
The separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of
two hearts that have loved, but have ceased to sympathize, while memory
still recalls what they once were to each other.
People are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them.
A woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it.
It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than
to be pardoned for it.
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our
buried hopes.
BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
In 1812, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, Lord Byron was more
talked of than any other man in London. He was in the first flush of his
brilliant career, having published the early cantos of "Childe Harold. "
Moreover, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing a
personal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist.
Byron's childhood had been one to excite in him strong feelings of
revolt, and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His
father was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to a
degree. Byron himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidly
sensitive because of a physical deformity--a lame, misshapen foot.
This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left him
headstrong, wilful, almost from the first an enemy to whatever was
established and conventional.
As a boy, he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he
formed. At eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girl
named Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him a
strange, un-childish passion. At fifteen came one of the greatest
crises of his life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whose
grand-father had been killed in a duel by Byron's great-uncle. Young as
he was, he would have married her immediately; but Miss Chaworth was
two years older than he, and absolutely refused to take seriously the
devotion of a school-boy.
Byron felt the disappointment keenly; and after a short stay at
Cambridge, he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and traveled
eastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens he wrote the pretty
little poem to the "maid of Athens"--Miss Theresa Macri, daughter of
the British vice-consul. He returned to London to become at one leap the
most admired poet of the day and the greatest social favorite. He was
possessed of striking personal beauty. Sir Walter Scott said of him:
"His countenance was a thing to dream of. " His glorious eyes, his
mobile, eloquent face, fascinated all; and he was, besides, a genius of
the first rank.
With these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denying
himself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, and
unstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the East
made many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, such
as "The Giaour" and "The Corsair. " A German wrote of him that "he was
positively besieged by women. " From the humblest maid-servants up to
ladies of high rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to make
a conquest. Some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to be
thrown. No wonder that he was sated with so much adoration and that he
wrote of women:
I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them as
grown-up children; but, like a foolish mother, I am constantly the slave
of one of them. Give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she
will be content.
The liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was that
between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has been greatly blamed for
his share in it; but there is much to be said on the other side. Lady
Caroline was happily married to the Right Hon. William Lamb, afterward
Lord Melbourne, and destined to be the first prime minister of Queen
Victoria. He was an easy-going, genial man of the world who placed too
much confidence in the honor of his wife. She, on the other hand, was
a sentimental fool, always restless, always in search of some new
excitement. She thought herself a poet, and scribbled verses, which
her friends politely admired, and from which they escaped as soon as
possible. When she first met Byron, she cried out: "That pale face is my
fate! " And she afterward added: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know! "
It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the point
of open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer. This woman,
older than he, flung herself directly at his head. Naturally enough,
it was not very long before she bored him thoroughly. Her romantic
impetuosity became tiresome, and very soon she fell to talking always
of herself, thrusting her poems upon him, and growing vexed and peevish
when he would not praise them. As was well said, "he grew moody and she
fretful when their mutual egotisms jarred. "
In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she was
worse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion she made
her way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another time, when she
thought he had slighted her, she tried to stab herself with a pair of
scissors. Still later, she offered her favors to any one who would kill
him. Byron himself wrote of her:
You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has said
and done.
Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel, "The
Marriage of William Ashe. "
Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation.
At any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Anne Millbanke,
who at first refused him; but he persisted, and in 1815 the two were
married. Byron seems to have had a premonition that he was making a
terrible mistake. During the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf,
and made the wrong responses to the clergyman. After the wedding was
over, in handing his bride into the carriage which awaited them, he said
to her:
"Miss Millbanke, are you ready? "
It was a strange blunder for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded
at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could
have been more thoroughly mismated--Byron, the human volcano, and his
wife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility
was evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from
their wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his honeymoon, he
answered:
"Call it rather a treacle moon! "
It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic
troubles. Only five weeks after their daughter's birth, they parted.
Lady Byron declared that her husband was insane; while after trying many
times to win from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave up
the task in a sort of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, for
the benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decades
afterward by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron,
that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Augusta
Leigh, Lord Byron's sister, and that even on her death-bed she sent an
amicable message to Mrs. Leigh.
Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him,
left England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland,
he took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding
himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, he
expressed in these lines:
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!
Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in upon
him from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe Harold" and
"Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. For the fourth
canto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve thousand dollars.
In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore; but
eventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter upon a
new phase of his curious career.
He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and much
brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His look
was no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the change
had not been altogether unfortunate. He had lost something of his wild
impetuosity, and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtieth
year, in fact, he had at last become a man.
It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for
the rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a star on the
stormy horizon of the poet. " This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli,
whom he first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years
of age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years her
senior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamy
eyes and an abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modest
and graceful. She had known Byron but a very short time when she found
herself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had never
dreamed. It was written of her:
She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became its
slave.
To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time until
his death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated.
Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might have been expected.
Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him with
Italian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess met
frequently. When Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever, the
countess remained beside him, and he was just recovering when Count
Guiccioli appeared upon the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was in
despair. He exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess, yet he
dreaded assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband.
Whenever he rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.
Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity was
remarkable. He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and he
hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united
once for all. This came about in the end through the persistence of the
pair. The Countess Guiccioli openly took up her abode with him, not to
be separated until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks in
their struggle for independence. This was in 1822, when Byron was in his
thirty-fifth year. He never returned to Italy, but died in the historic
land for which he gave his life as truly as if he had fallen upon the
field of battle.
Teresa Guiccioli had been, in all but name, his wife for just three
years. Much, has been said in condemnation of this love-affair; but in
many ways it is less censurable than almost anything in his career. It
was an instance of genuine love, a love which purified and exalted this
man of dark and moody moments. It saved him from those fitful passions
and orgies of self-indulgence which had exhausted him. It proved to be
an inspiration which at last led him to die for a cause approved by all
the world.
As for the woman, what shall we say of her? She came to him unspotted by
the world. A demand for divorce which her husband made was rejected.
A pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between the two. The
countess gladly left behind "her palaces, her equipages, society, and
riches, for the love of the poet who had won her heart. "
Unlike the other women who had cared for him, she was unselfish in
her devotion. She thought more of his fame than did he himself. Emilio
Castelar has written:
She restored him and elevated him. She drew him from the mire and set
the crown of purity upon his brow. Then, when she had recovered this
great heart, instead of keeping it as her own possession, she gave it to
humanity.
