The Friendships of Women Part 6

The historic tradition of her great, lovely, brilliant, accomplished women is one chief reason why friends.h.i.+ps of women with men are more common and important in France than in most other countries. Besides, the French are a more ideal people than others; live more from the brain, less from the spinal axis; take a deeper delight in the mere social reflection and echoing of life. And in this, on account of their instinctive swiftness of susceptibility, perception, and adroitness, refined women can have no rivals in the other s.e.x. The luxury of the British is taciturnity; but to this day the favorite excitement of the French is conversation; and conversation is the food of friends.h.i.+p.

The inner history of the Catholic Church, so wealthy in many departments of experience, is especially rich in an original cla.s.s of profound friends.h.i.+ps of men and women, friends.h.i.+ps between devout ladies and their spiritual directors. Without referring to the abuses which would sometimes occur in the instances of weak or sinister characters, these religious friends.h.i.+ps have often been surprisingly permeating and transparent. This follows from the nature of the case.

For the most ardent healthy devotees of religion are persons of the most exalted ideas and affections, most deeply endowed with the sensibility of genius. Every coa.r.s.e pa.s.sion both alien to their souls and awed away by the infinite realities they adore in common, the historic abyss of the Church scintillating around them with the memories and presences of saints, martyrs, angels, it is natural that all the purer sympathies of their being, enkindled and consecrated, should yearn together. The woman also confides every secret, unveils the inmost states of her spirit, to her confessor; takes counsel of him; holds with him the most confidential communion known outside of marriage. And the priest, in turn, shut out from the chief personal ties and vents of family, spontaneously bestows, so far as is blameless, his best human affections, turned back elsewhere, on the sister, daughter, mother, friend, fellow-wors.h.i.+pper, who looks up to him with such affecting trust, opening her heart to him, telling him her hopes and griefs, her errors, prayers, and fears. Madame de Sevigne, speaking of the attachment of women for their confessors, says, "They would rather talk ill of themselves than not talk of themselves." When pure and beautiful women, wonderfully dowered with spiritual charms, and n.o.ble priests, eminently possessed of every virtue and authority of character, so often meet, amid such inspiring circ.u.mstances, beneath the august sanctions of the church, drawn forward by the sublime mysteries of religion, and blending the potential perfections of heaven with the actual experiences of earth, it would be no less than a miracle if many friends.h.i.+ps of singular sincerity and power did not spring up. They have sprung up in every part and period of Christendom; more in the Catholic Church than anywhere else, because its ritual and doctrine, its organized religious life and its practice of direction, furnish for them unequalled facilities and provocatives.

The friends.h.i.+p all divine which Jesus showed for many women, of whom Mary and Martha, the sisters of his friend Lazarus, are examples--the friends.h.i.+p which drew such matchless devotion from them, has been perpetuated in the Church in a relation of peculiar tenderness between the priest and the devotee.

"Many women followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him." With what G.o.dlike benignity he spoke to the Samaritan woman, to the Syrophenician woman, and to the poor adulteress! With what indescribable compa.s.sion he turned to the women who accompanied him towards Calvary, bewailing and lamenting him, and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me". And what words shall be set beside those which fell from his lips when, as he hung on the cross, he saw his mother, and the disciple standing by whom he loved, and he saith unto his mother, "Woman, behold thy son!" then he saith to the disciple, "Behold thy mother!" Verily, from that hour, the Church has taken woman to itself, as the recipient of a ministration full of respect and purity. In any enumeration of renowned ecclesiastical friends.h.i.+ps, Saint Chrysostom and Saint Olympias, the gold-mouthed bishop of Constantinople and the rich and n.o.ble widow, deserve to head the list. Under the guidance of the eloquent preacher, she labored to perfect herself in the religious life, and gave her time and wealth to all kinds of charity and good works. From her Christian affection he drew precious strength and comfort. When he was carried from his church and driven into exile, the weeping Olympias fell at his feet, and clasped them so closely that the officers had to use force in tearing him from her. Sixteen letters addressed to her by Chrysostom during his banishment are still extant, silently p.r.o.nouncing her eulogy throughout the Christian world. A friends.h.i.+p like the foregoing, only still more complete, was that of Saint Jerome and Saint Paula. The talents, scholars.h.i.+p, services, and enthusiasm of Jerome are universally known; and the chief personal attachment of his life is scarcely less familiar to the public.

Paula, immortalized not less in literary history as his friend than in the ecclesiastical calendar for her virtues, was one of the most distinguished women of the age. She had great riches and high rank, as well as p.r.o.nounced talents and worth. The blood of the Scipios, of the Gracchi, and of Paulus Emilius, met in her veins. Jerome was her spiritual director at Rome for two years and a half-her other soul while life remained. She built and supported at her own expense an extensive monastery for Jerome and his monks at Bethlehem. When she died, Jerome wrote to her daughter the long and celebrated letter called "Epitaph of Paula," in which he exhausts the hyperboles of praise. The features of a rare character and the proofs of an extraordinary affection may be discerned within the extravagances of this eloquent panegyric. The tombs of Jerome and Paula are still to be seen side by side in the monastery at Bethlehem. Saint Clara of a.s.sisi, on account of her high rank, great wealth, and extreme loveliness, had many offers of marriage, many temptations to enter into the gayeties and luxuries of the world. But she preferred the th.o.r.n.y path of mortification and the crown of celestial beat.i.tude.

