Part 10

or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guyed him as Bunthorne in "Patience."

When Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense, "muscular Christianity" was a phrase which was taken up by many followers. A little earlier, Puseyism and a primitive form of socialism were in vogue with the intellectuals. There are just as many different fashions in thought as in garments, and they come and go without any particular reason. To-day, they are discussed and practised everywhere. To-morrow, they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of something new.

Forty years before the French Revolution burst forth with all its thunderings, France and Germany were affected by what was generally styled "sensibility." Sensibility was the sister of sentimentality and the half-sister of sentiment. Sentiment is a fine thing in itself. It is consistent with strength and humor and manliness; but sentimentality and sensibility are poor cheeping creatures that run scuttering along the ground, quivering and whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy, which they do not at all deserve.

No one need be ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to the blade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand, is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, in fact, all humbug, just as sentiment is often all truth.

Therefore, to find an interesting phase of human folly, we may look back to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era of sensibility. The great prophets of this false god, or goddess, were Rousseau in France and Goethe with Schiller in Germany, together with a host of midgets who shook and shivered in imitation of their masters. It is not for us to catalogue these persons. Some of them were great figures in literature and philosophy, and strong enough to shake aside the silliness of sensibility; but others, while they professed to be great as writers or philosophers, are now remembered only because their devotion to sensibility made them conspicuous in their own time. They dabbled in one thing and another; they "cribbed" from every popular writer of the day. The only thing that actually belonged to them was a high degree of sensibility.

And what, one may ask, was this precious thing--this sensibility?

It was really a sort of St. Vitus's dance of the mind, and almost of the body. When two persons, in any way interested in each other, were brought into the same room, one of them appeared to be seized with a rotary movement. The voice rose to a higher pitch than usual, and assumed a tremolo. Then, if the other person was also endowed with sensibility, he or she would rotate and quake in somewhat the same manner. Their cups of tea would be considerably agitated. They would move about in as unnatural a manner as possible; and when they left the room, they would do so with gaspings and much waste of breath.

This was not an exhibition of love--or, at least, not necessarily so. You might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallant soldier, or a celebrated traveler--or, for that matter, before a remarkable buffoon, like Cagliostro, or a freak, like Kaspar Hauser.

It is plain enough that sensibility was entirely an abnormal thing, and denoted an abnormal state of mind. Only among people like the Germans and French of that period, who were forbidden to take part in public affairs, could it have flourished so long, and have put forth such rank and fetid outgrowths. From it sprang the "elective affinities" of Goethe, and the loose morality of the French royalists, which rushed on into the roaring sea of infidelity, blasphemy, and anarchy of the Revolution.

Of all the historic figures of that time, there is just one which to-day stands forth as representing sensibility. In her own time she was thought to be something of a philosopher, and something more of a novelist. She consorted with all the clever men and women of her age. But now she holds a minute niche in history because of the fact that Napoleon stooped to hate her, and because she personifies sensibility.

Criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophy which was not her own. It is seen that she was indebted to the brains of others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth in Delphine and Corinne; but as the exponent of sensibility she remains unique. This woman was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, usually known as Mme. de Stael.

There was much about Mile. Necker's parentage that made her interesting. Her father was the Genevese banker and minister of Louis XVI, who failed wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances of France. Her mother, Suzanne Curchod, as a young girl, had won the love of the famous English historian, Edward Gibbon. She had first refused him, and then almost frantically tried to get him back; but by this time Gibbon was more comfortable in single life and less infatuated with Mlle. Curchod, who presently married Jacques Necker.

M. Necker's money made his daughter a very celebrated "catch." Her mother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliant beyond description, and yet was tottering to its fall. The rumblings of the Revolution could be heard by almost every ear; and yet society and the court, refusing to listen, plunged into the wildest revelry under the leadership of the giddy Marie Antoinette.