For twenty-seven years after Byron's death, she remained, as it were,
widowed and alone. Then, in her old age, she married the Marquis de
Boissy; but the marriage was purely one of convenience. Her heart was
always Byron's, whom she defended with vivacity. In 1868, she published
her memoirs of the poet, filled with interesting and affecting
recollections. She died as late as 1873.
Some time between the year 1866 and that of her death, she is said to
have visited Newstead Abbey, which had once been Byron's home. She was
very old, a widow, and alone; but her affection for the poet-lover of
her youth was still as strong as ever.
Byron's life was short, if measured by years only. Measured by
achievement, it was filled to the very full. His genius blazes like
a meteor in the records of English poetry; and some of that splendor
gleams about the lovely woman who turned him away from vice and folly
and made him worthy of his historic ancestry, of his country, and of
himself.
THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL
Each century, or sometimes each generation, is distinguished by some
especial interest among those who are given to fancies--not to call them
fads. Thus, at the present time, the cultivated few are taken up with
what they choose to term the "new thought," or the "new criticism," or,
on the other hand, with socialistic theories and projects. Thirty years
ago, when Oscar Wilde was regarded seriously by some people, there were
many who made a cult of estheticism. It was just as interesting when
their leader--
Walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily
In his medieval hand,
or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guyed him as
Bunthorne in "Patience. "
When Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense,
"muscular Christianity" was a phrase which was taken up by many
followers. A little earlier, Puseyism and a primitive form of socialism
were in vogue with the intellectuals. There are just as many different
fashions in thought as in garments, and they come and go without any
particular reason. To-day, they are discussed and practised everywhere.
To-morrow, they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of something
new.
Forty years before the French Revolution burst forth with all its
thunderings, France and Germany were affected by what was generally
styled "sensibility. " Sensibility was the sister of sentimentality and
the half-sister of sentiment. Sentiment is a fine thing in itself. It is
consistent with strength and humor and manliness; but sentimentality and
sensibility are poor cheeping creatures that run scuttering along the
ground, quivering and whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy,
which they do not at all deserve.
No one need be ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to the
blade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand,
is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, in
fact, all humbug, just as sentiment is often all truth.
Therefore, to find an interesting phase of human folly, we may look back
to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era of sensibility.
The great prophets of this false god, or goddess, were Rousseau in
France and Goethe with Schiller in Germany, together with a host of
midgets who shook and shivered in imitation of their masters. It is not
for us to catalogue these persons. Some of them were great figures
in literature and philosophy, and strong enough to shake aside the
silliness of sensibility; but others, while they professed to be great
as writers or philosophers, are now remembered only because their
devotion to sensibility made them conspicuous in their own time. They
dabbled in one thing and another; they "cribbed" from every popular
writer of the day. The only thing that actually belonged to them was a
high degree of sensibility.
And what, one may ask, was this precious thing--this sensibility?
It was really a sort of St. Vitus's dance of the mind, and almost of
the body. When two persons, in any way interested in each other, were
brought into the same room, one of them appeared to be seized with
a rotary movement. The voice rose to a higher pitch than usual, and
assumed a tremolo. Then, if the other person was also endowed with
sensibility, he or she would rotate and quake in somewhat the same
manner. Their cups of tea would be considerably agitated. They would
move about in as unnatural a manner as possible; and when they left the
room, they would do so with gaspings and much waste of breath.
This was not an exhibition of love--or, at least, not necessarily
so. You might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallant
soldier, or a celebrated traveler--or, for that matter, before a
remarkable buffoon, like Cagliostro, or a freak, like Kaspar Hauser.
It is plain enough that sensibility was entirely an abnormal thing, and
denoted an abnormal state of mind. Only among people like the Germans
and French of that period, who were forbidden to take part in public
affairs, could it have flourished so long, and have put forth such
rank and fetid outgrowths. From it sprang the "elective affinities" of
Goethe, and the loose morality of the French royalists, which rushed
on into the roaring sea of infidelity, blasphemy, and anarchy of the
Revolution.
Of all the historic figures of that time, there is just one which
to-day stands forth as representing sensibility. In her own time she
was thought to be something of a philosopher, and something more of a
novelist. She consorted with all the clever men and women of her age.
But now she holds a minute niche in history because of the fact that
Napoleon stooped to hate her, and because she personifies sensibility.
Criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophy
which was not her own. It is seen that she was indebted to the brains of
others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth in Delphine
and Corinne; but as the exponent of sensibility she remains unique. This
woman was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, usually known as Mme. de Stael.
There was much about Mile. Necker's parentage that made her interesting.
Her father was the Genevese banker and minister of Louis XVI, who failed
wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances of France. Her mother,
Suzanne Curchod, as a young girl, had won the love of the famous English
historian, Edward Gibbon. She had first refused him, and then almost
frantically tried to get him back; but by this time Gibbon was more
comfortable in single life and less infatuated with Mlle. Curchod, who
presently married Jacques Necker.
M. Necker's money made his daughter a very celebrated "catch. " Her
mother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliant beyond
description, and yet was tottering to its fall. The rumblings of the
Revolution could be heard by almost every ear; and yet society and the
court, refusing to listen, plunged into the wildest revelry under the
leadership of the giddy Marie Antoinette.
It was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegant
forms of luxury, and met the cleverest men of that time--Voltaire,
Rousseau, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Volney. She set herself to be the
most accomplished woman of her day, not merely in belles lettres, but in
the natural and political sciences. Thus, when her father was drawing
up his monograph on the French finances, Germaine labored hard over
a supplementary report, studying documents, records, and the most
complicated statistics, so that she might obtain a mastery of the
subject.
"I mean to know everything that anybody knows," she said, with an
arrogance which was rather admired in so young a woman.
But, unfortunately, her mind was not great enough to fulfil her
aspiration. The most she ever achieved was a fair knowledge of many
things--a knowledge which seemed surprising to the average man, but
which was superficial enough to the accomplished specialist.
In her twentieth year (1786) it was thought best that she should marry.
Her revels, as well as her hard studies, had told upon her health, and
her mother believed that she could not be at once a blue-stocking and a
woman of the world.
There was something very odd about the relation that existed between the
young girl and this mother of hers. In the Swiss province where they had
both been born, the mother had been considered rather bold and forward.
Her penchant for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventures that
have been told about her. She was by no means coy with the gallants of
Geneva. Yet, after her marriage, and when she came to Paris, she seemed
to be transformed into a sort of Swiss Puritan.
