Part 10

The plot develops; soon it becomes impossible any longer to maintain the unnatural union, to endure the unnatural misery. Henri de Lebensei writes the letter advising a divorce, which brought ill-fortune to the book, and which fell like a firebrand into the clerical camp. He writes to Délphine: "The man you love is worthy of you, madame, but neither his nor your feeling is of any avail to alter the situation in which an unhappy destiny has placed you. One thing alone can restore your reputation and procure your happiness. Collect all your strength to hear me. Léonce is not irrevocably bound to Mathilde; he can still become your husband; in a month from now divorce will be legalised by the Legislative Assembly." We must remember that the book appeared just at the time of the reinstitution of Catholic marriage in France.

Here are more extracts from his letter: "You, who reprobate divorce, believe your view to be the more moral. If it were so, it ought to be the view taken by all sincere thinkers; for the first aim of thinking man is to determine his duties to their full extent. But let us go into the matter together; let us inquire whether the principles which induce me to approve of divorce do not harmonise with the nature of man and with the beneficent intentions which we ought to attribute to the Divinity. The indissolubility of unhappy marriages makes life one long succession of hopeless miseries. Some men say, indeed, that it is only necessary to repress youthful inclinations, but they forget that the repressed inclinations of youth become the lasting griefs of age. I do not deny all the disadvantages connected with divorce, or rather, the imperfections of human nature which make divorce necessary; but in a civilised society which urges nothing against marriages of convenience, or against marriages at an age when it is impossible to foretell the future, a society whose law can neither punish the parents who misuse their authority, nor the husband or wife who behaves badly--in such a society the law which prohibits divorce is only harsh towards the victims whose fetters it takes upon itself to rivet more firmly, without in the least affecting the circumstances which make these fetters easy or terrible to bear. It seems to say: 'I cannot ensure your happiness, but I can at least vouch for the continuance of your unhappiness'."

In such involved and eloquent periods is couched what has been called Mme. de Staël's attack upon marriage. In reality it is, as we see, only an attack upon the binding, oppressing power with which society (itself first moulded into shape by the Church in the days when the Church was the only spiritual power) has invested the first attachment of youth--in Catholic countries by legislation, in Protestant by means of public opinion, which metes out as stern justice as any marriage laws. Her argument is based on the assumption that marriage can only be considered that which it is maintained to be, namely an ideally moral relation, when the two beings, who at a given moment of their lives promise to live together and be faithful to one another for the rest of their days, really know and love one another, and she points out how exceedingly difficult it is for any human being thoroughly to know himself and another human being. If marriage requires this mutual knowledge as its foundation, then a union in which it is lacking is not marriage. What kind of life can be based upon a sudden fancy, or upon a lie, or upon a Yes wrung from a woman by fear? In every case in which marriage does not rest upon a better foundation, its sanctity is imaginary, is derived from a confusion of the real relation with the ideal.

Delphine does not allow herself to be persuaded. Faithful to the motto of the book, that a woman must bow to public opinion, she even determines to place another obstacle between herself and Léonce. By the time his wife dies, Delphine has taken the veil. Once more, though in another form, we have strong opposition to a vow generally regarded as sacred. Again it is Henri who is spokesman, but this time he appeals to Léonce: "Are you able to listen to bold, salutary advice, the following of which would save you from an abyss of misery? Are you capable of taking a step which would offend what you have been accustomed all your life to defer to, public opinion and established custom, but which would be consonant with morality, reason, and humanity? I was born a Protestant, and have, I grant, not been brought up in awe of those insane and barbarous institutions of society which demand of so many innocent beings the sacrifice of all natural inclinations; but ought you to have less confidence in my judgment because it is uninfluenced by prejudice? A proud and high-minded man should only obey the dictates of universal morality. Of what signification are those duties which are merely the outcome of accidental circumstances, and depend upon the caprices of law or the will of a priest? duties that subject a man's conscience to the judgment of other men, of men, too, who have long bent their necks under the yoke of the prejudices and self-interest of their order? The laws of France will release Delphine from the vows unhappy circumstances have forced from her. Come and live with her upon our native soil! What is it that keeps you apart? A vow she has made to God? Believe me, the Supreme Being knows our nature too well ever to accept irrevocable vows from us. Possibly something in your heart rebels against profiting by laws which are the outcome of a Revolution to which you are antagonistic? My friend, this Revolution, which has unfortunately been soiled by so many violent deeds, will be extolled by posterity because of the freedom it has bestowed upon France. If it is followed only by fresh forms of slavery, this period of slavery will be the most ignominious period in the history of the world; but if freedom is its result, then happiness, honour, virtue, all that is noble in humanity, is so inseparably bound up with freedom, that centuries to come will be lenient in their judgment of the events which prepared the way for the age of freedom."

