Chapter VIII

, p. 35 below. The ideas contained in these two passages are the germ of a story written by Stendhal with the obvious intention of illustrating his theories. The story--"Ernestine"--is included in the Calmann-Lévy edition of _De l'Amour_.

[Pg 342] 5. Cf. a letter of Sir John Suckling "_to a Friend to dissuade him from marrying a widow, which he formerly had been in love with_":--

"Love is a natural distemper, a kind of Small Pox: Every one either hath had it or is to expect it, and the sooner the better."

6. Léonore: under this name Stendhal refers to Métilde Dembowski (_née_ Viscontini). His passion for the wife of General Dembowski, with whom he became intimate during his stay in Milan (1814-1821), forms one of the most important chapters in Stendhal's life, but it is a little disappointing to enquire too deeply into the object of this passion. At any rate, as far as one can see, the great qualities which Stendhal discovered in Métilde Dembowski had their existence rather in his expert crystallisation than in reality. It was an unhappy affair. Métilde's cousin used her influence to injure Stendhal, and in 1819 she cut off all communication with him. Stendhal was still bemoaning his fate on his arrival in England, 1821. There is, none the less, something unconvincing in certain points in the history of this attachment; in spite of his sorrow, Stendhal seems to have consoled himself in the Westminster Road with "little Miss Appleby." It is worth noticing that Métilde Dembowski had been the confidante of Signora Pietra Grua, his former mistress, and it was from the date of Stendhal's discovery of the latter's shameless infidelity to himself and other lovers, that his admiration for Métilde seems to have started.

7. It is here worth turning to a passage from Baudelaire--which is given in the Translators' note (11) below. Liberty in love, he says, consists in avoiding the kind of woman dangerous to oneself. He points out that a natural instinct prompts one to this spontaneous self-preservation. Stendhal here gives a more exact explanation of the operation of this instinctive selection in love. Schopenhauer's conception of the utilitarian nature of bodily beauty is a more general application of the same idea. The breasts of a woman _à la_ Titian are a pledge of fitness for maternity--therefore they are beautiful. Stendhal would have said a pledge of fitness for giving pleasure.

8. The well-known Dr. Edwards, in whose house Stendhal was introduced to one side of English life--and a very bourgeois side. He was introduced by a brother of Dr. Edwards, a

[Pg 343] man given to the peculiarly gloomy kind of debauch of which Stendhal gives such an exaggerated picture in his account of England. See note 31 below.

9. This brings to mind Blake's view of imagination and "the rotten rags" of memory.

10. _Bianca e Faliero ossia il consiglio di tre_--opera by Rossini (1819).

11. Cf. Baudelaire, _Choix de maximes consolantes sur l'amour_ in _Le Corsaire Satan_ (March 3, 1846) and reprinted in _Œuvres Posthumes_, Paris, 1908.

"Sans nier les coups de foudre, ce qui est impossible--voyez Stendhal...--il faut que la fatalité jouit d'une certaine élasticité qui s'appelle liberté humaine.... En amour la liberté consiste à éviter les catégories de femmes dangereuses, c'est-à-dire dangereuses pour vous."

["Without denying the possibility of 'thunderbolts,' for that is impossible (see Stendhal)--one may yet believe that fatality enjoys a certain elasticity, called human liberty.... In love human liberty consists in avoiding the categories of dangerous women--that is, women dangerous for you."]

12. Paul Louis Courier (1772-1825) served with distinction as an officer in Napoleon's army. He resigned his commission in 1809, in order to devote himself to literature, and especially to the study of Greek. His translation of _Daphnis and Chloe_, from the Greek of Longus, is well known, and was the cause of his long controversy with Del Furia, the under-librarian of the Laurentian Library at Florence, to which Stendhal here refers. Courier had discovered a complete manuscript of this romance in the famous Florentine Library. By mistake, he soiled with a blot of ink the page of the manuscript containing the all-important passage, which was wanting in all previously known manuscripts. Del Furia, jealous of Courier's discovery, accused him of having blotted the passage on purpose, in order to monopolise the discovery. A lively controversy followed, in which the authorities entered. Courier was guilty of nothing worse than carelessness, and, needless to say, got the better of his adversaries, when it came to a trial with the pen.

