Germaine de Staël

"JOHN" ROCCA

NAPOLEON had weathered the storm ;  Germaine decided to go to England.

“ I avow,” she wrote to Meister,¹ “in the presence of my guardian angel and of Heaven, her Fatherland, that I have made up my mind to leave the Continent ;  I have taken this decision solely from reasons of high-mindedness and pride.  Only one thing can reverse it ;  when my book on Germany appears . . . my children are going to beg the Emperor to recall me.  If he grants that petition, I’ll stay ;  if not, I’ll leave sorrowfully but with a firm heart.”

She told all her friends that her destination was America, and obtained passports for the United States.  In April 1810 she left Coppet and travelled by way of Lyons and Blois to Chaumont-sur-Loire, where her friend Le Ray de Chaumont owned a castle that he had placed at her disposal during his absence in New York.  Mathieu hurried to her.  The house party included Prosper, Elzéar de Sabran, Augustus William, Juliette and Benjamin.  Germaine drank the air of France and grew dizzy.  She began to show herself in Blois in an open carriage.  She went to the theatre, she paid calls, she gave parties.  When her host returned, she accepted another invitation and installed herself in the Castle of Fossé.  Here the final proofs of De l’Allemagne reached her.  Her spirits soared ;  her wit flashed.  She made a list of 100 friends who were to have presentation copies of her book on the day of publication.  Towards the end of September she went to spend a few days with Mathieu at his place La Godinière, near Blois.  On the 26th they lost themselves in the forest while out walking.  A young squire, to whose castle they came, offered hospitality for the night.  Scarcely had they gone to bed when a horseman galloped to the door.  There was loud knocking ;  Mathieu, at his devotions, put his head out of the window and recognised Auguste de Staël.

The lad brought sorrowful tidings.  Napoleon’s police were at Fossé with orders for his mother to embark at once for America or leave France within twenty-four hours.  De l’Allemagne had been condemned, manuscripts and proofs were to be destroyed.  Mathieu broke the news to Germaine.  They set out in the darkness for Fossil.  The place, when they reached it, was surrounded by gendarmes ;  but the woman’s courage did not fail.  Instantly, she began to fight a rearguard action, displaying a resource of which Napoleon might have been proud :  she needed money ;  she must get into touch with her printer ;  she was about to ask for an audience of the Emperor ;  before sailing for America, she must consult her man of business.

“ I saw in the newspapers,” she wrote, “that American ships were lying in the Channel ports.  I made up my mind to use my passport for America because I hoped by means of it to reach England.”²

She wrote to Savary, who had replaced Fouché as Minister of Police.  He replied :

“ Your exile is the inevitable result of the line of conduct you have followed during the past few years.  It seems to me that the air of this country does not suit you, and for ourselves, we are not yet reduced to seeking models among the peoples whom you admire.  Your last work, De l’Allemagne, is not French in sentiment.  I’ve ’topped its publication.

“ You know, Madame, that you were only allowed to leave Coppet because you stated your intention of going to America. . . .

“ I have reason, Madame, for indicating to you the Western ports, La Rochelle, Bordeaux and Rochefort, as the only ones where you may take ship.  Kindly let me know upon which your choice falls.”

They had seen through her design to go to England.  The spectre of Coppet rose again before her.  She sent her two sons off to Fontainebleau to plead with Napoleon.  He, meanwhile, had read her book.

“ I send you Madame de Staël’s book,” he wrote to Savary.  “Has she any right to call herself Baroness ?  Did she use that title in her earlier works ?  Suppress the passage about the Duke of Brunswick and cut out three-quarters of the passages in which she praises England to the skies.  This wretched enthusiasm has already done us harm enough.”

Her sons were informed that they could not see the Emperor and that if they stayed at Fontainebleau they would be arrested.  She played her last card and wrote herself to Napoleon :³

“ Your Majesty has been told that I lament my absence from Paris because of the Musée and Talma.  It’s a pleasant jest about exile, that is to say about the calamity that Cicero and Bolingbroke have called the most unbearable.  But surely you, sire, do not blame me for loving the masterpieces of art which France owes to your Majesty's conquests or those great tragedies that are immortal pictures of heroism !  Does not every man’s happiness depend on the bent of his mind ?  And if Heaven has given me talents, is it not true to say that my imagination needs the pleasures of the arts and of the mind ?  Everybody is asking benefits of your Majesty.  Need I blush to ask friendship, poetry, music, pictures, all that ideal life which, surely, I can enjoy without detriment to the duty which I owe to the ruler of France ? ”

“When the Devil was sick,” repeated Napoleon.  No answer was sent.  A few days later Metternich ventured to plead for the exile, doing her, thereby, no service.⁴

“I don’t want Madame de Staël back here in Paris,” the Emperor told him.  “And I’ve got the best possible reasons for my decision.  It’s no concern of mine if Madame de Staël is a Royalist or a Republican, and I should have nothing against her on either of these counts ;  but she’s an agitator who excites the salons.  It’s only in France that a woman of that kind is dangerous.  I don’t wish her to come back.”