Besides attacking to this extent certain definite social institutions, the book makes protest throughout against the great mass of received opinions, the prejudices with which most men are clad as it were in a coat of triple mail, the beliefs which must not even be approached, because the very ground around them is holy within a circumference of so and so many square miles. It cannot be too plainly asserted that, in this particular, _Delphine_ is a more vigorous, remarkable work than most of the other productions of the Emigrant Literature. For a nation has a literature in order that its horizon may be widened and its theories of life confronted with life. In his early youth society offers the individual an extraordinary, patched-together suit of prejudices which it expects him to wear. "Am I really obliged," asks the man, "to wear this tattered cloak? Can I not dispense with these old rags? Is it absolutely necessary for me either to blacken my face or hide it under this sheep's mask? Am I compelled to swear that Polichinelle has no hump, to believe that Pierrot is an eminently honourable, and Harlequin a particularly serious man? May I not look up into any of their faces, or write on any hand, 'I know you, fair mask!'? Is there no help?" There is no help, unless you are prepared to be beaten by Polichinelle, kicked by Pierrot, and whacked by Harlequin. But literature is, or should be, the territory where officialism ceases, established customs are disregarded, masks are torn off, and that terrible thing, the truth, is told.

_Delphine_ met with much disapprobation. The most famous critic of the day wrote: "One cannot conceive more dangerous and immoral doctrines than those which are disseminated by this book. The authoress would seem to have forgotten the ideas with which she, as Necker's daughter, was brought up. Regardless of the Protestant faith of her family, she expresses her contempt for revealed religion; and in this pernicious book, which, it must be confessed, is written with no small ability, she presents us with a long vindication of divorce. Delphine speaks of love like a Bacchante, of God like a Quakeress, of death like a grenadier, and of morality like a sophist." High-sounding words these, but just the high-sounding words which the future must always listen to from the toothless past, whose heavy artillery is charged to the muzzle with the wet powder of orthodox belief and the paper balls of narrow-mindedness.

Whereas Mme. de Staël's contemporaries lavishly praised the style of the book and the literary ability of its authoress, in order to be the better able to reprobate her views of life and her aims, the modern critic has little to say for the loose and diffuse style which the novel has in common with almost all others written in the form of letters; but, as regards the ideas of the book, they hold good to-day; they have actually not yet penetrated into all the countries of Europe, although the present century has striven to realise them ever more and more fully.

The breach between society and the individual depicted in _Delphine_ is entirely in the spirit of the Emigrant Literature. The same bold revolt followed by the same despair in view of the uselessness of the struggle, is to be found throughout the whole group of writings. In the present case the revolt is a spirited, desperate attempt to hold fast one of the gains of the Revolution at the moment when it is being wrested away by the reaction. The despair is due to the sorrowful feeling that no remonstrance will avail, that the retrograde movement must run its course, must exceed all reasonable limits, before a better condition of things can be looked for. Was a woman's novel likely to prevail against an autocrat's compact with a Pope!

