Logo DBNL
De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 1995 (1995)

De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 1995

(1995)– [tijdschrift] Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

C.P. Courtney
Reassessing Belle de Zuylen
A historical perspective*

From the numerous books and articles which have been devoted to the life and works of Belle de Zuylen, who later became Isabelle de Charrière, there emerge, broadly speaking, two different images. The first is the traditional image, the main outline of which can be found in certain writings of Benjamin Constant and which has been given memorable and influential expression in the biographical and critical studies published in the early years of the present century by Philippe Godet, Gustave Rudler and Geoffrey Scott.1. The second image is a new one, which is still being eloborated; it began to emerge in the early 1970s, when there was an extraordinary revival of interest in Belle de Zuylen, and it is now based, in essentials, on a close study of the van Oorschot edition of the OEuvres complètes, which was published between 1979 and 1984.2. This edition has made it possible for the first time for us to form a first-hand acquaintance with the whole of Belle de Zuylen's extant writings, including the correspondence, and it enables us - indeed, compels us - to re-examine that traditonal image which, over the last half-century or more, so many commentators have been reproducing uncritically and unimaginatively from Benjamin Constant and from the writings of Godet, Rudler and Scott.

 

The starting-point for any study of the traditional image is Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, which was begun in 1806 (a year after Isabelle de Charrière's death), completed in essentials by 1810 and finally published in 1816. As is well known, the public, much to the annoyance of the author, insisted in reading Adolphe as a roman à clef or thinly-disguised autobiography based on real people and real-life situations. The sad hero, it was assumed, was Constant himself, the heroine was Germaine de Staël (or, according to

some readers, Anna Lindsay), Adolphe's father was Juste de Constant, and so on. As for Isabelle de Charrière, she was identified with the elderly lady whose portrait we find in the first chapter of the novel:

‘J'avais à l'âge de dix-sept ans vu mourir une femme âgée, dont l'esprit, d'une tournure remarquable et bizarre, avait commencé à développer le mien. Cette femme, comme tant d'autres, s'était, à l'entrée de sa carrière, lancée vers le monde, qu'elle ne connaissait pas, avec le sentiment d'une grande force d'âme et de facultés vraiment puissantes. Comme tant d'autres aussi, faute de s'être pliée à des convenances factices, mais nécessaires, elle avait vu ses espérances trompées, sa jeunesse passer sans plaisir; et la vieillesse enfin l'avait atteinte sans la soumettre. Elle vivait dans un château voisin d'une de nos terres, mécontente et retirée, n'ayant que son esprit pour ressource, et analysant tout avec son esprit. Pendant près d'un an, dans nos conversations inépuisables nous avions envisagé la vie sous toutes ses faces, et la mort toujours pour terme de tout; et après avoir tant causé de la mort avec elle, j'avais vu la mort la frapper à mes yeux.’3.

This is a sad and gloomy picture of a wasted life, of disappointed hopes, of disillusionment and, indeed, of sterility, for the lady's powerful and original mind serves only to analyse her hopeless plight. The picture is even gloomier when we place it in its context: it is preceded by a meditation on death:

‘Je portais au fond de mon coeur un besoin de sensibilité dont je ne m'apercevais pas, mais qui, ne trouvant point à se satisfaire, me détachait successivement de tous les objets qui tour à tour attiraient ma curiosité. Cette indifférence sur tout s'était encore fortifiée par l'idée de la mort, l'idée qui m'avait frappé très jeune, et sur laquelle je n'ai jamias conçu que les hommes s'étourdissent si facilement.’4.

And, after recording the death of his friend, the narrator continues:

‘Cet événement m'avait rempli d'un sentiment d'incertitude sur la destinée, et d'une rêverie vague qui ne m'abandonnait pas. Je lisais de préférence dans les poètes qui rappelaient la brièveté de la vie humaine. Je trouvais qu'aucun but ne valait la peine d'aucun effort.’5.

Adolphe's elderly friend not only confirmed his gloomy thoughts about the apparent meaninglessness of life; she inspired in him a bitterly ironic and critical attitude to society, which she considered inhabited by stupid people whose lives were governed by platitudes:

‘J'avais contracté dans mes conversations avec la femme qui la première avait développé mes idées une insurmontable aversion pour toutes les maximes communes et pour toutes les formules dogmatiques. Lors donc que j'entendais la médiocrité disserter avec complaisance sur des principes bien établis, bien incontestables, en fait de morale, de convenances ou de religion, choses qu'elle met assez volontiers sur la même ligne, je me sentais poussé à la contredire, non que j'eusse adopté des opinions opposées, mais parce que j'étais impatienté d'une conviction si ferme et si lourde. Je ne sais quel instinct m'avertissait, d'ailleurs, de me défier de ces axiomes généraux si exempts de toute restriction, si purs de toute nuance. Les sots font de leur morale une masse compacte et indivisible, pour qu'elle se mêle le moins possible avec leurs actions et les laisse libres dans tous les détails.’6.

Needless to say, this attitude of critical superiority did nor endear Adolphe to the people he met in society:

‘Je me donnai bientôt par cette conduite, une grande réputation de légèreté, de persiflage, de méchanceté. Mes paroles amères furent considérées comme des preuves d'une âme haineuse, mes plaisanteries commes des attentats contre tout ce qu'il y avait de plus respectable.’7.

The young man is, of coure - and the reader will appreciate the irony here - making the same mistake as his friend who, in her youth, failed to understand that in every society it is necessary to have rules and conventions: ‘des convenances factices, mais nécessaires’.8.