The melting pathos of the preaching of Saint Francis, with the penetrative charm of his spirit, drew her to throw herself at his feet and supplicate his guidance. He approved her desire to devote herself wholly to the religious life in seclusion; and, when she had made her escape by night from the proud castle, clad in her festal garments, and with a palm-branch in her hand, he and his poor brotherhood met her at the chapel-door, with lighted tapers and hymns of praise, and led her to the altar. Francis cut off her long golden hair, and threw his own penitential habit over her. She became his disciple, daughter, and friend, never wavering, though exposed to dangers and trials of the severest character. Under his direction, she formed the famous order of Franciscan nuns, afterwards named from her the Poor Clares.

These nuns, clad in gowns of gray wool, knotted girdles, white coifs and black veils, engaged in touching works of humility and charity, have been seen in many nations now for seven centuries, keeping alive the example of their foundress. When the body of Saint Francis, on its way to burial, was borne by the church of San Damiano, where Clara and her nuns dwelt, she came forth with them weeping, saluted the remains of her friend, and kissed his hands and his garments. The memory of the relation of these sainted friends is perpetuated in many pictures of the Madonna, wherein Clara is portrayed on one side of the throne of the Virgin, and Francis on the other, both barefooted, and wearing the gray tunic and knotted cord emblematic of poverty. Perhaps the most fervent and interesting of all the friends.h.i.+ps between director and devotee, of which the doc.u.ments have been published, is that of Saint Francis of Sales and Madame de Chantal. Full materials for studying this relation are furnished in the letters that pa.s.sed between the parties, both of whom were of a temperament strung to the most exquisite tones of consciousness, with minds both wise and strong, and with characters under the control of austere principles of duty and piety. Michelet, in his work on the Confessional, gives a skilful and forcible picture of this rapt friends.h.i.+p; but his own pervading sensuousness, not to say sensuality, does the sentiment gross injustice by mixing in it so much of flesh and earth. The union of these two mystics in spirit and deed was as taintless as that of two angels in heaven.

If throbs of agonizing pa.s.sion sometimes mounted up, the invariable heroism with which they were veiled and suppressed simply adds the martyr merit to the saintly one. Saint Francis had an irresistible attractiveness of figure and face, a temper and bearing of singular sweetness. Childlike, and so fair in appearance that it was difficult to withdraw the eyes from him, he united the greatest social insight and skill with the greatest sincerity and simplicity. Madame de Chantal, early left a widow, with several children and an aged and infirm father, administered the business of her household with systematic prudence, and filled her leisure hours with fervent religious exercises. Saint Francis and Madame de Chantal seem to have been predestined for friends. Their biographers relate, that, long before they had seen each other, they met in mystical visions and ecstasies. Archbishop Fremiot, brother of Madame de Chantal, and an intimate acquaintance of Saint Francis, invited him to preach at Dijon. During his sermon, the preacher noticed one lady particularly above the rest; and, as he came down from the desk, asked, "Who is that young widow who listened so attentively to the word?" The archbishop replied, "That is my sister, the Baroness de Chantal." An inspired understanding appears to have at once united their minds.

"It is enchantment," Michelet says, "to read the vivacious and delightful letters which open the correspondence of Saint Francis with his dear sister and dear daughter. Nothing can be more pure, nothing can be more ardent." He says the sentiment she awakened powerfully a.s.sisted his spiritual progress. He thought of her at the moment of partaking of the sacrament. "I have given you and your widowed heart and your children daily to the Lord, in offering up his Son." She dispensed with her former confessor, and confided her spirit to Saint Francis. She desired to take the conventual vows; but he restrained her a long time. In the name of his mother, he gave her his young sister to educate.

This occupation tranquillized her mind; but the beloved child soon died at her house, in her arms. She prayed G.o.d "to take her own life, or one of her children, in place of her dear pupil." Saint Francis now consented that she should withdraw from the world. Her household presented a piteous scene-her old father and father-in-law in tears; her son, afterwards the father of Madame de Sevigne, prostrating himself on the threshold to prevent her departure. But the pa.s.sionate response in her to the supposed call of Heaven broke all lower ties; and she pa.s.sed over the body of her son, and said farewell for ever to her home. Saint Francis intrusted her with the formation of a new religious order--the celebrated Order of the Visitation. In nurturing this order, writing, travelling, praying in its interests, with intervals of silent retreat, she spent the rest of her days. Her intense temperament, her absolute faith and submission, her systematic attention to business, her mystical ecstasies, her heroic sacrifice, form a most original combination. Her life seems an alternation of sober processes, stormy raptures, and stifling calms.

Her restless sensibility, girdled by fixed principle, gives us the picture of a sea of fire breaking on a sh.o.r.e of frost. Her essay on "Desire and the Agony of Disappointment" is a gush forced from the bottom of a heart full of baffled feeling, under the pressure of a mountain of pain. The constancy and power of her attachment to Saint Francis, through all, are marvellous. On the day of his mother's death, he writes, "I have given you the place of my mother in my memorial at the ma.s.s: now you hold in my heart both her place and your own." She writes to him, "Pray that I may not survive you."