As such, she undertook her daughter's bringing up, and was extremely
careful about everything that Germaine did and about the company she
kept. On the other hand, the daughter, who in the city of Calvin had
been rather dull and quiet in her ways, launched out into a gaiety such
as she had never known in Switzerland. Mother and daughter, in fact,
changed parts. The country beauty of Geneva became the prude of Paris,
while the quiet, unemotional young Genevese became the light of all the
Parisian salons, whether social or intellectual.
The mother was a very beautiful woman. The daughter, who was to become
so famous, is best described by those two very uncomplimentary English
words, "dumpy" and "frumpy. " She had bulging eyes--which are not
emphasized in the flattering portrait by Gerard--and her hair was
unbecomingly dressed. There are reasons for thinking that Germaine
bitterly hated her mother, and was intensely jealous of her charm
of person. It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter's
cleverness, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end,
than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate,
the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father the
affection which her mother neither received nor sought.
It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage was
arranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who then
represented the court of Sweden at Paris. Many eyebrows were lifted when
this match was announced. Baron de Stael had no personal charm, nor any
reputation for wit. His standing in the diplomatic corps was not very
high. His favorite occupations were playing cards and drinking enormous
quantities of punch. Could he be considered a match for the extremely
clever Mlle. Necker, whose father had an enormous fortune, and who
was herself considered a gem of wit and mental power, ready to discuss
political economy, or the romantic movement of socialism, or platonic
love?
Many differed about this. Mlle. Necker was, to be sure, rich and clever;
but the Baron de Stael was of an old family, and had a title. Moreover,
his easy-going ways--even his punch-drinking and his card-playing--made
him a desirable husband at that time of French social history, when the
aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased, with wanton license,
and when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet
ambassadress might retire when the mob grew dangerous. For Paris was now
approaching the time of revolution, and all "aristocrats" were more or
less in danger.
At first Mme. de Stael rather sympathized with the outbreak of the
people; but later their excesses drove her back into sympathy with
the royalists. It was then that she became indiscreet and abused the
privilege of the embassy in giving shelter to her friends. She was
obliged to make a sudden flight across the frontier, whence she did
not return until Napoleon loomed up, a political giant on the
horizon--victorious general, consul, and emperor.
Mme. de Stael's relations with Napoleon have, as I remarked above, been
among her few titles to serious remembrance. The Corsican eagle and the
dumpy little Genevese make, indeed, a peculiar pair; and for this reason
writers have enhanced the oddities of the picture.
"Napoleon," says one, "did not wish any one to be near him who was as
clever as himself. "
"No," adds another, "Mme. de Stael made a dead set at Napoleon, because
she wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody, even of
the greatest man who ever lived. "
"Napoleon found her to be a good deal of a nuisance," observes a third.
"She knew too much, and was always trying to force her knowledge upon
others. "
The legend has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty to
be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction that the
conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. It is,
perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whether
Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to
this rather comic creature, even though at the time many people thought
her a remarkable genius.
In the first place, knowing Napoleon, as we have come to know him
through the pages of Mme. de Remusat, Frederic Masson, and others, we
can readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier would
sit at dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the whole ceremony
into twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine and a cup of coffee,
and then being interrupted by a fussy little female who wanted to
talk about the ethics of history, or the possibility of a new form of
government. Napoleon, himself, was making history, and writing it in
fire and flame; and as for governments, he invented governments all over
Europe as suited his imperial will. What patience could he have with
one whom an English writer has rather unkindly described as "an ugly
coquette, an old woman who made a ridiculous marriage, a blue-stocking,
who spent much of her time in pestering men of genius, and drawing from
them sarcastic comment behind their backs? "
Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion, but
he was most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated by
pedantry. Consequently, he found Mme. de Stael a good deal of a nuisance
in the salons of Paris and its vicinity. He cared not the least for her
epigrams. She might go somewhere else and write all the epigrams she
pleased. When he banished her, in 1803, she merely crossed the Rhine
into Germany, and established herself at Weimar.
The emperor received her son, Auguste de Stael-Holstein, with much good
humor, though he refused the boy's appeal on behalf of his mother.
"My dear baron," said Napoleon, "if your mother were to be in Paris
for two months, I should really be obliged to lock her up in one of the
castles, which would be most unpleasant treatment for me to show a lady.
No, let her go anywhere else and we can get along perfectly. All Europe
is open to her--Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg; and if she wishes to write
libels on me, England is a convenient and inexpensive place. Only Paris
is just a little too near! "
Thus the emperor gibed the boy--he was only fifteen or sixteen--and made
fun of the exiled blue-stocking; but there was not a sign of malice in
what he said, nor, indeed, of any serious feeling at all. The
legend about Napoleon and Mme. de Stael must, therefore, go into the
waste-basket, except in so far as it is true that she succeeded in
boring him.
For the rest, she was an earlier George Sand--unattractive in person,
yet able to attract; loving love for love's sake, though seldom
receiving it in return; throwing herself at the head of every
distinguished man, and generally finding that he regarded her overtures
with mockery. To enumerate the men for whom she professed to care would
be tedious, since the record of her passions has no reality about it,
save, perhaps, with two exceptions.
She did care deeply and sincerely for Henri Benjamin Constant, the
brilliant politician and novelist. He was one of her coterie in Paris,
and their common political sentiments formed a bond of friendship
between them. Constant was banished by Napoleon in 1802, and when Mme.
de Stael followed him into exile a year later he joined her in Germany.
The story of their relations was told by Constant in Adolphe, while Mme.
de Stael based Delphine on her experiences with him. It seems that he
was puzzled by her ardor; she was infatuated by his genius. Together
they went through all the phases of the tender passion; and yet, at
intervals, they would tire of each other and separate for a while, and
she would amuse herself with other men. At last she really believed that
her love for him was entirely worn out.
"I always loved my lovers more than they loved me," she said once, and
it was true.
Yet, on the other hand, she was frankly false to all of them, and hence
arose these intervals. In one of them she fell in with a young Italian
named Rocca, and by way of a change she not only amused herself with
him, but even married him. At this time--1811--she was forty-five, while
Rocca was only twenty-three--a young soldier who had fought in Spain,
and who made eager love to the she-philosopher when he was invalided at
Geneva.
The marriage was made on terms imposed by the middle-aged woman who
became his bride. In the first place, it was to be kept secret; and
second, she would not take her husband's name, but he must pass himself
off as her lover, even though she bore him children. The reason she gave
for this extraordinary exhibition of her vanity was that a change of
name on her part would put everybody out.
