species of worship attended her throughout her early life; and as soon as it ceased she had the sense and the self-control to feel at once that, though still a lovely woman, she was a goddess no longer. Ah, ma chère!' she said to a lady who was paying compliments on her well-preserved charms, 'il n'y a plus d'illusion à se faire. Dès que j'ai vu que les petits Savoyards dans la rue ne se retournaient plus, j'ai compris que tout était fini.' Though anticipating a little on our narrative, we may mention here that Madame Récamier was condemned to undergo rather a ludicrous specimen of the inconveniences which attend this kind of pre-eminence on the occasion of her short visit to England in May, 1802 (not 1803, as Madame Lenormant supposes), immediately after the Peace of Amiens.* The fame of her beauty and fashion had preceded her; and so had likewise that of the veils à l'Iphigénie, and hair worn off one brow à la Récamier,' to which the stamp of her genius had given currency. Some newspaper scribe thought proper to inform the public that 'Madame Récamier intended to walk in Kensington Gardens next Sunday. Accordingly when she appeared there with a companion, both in white, with white veils and violet-coloured parasols,' the pair were followed and hustled by a mob of curious people, who even carried their rudeness so far as to endeavour to lift their veils. The poor ladies were terribly frightened, and regained their carriage with difficulty. A newspaper of the day, extenuating the outrage, says that 'great part of the crowd consisted of Italian corset-makers, men-milliners, and shoemakers, who were endeavoring each to catch the fashion of her shoe and the quality of her veil.' Such is the tale as told by contemporaries. Those who wish to see it poetically embellished will find it in Châteaubriand's Memoirs.' To attempt a more particular inventory of these soul-subduing charms is a delicate task; nor, to say the truth, do either the written materials before us, or such portraits as we have seen, materially help the imagination. We only know that she was blonde, beautifully shaped, though with rather thin arms; her complexion exquisite; les épaules d'une blancheur inconcevable; her step that of a goddess on the clouds; that her features, * On this occasion Châteaubriand says that she was recommended to English society by introductions from one of her adorers, the veteran Duc de Guiche, who had been ambassador in England thirty years before. She made the friendship, amongst others, of Georgiana, Duchess of Devon shire. But she had a much closer intimacy, in later life, with the Duchess Elizabeth. though ravishing, were not strictly classical; that she had 'le nez bien Français,' otherwise termed, we believe, the nez à la Roxelane, from that Gallic fair one whose irregular beauties captivated the fiercest of Sultans. The only observer, as far as we have noticed, whose appreciation of her beauty does not quite come up to the mark, is M. Guizot, who knew her in her best days; and he says that her charm, in his eyes, was always that of expression rather than of feature. Not unnaturally, she seems to have been the despair of artists. David left her portrait unfinished in his discontent; Gérard elaborated his correctly, but tamely. Canova, whose admiration for her was excessive, attempted her bust in marble; but she was dissatisfied with the result, and could not help letting him know it. The prince of sculptors, vexed in his turn, gave up the task. I have turned your bust into a Beatrice,' he afterwards told her; a singular coincidence, certainly, when it is remembered that she was destined to become the Beatrice, the consoling and directing angel, of one who, though assuredly no Dante, had all the temperament of genius and some of its greatness-her dearest friend Châteaubriand. At sixteen she married a man of forty-two, Jacques Rose Récamier, a Lyonnais by birth, but established as a flourishing banker at Paris: a cousin of Brillat-Savarin, the famous gastronomer, and connected more or less with the good bourgeois society of the time. And here commences the enigma of her life. It can only be given in her niece and biographer's own words: 'Le lien ne fut jamais qu'apparent. Madame Récamier ne reçut de son mari que son nom. Ceci peut étonner, mais je ne suis pas chargé d'expliquer le fait : je me borne à l'attester. . . . M. Récamier n'eût jamais que des rapports paternels avec sa femme.' With singular adroitness, however, in the interest of her heroine, she lets drop a few words elsewhere (vol. i. p. 141) to the effect that the cause of this distance was repugnance on her part, and not insensibility on his. On such mysteries nothing more can be said. But what kind of a man was he with whom the beautiful Juliette had thus united her destinies? Nothing can be more evidently, we are almost forced to add intentionally, imperfect, than Madame Lenormant's partial revelations on this subject. That he behaved with tenderness and confidence towards his nominal wife is plain enough; and there are passages in which he is represented as a man of sense and honour, watching over his partner through her perilous career with paternal solicitude, giving her excellent advice, and rescuing her in one or two very questionable