Part 8 (2/2)

History scarcely affords a finer instance of the ministrations of womanhood to soothe the woes and supply the wants of man than is exhibited in the relation of Madame Recamier and Chateaubriand. His egotistic and restless mental activity; his exaggerated, perturbed, and gnawing self-consciousness; his despairing view of men; his alienation from the spirit of his age, made him most lonely and unhappy. Meanwhile his ardent poetic susceptibility, his soaring imagination, his impa.s.sioned tenderness, his knightly sentiments, his religious feeling, pre-eminently fitted him to enjoy the moral homage, the delicate, sympathetic attentions, of a woman crowned with every exalting attribute of her s.e.x. He appreciated the prize at its full worth. When nothing else could any longer interest him, her charm retained its pristine power. When beyond his threescore and ten, he writes to her thus, at different times:

”Other things are old stories: you are all that I love to see.” ”I am going to walk out with the lark. She shall sing to me of you: then she will be silent for ever in the furrow into which she drops.” ”I have only one hope graven on my heart, and that is, to see you again.” ”Cherish faithfully your attachment to me: it is all my life.

You see how my poor hand trembles; but my heart is firm.” ”I have but one thought, fidelity to you: all the rest is gone.”

For many years, even after his n.o.ble faculties were broken, and he had lost the use of his limbs, so that he was forced to be carried into her room, he pa.s.sed the hours of every day, from three to six, with her. Amidst the ordinary hatreds, miseries, and indifferences of society, is it not indeed instructive and refres.h.i.+ng to see this example of a spotless friends.h.i.+p still yielding, in extreme old age, the interest, the solace, the happiness, which every thing else had ceased to yield?

Chateaubriand devotes to Madame Recamier the eighth volume of his ”Memoires d'Outre Tombe.” He recognizes, in her serious friends.h.i.+p, a support for the weariness of his life, a remuneration for all his sufferings.

”It seems, in nearing the close of my existence, as if every thing that has been dear to me has been dear to me in Madame Recamier, and that she was the concealed source of my affections. All my memories, both of my dreams and of my realities, have been kneaded into a mixture of charms and sweet pains, of which she has become the visible form. In the midst of these Memoirs,' the temple I am eagerly building, she will meet the chapel which I dedicate to her. Perhaps it will please her to repose there. There I have placed her image.”

During the few months that she survived their loss, Madame Recamier often spoke of Chateaubriand and Ballanche together. Repeatedly, if the door chanced to open at the hour when these two friends had been accustomed to enter, she started; and, on being asked the reason, replied that at certain moments her thought of them was so vivid, that it amounted to an apparition. Only three days previous to her death, she received M. de Saint Priest, and took great interest in hearing him read the eulogy on Ballanche which he was about to p.r.o.nounce before the Academy.

Besides these three chief friends, Madame Recamier had many others well deserving of separate mention. Paul David, nephew of her husband, was a most devoted and inseparable companion of her whole life. When she lost her sight, he used to read to her every evening.

He was a poor reader; and, perceiving that she was sensitive to this defect, he secretly took lessons, at the age of sixty-four, to improve his elocution. Junot and Bernadotte were her ardent, lasting friends, and always delighted to serve her. Her rare graces, and her generous goodness to Madame Desbordes-Valmore, disarmed the prejudices and won the heart of the gifted but misanthropic Latouche.

The Duke de Noailles, who, under the envelope of a chill manner, concealed a conscientiousness of judgment, a constancy and delicacy of feeling, in strong sympathy with her own nature, was admitted to the rank and t.i.tle of friend, ”a serious thing,” says her biographer, ”for her who, more than any one in the world, inspired and practised friends.h.i.+p in the most perfect sense of the word.” He held a place in her esteem like that held by Matthieu de Montmorency. One of the latest and warmest of her friends was the brilliant and high-souled Ampere, introduced to her by Ballanche, who had been an intimate friend of his father, and who now loved the son with double fervor, a debt which the grateful young man repaid with interest in a n.o.ble tribute to his memory. Never did a mother feel a deeper solicitude in the prospects of a darling son, or exert herself more devotedly to further his success; never did a son more thoroughly idolize a beautiful and good mother, than was realized between Madame Recamier and Ampere. Solely to please her, this most entertaining and most courted man in Paris devoted himself not merely to her, which would have been easy; but to Chateaubriand, which was difficult. Nothing can better ill.u.s.trate her irresistible charm. And nothing can better ill.u.s.trate the coa.r.s.eness and ignorance of many of our critics, than the presumption with which one of them, in 1864, speaking of Ampere's funeral, says, ”He was one of Madame Recamier's many lovers, and was bitterly disappointed at her refusal to marry him after the death of Chateaubriand!”

