Part 21 (2/2)
She is said to have married M. Roland more as a theory than as a husband, for her ideas of marriage were such as to make pure, disinterested love impossible. Her husband was in many respects her intellectual superior, but she excelled him in versatility. Being her senior by twenty years, when he grew old and infirm he depended upon her for a great deal, all of which contributed to her restlessness and unhappiness. Then there developed in her that terrible struggle between loyalty to her husband and pa.s.sion for Buzot, in which reason conquered. This devotion to duty was indeed rare in those days, when pa.s.sion was supreme and pure love was almost unknown. Mr. Dobson says that this one trait by which she gave real expression of virtue is profoundly a product of her mental self. Her instinct would have led her to self-abandonment, so common in that day, but her ”man by the head” self was stronger than her ”woman by the heart” self. These two sides of her character, fostered by incessant reading, incited her fearful and unrelenting hatreds as well as her pa.s.sion, ”masculine enough to be mistrusted and feminine enough to be admired.” These two qualities made her a power and an attraction. Her better side will continue to s.h.i.+ne clearer as the horror of those days is revealed.
Whatever may be the effects of her ambitious nature and of her unfortunate pa.s.sion for Buzot, by the very virtue of her intellect and reasoning she will remain the one great woman of the Revolution who willingly and conscientiously sacrificed her life for her country.
A type perhaps more universally known in her relation to the Revolution than is Mme. Roland, though no better understood, was Charlotte Corday. Possessed of a most intense patriotism and an unusual emotional nature, she represented better than any other woman of her age the peculiar French trait--namely, the emotional perfectly combined with the mathematical. She was unique; her compatriots practised the art of studying themselves, in order to be attractive, and thus accomplished their ends, while her ambition was not to please merely, but to be of some real, practical value to her troubled country. She stands out, however, as the product of the end of the eighteenth century, a natural result of the reading of philosophy and political pamphlets. Quite naturally, she entertained such philosophical sentiments as this: ”No one will lose in losing me, and the country may be better off for the sacrifice. Death comes only once, and let us use it to the good of the country or the greatest number of people.” Thus, her philosophy led her to a complete detachment from her individual self, and fostered the idea of dying for her country.
Her decision to rid France of Marat was arrived at by degrees of silent brooding over the evils which beset her native land; at last she felt herself called to some great act which would necessitate the loss of her life. ”The time brought forth desperation, intense warmth of feeling, concentrated upon some purpose or object;” the reasoning self seemed to be stifled by the intensity of the emotion. Yet, reason was to conquer in her. When the Girondists returned to Caen and described Robespierre and Marat in the darkest colors, she at once felt moved to put forth all her efforts to rid France of that evil blot--Marat. She was beautiful, strong, and graceful, presenting a most striking appearance. Loved by all, she felt love and devotion only for her country. Desperate and determined, she set out to fulfil her mission. She was a mere expression of the conservative element which acts only when driven by sheer necessity. Her reason impressed her with her duty and circ.u.mstances; the time acted upon her mind.
”Easy, calm, resigned, she looked upon the angry ma.s.ses of people who cursed her,” confident that she had done her country a service, and proud that she had been the fortunate one to render it. This was her glory, and for this she will be remembered in history.
Possibly the rarest phenomenon in the history of the ill.u.s.trious women of France is Mme. Recamier, who, by force of her beauty and social fascination, and without intellectual gifts or even wit, won for herself the position of queen of French society, which she held for nearly half a century. The very name of Recamier has come to evoke a vision of beauty, a beauty so well known to every lover of art who has visited the Luxembourg and gazed upon the figure ”so flexible and elegant, with head well poised, brilliant complexion, little rosy mouth with pearly teeth, black curling hair, soft expressive eyes, and a bearing indicative of indolence and pride, yet with a face beaming with good nature and sympathy.” Her beauty has been considered perfect, but a recent writer has proved this to be an error.
M.J. Turquan, in a new volume on Mme. Recamier, is everything but sympathetic to the woman at whom criticism has rarely been pointed.
”Quite a contrast to her extraordinary beauty of face,” he declares, ”were her hands, with big fingers square at the end and having flat nails. The same may be said of her feet, which were not only big, but were without the slightest trace of _finesse_ in their lines.” But though Turquan has raised numerous points in her disfavor, they are not at all likely to detract from her unrivalled reputation for beauty.
