Part 2 of 2
Eastern EuropeDe Staël in 1812 by Vladimir BorovikovskyAugust Wilhelm von SchlegeThe operations of the French imperial police in regard to Mme de Staël are rather obscure. She was at first left undisturbed, but by degrees the chateau itself became a source of suspicion, and her visitors found themselves heavily punished. François-Emmanuel Guignard, De Montmorency and Mme Récamier were exiled for the crime of visiting her. She remained at home during the winter of 1811, planning to escape to England or Sweden with the manuscript. On 23 May 1812 she left Coppet almost secretly, and journeyed through Bern, Innsbruck and Salzburg on her way to Vienna, where she met with Metternich. There she obtained an Austrian passport up to the frontier, and after some trepidation and trouble, received a Russian passport in Brody.During Napoleon's invasion of Russia de Staël, her two children and Schlegel, journeyed through the Habsburg empire from Brno to Łańcut where Rocca, having deserted the French army and having been searched by the French gendarmerie, was waiting for her. The journey continued to Lemberg, capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. On 14 July 1812 they arrived in Volhynia. In the meantime, Napoleon, who took a more northern route, had crossed the Niemen River with his army. In Kiev she met Miloradovich, governor of the city. De Staël hesitated to travel to Odessa, Constantinople, and onto Greece, and decided instead to go north. In Moscow, she was invited by the governor Fyodor Rostopchin. According to de Staël, it was Rostopchin who ordered to set his mansion on fire, which spread to the city with its 1,600 churches. She left only a few weeks before Napoleon arrived.
Until the end of September, her party stayed in Saint Petersburg. She met twice with the tsar Alexander I of Russia who "related to me also the lessons a la Machiavelli which Napoleon had thought proper to give him."You see," said he, "I am careful to keep my ministers and generals at variance among themselves, in order that each may reveal to me the faults of the other; I keep up a continual jealousy by the manner I treat those who are about me: one day one thinks himself the favourite, the next day another, so that no one is ever certain of my favour."[60]
For de Staël that was a vulgar and vicious theory. General Kutuzov sent her letters from the Battle of Tarutino[61] and before the end of that year he would succeed in chasing the Grande Armée out of Russia.
After four months of travelling she arrived in Sweden. Crossing of the Bothnian Gulf by boat had frightened her. In Stockholm she started "Ten Years' Exile", giving details of whom she had met and explaining what she had seen. She never finished the manuscript and
after eight months she set out for England, without August Schlegel who had been appointed as secretary to general Bernadotte. (She supported Bernadotte as new ruler of France, who she hoped would introduce a constitutional monarchy.[62]) In London she received a great welcome.
She met with Lord Byron on the first evening (27 May). The next day they dined at Sir Humphry Davy's, the chemist and inventor. In the evening de Staël had made very long speeches, according to Byron. She preached English politics to the first of our English Whig politicians ... preached politics no less to our Tory politicians the day after."[63] Her stay was marred by the death of her son Albert, who as a member of the Swedish army had fallen in a duel with a Cossack officer in Doberan as a result of a gambling dispute. In October John Murray published De l'Allemagne both in French and in an English translation, in which she reflected on nationalism and suggested a re-consideration on cultural rather than on natural boundaries.[64] In May 1814, after Louis XVIII had been crowned (Bourbon Restoration) she returned to Paris. She undertook Considérations sur la révolution française, based on Part One of "Ten Years' Exile".
Again her salon became a major attraction both for Parisians and foreigners.RestorationLord Byron, ca 1816When news came of Napoleon's landing on the Côte d'Azur, between Cannes and Antibes, early in March 1815, she fled to Coppet, and never forgave Constant for approving of Napoleon's return.[65] Although she had no affection for the Bourbons she succeeded in obtaining restitution for the loan Necker had made to the French state before the Revolution.[66] In October, after the Battle of Waterloo, she set out for Italy, not only for the sake of her own health but for that of her second husband, Rocca, who was suffering from tuberculosis. In May her 19-year-old daughter Albertine married Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie in Livorno.