"In fact," she said, "if Mme. de Stael were to change her name, it would
unsettle the heads of all Europe! "
And so she married Rocca, who was faithful to her to the end, though she
grew extremely plain and querulous, while he became deaf and soon lost
his former charm. Her life was the life of a woman who had, in her own
phrase, "attempted everything"; and yet she had accomplished nothing
that would last. She was loved by a man of genius, but he did not love
her to the end. She was loved by a man of action, and she tired of him
very soon. She had a wonderful reputation for her knowledge of history
and philosophy, and yet what she knew of those subjects is now seen to
be merely the scraps and borrowings of others.
Something she did when she introduced the romantic literature into
France; and there are passages from her writings which seem worthy of
preservation. For instance, we may quote her outburst with regard to
unhappy marriages. "It was the subject," says Mr. Gribble, "on which she
had begun to think before she was married, and which continued to haunt
her long after she was left a widow; though one suspects that the word
'marriage' became a form of speech employed to describe her relations,
not with her husband, but with her lovers. " The passage to which I refer
is as follows:
In an unhappy marriage, there is a violence of distress surpassing all
other sufferings in the world. A woman's whole soul depends upon the
conjugal tie. To struggle against fate alone, to journey to the grave
without a friend to support you or to regret you, is an isolation of
which the deserts of Arabia give but a faint and feeble idea. When
all the treasure of your youth has been given in vain, when you can no
longer hope that the reflection of these first rays will shine upon the
end of your life, when there is nothing in the dusk to remind you of
the dawn, and when the twilight is pale and colorless as a livid specter
that precedes the night, your heart revolts, and you feel that you have
been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth.
Equally striking is another prose passage of hers, which seems less the
careful thought of a philosopher than the screeching of a termagant. It
is odd that the first two sentences recall two famous lines of Byron:
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
'Tis woman's whole existence.
The passage by Mme. de Stael is longer and less piquant:
Love is woman's whole existence. It is only an episode in the lives
of men. Reputation, honor, esteem, everything depends upon how a woman
conducts herself in this regard; whereas, according to the rules of
an unjust world, the laws of morality itself are suspended in men's
relations with women. They may pass as good men, though they have caused
women the most terrible suffering which it is in the power of one human
being to inflict upon another. They may be regarded as loyal, though
they have betrayed them. They may have received from a woman marks of
a devotion which would so link two friends, two fellow soldiers, that
either would feel dishonored if he forgot them, and they may consider
themselves free of all obligations by attributing the services to
love--as if this additional gift of love detracted from the value of the
rest!
One cannot help noticing how lacking in neatness of expression is this
woman who wrote so much. It is because she wrote so much that she wrote
in such a muffled manner. It is because she thought so much that her
reflections were either not her own, or were never clear. It is because
she loved so much, and had so many lovers--Benjamin Constant; Vincenzo
Monti, the Italian poet; M. de Narbonne, and others, as well as young
Rocca--that she found both love and lovers tedious.
She talked so much that her conversation was almost always mere personal
opinion. Thus she told Goethe that he never was really brilliant until
after he had got through a bottle of champagne. Schiller said that to
talk with her was to have a "rough time," and that after she left him,
he always felt like a man who was just getting over a serious illness.
Pencilings by the Way, has given an interesting sketch of the countess
and her surroundings, while the younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) has
depicted D'Orsay as Count Mirabel in Henrietta Temple. Willis says:
In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and
mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon
Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture, to my eye, as
the door opened, was a very lovely one--a woman of remarkable beauty,
half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent
lamp suspended from the center of the arched ceiling. Sofas, couches,
ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through
the room; enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in
every corner, and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book,
to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.
All this "crowded sumptuousness" was due to the taste of Lady
Blessington. Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as
Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such
as Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of
letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis. To maintain
this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money,
totaling about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his
different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of
course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived
in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager,
improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings
of his wife.
In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared,
there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon the
thirties--a time which is a very critical period in a woman's emotional
life, if she has not already given herself over to love and been loved
in return. During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had suffered in
many ways, and it is probable that no thought of love had entered her
mind. She was only too glad if she could escape from the harshness
of her father and the cruelty of her first husband. Then came her
development into a beautiful woman, content for the time to be
languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to
her.
When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced;
and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage--a marriage
with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and having
no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction in social
triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit
them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish
hand. But, after all, in a woman of her temperament none of these things
could satisfy her inner longings. Beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity,
imaginative and eager, such a nature as hers would in the end be starved
unless her heart should be deeply touched and unless all her pent-up
emotion could give itself up entirely in the great surrender.
After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied. Her
surroundings wearied her. There was a call within her for something more
than she had yet experienced. The earl, her husband, was by nature no
less restless; and so, without knowing the reason--which, indeed, she
herself did not understand--he readily assented to a journey on the
Continent.
As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence,
where Count d'Orsay was still quartered with his regiment. A vague,
indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a
woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to
the heart. The mere sound of the French officer's voice, the mere sight
of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing
had ever stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to
have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was enough
that they were soothed and satisfied with each other's company.
Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D'Orsay as
did his wife. The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and
to accompany them to Italy. This he was easily persuaded to do; and the
three passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse
among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy. Just
what passed between Count d'Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time
cannot be known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it
is certain that before very long they came to know that each was
indispensable to the other.
The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely
unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet
Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife. He pressed
the match upon the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum
of forty thousand pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen
years of age. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and,
in addition, D'Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.
On the other hand, his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing
more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations
between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter
written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way
of "YOUR D'Orsay. " The manners and morals of the time were decidedly
irregular; yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of
what every one was saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet
in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed
to the marriage with Lady Harriet, who was only fifteen years of age.
This made the intimacy between D'Orsay and the Blessingtons appear to be
not unusual; but, as a matter of fact, the marriage was no marriage.
The unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the
indiscretions of her stepmother was left entirely to herself; while the
whole family, returning to London, made their home together in Seymour
Place.
Could D'Orsay have foreseen the future he would never have done what
must always seem an act so utterly unworthy of him. For within two years
Lord Blessington fell ill and died. Had not D'Orsay been married he
would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he was
bound fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no
divorce court in England, and since he had no reason for seeking
a divorce, he was obliged to live on through many years in a most
ambiguous situation. He did, however, separate himself from his childish
bride; and, having done so, he openly took up his residence with Lady
Blessington at Gore House. By this time, however, the companionship of
the two had received a sort of general sanction, and in that easy-going
age most people took it as a matter of course.