[Pg 344] 13. The Viscomte de Valmont and the Présidente de Tourvel are the two central figures in Choderlos de Laclos' _Liaisons Dangereuses_ (1782).

14. Modern criticism has made it uncertain who Dante's la Pia really was. The traditional identification is now given up, but there seems no reason to doubt the historical fact of the story.

15. Napoleon crowned himself with the Iron Crown of the old Lombard kings at Milan in 1805.

16. The reader is aware by now that Salviati is none other than Stendhal. The passage refers to the campaign of 1812, in which Stendhal played a prominent part, being present at the burning of Moscow.

17. _Don Carlos_, Tragedy of Schiller (1787); Saint-Preux--from Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_.

18. Stendhal's first book. For the history of this work, which is an admirable example of Stendhal's bold method of plagiarism, see the introduction to the work in the complete edition of Stendhal now in course of publication by Messrs. Champion (Paris, 1914) or Lumbroso, _Vingt jugements inédits sur Henry Beyle_ (1902), pp. 10 and ff.

19. _Jacques le Fataliste_--by Diderot (1773).

20. The note, as it stands, in the French text, against the word "pique," runs as follows:--

"I think the word is none too French in this sense, but I can find no better substitute. In Italian it is 'puntiglio,' and in English 'pique.'"

21. The _Lettres à Sophie_ were written by Mirabeau (1749-1791) during his imprisonment at Vincennes (1777-1780). They were addressed to Sophie de Monnier; it was his relations with her which had brought him into prison. They were published in 1792, after Mirabeau's death, under the title: _Lettres originales de Mirabeau écrites du donjon de Vincennes_.

[Pg 345] 22. Catherine Marie, Duchesse de Montpensier, was the daughter of the Duc de Guise, assassinated in 1563. In 1570 she married the Duc de Montpensier. She was lame, but she had other reasons besides his scoffing at her infirmity for her undying hatred of Henry III; for she could lay at his door the death of her brother Henry, the third Duke. She died in 1596.

23. Julie d'Étanges--the heroine of Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_.

24. Stendhal, we must remember, is writing as a staunch liberal in the period of reaction which followed the fall of Napoleon and the end of the revolutionary period. Stendhal had been one of Napoleon's officers, and the Bourbon restoration put an end to his career. His liberalism and his pride at having been one of those who followed Napoleon's glorious campaigns, colour everything he writes about the state of Europe in his time. In reading Stendhal's criticisms of France, England and Italy, we must put ourselves back in 1822--remember that in France we have the Royalist restoration, in England the cry for reform always growing greater and beginning to penetrate even into the reactionary government of Lord Liverpool (Peel, Canning, Huskisson), in Italy the rule of the "Pacha" (see below, note 29) and the beginning of Carbonarism (of which Stendhal was himself suspected, see below, note 27), and the long struggle for unity and independence.

25. Charles Ferdinand, Duke de Berri (1778-1820), married a Bourbon Princess and was assassinated by a fanatic enemy of the Bourbons.

26. Bayard. Pierre Bayard (1476-1524), the famous French knight "without fear or reproach."

27. Of all foreign countries then to which Stendhal went Italy was not only his favourite, but also the one he knew and understood best. He was pleased in later years to discover Italian blood in his own family on the maternal side. The Gagnon family, from which his mother came, had, according to him, crossed into France about 1650.

He was in Italy with little interruption from 1814-1821, and again from 1830-1841 as consul at Civita Vecchia, during which time he became intimately acquainted with the best, indeed every

[Pg 346] kind of Italian society. He tells us that fear of being implicated in the _Carbonari_ troubles drove him from Italy in 1821.

One can well believe that a plain speaker and daring thinker like Stendhal would have been looked upon by the Austrian police with considerable suspicion.

