Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Encyclopedia
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (stal; 22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817), commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French
-speaking Swiss author living in Paris
and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 19th century.
, France
. Her father was the prominent Swiss
banker and statesman Jacques Necker
, who was the Director of Finance under King Louis XVI of France
. Her mother was Suzanne Curchod
, almost equally famous for being the early love of Edward Gibbon
, being the wife of Necker herself, and being the mistress of one of the most popular salon
s of Paris. Mother and daughter had little sympathy for each other. Mme Necker, despite her talents, her beauty and her fondness for philosophic society, was strictly decorous, somewhat reserved, and wanted to bring up her daughter with the discipline of her own childhood. Anne Louise was from her earliest years energetic and boisterous. She began very early to write, though not to publish. She was said to have injured her health by excessive study and intellectual excitement. But in reading all the accounts of Mme de Staël's life which come from herself or her intimate friends, it must be carefully remembered that she was the most distinguished and characteristic product of the period of sensibility — the singular fashion of ultra-sentimentalism — which required that both men and women, but especially women, should be always palpitating with excitement, steeped in melancholy, or dissolved in tears. Still, her father's dismissal from the ministry and the consequent removal of the family from the busy life of Paris
were probably beneficial to her.
During part of the next few years, they resided in the Swiss village of Coppet
at the Château de Coppet, her father's estate on Lake Geneva
, which she herself made famous. But other parts were spent in travelling, chiefly in southern France. They returned to Paris, or at least to its neighborhood, in 1785, and Mlle Necker resumed writing miscellaneous works, including a novel, Sophie, printed in 1786, and a tragedy, Jeanne Grey, published in 1790.
thought of her; the somewhat notorious lover of Julie de Lespinasse, Guibert, a cold-hearted coxcomb of some talent, certainly paid her addresses.
Finally, she married Baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein
, who was first an attaché
of the Swedish
legation, and then minister. For a great heiress and a very ambitious girl, the marriage did not seem brilliant, for Staël had no fortune and no very great personal distinction. A singular series of negotiations, however, secured from the king of Sweden a promise of the ambassadorship for 12 years and a pension in case of its withdrawal, and the marriage took place on 14 January 1786.
The husband was 37, the wife 20. Mme de Staël was accused of extravagance, and latterly an amicable separation of property had to be made between the couple. But this was a mere legal formality, and on the whole the marriage seems to have met the views of both parties, neither of whom had any affection for the other. The baron obtained money and the lady obtained, as a guaranteed ambassadress of a foreign power of consideration, a much higher position at court and in society than she could have secured by marrying almost any Frenchman, without the inconveniences which might have been expected had she married a Frenchman superior to herself in rank. Mme de Staël was not a persona grata at court, but she seems to have played the part of ambassadress fairly well.
) she appeared as an author under her own name (Sophie had been already published, but anonymously) with some Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau, a fervid panegyric which demonstrated evident talent but little in the way of critical discernment. She was at this time, and indeed generally, enthusiastic for a mixture of Rousseauism and constitutionalism in politics. Her novels were bestsellers and her literary criticism was highly influential, when she was allowed to live in Paris she greatly encouraged any political dissident from Louis's regime. She exulted in the meeting of the estates general
, and most of all when her father, after being driven to Brussels
by a state intrigue, was once more recalled and triumphantly escorted into Paris. This triumph however was short-lived.
Her first child, a boy, was born the week before Necker finally left France in unpopularity and disgrace; and the increasing disturbances of the Revolution made her privileges as ambassadress very important safeguards. She visited Coppet once or twice, but for the most part in the early days of the revolutionary period she was in Paris taking an interest in, and attending the Assembly
, and holding a salon
on the Rue du Bac, attended by Talleyrand, Abbé Delille
, Clermont-Tonnerre
, and Gouverneur Morris
.
At last, the day before the September massacres
(1792), she fled, befriended by Manuel and Tallien. Her own account of her escape is, as usual, so florid that it provokes the question whether she was really in any danger. Directly it does not seem that she was; but she had generously strained the privileges of the embassy to protect some threatened friends, and this was a serious matter.
She then moved to Coppet
, and there gathered round her a considerable number of friends and fellow-refugees, the beginning of the salon
which at intervals during the next 25 years made the place so famous. However, in 1793 she made a long visit to England
, and established a connection with other emigrants: Talleyrand, Narbonne
, Montmorency
, Jaucourt
and others. There was not a little scandal about her relations with Narbonne; and this Mickleham sojourn (the details of which are known from, among other sources, the letters of Fanny Burney
) has never been altogether satisfactorily accounted for.
