The Friendships of Women Part 9

General Swetchine was made military commandant and governor of St.

Petersburg. At the head of a splendid establishment, his young wife found herself in the highest circle of the most brilliant society in Europe; for at that time the Revolution had banished the n.o.blest families of France, and their headquarters were in the Russian capital. Madame Swetchine always possessed, in remarkable union, an earnest desire for action and companionship, and a strong taste for solitude and meditation. She managed her life so skilfully, that both these inclinations were largely gratified. With many of the most high-toned and accomplished persons whom she met, both of the Russian n.o.bility and the French emigrants, she formed earnest and lasting relations of mind and heart. The most refined, p.r.o.nounced, and impressive characters in St. Petersburg, between the years 1800 and 1815, were embraced in her friendships. Her leisure hours were scrupulously and eagerly devoted to self-improvement. She engaged in a wide range of literary, historic, and philosophical studies; making copious extracts from the books she read, patiently reflecting on the subjects, and setting down independent comments. The progress she made was rapid, and soon rendered her a notable woman.

Paul, full of lugubrious visions and suspicions, one day disgraced General Swetchine by removing him from office. But this official dismission did not entail banishment, and was followed by no loss of social caste. The general and his exemplary wife continued to live amidst their numerous friends as happily as before. The interchange of literary and philosophic ideas shared the hours in their attractive parlor with the revolutionary and reactionary politics of the time. The profound attachments, stamped with reverence and the rarest truthfullness, which in those years united many admirable persons with Madame Swetchine, were frequently reporting themselves, under far other circ.u.mstances, in a distant land, half a century later.

In 1833, the celebrated Count Joseph de Maistre was accredited from France to the Russian court. He was then about fifty, a man of pure life, rare genius, and fervent enthusiasm; familiar with the world, with the human heart, and with the loftiest ranges of sentiment and learning. His zeal for the Catholic Church was extreme. Madame Swetchine, at this time, without being at all a devotee, was a sincere member of the Greek Church. She was already familiar with the great minds of all ages and lands; and, at this particular period, was earnestly studying modern philosophical controversies, comparing the ideas of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel with those of Descartes, Pascal, and Leibnitz. Despite the difference in their points of view, and the many other contrasts between them, these two remarkable persons the thoroughly trained master, in whom the gifts of knowledge, eloquence, faith, and finesse, were acc.u.mulated; and the meditative, earnest, consecrated young woman of twenty-one had no sooner met than they felt the parity and harmony of their souls. They formed an exalted friendship, full of solace and happiness to them both, a friendship charged with the most important results on the destiny of the woman, since it led to her conversion from the Greek Church to the Catholic, and gave a deep religious inspiration and stamp to her entire subsequent life. Such minds have a thousand lofty topics of common interest to talk of; and they frequently visited each other, exchanging thoughts with ever-deepening confidence and esteem. "The cold countenance of the Count de Maistre," Madame Swetchine writes to her dearest female friend, "conceals a soul of profound sensibility.

Without praising me, he often says pleasing things to me." At another time, she humorously writes to the same friend: "The Princess Alexis and I have been to spend an evening at the house of the Count de Maistre. From deference to the duties of hospitality, he would not suffer himself a single moment of sleep. He rose with the palm of victory out of this terrible struggle of nature and politeness; but who can tell at what a cost?" She said that great griefs had purified his ambition, and lent a strange interest to him, elevating and aggrandizing his character. He set an extreme value on her friendship; and wrote to her, that he should never spare any pains to preserve in its integrity what he felt was an infinite honor to him.

He wrote to his friend, the Viscount de Bonald, that he had never seen so much moral strength, talent, and culture, joined with so much sweetness of disposition, as in Madame Swetchine. On their separation, by a residence in different countries, De Maistre gave her a magnificent portrait of himself, on the frame of which he had written four verses, adjuring the happy image, in answer to the call of awaiting friendship, to fly, and take its place where the original would so gladly be. This portrait she kept prominently hung in her parlor as long as she lived. In one of his letters to her, he writes: "My thought will always go out to seek you: my heart will always feel the worth of yours." The memory of this first great friend continued to hover over her life to the end. In her last days, generously offended by what she thought the unjust strokes in the portraiture of De Maistre, presented by Lamartine in his "Confidences," she took up her pen in refutation, and wielded it with telling effect. This eloquent vindication of her old friend, when he had been dead nearly forty years, was one of her latest acts, and truly characteristic of her tenacious fidelity of affection.

