Part 12 (2/2)
”An innocent and maiden grace still hovered over Miss Baillie to the end of her old age. It was one of her peculiar charms, and often brought to my mind the line addressed to the vowed Isabella, in Measure for Measure: I hold you for a thing enskyed and saintly. If there were ever human creature pure in the last recesses of the soul, it was surely this meek, this pious, this n.o.ble-minded, and n.o.bly-gifted woman, who, after attaining her ninetieth year, carried with her to the grave the love, the reverence, the regrets, of all who had ever enjoyed the privilege of her society.” The graves of these friends are side by side in the old churchyard at Hampstead.
The exquisite delicacy and wealth of Mrs. Hemans's nature, her winning beauty, modesty, and sweetness, drew a circle of dear friends around her wherever she tarried. In her poems and letters and memoirs, they numerously appear, in becoming lights, men and women, lofty and lowly in rank, from Wordsworth and Scott, to whom she paid visits, giving and receiving the choicest delight, to her own dependants, who wors.h.i.+pped her. She tells one of her correspondents, ”I wish I could give you the least idea of what kindness is to me, how much more, how far dearer, than fame.” The most interesting of her many prized friends.h.i.+ps is that which she formed with Miss Jewsbury, who, having long admired her with the whole ardor of her powerful nature, pa.s.sed a summer in Wales, near Mrs. Hemans, for the express purpose of making her acquaintance. The enthusiastic admiration on one side, the grateful appreciation of it on the other, the spiritual purity and earnestness and high literary and personal aspirations on both sides, quickly produced an attachment between these two gifted women, which yielded them full measures of encouragement, comfort, and bliss. They had just those resemblances and those contrasts of person and mind, together with community of moral aims, which made them delightfully stimulative to each other.
Miss Jewsbury dedicated to her friend her ”Lays of Leisure Hours,”
addressed her in the poem ”To an Absent One,” and described her in the first of the ”Poetical Portraits” contained in the same book.
Also, in her ”Three Histories,” Mrs. Hemans is the original of Egeria. ”Egeria was totally different from any other woman I had ever seen, either in Italy or England. She did not dazzle, she subdued, me. I never saw another woman so exquisitely feminine. Her movements were features. Her strength and her weakness alike lay in her affections. Her gladness was like a burst of sunlight; and if, in her depression, she resembled night, it was night wearing her stars. She was a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy of human beings.” Miss Jewsbury married, and went to India, where she soon died. Mrs. Hemans paid a heartfelt tribute to her memory, in the course of which she says, ”There was a strong chain of interest between us, that spell of mind on mind, which, once formed, can never be broken. I felt, too, that my whole nature was understood and appreciated by her; and this is a sort of happiness which I consider the most rare in earthly affection.”
Mary Mitford and Mrs. Browning were blessed with a friends.h.i.+p enviably full and satisfying. It has recorded itself in a correspondence, which, if published, would add fresh honor to them both in the hearts of their admirers. It was likewise celebrated with happy heartiness by Miss Barrett, in her maiden days, in her fine poem, ”To Flush, my Dog;” the dog, Flush, being a valued gift from Miss Mitford.
Margaret Fuller, after seeing an engraving of Madame Recamier, writes in her journal,
”I have so often thought over the intimacy between her and Madame de Stael. It is so true, that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man. I like to be sure of it; for it is the same love which angels feel, where Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib.”
Of the friends.h.i.+ps of women, perhaps none is more historic than this.
A large selection from the correspondence was published, in 1862, by Madame Lenormant, in connection with a volume called ”Madame de Stael and the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Louise.” It is impossible to read these letters, without being struck by the rare grace that reigned in the union of which they are the witnesses, and being affected by the sight of a friends.h.i.+p so faithful, a confidence so entire.
The first meeting of these celebrated women took place when Madame de Stael was thirty-two years old; Madame Recamier, twenty-one. Among the few existing papers from the pen of the latter is a description of this interview:
”She came to speak with me for her father, about the purchase of a house. Her toilet was odd. She wore a morning gown, and a little dress bonnet, adorned with flowers. I took her for a stranger in Paris. I was struck with the beauty of her eyes and her look. She said, with a vivid and impressive grace, that she was delighted to know me; that her father, M. Necker at these words I recognized Madame de Stael. I heard not the rest of her sentence. I blushed, my embarra.s.sment was extreme. I had just come from reading her 'Letters on Rousseau,' and was full of the excitement. I expressed what I felt more by my looks than by my words. She at the same time awed and drew me. She fixed her wonderful eyes on me, with a curiosity full of kindness, and complimented me on my figure, in terms which would have seemed exaggerated and too direct if they had not been marked by an obvious sincerity, which made the praise very seductive. She perceived my embarra.s.sment, and expresssd a desire to see me often, on her return to Paris; for she was going to Coppet. It was then a mere apparition in my life; but the impression was intense. I thought only of Madame de Stael, so strongly did I return the action of this ardent and forceful nature.”
Madame de Stael was a plain, energetic embodiment of the most impa.s.sioned genius. Madame Recamier was a dazzling personification of physical loveliness, united with the perfection of mental harmony.