Twenty years did she outlive him; finding, to the last, her greatest pleasure in remembering him, carrying out his wishes, and corresponding about him with his friends. Ten years after the death of Saint Francis, Madame de Chantal had his tomb opened in the presence of her community, and made an address before the embalmed body. A testimony to the deep impression their friends.h.i.+p had made is found in the myth, that, when on this occasion she reverently lifted to her head the dead hand of the saint, it acknowledged her devotion by an answering caress. The winning qualities of Madame Guion awakened an enthusiastic interest in many of those whom her remarkable religious experience brought into close relations with her. Especially they produced in her confessor, Father Lacombe, such a ruling admiration, reverence, and tenderness, that he was subdued into a caricature of her. He followed her everywhere, could not dine without her, made her directions his law. When her peculiar doctrines of the Quietist life, and her fame, had caused a disturbance in the Church, her enemies circulated scandals about the friends. The spotless and heavenly-minded woman smiled, and paid no heed to the wrong. But Father Lacombe, under the combined power of his Quietistic fanaticism, poor health, bitter persecutions, and relentless imprisonment, lost the balance of his mind altogether, and died.

Fenelon also, interested in Madame Guion by her genuine piety, and by sympathy with many of her views, and finding this interest greatly deepened on personal acquaintance, formed a strong attachment for her. Convinced of her innocence, and knowing her rare worth, the misfortunes and sufferings brought on her by her persecutors served but to redouble his kindness. Her enemies then became his; and they made him pay dearly for his fidelity, by robbing him of waiting honors, and throwing him into disgrace at court.

His friends.h.i.+p for Madame Guion was like that of a guardian angel. It never failed. One can imagine what her feelings towards him must have been. Many n.o.ble women had a strong friends.h.i.+p for Fenelon. He could not come into the confiding relations of his office with them without that result. His face was all intelligence and all harmony; his voice, music; his manner, fascination; his character, heaven. His unconscious suavity, his abnegated personality, formed a mighty magnet; and every soul, with any steel of n.o.bleness in it, fondly swayed to him. Madame Maintenon gave him, for years, all the reverence and affection of which her commonplace nature was capable; and then, at the command of her selfish bigotry, became chilled. The impa.s.sioned and unhappy La Maisonfort, so talented and so beautiful, whose pathetic story is charged with every element of romance, adored him. And the d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse and the d.u.c.h.ess de Beauvilliers always paid him an homage whose grace and sweetness the happiest man that ever lived might well sigh for. To the latter of these queenly women, then a sorrowing widow, he wrote, in the last letter he penned, "We shall soon find again that which we have not lost: every day we approach it with swift strides; yet a little while, and there will be no more cause for tears." Among the penitents of Bossuet, there was one--a widow, named Cornuau, to whom the great prelate gave more of his heart than to any of the rest. In submitting her spiritual life to his oversight, they were often brought together, both by letters and by personal interviews. The affectionate docility and loyalty of the novice won his kind esteem, and the condescending benignity and greatness of the n.o.ble genius kindled her enthusiasm.

And so the opposite ends of the chain of their attachment were fastened. After displaying exemplary zeal, for fifteen years, in all the works of duty a.s.signed her, she was permitted to become a nun, taking the name of Bossuet in addition to the t.i.tle of Sister Saint Benigne. Despite her humble origin and the mediocrity of her intellect, Bossuet preferred her above all the high-born and brilliant ladies who constantly knelt for his benedictions. It was only natural, that, notwithstanding the work of grace, she should sometimes feel jealous. But once, after she had expressed herself "ready to burst with jealousy" of a certain great lady, whom she falsely supposed esteemed more than herself by the lofty director, when the object of her jealousy was smitten with a frightful disease, Sister Benigne, with sublime self-sacrifice, went to Paris, and became her nurse; "shut herself up with her, watched over and loved her." When Bossuet died, La Cornuau, "happily guided by her friends.h.i.+p, forgetting her own vanity, and mindful only of the fame of her spiritual father, did more for him, perhaps, than any panegyrist." She published the two hundred letters he had written to her, "n.o.ble letters, written in profound secrecy, never intended to see the light, but worthy of exposure to the perusal of the whole world."

A friends.h.i.+p, such as we might suppose would be characteristic of such ecstatic natures, was cherished between the two celebrated Spanish mystics, Saint Theresa and Saint John of the Cross. The fullest expressions of it may be found in their respective writings, now translated into many languages, and easy of access almost anywhere. Unquestionably there have been very numerous Friends.h.i.+ps, worthy of notice, between clergymen and devout women, in the Protestant sects. But they are different from those in the Catholic communion, which has, in this respect, great advantages. In the Protestant establishment, all are on a free equality; and the religion is an element fused into the life. With the Catholics, the overwhelming authority of the Church invests the priests with G.o.dlike attributes; while celibacy detaches their hearts from the home and family, leaving them ready for other calls. The laity are placed in a pa.s.sive att.i.tude, except as to faith and affection, which are more active for the restrictions applied elsewhere; and religion is pursued and practised as an art by itself. The church ritual, by its dramatic contents and movement, peerless in its pathetic, imaginative power, intensifies and cleanses the pa.s.sions of those who appreciatively celebrate or witness it, and who are naturally attracted together, as, in blended devotional emotions and aims, they cultivate that supernatural art whose infinite interests make all earthly concerns appear dwarfed and pale.