The enthusiasm shown by the Count de Maistre for the Roman Catholic Church awakened a deep interest in Madame Swetchine. This interest was greatly enhanced by the admirable examples of piety and charity set before her in the lives of several of the French exiles in St.

Petersburg, with whom she had contracted friendships. Especially was she impressed and attracted by the amiable virtues of the Princess de Tarente, the devout elevation of her character, and the triumphant sanct.i.ty of her death. Madame Swetchine at length resolved to make a deliberate examination of the claims of the Roman Church, and to come to a settled conclusion. Providing herself with an appropriate library, acompanied only by her adopted daughter Nadine, in the summer of 1815, she withdrew to a lonely and picturesque estate, situated on the borders of the Gulf of Finland. Here, through the days and nights of six months, she plunged into the most laborious researches, historical and argumentative. The result was, that she became convinced of the apostolic authority of the Roman primacy, and avowed herself a Catholic. Soon after this conversion, the Jesuits were ordered to leave Russia. Indignant at an order which she regarded as unjust, she openly identified herself with the cause of these proscribed missionaries. The machinations of the political enemies of General Swetchine had made his situation disagreeable to him; and, when he saw those enemies gaining credit, his pride took offence, and he determined to leave the country. Madame Swetchine's pa.s.sion for travel and observation combined with her new religious faith to make this removal less unwelcome than it would otherwise have been.

The close of the year 1816 found her established in Paris, where, with the exceptions of a year in Russia, and a couple of years in Italy, she was to reside until her death. The Bourbon n.o.bility, now recalled to France, and reinstated in power, repaid the generous kindness she had shown them in St. Petersburg, by giving her a hearty welcome, and lavishing attentions and affection on her. Her deep interest in charitable inst.i.tutions soon brought her into intimate and most cordial relations with De Gerando. Baron Humboldt and the Count Pozzo di Borgo, among the earliest to become her friends, were a.s.siduous visitors at her house; and, in the salon of the brilliant d.u.c.h.ess de Duras, where she was quickly appreciated and made to feel at home, she became acquainted with the most interesting and commanding minds of France at that time, such as Chateaubriand, Remusat, Cuvier, Montmorency, Villemain, Barante. These persons have all testified, in turn, to the great impression her character made on them.

Madame Swetchine formed with a large number of men of rare excellence and accomplishments ardent and lasting attachments, which were the greatest comfort to herself, and administered invaluable inspiration and happiness to them. Among these, particular mention should be made of her confessor, the pious and venerable Abbe Desjardins; her brother-in-law, Father Gargarin; Moreau; Turquety; Montalembert; and, at a later date, De Tocqueville, who writes to her, "The friendship of such as you are, imposes obligations." Another expression of De Tocqueville must not be omitted here: "Let me thank you for your last letter. It contained, as all your letters do, proofs of an affection which consoles and strengthens me. I never received a line of your writing without being sensible of this twofold impression. The reason is, I think, that one finds in you a heart easily moved, in connection with a mind firmly fixed upon abiding principles. Here is the secret of your charm and your sway. I want to profit more than do by your precious friendship. It distresses me that I succeed so ill."

She was one of those few natures able to forget themselves, take an enthusiastic interest in others, and devote unwearied pains to further their interests, sympathize and aid in their pursuits, calm, refine, enrich, and bless their souls. She sustained the ideal standards, and raised the self-respect, of every one who enjoyed the honor of her regard. Accordingly, no n.o.ble man could be intimate with her without grateful and affectionate veneration. M. de Maistre said of her, "More loyalty, intellect, and learning were never seen joined to so much goodness." The Viscount de Bonald said, "She is a friend worthy of you; and one of the best heads I have ever met, effect or cause of the most excellent qualities of the heart with which a mortal can be endowed." The poet Turquety sent her an exquisite poem, descriptive of herself and of his feelings towards her. She wrote in reply, "Before thanking you, I have thanked G.o.d for giving your heart such an impression of me, unworthy of it as I am. The illusion which arises from affection is another grace, I had almost said another virtue. Your accent has a persuasive sincerity; and faith, when it is vivid, believes in miracles." And then she thus delicately indicates her objection to the publication of the verses: "I condemn this charming flower to enchant only my solitude; but this is the better to gather its fragrance, and it will survive me."

