The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864

The friendship between these women was highly honorable to both, though the sacrifices were chiefly on Madame Récamier's side. She espoused Madame de Staël's cause with zeal and earnestness; and when the latter was banished forty leagues from Paris, she found an asylum with her. Among the few fragments of autobiography preserved by Madame Lenormant is this account of the first interview between the friends.

"One day, which I count an epoch in my life, Monsieur Récamier arrived at Clichy with a lady whom he did not introduce, but whom he left alone with me while he joined some other persons in the park. This lady came about the sale and purchase of a house. Her dress was peculiar. She wore a morning-robe, and a little dress-hat decorated with flowers. I took her for a foreigner, and was struck with the beauty of her eyes and of her expression. I cannot analyze my sensations, but it is certain I was more occupied in divining who she was than in paying her the usual courtesies, when she said to me, with a lively and penetrating grace, that she was truly enchanted to know me; that her father, Monsieur Necker.... At these words, I recognized Madame de Staël! I did not hear the rest of her sentence. I blushed. My embarrassment was extreme. I had just read with enthusiasm her letters on Rousseau, and I expressed what I felt more by my looks than by my words. She intimidated and attracted me at the same time. I saw at once that she was a perfectly natural person, of a superior nature. She, on her side, fixed upon me her great black eyes, but with a curiosity full of benevolence, and paid me compliments which would have seemed too exaggerated, had they not appeared to escape her, thus giving to her words an irresistible seduction. My embarrassment did me no injury. She understood it, and expressed a wish to see more of me on her return to Paris, as she was then on the eve of starting for Coppet. She was at that time only an apparition in my life, but the impression was a lively one. I thought only of Madame de Staël, I was so much affected by her strong and ardent nature."

The sweet serenity of Madame Récamier's nature soothed the more restless and tumultuous spirit of her friend. The unaffected veneration, too, of one so beautiful touched and gratified the woman of genius. Still, this intimacy was not unmixed with bitterness for Madame de Staël. But it troubled only her own heart, not the common friendship. She continually contrasted Madame Récamier's beauty with her own plain appearance, her friend's power of fascination with her own lesser faculty of interesting, and she repeatedly declared that Madame Récamier was the most enviable of human beings. But in comparing the lives of the two, as they now appear to us, Madame de Staël seems the more fortunate. If her married life was uncongenial, she had children to love and cherish, to whom she was fondly attached. Madame Récamier was far more isolated. Years had made her entirely independent of her husband, and she had no children upon whom to lavish the wealth of her affection. Her mother's death left her comparatively alone in the world, for she had neither brother nor sister, and her father seems to have had but little hold on her heart, all her love being lavished on her mother. She had a host of friends, it is true, but the closest friendship is but a poor substitute for the natural ties of affection. Both these women sighed for what they had not. The one yearned for love, the other for the liberty of loving. Madame Récamier was dependent for her enjoyments on society, while Madame de Staël had rich and manifold resources within herself, which no caprice of friends could materially affect, and no reverse of fortune impair. Her poetic imagination and creative thought were inexhaustible treasures. Solitude could never be irksome to her. Her genius brought with it an inestimable blessing. It gave her a purpose in life,—consequently she was never in want of occupation; and if at intervals she bitterly felt that heart-loneliness which Mrs. Browning has so touchingly expressed in verse,—

"'My father!'—thou hast knowledge, only thou!How dreary 't is for women to sit stillOn winter nights by solitary fires,And hear the nations praising them far off,Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of love,Our very heart of passionate womanhood,Which could not beat so in the verse withoutBeing present also in the unkissed lips,And eyes undried because there's none to askThe reason they grew moist,"—

in the excitement and ardor of composition such feelings slumbered, while in the honest and pure satisfaction of work well done they were for the time extinguished. Madame Récamier, though beautiful and beloved, had no such precious compensations. She depended for her happiness upon her friends, and they who rely upon others for their chief enjoyments must meet with bitter and deep disappointments. Madame Récamier had great triumphs which secured to her moments of rapture. When the crowd worshipped her beauty, she probably experienced the same delirium of joy, the same momentary exultation, that a prima donna feels when called before an excited and enthusiastic audience. But satiety and chagrin surely follow such triumphs, and she lived to feel their hollowness.