He changed his mind about her book and ordered its total suppression.⁵  When the period of grace which had been granted her expired, she departed once more for Switzerland, travelling by Orleans.  In that town she gazed upon the statue of Jeanne d’Arc, and thought that, when the English ruled in France, France was freer, more truly herself than now.⁶  She reached Coppet early in October.  Soon afterwards she received a message from Benjamin, whom she supposed to be in Paris, inviting her to come to the hotel at Sécheron between Geneva and Lausanne.  She obeyed.⁷  Charlotte received her in the salon.

“I am Madame Constant,” Charlotte announced, “and my husband . . .”

“Madame Constant ?  My husband ?  What do you mean ? ”  “We were married a year ago.”

Germaine delivered herself to her feelings, pretended that she had no idea that Benjamin so much as dreamed of marriage and unloosed a torrent of abuse which frightened Charlotte so much that she could only protest feebly that her husband was a good man.

“ Good ?  He ?  Good ?” screamed Germaine.  “He’s the biggest scoundrel on earth.  The vainest, the most unfeeling that any woman could meet for her undoing.  Good ? . . . Mark me, Madame, I’ve loaded this fellow with benefits.  If he counts for anything to-day, he owes that position wholly to me.  I fetched him out of obscurity, out of total darkness.  I’ve given him everything, everything, Madame, do you hear ? and the only thanks I’ve had are ingratitude and betrayal.”

Charlotte repeated that Benjamin was a good man.

“ Where is he ?” cried Germaine.  “Where is the coward hiding himself ?  I want to see him.”

Benjamin was listening.  Like a naughty schoolboy he came skulking into the room.  Madame de Staël reduced him, in a few minutes, to babbling helplessness.  He begged her to forgive him.  Both he and Charlotte promised, in trembling tones, to obey any instructions she might choose to give them.  Germaine ordered that the marriage should be kept secret during her pleasure and that Benjamin should return to Coppet.  They accepted.  When they were alone again, Charlotte wept bitterly.  But she had to pack up and go to her husband’s father’s home.  Benjamin went to Coppet.

Germaine, however, was done with him and was concerned only to save her face till she found a husband.  He lived, despised and humiliated, while she made violent love to Prosper de Barante, who had fallen in love with Juliette Récamier, and at the same time conducted a brisk but unsuccessful affair with a young American named O’Brien.  Towards the end of the year 1810, Benjamin was allowed to slink away, almost unnoticed.  She had just met “John” Rocca.

He was twenty-three, very pale, beautiful as Italian boys can be beautiful, the victim of a ghastly wound taken in Napoleon’s Spanish campaign, where he had served as Second-Lieutenant of the 2nd Regiment of Hussars.  He limped a little, but in the saddle displayed an excellent grace.  Courage and passion glowed in his eyes.  The lad came of distinguished Italian-Swiss stock and possessed some money of his own.  His sufferings, the delicate state of his health, his boyish vehemence and his gallant bearing challenged her motherhood.  She showed him kindness ;  he fell in love with her.

Even she was embarrassed.  She was forty-five, twenty-three years his senior.  She protested her motherhood, opening the door for his escape.  “I’ll love her so much,” cried he to a friend, “that she’ll end by marrying me.”  He rode gaily under her windows, displaying his horsemanship and winning tender glances from every woman who saw him.  But he had eyes only for her.  Love and motherhood became allies in her heart.  When he taught his horse to kneel to her she yielded.  They were married, secretly, at Coppet early in the year 1811.

It was part of the bargain that her bridegroom was to keep his lips sealed ;  for she knew that Napoleon awaited a pretext to snatch from her the name she had made famous, and even in her ecstasy she was resolved to yield nothing to that man.  But she and Rocca lived together at Coppet and in Geneva.  Tongues began to wag, and Benjamin, a little weary already of Charlotte, paid them a visit.  He got no satisfaction.  His wit flashed out from the smouldering embers of his exasperation and kindled John Rocca’s temper.  In an instant, to Germaine’s dismay, the outraged husband demanded satisfaction and named a place of meeting.  Benjamin fled.  He made his will.