Such were the few princ.i.p.al men who penetrated to the centre of that select circle, in whose outer ranges of general benevolence the right of citizens.h.i.+p was granted to so many choice figures. Among the more distinguished of these latter may be named Benjamin Constant, the Duke de Doudeauville, De Gerando, Prosper de Barante, Delacroix, Gerard, Thierry, Ville-main, Lamartine, Guizot, De Tocqueville, Sainte Beuve. Surrounded by such persons as these, in the humble chamber to which, on the loss of her fortune, she had betaken herself, she presided like a priestess in the temple of friends.h.i.+p, ever pre-occupied with them, their glory her dominant pa.s.sion, never herself seeking to s.h.i.+ne, but intent only to elicit and display their gifts. Was it not natural, that they should, in the humorous phrase of Ballanche, ”gravitate towards the centre of the Abbaye-aux-Bois”?

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett allows us a few glimpses into two friends.h.i.+ps, which, to a nature like hers, we cannot but think must have been n.o.bly precious. One, celebrated in her poem of ”Cyprus Wine,” was with Hugh Stuart Boyd, who amused himself during some weary periods in his blindness with the grateful occupation of teaching her to read Greek. The other was with her cousin, John Kenyon, author of ”A Rhymed Plea for Tolerance,” to whom she so expressively inscribes the most elaborate work of her life, ”Aurora Leigh.”

It is difficult to find any more remarkable example of the inspiration, the balm, and the joy a great man may derive from the pure friends.h.i.+p of an appreciative woman than that which is furnished in the relation between Auguste Comte and Madame Clotilde de Vaux. In his ”Catechism of Positive Religion,” and in the preface and dedication of the first volume of his ”System of Positive Politics,”

he has given quite a full account of this friends.h.i.+p, of its circ.u.mstances and its effects. Comte was a man of an extraordinary original genius; of profound effusiveness; but excessively proud, and sensitive to affronts. Full of n.o.ble thoughts and sentiments, heroically devoted to the pursuit of truth and the good of his race, his outward life was unfortunate. He was poor and lonely. He had many severe quarrels, disappointments, and vexations. No one appreciated him with admiring love. His wife was utterly unsuited to his tastes, and finally deserted him. Meantime he toiled, with a martyr-like pertinacity, at his great task of philosophical construction.

Believing his work destined to be of incalculable service to mankind, he rewarded himself, for his vast achievements and his unmerited sufferings, with an exceptional valuation and esteem of himself.

Just at this time, sad, weary, solitary, and teeming with suppressed tenderness, he met with Madame Clotilde de Vaux, a young woman of a fine feminine genius and character, made virtually a widow by the crime and imprisonment of her unworthy husband. She seems at once to have fully appreciated the best side of the genius of Comte, entered into his disinterested sentiments, pitied his misfortunes, and ministered to his highest wants like an angel. As his disciple and friend, she lavished on him an enthusiastic admiration and affection.

She reflected him, in her esteem and treatment, at a height, and in a glory, harmonizing with his own estimation of his mission. It was a celestial luxury; and it wrought miracles in him. He was transformed into apparently another person. His scientific and philosophical career became a poetic and religious one. He reproduced the most glowing and delicate emotions of Dante and Petrarch and Thomas a Kempis. The relation between Comte and Madame de Vaux was one of absolute blamelessness and purity. For one year only was he allowed to enjoy this divine delight. He was about to adopt her legally as his daughter, when she died, leaving him inconsolable, save for the melancholy satisfaction of beatifying her memory with his pen, and of wors.h.i.+pping her in his heart.

”An unalterable purity,” he says, ”confirmed her tenderness, and was the cause of a moral resurrection to me during the incomparable year of our external union. My present adoration of her is more a.s.siduous and profound, but less vivid, than when she was alive. It daily makes me feel the truth of a sentence which once dropped from her pen: There is nothing in life irrevocable, except death.'”

The deep and stern solitude of Comte, the wearisome toils he underwent, the austere pre-occupations of his mind, the hara.s.sments and lacerations he had known, seemed to make him doubly susceptible to the action of the sympathetic instincts, to those pleasures of praise and tenderness which aggrandize and sweeten our existence, and const.i.tute our keenest happiness. No one was purer than he in his life; no one severer in his condemnation of every form of corrupt indulgence. Therefore, no one has had a higher idea of the value of feminine friends.h.i.+p, and no one been more loyal to it in his own experience. It is truly touching to read, in the light of his life and character, what he has written on this topic. The three guardian angels, for devout and effusive communion with whom he set apart a sacred period every day, were, Rosalie Boyer, Clotilde de Vaux, and Sophie Eliot, his mother, his friend, and his servant. By prayer and meditation on these three beloved memories, he cultivated the three chief sympathies, veneration for superiors, attachment to equals, goodness to inferiors. He expresses the deepest grat.i.tude for the privilege of that friends.h.i.+p, ”the tardy felicity reserved for a solitary life, devoted, from the first, to the fundamental service of humanity.” Even its removal by death, he said, did not restore his former isolation; for the inward treasure of affection it had bestowed, constantly contemplated afresh in memory, remained the permanent and princ.i.p.al resource of his life. ”She has, now for more than six years since her death, been a.s.sociated with all my thoughts, and with all my feelings.”

