“ Le Juge suprème évaluera tout. Il sera clément envers le génie.”
ALBERTINE ADRIENNE on MADAME DE STAËL.
Germaine de Staël
Chapter XXXVII“THE PRINCE”
NOT in vain had Madame de Staël come galloping across Europe. The hour of crisis had found her in the place where her influence was decisive.
She set to work, now, to follow up her victory by inducing Bernadotte to throw in his lot with Alexander. Her activity was doubled. She entertained on a scale unprecedented even in her history, and made of Stockholm a chief centre of opposition to Napoleon. While the wounded eagle, back in Paris, was calling up his last reserves, she was comforting and reconciling his enemies and securing a constant interchange of news between England and Russia. And meanwhile the seed which she had sowed was sprouting in millions of hearts. In the name of the liberty and love she had preached to them, Germans were marching to war, Frenchmen demanding to be released from it.
She published her essay on Suicide with its preface in which Bernadotte was advanced as a reason for continuing to live. Why kill yourself, ran the argument, when, under the leadership of the Prince Royal of Sweden, you can kill Frenchmen instead ? Another pamphlet, published anonymously in Hamburg, adjured the Swedes to follow this modern Bayard to the battlefields of liberty. Bernadotte, fortified by the spectacle of the Retreat from Moscow, announced himself Napoleon’s enemy. He appointed Albert de Staël his aide-de-camp, made Augustus William his secretary and, in April, 1813, left Stockholm for the front. Germaine wrote to Augustus William on May 10, 1813, from Stockholm :1
“Auguste has arrived, dear William, but nothing can heal the wound your absence has inflicted on me. Only with those of our own age and our own mental stature can we communicate freely. I send you a letter he has brought for you and another from my cousin (Albertine Adrienne). His most interesting news is that the Russian proclamations have wounded the military pride of the French, with the result that the conscription of the 1814 classes is going smoothly.
“Madame Humboldt writes me that Austria will declare war in the middle of May and that there’s great enthusiasm there for the Prince Royal. Tell him this. He will have heard from M. d’Engestrom that Neipperg has received bitter complaints about the obstacles being placed in M. de Weissenburg’s way in Sweden and about the great uneasiness felt lest he (the Prince Royal) should turn aside to concern himself about Norway to the detriment of the Common Cause. What Engestrom will not tell, but what I want you to inform the Prince Royal about, is that he (Weissenburg) received, the day before yesterday, an order from his Court to furnish explanations of the relations between Sweden and Denmark and that he has obeyed this order, as has also Wetterstedt. . . . Assure the Prince that I am for him in life and in death. . . .”
Augustus William was charged with the duty of keeping a tight hold on Bernadotte. Germaine kept a tight hold on Augustus William and corresponded at the same time with the Emperor Alexander and with the German princes. She suggested to Alexander that, if Napoleon fell, Bernadotte should be placed on the French throne, since a return of the Bourbons was not to be desired. It was partly this intrigue, and partly the boredom she experienced in Stockholm, when her work there was finished, which sent her to London towards the end of June, 1813. She took Auguste, Albertine and Rocca with her. Of Rocca she was growing tired, as her letters to Augustus William show. Nevertheless, she had taken the precaution of going through a second marriage with him during her stay at Stockholm.
“It seemed,” he remarked, “that she couldn’t be married enough to me.”
She had also, on May 20, written to Benjamin :2
“Do you remember saying that we ought not to be separated ? I can honestly say that, apart from everything else, you have allowed a fine career to escape you. And what is to become of me in my spiritual solitude ? With whom can I talk and how shall I exist on my own resources ? My daughter will write you. . . . It will be her last farewell and mine ; but I hope that you will still feel the need of seeing us again and not neglect that which God has given you (i.e., Albertine). I keep your letters always. I never take out my writing materials without looking at them. All that I have suffered through that handwriting makes me shudder ; and yet I would fain see it again. My father and you and Mathieu share a part of my heart which is eternally closed. I live in the past, and were I about to be swallowed up by the waves my voice would utter those names, one of which alone was harmful to me. Is it possible that you brought such ruin ? That despair such as mine could not restrain you ? No, you are guilty ; only your admirable intellect can cause me any further illusions. Farewell, farewell. What I suffer you cannot understand.”
She wrote again :
“Benjamin, you have ruined my life. For ten years no day has gone by without some suffering on your account.”