The whole family returned to Coppet in June, and Lord Byron a womanizer and a gambler in debt, left London in great trouble and frequently visited Mme de Staël during July and August. For Byron, she was Europe's greatest living writer, but ...with her pen behind her ears and her mouth full of ink". "Byron was particularly critical of de Staël's self-dramatizing tendencies..."[67] Byron was a supporter of Napoleon, but for de Staël "Bonaparte was not only a man but a system..." "Napoleon imposed standards of homogeneity on Europe that is, French taste in literature, art and the legal systems, all of which de Staël saw as inimical to her cosmopolitan point of view."[67] Byron wrote she was "... sometimes right and often wrong about Italy and England - but almost always true in delineating the heart, which is of but one nation of no country, or rather, of all."[68]Despite her increasing ill-health, she returned to Paris for the winter of 1816–17. Constant argued with de Staël who had asked him to pay off his debts to her. A warm friendship sprang up between Madame de Staël and the Duke of Wellington, whom she had first met in 1814, and she used her influence with him to have the size of the Army of Occupation greatly reduced.[69] She had already become confined to her house at 40, rue des Mathurins, paralyzed since 21 February. She died on 14 July.
Her deathbed conversion to Roman Catholicism surprised many, including Wellington, who remarked that while he knew that she was greatly afraid of death, he had thought her incapable of believing in the afterlife.[70] Rocca survived her by little more than six months.
"Yet although she insisted to the Duke of Wellington that she needed politics in order to live, her attitude towards the propriety of female political engagement varied: at times she declared that women should simply be the guardians of domestic space for the opposite sex, while at others, that denying women access to the public sphere of activism and engagement was an abuse of human rights. This paradox partly explains the persona of the “homme-femme” she presented in society, and it remained unresolved throughout her life."[71]
Albertine Necker de Saussure, married to her cousin, wrote her biography in 1821, published as part of the collected works.
Auguste Comte included Mme de Staël in his Calendar of Great Men. Her political legacy has been generally identified with a stern defence of "liberal" values: equality, individual freedom and the limitation of power by constitutional rules.[72]
Comte's disciple Frederic Harrison wrote about de Staël that her novels "precede the works of Walter Scott, Byron, Mary Shelley, and partly those 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 arts, antiquities, and history of Europe."OffspringLouis-Marie de NarbonneBenjamin ConstantBeside two daughters, Gustava Sofia Magdalena (born July 1787) and Gustava Hedvig (died August 1789), who died in infancy, she had two sons, Ludwig August (1790–1827), Albert (November 1792–July 1813), and a daughter, Albertine, Baroness de Staël von Holstein (June 1797–1838). It is believed Louis, Comte de Narbonne-Lara was the father of Ludvig August and Albert, and Benjamin Constant the father of red-haired Albertine.[73] With Albert de Rocca, de Staël then aged 46, had one son, the disabled Louis-Alphonse de Rocca (April 1812–1842), who would marry Marie-Louise-Antoinette de Rambuteau, daughter of Claude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau,[27] and granddaughter of De Narbonne.[74]
Even as she gave birth, there were fifteen people in her bedroom.[75]After the death of her husband, Mathieu de Montmorency became the legal guardian of her children. Like August Schlegel he was one of her intimates until the end of her life.
In popular culture• Republican activist Victor Gold quoted Madame de Staël when characterizing American Vice President Dick Cheney, "Men do not change, they unmask themselves."
• De Staël is credited in Tolstoy's epilogue to War and Peace as a factor of the 'influential forces' which historians say led to the movement of humanity in that era.[76]
• The popular wrestling compilation series Botchamania has referenced her on several occasions saying One must choose in life, between boredom and suffering which is normally followed by a humorous joke.
• Mme de Staël is used several times to characterize Mme de Grandet in Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen.
• Mme de Staël is mentioned several times, always approvingly, by Russia's national poet, Alexander Pushkin.
• Mme de Staël is frequently quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson and she is credited with introducing him to recent German thought.[77]
• Talleyrand observed with his customary cynicism that Germaine enjoyed throwing people overboard simply to have the pleasure of fishing them out of the water again.[78]
• Sismondi accused De Staël of a lack of tact, when they were travelling through Italy and wrote Mme De Staël was easily bored if she had to pay attention to things.
