Madame de Staël: Her English period

242 Pages·012.605 MB·English

by  Forsberg, Roberta J

MADAME DE STAEL: HER ENGLISH PERIOD
A Dissertation
Presented to
the Faculty of the -Graduate School
University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Roberta J. Forsberg
June 1950
UMI Number: DP71534
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been presented to and accepted by the Council
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION..................................... i
CHAPTER I. THE PERIOD FROM 1793 TO 1813 . .
The Emigres at Juniper Hall . . 1
Englishmen Abroad..............................24
CHAPTER II. THE PERIOD FROM 1813 TO 1817
Swiss Friends in England...................... 49
Lord Byron....................................56
Sir James Mackintosh ....................... 69
William Wilberforce . . ...................... 80
Other Figures in London..................... 88
Coppet and Paris . ...........................116
CHAPTER III. OPINION ON BOTH SIDES OF THE CHANNEL
Madame de Stael Considers the English.......... 151
De la Litterature......... . . .............152
Corinne...................................164
Les Considerations................. 170
The English Consider Madame de Stael . . . . . 182
CONCLUSION.........................................209
BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................... 224
INTRODUCTION
Madame de Sta§l visited I&gland in 1793 end again in
1813. The twenty years that elapsed between these two visits
marked a significant change in her. In 1793 she was a rela­
tively young woman of twenty-seven who was scarcely known as
a writer in England. She had published, in 1788, Lettres sur
les eorits et le caractere de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in which
she had been largely influenced by the sensibility character­
istic of the end of the eighteenth century. Sainte-Beuve sees
evidence of this in Madame de Staelrs interest in Rousseau.^
Her chief claims to renown then, when she arrived in England
for the first time, were as a refugee from the terror in
France and as the wife of the Swedish ambassador to France,
the Baron de Stae’l. There is evidence that she was working on
De lfInfluence des passions (1796) while she was in England.
When she arrived in England for the second time, in
1813, she was famous not only as a writer, but as an enemy of
Napoleon. She had carried the stories of his infamies across
the continent of Europe, jlmong other things she had written a
well-known novel, Corinne, published in 1807, and an outstand­
ing piece of criticism in De la Litterature, published in 1800.
■** C.-A. Sainte-Beuve, "Madame de Stael,n Portraite de
Femmes (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1845), p. 87.
it
She was a social queen of the 1813-14 season in London, At one
of her first public appearances people stood on chairs in order
to get a glimpse of this famous woman.
Both of these works, Corinne and Be la Litterature, deal
to a great extent with English people and English literature, it
is safe to assume that the first visit of Madame de Stael had
something to do with the ideas of England and the English which
she expounds in these works. Considerations sur la Revolution
frangaise was published, posthumously, in 1818, and in this
most mature of her books she pays the greatest tribute to Eng­
land. Here again what she learned during her second visit must
have influenced the attitudes and ideas she proposed in this
volume.
As she was influenced by her contacts with the English in
England and on the continent, so she in turn influenced the Eng­
lish in their attitudes toward continental ideas# Corinne and De
1*Allemagne undoubtedly had the greatest vogue in England of any
of her works, and perhaps Lord Byron of ©11 of her English friends
was most influenced by her, George Brandes has summarized her
contribution:
If I were asked to define in one word the service ren­
dered by Madame de.-Stab 1 to French society, to its culture
and literature, and through these to Europe in general, I
should express myself thus: By means of her writings, more
particularly her great works on Italy and Germany, she on-
iii
abled th© French, English, and German peoples to take a
comparative view of their own social and literary ideas
and theories.2
By tracing the evidence of friendshipr;of Madame de Stael with
the English one may find support for Brandes* statement and show
to some extent how the French and English took a more compare-*
tive view of their social and literary ideas as a result of
their contact with her.
Statement of the Problem. The problem will be, first, to
trace the English friendships of Madame de Stael during her two
visits to England, and to indicate the most important English
friends she made on the continent; second,, to summarize the atti-*
tude of these English toward her and toward her work; and finally,
to set forth her opinion of the English and England. A general