He was not so glad to be rid of her as he had expected.
“The thought of her and Albertine,” he wrote in his journal, “distracts me. My heart is weary of everything it does not possess. Perhaps Charlotte’s gentleness will at last destroy this perpetual recollection. How sad life is and what a madman I am ! I am planning a trip to Vienna. That recalls Madame de Staël’s efforts to take me there with her.3 Thus, what I did not want to do with the most spiritual of women I am to-day thinking of doing with Charlotte. Judgment of Heaven ! ”
Immediately on reaching London, Germaine wrote to Augustus William :
“London, June 24, 1813.
“I can’t understand the reason of your silence, and I refrain from passing judgment on it. . . . I have been received here in a manner that baffles description. You can have no idea of the goodness and the enthusiasm. I’m seeing the Prince Regent to-morrow. Tell our Prince (Bernadotte) that I’m delaying writing to him till I have seen this Prince. I’ve had a letter from Albert, who is crazy. Call him to reason. . . . I’m very much disturbed because I love you.”
“London, July 2, 1813.
“Dear friend, I apologise ; your letter deserves it. But if I’ve grumbled, I’m not the less interested in you. . . The other day the Duke of Cambridge told me that he had talked with you lately at Gottingen, and that he was charmed with you. Your pamphlet has had a great success here, and I think you’ll get a pension (from the English Government). That’s the first step. Later on you may get a post. The important thing is that you should be independent, for I don’t believe that, in the long run, this country will please you. What I hope is that we may travel together in Greece. They’ve received me like a princess. But the crowds are so big, the women so many and the monotony of their society so great that I’m more wearied than amused. English people who have not travelled have very little to say for themselves and seem to be about Albertine’s age. In short, I’m sad and discouraged. More than ever I need you. What astonishes me is that, as everyone will tell you, I am received with rapture and that, meanwhile, I have no clear impression except a sea of faces each of which is exactly like all the others. Nevertheless they’re a worthy folk and will give you a hearty welcome.
“When you like I’ll make overtures about your pension. I was advised to wait till my book is published (her book on Germany). I’ve sold it for £1,500. Your French writings will do you no good here. My book tells of you ; and it is on the strength of what I have said there that I mean to ask for a pension for you of £3oo. Tell me what you think yourself. Tell me, too, how I can send you a credit of £200.
“Give Albert the enclosed letter and tell him that I refuse to mix myself up in his affairs except in so far as I can serve Sweden and please the Prince Royal. He seems to think that physical courage is very rare ; it isn’t.
“Here they pay very little attention to the news of the outside world. One might be living in a convent. The Prince Regent, the Queen and the Duchess of York have been very good to me. I haven’t dared as yet to see the Princess of Wales. Every day I long to talk to you. . . I seem to have no ideas since you left me. My children will write to you. Don’t forget that we are your family.”
“London, September 26, 1813.
“You hurt me by your constant references to money, my dear friend. You know that all my happiness in this world consists in seeing you beside me. When you accept money from me, you seem to say ‘ I’ll come back.’ Don’t have any feelings about it, and if you want a fresh letter of credit, ask me without the least diffidence and think of your request as a declaration of your attachment to me.
“How I admire our Prince I (Bernadotte). Can’t you tell him so ? Haven’t you got a moment to assure him that I kneel at his feet ? They speak of him here with lively admiration. But tell him, in my name, never to forget France. He ought to remain on the banks of the Rhine, he and Moreau together. What a terrible fate has befallen poor Moreau.4 I suffer for his poor wife and pity her with all my heart. Do you happen to know if he still lives ? He has written a letter to his wife, since he was wounded, which is a beautiful historic document. I’m getting Albertine to send you a copy of it. I repeat again what I’ve said before. If Germany regains her freedom, I’ll go and live there after you’ve spent some time here (in England) with me. . . . I see nothing here but the veil for Albertine ; it would suit my plans about going to Berlin. But alas, doesn’t he (Napoleon) mean to throw himself against you with all his force ? Take care of the Prince (Bernadotte) ; keep him from exposing himself. And you, dear friend, take care of yourself and come back to me. The winter will be too harsh for you. Let me be your pretext for getting away if you feel that you can’t stand it.
“Poor Albert ! What a career he has lost. Don’t pay any of his debts. Send them all on to me. . . .”