She had an enthusiastic admiration for her friend, who, in return, found an unspeakable luxury in her society. Her angelic candor of soul, and the frosty purity which enveloped her as a s.h.i.+eld, inspired the tenderest respect; while her happy equipoise calmed and refreshed the restless and expensive imagination of the renowned author. There could be no rivalry between them. Both had lofty and thoroughly sincere characters. They were partly the reflection, partly the complement, of each other; and their relation was a blessed one, charming and memorable among such records. ”Are you not happy,”
writes Madame de Stael, ”in your magical power of inspiring affection? To be sure always of being loved by those you love, seems to me the highest terrestrial happiness, the greatest conceivable privilege.” Again, acknowledging the gift from her friend of a bracelet containing her portrait, she says, ”It has this inconvenience: I find myself kissing it too often.” In 1800, Madame Recamier had a brilliant social triumph in England: ”Ah, well, beautiful Juliette! do you miss us? Have your successes in London made you forget your friends in Paris?” Madame Recamier was the original of the picture of the shawl-dance in ”Corinne;” and her friend says of her, in the ”Ten Years of Exile,” that ”her beauty expressed her character.” The following pa.s.sages, taken from letters written in 1804, show how the intimacy had deepened:
”For four clays, faithless beauty, I have not heard the noise of the wind without thinking it was your carriage. Come quickly. My mind and my heart have need of you more than of any other friend.” ”I have just seen Madame Henri Belmont. People say that all beautiful persons remind them of you. It is not so with me. I have never found any one who looks like you; and the eyes of this Madame Henri seem to me blind by the side of yours.” ”Dear and beautiful Juliette, they give me the hope of seeing you when I return from Italy; then only shall I no longer feel myself an exile. I will receive you in the chateau where I lost what of all the world I most loved; and you will bring the feeling of happiness which no more exists there. I love you more than any other woman in France. Alas! when shall I see you again?”
The friends pa.s.sed the autumn of 1807 together at Coppet, with Matthieu de Montmorency, Benjamin Constant, and a brilliant group of a.s.sociates, amidst all the romance in which the scenery and atmosphere of that enchanted spot are steeped. One day they made a party for an excursion on Mont Blanc. Weary, scorched by the sun, De Stael and Recamier protested that they would go no farther. In vain the guide boasted, both in French and German, of the spectacle presented by the Mer de Glace. ”Should you persuade me in all the languages of Europe,” replied Madame de Stael, ”I would not go another step.” During the long and cruel banishment inflicted by Napoleon on this eloquent woman, the bold champion of liberty, her friend often paid her visits, and constantly wrote her letters:
”Dear Juliette, your letters are at present the only interest of my life.” ”How much, dear friend, I am touched by your precious letter, in which you so kindly send me all the news! My household rush from one room to another, crying, A letter from Madame Recamier!' and then all a.s.semble to hear her” ”Every one speaks of my beautiful friend with admiration.. You have an ethereal reputation which nothing vulgar can approach.” ”Adieu, dear angel. My G.o.d, how I envy all those who are near you!”
When an envious slanderer had greatly vexed and grieved Madame Recamier, Madame de Stael wrote to her, ”You are as famous in your kind as I am in mine, and are not banished from France. I tell you there is nothing to be feared but truth and material persecution.
Beyond these two things, enemies can do absolutely nothing; and your enemy is but a contemptible woman, jealous of your beauty and purity.” ”Write to me. I know you address me by your deeds; but I still need your words.”
In 1811, Madame de Stael resolved to flee to Sweden. Montmorency, paying her a parting visit, received from Napoleon a decree of instant exile. Madame Recamier determined, at any risk, to embrace her friend before this great distance should separate them. The generous fugitive wrote, imploring her not to come: ”I am torn between the desire of seeing you, and the fear of injuring you.” No dissuasion could avail; but no sooner did she arrive at Coppet than the mean soul of Napoleon sought revenge by exiling her also. The distress of Madame de Stael knew no bounds. On learning the fatal news, she wrote,
”I cannot speak to you; I fling myself at your feet; I implore you not to hate me.” ”What your n.o.ble generosity has cost you! If you could read my soul, you would pity me.” ”The only service I can do my friends is to make them avoid me. In all my distraction, I adore you.
Farewell, farewell! When shall I see you again? Never in this world.”
Throughout the period of their banishment, the friends kept up an incessant correspondence, and often interchanged presents.
”Dear friend,” writes Madame de Stael, ”how this dress has touched me! I shall wear it on Tuesday, in taking leave of the court. I shall tell everybody that it is a gift from you, and shall make all the men sigh that it is not you who are wearing it.”
In return, some time later, she sends a pair of bracelets, and a copy of a new work from her pen, adding, ”In your prayers, dear angel, ask G.o.d to give peace to my soul.” In another letter she says, ”Adieu, dear angel: promise to preserve that friends.h.i.+p which has given me such sweet days.” And again,
”Angel of goodness, would that my eternal tenderness could recompense you a little for the penalties your generous friends.h.i.+p has brought on you!” ”You cannot form an idea, my angel, of the emotion your letter has caused me. It is at the extremity of Moravia that these celestial words have reached me. I have shed tears of sorrow and tenderness in hearkening to the voice which comes to me in the desert, as the angel came to Hagar.”
What a rare and high compliment is contained in the following pa.s.sage! ”You are the most amiable person in the world, dear Juliette; but you do not speak enough of yourself. You put your mind, your enchantment, in your letters, but not that which concerns yourself. Give me all the details pertaining to yourself.” ”The hundred fine things Madame de Boigne and Madame de Belle-garde say of you and me, prove to me that I live a double life: one in you, one in myself.”
When Napoleon fell, in 1814, Madame de Stael hurried home from her long exile. The great news found Madame Recamier at Rome. In a few days, she embraced her ill.u.s.trious friend in Paris. Close was their union, great their joy. It was engrossing admiration and devotion on one side; absorbing sympathy, respect, and grat.i.tude, on the other.
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