In the summer, she returned to Coppet and wrote a pamphlet on the queen's execution. The next year, her mother died, and the fall of Robespierre opened the way back to Paris. Her husband (whose mission had been in abeyance and himself in Holland for three years) was accredited to the French republic by the regent of Sweden; his wife reopened her salon and for a time was conspicuous in the motley and eccentric society of the Directory
. She also published several small works, the chief being the essays Sur l'influence des passions "On the influence of passions" (1796), and Sur la litérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800).
It was during these years that Mme de Staël was of chief political importance. Narbonne's place had been supplanted by Benjamin Constant
, whom she first met at Coppet in 1794, and who had a very great influence over her, as in return she had over him. Both personal and political reasons threw her into opposition to Bonaparte
. Her own preference for a moderate republic or a constitutional monarchy was quite sincere, and, even if it had not been so, her own character and Napoleon's were too much alike in some points to admit of their getting on together. For some years, she was able to alternate between Coppet and Paris without difficulty, though not without knowing that the First Consul disliked her. In 1797 she, as above mentioned, separated formally from her husband. In 1799, he was recalled by the king of Sweden, and in 1802 he died, duly attended by her. Besides a daughter (Gustavine, 1787–1789) who died in infancy and the eldest son Auguste Louis (1790–1827), they had two other children — a son Albert (1792–1813), and a daughter Albertine
(1797–1838), who afterwards married Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie
. The paternity of these children is uncertain.
It displeased Napoleon that Mme de Staël should show herself recalcitrant to his influence. But it probably pleased Mme de Staël to quite an equal degree that Napoleon should apparently put forth his power to crush her and fail. Both personages had a curious touch of theatricality. If Mme de Staël had really desired to take up her struggle against Napoleon seriously, she need only have established herself in England at the peace of Amiens. But she lingered on at Coppet. There, she was shadowed by Napoleon's spies due to her tendency to defy Napoleon's orders, firstly that she keep away from Paris, and later out of France altogether, leaving her restless and lonely in rural Switzerland and constantly yearning after her beloved Paris.
In 1802, she published the first of her noteworthy books, the novel Delphine, in which the femme incomprise was in a manner introduced to French literature, and in which she herself and not a few of her intimates appeared in transparent disguise. In the autumn of 1803, she returned to Paris. Had she not made her anxiety about exile so public, it remains unclear whether Napoleon would have exiled her; but, as she began at once appealing to all sorts of persons to protect her, he seems to have thought it better that she should not be protected. She was directed not to reside within 40 leagues
of Paris, and after considerable delay she determined to go to Germany
.
and Frankfurt
to Weimar
, and arrived there in December. There she stayed during the very long winter and then went to Berlin
, where she made the acquaintance of August Wilhelm Schlegel, who afterwards became one of her intimates at Coppet. Thence she travelled to Vienna
, where, in April, the news of her father's dangerous illness and shortly of his death (8 April) reached her.
She returned to Coppet, and found herself its wealthy and independent mistress, but her sorrow for her father was deep and certainly sincere. She spent the summer at the chateau
with a brilliant company; in the autumn she journeyed to Italy
accompanied by Schlegel and Sismondi
, and there gathered the materials of her most famous work, Corinne, whose main protagonist was inspired by the Italian poet Diodata Saluzzo Roero
.
She returned in the summer of 1805, and spent nearly a year in writing Corinne; in 1806 she broke the decree of exile and lived for a time undisturbed near Paris. In 1807 Corinne, the first aesthetic romance not written in German, appeared. It is in fact, what it was described as being at the time of its appearance, a picaresque
tour couched in the form of a novel. The famous quote "Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent", commonly translated as "To know all is to forgive all", is found in Corinne, Book 18, chapter 5.
The publication was taken as a reminder of her existence, and the police of the empire sent her back to Coppet. She stayed there as usual for the summer, and then set out once more for Germany, visiting Mayence, Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna. She was again at Coppet in the summer of 1808 (in which year Constant broke with her, subsequently marrying Charlotte von Hardenberg) and set to work at her book, De l'Allemagne. It took her nearly the whole of the next two years, during which she did not travel much or far from her own house.