The importance of these passages for the history of Isabelle de Charrière's posthumous image can hardly be exaggerated; even today it is in reading chapter I of Adolphe (at least in an annotated edition) that students of French literature hear of her for the first time. However, it would be a mistake to suppose that as early as 1816, when the novel was first published, most readers were capable of identifying the minor characters with people in real life. In fact, only Constant's relatives, close friends or members of the circle he knew in Neuchâtel and Colombier had any knowledge of his friendship with Isabelle de Charrière. In any case, her name would have meant nothing to the majority of readers, for by 1816 she had fallen into near-oblivion, so much so that the author of the brief biographical article devoted to her in the 1813 volume of the Biographie universelle9. seems to have had the greatest difficulty in assembling any accurate information about her life and writings; in fact, the article is grotesquely inade-

quate and even garbles her name, which is given as ‘Charrière, Mme de St-Hyacinth de’, a curious error which to this day is perpetuated in the catalogues of several major libraries.

However, Isabelle de Charrière was not destined to remain for long in total obscurity; before the middle of the century she had been discovered by Sainte-Beuve, who brought her to the attention of a wide reading public in a series of publications which date from the period 1832-1845 and were frequently reprinted. These include articles in the Revue de deux mondes on her novels, a study of her relations with Benjamin Constant based on selections (somewhat inaccurately transcribed, unfortunately) of their unpublished correspondence and an edition of the Lettres écrites de Lausanne and Caliste.10. By now the identity of the elderly lady in Adolphe was common knowledge; Sainte-Beuve quotes the relevant passages from chapter I of the novel and states explicitely that Isabelle de Charrière is the model. If any further confirmation were needed, it was forthcoming in later publications which drew on Constant's original manuscripts, particularly Dora Melegari's edition of the Journal intime (1895), which included a series of letters addressed to Isabelle de Charrière by Constant11. and, even more important, the edition of the Cahier rouge (Ma Vie) which was published in 1907.12.

In Constant's autobiographical Cahier rouge Isabelle de Charrière is introduced in the following passage:

‘Ce fut à cette époque [1787] que je fis connaissance avec la première femme d'un esprit supérieur que j'aie connue, et l'une de celles qui en avait le plus que j'aie jamais rencontrées. Elle se nommait Mme de Charrière. C'était une Hollandaise d'une des premières familles de ce pays, et qui, dans sa jeunesse, avait fait beaucoup de bruit par son esprit et la bizarrerie de son caractère. A trente ans passés, après beaucoup de passions, dont quelques-unes avaient été assez malheureuses, elle avait épousé, malgré sa famille, le précepteur de ses frères, homme d'exprit, d'un caractère délicat et noble, mais le plus froid et le plus flegmatique

que l'on puisse imaginer. Durant les premières années de son mariage, sa femme l'avait beaucoup tourmenté pou lui imprimer un mouvement égal au sien; et le chagrin de n'y parvenir que par moments avait bien vite détruit le bonheur qu'elle s'était promis dans cette union à quelques égards disproportionnée.’13.

This is followed by a brief account of how she fell in love with a man much younger than herself who eventually abandoned her to marry another woman and how the despair and unhappiness which she experienced inspired her to write Caliste. The text continues:

‘Elle était occupée à faire imprimer ce livre quand je fis connaissance avec elle. Son esprit m'enchanta. Nous passâmes des jours et des nuits à causer ensemble. Elle était très sévère dans ses jugements sur tous ceux qu'elle voyait. J'était très moqueur de ma nature. Nous nous convîmes parfaitement. Mais nous nous trouvâmes bientôt l'un avec l'autre des rapports plus intimes et plus essentiels. Mme de Charrière avait une manière si originale et si animée de considérer la vie, un tel mépris pour les préjugés, tant de force dans ses pensées, et une supériorité si vigoureuse et si dédaigneuse sur le commun des hommes, que dans ma disposition, à vingt ans, bizarre et dédaigneux que j'étais aussi, sa conversation m'était une jouissance jusqu'alors inconnue. Je m'y livrai avec transport.’14.

In the same vein he writes in a later passage:

‘Toutes les opinions de Mme de Charrière reposaient sur le mépris de toutes les convenances et de tous les usages. Nous nous moquions à qui mieux de tous ceux que nous voyions: nous nous enivrions de nos plaisanteries et de notre mépris pour l'espèce humaine, et il résultait de tout cela que j'agissais comme j'avais parlé, riant quelquefois comme un fou une demi-heure après de ce que j'avais fait de très bonne foi dans le désespoir une demi-heure avant.’15.

There are some obvious differences between the presentation of Isabelle de Charrière in the passages just quoted from the Cahier rouge and the portrait of the elderly lady in Adolphe. In the first place, whereas the tone of Adolphe is tragic, the Cahier rouge is written in a tone of bitter or ironic comedy. Secondly, the information given in the Cahier rouge is more detailed than in the novel; in Adolphe there is no reference to the lady's Dutch origins, her unhappy marriage, her unrequited love for a younger man or her having written a novel. What the two descriptions have in common is that purely negative attitude to social conventions and accepted beliefs which can have such a devastating effect when instilled into an inexperienced and

impressionable young man by a bitterly disappointed older woman of outstanding intelligence. ‘Je suis convaincu’, we read in the Cahier rouge, ‘que sans ces conversations, [with Mme de Charrière], ma conduite eût été beaucoup moins folle’16., and indeed, the role of Isabelle de Charrière, as she is depicted here, consists very largely of egging the young man on, of encouraging his outrageous anti-social behaviour. And, as we have seen, the role of the elderly lady in Adolphe is similar.

Taken together, Adolphe and the Cahier rouge have provided several generations of readers with a purely negative image of Isabelle de Charrière: unhappy in her early years, unfortunate in her marriage, unsuccessful in love, she is an ironic detached observer whose brilliant intelligence is directed towards destroying all established beliefs without putting anything in their place. As for her writings, these, in spite of Sainte-Beuve's admiration for her novels, were more or less forgotten; by the beginning of the present century she was remembered, if at all, simply as the friend of Benjamin Constant.