• For Heinrich Heine she was the "grandmother of doctrines".[79]
• For Byron she was "a good woman at heart and the cleverest at bottom, but spoilt by a wish to be -- she not was. In her own house she was amiable; in any other person's, you wished her gone, and in her own again.[80]
Works Delphine, 1803 edition. De l'Allemagne• Journal de Jeunesse, 1785
• Sophie ou les sentiments secrets, 1786 (published anonymously in 1790)
• Jane Gray, 1787 (published in 1790)
• Lettres sur le caractère et les écrits de J.-J. Rousseau, 1788 [81]
• 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
• Essai sur les fictions, translated by Goethe into German
• De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations, 1796 [82]
• 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
• Delphine, 1802 deals with the question of woman's status in a society hidebound by convention and faced with a Revolutionary new order
• Vie privée de Mr. Necker, 1804
• Épîtres sur Naples
• Corinne, ou l'Italie, 1807 is as much a travelogue as a fictional narrative. It discusses the problems of female artistic creativity in two radically different cultures, England and Italy.
• 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, 1813, translated as Of Germany 1813.[83]
• Réflexions sur le suicide, 1813
• Morgan et trois nouvelles, 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) [84]
• Dix Années d'Exil (1818), posthumously published in France by Mdm Necker de Saussure. In 1821 translated and published as Ten Years' Exile. Memoirs of That Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein, Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813, and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript, by Her Son.[85]
• Essais dramatiques, 1821
• Oeuvres complètes 17 t., 1820-21
• Oeuvres complètes de Madame la Baronne de Staël-Holstein [Complete works of Madame Baron de Staël-Holstein]. Paris: Firmin Didot frères. 1836. Volume 1 •Volume 2
See also• Contributions to liberal theory
• Liberalism
References1. Lord Byron and Germaine de Staël by Silvia Bordoni, The University of Nottingham 2005
2. Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution ..., Band 2 by Madame de Staël, p. 46
3. Mémoires de Madame de Chastenay, 1771–1815
4. L. Moore (2007) Liberty. The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France, p. 15
5. Saintsbury 1911, p. 750.
6. Casillo, R. (13 May 2006). "The Empire of Stereotypes: Germaine de Staël and the Idea of Italy". Springer – via Google Books.
7.
http://www.swisscastles.ch/Vaud/chateau/jouxtens.html8. Stael and the French Revolution Introduction by Aurelian Craiutu
9. Napoleon's nemesis
10. Historical & literary memoirs and anecdotes by Friedrich Melchior Grimm and Denis Diderot, H. Colburn, 1815, p. 353.
11. Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, Mirabeau, Madame Roland, Madame De Stael, p. 311. by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
12. L. Moore, p. 334
13. Biancamaria Fontana (2016) Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait, p. 30. Princeton: Princeton University Press
14. B. Fontana, p. 33
15. B. Fontana, p. 37, 41, 44
16. Correspondance (1770-1793). Published by Évelyne Lever. Paris 2005, p. 660, 724
17. B. Fontana, p. 49
18. "Mémoires de Malouet", p. 221
19. B. Fontana, p. 61
20. L. Moore, p. 138
21. Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël von J. Christopher Herold
22. Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, Mirabeau, Madame Roland, Madame De Stael by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, p. 317
23. Selected Correspondence by Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
24. Fontana, p. 113
25. Fontana, p. 125
26. Olaf Müller: Madame de Staël und Weimar. Europäische Dimensionen einer Begegnung. In: Hellmut Th. Seemann (Hrsg.): Europa in Weimar. Visionen eines Kontinents. Jahrbuch der Klassik Stiftung Weimar 2008. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2008, p. 29.
27. Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baroness de Staël-Holstein (1766-1817) by Petri Liukkonen
28. L. Moore, p. 332
29. B. Fontana, p. 178; L. Moore, p. 335
30. L. Moore, p. 345, 349
31. Fontana, p.159
32. Fontana, p. 159
33. L. Moore, p. 348
34. L. Moore, p. 350-352
35. Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution ..., p. 90, 95-96, Band 2 by Madame de Staël
36. Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution ..., Band 2 by Madame de Staël, p. 42
37. A. Goodden (2000) Delphine and Corinne, p. 18
38. L. Moore, p. 379
39. Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, trans. Cashel Hoey and John Lillie, p. 407. Books.Google.com
40. Saintsbury 1911, p. 751.
41. From the Introduction to Madame de Staël (1987) Delphine. Edition critique par S. Balayé & L. Omacini. Librairie Droz S.A. Génève
42. Fontana, p. 204
43. "Un journaliste contre-révolutionnaire, Jean-Gabriel Peltier (1760–1825) – Etudes Révolutionnaires". Etudes-revolutionnaires.org. 7 October 2011. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
44. Fontana, p. 263, note 47
45. Fontana, p. 205
46. Olaf Müller: Madame de Staël und Weimar. Europäische Dimensionen einer Begegnung. In: Hellmut Th. Seemann (Hrsg.): Europa in Weimar. Visionen eines Kontinents. Jahrbuch der Klassik Stiftung Weimar 2008. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2008, p. 292
47. Madame de Staël von Klaus -Werner Haupt
48. Fontana, p. 206
49. Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël by J. Christopher Herold