She had bought property in America
and thought of moving there, but she was determined to publish De l'Allemagne in Paris. Straining under French censorship, she wrote to the emperor a provoking and perhaps undignified letter. Napoleon's mean-spirited reply to her letter was the condemnation of the whole edition of her book (ten thousand copies) as not French, and her own exile from the country.
She retired once more to Coppet, where she was not at first interfered with, and she found consolation in a young officer of Swiss origin named Albert de Rocca, twenty-three years her junior, whom she married privately in 1811. The intimacy of their relations could escape no one at Coppet, but the fact of the marriage (which seems to have been happy enough) was not certainly known till after her death. They had one son, Louis-Alphonse de Rocca (1812–1842), who would marry Marie-Louise-Antoinette de Rambuteau, daughter of Claude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau
.
and Mme Récamier were exiled for the crime of seeing her; and she at last began to think of doing what she ought to have done years before and withdrawing herself entirely from Napoleon's sphere. In the complete subjection of the Continent which preceded the Russian War this was not so easy as it would have been earlier, and she remained at home during the winter of 1811, writing and planning. On 23 May she left Coppet almost secretly, and journeyed through Bern, Innsbruck
and Salzburg
on her way to Vienna. There she obtained an Austrian passport to the frontier, and after some fears and trouble, receiving a Russia
n passport in Galicia, she at last escaped from Napoleon's omnipotent eyes and far reach.
She journeyed slowly through Russia
and Finland
to Sweden
, making a stay at Saint Petersburg
, spent the winter in Stockholm
, and then set out for England. Here she received a brilliant reception and was much lionized during the season of 1813. She published De l'Allemagne in the autumn, was saddened by the death of her second son Albert, who had entered the Swedish army and fell in a duel brought on by gambling, undertook her Considérations sur la révolution française, and when Louis XVIII
had been restored returned to Paris.
. In October, after Waterloo
, she set out for Italy
, not only for the advantage of her own health but for that of her second husband, Rocca, who was dying of consumption
.
Her daughter married Duke Victor de Broglie on 20 February 1816, at Pisa
, and became the wife and mother of French statesmen of distinction. The whole family returned to Coppet in June, and Lord Byron
now frequently visited Mme de Staël there. Despite her increasing ill-health she returned to Paris for the winter of 1816-1817, and her salon was much frequented. But she had already become confined to her room if not to her bed. She died on 14 July, and Rocca survived her little more than six months.
Auguste Comte
included Madame Stael in his Calendar of Great Men. In a book with the same name, Comte's disciple Frederic Harrison
wrote about Stael and her works: "In Delphine a woman, for the first time since the Revolution, reopened the romance of the heart which was in vogue in the century preceding. Comte would daily recite the sentence from Delphine, 'There is nothing real in the world but love.' [Pos. Pol. iv. 44). Our thoughts and our acts, he said, can only give us happiness through results: and results are not often in our own control. Feeling is entirely within our power; and it gives us a direct source of happiness, which nothing outside can take away." Her works, Harrison wrote, "precede the works of Scott
, Byron, Shelley
, and partly of Chateaubriand, their historical importance is great in the development of modern romanticism
, of the romance of the heart, the delight in nature, and in the art, antiquities, and history of Europe."
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
-speaking Swiss author living in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 19th century.
Childhood
Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Her father was the prominent Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
banker and statesman Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:...
, who was the Director of Finance under King Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
. Her mother was Suzanne Curchod
Suzanne Curchod
Suzanne Curchod was a French-Swiss salonist and writer. She hosted one of the most celebrated salons of the Ancien Régime. She was the wife of Jacques Necker, and is often referenced in historical documents as Madame Necker....
, almost equally famous for being the early love of Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
, being the wife of Necker herself, and being the mistress of one of the most popular salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
s of Paris. Mother and daughter had little sympathy for each other. Mme Necker, despite her talents, her beauty and her fondness for philosophic society, was strictly decorous, somewhat reserved, and wanted to bring up her daughter with the discipline of her own childhood. Anne Louise was from her earliest years energetic and boisterous. She began very early to write, though not to publish. She was said to have injured her health by excessive study and intellectual excitement. But in reading all the accounts of Mme de Staël's life which come from herself or her intimate friends, it must be carefully remembered that she was the most distinguished and characteristic product of the period of sensibility — the singular fashion of ultra-sentimentalism — which required that both men and women, but especially women, should be always palpitating with excitement, steeped in melancholy, or dissolved in tears. Still, her father's dismissal from the ministry and the consequent removal of the family from the busy life of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
were probably beneficial to her.