predicaments. Else- dent myth of the Revolution. When her where he appears as a selfish, narrow-minded, turn of supremacy arrived, her correct taste mean-spirited personage, wholly unworthy in dress led her to mitigate the extravagance to be named in connexion with his distin- of her predecessors; and, if the annals of guished consort; 'Une seule qualité leur that abstruse science speak true, she was the était commune, c'était la bonté.' It is evi- author of the first faint efforts at developdent there is more behind to which we are ment from the close-fitting model which not admitted, and we certainly have no right people called Grecian, towards that amplitude to the whole truth; but why frame for us an which now threatens to usurp all space. inconsistent romance instead of it? When we add that her own dress was almost invariably white-that she loved some contrasts of colour (Châteaubriand particularly observes that on his first introduction he found her 'in a white dress, seated in the middle of a sofa of blue silk')-that she ge The only characteristic trait of the bonhomme Récamier which we find recorded in these pages is that, during the period of Terror, he always made a point of witnessing the executions. It was a good preparation, he said, before one's own turn came. His, how-nerally wore pearls-never, in the height of ever, did not come at all, thanks, chiefly, to the protection of Barrère. He emerged from the Revolution with unimpaired fortune, which he much increased during the Directory; and he and his wife together maintained that magnificent equipage and establishment which for some years almost vied with her beauty in astonishing mankind. Afterwards, and on his loss of fortune, they seem to have lived more apart; but always with complete decorum, without scandal or scenes, and in such a manner as to merit the highest approval of the fashionable world. This perfect harmony,' as Madame Lenormant is pleased to call it, subsisted until his death, at a very advanced age, in 1830, when her friends wrote her letters full of condoling conventionalities, as if Baucis had lost her Philemon. her fortune, diamonds-that she delighted and excelled in music, the dance, and the masquerade, while masquerades were still reputable-that her special success was in the bewitching evolutions of the shawl dance' (being the original, in this respect, of Madame de Staël's Corinne)-we have called up all we can of that vision of grace and beauty which captivated France in the days. of our grandfathers, and is now departed to the limbo of fair women,' along with Helen and Cleopatra, and Lilith, Adam's first wife,' and the other enchantresses of old. It was not until the year 1799 that Madame Récamier began to receive' in form. Her beautiful residence at No. 17, Rue du Mont Blanc, and her lodge or pavillon' at Clichy, soon became known as the favourite resorts of Republican rank and fashion. The taste and luxury displayed in the furniture of these apartments were the common topics of exaggerated admiration. The embellishments were in the very best style of that second It has been rather common among careless writers to group Madame Récamier with Mesdames Tallien, Beauharnais, Hamelin, and the other heroines of the Directory. But this is a mistake. She was at that time aRenaissance,' or rather second attempt to mere married child, too young to have attained the aplomb required in a Parisian leader of fashion. In those bacchanalian times, when all France, rescued from the jaws of the Convention, burst out into a mania for dances, suppers, and theatricals when the rival queens of the mode, seeking to combine republicanism with elegance, rushed into the extreme of classical taste, and adopted the drapery of Grecian Hetairai under the guidance of Citizen Gail—when La Tallien, secouant sa tunique, the lovely Juliet was fortunate enough to be still in comparative seclusion. And although there certainly is a tradition that she appeared, in 1796, in the boxes of the fashionable little theatre of the Rue Chantereine, costumed as Laïs, in order to eclipse Madame Tallien as Aspasia, we dismiss it as an impu reproduce classical types, which distinguished the days of the Directory. Her couch, says a contemporary describer, is 'placed in a Pompeii, bounded on the left by a marble statue, on the right by a bronze candelabrum.' Here she reigned supreme, not merely as the Queen of Fashion, but as the object of a personal adoration from the leading men of her time which is perhaps without example. Exnobles, financiers, ministers, generals of the young Republic, all were together at her feet -all received with the same sweet smiles of encouragement-all, we must believe the uniform testimony before us, rejected with equal impartiality. Nous en étions tous amoureux,' said Junot to his wife, Madame d'Abrantés. The armies of Italy and of Sambre-et-Meuse, hostile in all beside, fraternized in this common idolatry. Lucien Bonaparte led the van with his ridiculous letters of Romeo to Juliet, laughed at by Châteaubriand, and reproduced in these Memoirs. Moreau (whose wife was The a cousin and close personal friend of Madame | Fœdora,' a coquette cold as ice, absorbed in Récamier) only paid her un hommage re- one sole idolatry, the culture of self, and in spectueux. The