An invaluable friendship also existed between Madame Swetchine and Alexander the Emperor of Russia, one of the most interesting and romantic characters of modern time, of whom she said to Roxandra Stourdza, "Already above other men, by his glory; by the influence of religion, he will be above himself." When the famous mystical Madame de Kriidener appealed to him, in the name of virtue and of religion, to be true to his own better nature, he burst into tears, and hid his face in his hands. As she paused apologetically, he exclaimed, "Speak on, speak on: your voice is music to my soul." She obtained a great influence over him. He had likewise an enthusiastic attachment for Napoleon; and Madame de Kriidener called them respectively the white angel and the black angel. His sensibility to all generous sentiments, all thoughts of poetic height and richness, was extraordinarily tender and expansive. He was often known, in the overwhelming re-action of his emotions, convulsed with tears, to leap into his carriage alone, and drive out into the solitary country or forest. Such were the exalted traits of his character, and his many beautiful deeds, that Madame Swetchine felt her natural relations of duty and submission trans.m.u.ted into those of vivid admiration and devotion. "I fully sympathize," she writes to her earliest bosom- friend, "with the vivacity of your admiration for our dear Emperor.

What a happiness to be able to eulogize with truth! Let us hope we are in the aurora of a most beautiful day for Russia. How pleased I am at having always seen in his soul that which this day shows itself with a glory so fair and so pure! He is a true hero of humanity. He seems in his conduct to realize all my dreams of moral dignity; and I find, at last, in this union of religious sentiments and liberal ideas, the long-sought resemblance of the type I carry in my mind, and which has. .h.i.therto been qualified as fantastic, the creation of a too sanguine imagination. In him we see, that, even on the throne, in the wild tumult of all interests, of all pa.s.sions, one can remain man, Christian, philosopher; pursue the wisest and most generous plans; and carry into his actions every thing that is beautiful, from the highest justice to the most touching modesty."

Alexander testified his respect and regret, when Madame Swetchine departed to reside in Paris, by asking her to be his correspondent.

The correspondence was continued until his death, ten years afterwards. The Emperor Nicholas, on his accession, restored to Madame Swetchine all her letters; and she allowed an eminent statesman, in 1845, to read the whole collection. After her death, no trace of it was to be found among her papers. It must possess an intense interest; and it is to be hoped that it still exists, and may yet one day see the light.

Perhaps the most intimate and truly devoted of all the friends of Madame Swetchine was that accomplished member of the French Academy whose biographic and editorial labors have erected such an attractive and perdurable monument to her memory, the Count Alfred de Falloux.

The soul of reverence, grat.i.tude, and love exhales in his sentences when he writes of her. After describing what "she was to all who had the inexpressible happiness of knowing her," he acids, "and this she will now be to all who shall read her; and death will but give to her words one consecration more." But the modesty of M. de Falloux has not given the public her letters to him, and has kept his personal relations with her much in the background. We are left to guess the measure and the activity of their friendship, from indirect indications.

On the whole, possibly because of the editor's reticence as to himself, we are left to believe, that the friend who held the pre-eminent place in the heart of Madame Swetchine, during the last twenty-five years of her life, was Father Lacordaire, the ill.u.s.trious Catholic preacher. A complete picture of this ardent and unfaltering friendship is shown in the letters of the two parties, gathered in an octavo volume of nearly six hundred pages. We know not where, in the annals of human affection, to find the account of a friendship more spotless or more morally satisfying than this. The volume which preserves and exhibits it will be found by all who are duly interested in the psychology and experience of persons so extraordinary, both for their genius in society, and for the quant.i.ty and quality of their private experience full of solid instruction and romantic interest. The inner life of Madame Swetchine was a sacred epic: the outer career of Lacordaire, an electrifying drama. This double interest of a private, spiritual ascent, and of a chivalrous gallantry in the thick of battle, is clearly unfolded in the book before us.