Albert had been killed in a duel. By a curious chance his father, Narbonne, lost his life about the same time while serving Napoleon. The news of these two deaths threw Germaine into one of her fits of depression. But not for an instant did she relax her activity. In London as elsewhere the lions of politics and literature were beaten from covert for her sport. She met Byron, Sheridan, Whitbread, Grattan, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Sir Walter Scott, Grey, Canning, Holland, Wellesley, Wilberforce, Mrs. Siddons, Sir Humphry Davy—all the celebrities. Byron had stayed at Coppet on his way to Italy.5
“She is sadly changed,” he wrote to Thomas Moore. “She is for the Lord of Israel and the Lord of Liverpool—a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a Tory—talks of nothing but devotion to the Ministry and, I presume, expects that God and the Government will help her to a pension. . . . She’s published an essay against Suicide which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himself.”
He wrote again :
“I saw the woman of whom I had heard marvels ; she justified what I had heard, but she was still a mortal and made long speeches. Nay, the very day of this philosophical feast in her honour, she made very long speeches to those who had been accustomed to hear such only in the two Houses. She interrupted Whitbread ; she declaimed to Lord L(iverpool), she misunderstood Sheridan’s jokes for assent ; she harangued, she lectured, she preached English politics to the first of our English Whig politicians the day after her arrival in England and (if I am not much misinformed) preached politics no less to our Tory politicians the day after. The Sovereign himself, if I am not in error, was not exempt from this flow of eloquence.”
Germaine called Byron “the most seductive man in England.” He agreed that “She was vain ; but who had an excuse for vanity if she had not ? ” The letters to Augustus William continued without interruption :
“I’m staying eight days in London. Then I go to stay three weeks with the Marquis of Lansdowne, where your letters will reach me twelve hours later. There you are.
“I admire this land ; in some ways it pleases me. But you have to be a native to like it better than all others. Our Continental ways are less worthy of esteem, no doubt, but they suit us better. What is so admirable is the safety, the freedom and the enlightenment. I find reading a new experience here. Their books are so full of life. What society lacks the books of travel and history supply. And then the newspapers are waited for like a returning traveller. But the winds make a prison of the beautiful island where I wait for news of you.
“Adieu, dear friend, adieu. Count on me. Remember me. For I have learned, better than I knew before, that you are incomparable.”
Her next letter was dated October 8, 1813, and was addressed formally to :
“M.A. William Schlegel, Secretary of his Royal Highness the Prince of Sweden, Chevalier of the Order of Vasa, etc., at the Headquarters of the Prince Royal of Sweden.”
In it she confessed that Auguste and Albertine were sadly bored and that she herself was not very happy.
“But I think that may be due to your absence, for there are lots of things here of which we could talk. My children have nothing to say for themselves. A curious effect that of my flair ! That poor Albert gave me plenty of trouble but he had the flair ! I repeat again, you are necessary to me. You’re unique and I can’t live without you.”
“London, November 9, 1813.
“Two months have passed and not a line from you. That’s cruel. I wouldn’t have believed that you could have behaved in that fashion and that, knowing how unhappy I am, you could have hurled poison into my heart. Here everybody gets letters from their friends at Headquarters. The busiest men find time to write. I alone get nothing from my closest friend, from the man I have sent away from me, sacrificing my interests to his, but flattering myself meanwhile that separation could never weaken his interest in me. That’s not all, either. Your little letter to my son is proof that you’re not troubling to secure the goodwill of the Prince Royal for us. You promised to do that. Surely the common gratitude in your nature should remind you that you owe your glorious connection with him to me. How should success change such a heart as yours ? Don’t you feel that your forgetfulness is wounding my soul ? Never a mail arrives but costs me sleepless rights. I feel humiliated in the eyes of others when I’m asked : ‘ Have you news of M. Schlegel ? ’ I am desolated in loneliness by the loss of my faith in your friendship, which was my greatest treasure in this world. My son and my daughter are also deeply affected at your indifference for us all ; when we’re together we talk of nothing else. Since the loss of my poor son, I’ve suffered no more bitter experience. These two calamities are joined together ; I tell myself that if he was there still I wouldn’t be forgotten by you, nor by the Prince. . . . Ah, if you needed me as I need you you wouldn’t abandon me in this fashion ! Did I desert you at Stockholm ? If prosperity came my way would I not share it with you ?