 

There was one place, however, where she was remembered for her own sake and where her writings were still admired. This was the canton of Neuchâtel, where Henriette Gaullieur (née L'Hardy) had inherited her literary manuscripts and where Isabelle Morel (née de Gélieu) hoped to publish a volume of her works with an introduction by Benjamin Constant.17. This plan came to nothing, but transcripts of some of her papers were communicated to Sainte-Beuve by Henriette Gaullieur's son, who himself, between 1845 and 1855, published a number of articles on Isabelle de Charrière, Benjamin Constant and related topics.18. Unfortunately, Gaullieur was no scholar and his publications are, for the most part, totally unreliable; however, he has his place in the history of Isabelle de Charrière's posthumous reputation, not only because he inherited her papers from his mother, but because it was he who drew Sainte-Beuve's attention to the real-life source of the portrait of the elderly lady in Adolphe. What Sainte-Beuve made of this, and of the texts he received from Gaullieur was, unfortunately, extremely damaging to the reputation of both Constant and Isabelle de Charrière; he suggested, without a shred of evidence, that Constant was a Chérubin who found in Isabelle de Charrière his first marraine - in other words, that their relationship was not innocent.19. Fortunately, there were better scholars in Neu-

châtel than Gaullieur. There was Charles Berthoud, who had every intention of writing a full-scale biography of the lady whom he referred to as ‘Notre-Dame de Colombier’; but somehow he kept putting it off and only managed to publish a short article on the subject: this is the entry entitled ‘Madame de Charrière’ in the Galerie suisse; biographies nationales (1876). Berthoud eventually passed his documentation on to a younger colleague, Philippe Godet, with the words: ‘Faites le livre que j'aurais dû faire. Mais dépêchezvous! Je n'ai pas le temps d'attendre’.20.

In spite of this exhortation, Godet's book was a long time in the making; but his Madame de Charrière et ses amis, which was eventually published in 1906, was worth waiting for, as were the editions of some of Isabelle de Charrière's works which he published over the next three years: an edition of her letters to Constant d'Hermenches (1909) and a two-volume collection of some of her prose fiction (1908-1909).21. The biography, which is in two lavishy illustrated volumes, is a monument of conscientious historical scholarship; it is also a labour of love and in fact, the author confesses in his preface that he has fallen in love with his subject. The great strength of the work lies in its massive documentation which was brought together mainly from Swiss archives, private and public. Needless to say, much new material has come to light since Godet wrote his biography, but it remains the most exhaustive and authoritative study, if not of the young Belle de Zuylen (for Godet's documentation is rather thin on the Dutch side), at least of Isabelle de Charrière seen in the setting of Neuchâtel and Colombier. Indeed, if the biography has a fault, it is Godet's tendency to submerge Isabelle de Charrière in so much background material that the reader sometimes loses sight of the main subject. This is something which Godet himself was aware of and he speaks in his preface rather apologetically of his self-indulgence in writing a book which might be found tedious by readers with little interest in the local history of Neuchâtel. When a new edition of the work was published (posthumously) in 1927, it was abridged by omitting much that was considered of interest only to the Swiss reader.22.

With regard to Godet's interpretation of Isabelle de Charrière, one notes his admiration for her style, her intellectual brilliance, her psychological

insight into character and her talent as letter-writer and novelist. However, when he considers her general attitude to life, he does so with stem disapproval. He regrets that she should have had doubts about the naïve faith of her childhood and that she should take up what he calls ‘a certain tone of detachment and precocious scepticism’, a scepticism to which he attributed her later unhappiness. When he passes from Belle de Zuylen to Isabelle de Charrière he sees everywhere at work this destructive scepticism and has no hesitation in accepting the picture given in chapter I of Adolphe, of which he writes:

‘Cette page résume la destinée de Mme de Charrière et caractérise à merveille l'influence qu'elle exerça sur le rare esprit qu'elle gouverna pendant six ans.’23.

This he sees as a misfortune for the young Benjamin Constant:

‘Nous pensons que ce fut un malheur pour lui de tomber sous l'influence d'une femme moralement désmeparée, de s'abandonner à son charme, d'autant plus dangereux, qu'il s'accompagnait d'une affection profonde, d'une sollicitude attentive, et d'une véritable élévation de sentiments.’24.

However, it would be a mistake to think that Godet's interpretation is based simply on his understanding of Isabelle de Charrière's friendship with Constant. Wherever he turns he finds evidence of that ironic scepticism of which he so strongly disapproves and which he sees as a philosophy of despair, a philosophy which he sums up as follows:

‘A quoi bon agir, en effet? A quoi s'enthousiasmer? A quoi bon vivre? A quoi bon? Cela résume, hélas, pour Mme de Charrière, sa conception de l'humaine destinée.’

And he continues: ‘Par là s'explique son dilletantisme fiévreux, cette activité à tout propos, mais un peu vide, sans but précis, dans laquelle la pauvre désenchantée a consumé sa vie’.25. Again, a few further examples of his judgements:

‘Profondément sceptique, naturellement désabusée, elle ne crut jamais à la vie. Nous l'avons souvent répété, le mot qui résume toute sa “raison pratique”, c'est A quoi bon? Dès l'âge de jeune fille, elle a cessé de croire à l'utilité de l'action et à la vertu des principes (nous ne disons pas: aux principes de la vertu, encore qu'on pût l'insinuer). Elle avait tout ensemble un immense besoin d'activité et le sentiment incurable du néant de l'effort humain.’26.

He admits, it is true, that ‘elle aime la vie tout en l'estimant mauvaise’ and that ‘elle corrige son pessimisme par sa bonté’27., but immediately after making this concession he writes:

‘Pour elle-même, elle n'espère rien, et s'agite dans le vide, sachant que c'est le vide. Elle souffre de cet ennui supérieur, conscient et raisonné, que crée le sentiment du néant de la vie, de l'inutilité de l'effort et de la bêtise universelle. De là vient l'inquiète diversité, la mobilité de ses caprices. Rien ne vaut bien sérieusement la peine d'être fait, mais il y a la distraction passagère que l'effort nous donne et le plaisir que nous pouvons donner aux autres.’28.