“I beg my wife’s forgiveness,” he declared, “for the trouble I have caused her and for this last catastrophe which will be the cause of still more misery for her.  I beg her on no account to believe that I did anything to provoke it.  My true, deep and unchangeable love for her was an obstacle which prevented any act of gallantry on my part towards any other woman.  I love no one as I love her ;  she has been an angel to me, and my last feelings are those of Dante towards his beloved.  I forgive Madame de Staël for the fatality of which she will have been the cause, and I do not hold her responsible for the savagery of a young barbarian.”

Germaine called the duel off.  Her “young barbarian” was very dear to her.  She sent Benjamin packing out of her life, and he wrote in his diary :

“On this day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, on the stairs of the Hôtel de la Couronne at Lausanne, I parted from Madame de Staël, who said that she felt that we were destined not to meet again during our lives.  That is as it should be.  Alas, dear Albertine ! ”

Her happiness was increased by a piece of news.  She learned that her old friend Bernadotte had persuaded Napoleon to nominate him to the succession to the Swedish throne.  The state of the King of Sweden’s health made that sovereign’s death an early probability ;  meanwhile the Gascon had assumed the title of Prince Royal of Sweden, with the blessing of the Emperor of the French (a little reluctantly given, it is true) and to the great contentment of the Swedes.  News of Rocca’s stay at Coppet reached France, and moral lectures from old friends began to arrive by post ;  was it quite decent to be living with this lad ?

“ I’m of opinion,” she wrote to Jordan, “that, in point of moral dignity, my circumstances place me as high as it is possible to be placed, and I’m astonished that you . . . should launch your thunders against an unhappy woman who, battling to the last, defending her children and her genius at the expense of her happiness, her safety, her life, is momentarily touched by the fact that a gallant lad should be willing to sacrifice everything for the pleasure of seeing her.”

Love, as usual, directed her thoughts towards religion.  She began to interest herself in mysticism and in the life after death.  She had need of these consolations, for her enemy was closing in on her.  She was forbidden to leave Coppet, even to travel more than six miles from her own door.  Her friends were warned to keep away from her, and Augustus William received his passport with orders to use it.  Even Mathieu and Juliette thought it better to decline an invitation to visit the exile.

“Until now,” she wrote to Mathieu, “I have known only the roses of exile ;  it was reserved to those I love the best to show me the thorns or rather to stab me in the heart in making it clear to me that I’m an object of horror and repulsion.”

Mathieu’s holy spirit could not endure that reproach.  He hurried to her side.  In August: 1811 he took rooms at the inn at Secheron.  An order came immediately from Savary forbidding him to come within 120 miles of Paris.  Shortly afterwards, Juliette announced by letter that she was on her way to Coppet.  Germaine sent Auguste to meet her and turn her back, but the plan miscarried.  Juliette arrived and was duly forbidden to return to the capital.  These orders were not issued solely on account of Madame de Staël.  Both Mathieu and Juliette had been intriguing against the Imperial Government.  Their stay at Coppet added anxiety about their friend to their other troubles.  Germaine, they both thought, was suffering from dropsy.  When they went away, husband and wife discussed with anguish the calamity that had befallen.  Germaine was pregnant.  What were they to do ?

She would not announce her marriage.  She applied for leave to go to America.  It was refused.  Then she would go to Italy.  Another refusal.  To Vienna ?  She was ordered to stay where she was.  She grew ill and became a nervous wreck.  But Rocca’s pleas that they should be honest about their relationship were swept aside.  Would he have her haul down her flag ?  Change her name ?  Turn Europe upside down ?  She wrote to the Grand Duchess Louise begging her to obtain from the Emperor Alexander of Russia a passport for Riga.  Despair, fear, shame, rage swept her spirit.  Napoleon was killing her.  He would expose her before the world when her hour came.  He would snatch John Rocca—who was still an officer of Hussars—away from her.  Why was he holding her captive if not to be revenged upon her in signal fashion ?  Love, hate, and vanity were robbers of her reason and her energy, so that all who surrounded her grew afraid.  But not once did that stubborn will relax.  She would not announce her marriage.

“I have no more genius, no more ideas, no more inspiration,” she wrote to Meister on October 5, 1811,⁸ “and I’m grown passive, a quality I did not believe existed in my nature.  The great event of my life just now is the sun.  When the sun shines I hope once more that the Good God will not forsake me.”

On December 10 she wrote :⁹

“I live far from all news. . . . I await better days as men waited for the Messiah. . . . Write to me.  Think of me.  And you, whom Heaven has won, pray sometimes for the family of M. Necker.”

The early months of 1811 were spent in preparations for a confinement which was to be kept absolutely secret.  Husband and wife spread assiduously the story of a severe illness which would require prolonged treatment for its cure.

“My health is in a wretched state,” wrote Germaine to Meister on April 3, 1812¹⁰ “and if you could see me, thin, weak, pale, you would find it hard to understand how so strong a woman as myself has been thus brought low.  But it is the power of powers (puissant des puissants) which has wrought my downfall. . . Be kind to me in this world until we are united to him (her father) in the next.”