50. Panizza, Letizia; Wood, Sharon. A History of Women's Writing in Italy. p. 144.
51. A. Goodden (2000), p. 61
52. Fontana, p. 230
53. Herold, J. Christopher. Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël. Grove Press, 2002. p. 290. ISBN 0802138373
54. Ferber, Michael (2010) Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-956891-8.
55. Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell (1805–1817), d’apres des letters inedites, by Jean Mistler, published by Calmann-Levy, Editeurs, 3 rue Auber, Paris, 1926.
56. A. Goodden (2000), p. 73
57. Olaf Müller: Madame de Staël und Weimar. Europäische Dimensionen einer Begegnung. In: Hellmut Th. Seemann (Hrsg.): Europa in Weimar. Visionen eines Kontinents. Jahrbuch der Klassik Stiftung Weimar 2008. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2008
58. Ten Years of Exile, pt. II, chap. i, 101–10
59. Fontana, p. 206
60. Ten Years' Exile, chapter 17
61. Tolstoy, Leo (21 June 2017). The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy. Musaicum Books. pp. 2583–. ISBN 978-80-7583-455-3. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
62. A. Zamoyski (2007) Rites of Peace. The fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna, p. 105
63. The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, p. 184-185. Ed. by Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
64. Lord Byron and Germaine de Staël by Silvia Bordoni, p. 4
65. Fontana, p. 227
66. Fontana, p. 208
67. Joanne Wilkes, Lord Byron and Madame de Staël: Born for Opposition. London: Ashgate, 1999. ISBN 1-84014699-0.
68. The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, p. 223-224. Ed. by Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
69. Longford, Elizabeth (1972) Wellington-Pillar of State, p.38. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. London.
70. Longford p.38
71. The Man-Woman and the Idiot: Madame de Staël's Public/Private Life Goodden, Angelica. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2007, Vol. 43(1), pp.34-45
72. Fontana, p. 234
73. Angelica Goodden. Madame de Staël: the dangerous exile. Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 31?
74. L. Moore, p. 390
75. Lucy Moore, p. 8
76. Abramowitz, Michael (2 April 2007). "Rightist Indignation". Washington Post. Retrieved 30 June 2007.
77. "Emerson - Roots - Madame DeStael". transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu.
78. L. Moore, p. 350
79. Sämtliche Schriften (Anm. 2), Bd. 3, S. 882 f.
80. The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, p. 222. Ed. by Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
81. LETTRES SUR LE CARACTÈRE ET LES ÉCRITS DE JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
82. A Treatise on the influence of Passions on the Happiness of indivuals and of nations
83. Of Germany
84. Considérations sur les principaux événements de la révolution française
85. Ten Years' Exile by Madame de Staël
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Saintsbury, George (1911). "Staël, Madame de". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 750–752.
Sources• Biancamaria Fontana (2016) Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait. Princeton University Press.
• Angelica Goodden (2008) Madame de Staël : the dangerous exile. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199238095 ISBN 019923809X
Further reading• (in French) 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 0-7867-1339-9); 2006 (paperback, ISBN 0-7867-1705-X); 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 Press, 2002 (paperback, ISBN 0-8021-3837-3).[1]
• Winegarten, Renee. Germaine de Staël & Benjamin Constant: a Dual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008 (ISBN 9780300119251).
• Winegarten, Renee. Mme. de Staël. Dover, NH : Berg, 1985 (ISBN 0907582877).
External links• Stael and the French Revolution Introduction by Aurelian Craiutu
• BBC4 In Our Time on Germaine de Staël
• Madame de Staël and the Transformation of European Politics, 1812–17 by Glenda Sluga. In: The International history review 37(1):142-166 • November 2014
• (in French) Stael.org, with detailed chronology
• (in French) BNF.fr (Searching "stael").
• Works by Germaine de Staël at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Germaine de Staël at Internet Archive
• "Staël, Germaine de" in The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition: 2001-05.
• The Great de Staël by Richard Holmes from The New York Review of Books
•
http://www.dieterwunderlich.de/madame_G ... _Stael.htm