Thus, we are told, ‘sa prodigieuse activité ressemble ainsi à un jeu’ and she ‘a trop de clairvoyance pour croire à un résultat durable et utile de son oeuvre: son scepticisme la prive de cette illusion consolante’. This scepticism, this failure to find any meaning in life, undermines the apparent sincerity of her writings:

‘Quand, par example, elle plaide la cause douteuse de Thérèse Levasseur, ou quand elle morigène les Jacobins neuchâtelois, on sent qu'elle dit la vérité pour s'amuser et amuser les autres, plus que pour obéir à une conviction impérieuse et à un ordre pressant de sa conscience. Elle sait avant d'ecrire que tout l'esprit et tout le talent du monde ne changeront rien à ce qui est.’29.

This last judgement is somewhat devastating, particularly coming from a man who informs us he has fallen in love with the subject of the biography. It is a judgement which suggests that the whole of Isabelle de Charrière's writings are something of a sham, a frivolous form of amusement invented to pass the time. Readers of Godet are so impressed by his historical erudition and the loving care with which he inserts Isabelle de Charrière into the Swiss background that they tend to overlook the severity of his judgements.

 

Three years after the publication of Godet's biography of Isabelle de Charrière there appeared Gustave Rudler's Jeunesse de Benjamin Constant. Here we find a much more detailed study of Isabelle de Charrière's personality and, in some respects, a different interpretation of her life and works. The young Belle de Zuylen, according to Rudler, is not a sceptic: she is a highly-strung eighteenth-century rationalist whose norms are reason and nature. She is a rationalist living in an irrational world and the outcome, we are told, is bitterness, disappointment and, in philosophical terms, pessimism - that kind of pessimism which follows the collapse of the optimism of the

period and which is familiar to readers of Candide, where Voltaire rejects the optimism of Pope and Leibniz. It is a pessimism marked by ironic detachment and sardonic mockery.

As for her relationship with Constant, Rudler endorses the usual interpreation of chapter I of Adolphe and of those passages in the Cahier rouge which refer to Isabelle de Charrière. However, he believes that in some respects her influence on the young Constant was beneficial: she taught him to distrust jargon and clichés, offered him both a refuge from his dreadful family and also what is best described as maternal understanding. However, in the long run, her influence was harmful and, in fact, Rudler's interpretation is not so different from Godet's, especially when he writes that discussions between the young man and the lady twenty-seven years his senior usually led to a conclusion which is ‘le néant de tout’.30. The role of Isabelle de Charrière, as Rudler understands it, was to destroy what few illusions the young Constant might have had and to undermine his confidence in the future. Because of her, he says, though not only because of her, Benjamin Constant sank into a philosophy of despair: ‘Par elle (non par elle seule toutefois) il s'enfonça pour six ans dans une philosophie désolée.’ And he sums up: ‘En gros, il est certain qu'elle lui a fait du mal, je veux dire qu'elle l'a mûri trop vite’31.; in other words, she imposed on the young man her own middle-aged bitterness, disappointment and pessimism, Rudler's study ends with a section entitled: ‘L'élimination du pessimisme; rupture avec Mme de Charrière’: the conclusion to the story is Constant's break with Isabelle de Charrière and the beginning of his friendship with Germaine de Staël; the pessimism he had been absorbing at Le Pontet is replaced by the exciting optimism of Coppet.

 

By this time it must have seemed to readers that there was not much left to say about Isabelle de Charrière; Godet had written an exhaustive biography and Rudler an exhaustive account of her friendship with Constant. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that when Geoffrey Scott decided to write a book on the subject, he should have relied mainly on what he found in these two scholarly works. The Portrait of Zélide, which Scott published in 1925 is, nevertheless, a work of considerable importance insofar as it brought Belle de Zuylen to the attention of a wide readership. The book, which is short and written in an extremely attractive style, was reprinted at least eight times in England in 1925 and was reprinted in America in 1927 and 1959; it was also translated into French, in 1937, and published with an introduction by André Maurois.32. It is interesting that when Simone de Beauvoir

refers to Isabelle de Charrière in a famous passage on Le Deuxième sexe (1949), it is not to Godet or Rudler that she refers, but to Scott.33. Nor is the Portrait of Zélide Scott's only contribution to the subject; he wrote an introduction to Four Tales by Zélide, which is a translation of some of her works of prose fiction published in 1925 by his wife Lady Sybil Scott.34. He also published, for the first time, in 1929, as volume II of the Boswell Papers, all the extant correspondence between Belle de Zuylen and Boswell.35. It is thanks to Scott that Belle, or Zélide, has become a name familiar to students of English literature.

The Portrait of Zélide reads like a synthesis of Godet and Rudler. From the second Scott takes the idea that Belle is a disappointed rationalist, from Godet the idea that she believes that nothing is worth any human effort. A few quotations will illustrate the point. First, here is Belle the rationalist:

‘Belle de Zuylen, alone in the world of Tuylls, had caught the breath of the new spirit which thirty years later was to make the Revolution. If she seemed eccentric to her countrymen, it was because she appealed at every point from usage to reason: her true eighteenth-century mind could not doubt for a moment that logic was the basis of human happiness. That man is an irrational animal, for whom logic lays a snare; that custom, like the heart, has its own reasons; that folly, as a human attribute, is entitled, if not to veneration, at least to a certain tenderness, she could not conceive.’36.

However, beneath this rationalism there is scepticism and melancholy:

‘Her gaiety, which illuminated the shadowy world she moved in, was nevertheless the mask to a profound melancholy. She was one of those whose inmost consciousness is born sceptical, and she was disillusioned even before life had destroyed the illusions she artificially created.’37.