The instances already cited of the friends.h.i.+ps thus originating suffice to indicate the wealth in this kind of experience which must remain for ever unknown to the public. But one example which has just been brought to light, and is worthy to rank with the best of earlier times, should be mentioned here. It is the relation of Madame Swetchine and the most renowned preacher of our century, Lacordaire.

This friends.h.i.+p has been beautifully portrayed by Montalembert. A full account of it will be found farther on in these pages. The friends.h.i.+p that joined the souls, and still links the names, of Vittoria Colonna and Michael Angelo, is one of the most celebrated in history. Her married life with the chivalrous and magnificent Marquis of Pescara, in his palace on the bewitching isle of Ischia, was one of the most romantically happy unions ever known; and nothing could be more n.o.ble than her impa.s.sioned fidelity to his memory. It was in the twelfth year of her widowhood that she first met with Michael Angelo, then sixty-three years old. Such were their respective attributes of personal worth and majesty, rank and fame, exaltation of character and genius, stainless purity, dignity, earnestness, and devotion, that they could not fail to regard each other with ardent esteem. For ten years, till death separated them, this esteem, with a consequent sympathy and happiness, steadily grew. To her he dedicated many works of his chisel and his pencil, and addressed several exquisite poems.

Their example affords a fine ill.u.s.tration of the sentiment of Platonic love; and his verses repeatedly give it a rhetorical expression equally fine. He says,

Better plea Love cannot have, than that, in loving thee, Glory to that eternal Peace is paid, Who such divinity to thee imparts As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts.

His hope is treacherous only whose love dies With beauty, which is varying every hour.

But in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower, That breathes on earth the air of Paradise.

Vittoria said, "He who admires only the works of Michael Angelo values the smallest part in him." One of the only two portraits he ever painted was hers. The aged Angelo stood by the couch of Vittoria at her death. When the last breath had gone, "he raised her hand, and kissed it with a sacred respect." It is touching to know, that the sublime old man, years afterwards, recalling that scene to a friend, lamented, that, in the awe of the moment, he had refrained from pressing his lips on those of the sainted Colonna. Hermann Grimm says, "How great the loss was which he sustained can be realized only by him who has himself felt the void which the removal of a superior intellect irretrievably leaves behind it. It must have been to him as if a long-used, magnificent book, in which he found words suiting every mood, had been suddenly closed, never to be re-opened. Nothing can compensate for the loss of a friend who has journeyed with us for many years, sharing our experiences. Vittoria was the only one who had ever fully opened her soul to him. What profit could he draw from the reverence of those who would have ceased to understand him, had he shown himself as he was in truth? His only consolation was the thought, that his own career was near its close."

Among the celebrated French women, who have had a genius and a pa.s.sion for friends.h.i.+ps, Mademoiselle de Scudery deserves prominent mention. Her great talents, virtuous character, and affectionate disposition, made her a favorite in the distinguished society she frequented. The great Conde, Madame de Longueville, and the other famous visitors of the Hotel Rambouillet, honored her, and took delight in her companions.h.i.+p. Her ardent devotion to her friends, her beautiful and heroic fidelity to them, her chivalrous vein of sentiment and character, Cousin has ill.u.s.trated with his minute learning and generous eloquence. Why Madame de Longueville was in disgrace with the court party, Mademoiselle de Scudery, with a fearless and n.o.ble constancy, dedicated a book to her, and, in consequence, lost her pension, and had to write for her bread. For this her aristocratic friends, instead of forsaking her, admired and clung to her the more. Her famous work, the "Grand Cyrus," in ten thick volumes, to which Cousin has brought to light a complete key, is filled with disguised portraits of her friends and a.s.sociates, and with descriptions of the times.

She draws her own likeness under the name of Sappho. In this work, the pictures, incidents, and conversations reflect a state of society, in which "the degrees and shades of friends.h.i.+p, from deep Platonic love to the slight impression one person makes on another at first meeting, are the real pre-occupations of existence; the smallest grace of mind or manner is observed, and of importance; there is an intense epicurism in companions.h.i.+p; it is both the first occupation and the greatest pleasure of life." The second edition of an English translation of the whole ten volumes of the "Grand Cyrus"