Critics have made of her a sort of enigmatic figure, supernatural and having only the form of the human. Thus, in Lamartine we find the following description: ”The young girl was, they say, a _sous-entendu_ of nature: she could be a wife, she could not be a mother. These are the two mysteries we must respect, but which we must know to have been the secret of the entire life of Mme. Recamier--a mournful and eternal enigma which will never have its words divined,... All her looks produced an intoxication, but brought hope to no heart. The divine statue had not descended from its pedestal for anyone, as though such a performance would have been too divine for a mortal.” Her beauty was so marked, so singular, that wherever she appeared--at the ball, the theatre--it caused a sensation; all turned to look at her and admire in subdued astonishment. Her form was said to be marvellously elegant and supple, her neck of an exquisite perfection, her mouth ”deliciously small and pink, her teeth veritable pearls set in coral, her arms splendidly moulded, her eyes full of sweetness and admiration, her nose most attractive in its regularity, her physiognomy candid and spiritual, her air indolent and haughty, and her att.i.tude reserved. Before this ensemble, you remained in ecstasy.”
All this beauty was particularly well set off by an exquisite white dress adorned with pearls--a style she affected the year around.
But her beauty alone could hardly have contributed to the marvellous success of Mme. Recamier, as some critics a.s.sert. Guizot, for instance, suspects her nature to have been less superficial than other writers might lead one to suppose. He said: ”This pa.s.sionate admiration, this constant affection, this insatiable taste for society and conversation, won her a wide friends.h.i.+p. All who approached and knew her--foreigners and Frenchmen, princes and the middle cla.s.ses, saints and worldlings, philosophers and artists, adversaries as well as partisans--all she inspired with the ideas and causes she espoused.” Her qualities outside of her beauty were tact, generosity, and elevation of soul, combined with an amiable grace which was unlimited, however superficial it may have been. Knowing how to maintain, in her salon, harmony and even cordial relations between men of the most varied temperaments and political ideas, it was possible for her to remain all her life an intelligent and warm-hearted bond between the elite minds and their diverse sentiments, which she tactfully tempered. Though ever faithful to one cause, she admitted men and women of all parties to her salon. She was moderate and just in the midst of the most arduous struggles, tolerant toward her adversaries, generous toward the conquered, sympathetic to all, and remarkably successful in conciliating all political, literary, and philosophical opinions as well as the pa.s.sions which she aroused in her wors.h.i.+ppers. To these qualities, as much as to her beauty, were due the harmony of her life, the unity of her character--which were never troubled by the turmoils of politics or the emotions of love.
She was not wife, mother, or lover; ”she never belonged to anyone in soul or sense.” Always mistress of her imagination as well as of her heart, she permitted herself to be charmed but never carried away--receiving from all, but giving nothing in return. Her life was brilliant, but there was lurking in the background the demon of sadness and la.s.situde and the terrible disease of the eighteenth century,--ennui.
Two splendid portraits of Mme. Recamier are left to us: one by her pa.s.sionate but unsuccessful lover, Benjamin Constant, picturing her as the personification of attractiveness; the other by M. Lenormant, showing that she desired constant admiration: ”She lacked the affections which bring veritable happiness and the true dignity of woman. Her barren heart, desirous of tenderness and devotion, sought recompense for this need of living, in the homage of pa.s.sionate admiration, the language of which pleases the ears.” Mme. Recamier, while still a child, seemed to realize the power of her beauty, and even before her marriage in 1793 she would often say, when demanded in marriage: ”Mon Dieu! how beautiful I must be already!” A mere girl when married, being only sixteen years of age, she felt no love for her husband, who was her senior by twenty-five years. Soon after the terrible times of ”the Reign of Terror” she found herself one of the most beautiful women in Paris, and her husband one of the wealthiest of bankers. The three rival women of the times were Mme. Recamier, Mme. Tallien, and Josephine. The terrible days of the guillotine were succeeded by an uninterrupted reign of pleasure, ”when a fever of amus.e.m.e.nt possessed everyone, and the desire for distraction of all kinds seemed to have been pushed to its limits.” M. Turquan states that in the reign of dissolute extravagance, immorality, and gorgeous splendor, Mme. Recamier formed a striking contrast by her simplicity.