devotion of Bernadotte (to one engrossing employment-that of excitjudge by his letters) had something of the ing in all who approached her a passion to laborious stiffness of a sous-officier in love; which she was by nature inaccessible? but he displayed it in a very effective man- first supposition will always find some scepner, by extricating her father, M. Bernard, tics; the second is negatived by the fact that with much difficulty, from a political scrape. esteem and respect were produced by her inMasséna wore her white favour on his arm fluence as surely as love, and that her rejectthroughout the siege of Genoa. Fouché, ed adorers became her most constant friends. while conveying to her well-pleased ear the Higher testimony to her social excellence can intelligence that 'le premier consul vous hardly be given; and yet, after all, with such trouve charmante,' seems not to have neg- materials for happiness, her career seems lected the occasion of saying a few tender scarcely to have been a happy one. It was things on behalf of this repulsive self. Nor unnatural, and therefore joyless. Possessing were her charms less fatal to visitors than to through life prosperity and ease, or at all Parisian natives. Almost every celebrity' events but lightly touched by poverty; an which travelled to Paris during the pacific adored beauty in her youth, the centre of a period of the Consulate fell in love with Ma- circle of devoted friends in after years, with dame Récamier, either by way of fashion or no serious care or sorrow to ruffle her existin earnest. The Prince of Wurtemburg must ence at any time, she endured life, we are have proceeded some way, since she seems to told, rather than enjoyed it. Le phénix, have made him a present of a ring at a oiseau merveilleux mais solitaire, s'ennuyait masked ball, a circumstance over which the beaucoup, dit-on,' says her romantic squire M. niece rather slides.' The Prince of Meck- Ballanche. And 'ennui' was evidently her lenburg-Strelitz nearly got her into a scrape insatiable enemy in the background. Often, with another very respectful and romantic in her brilliant isolation, did she sigh for the admirer, Adrian de Montmorency, by leaving ordinary lot of women-a commonplace hushis hat on a table where no such object was band, and troublesome children. expected. With Metternich, a great aspirant after conquests of this order, she had what her niece terms an intrigue de bal masqué,' which lasted a whole winter, until the envoy himself became afraid of the consequences of too close attention to beauty in opposition. The fiancée du Roi de Garbe herself scarcely passed through so many adventures in her less Platonic career as did Madame Récamier in the conduct of her successive and contemporaneous flirtations. And yet once more to repeat the singular fact-the world, with all its jealousies and envies, and delight in abasing success and contaminating excellence, passed her by as unassailable. The first of these was esteemed the prince She remains, as we have said, a riddle, unex- of fashion in his day-not in the sense of a plained by all the pretty fancies and insipid Brummel or a D'Orsay, but that of the percompliments of her biographers. Was she fect Grand Seigneur: the man who gave, in reality, as Châteaubriand describes her, above all others, the leading tone in converthe possessor of that almost unique tempera-sation and social demeanour. He had in ment which could enable her to rush into the world in mere gaiety of heart, enjoy its homage and disregard its temptations, attract all and yield to none, encounter every seduction in mere strength of celestial purity, and remain calm in the very crowd and vortex of a dizzy world—the nymph Arethusa, as she has been called, carrying the unmingled freshness of her stream through the waters of the Ionian sea? Or was she, after all, merely one of that order of women (rare, it is to be hoped) of whom Balzac somewhat coarsely drew the type in his Countess We have said that Madame Récamier's sphere of conquest, at this era of the Consulate, extended not only over the successful men of the day, but also over the more highly-educated class of returned 'emigrés' with whom some family circumstances brought her into contact. The most distinguished among her captives of this order, and those who exercised the greatest influence on her after life until Châteaubriand came on the scene, were the two cousins-great men de par le monde-Adrian, Prince de Laval, and the Jacobin-Saint-Duke, Mathieu de Montmorency. perfection,' says one of his biographers, 'cette petite science, toute de mollessc, de recherche délicate, de goût assuré, de tact, qui, sans effort, apprenait à chacun son rang, à chaque mot sa valeur, à chaque politesse le tems de sa durée: cette vraie science arcanique,' &c. &c. That science, in short, which teaches how to atone for the utter absence of truth, frankness, and nature, by the most plausible and graceful substitutes. Such was the character which contemporaries attached to Duke Adrian's manner and conversation. It is impossible to judge of these traditions by the ness; against which criticism and ridicule glance powerlessly aside, because it appeals to sensibilities on which these have no hold. And it must be added, that