The chivalrous young Count de Montalembert was one of the dearest friends of Madame Swetchine. She said that his soul seemed formed under the inspiration of the fine thought of Plato: "The beautiful as a means of reaching the true." Behold, in the following extract from one of the many letters in which she strove to pacify his perturbed spirit, by recalling him from the war of politics, and reconciling his pa.s.sionate reformatory sentiments with the ruling principles and authorities of the Catholic Church, the tender wisdom and affection with which she speaks: "You seize only on the disinterested and poetic side of these questions, but all the same you are in the battle, giving and taking blows. And thus, with a mind perfectly high-toned and honorable, a crystal which is almost a diamond, with faultless habits, and all the believing and pious sentiments they involve, you have neither the heart's sweet joy nor its sweet peace.

The reason why you are so ill at ease, is, that your conscience lies so near your heart that their voices and their troubles are confounded. My dear Charles, will you not reward me by being all that my wishes and my prayers would fain make you? I will not say whether you have the power to rejoice or afflict my heart; but, when you woke in me a mother's emotions, I cannot believe that you condemned me to the sorrow of Rachel."

One day this beloved young man led to the drawing-room of his maternal friend his heart's brother, the eloquent Lacordaire, then in the early renown of his wonderful career of ecclesiastical oratory.

Madame Swetchine had already been deeply moved by his preaching, and was desirous of knowing him. She quickly won his confidence, and became, what she ever continued to be, a ministering angel to his spirit. She was much older than he, much more profoundly versed in human nature, much more soberly balanced and calm in soul. With a vigilance, a wisdom, and a tenderness that were unwearied and inexhaustible, she watched his course, studied the wants of his mind and heart, and labored, as need was, alternately to confirm his sinking courage and to soothe his excited imagination. Without being ostensibly such, she was really his spiritual director. "Her subtile and tender spirit," as Dora Greenwell has remarked, "seems to move across his heart, to woo and to caress it to peace and goodness, to call out its deepest concords, as the hand of the skilled musician moves across his instrument, knowing well each fret and chord of the sweet viol he doth love."

It was the greatness, not the weakness, of Lacordaire, that, before loving G.o.d, he had loved glory. Few men have spirit enough truly to seek fame: it is notice which they wish. The heart of Lacordaire was a pure fire, encased in a cold intellect. It reminds us of an intense flame clothed in transparent ice. Sometimes, he said, he hardly knew whether his voice was moved from within by the spirit, or from without by renown. In regard to every such scruple Madame Swetchine was an infallible counsellor. Her advice was as the speech of incarnate reason and love in their most purified and exalted form.

The heavy perfume that drenched his oratoric atmosphere would have intoxicated most men with self-adulation; but he offset every such allurement by constantly withdrawing from trifles, excitements, and seductions, and spending long hours in the unbroken solitude of thought and the awful neighborhood of G.o.d. If both these extremes brilliant public triumphs, and severe seclusion and asceticism had their special dangers, Madame Swetchine was his resistless guardian against them both. No one who has not read their correspondence, reaching richly through a whole generation, can easily imagine the services rendered by this gifted and saintly woman to this holy and powerful man. Community of faith, of loyalty, of n.o.bleness, joined them. It was in looking to heaven together that their souls grew united. Drawn by the same attractions, and held by one sovereign allegiance, such souls need no vows, nor lean on any foreign support.

The divinity of truth and good is their bond.

No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, Their n.o.ble meanings are their p.a.w.ns: And so thoroughly is known Each other's counsel by his own, They can parley without meeting.

At first Madame Swetchine shrank from the excessive agitation she underwent in listening to the great sermons of Lacordaire in Notre Dame. "I go through all his perils," she said: "I tremble at every rock; I feel every stroke. His way of speaking acts upon the human soul in the same way as sanct.i.ty: it wounds; but it enraptures." At length her attendance on his sermons became so constant, and her pleasure and admiration so obvious, that many of the congregation supposed her to be literally, as she was morally, his mother. One day, as she was leaning against a pillar in the crowded church, her face upturned towards the pulpit, two persons were heard whispering to each other: "Would you like to see the preacher's mother?" "Why, she died ten years ago." "No, there she is: look at her."

The genius of Madame Swetchine was sweeter, serener, more tolerant, than that of her friend. Her influence on him in these respects was benignant. He thought more of the strict doctrine: she, more of the broad and charitable spirit. She once said, concerning dogmas, that she could consent to see the ocean filtered to a thread of water, if it but remained pure. He wrote to her, "My dear friend, you have proved yourself deficient in holy anger; otherwise you would not have been able to tolerate M." His electric, vehement soul needed exactly the check her reflective subtilty and prudent consideration gave. So she tells him once, "I acted as your ballast, or rather I held you by the skirts of your garment, to r.e.t.a.r.d your too impetuous movements.