There follows an account of her unhappiness in marriage and love and then there is a passage which is very close to Godet: Scott, referring to Isabelle de Charrière's later years, writes:

‘Yet all this activity - the writing of books, this collecting of waifs - had no directing aim. It served to kill time; it helped her to forget the

monotony of Colombier and the maddening passivity of Monsieur de Charrière to whose inert presence she was forever chained [...] She strove to hide from herself the truth that she was simply a childless, passionate protective woman who had been frustrated in every instinct, and that the life of reason, which she had embraced so gallantly and defiantly at the start was now no more than a makeshift and a screen [...] The wheels of her intellect revolved at random in a kind of busy void, and the conclusion was always the same: à quoi bon?’38.

And, as for Isabelle de Charrière's writings, Scott, while he says she is ‘in the first rank of eighteenth-century letter writers’, is severely critical of her novels: ‘one must not look in these leisurely and urbane trifles of the eighteenth century’, he says, ‘for any originality of method, for sweep or speed in the action or medical zest in the psychology’.39. And, referring to her latter writings, he says, ‘The disillusion of life stole like dry rot over her later books, the bric-à-brac of her disenchanted mind.’40.

 

After Godet, Rudler and Scott, most critics, up until the 1970s, have very little to say about Isabelle de Charrière that had not been said before. Every book on Benjamin Constant and every edition of Adolphe refer to her, but in a way that suggests a complete lack of first-hand knowledge. Thus, for example, in the introduction to the Garnier edition of Adolphe, edited by Henry Bornecque in 1955 and frequently reprinted, we hear of ‘Belle de Zuylen, comtesse [sic] de Charrière’, whose influence on Constant was ‘considérable’ and ‘de bien des façons désastreuse.41. Again, Harold Nicolson, in his book on Constant (1949), until recently the most important study on the subject in English, writes:

‘She was a profoundly despondent woman [...] She combined in her morbid nature that unfortunate mixture of exaltation and gloom, of excitement and scepticism, of impulse and calculation, which was exactly attuned to Benjamin's own temperament at the time.’42.

And again:

‘She confirmed him [Constant] in his opinion that all human conventions were either unintelligent or harsh; that the only sure rule is to cherish and exploit the capacities, even the defects, with which nature had endowed one. To that extent she increased his egoism, while at the same time diminishing his self-reliance. In her bitter disappointment with life,

in her dread lest he might escape her, she discouraged his ambition. Her disillusion came from experience: his from self-distrust. She revenged herself for her own failure by persuading him that he could never succeed.’43.

Somehow we have heard all this before: in Adolphe and the Cahier rouge, in Godet, Rudler and Scott. Nor do we find anything new when we turn to studies written during this period (up to the 1970s) on Boswell, where the studies of Scott are considered authoritative. As for books concerned exclusively with Isabelle de Charrière, there are only two: the work entitled Les mariages manqués de Belle de Tuyll, published by the Baronne de Constant de Rebecque and Dorette Berthoud in 1940, and Arnold de Kerchove's Une amie de Benjamin Constant: Belle de Charrière, published in 1937.44. The first is a somewhat unreliable selection of extracts, with commentary, from Belle's correspondence with Constant d'Hermenches; the second, as its title indicates, presents her as a marginal figure: a friend of Benjamin Constant. Indeed, it was Belle's misfortune to have become essentially a marginal figure: French readers knew that she was a friend of Benjamin Constant, English and American readers that she was a friend of Boswell, but no one seemed to value her for her own sake. Nor were her writings available in any easily accessible edition.

During this barren period there were, of course, a few studies which were original and which broke away from what had now become almost a caricature of the traditional image. There was an article by Basil Munteano published in the Revue de littérature comparée in 1935, one by Sam Dresden in Neophilologus in 1961 and an essay by Jean Starobinski which dates from 1970.45. But these were exceptions; the moment for the renewal of interest in Belle de Zuylen had not yet arrived.

 

This renewal of interest, which dates from the 1970s, is essentially the work of Simone and Pierre Dubois, who, along with the late Geert van Oorschot, set in motion the machinery for the publication of the OEuvres complètes. This renewal of interest led to the organisation of an international con-

gress46. held in Zuylen in 1974 and many of us who were invited to that congress found ourselves reading Belle de Zuylen properly for the first time. We began to ask ourselves why she had been neglected for so long. Part of the answer may be simple prejudice and ignorance: the traditional image was of a marginal writer: marginal because she was a Dutchwoman living in Colombier and remote from such cultural centres as Paris and London; marginal because she was seen simply as the friend of Boswell or Constant; and marginal perhaps, in the minds of some readers, because she was a woman. But there is also another factor: it is that until the 1950s, or even later, there was a considerable prejudice against the literature of the eighteenth century, the period of Enlightenment; Voltaire and Diderot were not held in high esteem, nor was Laclos, now considered the most brilliant novelist of the period. There can be no doubt that many of the critical remarks made on Isabelle de Charrière's alleged scepticism, irony and frustrated rationalism by Godet and Rudler reflect their dislike of certain aspects of the eighteenth century and a preference for romanticism; today we not necessarily share this preference.

However this may be, the moment chosen by Simone and Pierre Dubois and by Geert van Oorschot to publish an edition of Isabelle de Charrière's complete works was propitious: it corresponded with a moment when some of her most important papers, hirtherto locked away in the Réserve in the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire, Lausanne, became available to scholars. The availability of these papers, along with many others which were discovered in the Netherlands, Switzerland and elsewhere, meant that much of what had been written on the subject, even by such conscientious historians as Godet, was in need of revision.

Thanks to the publication of the OEuvres complètes, it is no longer necessary to think of Isabelle de Charrière as a marginal figure. Indeed, modern criticism has taught us that the concept of marginality is a relative one, and today, as one turns over the pages of the van Oorschot edition, it is ironic to find that it is not Belle, but Boswell and Constant who have become marginal: the correspondence with Boswell fills only a few pages in the first two volumes; the correspondence with Constant does not begin until volume III and begins to fade out after volume IV. It is now generally realized that to see Belle de Zuylen exclusively through the eyes of Boswell and Isabelle de Charrière through the eyes of the author of Adolphe (which is prose fiction) and the Cahier rouge (which is fictionalised autobiography)

is bound to lead to distortion.47. Likewise, we are now aware of the limitations of the approach of Godet and Rudler and of those who have followed them more or less uncritically. This does not mean that we necessarily reject everything in the traditional image; Boswell and Constant, Godet and Rudler make important contributions to the subject; but they must be read critically and in the light of the available evidence.