Her first triumph was at the church Saint-Roche, the most fas.h.i.+onable of Paris, where she was selected to raise a purse for charity. On one occasion the collection amounted to twenty thousand francs, all due to the beauty of the woman pa.s.sing the plate. She was soon invited by her friend Barras to all the b.a.l.l.s and fetes under the Directorate.
In 1798 M. Recamier bought the house formerly tenanted by Necker, and later established himself in a chateau at Clichy, where he received his friends, among whom was Lucien Bonaparte, who attempted the ruin of the beautiful hostess, but without success. Napoleon himself attempted in vain to win her to his court as maid of honor and as an ornament, her refusal incurring his anger, especially as she was the height of fas.h.i.+on and courted by all the great men of the age. Through her preference for the Royalists--persisting in her line of conduct in spite of her friend Fouche--she finally incurred the enmity of the emperor. Even the Princess Caroline endeavored to obtain Mme.
Recamier's friends.h.i.+p for Napoleon, ”but, although the princess gave her _loge_ twice to the favorite, and upon each occasion the emperor went to the theatre expressly to gaze upon her, she remained firm in her refusal, which was one of the causes of the downfall of her banker husband, whom Napoleon might have saved had his wife been the emperor's friend.” Napoleon certainly resented her refusal, for when requested to save Recamier's bank he replied: ”I am not in love with Mme. Recamier!” Thus, because his wife preferred the aristocracy to the favors of Napoleon, the banker lost his fortune.
She, however, bore her misfortunes with great reserve, immediately selling her jewels and her hotel; after which they both retired to small apartments, where they were even more honored and had greater social prestige than ever. She at once made her salon the centre of hostility against the emperor, who, according to Turquan, did not banish her, but her friend Mme. de Stael, with whom she pa.s.sed over into Switzerland. Here began her romance with Prince August of Prussia, who became so enamored of her that he asked her hand in marriage. Encouraged by Mme. de Stael, she even went so far as to ask her husband for a divorce, that she might wed the royal aspirant. Her husband generously consented to this, but at the same time set forth to her the peculiar position which she would occupy, an argument that opened her eyes to her ingrat.i.tude, and she refused the prince.
Upon the fall of Napoleon, Mme. Recamier returned to Paris and, her husband's fortune being restored, gathered about her all the great n.o.bles of the ancient regime. But fortune was unkind to her husband for the second time, and she withdrew to the Abbaye-au-Bois, where she occupied a small apartment on the third floor. Here her distinguished friends followed her--such as Chateaubriand and the Duc de Montmorency. Between her and the famous author of _Le Genie du Christianisme_ there sprang up a friends.h.i.+p which lasted thirty years.
During this time it is said that he visited her at a certain hour each day, the people in the neighborhood setting their clocks by his appearance. When he was absent on missions, he wrote her of every act of his life. Both, weary of the dissipations of society and its flatteries, sought a pure and lofty friends.h.i.+p, spiritual and affectionate, with no improper intimacy. There was mutual admiration and mutual respect. Even Chateaubriand's wife, who was an invalid and with whom he spent every evening, encouraged his friends.h.i.+p with Mme.
Recamier. When, through the fall of Charles X., Chateaubriand lost his power, the friends.h.i.+p did not cease. M. Turquan insists that he did not really care seriously for Mme. Recamier, that his visits were the outgrowth of mere habit. But it is to be seen that throughout his book Turquan has little sympathy for his subject, whom he pictures as a beautiful, heartless, intriguing woman with immense hands, flat, square fingers, and large feet.
The influence possessed by Mme. Recamier was most remarkable; for with the new statesmen, Thiers, Guizot, Mignet, De Tocqueville, Sainte-Beuve, as well as the n.o.bles and princes, she was on most cordial terms, and was received in any salon which she chose to visit.
Her unbounded sympathy, tact, and common sense made her friends.h.i.+p and counsel much in demand by great men. One trait, however, her exclusiveness, caused much discomfort in her life, such as bringing upon her the ill will of Napoleon.