estimate of nineteenth century critical opinion of her work will
provide a conclusion.
Importance of the Study. There are three basic areas in
the study of Madame de Steelfs relationship to the English to be
explored. The first is the biographical. Ho complete study has
been made of all the major English friendships. The development
of these friendships and in some cases their decline has not
been fully traced* In some cases, particularly in the Byron-de
Stae’l friendship, certain legends have been perpetuated. For
2 George Brandes, Emigrant Literature (vol. I, Main
Currents in nineteenth Century Literature, E vols.; London:
William Heinemann, 1901), p. 136.
example, H. M. Jones lias said in a recent study: '•Madame de
Steel, 'that plain woman with her mouth full of ink, f whom
Byron so disliked,**3 This sqme idea of Byron*s dislike is
to he found in some of the biographies. It might be pointed
out that only the first part of the Byron memoirs could have
given tise to such an idea. However, it is important to examine
this point more closely not only because biographical errors
have been made but because the Byron-de Sta§l relationship
sets a pattern for her other English friendships* she fre­
quently did not make a good first impression upon people any
more than she did upon Lord Byron. However, as Byron learned
to know her more intimately his attitude toward her changed.
He saw her good qualities and became increasingly appreciative
of her until at her death he considered her to be one of his
few true friends, for she had remained loyal to th&ir friend­
ship even after he had been ostracized by English society.
Many of the English people whom Madame de Stael knew changed
their minds about her.
Madame de Sta&L it will be shown, had the type of mind
which proceeded from the particular to the general, not only
in her philosophical thinking but in her thinking about the
people of other nations, because she took the breath of her
3 H. M. Jones, The Theory of teerican Literature (Ithaca
Cornell University Press, 1948), p. Si
being from personal contact with other individuals in society*
Here was not the type of mind that philosophized abstractly
and then found proof for her philosophical system in partic­
ulars; she rather made up her mind about social institutions
from the people with whom she came in contact and as she ob­
served actual situations.^ Study of her life and works makes
it evident that her contacts with a rather snobbish English
society in 1793 and particularly with Madame d*Arblay did in­
fluence the conclusions she drew about social groups and used
as basic material in her novel Corinne* In the Considerations
she frequently makes her point by specific references to
people whom she met in England and to particular social groups
of which she was a part* This seems to have been her method of
procedure. Therefore, in her ease, as much as in the ease of
any other writer, to study her English friendships in England
and on the continent is to discover the source of her conclu­
sions on England. These friendships help to explain her method
of writing and to give a starting point for her ideas.
Perhaps some of the difficulties that Englishmen and
Frenchmen experience in understanding each other can be studied
in the works of Madame de Stael. Were Englishmen interested in
4 Jules Bertaut, in opposition to Sainte-Beuve, takes
the point of view that Madame de Stael made up her mind in
advance. "Madame de Ste&l et jingleterre," Her cur® de France.
CXjCII (1917), 285.
large assemblies, as she calls them, rather than intimate
social conversational groups? Were women happy in their home
life in England while being discounted in political and lit­
erary discussions? Were women ostracized and considered to be
freaks if they cultivated their minds and wished for intellect­
ual attainment, as Oorinne found when she visited England?
Whether these things were true or not they were obstacles, at
least in the opinion of Madame de Sta'e’l, and she found that
they hindered her and made it difficult for her to come to a
complete understanding with certain Englishmen whom she met*
The last area of this study is that of comparative lit­
erature, which deals with the contribution that Madame de Stael
made to the literary exchange between France and England* in Be
la Literature she acquainted the Frenchman with the English
novel, with the English sense of humor as contrasted with the
French, and most particularly with the importance of Shakespeare.
The great personality that was Voltaire had, until this time,
pretty much left his impression of Shakespeare on the French
mind* Madame de Stael*© Be la Litterature helped to reawaken
French interest in Shakespeare* There is the evidence of Thomas
Garlyle for the influence of her ideas on Germany, and the im*-
portance of this work to the English. It is safe to say that
she was responsible for ideas going to the continent about Eng­
land and for continental ideas, both French and German, coming
into England.