In a letter to her adopted daughter, she says,—"I hope you will be more happy than I have been"; and she confessed to Sainte-Beuve, that more than once in her most brilliant days, in the midst of fêtes where she reigned a queen, she disengaged herself from the crowd surrounding her and retired to weep in solitude. Surely so sad a woman was not to be envied.

Another friend of Madame Récamier's youth, whose friendship in a marked degree influenced her life, was Matthieu de Montmorency. He was seventeen years older than she, and may with emphasis be termed her best friend. A devout Roman Catholic, he awakened and strengthened her religious convictions, and constantly warned her of the perils surrounding her. Much as he evidently admired and loved her, he did not hesitate to utter unwelcome truths. Vicomte, afterward Duc de Montmorency, belonged to one of the oldest families of France, but, espousing the Revolutionary cause, he was the first to propose the abolition of the privileges of the nobility. He was married early in life to a woman without beauty, to whom he was profoundly indifferent, and soon separated from her, though from family motives the tie was renewed in after-years. In his youth he had been gay and dissipated; but the death of a favorite brother, who fell a victim to the Revolution, changed and sobered him. From an over-sensibility, he believed himself to be the cause of his brother's death on account of the part he had taken in hastening the Revolution, and he strove to atone for this mistake, as well as for his youthful follies, by a life of austerity and piety. While his letters testify his great affection for Madame Récamier, they are entirely free from those lover-like protestations and declarations of eternal fidelity so characterise of her other masculine correspondents. He always addressed her as "amiable amis", and his nearest approach to gallantry is the expression of a hope that "in prayer their thoughts had often mingled, and might continue so to do." He ends a long letter of religious counsel with this grave warning:—"Do what is good and amiable, what will not rend the heart or leave any regrets behind. But in the name of God renounce all that is unworthy of you, and which under no circumstances can ever render you happy."

Adrien de Montmorency, Duke of Laval, if not so near and dear a friend, was quite as devoted an admirer of Madame Récamier as his cousin Matthieu. His son also wore her chains, and frequently marred the pleasure of his father's visits by his presence. In reference to the family's devotion, Adrien wrote to her,—"My son is fascinated by you, and you know that I am so also. It is the fate of the Montmorencys,—

"'Ils ne mouraient pas tous, mais tout étaient frappés.'"

Adrien was a man of wit, and he had more ability than Matthieu. "Of all your admirers," writes Madame de Staël, in a letter given in Châteaubriand's Memoirs, "you know that I prefer Adrien de Montmorency. I have just received one of his letters, which is remarkable for wit and grace, and I believe in the durability of his affections, notwithstanding the charm of his manners. Besides, this word durability is becoming in me, who have but a secondary place in his heart. But you are the heroine of all those sentiments out of which grow tragedies and romances."

Other admirers succeeded the Montmorencys. The masked balls, fashionable under the Empire, were occasions for fresh conquests. Madame Récamier attended them regularly under the protection of an elder brother of her husband, and had many piquant adventures. Prince Metternich was devoted to her one season, and when Lent put an end to festivity, he visited her privately in the morning, that he might not incur the Emperor's displeasure. Napoleon's animosity had now become marked and positive. On one occasion, when three of his ministers met accidentally at her house, he heard of it, and asked petulantly how long since had the council been held at Madame Récamier's? He was especially jealous of foreign ministers, and treated with so much haughtiness any who frequented her salon, that, as a matter of prudence, they saw her only in society or visited her by stealth. The Duke of Mecklenburg, whom she met at one of the masked balls, was extremely anxious to keep up her acquaintance. She declined the honor, alleging the Emperor's jealousy as reason for her refusal. He persuaded her, however, to grant him an interview, and she appointed an evening when she did not generally receive visitors. Stealing into the house in an undignified manner, the Duke was collared by the concierge, who mistook him for a thief. This ill-fortune did not deter him, however, from visiting her frequently. Years after, he wrote,—"Among the precious souvenirs which I owe to you is one I particularly cherish. It is the eminently noble and generous course you pursued toward me, when Napoleon had said openly, in the salon of the Empress Josephine, that he 'should regard as his personal enemy any foreigner who frequented the salon of Madame Récamier.'"