28. Racine and Shakespeare. Very early in life Stendhal refused to accept the conventional literary valuations. Racine he put below Corneille--Racine, like Voltaire, he says, fills his works with "bavardage éternel." Shakespeare became for Stendhal the master dramatist, and he is never tired of the comparison between him and Racine. Cf. _Rome, Naples et Florence_ (1817), and _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_ (1817). Finally he published his work on the subject: _Racine et Shakespeare par M. de Stendhal_ (1823).

29. Stendhal knew Italy and was writing in Italy in the dark period that followed the fall of Napoleon. The "Pacha" is, of course, the repressive and reactionary government, whether that of the Austrians in Lombardy, of the Pope in Rome, or of the petty princes in the minor Italian states. See above, note 27.

30. Count Almaviva--character from Beaumarchais' _Marriage de Figaro_, first acted April, 1784. The play was censored by Louis XVI and produced none the less six months later. Its production is an event in the history of the French Revolution. Almaviva stands for the aristocracy and cuts a sad figure beside Figaro, a poor barber.

STENDHAL'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH ENGLAND

31. Baretti, Dr. Johnson's friend, has the reputation of having learnt English better than any other foreigner. Stendhal might well claim a similar distinction for having acquired in a short stay a grasp so singularly comprehensive of England--of English people and their ways. He was four times in England--in 1817, 1821, 1826, and 1838--never for a whole year in succession, and on the first occasion merely on a flying trip. But Stendhal had not only a great power of observing and assimilating ideas; he was also capable of accommodating himself to association with the most varied types. Stendhal was as appreciative of Miss Appleby--his

[Pg 347] little mistress in the Westminster Road--as of Lord Byron and Shelley: he was at home in the family circle of the Edwards and the Clarkes. From the first he was sensible of the immense value of his friendship with the lawyer, Sutton Sharpe (1797-1843). Sharpe was one of those Englishmen who seem made for the admiration of foreigners--possessing all the Englishman's sense and unaffected dignity and none of his morbid reserve or insularity. Porson, Opie, Flaxman, Stothard were familiar figures in the house of Sharpe's father, and Sharpe and his charming sister continued to be the centre of a large and intelligent circle. In 1826 Sharpe took Stendhal with him on circuit. Stendhal was often present in court and learnt from his friend, who in 1841 became Q. C., to admire the real character, so rarely appreciated abroad, of English justice. He took this opportunity of visiting also Manchester, York, and the Lake district. Likewise to Sharpe he owed the privilege of meeting Hook, the famous wit and famous bibber, at the Athenaeum. He was present even at one of Almack's balls--the most select entertainment of that time.

With an acquaintance with England at once so varied, so full and yet so short, as regards direct intercourse with the country and people, it is rather natural that Stendhal was wary of subscribing to any one very settled conception of the English. He felt the incongruity of their character. At one time he called them "la nation la plus civilisée et la plus puissante du monde entier"--the most civilised and powerful people on the face of the earth; at another they were only "les premiers hommes pour le steam-engine"; and then, he merely felt a sorrowful affection for them--as for a people who just missed getting the profit of their good qualities by shutting their eyes to their bad.

As for Stendhal's knowledge of English literature--of that the foundations were laid early in life. His enthusiasm for Shakespeare was a very early passion (cf. Translators' note 28). As years went on, his acquaintance with English thought and English literature became steadily wider. Significant is his familiarity with Bentham, whose views were congenial to Stendhal: Stendhal quotes him more than once. Hobbes he was ready to class with Condillac, Helvétius, Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy, as one of the philosophers most congenial and useful to his mind. For the rest, the notes and quotations in this book leave no doubt of the extent of his English reading--they

[Pg 348] give one a poorer opinion of his purely linguistic capacities; Stendhal's own English is often most comical. For a very complete consideration of his connexion with England see _Stendhal et l'Angleterre_, by Doris Gunnell (Paris, 1909). Cf. also Chuquet's _Stendhal-Beyle_ (Paris, 1902), Chap. IX, pp. 178 and ff.