was published in London in 1691. The translator, F. G., Esq., erroneously attributes the authors.h.i.+p to "that famous wit of France, Monsieur de Scudery, Governour of Nostre-Dame." He confounds the sister with the brother. It is dedicated to Queen Mary, wife of William of Orange, in a style of sonorous pomp, worthy of the court of Nadir Shah. In his preface, F. G. says, "If you ask what the subject is; 'Tis the Height of Prowess, intermixed with Virtuous and Heroick Love; consequently the language lofty, and becoming the Grandeur of the Ill.u.s.trious Personages that speak; so far from the least Sully of what may be thought Vain or Fulsom, that there is not anything to provoke a Blush from the most modest Virgin; while Love and Honour are in a seeming Contention which shall best instruct the willing ear with most Delight." In describing the deep and rare friends.h.i.+ps with which the "Grand Cyrus" abounds, Mademoiselle de Scudery had but to look into her own heart, and make copies from her experience. Especially might the union of Sappho and Phaon stand for the picture of her own connection with Pelisson." The exchange of their thoughts was so sincere that all those in Sappho's mind pa.s.sed into Phaon's, and all those in Phaon's came into Sappho's. They told each other every particular of their lives; and so perfect was their union, that nothing was ever seen equal to it. Never did love join so much purity to so much ardor. He wished for nothing beyond the possession of her heart. They understood each other without words, and saw their whole hearts in each other's eyes." Pelisson was twenty-nine, and Mademoiselle de Scudery forty-five, when they first met. Their instant mutual interest deepened, on more thorough acquaintance, into the warmest esteem and affection, and remained unshaken for over forty years. The perfection of their intimacy was known to every one; and every one believed in its entire purity.

Cousin says it is touching to see these two n.o.ble persons made so happy by their friends.h.i.+p, a friends.h.i.+p which even the coa.r.s.e and slanderous Tallement respected so much that he refrained from casting a single sneer at it. The story of Pelisson's imprisonment in the Bastile is known to the whole world by the anecdote of the spider.

His only companion, during those wretched years, was a large spider, which he had tamed, and was accustomed to feed and play with. One day, the brute of a jailer trod on him, and killed him; and Pa.s.son wept. His friend employed all her ingenuity, during his confinement, in inventing means of communication with him. "At times, when he was ready to fall into despair, a few lines would reach him, and bring him comfort." At length his prison was opened, and fortune smiled again. At his death, Mademoiselle de Scudery, though eighty-six years old, wrote and published a simple and affecting memoir of him, paying a deserved tribute to his character, in which, she said, there reigned a singular and most charming combination of tenderness, delicacy, and generosity. The most constant among the large circle of admiring friends drawn around Madame de Sevigne by her merits and charms was a cultivated Italian gentleman named Corbinelli, who lived in Paris, on a moderate income, asking only leisure, and the gratification of his high tastes. He was "one of those rare exceptions who seem created by nature to be the benevolent spectators of human events, without taking any part in them beyond that of observation and interest for the actors." He had talents equal to the greatest achievements, but was indolent and unambitious.

He was one of the earliest to discern and to proclaim Madame de Sevigne's exquisite superiority of mind, disposition, and manners, and to pay reverential court to her. Lamartine gives this account of the friends.h.i.+p that ensued--an account not less instructive than interesting: "His admiration, his wors.h.i.+p, which sought no return, gained him admittance to her house, where he was regarded as one of the family, and became a necessary appendage. Madame de Sevigne, at first charmed by his wit, afterward touched by his disinterested attachment, concluded by making him the confidant of her most secret emotions. Every heart that beats warmly beneath its own bosom seeks to hear itself repeated in that of another. Corbinelli became the echo of Madame de Sevigne's mind, soul, and existence. He partic.i.p.ated in her adoration of her daughter. At Paris, he visited her every day: he sometimes followed her to Livry; and, when absent, corresponded with her frequently.

"The dominion which his friend exercised over him was so gentle, that he experienced no feeling of slavery while submitting 'implicitly to the rule of her tastes. So absolute was her empire, that, when she became a devotee, he became a mystic: he followed her, as the satellite accompanies the planet, from the worldly gayeties of her youth, even to the foot of the altar, and the ascetic self-denial of Port-Royal. He survived her, as though he had survived himself, and lived to the extraordinary age of one hundred and four years, animated to unusual life by his gentle and amiable feelings. Such was Madame de Sevigne's princ.i.p.al friend. If his name were erased from her letters, the monument would be mutilated." La Rochefoucauld, whose reputation the indignant eloquence of Cousin has so damaged, was the object of an admiring friends.h.i.+p, of which he was not worthy, from Madame de Sevigne and Madame de la Fayette. But of all the friends to whom the ardent, imaginative, faithful heart of Madame de Sevigne attached itself, no one, after her husband and her daughter, held so commanding a place as Fouquet, the unfortunate minister of Louis XIV. Fouquet must have had rare traits, besides his acknowledged greatness of mind, to have won such a pure and unconquerable affection. Cast down from power, disgraced, closely imprisoned for fifteen years in the fortress of Pignerol, scoffed at by those who had fawned on him in his prosperity, and forgotten by nearly all whom he had befriended, never did Madame de Sevigne forget him, or cease, for one day, her efforts to alleviate his condition-- cheering him with letters, and toiling to secure his liberation.

D'Alembert had a long and sedulously improved friends.h.i.+p with Madame du Deffand, of whom Henault said, "Friends.h.i.+p was a pa.s.sion with her; and no woman ever had more friends, or better deserved them."

There was a basis for this eulogy; but it needs much qualification.

She and D'Alembert prized each other's society highly, and pa.s.sed much time together. But jealousy and exaction are tenacious occupants, easily recalled to the heart even of an aged and friendly woman. When D'Alembert formed a closer friends.h.i.+p with Mademoiselle Lespina.s.se, the young and charming companion of Madame du Deffand, the latter imperiously dictated the renunciation of the new friend as the condition of retaining the old. The superiority of temper, genius, and worth in Mademoiselle Lespina.s.se did not permit D'Alembert to hesitate; and she repaid him with memorable fidelity.

