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<h3>MADAME RECAMIER.</h3> [BORN 1777. DIED 1849.] DAVENPORT ADAMS. <ANTIMG src="images/it.jpg" alt="T" width-obs="78" height-obs="72" class="floatl" />HE daughter of Monsieur Bernard, a notary of Lyons, born in 1777, and married at fifteen to Monsieur R�camier, a wealthy banker of forty-three. She was a beauty, and she knew it; the idol of that gay, irresistible French society which knows so well how to repay the devotion of its votaries; the theme of song, the goddess of la beau monde; very capable of love, but denied its natural exercise as wife and mother. If her path then ran among the flowers, not the less did she skirt the brink of the precipice; and her friends' advice and counsel were often needed and always welcome. She did not disdain the flatteries of her admirers; often she encouraged them to an extent that in England would have been considered criminal; but from the testimony of impartial witnesses, it seems clear that she never overstepped the bounds of virtue. She was the only woman, said Charles James Fox, "who united the attractions of pleasure to those of modesty;" but a woman who is always travelling on the verge of danger needs such a friend as Matthieu de Montmorency to counsel her in time. Fox was in Paris in 1802 when Madame R�camier was at the zenith of her reputation. He almost divided with her the allegiance of the gay world. The Parisian beaux imitated his costume, and the Parisian shop-windows were crowded with his portraits. Between the statesman and the beauty so close an intimacy was established that scandal made busy with it. She called upon him one day to accompany her in a drive along the Boulevards. "Before you came," said she, "I was the fashion; it is a point of honour, therefore, that I should not seem jealous of you." When sitting with her in her box at the opera, a copy of an ode was placed in the hands of each, in which Fox was panegyrised as Jupiter, and Madame R�camier as Venus. The failure of Monsieur R�camier in 1806 affected her health, and she went to spend the summer months of 1807 with Madame de Sta�l at Coppet. Among the illustrious residents at Geneva at the time was Prince Augustus of Prussia, a nephew of Frederick the Great, and a handsome young man of twenty-four. He fell violently in love with the Parisian beauty, who was by no means indifferent to the passion he openly displayed. He offered her his hand if she could obtain a divorce from her husband, whom half Paris [according to an old scandal] declared to be her father. Madame was not unwilling to be a princess, and she wrote to her husband proposing a divorce. Monsieur R�camier, in reply, expressed his willingness, but at the same time appealed to her better feelings. Years afterwards the love-suit dropped, and the prince, instead of a wife, received her portrait. Other lovers followed, and her career came near its close. In 1849 the cholera broke out in Paris. Madame R�camier was not afraid of dying, but she shrunk from death in so terrible a form. To avoid its ravages she removed to the Biblioth�que Nationale, but she could not escape from fate. On the 10th of May she was seized with the premonitory symptoms; on the 11th she was a corpse. She had completed nearly two-and-seventy years when she was removed from life by a death which of all others she most dreaded. In her time she played a conspicuous part; was constantly upon the gay and glittering stage; the audience applauded her loudly, and illustrious hands flung at her garlands and bouquets. Now that the applause has died out, now that the lamps burn dimly, now that the silent stage is given up to shadows, we wonder what there was in her acting to secure her so wide a fame. We look in vain for a flash of genius, for a burst of noble emotion. Vain, greedy of admiration, an errant coquette, a somewhat frivolous intruder on the threshold of criminal passion,—what was she more? A beauty? Yes, but could beauty alone have secured her so wide a repute among her contemporaries? She did not even converse brilliantly, like a Du Deffand or a De Sta�l. She did not write charming epistles, like a De S�vign�, and yet she was assiduously courted by famous wits and accomplished men of letters. Partly we may suppose her celebrity to have arisen from her profession of liberal principles under the stern r�gime of a Bonaparte; partly it was owing to the tact with which she drew out the best qualities, and flattered the amour propre of her visitors. <div class="figcenter p4"> <ANTIMG src="images/i161.jpg" width-obs="196" height-obs="64" alt="Decoration" /></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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