During part of the next few years, they resided in the Swiss village of Coppet
Coppet
Coppet is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.-History:Coppet is first mentioned in 1294 as Copetum. In 1347 it was mentioned as Copet.-Geography:...
at the Château de Coppet, her father's estate on Lake Geneva
Lake Geneva
Lake Geneva or Lake Léman is a lake in Switzerland and France. It is one of the largest lakes in Western Europe. 59.53 % of it comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland , and 40.47 % under France...
, which she herself made famous. But other parts were spent in travelling, chiefly in southern France. They returned to Paris, or at least to its neighborhood, in 1785, and Mlle Necker resumed writing miscellaneous works, including a novel, Sophie, printed in 1786, and a tragedy, Jeanne Grey, published in 1790.
Marriage
Soon her parents became impatient for her to marry; and they are said to have objected to her marrying a Roman Catholic, which, in France, considerably limited her choice. There is a legend that William Pitt the YoungerWilliam Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
thought of her; the somewhat notorious lover of Julie de Lespinasse, Guibert, a cold-hearted coxcomb of some talent, certainly paid her addresses.
Finally, she married Baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein
Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein
Baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, . Erik Magnus was Chamberlain to Her Majesty Queen Sophia Magdalena. In 1783 he was appointed chargé d'affaires to the Court of France, and in 1785 he was named Ambassador to France...
, who was first an attaché
Attaché
Attaché is a French term in diplomacy referring to a person who is assigned to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency...
of the Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
legation, and then minister. For a great heiress and a very ambitious girl, the marriage did not seem brilliant, for Staël had no fortune and no very great personal distinction. A singular series of negotiations, however, secured from the king of Sweden a promise of the ambassadorship for 12 years and a pension in case of its withdrawal, and the marriage took place on 14 January 1786.
The husband was 37, the wife 20. Mme de Staël was accused of extravagance, and latterly an amicable separation of property had to be made between the couple. But this was a mere legal formality, and on the whole the marriage seems to have met the views of both parties, neither of whom had any affection for the other. The baron obtained money and the lady obtained, as a guaranteed ambassadress of a foreign power of consideration, a much higher position at court and in society than she could have secured by marrying almost any Frenchman, without the inconveniences which might have been expected had she married a Frenchman superior to herself in rank. Mme de Staël was not a persona grata at court, but she seems to have played the part of ambassadress fairly well.
Revolutionary activities
Then in 1788 (a year prior to the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
) she appeared as an author under her own name (Sophie had been already published, but anonymously) with some Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau, a fervid panegyric which demonstrated evident talent but little in the way of critical discernment. She was at this time, and indeed generally, enthusiastic for a mixture of Rousseauism and constitutionalism in politics. Her novels were bestsellers and her literary criticism was highly influential, when she was allowed to live in Paris she greatly encouraged any political dissident from Louis's regime. She exulted in the meeting of the estates general
French States-General
In France under the Old Regime, the States-General or Estates-General , was a legislative assembly of the different classes of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates, which were called and dismissed by the king...
, and most of all when her father, after being driven to Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
by a state intrigue, was once more recalled and triumphantly escorted into Paris. This triumph however was short-lived.
Her first child, a boy, was born the week before Necker finally left France in unpopularity and disgrace; and the increasing disturbances of the Revolution made her privileges as ambassadress very important safeguards. She visited Coppet once or twice, but for the most part in the early days of the revolutionary period she was in Paris taking an interest in, and attending the Assembly
National Assembly (French Revolution)
During the French Revolution, the National Assembly , which existed from June 17 to July 9, 1789, was a transitional body between the Estates-General and the National Constituent Assembly.-Background:...
, and holding a salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
on the Rue du Bac, attended by Talleyrand, Abbé Delille
Jacques Delille
Jacques Delille was a French poet and translator. He was born at Aigueperse in Auvergne.-Life:He was an illegitimate child, and was descended by his mother from the chancellor De l'Hôpital. He was educated at the College of Lisieux in Paris and became an elementary teacher...
, Clermont-Tonnerre
Stanislas Marie Adelaide, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre
Stanislas Marie Adélaïde, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre was a French politician.-Early life and career:Born in Pont-a-Mousson, in what is today the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France...