Perhaps these are the very attributes with which you would have done well to invest some one at Rome, who might have united the two conditions which I fulfilled so perfectly: first, that of not being you, either in natural disposition, antecedents, or age; second, and more essential, that of loving you better than you could possibly love yourself."

With the lapse of years, their attachment grew closer and deeper.

Lacordaire writes from Rome, "I have been bitterly disappointed in not hearing from you. You know what a need one has of friendly words when one is alone and so far away." And when the epistle comes, he writes to her, "I had no sooner opened your letter than my soul was inundated with joy." Again he says, "I found in your last letter the expression of an affection so tender, and a watchfullness so fixed, that I was melted by it, even to tears." "Your letters are always to me a balm and a force." In excuse of his own reserve, he strikingly writes, "Women have this admirable quality, that they can talk as much as they wish, as they wish, with what expression they wish: their heart is a fountain that flows naturally. The heart of man, especially mine, is like those volcanoes whose lava leaps forth only at intervals after a convulsion." We find Madame Swetchine saying, in one of her letters to Lacordaire, "I protest against long silences: they are to me that vacuum of which nature has a horror." The exceeding care which this discreet woman took always to administer her advice, her praise, or rebuke, in such a way as not to offend or injure the most sensitive recipient of it, is a rare lesson for others. Lacordaire once wrote to her, although he knew very well how guileless was the motive of her managements, "You say, dear friend, that you fear to displease me in speaking your thought about me. I a.s.sure you my sole reproach is, that you are too circ.u.mspect and delicate in your style of expression. I appreciate all the more that flattery which is the guardian escort of truth, because it is wholly wanting to me. I speak things out too bluntly; and it is true that almost always men need an extreme sweetness in the language of those who would benefit them. The heart is like the eyes: it cannot bear too glaring a light. However, I find you excessive in the art of shades." Soon afterwards he says, "Excuse my franknesses; with you, as with G.o.d. I can say every thing." Scarcely ever did a man owe more to a woman than this eloquent and heroic priest to the heavenly- minded friend who said she loved him as father, brother, and son, all at once. He deeply felt his debt, and faithfully paid it. He paid it in loving words and attentions, while she lived, and in a tribute of immortal eloquence when she was dead. "You appeared to me," he tells her, "between two distinct parts of my life, as the angel of the Lord might appear to a soul wavering between life and death, between earth and heaven." To a common friend he wrote of her, "Her soul was to mine what the sh.o.r.e is to the plank shattered by the waves; and I still remember, after the lapse of twenty-five years, all the light and strength she afforded to me when I was young and unknown." He dedicated to her his "Life of Saint Dominic," saying, "I wish that some one of your descendants may one day know that his ancestress was a woman whom Saint Jerome would have loved as he loved Paula and Marcella, one who needed only a pen ill.u.s.trious and saintly enough to do her justice." Hearing of her last illness, he made a journey of six hundred miles, to be with her, and lavished on her every winning word and act that filial love and reverence could suggest; and, after all was over, he p.r.o.nounced on her a funeral address, which will always rank with the highest trophies of his genius. No other words can be so fitting as his own to close this sketch:

"She belongs to the nation of the great minds of our age. In a time of intellectual dependence, when parties bore every thing in their train, she made no engagement, and submitted to no attraction: she isolated every question from the noise around her, and placed it in the silence of eternity. A constant simplicity and an equal elevation gave to her ideas a personal influence. This double charm might be resisted; but she could not fail to be loved herself, and to inspire the desire to become better. Happy mouth, which for forty years made not an enemy to G.o.d, but which poured into a mult.i.tude of wounded or languishing hearts the germ of the resurrection and the rapture of life! Alas! dear and ill.u.s.trious lady. I cannot attach to your name the glory of those Roman women whom Saint Jerome has immortalized; and yet you were of their race. Conquered for G.o.d through the language of France, you wished to live under the French speech; and, quitting a country you alwaysloved, you came among us with the modesty of a disciple and of an exile. But you brought us more than we gave you. The light of your soul illumined the land which received you, and for forty years you were for us the sweetest echo of the gospel and the surest road to honor."

FRIENDSHIPS OF MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS.