Madame Récamier was to feel yet more severely the effects of the Emperor's displeasure. In the autumn of 1806 the banking-house of Monsieur Récamier became embarrassed, through financial disorders in Spain. Their difficulties would have been temporary, had the Bank of France granted them a loan on good security. This favor was refused, and the house failed. While the decision of the bank was yet uncertain, Monsieur Récamier confided to his wife the desperate state of his affairs, and deputed her to do, the next day, the honors of a large dinner-party, which could not be postponed, lest suspicion should be excited. He went into the country, completely overwhelmed, and awaited there the result of his application. Madame Récamier forced herself to appear as usual. No one suspected the agony of her mind. She afterwards said that she felt the whole evening as though she were a prey to some horrible nightmare. In contrasting the conduct of the husband and wife, Madame Lenormant is scarcely just to the former. Acutely as Madame Récamier dreaded the impending ruin, it could not be to her what it was to her husband. A fearful responsibility rested upon him. The failure of his house was not only disaster and possible dishonor, but the ruin of thousands who had confided in him. A strong intellect might well be bowed down under the apprehension of such a catastrophe. Women, too, are proverbially calmer in such emergencies than men. To them it simply means sacrifice, but to men it is infinitely more than that.

When the blow fell, Monsieur Récamier met it manfully. He gave up everything to his creditors, who had so much confidence in his integrity that they put him at the head of the settlement of liquidation. Madame Récamier was equally honorable. She sold all her jewels. They disposed of their plate, and offered the house in the Rue Mont Blanc for sale. As a purchaser could not immediately be found, they removed to the ground-floor and let the other stories. This reverse of fortune involved more than personal sacrifices. Madame Récamier was both generous and charitable, and had dispensed her benefits with an open hand. She had, with the aid of friends, founded a school for orphans, and had numerous claims upon her bounty. To be restricted in her charities must have been a sore trial. Further mortifications she was spared, for she was treated with greater deference than ever. Her friends redoubled their attentions, her door was besieged by callers, who vied with each other in showing sympathy and respect. Junot was one of her firmest friends at this crisis. Witnessing, in Paris, the attentions she received, he spoke of them to the Emperor, when he rejoined him in Germany. He was checked by Napoleon, who pettishly remarked that they could not have paid more homage to the widow of a marshal of France fallen on the field of battle.

Junot was not the only general of the Emperor who was concerned at her reverse of fortune. Bernadotte, whom Sainte-Beuve numbers among her lovers, and whose letters confirm this idea, wrote to her from Germany, expressing his sympathy. Madame de Staël was sensibly afflicted. "Dear Juliette," she writes, "we have enjoyed the luxury which surrounded you. Your fortune has been ours, and I feel ruined because you are no longer rich."

Another anxiety now weighed heavily upon Madame Récamier. Her mother's health had long been failing, and the misfortunes of her son-in-law were more than her shattered constitution could bear. She died six months after the failure, leaving her fortune to her daughter, though her husband was still living. To the last she was devoted to dress and society. Throughout her illness she insisted upon being becomingly dressed every day, and supported to a couch, where she received her friends for several hours.

After Madame Bernard's death, her daughter passed six months in retirement, but, her grief affecting her health, she was induced by Madame de Staël to visit her at Coppet. Here she met the exiled Prince Augustus of Prussia, nephew of Frederick the Great. We find in the "Seaforth Papers," lately published in England, an allusion to this Prince, who visited London in the train of the allied sovereigns in 1814. A lady writes, "All the ladies are desperately in love with him,—his eyes are so fine, his moustaches so black, and his teeth so white." Madame Lenormant describes him as extremely handsome, brave, chivalric, and loyal. He was twenty-four when he fell passionately in love with Madame de Staël's beautiful guest, to whom he at once proposed a divorce and marriage. We give Madame Lenormant's account of his attachment.