 

When we turn to the new image of Isabelle de Charrière, it must be said at once that it is not a monolithic image; it is an image in course of formation and there is plenty of room for difference of emphasis depending on one's approach and indeed, room for disagreement among critics. In what follows I shall simply offer my own view of this image, a view which, of course, is not entirely my own since, like everyone else working in this field, I have learned a great deal from friends and colleagues and from those who, over the last twenty years have been publishing books and articles on the subject.48.

First, with regard to Belle de Zuylen, before she becomes Isabelle de Charrière. The traditional image is of a young woman whose most striking characteristic is her rejection of conventional behaviour. Godet sees this as scepticism, Rudler as a form of exasperated rationalism. There can be no doubt that Rudler is right: Belle is a rationalist living in an irrational world; her norms are ‘la raison’ and ‘la nature’ and it is in the light of these norms that she rejects those standards which are generally accepted by the unthinking majority, who blindly follow what she scornfully refers to as ‘opinion’. Thus we find running through her early correspondence, particularly her letters to d'Hermenches and Boswell, a tension between Belle's perception of the world as it ought to be and the world as it is, between her perception of the order she believes God has put in the universe and the irrational disorder of empirical reality.

So far so good. However, the traditional image is not entirely satisfactory, not because it is wrong, but because it is incomplete, for what is left out is the fact that, as well as being a rationalist, Belle is a dreamer who has a tendency to lose herself in a world of fantasy. This is something which was noted by her contemporaries, for example by her doctor, Professor Hahn

of the University of Utrecht, who says ‘she had no pleasure in realities; all must be ideal, all visionary’49., by d'Hermenches, who speaks of her ‘tournure d'esprit un peu romanesque, un peu métaphysique’50., and, indeed, by Belle herself, who regrets that she is often governed less by her head than by her heart or her imagination.51. Boswell offers his own interpretation of this when he writes, ‘I fear that the heart of Zélide is not to be found; it has been consumed by the fire of an excessive imagination’.52.

This tendency to live in a world of fantasy is very obvious, for example, in Belle's letters to d'Hermenches concerning Bellegarde, a man she hardly knows, but whom she decides she will marry, in spite of considerable obstacles (especially the fact that he is a Catholic) and in spite of the fact, which is painfully obvious to every reader of these letters, that Bellegarde his only the most tepid interest in Belle and, in almost every respect, is a most insuitable person for her to think of marrying. However, these mundane and commonsense views were brushed aside by Belle and as we read her letters to d'Hermenches we have the impression that we are entering a fictional universe where the plot is a melodrama and the two main characters (Belle and d'Hermenches) are fellow-conspirators whose aim is to manipulate the action. As for Bellegarde, he plays only a minor role; in fact he is off-stage most of the time. But occasionally reality breaks in, for example on the rare occasions when Belle actually meets Bellegarde: she is disconcerted to find that Bellegarde in the flesh does not quite correspond to the man she thinks she is in love with; nevertheless, she is sufficiently blinded by her wishful thinking and imagination to overlook his obvious shortcomings and to continue to move heaven and earth to bring about a happy ending to this fantastic romance. It is only when Bellegarde, after much dithering, finally withdraws his suit, that she scales fall from her eyes. Writing to d'Hermenches a few years later, she admits she had never really loved Bellegarde and that her judgement had been clouded by her imagination.

Further examples of Belle's tendency to live in a fantasy world can be found in those letters to Boswell and d'Hermenches where she imagines herself playing the part of a woman who, putting probity before decency, takes Ninon de Lenclos as a model. When she writes to d'Hermenches she enjoys stripping off all her inhibitions and, when she arranges to see him secretly and alone at The Hague, she can almost see herself falling into his

arms. However, the meeting in The Hague was an anticlimax: d'Hermenches kept his distance and Belle, embarrassed and tongue-tied, once again found herself confronted with a reality which was very different from the world of her imagination: the reality was, quite simply, an interview with a man to whom she had hardly ever spoken, hardly ever seen, but to whom she wrote regularly as if he were a character in a novel.

What does not seem to have been noticed by the traditional interpreters is that Belle de Zuylen is a victum of bovarysme; like the heroine in Flaubert's novel (and like Don Quixote), she has a tendency to live in a dream world and to turn her life into a novel. There are, of course, important differences between Emma Bovary and Belle; Emma is an unintelligent woman who reads trashy romances; Belle is a woman of exceptional intelligence whose reading includes not only the masterpieces of French and English literature, but also history, philosophy and science. Emma Bovary, in order to fulfil her romantic longings, has adulterous love affairs; Belle dreams of being a Ninon, but her libertinage is all in the mind. But the most important difference is that whereas Emma simply reads novels, Belle actually writes them, or, more precisely, she writes endless letters in which, as we have seen, she turns her life into a novel. This is something she cannot resist doing as soon as she takes up her pen. Thus, when she decides to inform d'Hermenches that she hopes to marry Bellegarde, she warns him that she is about to deliver herself over to that power of imagination which overtakes her when she writes: ‘Me voici la plume à la main; elle ira, cette plume, au gré d'une tête folle; ne vous attendez pas à voir de la raison, ne croyez pas que j'écrive pour vous faire plaisir, j'écris parce que je ne puis faire autre chose’.53. Thus, she construct an imaginary world, in full knowledge of what she is doing; and, at times, if it is a question of choosing between the world of fantasy and the real world, she seems to say she will choose the second: thus, after her embarrassed meeting with d'Hermenches at The Hague, she writes to him to say, ‘Je ne sais point vous parler comme je sais vous écrire’ and she concludes. ‘Eh bien, écrivons’54., which is almost like saying: let us continue to write to each other as if we were still characters in a novel.