THE first species of exclusively female friendship is that which exists between mother and daughter. The maternal tie of organic instinct and moral guardianship on the one side, and the filial tie of respect, dependence, and grat.i.tude on the other, form the ordinary connection of mothers and daughters. In exceptional cases, these bonds of affectionate protection and pious love are lifted out of the faded commonplace of custom by deep mutual appreciation and sympathy, broadened and brightened into a friendship emphatically worthy of the name. The sight of a mother and a daughter thus happily paired is beautiful and holy. And there are far more examples of it than the world knows.

Probably, the best representation of this union is the one afforded by Madame de Sevigne and Madame de Grignan. These celebrated ladies, among the most brilliant of the long roll of distinguished French women, were possessed of every charm of person and spirit, fascinating grace, dignity, intelligence, accomplishments, purity, and generosity. In their early years, they were inseparable. They hung on each other's looks and motions. The wish of the mother was the instinctive law of the child. The beautiful image of the daughter, loved to the verge of distraction, seemed gradually to occupy the whole being of the mother. For, as Madame de Sevigne successively lost her idolized husband and her most endeared friend, the unhappy Fouquet, the maternal instinct seemed to take up into itself all the baffled or bereaved pa.s.sions, and, magnified and vivified by the appropriation, to transform itself into a friendship which almost annihilated her individuality, beneath the ideal stamp and transfused impression of that of her daughter. The pain of parting from her was like the anguish of tearing the soul out of the body. During the period of their separation, memory took the place of sight; ideas, of actions; correspondence, of conversation. She constantly writes to the absent one, and seems to live only for this.

Every observation, reflection, emotion, finds a place in the tender and immortal record. She spares no pains to make her letters interesting to the receiver. She writes, "I shall live for the purpose of loving you. I abandon my life to that occupation." It is affecting to note the agitation of the mother at every ruffle on the life of the daughter. In tracing the thoughts, feelings, events, that vibrated across the relation between them, one can hardly escape the conviction, that the soul of the younger friend was ideally superimposed on the self-abnegating soul of the elder friend, and governed it, as the mental processes of a magnetized person are said to be superseded by the personality and states of consciousness of the magnetizer. A single pa.s.sion has seldom so consistently ruled a being as the affection of Madame de Sevigne for her daughter; and it was returned by the latter with all the fervor of which her less ardent nature was capable. The collection of letters in which the sentiment and its manifold workings are enshrined, created, as Lamartine says in his eloquent sketch, a new species of literature, and formed an epoch in authorship. "The genius of the hearth held the pen, and the heart flowed through it. The literature of the family, or confidential conversation written out, began. It is the cla.s.sic of closed doors."

This friendship had an earthly close worthy of its progress. For, when Madame de Grignan was attacked by a dangerous and lingering malady, her mother watched incessantly by her bedside, as she had formerly watched by her cradle. After three months of sleepless care, she had the joy of seeing the beloved patient return to life; but she had given her own in exchange. "Intense affection alone seemed to have enabled her to retain existence until the convalescence of Madame de Grignan, when it fled, having fulfilled its last object upon earth. She expired in the arms of her daughter, and surrounded by her weeping grandchildren. Her last glance fell upon the being enshrined in her soul, and restored to health by her care. She was interred in the chapel of the Chateau de Grignan. But her letters are her true and living sepulchre. Grignan holds her body; but her correspondence contains her soul."

Another fine example of a n.o.ble and glowing friendship between a mother and her daughter is furnished by Madame de Rambouillet and Julie d'Angenne. They were equally endowed with loveliness of person, attractiveness of mind, elevation of character, and perfection of manners. They were the magic centres of every circle in which they moved together. When the plague, of which all Paris was in terror, seized Madame de Rambouillet's youngest son, she nursed him; and Julie shut herself in the room with them till the boy died. The sweet harmony of their souls and intercourse was unmarred, unalloyed, in life and in death. Some mothers make slaves of their daughters; some are slaves to them; some even find rivals in them. Some are prevented from forming friendships, by tyranny on one side or by insubordination on the other; by selfishness there or by heartlessness here. Envy, vanity, fickleness, spite, festering incompatibilities of character, often prove fatal in these veiled and intimate relations. But when the characters of mother and daughter are happy accords, or accurate counterparts, rich, lofty, ardent, and disinterested, the solidly a.s.sured friendship which results, is a felicity scarcely inferior to any known on earth. The example of such a relation between Mrs. Browne and Mrs. Hemans was charming. Its inexpressible preciousness to the sensitive soul of that sweet singer, every reader of sensibility, who traces the numerous allusions to it in her letters and poems, will recognize with emotion. There is much in the relation between a mother and the wife of her son to create peculiar interest and love. And they, allowing for exceptions of an opposite character, become the warmest friends in unnumbered instances. A better example can hardly be desired than is furnished in the sweet pastoral tale of Hebrew Scripture. What pa.s.sage in literature is more pervaded with the pathetic charm of the affection of the early world than the story of Naomi and her widowed daughter-in-law, Ruth, the Moabitish ancestress of David and of Jesus? Ruth said, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; and thy people shall be my people, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I he buried.