his power over his fair disciple seems to have been used with the best of intentions. We suspect that it was through his help that her refined nature threw off so completely the slight touch of vulgarity which it could hardly fail to contract from her youthful familiarity with the parvenu style of Napoleon's family and Court. He was shocked, moreover, at her love of dissi mere test of writing, but we should be tempted to say that the letters of the celebrated Duke, in this collection, would rank him among the stiffest and dullest of Madame Récamier's correspondents. One passage only strikes us, as evincing that excessively affected tone of fashionable sentiment which distinguished the côterie, and from which Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier herself were by no means exempt: it is when he describes his aunt, the Viscountess de Laval, an aged lady, plunged in affliction at the loss of an only son, as toujours attra-pation, and was always trying to convert her yante, toujours aimable, et qui plaît avec toute l'insouciance du désespoir !" (vol. ii. p. 204.) Mathieu de Montmorency was a much more remarkable personage; through life a weak but generous enthusiast, a foolish man in the estimation both of the wise and of the multitude, but of that particular class of folly which exercises a singularly captivating and subjugating influence over a few sympathetic minds. Nous commandons aux hommes,' says Châteaubriand, 'plutôt par nos défauts que par nos qualités;' and it was this kind of paradoxical influence which the Duc Mathieu exercised in his côterie, and partially in the world at large. It has been the fashion, in soft and plausible biographies, to represent him as one of the 'youthful and ardent spirits seduced by the dreams of 1789,' who played afterwards such a variety of parts in the world. But he was a good deal more than this. He was an active democrat down to 1792, when he was past thirty. After one of his popular displays in the Assembly, the caustic Rivarol addressed him by his family name, Monsieur Mathieu Bouchard.' But,' said the offended patriot, 'you know I cannot help being descended from Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France; from Anne de Montmorency, who married the widow of Louis-le-Gros,' &c. Eh, mon cher Mathieu,' exclaimed the wit, 'pourquoi êtesvous donc tant descendu?' In 1792 he left the country, which had got too hot to hold even so ardent a disciple of progress as himself. When in emigration he turned on a sudden devout, lived the life of a zealot, and ultimately died in the odour of sanctity. When he returned to Paris in 1799, he was suffering under religious remorse for his Jacobin errors, and was, therefore, all the better subject for Madame Récamier's unrivalled powers of consolation. He rendered himself a willing captive; but, as we have said, the slave became in turn, to a considerable extent, a master. His letters-tiresome though they be from their unctuous monotony of style, and perpetual repetitions of 'mon aimable amie-savour abundantly of that engaging mysticism which is so strong in its very feeble a task in which his success was indifferent, until declining means and advancing years made her an easier subject for such endeavours at persuasion. Madame Récamier had always had a happy, though not very overpowering, turn towards religion. She never lost her early impressions of soft conventual devotion. Under the guidance of Duke Mathieu she attained to a certain unction of fashionable piety, insomuch that her niece-with what we must call a slight touch of profaneness-calls her in one passage a saint. We are gravely informed how, on one occasion, she and her friends rescued a poor English orphan girl from an itinerant showman, and made a nun of her; how, at another time, she and that most coquettish of ecclesiastics the Abbé de Rohan,* with much ado, converted from Protestantism a sick femme de chambre (vol. ii. p. 58). But as, in all seriousness, we can reconcile with neither Catholic nor Protestant views of religion a life of frivolity, however charming, spent in the exercise of no single duty except those self-imposed by sentimental attachments, we must pass over this subject of piety without further remarkce n'est pas par là qu'elle brille, in our opinion. If the Duke Mathieu tried hard to make her a dévotee, she in return made him in later years an Academician at least his most undeserved election to one of the forty armchairs was mainly attributed, at this time, to the influence of la Circé de l'Abbaye-auxBois.' 'We owe thanks to Madame Récamier' (says M. Rondelet) 'for having seen the Académie Française return so appropriately to that ancient tradition of good society, in which a great name passed as a serious reason for competition.' It was in 1806 that the first great change *'Le Duc de Rohan était fort joli. Il roucoulait la romance, lavait de petites aquarelles, et se distinguait par une étude coquette de toilette. Quand il fut abbé, sa précise chevelure, éprouvée au fer, avait une élégance de martyr. Il préchait à la brune, dans des oratoires sombres, devant des dévotes, ayant soin, à l'aide de deux ou trois boucomme un tableau son visage pâle.'