It was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegant forms of luxury, and met the cleverest men of that time--Voltaire, Rousseau, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Volney. She set herself to be the most accomplished woman of her day, not merely in belles lettres, but in the natural and political sciences. Thus, when her father was drawing up his monograph on the French finances, Germaine labored hard over a supplementary report, studying documents, records, and the most complicated statistics, so that she might obtain a mastery of the subject.

"I mean to know everything that anybody knows," she said, with an arrogance which was rather admired in so young a woman.

But, unfortunately, her mind was not great enough to fulfil her aspiration. The most she ever achieved was a fair knowledge of many things--a knowledge which seemed surprising to the average man, but which was superficial enough to the accomplished specialist.

In her twentieth year (1786) it was thought best that she should marry. Her revels, as well as her hard studies, had told upon her health, and her mother believed that she could not be at once a blue-stocking and a woman of the world.

There was something very odd about the relation that existed between the young girl and this mother of hers. In the Swiss province where they had both been born, the mother had been considered rather bold and forward. Her penchant for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventures that have been told about her. She was by no means coy with the gallants of Geneva. Yet, after her marriage, and when she came to Paris, she seemed to be transformed into a sort of Swiss Puritan.

As such, she undertook her daughter's bringing up, and was extremely careful about everything that Germaine did and about the company she kept. On the other hand, the daughter, who in the city of Calvin had been rather dull and quiet in her ways, launched out into a gaiety such as she had never known in Switzerland. Mother and daughter, in fact, changed parts. The country beauty of Geneva became the prude of Paris, while the quiet, unemotional young Genevese became the light of all the Parisian salons, whether social or intellectual.

The mother was a very beautiful woman. The daughter, who was to become so famous, is best described by those two very uncomplimentary English words, "dumpy" and "frumpy." She had bulging eyes--which are not emphasized in the flattering portrait by Gerard--and her hair was unbecomingly dressed. There are reasons for thinking that Germaine bitterly hated her mother, and was intensely jealous of her charm of person. It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter's cleverness, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end, than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate, the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father the affection which her mother neither received nor sought.

It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage was arranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who then represented the court of Sweden at Paris. Many eyebrows were lifted when this match was announced. Baron de Stael had no personal charm, nor any reputation for wit. His standing in the diplomatic corps was not very high. His favorite occupations were playing cards and drinking enormous quantities of punch. Could he be considered a match for the extremely clever Mlle. Necker, whose father had an enormous fortune, and who was herself considered a gem of wit and mental power, ready to discuss political economy, or the romantic movement of socialism, or platonic love?

Many differed about this. Mlle. Necker was, to be sure, rich and clever; but the Baron de Stael was of an old family, and had a title. Moreover, his easy-going ways--even his punch-drinking and his card-playing--made him a desirable husband at that time of French social history, when the aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased, with wanton license, and when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet ambassadress might retire when the mob grew dangerous. For Paris was now approaching the time of revolution, and all "aristocrats" were more or less in danger.

At first Mme. de Stael rather sympathized with the outbreak of the people; but later their excesses drove her back into sympathy with the royalists. It was then that she became indiscreet and abused the privilege of the embassy in giving shelter to her friends. She was obliged to make a sudden flight across the frontier, whence she did not return until Napoleon loomed up, a political giant on the horizon--victorious general, consul, and emperor.

Mme. de Stael's relations with Napoleon have, as I remarked above, been among her few titles to serious remembrance. The Corsican eagle and the dumpy little Genevese make, indeed, a peculiar pair; and for this reason writers have enhanced the oddities of the picture.

"Napoleon," says one, "did not wish any one to be near him who was as clever as himself."

"No," adds another, "Mme. de Stael made a dead set at Napoleon, because she wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody, even of the greatest man who ever lived."

"Napoleon found her to be a good deal of a nuisance," observes a third. "She knew too much, and was always trying to force her knowledge upon others."

The legend has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty to be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction that the conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. It is, perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whether Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to this rather comic creature, even though at the time many people thought her a remarkable genius.