The affectionate and dependent girl was harshly driven out. In her anguish, she took laudanum, but not with a fatal result. D'Alembert then called Du Deffand an old viper; but his friend checked him, and would never allow any abuse of her former mistress, much less herself indulge in vituperation of her. When D'Alembert was attacked by a malignant fever, she went to his bedside, and nursed him day and night till he was convalescent. Marmontel says, "Malice itself never a.s.sailed their pure and innocent intimacy." She afterwards formed an attachment, of the most romantic character, to the young Spanish Marquis de Mora, who reciprocated her affection with impa.s.sioned ardor. He died while on the road to join her; and she was not long in following him into the grave, though, in the mean time, a still stronger pa.s.sion for Guibert had weaned her from D'Alembert. The fervent tenderness of the latter for her remained unaltered, and he was inconsolable at her departure. On hearing of her death, Madame du Deffand said, "Had she only died fifteen years earlier, I should not have lost D'Alembert." Her letters are famous in the literature of love. Sir James Mackintosh says, "They are, in my opinion, the truest picture of deep pa.s.sion ever traced by a human being." Margaret Fuller writes, "I am swallowing by gasps that cauldrony beverage of selfish pa.s.sion and morbid taste, the letters of Lespina.s.se. It is good for me. The picture, so minute in its touches, is true as death." Madame de Stael had many devoted friends.h.i.+ps, as would naturally be expected from the overwhelming wealth and ardor of her nature. Affinity of genius and a common love of liberty drew Benjamin Constant and her into intimate relations; and she maintained for years still closer relations with the all-knowing, all-cultured August Schlegel, whose devouring egotism and ever-sensitive vanity put all her patience and generosity to the proof.

The current opinion concerning Madame de Stael, that she was an exacting and disagreeable woman, is unjust. Schiller, who shrank from her impetuous eloquence, and Heine, whose reckless satire depicts her as going through Europe, a whirlwind in petticoats, both do her wrong. William von Humboldt, who knew her well, p.r.o.nounces a glowing eulogy on her exalted traits, and says that Goethe, from prejudice and ignorance, was very unjust to her. Madame Mole says, "Women are not half grateful enough to Madame de Stael for the honor she conferred upon her s.e.x by taking up the n.o.ble side of every question, armed with her pen and her eloquence, and never once calculating what the consequences might be. As time goes on, and details sink into insignificance, she will rise as the grand figure who withstood Bonaparte at the head of six hundred thousand men, with Europe at his back. His vanity was such that he could not bear one woman should refuse to praise him; for that was her only guilt." She was capable of the utmost magnanimity and disinterestedness. Every exalted sentiment struck a powerful chord in her heart. She lived in justice, freedom, beneficence, love, aspiration. The friends.h.i.+p of Matthieu de Montmorency, the most intimate and devoted of all her friends, is enough to prove her exalted worth, making every abatement for her acknowledged foibles. This chivalrous n.o.bleman came, in his youth, to America with Lafayette, and fought for the new Republic. Although one of the foremost members of the aristocracy, it was on his motion in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly that the privileges of the n.o.bility were abolished. Sympathy in opinions and in the generous strain of their characters was the basis of a connection between him and Madame de Stael, that constantly grew in strength with the trials to which it was subjected, and was not severed even by death. When his brother, ardently loved, fell under the axe of the Revolution, it was her delicate sympathy, her ingenious and indefatigable goodness, that first soothed his anguish, a.s.suaged the horror that threatened his reason, and prepared the way for religion and peace. And in turn, when she was exiled by Napoleon, Montmorency journeyed to Switzerland to visit her, at the risk of being banished himself, as he immediately was. "Matthieu, the friend of twenty years, is the most faultless being I have ever known." "How could he think I should tarry in Germany, when, by leaving it, I had a chance of seeing him?

All Germany could not pay me for the loss of two days of his society." No unkindness, suspicion, or ign.o.bleness of any sort, ever interrupted or mixed in the affection of these high friends. When Montmorency died, suddenly, in church, years after the death of Madame de Stael, the daughter of the latter, the d.u.c.h.ess de Broglie, instinctively exclaimed, on hearing of the event, "Ah, my G.o.d! I seem to see the grief of my poor mother." The prejudice in England and America against friends.h.i.+ps between men and women has operated considerably to lessen their frequency, still more to keep them from public attention when they do exist. Undoubtedly, many a charming English woman, many a charming American woman, in her time the centre of the social circles of fas.h.i.+on, letters, and politics, has been surrounded by a company of friends as devoted at heart as those who have gathered with more public homage about the famous dames of France and Germany. Such groups will be called to mind by the English names of Mrs. Montagu, Lady Melbourne, Lady Holland; the American names of Mrs. Madison, Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Seaton, Mrs. Schuyler, and many others. But, since, with the most of these latter, the details have not been taken from the category of private property, by publications of memoirs and journals, it would be impertinent to single them out for personal mention, even where it is possible.