There are obvious dangers in losing oneself in a fantasy world; in Madame Bovary, when reality breaks in, Emma commits suicide. As for Belle de Zuylen, while the collapse of her dream world often brings bitter disappointment, she always ends up by accepting reality and is perfectly capable of offering a lucid analysis of what went wrong. Reference has already been made to her later comment on how she was mistaken in

thinking she loved Bellegarde. Particularly revealing is a comment she makes in a letter to her brother Ditie who had been disappointed in love: she asks him whether he had not been a victim of his imagination, that is to say whether he was not simply in love with love; and she goes on to say that perhaps at his tender age (he was twenty-one) it was not such a bad thing that he should learn what disappointed hopes were, since such knowledge is necessary if one is to cope with the unpredictable blows of fortune which await us in later life.55.

Whether we think of Belle de Zuylen as a dreamer whose dreams are often shattered, or as a rationalist who is severely critical of the irrational, it is a misunderstanding to think of her as someone who is normally unhappy or permanently at loggerheads with her milieu. There are, indeed, moments when she is rebellious, and quite outrageously so; but there are others, for example when she is with her friends at Amerongen, Rosendaal and Middagten, when she is at peace with herself and the world, so much so that she makes fun of d'Hermenches when he is critical of her apparent happiness in the company of people he regards as dull and conventional.

The new image of Belle de Zuylen is thus much more complex than the traditional one. Part of this complexity is her tendency to exist at two different levels. First, there is the higher level, where we find the rationalist and the dreamer. The rationalist contemplates eternal verities, those found in the order of the created universe or in the truths of mathematics; the dreamer constructs a world where fantasy reigns and where everything is bathed in a glow which is absent from real life. Secondly, there is the lower level: the level of raility, which is satirized by the rationalist and ignored by the dreamer. And yet, Belle frequently sets aside her astringent rationalism and her dreaming to step back into the real world which she accepts with good grace.

The older critics read Belle's early correspondence mainly for factual information about her life or for information about her psychology. This is perfectly legitimate, but there is more. First, in those letters where she examines the divergence between the rational and the real, she comes up against a surprising antinomy: her innermost feelings and desires, though undoubtedly ‘natural’, turn out to be shockingly ‘irrational’; this is her discovery in the letters to d'Hermenches where she reveals her innermost thoughts. What the older critics did not notice, but which is obvious today, is that Belle, at the level of her personal experience, is exploring the kind of problems which are central to the writings of the major intellectual writers of the periode, particularly Diderot. Like Diderot, Belle discovers that the exhortation to follow nature, which is apparently harmless, particularly if

nature is equated with reason, leads in fact to an immoral, or amoral naturalism. It might be added that there are many other facets of Belle de Zuylen, as a writer, that remind one of Diderot: her fondness for dialogue (her letters are her side of an ongoing dialogue with d'Hermenches and others), her willingness to follow up bold ideas to their conclusion and, not the least interesting, her interest in the unusual and outlandish: d'Hermenches was her Neveu de Rameau, a man regarded by respectable society as an outcast, an untouchable immoraliste.

Thus, the new image is of a writer who is to be seen in the context of the intellectual debate of the period. She is also to be studied in the context of the literary art of the period, particularly the epistolary art. As a letterwriter Belle is a self-conscious artist. As we have seen, she knows that, as soon as she takes up her pen, she will surrender to her imagination; and when she puts it down she knows that what she has written belongs to the world of fantasy. Thus, as we read her letters we have the impression of reading a novel within a novel or at the very least a self-reflexive novel in which we are aware of different frameworks which may intersect, but never quite fit together. To study Belle as an epistolary artist is to study questions of self-identity and representation which are central to some of the preoccupations of modern criticism, that is to say the criticism and critical theory of postmodernism.

 

When we pass from Belle de Zuylen to Isabelle de Charrière, one of the most striking changes is that whereas formerly she turned her life into a novel, now she writes real novels which, though they may be autobiographically based, are to be read for their own sake. The traditional criticism, obsessed by Isabelle de Charrière's scepticism or pessimism, read the four novels she published between 1784 and 1788 as confirmation of her personal unhappiness. Three of these novels (Mistriss Henley, Lettres écrites de Lausanne and Caliste) are in the tragic mode; however it does not follow that the author of tragic novels is committed to a philosophy of despair, and in any case, one would have to explain why the other novel, Lettres neuchâteloises is conceived in a way which leads one to suppose that the outcome will be (or could be) happy.

A more reliable source of information on the author's outlook at this time is her correspondence. Whatever unhappiness and disappointment she may have suffered during the first dozen years of her marriage, when she discovered she was unable to have children and when she had an unhappy love affair with a young man who left her to marry someone else, by the time she met Benjamin Constant in 1787 she had decided to make the best of what life offered. When we study her friendship with Constant in the light of letters which were not available to Godet and Rudler, but which

have now been published56., we realise that, far from encouraging the young man in his outrageous behaviour and in his defeatist attitude to life, she did exactly the opposite. When Constant, in defiance of his father, refuses to go to Brussels and bolts to England, he writes to Isabelle de Charrière, ‘Aimezmoi, malgré mes folies’57. - this malgré hardly suggests that he had been encouraged by Isabelle de Charrière in that outrageous behaviour which Constant refers to as his folies. And when he writes long letters complaining that he can find no meaning in life, she accuses him of striking a pose and of wasting time reflecting on insoluble metaphysical problems. Her own philosophy, she tells him, is a practical one:

‘Comme Candide disait après toute sorte de raisonnements, il faut cultiver notre jardin, je vous avais dit, il faut faire du bien quand nous pouvons, il faut tâcher de ne nuire à personne, il faut amuser notre esprit.’58.

This is, in summary form, her mature philosophy: we do not know the answer to those ultimate questions posed by metaphysicians, but we know the difference between justice and injustice, kindness and cruelty, virtue and vice, and this suffices for the ordinary business of day-to-day living.