The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady
Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d'Orsay was accepted
in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore
House, and there they received all the notable men of the time. The
improvidence of Lady Blessington, however, was in no respect diminished.
She lived upon her jointure, recklessly spending capital as well as
interest, and gathering under her roof a rare museum of artistic
works, from jewels and curios up to magnificent pictures and beautiful
statuary.
D'Orsay had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had
come to Lady Blessington from her husband. He was a skilful painter, and
he practised his art in a professional way. His portrait of the Duke of
Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other that had
been made of him. The Iron Duke was, in fact, a frequent visitor at Gore
House, and he had a very high opinion of Count d'Orsay. Lady Blessington
herself engaged in writing novels of "high life," some of which were
very popular in their day. But of all that she wrote there remains only
one book which is of permanent value--her Conversations with Lord Byron,
a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of the brilliant poet.
But a nemesis was destined to overtake the pair. Money flowed through
Lady Blessington's hands like water, and she could never be brought to
understand that what she had might not last for ever. Finally, it
was all gone, yet her extravagance continued. Debts were heaped up
mountain-high. She signed notes of hand without even reading them. She
incurred obligations of every sort without a moment's hesitation.
For a long time her creditors held aloof, not believing that her
resources were in reality exhausted; but in the end there came a crash
as sudden as it was ruinous. As if moved by a single impulse, those to
whom she owed money took out judgments against her and descended
upon Gore House in a swarm. This was in the spring of 1849, when Lady
Blessington was in her sixtieth year and D'Orsay fifty-one.
It is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the
wreck of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore
House Mr. Madden, Lady Blessington's literary biographer, has written:
Numerous creditors, bill-discounters, money-lenders, jewelers,
lace-venders, tax-collectors, gas-company agents, all persons having
claims to urge pressed them at this period simultaneously. An execution
for a debt of four thousand pounds was at length put in by a house
largely engaged in the silk, lace, India-shawl, and fancy-jewelry
business.
This sum of four thousand pounds was only a nominal claim, but it opened
the flood-gates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors. Mr. Madden
writes still further:
On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The
auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of fashion.
Every room was thronged; the well-known library-salon, in which the
conversaziones took place, was crowded, but not with guests. The
arm-chair in which the lady of the mansion was wont to sit was occupied
by a stout, coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily engaged
in examining a marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of which
were modeled from a cast of those of the absent mistress of the
establishment. People, as they passed through the room, poked the
furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of
various kinds that lay on the table; and some made jests and ribald
jokes on the scene they witnessed.
At this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value.
Pictures by Lawrence and Landseer, a library consisting of thousands
of volumes, vases of exquisite workmanship, chandeliers of ormolu, and
precious porcelains--all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical
prices. Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that
the hour had struck, and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither
Count d'Orsay had already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a
boot-maker to whom he owed five hundred pounds.
D'Orsay very naturally went to Paris, for, like his father, he had
always been an ardent Bonapartist, and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had
been chosen president of the Second French Republic. During the prince's
long period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay, who had
helped him both with money and with influence. D'Orsay now expected
some return for his former generosity. It came, but it came too late. In
1852, shortly after Prince Louis assumed the title of emperor, the count
was appointed director of fine arts; but when the news was brought to
him he was already dying. Lady Blessington died soon after coming to
Paris, before the end of the year 1849.
Comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed. Yet one may quote
some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her
"Night Book. " They seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only
for a little while, and that deep down in her heart she had condemned
herself.
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is
always influenced by his head.
The separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of
two hearts that have loved, but have ceased to sympathize, while memory
still recalls what they once were to each other.
People are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them.
A woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it.
It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than
to be pardoned for it.
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our
buried hopes.
BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
In 1812, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, Lord Byron was more
talked of than any other man in London. He was in the first flush of his
brilliant career, having published the early cantos of "Childe Harold. "
Moreover, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing a
personal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist.
Byron's childhood had been one to excite in him strong feelings of
revolt, and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His
father was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to a
degree. Byron himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidly
sensitive because of a physical deformity--a lame, misshapen foot.
This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left him
headstrong, wilful, almost from the first an enemy to whatever was
established and conventional.
As a boy, he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he
formed. At eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girl
named Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him a
strange, un-childish passion. At fifteen came one of the greatest
crises of his life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whose
grand-father had been killed in a duel by Byron's great-uncle. Young as
he was, he would have married her immediately; but Miss Chaworth was
two years older than he, and absolutely refused to take seriously the
devotion of a school-boy.
Byron felt the disappointment keenly; and after a short stay at
Cambridge, he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and traveled
eastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens he wrote the pretty
little poem to the "maid of Athens"--Miss Theresa Macri, daughter of
the British vice-consul. He returned to London to become at one leap the
most admired poet of the day and the greatest social favorite. He was
possessed of striking personal beauty. Sir Walter Scott said of him:
"His countenance was a thing to dream of. " His glorious eyes, his
mobile, eloquent face, fascinated all; and he was, besides, a genius of
the first rank.
With these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denying
himself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, and
unstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the East
made many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, such
as "The Giaour" and "The Corsair. " A German wrote of him that "he was
positively besieged by women. " From the humblest maid-servants up to
ladies of high rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to make
a conquest. Some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to be
thrown. No wonder that he was sated with so much adoration and that he
wrote of women:
I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them as
grown-up children; but, like a foolish mother, I am constantly the slave
of one of them. Give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she
will be content.
The liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was that
between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has been greatly blamed for
his share in it; but there is much to be said on the other side. Lady
Caroline was happily married to the Right Hon. William Lamb, afterward
Lord Melbourne, and destined to be the first prime minister of Queen
Victoria. He was an easy-going, genial man of the world who placed too
much confidence in the honor of his wife. She, on the other hand, was
a sentimental fool, always restless, always in search of some new
excitement. She thought herself a poet, and scribbled verses, which
her friends politely admired, and from which they escaped as soon as
possible. When she first met Byron, she cried out: "That pale face is my
fate! " And she afterward added: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know! "
It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the point
of open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer. This woman,
older than he, flung herself directly at his head. Naturally enough,
it was not very long before she bored him thoroughly. Her romantic
impetuosity became tiresome, and very soon she fell to talking always
of herself, thrusting her poems upon him, and growing vexed and peevish
when he would not praise them. As was well said, "he grew moody and she
fretful when their mutual egotisms jarred. "
In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she was
worse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion she made
her way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another time, when she
thought he had slighted her, she tried to stab herself with a pair of
scissors. Still later, she offered her favors to any one who would kill
him. Byron himself wrote of her:
You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has said
and done.
Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel, "The
Marriage of William Ashe. "
Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation.
At any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Anne Millbanke,
who at first refused him; but he persisted, and in 1815 the two were
married. Byron seems to have had a premonition that he was making a
terrible mistake. During the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf,
and made the wrong responses to the clergyman. After the wedding was
over, in handing his bride into the carriage which awaited them, he said
to her:
"Miss Millbanke, are you ready? "
It was a strange blunder for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded
at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could
have been more thoroughly mismated--Byron, the human volcano, and his
wife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility
was evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from
their wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his honeymoon, he
answered:
"Call it rather a treacle moon! "
It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic
troubles. Only five weeks after their daughter's birth, they parted.
Lady Byron declared that her husband was insane; while after trying many
times to win from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave up
the task in a sort of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, for
the benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decades
afterward by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron,
that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Augusta
Leigh, Lord Byron's sister, and that even on her death-bed she sent an
amicable message to Mrs. Leigh.
Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him,
left England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland,
he took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding
himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, he
expressed in these lines:
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!
Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in upon
him from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe Harold" and
"Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. For the fourth
canto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve thousand dollars.
In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore; but
eventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter upon a
new phase of his curious career.
He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and much
brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His look
was no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the change
had not been altogether unfortunate. He had lost something of his wild
impetuosity, and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtieth
year, in fact, he had at last become a man.
It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for
the rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a star on the
stormy horizon of the poet. " This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli,
whom he first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years
of age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years her
senior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamy
eyes and an abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modest
and graceful. She had known Byron but a very short time when she found
herself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had never
dreamed. It was written of her:
She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became its
slave.
To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time until
his death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated.
Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might have been expected.
Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him with
Italian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess met
frequently. When Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever, the
countess remained beside him, and he was just recovering when Count
Guiccioli appeared upon the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was in
despair. He exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess, yet he
dreaded assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband.
Whenever he rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.
Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity was
remarkable. He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and he
hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united
once for all. This came about in the end through the persistence of the
pair. The Countess Guiccioli openly took up her abode with him, not to
be separated until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks in
their struggle for independence. This was in 1822, when Byron was in his
thirty-fifth year. He never returned to Italy, but died in the historic
land for which he gave his life as truly as if he had fallen upon the
field of battle.
Teresa Guiccioli had been, in all but name, his wife for just three
years. Much, has been said in condemnation of this love-affair; but in
many ways it is less censurable than almost anything in his career. It
was an instance of genuine love, a love which purified and exalted this
man of dark and moody moments. It saved him from those fitful passions
and orgies of self-indulgence which had exhausted him. It proved to be
an inspiration which at last led him to die for a cause approved by all
the world.
As for the woman, what shall we say of her? She came to him unspotted by
the world. A demand for divorce which her husband made was rejected.
A pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between the two. The
countess gladly left behind "her palaces, her equipages, society, and
riches, for the love of the poet who had won her heart. "
Unlike the other women who had cared for him, she was unselfish in
her devotion. She thought more of his fame than did he himself. Emilio
Castelar has written:
She restored him and elevated him. She drew him from the mire and set
the crown of purity upon his brow. Then, when she had recovered this
great heart, instead of keeping it as her own possession, she gave it to
humanity.
For twenty-seven years after Byron's death, she remained, as it were,
widowed and alone. Then, in her old age, she married the Marquis de
Boissy; but the marriage was purely one of convenience. Her heart was
always Byron's, whom she defended with vivacity. In 1868, she published
her memoirs of the poet, filled with interesting and affecting
recollections. She died as late as 1873.
Some time between the year 1866 and that of her death, she is said to
have visited Newstead Abbey, which had once been Byron's home. She was
very old, a widow, and alone; but her affection for the poet-lover of
her youth was still as strong as ever.
Byron's life was short, if measured by years only. Measured by
achievement, it was filled to the very full. His genius blazes like
a meteor in the records of English poetry; and some of that splendor
gleams about the lovely woman who turned him away from vice and folly
and made him worthy of his historic ancestry, of his country, and of
himself.
THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL
Each century, or sometimes each generation, is distinguished by some
especial interest among those who are given to fancies--not to call them
fads. Thus, at the present time, the cultivated few are taken up with
what they choose to term the "new thought," or the "new criticism," or,
on the other hand, with socialistic theories and projects. Thirty years
ago, when Oscar Wilde was regarded seriously by some people, there were
many who made a cult of estheticism. It was just as interesting when
their leader--
Walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily
In his medieval hand,
or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guyed him as
Bunthorne in "Patience. "
When Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense,
"muscular Christianity" was a phrase which was taken up by many
followers. A little earlier, Puseyism and a primitive form of socialism
were in vogue with the intellectuals. There are just as many different
fashions in thought as in garments, and they come and go without any
particular reason. To-day, they are discussed and practised everywhere.
To-morrow, they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of something
new.
Forty years before the French Revolution burst forth with all its
thunderings, France and Germany were affected by what was generally
styled "sensibility. " Sensibility was the sister of sentimentality and
the half-sister of sentiment. Sentiment is a fine thing in itself. It is
consistent with strength and humor and manliness; but sentimentality and
sensibility are poor cheeping creatures that run scuttering along the
ground, quivering and whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy,
which they do not at all deserve.
No one need be ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to the
blade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand,
is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, in
fact, all humbug, just as sentiment is often all truth.
Therefore, to find an interesting phase of human folly, we may look back
to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era of sensibility.
The great prophets of this false god, or goddess, were Rousseau in
France and Goethe with Schiller in Germany, together with a host of
midgets who shook and shivered in imitation of their masters. It is not
for us to catalogue these persons. Some of them were great figures
in literature and philosophy, and strong enough to shake aside the
silliness of sensibility; but others, while they professed to be great
as writers or philosophers, are now remembered only because their
devotion to sensibility made them conspicuous in their own time. They
dabbled in one thing and another; they "cribbed" from every popular
writer of the day. The only thing that actually belonged to them was a
high degree of sensibility.
And what, one may ask, was this precious thing--this sensibility?
It was really a sort of St. Vitus's dance of the mind, and almost of
the body. When two persons, in any way interested in each other, were
brought into the same room, one of them appeared to be seized with
a rotary movement. The voice rose to a higher pitch than usual, and
assumed a tremolo. Then, if the other person was also endowed with
sensibility, he or she would rotate and quake in somewhat the same
manner. Their cups of tea would be considerably agitated. They would
move about in as unnatural a manner as possible; and when they left the
room, they would do so with gaspings and much waste of breath.