The "war with society" which she depicts is less a conflict with the state or the law than with the jumble of conventions and beliefs, old and new, artificial and natural, reasonable and unreasonable, hurtful and beneficial, which, fused together into a cohesive and apparently homogeneous mass, constitute the stuff whereof public opinion is made. Just as the so-called sound common sense, which is always ready to set itself in opposition to any new philosophy, is at any given time to a great extent simply the congealed remains of a philosophy of earlier date, so the rules of society and the verdicts pronounced by society in accordance with these rules, verdicts always unfavourable in the case of new ideas, are to a great extent founded upon ideas which in their day had a hard struggle to assert themselves in face of the opposition of the then prevailing public opinion. That which was once an original, living idea, stiffens in time into the corpse of an idea. Social laws are universal laws, the same for all, and, like everything that is universal, they in numberless cases victimise. No matter how singular the individual may be, he is treated like every one else. The genius is in much the position of the clever head-boy in a stupid class; he has to listen to the same old lessons over and over again because of the dunces who have not learned them and yet must learn them. The verdict of society is an irresponsible verdict; while the judgments of the individual, as such, must always to a certain extent be a natural product, those of society are in most cases a manufactured article, provided wholesale by those whose business it is to concoct public opinion; and no responsibility is felt by the individual in giving his adherence to them. The natural course would be for the individual to form his own views and principles, make his own rules of conduct, and, according to his powers, search for the truth with his own brains; but instead of this, in modern society the individual finds a ready-made religion, a different one in each country, the religion of his parents, with which he is inoculated long before he is capable of religious thought or feeling. The result is that his religion-producing powers are nipped in the bud, or if they are not, then woe be to him! His essays are a gauntlet flung in the face of society. And in the same way all originality of moral feeling is, in the majority of men, crushed or checked by the ready-made moral code of society and ready-made public opinion. The verdicts of society, which are the outcome of all the pious and moral doctrines accepted by it on trust, are necessarily untrustworthy, often extremely narrow-minded, not infrequently cruel.

It was Mme. de Staël's lot to be brought face to face with more prejudices than the generality of authors are. She was a Protestant in a Catholic country, and in sympathy with Catholics although brought up in a Protestant family. In France she was the daughter of a Swiss citizen, and in Switzerland she felt herself a Parisian. As a woman of intellect and strong passions, she was predestined to collision with public opinion, as the authoress, the woman of genius, to war, offensive and defensive, with a social order which relegates woman to the sphere of private life. But that she saw through the prejudices by which she was surrounded, more clearly than did any other contemporary writer, was principally due to the fact that, as a political refugee, she was obliged to travel in one foreign country after another; this gave her ever-active, inquiring mind the opportunity of comparing the spirit and the ideals of one people with those of another.

[1] Friedrich Kapp: "Justus Erich Bollmann."

[2] _De la Littérature_, p. 257. Paris, 1820.

[3] _Dix Années d'Exil_, 1820, p. 84.

IX

EXILE

When the edict banishing Mme. de Staël from Paris was made known to her, she inquired through Joseph Bonaparte, who was among the number of her friends, whether she would be permitted to travel in Germany or would be brought back from there. After some delay a passport was sent her, and she set out for Weimar. There she made the acquaintance of the ducal family, had long conversations with Schiller on the reciprocal relations of French and German literature, and pestered Goethe with questions upon every subject in heaven and earth. The eager discussion of problematical questions was, he says, her special passion. But what surprised both Goethe and the other German celebrities most was, that she not only wished to make their acquaintance, but to influence affairs generally; she always talked as if the moment for action had come, and they must all be up and doing. She went on from Weimar to Berlin, made acquaintance with Prince Louis Ferdinand, was taken up by the Fichte, Jacobi, and Henriette Herz circles, and carried off A. W. Schlegel as tutor to her children.

The following year she travelled in Italy, studied its ancient monuments, its art, the southern manners and customs of its people, and absorbed impressions of Italian nature at every pore. Then she returned to Coppet and wrote _Corinne, ou l'Italie_.

Her longing for France, however, gave her no peace. She had been forbidden to come within forty leagues of Paris, but she took up her abode just outside that limit, first at Auxerre, then at Rouen. (The prefect of this latter town was suspended for having shown her some courteous attention.) She eventually received permission to superintend the publishing of _Corinne_ from a country house only twelve leagues from Paris. But the book was barely published before a new edict banished her from France altogether. _Corinne_ was a grand success, and Napoleon could not endure any success in which he had no share. Mme. de Staël returned to Coppet, and, like the Emperor, continued to extend her realm. It grew as her emotional nature expanded, her intellectual grasp widened, and the number of her friendships increased. She held a regular court at Coppet. Remarkable men from all parts of Europe gathered round her there. In her house were to be met statesmen like Constant--whom in her infatuation she calls the cleverest man in the world--historians like Sismondi, poets like Zacharias Werner and Oehlenschläger, German princes, Polish princes and princesses, the flower of the aristocracy of birth and of intellect. Since her visit to Germany she had steadily continued to study the German language and literature, but she found that it would be necessary for her to make another sojourn in that country if she desired to present to her countrymen a complete picture of the new world which had revealed itself to her. She had been in North Germany, now she spent a year in Vienna, and upon her return to Switzerland set to work upon her great three-volume book, _De l'Allemagne_. It was completed in 1810. The next thing was to get it published in Paris.