In her later years her physical beauty gradually developed into a moral beauty. She was never a pa.s.sionate woman, but rather pa.s.sively affectionate; purely unselfish, her one desire always was to make people love her and to be happy. Her friends.h.i.+p with Chateaubriand in the later days was possibly the most ideal and n.o.ble in the history of French women. He never failed to make his appearance in the afternoon at the _abbaye_, driven in a carriage to her threshold, where he was placed in an armchair and wheeled to a corner by her fireplace. On one of those visits, he asked her to marry him--he being seventy-nine, she seventy-one--and bear his ill.u.s.trious name. ”Why should we marry at our age?” Mme. Recamier replied. ”There is no impropriety in my taking care of you. If solitude is painful to you, I am ready to live in the same house with you. The world will do justice to the purity of our friends.h.i.+p. Years and blindness give me this right. Let us change nothing in so perfect an affection.” Her charm never deserted her, and she continued to the very last to receive the greatest men and women of the day. Still the reigning beauty and the queen of French society, she died at the age of seventy-two, of cholera.
There is a wide difference between Mme. Recamier and Josephine, the two women of the Napoleonic era who exerted so powerful an influence upon the social and political fortunes of France. At the time of Napoleon's first success, the former was only twenty-one, with Madonna-like charms and attractiveness; the latter, thirty-five, but with exquisite taste in dress and skill in beautifying. Possessed of unstudied natural grace and elegance, and always attired in perfect harmony with her beauty of face and form, she could easily stand a comparison with the other beauties of the day, all of whom studied her air and manner and marked the aristocratic ease and poise of her real _n.o.blesse_ of the old regime.
[Ill.u.s.tration 6: _MME. RECAMIER'S SALON After the painting by Adrien Moreau._ _Thus, in Lamartine we find: ”The young girl was, they say, a_ sous-entendu _of nature: she could be a wife, she could not be a mother.”
These are the two mysteries we must respect, but which we must know to have been the secret of the entire life of Mme. Recamier. Knowing how to maintain, in her salon, harmony between men of the most varied temperaments and political ideas, it was possible for her to remain all her life an intelligent and warm-hearted bond. She admitted men and women of both parties to her salon.... was moderate and just in the midst of the most arduous struggles, tolerant toward her adversaries, generous toward the conquered, sympathetic to all, and remarkably successful in conciliating all political, literary, and philosophical opinions as well as the pa.s.sions which she aroused in her wors.h.i.+ppers._]
”Josephine had a faded and brown complexion, which she remedied with rouge and powder; her small mouth concealed her bad teeth; her elegant figure and graceful movements, refined expression, gentle voice and dignity, all dexterously expressed with an air of coquetry, made her delightful.” The happiest part of the life of Napoleon and Josephine was during their stay in Italy, when he was absolutely faithful to her. As soon as Napoleon left for Egypt, Talleyrand secured the erasure of many n.o.ble names from the list of the proscribed exiles and soon gathered about him a large number of Royalists, who immediately began to pay court to Josephine. Napoleon had enjoined her to keep her salon according to the means he provided and to entertain all influential people. To this she was equal; and all men of elevated rank, the most distinguished artists, men of letters, orators, and musicians, found her salon an enjoyable retreat. No greater galaxy of talent and genius ever a.s.sembled under the old regime than was found there,--David, Lebrun, Lesueur, Gretry, Cherubini, Mehul, J. Chenier, Hoffman, Ducis, Desaugiers, Legouve, and others.
But her life was not without its difficulties. She was always annoyed by the Bonaparte family, who were jealous of her influence over Bonaparte. Exceedingly extravagant, in fact a spendthrift, she was always in need of money. Her virtues, however, easily offset these defects. Josephine never offended anyone, never argued politics; she made friends in all cla.s.ses, thus conciliating Republicans and aristocrats; therefore, her greatest influence was as a mediator between two cla.s.ses of society, by which she, more than any other woman, unconsciously contributed to the forming of a new social France. Napoleon was wise enough to recognize such diplomacy, and encouraged her to intrigue like an experienced diplomat. She was the most efficient aid and means to his future plans, and M. Saint-Amand says that without her he would possibly never have become emperor.
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