“I’ve published that book (De l’Allemagne), every line of which recalls you to my mind. The edition was bought up in three days. But what does that matter ? When can I talk to you about it ? You did well to be nasty to me during the last few days of our stay together ; but for that I would never have allowed you to leave me. What have I not lost in losing you ! If you can come back, I’ll do all in my power to keep you. I’m prostrate with spleen, although everyone is so kind to me ; and it’s your fault. M. de Wetterstadt doesn’t treat his wife in this fashion ; and am I not, though I say it myself, the person who interests you most ? Isn’t my house yours ? My family ? My children ? Ah, what harm you do me by your silence. I’ll forgive you, though, if you come back to me.
“Can you stand this war ? I go from irritation to anxiety. For pity’s sake don’t let a courier go without a few lines from you, and believe that in destroying me you’re ruining your own prosperity.
“Adieu. My health continues very poor. You’ll miss me one of these days.”
“November 30, 1813.
“How your letter has rejoiced me, my dear friend. I can’t bear your silence, and you have several of my nights on your conscience during which I wept over our liaison. It is true that absence is necessary to teach us how dear a dear person really is ; and undoubtedly we’re basely ungrateful to God for youth, love and life. If then, I find fault with you, remind me of what I have suffered in being separated from you, and I’ll be as douce as a sheep.
“I’ll go to live in Germany if you come here in spring. But don’t let it be Hanover. Let us choose Berlin. . . . There’s nothing suitable here for my daughter and she’s not happy in this country, beautiful as it is. So I think, and so does she, of Baudissin. Write him, as if from yourself, that his imprisonment has greatly touched us. Tell him that I’ve written him twice from here. I want my son-in-law to be your admirer and to love Greece.
“You must come here for a year, see Scotland and Ireland with me, and publish, in England, an account of what you’ve seen. You’ll make £1000 out of it. . . . My book’s a howling success (un succés fou). But nothing lifts the weight from my heart. Since our separation and Albert’s death I feel isolated. The air presses on me. My health’s destroyed. In short, it hurts me to live and I know of no other remedy than the sight of you. I’ve always thought that you were the one selected by my father to close my eyes.
“I’ll pay the Hamburg debt . . . because you’ve put your name to it and your name must be honoured. But I won’t pay more. Dear friend, we must think of our future and of the future of the children who have been wise and obedient.
“I want to speak about our Prince (Bernadotte) ; for I never stop thinking about him. It’s being said in the circle of the Prince Regent that, in the Prince’s bulletin (Bernadotte’s) a fault has been committed in speaking of ‘the King of Saxony’ instead of ‘the Elector,’ and that another fault was committed in speaking of ‘the King of Westphalia,’ and of the frontier of the Rhine for France.6 In short, people have suggested for the first time that the Prince is playing up to France so as to be made the Emperor Napoleon’s successor. Tell him these tales, which have no importance. They come from the Bourbons.
“I’ll tell you all I hear. Speak well of me to the Prince. What I mean by that is, tell him how I love him. . . But, in short, the good God will perhaps protect us. What France lacks, in the matter of getting rid of her present ruler, is a clear and satisfactory conception of what is going to happen afterwards. Tell that to the Prince from me ; he’ll understand what I want. The letters from Paris express the hate of what is, but also the doubt of what may be in store.
“Adieu, dear friend. Write me for the repose of my nights and the delight of my days. God bless you. Can I send you some English poetry ? Have you time to read it ? Tell me what they’re saying about my book in Germany.
“Have the goodness to take this letter for Benjamin. I’ve received a letter from him, more passionate than in the days when he loved me most. Do make it your business to deliver this letter to Benjamin’s address.
“I want you to think about Baudissin, to write to me and above all to love me. Adieu.
“I add a few small details which the Prince may like to know. The Comte Lieven is very often closeted with the Comte d’Artois ;7 the rumour runs that they have a body of supporters in the Midi and in the Senate. There is an idea of sending them to Lord Wellington. England has urged the Prince of Brazil to return to Lisbon. The Duc de Berry, second son of the Comte d’Artois, wants to marry his daughter. An emigrant of the lower order has remarked : ‘The Prince Royal of Sweden will certainly play the part of Monk for, at the counter-revolution, he won’t be able to remain on the throne (of France).’