A law had been passed which forbade the publication of any book until it had been approved of by the Censors; on this followed another regulation, specially aimed at Mme. de Staël, which gave the Chief of the Police authority to suppress a book if he saw fit, even though it had been published with the approval of the Censors. This was a law which did away with all law. Having again received permission to take up her abode at a distance of forty leagues from Paris to superintend the publication of her book, Mme. de Staël went to Blois, lived first at the château of Chaumont-sur-Loire, then at Fossé, and afterwards at the country-houses of friends in the neighbourhood; she fluttered round her beloved Paris at the required distance, as a moth flutters round a candle. Once she even ventured into the capital. Meanwhile the Censors examined her book, corrected, deleted, and gave the mangled remains their _imprimatur_. Ten thousand copies were printed. But on the day on which they were to be issued, the Chief of the Police sent his gendarmes into the publisher's shop, after placing a sentinel at every exit, and, by order of the Government, performed the heroic feat of hacking the ten thousand copies to pieces. The mass was kneaded into a dough, and the publisher received twenty louis d'or in compensation. Mme. de Staël was at the same time ordered to deliver up her manuscript (representing the labours and hopes of six years) and to leave France in the course of twenty-four hours. In the letter which she received from the Chief of the Police on this occasion occur the following sentences: "You are not to seek the reason of the command I have communicated to you in your omission of all reference to the Emperor in your last work; that would be a mistake; no place could be found for him in it that would be worthy of him: your banishment is the natural consequence of the course you have persistently pursued for some years past. It appears to me that the air of this country does not suit you; as for us, we are, fortunately, not yet reduced to seeking models amongst the people you so much admire. Your last work is not French."

That was what doomed her--it was _not French_. And to think that it was the epoch-making book, _De l'Allemagne_, epoch-making in French literature, because, not accidentally but on principle, it broke with all antiquated literary traditions and indicated new sources of life--to think that it was this book which the spiritual policeman of the nation presumed to condemn as _not French_! And the cruelly ironical attempt to assume a tone of gallantry! "It appears to me that the air of this country does not suit you "--therefore be kind enough to betake yourself elsewhere! We seem to hear the intoxicated vanity of France itself speak: "Because you have ventured to love liberty even now, when the rest of us are happy under tyranny; because, whilst we have been sunning ourselves in the beams of Napoleon's glory, you have dared to depict in Corinne the sovereign independence of genius, and, yourself banished from Paris, have crowned your ideal at the Capitol; because, at the moment when the eagles of France are shining resplendent with the glory of a thousand victories, and foreign nations have become our lieges, you, a weak woman, have had the audacity to represent to us our sources of spiritual life as almost dried up, and to point us to the despised Germany as a land whose poetry far outshines our own, to hated England, perfidious Albion, as a country whose love of liberty is more persistent and genuine than ours, and to dying Italy, the subjugated province of France, as a country whose simple manners and customs and vast superiority in art are worthy of imitation--because of all these things, you shall be stigmatised as unpatriotic, the cockade of your country shall be torn from your brow, your books shall be destroyed, even your manuscripts shall be torn into fragments, and you yourself, with a couple of spies at your heels, shall be chased like a wild animal across the frontier of France before twenty-four hours have passed."

The Prefect of the department was sent to demand the manuscript of the book; Mme. de Staël succeeded in saving it by giving him a rough copy. But anxiety about her book was for the moment the least of her anxieties. She had hoped to cross to England, but, expressly to prevent this, the Chief of the Police had added a postscript to his letter, forbidding her to embark at any northern port. She was half inclined to sail in a French ship bound for America, on the chance of the ship being captured by the English, but abandoned this plan as too adventurous. Despondent and sorrowful, she retired once more to Coppet.