32. Of the three Englishmen referred to here, James Beattie (1735--1803), the author of _The Minstrel_ (published 1771-1774), and Richard Watson (1737-1816), Bishop of Llandaff (1782), a distinguished chemist and a man of liberal political views, will both be familiar to readers of Boswell. The third, John Chetwode Eustace (1762?-1815) was a friend of Burke and a Roman Catholic, who seems to have given some trouble to the Catholic authorities in England and Ireland. His _Tour through Italy_, to which Stendhal refers, was published in 1813.

33. The Divorce Bill, introduced in 1820 into the House of Lords by George IV's ministers, to annul his marriage with Queen Caroline, but abandoned on account of its unpopularity both in Parliament and in the country generally.

34. The Whiteboys were a secret society, which originated in Ireland about 1760 and continued spasmodically till the end of the century. In 1821 it reappeared and gave great trouble to the authorities; in 1823 the society adopted another name. The yeomanry was embodied in Ulster in September 1796, and was mainly composed of Orangemen and Protestants. The body was instrumental in disarming Ulster and in suppressing the rebellion of 1798--not, it has been maintained, without unnecessary cruelty.

35. Sir Benjamin Bloomfield (1786-1846), a distinguished soldier, ultimately did get his peerage in 1825. In 1822 he had resigned his office of receiver of the duchy of Cornwall, having lost the King's confidence after many years of favour.

STENDHAL'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH SPAIN

36. Stendhal's personal knowledge of Spain was less extensive than that of Italy, England and Germany. He was early interested in the country and its literature. In 1808 at Richemont he was reading a _Histoire de la guerre de la succession d'Espagne_, and the same year speaks of his plan of going to Spain to study the

[Pg 349] language of Cervantes and Calderon. In 1810 he actually took Spanish lessons and the next year applied from Germany for an official appointment in Spain. In 1837 he made his way as far as Barcelona.

STENDHAL'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH GERMANY

37. In 1806 Stendhal returned to Paris from Marseilles whither he had followed the actress Melanie Guilbert and taken up a commercial employment in order to support himself at her side. He now again put himself under the protection of Daru, and followed him into Germany, though at first without any fixed title. He was not at Jena, as he pretends (being still in Paris the 7th October), but on the 27th of the month he witnessed Napoleon's triumphal entry into Berlin. Two days later he was nominated by Daru to the post of assistant _commissaire des guerres_.

Stendhal arrived in Brunswick in 1806 to take up his official duties. Although his time was occupied with a considerable amount of business, he found leisure also for visiting the country at ease. In 1807 he went as far as Hamburg. His observations on the country and people are occurring continually in his works, particularly in his letters and in his _Voyage à Brunswick_ (in _Napoléon_, ed. de Mitty, Paris, 1897), pp. 92-125. In 1808 he left Brunswick, but soon returned with Daru to Germany. This time he was employed at Strasbourg--whence he passed to Ingolstadt, Landshut, etc., etc. Facts prove that he was not at the battle of Wagram, as he says in his _Life of Napoleon_. He was at the time at Vienna, where he managed to remain for the _Te Deum_ sung in honour of the Emperor Francis II after the evacuation by the French. He returned in 1810, after the peace of Schonnbrunn, to Paris. It was during his stay in Brunswick that Stendhal made the acquaintance of Baron von Strombeck, for whom he always preserved a warm affection. He was a frequent guest at the house of von Strombeck and a great admirer of his sister-in-law, Phillippine von Bülow--who died Abbess of Steterburg--_la celeste Phillippine_. Baron von Strombeck is referred to in this work as M. de Mermann. See generally Chuquet, _Stendhal-Beyle_, Chap. V.

38. Triumph of the Cross. In Arthur Schuig's sprightly, but inaccurate, German edition of _De l'Amour--Über die Liebe_ (Jena, 1911)--occurs this note:--

"Stendhal names the piece _Le Triomphe de la Croix_, but must

[Pg 350] mean either _Das Kruez an der Ostsee_ (1806), or _Martin Luther oder die Weihe der Kraft_ (1807)--both tragedies by Zacharias Werner."