Magdalen Herbert, mother of George Herbert, befriended Dr. Donne in his distresses, ministering to the wants of his family with generous delicacy, and comforting him by her society. His discernment of her wit and piety, her gracious and n.o.ble disposition, combined with his grat.i.tude to make him her fast and fervent friend. His conversation, together with that of Bishop Andrews, whose renown Clarendon and Milton unite to swell, appears to have given Lady Herbert great delight. Lasting evidence of the impression her character and kindness made on him is found in his verses and letters addressed to her, and in the funeral sermon which, with many tears, he preached for her. He says in verse, in her advancing age,

No spring nor summer beauty has such grace As I have seen on an autumnal face.

And he gratefully writes to her in his quaint prose, "Your favors to me are everywhere. I use them and have them. I enjoy them at London and leave them there, and yet find them at Mitcham. Such riddles as these become things inexpressible; and such is your goodness." There was a choice, ever-comforting, and sacred friends.h.i.+p between the great John Locke and the excellent Lady Damaris Masham, the only daughter of that ornament of the English Church, the learned and benignant Cudworth.

She was one of the most gifted, cultivated, and elegant women of her time. The genius and moral worth of Locke are well known to all.

Domesticated in the family of Lady Masham for many years before his death, giving her all the advantage of his talents, acquirements, and sympathy, "she returned the obligation with singular benevolence and grat.i.tude, always treating him with the utmost generosity and respect; for she had an inviolable friends.h.i.+p for him." She watched by him in his last illness. He asked her to read a psalm to him. As death approached, he desired her to break off reading, and in a few minutes breathed his closing breath. She wrote the fine sketch of his character published in the "Historical Dictionary." She says his manners made him very agreeable to all sorts of people, and n.o.body was better received than he among those of the highest rank. "His greatest amus.e.m.e.nt was to talk with sensible people, and he courted their conversation." The amiable, unfortunate Cowper, the most shrinking and melancholy of men, too gentle and too unworldly for common companions.h.i.+p, was especially fitted for the soothing ministrations and the healing sympathy of women. He was dependent on these friends.h.i.+ps, and found his chief happiness in them. But for them, his career would have been as brief as it was wretched; and his name, now haloed with such sadly pleasing attractions, would have had no place in English literature, except in the dark list of madmen and suicides. Who that has read his matchless lines on his mother's picture will not bless the good women who shed so many rays of peace and bliss on his unhappy lot. His cousin, the angelic Lady Hesketh, whose disinterested tenderness lavished grateful attentions on him, with a sweet skill that failed neither in his youth nor in his age, was as a light from heaven on his path through the whole journey.

Some touching verses, and innumerable references in his letters, attest his appreciation of her. Mrs. Throckmorton and her husband, in whose grounds he loved to walk, and in whose kindly and refined society he spent so many delightful hours, furnished a healthy relief from the gloom of his austere religion, in the atmosphere of their genial catholicity; and were an invaluable comfort and benefit to him. Lady Austen also, a sprightly and accomplished woman, of intellectual tastes, quick sympathies, and charming manners, whose appearance at Olney "added fresh plumes to the wings of time," was at one period an inexpressible blessing to him. "Lady Austen's conversation acted on Cowper's mind as the harp of David on the troubled spirit of Saul." He christened her "Sister Ann," and wrote cordial verses to her. Constant communications with her withdrew his attention from depressing superst.i.tions, and enlivened his spirits.

At her suggestion it was, and under her sustaining encouragement, that he composed the immortal ballad of "John Gilpin," the "Dirge for the Royal George," and his greatest work, "The Task." Love being proscribed by his repeated subjection to insanity, friends.h.i.+p was the resource in which he was thrice fortunate.

Far above all others in the number of his female friends, in importance, must be ranked Mary Unwin, whose name is indissolubly joined with his in the memories of all who are familiar with his plaintive story. Mrs. Unwin, wife of a clergyman, religious after the most scrupulous evangelical type, was first drawn to Cowper by a sectarian interest. They were fated to be friends, as by the striking of a die. "That woman," he soon wrote to Lady Hesketh, "is a blessing to me; and I never see her without being the better for her company."

This is the secret of the charm of all true friends.h.i.+p--that it soothes the heart, clarifies the mind, heightens the soul. One feels so much the better for it. Almost penniless as he was, a s.h.i.+ftless manager, a.s.sailed by terrible depression and even madness, the Unwins took him under their roof, and gave him a home on the most generous terms. From this time until her death, the friends.h.i.+p of Mary was a necessity to Cowper, the greatest support and enjoyment the hapless poet knew, combining with his native humor and gentleness to combat his melancholy malady with frequent and long victories. In his fits of insanity, she watched and waited on him day and night, defying alike personal hards.h.i.+ps and the slanderous remarks of the vile. The only drawback on Cowper's indebtedness to Mrs. Unwin was her jealous wish to restrict him to the society of her own sect of religionists, that harrowing type of piety represented by John Newton. Otherwise, he might have enjoyed much more frequent and prolonged periods of what he cheerily characterized as "absences of Mr. Blue-devil." Lady Hesketh said of her, "She seems in truth to have no will left on earth but for his good. How she has supported the constant attendance she has gone through with the last thirteen years is to me, I confess, wonderful." Cowper himself said, "It is to her, under Providence, I owe it that I am alive at all." With a devotion in which self appeared to be lost, "there she sat, on the hardest and smallest chair, leaving the best to him, knitting, with the finest possible needles, stockings of the nicest texture. He wore no others than of her knitting." After nearly a generation of her fond and sedulous ministering, repeatedly stricken with paralysis, her mind decayed, mute, almost blind, as she sat by his side, a pathetic memento of what she had been, Cowper composed for her that unsurpa.s.sed tribute, his exquisite and imperishable lines, "To Mary":

The twentieth year has well-nigh past, Since first our sky was overcast: Ah! would that this might be our last, My Mary!