Alongside Isabelle de Charrière's letters to Constant one should read those she addresses to the numerous young people she took under her protection, particularly Susette Du Pasquier, Caroline de Chambrier, Henriette L'Hardy and Isabelle de Gélieu. She consistently warns these young friends against two dangers which face them in society. The first is ‘le dédain’, by which she means that ostentatious disregard for conventions which she herself once practised, but which she now realises was bad manners, exhibitionism and immaturity. The second is ‘engouement’, by which she means infatuation with one's own ideas, an infatuation which blinds one's judgement and leads to one's living in a world of fantasy. In these letters we see Isabelle de Charrière passing judgement on Belle de Zuylen; she now understands her earlier mistakes and hopes that her young friends will benefit from her experience.

She also has a positive lesson for these young people: they should aim at achieving what she calls ‘la maturité’, an attitude to life which, while it does not imply an uncritical attitude to society, involves tact, diplomacy and sound judgement; the mature person will realize that it is only by coming to terms with society and playing a constructive role in it that one can lead a

useful and fulfilling life. This is a lesson she repeats to the young women who looked up to her for advice; it is a lesson she communicated during the last years of her life to her nephew Willem van Tuyll, whose education she hoped would fit him for an honourable and distinguished role in society. It is difficult to reconcile the traditional image of Isabelle de Charrière as a sceptic or pessimist with her activity as (to use her own term, in English) ‘a teaching devil’. It is undeniable that she was often unhappy, lonely and ill, often sunk in gloom and despondency, but she never lost her faith in the young and in the role they could play in improving the human lot.

The philosophy of her maturity can be found in Trois Femmes which, like Voltaire's Candide, is a demonstration that the abstractions of rationalistic metaphysics (in this case the ethics of Kant) cannot be applied directly to the concrete problems of real life. The three women in the novel find themselves making moral decisions which, when judged by a stern Kantian standard, are imperfect, but which, in the circumstances are the best that can be achieved. The conclusion is, as in Candide, ‘il faut cultiver notre jardin’, that is to say, one must not aim at perfection, but at whatever relative good is possible in the circumstances. And yet, Isabelle de Charrière is not entirely happy with this pragmatism; in the continuation of the novel she shows that pragmatic decisions do not always lead to a happy outcome. In the conclusion there is a hankering after some higher standard, an ideal which, even if we cannot reach it or understand it, adds a certain dignity and nobility to human aspirations, indeed, adds some meaning to those aspirations. It is for this reason she admires Rousseau who, she says taught us to dream and to whom she applies the lines which she found in some unidentified English poem: ‘His words were music, his thoughts celestial dreams’.59.

Thus Isabelle de Charrière, like the young Belle de Zuylen, finds herself still caught between two worlds: the rationalist's world of ideals and the empirical world where pragmatism is not quite the answer. She remains likewise caught between the world of fantasy and the world of every-day reality, for, ironically, in spite of the sober advice she showers on her young friends, she never really cured herself of a tendency to be carried away by her imagination. This last tendency can be seen in the way she was absorbed for several years in musical composition, for which she had no talent, and it can be seen in the way she tends to idealize her young friends and in her at times excessive zeal in running their lives, for example in her intervention in the events leading up to the marriage of Isabelle de Gélieu. We can also see the clouding of her judgement in her somewhat misguided loyalty to her maid Henriette Monachon and in her protection of various waifs and strays,

for example Marianne Ustrich who, though treated with kindness, turned out to be something of an embarassment.

It is difficult to find in all this anything to support the traditional interpretation of Isabelle de Charrière as an author who spent her days plunged in despair, who could find no meaning in life and who wrote only to kill time. Godet says that she wrote only for entertainment, knowing that what she said would make no difference to anything. Against this can be quoted what Isabelle de Charrière says in a letter of 26 April 1800 to Caroline de Sandoz-Rollin: ‘Lire et écrire change réellement l'existence de l'homme’, and that applies, she goes on to say, even to private correspondence. And there can be no doubt that she wrote, not simply for amusement, but from conviction.

 

The modern image of Isabelle de Charrière is more positive, more complex and more interesting than the traditional one. This modern image, as I said earlier, is still taking shape and will no doubt benefit from contributions from critics with different approaches. In conclusion I shall mention some of these approaches.

First, the biographical approach. There are now three modern biographies60. which, by making use of the OEuvres complètes and other material unavailable to older biographers, help to dispel the purely negative view of Isabelle de Charrière and, at the very least, give some idea of the richness and complexity of her life and works.

Secondly, the approach of intellectual and conceptual history which, by placing Isabelle de Charrière's writings in the context of the intellectual debate of the period, sees them as variations on themes normally associated with Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. This approach will also involve an examination of what modern philosophers call paradigm shifts, for example Isabelle de Charrière's abandonment of the kind of naïve optimism we find in some of her early writings (especially in Le Noble) for a position close to that of the later Voltaire.

Thirdly, the approach of critics specializing in gender studies. This would examine Isabelle de Charrière's presentation of women in a male-dominated society; it would also examine the full implications of her belief that gender distinctions have their origin, not in nature, but in culture.

Forthly, the psychological approach; it is strange that to date there has been no Lacanian analysis of how Belle de Zuylen reacts to the patriarchal

order as represented by the Tuylls, though some critics have noted the Freudian implications of that amusing episode in Le Noble where, to break her fall when jumping out of the castle window, the young heroine throws the portraits of her ancestors into the moat.

Finally, there is the approach of the literary critic, who will surely be fascinated by Belle de Zuylen's obsession with her own image when, for example, in the Portrait de Zélide, she finds that self-definition is something which leads to infinite deferral of meaning. And it is the literary critic who has the task of enhancing our understanding of Belle's mastery of the epistolary art, an art which, in this case, involves extraordinarily complex problems of perspective, reflexivity and bovarysme.


Vorige Volgende

Over dit hoofdstuk/artikel

auteurs