39. The Provencal story in this chapter, and the Arabic anecdotes in the next, were translated for Stendhal by his friend Claude Fauriel (1772-1806)--"the only savant in Paris who is not a pedant," he calls him in a letter written in 1829 (_Correspondance de Stendhal_, Paris, Charles Brosse, 1908, Vol. II, p. 516). A letter of 1822 (Vol. II, p. 247) thanks M. Fauriel for his translations. "If I were not so old," he writes, "I should learn Arabic, so charmed am I to find something at last that is not a mere academic copy of the antique.... My little ideological treatise on Love will now have some variety. The reader will be carried beyond the circle of European ideas." Saint-Beuve relates that he was present when Fauriel showed Stendhal, then engaged on his _De l'Amour_, an Arab story which he had translated. Stendhal seized on it, and Fauriel was only able to recover his story by promising two more like it in exchange. M. Fauriel is referred to p. 188, note 3, above.

40. The reference is to a piece by Scribe (1791-1861).

41. Stendhal had no first-hand knowledge of America.

42. Stendhal was writing before Whitman and Whistler; yet he had read Poe.

43. The entire material for these three chapters, and to a very great extent their language too, is taken straight from an article in the _Edinburgh Review_--January 1810--by Thomas Broadbent. See for a full comparison of the English and French, Doris Gunnell--_Stendhal et l'Angleterre_, Appendix B.

Stendhal has not only adapted the ideas--he has to a great extent translated the words of Thomas Broadbent. He has changed the order of ideas here and there--not the ideas themselves--and in some cases he has enlarged their application. Where he has translated the English word for word, it has often been possible in this translation to restore the original English, which Stendhal borrowed and turned into French. Where we have done this, we have printed the words, which belong to Thomas Broadbent, in italics.

[Pg 351] However, as Stendhal often introduced slight, but important, changes of language, we also give below, as an example of his methods, longer passages chosen from the article in the _Edinburgh Review_, to compare with the corresponding passages literally translated by us from Stendhal.

These are the passages:--

P. 225, l. 2:

"As if women were more quick and men more judicious, as if women were more remarkable for delicacy of expression and men for stronger powers of attention."

P. 228, l. 9:

"Knowledge, where it produces any bad effects at all, does as much mischief to one sex as to the other.... Vanity and conceit we shall of course witness in men and women, as long as the world endures.... The best way to make it more tolerable is to give it as high and dignified an object as possible."

P. 229, l. 21:

"Women have, of course, all ignorant men for enemies to their instruction, who being bound (as they think) in point of sex to know more, are not well pleased in point of fact to know less."

P. 230, l. 24:

"The same desire of pleasing, etc.... We are quite astonished in hearing men converse on such subjects to find them attributing such beautiful effects to ignorance."

P. 232, l. 31:

"We do not wish a lady to write books any more than we wish her to dance at the opera."

P. 237, l. 13:

"A merely accomplished woman cannot infuse her tastes into the minds of her sons....

"By having gained information a mother may inspire her sons with valuable tastes, which may abide by them through life and carry him up to all the sublimities of knowledge."

P. 237, l. 27:

"Mankind are much happier for the discovery of barometers, thermometers, steam-engines and all the innumerable inventions in the arts and the sciences.... The same observation is true of such works as those of Dryden, Pope, Milton and Shakespeare."

[Pg 352] Stendhal's habit of quoting without acknowledgment from all kinds of writings is so curious, that it demands a word to itself. His wholesale method of plagiarism has been established in other works beside the present one; almost the whole of his first work--_La Vie de Haydn_ (1814)--is stolen property. See above, note 18. Goethe was amused to find his own experiences transferred to the credit of the author of _Rome, Naples et Florence!_

If there is any commentary necessary on this literary piracy--it is to be found in a note by Stendhal (_vide_ above,