, and Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris , was an American statesman, a Founding Father of the United States, and a native of New York City who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation. Morris was also an author of large sections of the...
.
At last, the day before the September massacres
September Massacres
The September Massacres were a wave of mob violence which overtook Paris in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution. By the time it had subsided, half the prison population of Paris had been executed: some 1,200 trapped prisoners, including many women and young boys...
(1792), she fled, befriended by Manuel and Tallien. Her own account of her escape is, as usual, so florid that it provokes the question whether she was really in any danger. Directly it does not seem that she was; but she had generously strained the privileges of the embassy to protect some threatened friends, and this was a serious matter.
Salons at Coppet and Paris
Coppet
Coppet is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.-History:Coppet is first mentioned in 1294 as Copetum. In 1347 it was mentioned as Copet.-Geography:...
, and there gathered round her a considerable number of friends and fellow-refugees, the beginning of the salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
which at intervals during the next 25 years made the place so famous. However, in 1793 she made a long visit to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and established a connection with other emigrants: Talleyrand, Narbonne
Louis, comte de Narbonne-Lara
Louis Marie Jacques Amalric, comte de Narbonne-Lara was a French nobleman, soldier and diplomat.-Birth and early life:He was born at Colorno, in the Duchy of Parma, as the son of Françoise de Châlus Louis Marie Jacques Amalric, comte de Narbonne-Lara (17, 23 or 24 August 1755 – 17 November...
, Montmorency
Mathieu de Montmorency
Mathieu Jean Felicité de Montmorency, duc de Montmorency-Laval was a prominent French statesman during the French Revolution and Bourbon Restoration.-Early life:...
, Jaucourt
Arnail François, marquis de Jaucourt
Arnail François, marquis de Jaucourt, comte de l'Empire was a French aristocrat and politician.-Military career and Revolution:...
and others. There was not a little scandal about her relations with Narbonne; and this Mickleham sojourn (the details of which are known from, among other sources, the letters of Fanny Burney
Fanny Burney
Frances Burney , also known as Fanny Burney and, after her marriage, as Madame d’Arblay, was an English novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King’s Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to musical historian Dr Charles Burney and Mrs Esther Sleepe Burney...
) has never been altogether satisfactorily accounted for.
In the summer, she returned to Coppet and wrote a pamphlet on the queen's execution. The next year, her mother died, and the fall of Robespierre opened the way back to Paris. Her husband (whose mission had been in abeyance and himself in Holland for three years) was accredited to the French republic by the regent of Sweden; his wife reopened her salon and for a time was conspicuous in the motley and eccentric society of the Directory
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
. She also published several small works, the chief being the essays Sur l'influence des passions "On the influence of passions" (1796), and Sur la litérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800).
It was during these years that Mme de Staël was of chief political importance. Narbonne's place had been supplanted by Benjamin Constant
Benjamin Constant
Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born French nobleman, thinker, writer and politician.-Biography:...
, whom she first met at Coppet in 1794, and who had a very great influence over her, as in return she had over him. Both personal and political reasons threw her into opposition to Bonaparte
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
. Her own preference for a moderate republic or a constitutional monarchy was quite sincere, and, even if it had not been so, her own character and Napoleon's were too much alike in some points to admit of their getting on together. For some years, she was able to alternate between Coppet and Paris without difficulty, though not without knowing that the First Consul disliked her. In 1797 she, as above mentioned, separated formally from her husband. In 1799, he was recalled by the king of Sweden, and in 1802 he died, duly attended by her. Besides a daughter (Gustavine, 1787–1789) who died in infancy and the eldest son Auguste Louis (1790–1827), they had two other children — a son Albert (1792–1813), and a daughter Albertine
Albertine, baroness Staël von Holstein
Hedvig Gustava Albertina, Baroness de Staël-Holstein or simply Albertine , was the daughter of Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein and Madame de Staël, the granddaughter of Jacques Necker and Suzanne Curchod, wife to Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie, and mother to Albert, a French monarchist politician...
(1797–1838), who afterwards married Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie
Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie
Achille-Léonce-Victor-Charles, 3rd duc de Broglie, called Victor de Broglie was a French statesman and diplomat. He was twice President of the Council during the July Monarchy, from August 1830 to November 1830 and from March 1835 to February 1836...
. The paternity of these children is uncertain.