"Three months passed in the enchantments of a passion by which Madame Récamier was profoundly touched, if she did not share it. Everything conspired to favor Prince Augustus. The imagination of Madame de Staël, easily seduced by anything poetical and singular, made her an eloquent auxiliary of the Prince. The place itself, those beautiful shores of Lake Geneva, peopled by romantic phantoms, had a tendency to bewilder the judgment. Madame Récamier was moved. For a moment she welcomed an offer of marriage which was not only a proof of the passion, but of the esteem of a prince of a royal house, deeply impressed by the weight of its own prerogatives and the greatness of its rank. Vows were exchanged. The tie which united the beautiful Juliette to Monsieur Récamier was one which the Catholic Church itself proclaimed null. Yielding to the sentiment with which she inspired the Prince, Juliette wrote to Monsieur Récamier, requesting the rupture of their union. He replied that he would consent to a divorce, if it was her wish, but he made an appeal to her feelings. He recalled the affection he had shown her from childhood. He even expressed regret at having respected her susceptibilities and repugnances, thus preventing a closer bond of union, which would have made all thoughts of a separation impossible. Finally he requested, that, if Madame Récamier persisted in her project, the divorce should not take place in Paris, but out of France, where he would join her to arrange matters."

This letter had the desired effect. Madame Récamier concluded not to abandon her husband, and returned to Paris, but without undeceiving the Prince, who started for Berlin. According to her biographer, Madame Récamier trusted that absence would soften the disappointment she had in store for him; but, if this was the case, the means she took to accomplish it were very inadequate. She sent him her portrait soon after her return to Paris, which the Prince acknowledged in a letter, of which the following is an extract:—

"April 24th, 1808.

"I hope that my letter of the 31st has already been received. I could only very feebly express to you the happiness I felt on the receipt of your last, but it will give you some idea of my sensations when reading it, and in receiving your portrait. For whole hours I looked at this enchanting picture, dreaming of a happiness which must surpass the most delicious reveries of imagination. What fate can be compared to that of the man whom you love?"

When Madame Récamier subsequently wrote to him more candidly, the Prince was astonished. "Your letter was a thunderbolt," he replied; but he would not accept her decision, and claimed the right of seeing her again. Three years passed in uncertainty, and in 1811 Madame Récamier consented to meet him at Schaffhausen; but she did not fulfil her engagement, giving the sentence of exile which had just been passed upon her as an excuse. The Prince, after waiting in vain, wrote indignantly to Madame de Staël, "I hope I am now cured of a foolish love, which I have nourished for four years." But when the news of her exile reached him, he wrote to her expressing his sympathy, but at the same time reproaching her for her breach of faith. "After four years of absence I hoped to see you again, and this exile seemed to furnish you with a pretext for coming to Switzerland. But you have cruelly deceived me. I cannot conceive, if you could not or would not see me, why you did not condescend to tell me so, and I might have been spared a useless journey of three hundred leagues."

Madame Récamier's conduct to the Prince, even viewed in the light of her biographer's representations, is scarcely justifiable. Madame Möhl attempts to defend her. She alleges, that, at the time Prince Augustus was paying his addresses to her, he had contracted a left-handed marriage at Berlin. Even if this story be true, there is no evidence that Madame Récamier was then acquainted with the fact, and if she had been, there was only the more reason for breaking with the Prince at once, instead of keeping him so long alternating between hope and despair. In speaking of him to Madame Möhl, Madame Récamier said that he was desperately in love, but he was very gallant and had many other fancies. The impression she made upon him, however, seems to have been lasting. Three months before his death, in 1845, he wrote to her that the ring she had given him should follow him to the tomb, and her portrait, painted by Gérard, was, at his death, returned to her by his orders. Either the Prince had two portraits of Madame Récamier, or else Madame Lenormant's statements are contradictory. She says that her aunt sent him her portrait soon after her return to Paris, and the date of the Prince's letter acknowledging the favor confirms this statement. It is afterward asserted that Madame Récamier gave him her portrait in exchange for one of Madame de Staël, painted by Gérard, as Corinne.

The next important event in Madame Récamier's life is her exile, caused by a visit she paid Madame de Staël when the surveillance exercised over the latter by the government had become more rigorous. Montmorency had been already exiled for the same offence. But, disregarding this warning, Madame Récamier persisted in going to Coppet, and though she only remained one night there, she was exiled forty leagues from Paris.

She bore her exile with dignity. She would not solicit a recall, and she forbade those of her friends, who, like Junot, were on familiar terms with the Emperor, to mention her name in his presence. She doubtless felt all its deprivations, even more keenly than Madame de Staël, though she made no complaints. Her means were narrow, as she does not appear to have been in the full possession of her mother's fortune until after the Restoration. She had lived, with scarcely an interruption, a life of society; now she was thrown on her own resources, with little except music to cheer and enliven her. It was not only the loss of Paris that exiles under the Empire had to endure. They were subjected to an annoying surveillance by the police, and even the friends who paid them any attention became objects of suspicion.