-Châteaugies artistement placeés, d'éclairer en demi-teintes briand, Mémoires. voured to secure her as one of his new 'dames du palais,'-an offer which she declined with dignity. Strange to say, this negotiation assumes, in her own pages and those of her admirers, the character of a dishonourable proposal, made through Fouché-of all peo occurred in the life and habits of Madame Récamier, from the bankruptcy of her husband. Never was decline of fortune better supported, or, it may perhaps be added, less keenly felt for her tastes were really simple, and her fancies unexacting; and her friends rallied round her with an honourable devo-ple in the world, ' proper person to intrust tion such as soon made admission to the little apartment on the rez de chaussée of her magnificent hotel, to which she now retired, a greater favour than the entrée of her brilliant receptions had been. But she had now become, in addition, a personage of some political importance; a leader of social opposition; and, with the strange blindness of partisanship, her admirers even now make it a charge of meanness against the first Napoleon that he did not make the Bank of France come forward to retrieve M. Récamier's fortune, which was spent under his wife's direction, in comforting and feeding the bitterest enemies of the dynasty. We cannot, indeed, at all partake in the unlimited admiration which her biographers lavish on the political part of their heroine's career. No doubt she was actuated by the common sentiments of a high-minded woman -abhorrence of tyranny, and a generous partiality for the weaker side. But it must be remembered, on the other hand, that the opposition of the salons' has always been the popular line in France; that few compliments are so flattering to a reigning beauty as those which are lavished on her courage and her influence on matters beyond her ordinary sphere; that sly agitators know full well how admirably the delicate fingers of woman are adapted by nature for the purpose of pulling political chesnuts out of the fire. Be this as it may, it had been Madame Récamier's fate all along to be in permanent hostility to the new power. Her father, M. Bernard, when employed in the post-office under the Directory, had been in danger of losing both his place and his head for intrigues with the Emigrant party. She was connected, through her mother, with Madame Moreau; and had shown the warmest interest and partisanship during the General's trial. 'It was at her house, and with her,' says her panegyrist, M. Rondelet, honestly enough,' that M. de Montmorency endeavoured to combine in a struggle against the First Consul the ambition of Bernadotte and the jealousy of Moreau.' Yet the First Consul, whether from policy or whatever motive, refrained from molesting both her intimate circle and herself. We have seen how well his first compliment to her was received. When he assumed the Imperial crown, he fancied that it would be a politic thing to form an alliance with so powerful a leader of opposition, and endea a love-tale to'-and through the Emperor's own sister, Caroline Murat. The whole theory seems to rest on the merest fancy. Madame Récamier was accustomed to see the world at her feet, and it became her habit, as these memoirs sufficiently show, to behold a lover in every one who approached her, and interpret every act of homage as an act of courtship. She says herself that she only saw Napoleon twice in her life, and then in large companies. Are we to suppose that his curiosity about the lady to whom he meant to make a tender of his affections was so languid? or had he become such a Turk since his Egyptian expedition as to believe that the finest woman in France was to be won as soon as he dropped the handkerchief? Napoleon was neither a fool nor a coxcomb, and he knew France well, and must have been thoroughly aware that, in the social estimation of that country, rude presumption towards a lady is a fault utterly irredeemable except by success. And the supposition, were it true, would reflect very little credit on the delicacy of the heroine herself, since Caroline Murat-the go-between, according to the story, in this disgraceful transaction-always remained the object of one of her most sentimental friendships. But we dismiss it with little hesitation, certainly from no tenderness to the Imperial memory, but as a distorted notion, originating in feminine vanity and political spite. From that refusal, however, peaceful relations between the two potentates came speedily to an end. Madame Récamier first became an object of the attentions of the Imperial police, and finally, from 1808 to the Restoration, spent most of her time, like her friend Madame de Staël, in compulsory exile either from Paris or from France. Every one knows the eloquent vituperations poured by the latter lady on her persecutor; and it was often said that his most violent acts of tyranny had done Napoleon less disservice than the unmanly severity exercised towards these distinguished personages. But what, in truth, is to be done in troublesome times with ladies who take active part against the powers that be? Their treatment sometimes constitutes the great embarrassment, and sometimes the ludicrous side, of despotism. When left alone, they glory in carrying opposition beyond the verge of the endurable. When touched, they have the art |