Conflict with Napoleon
The date of the beginning of what Mme de Staël's admirers call her duel with Napoleon is not easy to determine. Judging from the title of her book Dix annees d'exil ("Ten years of exile"), it should be put at 1804; judging from the time at which it became pretty clear that the first man in France and she who wished to be the first woman in France were not likely to get on together, it might be put several years earlier. Napoleon said about her, according to the Memoirs of Mme. de Remusat, that she "teaches people to think who never thought before, or who had forgotten how to think."It displeased Napoleon that Mme de Staël should show herself recalcitrant to his influence. But it probably pleased Mme de Staël to quite an equal degree that Napoleon should apparently put forth his power to crush her and fail. Both personages had a curious touch of theatricality. If Mme de Staël had really desired to take up her struggle against Napoleon seriously, she need only have established herself in England at the peace of Amiens. But she lingered on at Coppet. There, she was shadowed by Napoleon's spies due to her tendency to defy Napoleon's orders, firstly that she keep away from Paris, and later out of France altogether, leaving her restless and lonely in rural Switzerland and constantly yearning after her beloved Paris.
In 1802, she published the first of her noteworthy books, the novel Delphine, in which the femme incomprise was in a manner introduced to French literature, and in which she herself and not a few of her intimates appeared in transparent disguise. In the autumn of 1803, she returned to Paris. Had she not made her anxiety about exile so public, it remains unclear whether Napoleon would have exiled her; but, as she began at once appealing to all sorts of persons to protect her, he seems to have thought it better that she should not be protected. She was directed not to reside within 40 leagues
League (unit)
A league is a unit of length . It was long common in Europe and Latin America, but it is no longer an official unit in any nation. The league originally referred to the distance a person or a horse could walk in an hour...
of Paris, and after considerable delay she determined to go to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
German travels
She journeyed, in company with Constant, by MetzMetz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...
and Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
to Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
, and arrived there in December. There she stayed during the very long winter and then went to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where she made the acquaintance of August Wilhelm Schlegel, who afterwards became one of her intimates at Coppet. Thence she travelled to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, where, in April, the news of her father's dangerous illness and shortly of his death (8 April) reached her.
She returned to Coppet, and found herself its wealthy and independent mistress, but her sorrow for her father was deep and certainly sincere. She spent the summer at the chateau
Château
A château is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally—and still most frequently—in French-speaking regions...
with a brilliant company; in the autumn she journeyed to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
accompanied by Schlegel and Sismondi
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi , whose real name was Simonde, was a writer born at Geneva. He is best known for his works on French and Italian history, and his economic ideas.-Early life:...
, and there gathered the materials of her most famous work, Corinne, whose main protagonist was inspired by the Italian poet Diodata Saluzzo Roero
Diodata Saluzzo Roero
Diodata Saluzzo Roero was an Italian poet, playwright and author of prose fiction. Her work drew praise from such figures as Tommaso Valperga di Caluso, Giuseppe Parini, Ludovico di Breme, Alessandro Manzoni, Vittorio Alfieri and Ugo Foscolo, and her life served as an inspiration for the...
.
She returned in the summer of 1805, and spent nearly a year in writing Corinne; in 1806 she broke the decree of exile and lived for a time undisturbed near Paris. In 1807 Corinne, the first aesthetic romance not written in German, appeared. It is in fact, what it was described as being at the time of its appearance, a picaresque
Picaresque novel
The picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society...
tour couched in the form of a novel. The famous quote "Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent", commonly translated as "To know all is to forgive all", is found in Corinne, Book 18, chapter 5.
The publication was taken as a reminder of her existence, and the police of the empire sent her back to Coppet. She stayed there as usual for the summer, and then set out once more for Germany, visiting Mayence, Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna. She was again at Coppet in the summer of 1808 (in which year Constant broke with her, subsequently marrying Charlotte von Hardenberg) and set to work at her book, De l'Allemagne. It took her nearly the whole of the next two years, during which she did not travel much or far from her own house.
She had bought property in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and thought of moving there, but she was determined to publish De l'Allemagne in Paris. Straining under French censorship, she wrote to the emperor a provoking and perhaps undignified letter. Napoleon's mean-spirited reply to her letter was the condemnation of the whole edition of her book (ten thousand copies) as not French, and her own exile from the country.