The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." So they two, Naomi and Ruth, went till they came to Bethlehem; and there did they sojourn together until the end.

All the near ties of kindred, by the closeness of a.s.sociation and sympathy naturally consequent on them, must often prove the fostering occasions or incentives of warm and lasting friendships between those whom they draw together. In thousands of families there is an aunt who becomes to her nieces a friend only less intimate and trusted than the mother herself. Such was the case with Mrs. Barhauld and her brother's only daughter, Lucy Aikin. In a mult.i.tude of families there are likewise cousins bound to each other by bonds as numerous and glowing as those of sisterhood. So, too, there are countless examples in which a wife and the sister of her husband grow into the most ardent sincerity of friendship. An interesting instance of this union is celebrated by Pliny in his famous panegyric of Trajan. Pliny says it is a wonder for two ladies of the same quality to dwell in the same place, without feuds or contention. But he declares that Plotina and Marciana, the wife and the sister of Trajan, never disputed over the right of precedence; but had the same intentions, and followed the same course of life; nay, were scarcely to be distinguished as two different persons.

Mrs. Hemans writes, on the eve of the removal of her brother George to Ireland, "I fear I shall feel very lonely and brotherless, as I have always been one of a large family circle before. I could laugh or cry when I think of the helplessness I have contrived to acc.u.mulate." And then she adds, with reference to her sister-in-law, "In her I shall be deprived of the only real companion I ever had.

She is to leave me on Sat.u.r.day next; and I am haunted by those melancholy words of St. Leon's guest, the unhappy old man with his immortal gifts, Alone! Alone!"

THERE is also another unspeakably important cla.s.s of womanly friendships; namely, those subsisting between sisters. In the fourth book of the Aeneid, Virgil powerfully paints this union in the example of Dido and Anna. Scott has drawn an impressive picture of such a friendship, in the characters of Minna and Brenda Troil; and a still more affecting one in the story of Jeannie and Effie Deans.

Thrown into constant intimacy, with an endearing community of inheritance, duties, and a.s.sociations-mult.i.tudes of sisters must become ardent friends. The failure of that result, in consequence of base qualities, irritating circ.u.mstances, or cold and meagre natures, is a great misfortune and loss in a household: the fruition of it is a blessing worthy of the most earnest grat.i.tude of its subjects.

Perhaps there is no species of friendship more sure to elude publicity. It plays its undramatic part in domestic scenes, avoiding, rather than asking, the notice of the world. We need not wonder, that there are so few examples of it sufficiently exciting and public to induce the historian or biographer to narrate their stories.

Hannah More and her four sisters were a group of happy friends, who kept house together for more than half a century. The union of Hannah and Martha was especially one of entire admiration and fondness. In Wrington churchyard the remains of the five sisters rest together under a stone slab, enclosed by an iron railing, and overshadowed by a yew-tree.

Mary and Agnes Berry, who were such widely courted favorites, in the most intellectual society of the time of their ardent friend, Horace Walpole, dwelt together, for over eighty years, in entire and fervent affection: and they now sleep side by side in their grave at Petersham.

The three wonderful sisters, Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte, were joined by uncommonly deep and intense bonds. Their strange, fervid personalities; their solitary, melancholy lives; their tastes and pursuits; their joys and triumphs, were held in common. Writing to her best friend, Charlotte says, "You, my dear Miss W., know, as well as I do, the value of sisters' affection to each other; there is nothing like it in this world, I believe, when they are nearly equal in age, and similar in education, tastes, and sentiments." In another letter, written after she had lost both her sisters, she says, "Emily had a particular love for the moors; and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne's delight; and, when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon."