The first eight months of her exile Madame Récamier passed at Chalons. She had for companionship a little niece of her husband's, whom she had previously adopted. At the suggestion of Madame de Staël, she removed to Lyons, where Monsieur Récamier had many influential relatives. Here she formed an intimacy with a companion in misfortune, the high-spirited Duchess of Chevreuse, whose proud refusal to enter into the service of the captive Spanish Queen was the cause of her exile. "I can be a prisoner," she replied, when the offer was made to her, "but I will never be a jailer."

Though the society of friends offered Madame Récamier many diversions, she was often a prey to melancholy. The Duchess D'Abrantes, who saw her here, casually mentions her dejection in her Memoirs, and Châteaubriand says that the separation from Madame de Staël weighed heavily upon her spirits. He also alludes to a coolness between the friends, caused by Madame de Staël's marriage with Monsieur de Rocca. The desire to keep this connection secret induced Madame de Staël to write to her friend, declining a proposed visit from her, on the plea that she was about to leave Switzerland. Châteaubriand asserts that Madame Récamier felt this slight severely, but Madame Lenormant makes no allusion to the circumstance.

At Lyons Madame Récamier met the author, Monsieur Ballanche. He was presented to her by Camille Jordan, and, in the words of her biographer, "from that moment Monsieur Ballanche belonged to Madame Récamier." He was the least exacting of any of her friends. All he asked was to devote his life to her, and to be allowed to worship her. His friends called her his Beatrice. As he was an extremely awkward and ugly man, the two might have been termed with equal propriety "Beauty and the Beast." Monsieur Ballanche's face had been frightfully disfigured by an operation, and though his friends thought that his fine eyes and expression redeemed his appearance, he was, to strangers, particularly unprepossessing. He was, moreover, very absent-minded. When he joined Madame Récamier at Rome, she noticed, during an evening walk with him, that he had no hat. In reply to her questions, he quietly said, "Oh, yes, he had left it at Alexandria." He had, in fact, forgotten it; and it never occurred to him to replace it by another. Madame Lenormant relates an anecdote of his second interview with Madame Récamier, which is illustrative of his simplicity.

"He found her alone, working on embroidery. The conversation at first languished, but soon became interesting,—for, though Monsieur Ballanche had no chit-chat, he talked extremely well on subjects which interested him, such as philosophy, morals, politics, and literature. Unfortunately, his shoes had an odor about them which was very disagreeable to Madame Récamier. It finally made her faint, and, overcoming with difficulty the embarrassment she felt in speaking of so prosaic an annoyance, she timidly avowed to him that the smell of his shoes was unpleasant. Monsieur Ballanche apologized, humbly regretting that she had not spoken before, and then went out of the room. He returned in a few moments without his shoes, resumed his seat, and continued the conversation. Other persons came in, and noticing him in this situation, he said, by way of explanation, 'The smell of my shoes annoyed Madame Récamier, so I left them in the antechamber.'"

After the death of his father, Monsieur Ballanche left Lyons, and passed the rest of his life in the society of her whom he worshipped with so single-minded a devotion.

Madame Récamier subsequently left Lyons for Italy, and the next new admirer whose attentions we have to chronicle is Canova. During her stay in Rome he wrote a note to her every morning, and the heat of the city growing excessive, he invited her to share his lodgings at Albano. Taking with her her niece and waiting-maid, she became his guest for two months. A Roman artist painted a picture of this retreat, with Madame Récamier sitting near a window, reading. Canova sent the picture to her in 1816. When she left Rome for a short absence, Canova modelled two busts of her from memory, in the hope of giving her a pleasant surprise,—one with the hair simply arranged, the other with a veil. Madame Récamier was not pleased, and her annoyance did not escape the penetrating eye of the artist. She tried in vain to efface the unfavorable impression he had received, but he only half forgave her. He added a crown of olives to the one with the veil, and when she asked him about it, he replied, "It did not please you, so I made a Beatrice of it."