She retired once more to Coppet, where she was not at first interfered with, and she found consolation in a young officer of Swiss origin named Albert de Rocca, twenty-three years her junior, whom she married privately in 1811. The intimacy of their relations could escape no one at Coppet, but the fact of the marriage (which seems to have been happy enough) was not certainly known till after her death. They had one son, Louis-Alphonse de Rocca (1812–1842), who would marry Marie-Louise-Antoinette de Rambuteau, daughter of Claude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau
Claude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau
Claude-Philibert Barthelot, comte de Rambuteau was a French senior official of the first half of the 19th century. He was Préfet of the former Départment of the Seine, which included Paris, from 1833 to 1848...
.
Eastern Europe
The operations of the imperial police in regard to Mme de Staël are rather obscure. She was at first left undisturbed, but by degrees the chateau itself became taboo, and her visitors found themselves punished heavily. Mathieu de MontmorencyMathieu de Montmorency
Mathieu Jean Felicité de Montmorency, duc de Montmorency-Laval was a prominent French statesman during the French Revolution and Bourbon Restoration.-Early life:...
and Mme Récamier were exiled for the crime of seeing her; and she at last began to think of doing what she ought to have done years before and withdrawing herself entirely from Napoleon's sphere. In the complete subjection of the Continent which preceded the Russian War this was not so easy as it would have been earlier, and she remained at home during the winter of 1811, writing and planning. On 23 May she left Coppet almost secretly, and journeyed through Bern, Innsbruck
Innsbruck
- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...
and Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
on her way to Vienna. There she obtained an Austrian passport to the frontier, and after some fears and trouble, receiving a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n passport in Galicia, she at last escaped from Napoleon's omnipotent eyes and far reach.
She journeyed slowly through Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
to Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, making a stay at Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, spent the winter in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, and then set out for England. Here she received a brilliant reception and was much lionized during the season of 1813. She published De l'Allemagne in the autumn, was saddened by the death of her second son Albert, who had entered the Swedish army and fell in a duel brought on by gambling, undertook her Considérations sur la révolution française, and when Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
had been restored returned to Paris.
Restoration
She was in Paris when the news of Napoleon's landing arrived and at once fled to Coppet, but a singular story, much discussed, is current of her having approved Napoleon's return. There is no direct evidence of it, but the conduct of her close ally Constant may be quoted in its support, and it is certain that she had no affection for the BourbonsHouse of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
. In October, after Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, she set out for Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, not only for the advantage of her own health but for that of her second husband, Rocca, who was dying of consumption
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
.
Her daughter married Duke Victor de Broglie on 20 February 1816, at Pisa
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
, and became the wife and mother of French statesmen of distinction. The whole family returned to Coppet in June, and Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
now frequently visited Mme de Staël there. Despite her increasing ill-health she returned to Paris for the winter of 1816-1817, and her salon was much frequented. But she had already become confined to her room if not to her bed. She died on 14 July, and Rocca survived her little more than six months.
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
included Madame Stael in his Calendar of Great Men. In a book with the same name, Comte's disciple Frederic Harrison
Frederic Harrison
Frederic Harrison was a British jurist and historian.Born at 17 Euston Square, London, he was the son of Frederick Harrison, a stockbroker and his wife Jane, daughter of Alexander Brice, a Belfast granite merchant. He was baptised at St...
wrote about Stael and her works: "In Delphine a woman, for the first time since the Revolution, reopened the romance of the heart which was in vogue in the century preceding. Comte would daily recite the sentence from Delphine, 'There is nothing real in the world but love.' [Pos. Pol. iv. 44). Our thoughts and our acts, he said, can only give us happiness through results: and results are not often in our own control. Feeling is entirely within our power; and it gives us a direct source of happiness, which nothing outside can take away." Her works, Harrison wrote, "precede the works of Scott
Scott
- Companies :* H. H. Scott, Inc., vintage tube hi-fi company* SCOTT Sports, a producer of bicycles and sportswear* The Scott Motorcycle Company* The Scott Paper Company, brand of paper towels and toilet paper owned by the Kimberly-Clark Corporation...
, Byron, Shelley
Shelley
-Meaning:In many baby name books, Shelley is listed as meaning "From the meadow on the ledge" or "clearing on a bank". It is Old English in origin. As with many other names , Shelley is today a name given almost exclusively to girls after historically being male...
, and partly of Chateaubriand, their historical importance is great in the development of modern romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
, of the romance of the heart, the delight in nature, and in the art, antiquities, and history of Europe."