This was not an exhibition of love--or, at least, not necessarily
so. You might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallant
soldier, or a celebrated traveler--or, for that matter, before a
remarkable buffoon, like Cagliostro, or a freak, like Kaspar Hauser.
It is plain enough that sensibility was entirely an abnormal thing, and
denoted an abnormal state of mind. Only among people like the Germans
and French of that period, who were forbidden to take part in public
affairs, could it have flourished so long, and have put forth such
rank and fetid outgrowths. From it sprang the "elective affinities" of
Goethe, and the loose morality of the French royalists, which rushed
on into the roaring sea of infidelity, blasphemy, and anarchy of the
Revolution.
Of all the historic figures of that time, there is just one which
to-day stands forth as representing sensibility. In her own time she
was thought to be something of a philosopher, and something more of a
novelist. She consorted with all the clever men and women of her age.
But now she holds a minute niche in history because of the fact that
Napoleon stooped to hate her, and because she personifies sensibility.
Criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophy
which was not her own. It is seen that she was indebted to the brains of
others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth in Delphine
and Corinne; but as the exponent of sensibility she remains unique. This
woman was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, usually known as Mme. de Stael.
There was much about Mile. Necker's parentage that made her interesting.
Her father was the Genevese banker and minister of Louis XVI, who failed
wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances of France. Her mother,
Suzanne Curchod, as a young girl, had won the love of the famous English
historian, Edward Gibbon. She had first refused him, and then almost
frantically tried to get him back; but by this time Gibbon was more
comfortable in single life and less infatuated with Mlle. Curchod, who
presently married Jacques Necker.
M. Necker's money made his daughter a very celebrated "catch. " Her
mother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliant beyond
description, and yet was tottering to its fall. The rumblings of the
Revolution could be heard by almost every ear; and yet society and the
court, refusing to listen, plunged into the wildest revelry under the
leadership of the giddy Marie Antoinette.
It was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegant
forms of luxury, and met the cleverest men of that time--Voltaire,
Rousseau, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Volney. She set herself to be the
most accomplished woman of her day, not merely in belles lettres, but in
the natural and political sciences. Thus, when her father was drawing
up his monograph on the French finances, Germaine labored hard over
a supplementary report, studying documents, records, and the most
complicated statistics, so that she might obtain a mastery of the
subject.
"I mean to know everything that anybody knows," she said, with an
arrogance which was rather admired in so young a woman.
But, unfortunately, her mind was not great enough to fulfil her
aspiration. The most she ever achieved was a fair knowledge of many
things--a knowledge which seemed surprising to the average man, but
which was superficial enough to the accomplished specialist.
In her twentieth year (1786) it was thought best that she should marry.
Her revels, as well as her hard studies, had told upon her health, and
her mother believed that she could not be at once a blue-stocking and a
woman of the world.
There was something very odd about the relation that existed between the
young girl and this mother of hers. In the Swiss province where they had
both been born, the mother had been considered rather bold and forward.
Her penchant for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventures that
have been told about her. She was by no means coy with the gallants of
Geneva. Yet, after her marriage, and when she came to Paris, she seemed
to be transformed into a sort of Swiss Puritan.
As such, she undertook her daughter's bringing up, and was extremely
careful about everything that Germaine did and about the company she
kept. On the other hand, the daughter, who in the city of Calvin had
been rather dull and quiet in her ways, launched out into a gaiety such
as she had never known in Switzerland. Mother and daughter, in fact,
changed parts. The country beauty of Geneva became the prude of Paris,
while the quiet, unemotional young Genevese became the light of all the
Parisian salons, whether social or intellectual.
The mother was a very beautiful woman. The daughter, who was to become
so famous, is best described by those two very uncomplimentary English
words, "dumpy" and "frumpy. " She had bulging eyes--which are not
emphasized in the flattering portrait by Gerard--and her hair was
unbecomingly dressed. There are reasons for thinking that Germaine
bitterly hated her mother, and was intensely jealous of her charm
of person. It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter's
cleverness, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end,
than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate,
the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father the
affection which her mother neither received nor sought.
It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage was
arranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who then
represented the court of Sweden at Paris. Many eyebrows were lifted when
this match was announced. Baron de Stael had no personal charm, nor any
reputation for wit. His standing in the diplomatic corps was not very
high. His favorite occupations were playing cards and drinking enormous
quantities of punch. Could he be considered a match for the extremely
clever Mlle. Necker, whose father had an enormous fortune, and who
was herself considered a gem of wit and mental power, ready to discuss
political economy, or the romantic movement of socialism, or platonic
love?
Many differed about this. Mlle. Necker was, to be sure, rich and clever;
but the Baron de Stael was of an old family, and had a title. Moreover,
his easy-going ways--even his punch-drinking and his card-playing--made
him a desirable husband at that time of French social history, when the
aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased, with wanton license,
and when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet
ambassadress might retire when the mob grew dangerous. For Paris was now
approaching the time of revolution, and all "aristocrats" were more or
less in danger.
At first Mme. de Stael rather sympathized with the outbreak of the
people; but later their excesses drove her back into sympathy with
the royalists. It was then that she became indiscreet and abused the
privilege of the embassy in giving shelter to her friends. She was
obliged to make a sudden flight across the frontier, whence she did
not return until Napoleon loomed up, a political giant on the
horizon--victorious general, consul, and emperor.
Mme. de Stael's relations with Napoleon have, as I remarked above, been
among her few titles to serious remembrance. The Corsican eagle and the
dumpy little Genevese make, indeed, a peculiar pair; and for this reason
writers have enhanced the oddities of the picture.
"Napoleon," says one, "did not wish any one to be near him who was as
clever as himself. "
"No," adds another, "Mme. de Stael made a dead set at Napoleon, because
she wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody, even of
the greatest man who ever lived. "
"Napoleon found her to be a good deal of a nuisance," observes a third.
"She knew too much, and was always trying to force her knowledge upon
others. "
The legend has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty to
be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction that the
conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. It is,
perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whether
Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to
this rather comic creature, even though at the time many people thought
her a remarkable genius.