Thy spirits have a fainter flow: I see thee daily weaker grow; 'Tis my distress that brought thee low, My Mary!

Thy needles, once a s.h.i.+ning store, For my sake restless heretofore, Now rust, disused, and s.h.i.+ne no more, My Mary!

Thy indistinct expressions seem Like language uttered in a dream; Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme, My Mary!

Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, Are still more lovely in my sight Than golden beams of orient light, My Mary!

Partakers of my sad decline, Thy hands their little force resign; Yet, gently prest, press gently mine, My Mary!

Yet ah! by constant heed, I know How oft the sadness that I show Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, My Mary!

And should my future lot be cast With much resemblance of the past, Thy worn-out heart will break at last, My Mary!

Lady Hesketh, ever a true angel, came and dwelt with the afflicted pair. And when Cowper, after four wretched years of separation, plunged, as he expressed it, in deeps unvisited by any human soul save his, followed his faithful sister-spirit to a better world, Lady Hesketh, that model of a third friend, built, in St. Edmund's Chapel, where he was buried, a monument displaying two tablets, both bearing poetical inscriptions; one dedicated to William Cowper, the other to Mary Unwin. The friends.h.i.+p of Garrick and Mrs. Clive is memorable for its sprightliness, sincerity, unbroken harmony-saving a few momentary quarrels for relish--long duration, and the large measure of happiness it yielded. Their correspondence is very entertaining, and reflects honor on them both. Their talents and virtues contributed in a high degree to adorn and elevate the profession to which they belonged. It is an interesting fact, equally creditable to all the parties, that "Pivy," as they affectionately called Kittie Clive, was as dear to the excellent Mrs. Garrick as to her brilliant husband. The friends.h.i.+p of David Garrick was also one of the most delightful features in the life of the admirable Hannah More. A letter written by Hannah on seeing him play Lear, greatly pleased him, and led to their acquaintance. Acquaintance soon ripened into a warm esteem, and produced a friends.h.i.+p of the most cordial--and intimate character, which lasted until death. He declared that the nine muses had taken up their residence in her mind; and both in his conversation and his letters he constantly called her "Nine." One day when she and Johnson, and a few others, were at table with the Garricks, David read to the company her Sir Eldred, with such inimitable feeling that the happy auth.o.r.ess burst into tears. Friends.h.i.+p filled a large s.p.a.ce in the life of Hannah More, administering incalculable strength in her labors, joy in her successes, comfort in her afflictions. It has left its memorials in the records of a host of visits, gifts, letters, poems, dedications. Her correspondence with Sir William Pepys shows what an invaluable resource a wise, pure, comprehensive friends.h.i.+p is in the life of a thoughtful woman. Bishop Porteus bequeathed her a legacy of a hundred pounds. She consecrated an urn to him near her house with an inscription in memory of his long and faithful friends.h.i.+p. Mr. Turner, of Belmont, to whom she was for six years betrothed, but broke off the engagement after he had three times postponed the appointed wedding-day, always retained the highest esteem for her, and left her a thousand pounds at his death.

She also maintained a most friendly relation, as long as his increasing habit of intemperance allowed it, with her early tutor, Langhorne, the translator of Plutarch. On occasion of an antic.i.p.ated visit from her, Langhorne wrote a very pretty poem, beginning,

Blow, blow, my sweetest rose!

For Hannah More will soon be here; And all that crowns the ripening year Should triumph where she goes.

Joanna Baillie and Sir Walter Scott were deeply attached friends.

United by a generous admiration for genius, by esteem for exalted worth and by community of tastes, they were drawn still more closely together by many mutual kindnesses, visits, and frequent correspondence. A copy of Scott's "Marmion," fresh from the press, was placed in Joanna's hands. She cut the leaves and began to read it aloud to a small circle of friends, when she suddenly came upon the following magnificent and electrifying tribute to herself:

Or, if to touch such chord be thine, Restore the ancient tragic line, And emulate the notes that rung From the wild harp that silent hung By silver Avon's holy sh.o.r.e Till twice an hundred years rolled o'er; When she, the bold enchantress, came With fearless hand and heart in flame, From the pale willow s.n.a.t.c.hed the treasure, And swept it with a kindred measure, Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove With Monfort's hate and Basil's love, Awakening at the inspired strain, Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again!

Joanna, though taken by surprise, read on in a firm voice, till she observed the uncontrollable emotion of a friend by her side. Then she too gave way. It is delightful to partake by sympathy in so generous a gift of joy. What a pity it is that such a loving magnanimity as that of glorious Sir Walter is not more frequent among authors! The chief advantage of Fox over Pitt consisted in the fascinating demonstrativeness of his heart and manners. This won him hosts of idolizing friends, foremost among whom were many of the choicest ladies of the kingdom.