Works
- Journal de Jeunesse, 1785
- Sophie
- Lettres sur les ouvrages et le caractère de J.-J. Rousseau, 1788
- Jane Gray, 1790
- Éloge de M. de Guibert
- À quels signes peut-on reconnaître quelle est l'opinion de la majorité de la nation?
- Réflexions sur le procès de la Reine, 1793
- Zulma : fragment d'un ouvrage, 1794
- Réflexions sur la paix adressées à M. Pitt et aux Français, 1795
- Réflexions sur la paix intérieure
- Recueil de morceaux détachés (comprenant : Épître au malheur ou Adèle et Édouard, Essai sur les fictions et trois nouvelles : Mirza ou lettre d'un voyageur, Adélaïde et Théodore et Histoire de Pauline), 1795
- De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations, 1796
- Des circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la République en France
- De la littérature dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1799
- DelphineDelphineDelphine is the first novel by Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, published in 1802. The book is written in epistolary form and examines the limits of women's freedom in an aristocratic society...
, 1802 - Épîtres sur Naples
- Corinne ou l'Italie, 1807
- Agar dans le désert
- Geneviève de Brabant
- La Sunamite
- Le capitaine Kernadec ou sept années en un jour (comédie en deux actes et en prose)
- La signora Fantastici
- Le mannequin (comédie)
- Sapho
- De l'Allemagne, 1810/1813
- Réflexions sur le suicide, 1813
- De l'esprit des traductions
- Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française, depuis son origine jusques et compris le 8 juillet 1815, 1818 (posthumously)
Cultural references
- Mme de Staël has been referred to on at least two occasions in the writings of Judith MartinJudith MartinJudith Martin , better known by the pen name Miss Manners, is an American journalist, author, and etiquette authority. Martin's uncle was economist and labor historian Selig Perlman.- Early life and career :...
, writing as syndicated etiquette columnist Miss Manners. - Mme de Staël is mentioned in The Passion, by Jeanette WintersonJeanette WintersonJeanette Winterson OBE is a British novelist.-Early years:Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted on 21 January 1960. She was raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by Constance and John William Winterson...
. - RepublicanRepublican Party (United States)The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
activist Victor GoldVictor Gold (journalist)Victor Gold is an American journalist, author, and Republican political consultant. His career as a political consultant spanned the period from the 1964 Presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater through George H. W...
quoted Madame de Staël when characterizing American Vice PresidentVice President of the United StatesThe Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
Dick CheneyDick CheneyRichard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
, "Men do not change, they unmask themselves." - De Stael is credited in TolstoyLeo TolstoyLev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's epilogue to War and PeaceWar and PeaceWar and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...
as a factor of the 'influential forces' which historians say led to the movement of humanity in that era. - Mme de Staël is quoted by Meadow Soprano in Season 2, Episode 7 of The SopranosThe SopranosThe Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads...
when she tells her parents, 'Madam de Staël says, in life one must choose between boredom and suffering.' - Mme de Stael is cited by Auguste Comte in his first major work, Cours de Philosophie Positive, and in his Calendar of Great Men, and in Frederic Harrison's book with the same name.
- Mme de Stael is referenced in "I Want It All" from Baby by Maltby & Shire
Further reading
Bredin, Jean-Denis. Une singulière famille: Jacques Necker, Suzanne Necker et Germaine de Staël. Paris: Fayard, 1999 (ISBN 2213602808).- Fairweather, Maria. Madame de Staël. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005 (hardcover, ISBN 0786713399); 2006 (paperback, ISBN 078671705X); London: Constable & Robinson, 2005 (hardcover, ISBN 1-84119-816-1); 2006 (paperback, ISBN 1-84529-227-8).
- Herold, J. Christopher. Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël. New York: Grove PressGrove PressGrove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its...
, 2002 (paperback, ISBN 0-8021-3837-3). - Winegarten, Renee. Germaine de Staël & Benjamin Constant: a Dual Biography. New Haven: Yale University PressYale University PressYale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
, 2008 (ISBN 9780300119251). - Winegarten, Renee. Mme. de Staël. Dover, NH : Berg, 1985 (ISBN 0907582877).
External links
Stael.org, with detailed chronology BNF.fr (Searching "stael").- "Staël, Germaine de" in The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition: 2001-05.
- The Great de Staël Richard HolmesRichard HolmesRichard Holmes may refer to:* Richard Holmes , American actor* Richard Holmes , British biographer* Richard Holmes , British soldier and military historian...
on de Staël from The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...