Exactly a fortnight later (on April 17, 182) she was delivered of a male child.  It was smuggled out of the house and placed in charge of Dr. Jurine of Longirod in the Jura.

“Louis Alphonse,” says the baptismal register of that parish, “son of Theodore Giles of Boston, America, and of Henrietta née Preston, his wife, born the 7th (sic, the date was the 17th) April, 1812, has been presented for Holy Baptism at Longirod on May 11 following, by Louis Jurine, Professor at the Academy of Geneva.”

But the truth leaked out.  A Parisian wit celebrated it.

“ Even her dropsy, as we see,
Is defined for posterity,”

he wrote.  She was up and about as soon as possible, and paid an early visit to Geneva, but the reception she met with in that city cured her of the wish to return.  Meanwhile an invitation reached her from the Emperor Alexander of Russia to come to his capital.  It was no more, perhaps, than a hint of a warm welcome, but the course of events lent it the utmost significance.  Napoleon and Alexander had broken with each other and were preparing for war.  The quarrel had the immediate effect of upsetting the campaign of the Emperor of the French against England, for that campaign, in its economic and military aspects, was based on Russia.  “Without Russia,” Napoleon declared, “the Continental System is an absurdity.”  Without Russia to overawe them, both Prussia and Austria were certain, the moment they got the chance, to attack France.  For these reasons Napoleon, who believed that there was not a moment to be lost, made ready, in 1812, to exert his utmost strength against Alexander.  He judged the moment favourable for two reasons.  In the first place, Russia was at war with Sweden about Finland and also with Turkey ;  secondly, he himself was still strong enough to compel Prussia and Austria to join him.  In these circumstances the attitude of Sweden became a matter of importance to both Emperors.  Napoleon felt that he had a right to expect help from the new Prince Royal of Sweden, Bernadotte, his former lieutenant and a Frenchman.  Alexander, on the contrary, remembered Bernadotte’s hatred of his master and recalled the plot against Napoleon’s life which the Crown Prince had hatched in Madame de Staël’s salon.  As the friend of Bernadotte, the widow of a Swedish nobleman for long Ambassador to France, the special object of Napoleon’s persecution and the most illustrious of Frenchwomen, Germaine interested the Russian profoundly.  Who better fitted than she to influence the shifty mind of Bernadotte against Napoleon, and so make it possible to withdraw the Russian troops from Finland for service against the Grand Army ?  Who, again, more able to mobilise liberal opinion in Europe against the Emperor of the French ?  The presence of Madame de Staël at St. Petersburg or Moscow, Alexander saw, would be the sufficient justification of his claim that in opposing Napoleon, he was acting as the true friend of France and the saviour of humanity.

She was not less well persuaded than he of the soundness of this reasoning.  The resounding success of her novels and the fame with which Napoleon’s persecution had dowered her, had made of her, in these last years, almost a legendary figure.  Russians, Swedes, Englishmen, Germans, Spaniards, Frenchmen even, spoke of her gratefully as the martyr of liberty ;  her doctrine of love had been transmuted to an evangel, which challenged all the Tyrant’s demands.  By what right was this Corsican devouring humble homes and tearing men from women’s embraces to feed his greedy guns ?  Germaine was Mother-Superior of the new sisterhood of the women of Europe.  Wives, mothers, sweethearts fed on her gospel and vowed themselves to the crusade against Napoleon.  In France the effect was to hinder recruiting ;  everywhere else, and especially in Germany, the effect was to stimulate it.  National spirit was reborn in women’s hearts and sanctified on humble hearths.  Was this the moment to proclaim a second marriage to a soldier-lad of twenty-three and renounce the name that was on every lip ?  How could Madame Rocca accomplish the task to which Heaven had called Madame de Staël ?

¹ Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 2o9.

² Dix Années d’Exil.

³ Coppet et Weimar, p. 165.

⁴ Metternich :  Mémoires, Vol. I, p, 289.

⁵ On his return from Elba, Napoleon stated that the advice to prohibit publication of De l’Allemagne had been given him by his censors.  Paul Gautier proves that, in fact, it was he himself who ordered suppression.  See Madame de Staël et Napoléon, pp. 254 et seq.

⁶ Dix Années d’Exil.

⁷ Some doubt exists about the actual date of this famous scene.  It has been put a whole year earlier, the idea being that Benjamin travelled with Madame de Staël into France after confessing that he was married.  But a careful review of the evidence has led the present writer to regard that idea as mistaken.  The words used in the interview are well attested.

⁸ Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 222.

⁹ Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 223.

¹⁰ Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 225.