“The English have compelled the Portuguese army to march into France without any ‘by-your-leave’; the Portuguese are rather annoyed at this parade of English power. . . .
“As I finished this letter, the Comte Edouard Dillon came to me from the chief Minister of Louis XVIII, M. de Blacas, to ask me to receive him and to lend my pen and my talk to their design of restoring him to the throne. ‘Ask what you want,’ he said, ‘as the reward of this service.’ I answered that I could do nothing. He said that the English newspapers and poets called me the first woman in the world (it’s true ; they have done), and that, with such a title, I could accomplish anything. I answered again that I wasn’t going to dabble any more in politics. There the matter rests. If this M. de Blacas comes to see me, I’ll tell you what he says ; but if you can, get our Prince (Bernadotte) to instruct me. Edouard Dillon told me that he (Bernadotte) was the hero of the century and that if he wished to restore the Bourbons he would be more King of France than them. . . .
“I love you in life and in death. . . . Persuade the Prince of my limitless attachment. My God, what a campaign ! ”8
“December 12, 1813.
“Prosperity turns your head, my dear Schlegel, and you forget the friends who are most attached to you. . . . You would enable me to help you better if you would write to me oftener. I’m constantly with the Ministers, and I’ve read them one of your letters. . . .
“You are all at a critical moment, and what you have accomplished was easier than what remains to be done ; you want to set up sovereign princes in Holland, to attack Switzerland, to attack France. Undoubtedly so long as The Man lives, there’s nothing else to be done. But it’s difficult to assail 24,ooo,ooo men in order to attack one man.
“My position here grows better every day ; but my heart is only the sadder. But why tell you that ? Are you even interested ? . . .
“What’s Benjamin doing ? Is he employed by your Prince ? For goodness’ sake tell me if the Prince is well disposed towards me. He ought to be, because of the zeal with which I support his admirers and oppose his detractors. . . .
“In God’s name, have you written to Baudissin to ask him to come here ? There’s nobody I want more for Albertine.
“Is Benjamin with you ? ”
He was. He, too, believed in Bernadotte. But his faith was growing at the moment when Germaine’s faith was beginning to ebb. Her stay in London was opening her eyes to the truth about Napoleon and England or rather about France and England. She knew now that the English Government was determined to restore the Bourbons, and to reduce France within her old frontiers—in short, to render her for ever incapable of challenging British world-power. With Napoleon would pass, for good and all, the hope of recovering the lost Empire.
“The fact is,” she wrote to Benjamin, “that once Bonaparte is overthrown the old Government will be re-established.”
1 This letter to Schlegel and those which follow it are published in Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, pp. 252 et seq.
2 These letters are quoted in Benjamin Constant, by E.W. Schermerhorn.
3 Germaine was never off with the old love in order to be on with the new. She would have enjoyed nothing better than that Benjamin should be witness of the affair with Maurice O’Donnell. In her youth, on her own showing, she conducted affairs simultaneously with Narbonne, Mathieu and Talleyrand—to say nothing of her husband. Later Narbonne, Benjamin and Ribbing existed side by side. Then Benjamin and Prosper de Barante, Schlegel and Rocca were also contemporaries in her affection.
4 There is some evidence that it was on Madame de Staël’s advice that Moreau was recalled from America to fight with the Allies against Napoleon. The presence of the victor of Hohenlinden in the army attacking France was a clever piece of propaganda, well worthy of Germaine’s fertile mind. Moreau was killed at the battle of Dresden, Napoleon’s last great victory.
5 Blennerhasset : Madame de Staël, Vol. III.
6 Napoleon turned the Electors of Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg into Kings as the reward of supporting him. He made his brother Jerome “King of Westphalia.” England was eternally opposed to the “natural frontiers” of the Rhine and the Alps because these afforded France too high a degree of security on her eastern side and so left her free to take action on the sea. The Bourbons secured their restoration at English hands by adopting the English policy towards France, hence their unpopularity and ultimate fall. Hence, too, perhaps, Napoleon’s return from Elba. Napoleon made the most of the Bourbon-British alliance.
7 Louis XVI’s youngest brother. After the death of Louis XVIII he became King of France as Charles X. His reactionary behaviour led to the July Revolution of 1830, when his throne was upset. He died in exile in England.
8 Napoleon received his death-blow at Leipzig in October.