The injustice of the popular view of Comte's character, in its deepest truth, as hard, coa.r.s.e, despotic, is shown by his favorite aphorisms. ”Live for others.” ”Disinterested love is the supreme good of man.” ”Love cannot be deep, unless it is also pure.” ”The one thing essential to happiness is, that the heart shall be always n.o.bly occupied.” It is probable that Comte exaggerated the worth of his friend, when he ascribed to her ”a marvellous combination of tenderness and n.o.bleness, never, perhaps, realized in another heart in an equal degree;” but he did not exaggerate the blessed comfort which her friends.h.i.+p was to him, or the power with which it wrought in his soul. That she was a very superior nature, appears clearly from the few expressions of her mind which are preserved to us. For example, she says, ”No one knows better than myself how weak our nature is, unless it has some lofty aim beyond the reach of pa.s.sion.”

And again she says, ”Our race is one which must have duties, in order to form its feelings.”

In speaking thus of Auguste Comte, I am not ignorant of his foibles of character, the morbid side of his ill-balanced mind and heart. But the unquestionable greatness and n.o.bleness of the man are so much superior to his weaknesses, and are so much less appreciated by the public, that I can treat his memory only with reverence, willingly leaving to others the ungrateful task of ridiculing or scorning him.

He had, no doubt, an exaggerated pride and vanity. But he labored for truth and his fellow-men with transcendent fidelity. His irascible egotism made him suffer its own punishment. His lot was lonely and was painful. The solace of the stainless friends.h.i.+p which Madame Clotilde de Vaux brought him appeals to my most respectful sympathy.

And it has a lesson which many of those who sneer would be benefited by appropriating. Let us leave the history with the breathing words of Comte himself:

”Adieu, my unchangeable companion! Adieu, my holy Clotilde, who art to me at once wife, sister, and daughter! Adieu, my dear pupil, and my fit colleague. Thy celestial inspiration will dominate the remainder of my life, public as well as private, and preside over my progress towards perfection, purifying my sentiments, enn.o.bling my thoughts, and elevating my conduct. Perhaps, as the princ.i.p.al reward of the grand tasks yet left for me to complete under thy powerful invocation, I shall inseparably write thy name with my own, in the latest remembrances of a grateful humanity.”

When Paul, the Czar of Russia, espoused the Princess Marie de Wurtemburg, Sophie Soymonof, then in her sixteenth year, and distinguished for her accomplishments, was chosen maid of honor to the new empress. Marie was endowed with rare beauty, and surrounded by seductions and difficulties; but she set such an example of amiable and solid virtue in her lofty place, that calumny never a.s.sailed her.

A strong affection, based on mutual esteem and tenderness, sprang up between the empress and her maid. This affection was never interrupted nor chilled. The fury and puerility, the monstrous pride and jealousy, of Paul, made him constantly quarrel with those who were brought into close relations with him. The empress alone triumphed over his outbursts, by dint of unfailing sweetness, modesty, and patience. She smilingly submitted to the capricious exactions, distasteful exercises, and excessive fatigues he imposed.

However bitter her sufferings, the serenity of her soul was never visibly altered. But, in sympathizing with the hards.h.i.+ps of her kind mistress, Sophie early learned to penetrate the secret of noisy pomp and hidden woes, glittering prosperity and silent tears.

Secretary Soymonof, aware of the precarious tenure by which the dependents of the court held their prosperity, was anxious to secure for his daughter a trustworthy protector, and a handsome position in the future. He cast his eyes on his personal friend, General Swetchine, a man of an imposing aspect, a firm character, a just and calm spirit, who had had an honorable career, and was held in high consideration. Sophie accepted, with her usual deference to her father's wishes, the husband thus chosen, although he was twenty-five years older than herself. It cost her many a secret pang; for she was already in love with a young man of n.o.ble birth and fortune, with rare qualities of mind and a brilliant destiny. She knew that her affection was reciprocated. But, from a sense of filial duty, she silently renounced him; and, when he in turn resigned himself to another marriage, she became the warm and steadfast friend of his wife. This painful renunciation, in the introspective reflection, and the dissolution of romantic dreams to which it led, was the first of those earthly disenchantments, which, shattering and darkening the empire of social ambition, transferred her interest from material pleasures and hopes to the imperturbable satisfactions of religion.

The second blow quickly followed. Only a few days after that marriage which her father thought promised so much security and consolation to his old age, the Emperor Paul, in a cruel whim, suddenly banished him from Petersburg. Retiring to Moscow, the galling sense of his disgrace, the separation from his darling daughter, together with a frigid reception by a friend on whom he had especially relied, plunged him into the deepest grief. A terrible attack of apoplexy swept him away. At the dire announcement, Madame Swetchine sunk on her knees; and, in the spiritual solitude, unable any more to lean on her father, turned with irrepressible need and effusion to G.o.d.

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