STAEL 



669 



was fifteen when her father was dismissed from 

 office for publishing his famous Compte Rendu, and 

 withdrew into retirement, carrying with him the 

 admiration of the whole of France. A great 

 marriage was desired for the young heiress, and 

 it seems certain that William Pitt on his visit to 

 the Continent in 1783 was a suitor for her hand, 

 and one favoured especially l>y her mother, although 

 displeasing to herself. At length after long negotia- 

 tions she married on January 14, 1786, trie Baron 

 de Stael-Holstein, whom Gustavus III. of Sweden 

 pledged himself to retain as his ambassador at 

 Paris. He was drowned in debt, and seventeen 

 years her senior, but proved an inoffensive and 

 easy husband. She bore him two sons ( 1790 and 

 1792) and a daughter (1797), but to protect her 

 fortune separated formally from him in 1798, 

 although she hastened dutifully to his bedside 

 when he died four years later. The deepest feelin" 

 of her heart was a woman's craving for love, and 

 those who can read between the lines of Delphi ne 

 < 1802) the real romanceof her life will understand 

 how little she had realised her youthful dream in 

 marriage. But hardly less deep within her heart 

 was the desire to shine and to please, and this she 



f ratified to the full as a society-queen in the 

 rilliant world of the Paris of her day. She lacked 

 the special charm of beauty, she was careless of 

 dress, impulsive and abrupt in manners, but her 

 vast capacity for enthusiasm and the passionate 

 intensity of lier affections gave force and colour to 

 her rich and versatile character, and combined to 

 form a personality whose influence was irresistible. 

 Society and conversation were a necessity of her 

 natnre, and called forth from the depths of her heart 

 that flowing impromptu eloquence that subdued all 

 hearers into admiration. The simplicity and direct- 

 ness of her thought was no less remarkable than 

 its impetuosity and force, and words and ideas 

 flowed from her lips in a kind of glorified improvisa- 

 tion that suggested at once the exalted inspiration 

 of the prophet, the refined sensibility of the woman, 

 and the clear understanding of the thinker. ' Were 

 I queen," said Madame de Tesse, 'I would order 

 Madame de Stael to talk to me for ever.' 



She shone brilliant and solitary in Paris, but many 

 envious enemies her father's before her own em- 

 bittered her triumph. Meanwhilethedawn of revolu- 

 tion promised to open up new horizons for France, 

 bu t events moved quickly to their inevitable end, and 

 Neckei 's elevation and unregretted fall but hastened 

 on the denouement of the tragedy. She mistrusted 

 Mirabeau, and saw with sinking. heart the ruin of 

 the monarchy, but only quitted Paris for Coppet at 

 the last moment, in September 1792. Indeed she 

 risked her own life with characteristic unselfishness 

 to save some of her friends, and only fled when it 

 was impossible longer to remain. From Coppet 

 ahe went to England, where at Mickleham in 

 Surrey she was surrounded by Narbonne, Talley- 

 rand, Montinorency, Lally, and Malouet, and cast 

 her unfailing spell over that warm-hearted little 

 rude Fanny Burney. Even here, victim of the 

 evolution as she was, Necker's daughter was 

 shunned by the royalist exiles ; still with all her 

 mortifications she acknowledged that she owed to 

 England ' four months of happiness saved from the 

 shipwreck of life.' She joined her husband at Cop- 

 pet in May 1793, and launched into the world her 

 Reflexions sur le Proces de la Seine in the vain hope 

 to save the head of Marie Antoinette. The Terror 

 literally crushed her sympathetic heart, and all 

 work became for a time impossible. Her mother 

 died in May 1794 ; in Septemlwr of the same year 

 she found some consolation in a new friendship 

 with Benjamin Constant, which formed an epoch 

 in the lives of both. In May 1795 she returned to 

 Paris, where her husband had re-established him- 



p 



self as ambassador. She prepared for a political 

 r61e by her Reflexions sur la Paix inttrieure ( 1795), 

 and published some of the novels of her youth, 

 with an Essai sur les Fictions, but the Directory 

 found her inconvenient as a citizen of Paris, and 

 she was advised to return to Coppet in December. 

 Her book De V Influence des Passions appeared in 

 the autumn of 1796 ; the chapters on ambition and 

 suicide are forced and feeble ; those on woman's 

 love, unsatisfied, misunderstood, betray the living 

 heart. She was allowed to return to Paris in 

 April 1797. The young conqueror, Bonaparte, 

 overawed her with a vague presentiment of fear. 

 He disliked clever women, and received her 

 friendly advances with such studied coldness that 

 their mutual feelings soon turned to hatred. In 

 April 1800 she published her famous book De la 

 Litterature consideree dans ses Rajrports avec les 

 Institutions sociales a thesis of 600 pages on that 

 perfectibility of the human mind which finds its 

 consecration in the liberty guaranteed by repub- 

 lican institutions. 



She returned again to Paris in March 1802, 

 when her salon was more brilliant than ever. 

 Here the vulgarity and charlatanism of the Napo- 

 leonic regime were heartily laughed at, but at 

 length the epigrams of Constant, her own friend- 

 ship with disaffected men like Moreau and lierna- 

 dotte, and last of all the appearance of Necker's 

 Dcmieres Viies de Politique et de Finances ex- 

 hausted the patience of Napoleon. And now com- 

 menced that ten years' duel l>etween C.-vsar and 

 a single woman of genius, which drew towards 

 her the pity and admiration of the world. If she 

 does pose somewhat too complacently throughout 

 as the victim of a tragedy, and if there is still 

 something of theatrical exaltation in her exile's 

 despair, it cannot be denied that Napoleon belittled 

 himself by his malignant and spiteful persecution. 

 Already in 1802 her friends fell off from her under 

 Napoleon's displeasure, and in the autumn of 1803 

 she received orders to keep forty leagues from Paris. 

 Her husband had died in May 1802, and she was 

 now free to marry Constant, but she determined 

 not to convert a slave into a master, and in De- 

 cemlx>r 1803 set out with heijcliildren for Weimar. 

 Schiller received her with warmth, but Goethe 

 paid a more unwilling homage. She dazzled 

 the whole court with the extraordinary volu- 

 bility and force of her ideas, yet even the 

 generous Schiller breathed a sigh of relief when 

 she departed for Berlin. Here she made acquain- 

 tance with the erudite August Schlegel, after- 

 wards to be added to the circle of intimates at 

 Coppet to the displeasure of Sismondi, Bonstetten, 

 and the rest. She next turned her steps towards 

 Vienna, but on the way learned of her father's 

 death, and at once returned to Coppet, her heart 

 weighed down under the deepest grief of her life. 

 She found relief during the spring in writing the 

 sincere and touching eulogy, Du Caractere de M. 

 Necker et de sa Vie privee*. Then she set out for 

 Italy accompanied by Schlegel, Wilhelm von Hum- 

 Imliit, and Bonstetten, and returned to Coppet in 

 June 1805 to write Corinne, a romance unfolded in 

 a journal of travel mingled with meditations on 

 history, the heroine again herself, exalted indeed, 

 but recognisable down to close personal traits. It 

 at once brought her a European fame, and it 

 revealed to Frenchmen all the mystery and charm 

 of Italy. 



She visited Germany again in the end of 1807, 

 thought for a moment of travelling in America, 

 and about this time began to turn for consolation 

 to religion, or at least to what the Due Victor de 

 Broglie terms with a happy and pious vagueness, 

 'nn latitudinariste pietisme.' Her famous book 

 De I'Allemagne was finished in 1810, submitted to 