In the first place, knowing Napoleon, as we have come to know him
through the pages of Mme. de Remusat, Frederic Masson, and others, we
can readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier would
sit at dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the whole ceremony
into twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine and a cup of coffee,
and then being interrupted by a fussy little female who wanted to
talk about the ethics of history, or the possibility of a new form of
government. Napoleon, himself, was making history, and writing it in
fire and flame; and as for governments, he invented governments all over
Europe as suited his imperial will. What patience could he have with
one whom an English writer has rather unkindly described as "an ugly
coquette, an old woman who made a ridiculous marriage, a blue-stocking,
who spent much of her time in pestering men of genius, and drawing from
them sarcastic comment behind their backs? "
Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion, but
he was most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated by
pedantry. Consequently, he found Mme. de Stael a good deal of a nuisance
in the salons of Paris and its vicinity. He cared not the least for her
epigrams. She might go somewhere else and write all the epigrams she
pleased. When he banished her, in 1803, she merely crossed the Rhine
into Germany, and established herself at Weimar.
The emperor received her son, Auguste de Stael-Holstein, with much good
humor, though he refused the boy's appeal on behalf of his mother.
"My dear baron," said Napoleon, "if your mother were to be in Paris
for two months, I should really be obliged to lock her up in one of the
castles, which would be most unpleasant treatment for me to show a lady.
No, let her go anywhere else and we can get along perfectly. All Europe
is open to her--Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg; and if she wishes to write
libels on me, England is a convenient and inexpensive place. Only Paris
is just a little too near! "
Thus the emperor gibed the boy--he was only fifteen or sixteen--and made
fun of the exiled blue-stocking; but there was not a sign of malice in
what he said, nor, indeed, of any serious feeling at all. The
legend about Napoleon and Mme. de Stael must, therefore, go into the
waste-basket, except in so far as it is true that she succeeded in
boring him.
For the rest, she was an earlier George Sand--unattractive in person,
yet able to attract; loving love for love's sake, though seldom
receiving it in return; throwing herself at the head of every
distinguished man, and generally finding that he regarded her overtures
with mockery. To enumerate the men for whom she professed to care would
be tedious, since the record of her passions has no reality about it,
save, perhaps, with two exceptions.
She did care deeply and sincerely for Henri Benjamin Constant, the
brilliant politician and novelist. He was one of her coterie in Paris,
and their common political sentiments formed a bond of friendship
between them. Constant was banished by Napoleon in 1802, and when Mme.
de Stael followed him into exile a year later he joined her in Germany.
The story of their relations was told by Constant in Adolphe, while Mme.
de Stael based Delphine on her experiences with him. It seems that he
was puzzled by her ardor; she was infatuated by his genius. Together
they went through all the phases of the tender passion; and yet, at
intervals, they would tire of each other and separate for a while, and
she would amuse herself with other men. At last she really believed that
her love for him was entirely worn out.
"I always loved my lovers more than they loved me," she said once, and
it was true.
Yet, on the other hand, she was frankly false to all of them, and hence
arose these intervals. In one of them she fell in with a young Italian
named Rocca, and by way of a change she not only amused herself with
him, but even married him. At this time--1811--she was forty-five, while
Rocca was only twenty-three--a young soldier who had fought in Spain,
and who made eager love to the she-philosopher when he was invalided at
Geneva.
The marriage was made on terms imposed by the middle-aged woman who
became his bride. In the first place, it was to be kept secret; and
second, she would not take her husband's name, but he must pass himself
off as her lover, even though she bore him children. The reason she gave
for this extraordinary exhibition of her vanity was that a change of
name on her part would put everybody out.
"In fact," she said, "if Mme. de Stael were to change her name, it would
unsettle the heads of all Europe! "
And so she married Rocca, who was faithful to her to the end, though she
grew extremely plain and querulous, while he became deaf and soon lost
his former charm. Her life was the life of a woman who had, in her own
phrase, "attempted everything"; and yet she had accomplished nothing
that would last. She was loved by a man of genius, but he did not love
her to the end. She was loved by a man of action, and she tired of him
very soon. She had a wonderful reputation for her knowledge of history
and philosophy, and yet what she knew of those subjects is now seen to
be merely the scraps and borrowings of others.
Something she did when she introduced the romantic literature into
France; and there are passages from her writings which seem worthy of
preservation. For instance, we may quote her outburst with regard to
unhappy marriages. "It was the subject," says Mr. Gribble, "on which she
had begun to think before she was married, and which continued to haunt
her long after she was left a widow; though one suspects that the word
'marriage' became a form of speech employed to describe her relations,
not with her husband, but with her lovers. " The passage to which I refer
is as follows:
In an unhappy marriage, there is a violence of distress surpassing all
other sufferings in the world. A woman's whole soul depends upon the
conjugal tie. To struggle against fate alone, to journey to the grave
without a friend to support you or to regret you, is an isolation of
which the deserts of Arabia give but a faint and feeble idea. When
all the treasure of your youth has been given in vain, when you can no
longer hope that the reflection of these first rays will shine upon the
end of your life, when there is nothing in the dusk to remind you of
the dawn, and when the twilight is pale and colorless as a livid specter
that precedes the night, your heart revolts, and you feel that you have
been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth.
Equally striking is another prose passage of hers, which seems less the
careful thought of a philosopher than the screeching of a termagant. It
is odd that the first two sentences recall two famous lines of Byron:
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
'Tis woman's whole existence.
The passage by Mme. de Stael is longer and less piquant:
Love is woman's whole existence. It is only an episode in the lives
of men. Reputation, honor, esteem, everything depends upon how a woman
conducts herself in this regard; whereas, according to the rules of
an unjust world, the laws of morality itself are suspended in men's
relations with women. They may pass as good men, though they have caused
women the most terrible suffering which it is in the power of one human
being to inflict upon another. They may be regarded as loyal, though
they have betrayed them. They may have received from a woman marks of
a devotion which would so link two friends, two fellow soldiers, that
either would feel dishonored if he forgot them, and they may consider
themselves free of all obligations by attributing the services to
love--as if this additional gift of love detracted from the value of the
rest!
One cannot help noticing how lacking in neatness of expression is this
woman who wrote so much. It is because she wrote so much that she wrote
in such a muffled manner. It is because she thought so much that her
reflections were either not her own, or were never clear. It is because
she loved so much, and had so many lovers--Benjamin Constant; Vincenzo
Monti, the Italian poet; M. de Narbonne, and others, as well as young
Rocca--that she found both love and lovers tedious.
She talked so much that her conversation was almost always mere personal
opinion. Thus she told Goethe that he never was really brilliant until
after he had got through a bottle of champagne. Schiller said that to
talk with her was to have a "rough time," and that after she left him,
he always felt like a man who was just getting over a serious illness.