Let any one, who would understand what these rare natures felt for each other, read the memoir of her two sisters, prefixed by Charlotte to "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey."

In 1846, Margaret Fuller wrote an account of a visit she had just paid to Joanna Baillie, whom she had long honored almost above any of her s.e.x. She says, "I found on her brow, not, indeed, a coronal of gold, but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation which her thoughts have received. We found her in her little calm retreat, at Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character, and their mutual relations, she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline." This admirable, semi-biographical, semi-psychological poem was addressed by Joanna to her sister Agnes, her dear, life-long companion, on one of the latest anniversaries of her birthday. It is an interesting fragment in the literature of the friendships of sisters.

THE friendship of woman with woman, outside of the ties of blood, is pictured with varying degrees of fidelity in the works of many romance writers and novelists. One of the most glowing delineations of it, also one of the most famous, is given by Richardson in the character of Clarissa Harlowe. Jane Austen, in her "Northanger Abbey," treats it with great insight, in the relations of Catherine Morland, Isabella Thorpe, and Eleanor Tilney. Miss Edgeworth's "Helen" is likewise full of it: both its sympathies and its antagonisms are forcibly depicted. Helen Stanley is Lady Cecilia's double, her second self, her better self. Lady Katrine Hawksby is such an acidified piece of envy, so jealous of all her s.e.x, that "every commonly decent marriage of her acquaintance gives her a sad headache." That there is truth in this bitter stroke cannot be denied; but there is truth as well in the extreme opposite. Many a girl, with a sublime self-renunciation, stifling an agony sharper than death, has given up a lover to a friend, in silence and secrecy.

Women are capable of any sacrifice, and their grandest deeds are hidden. Could any woman capable of voluntarily withdrawing herself, in order that her friend might marry the man they both loved, be capable of boasting of it, or willingly letting it be known?

Mrs. Barbauld gives a beautiful description of pious friendship in her hymn beginning,

How blest the sacred tie that binds In union sweet according minds!

How swift the heavenly course they run Whose hearts, whose faith and hope, are one!

Their streaming tears together flow For human grief and mortal woe; Their ardent prayers together rise Like mingling flames in sacrifice.

Pictures of female friendships, in all their glory and tragedy, their ecstatic fusions and heroic sacrifices, their bitter jealousies and inversions, abound in the great dramatists, who are the crowned expositors of human nature. Auger, Secretary of the French Academy, in his "Philosophical and Literary Miscellanies," has an excellent little essay ent.i.tled, "The Friendships of Women among themselves compared with the Friendships of Men among themselves; Difference of the two Friendships, and the Causes of that Difference." The essay, though not adequate, is true and suggestive. Charles Lamb's poem of "The Three Friends, "--Mary, Martha, and Margaret--is an extremely truthful and effective description of female friendship, its fervor, jealousy, estrangement, generosity, and restoration.

Grace Aguilar has written a work expressly on the subject of Woman's Friendship. Though not a work of a high order, it possesses considerable interest as a tale; and, as a treatment of the theme, it is full of sincere feeling and discriminating observations. In Lady Ida Villiers and Florence Leslie we have a picture of a pair of n.o.ble friends, proof against every trial. The black-hearted falsehood and hate of Flora Rivers form an effective foil; and, incidentally, there are many telling strokes and sidelights on the relations of women to each other. "It is the fashion to deride female friendship," Grace Aguilar says: "to look with scorn on those who profess it. There is always to me a doubt of the warmth, the strength, and purity of her feelings, when a girl merges into womanhood, looking down on female friendship as romance and folly." The subtile and masterly knowledge of the characters of women, their weaknesses and their strengths, is not the least of the charms of that consummate work of art, "The Princess" of Tennyson. Blanche, Melissa, Ida, Psyche, in their unions, Two women faster welded in one love Than pairs of wedlock, in their jealousies, quarrels, aspirations, sorrows, are psychological studies full of delicate truth. Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"

discusses many of the same topics, in a manner characteristically contrasting with Tennyson's, but marked by all her own conscientiousness, power, and care. Lady Waldemar, Marian Erle, Aurora Leigh, with the unsparing censures, magnanimous thoughts, and burning aspirations strewn through this profound and ma.s.sive work, are lasting lessons for all womankind. It seems to have been much easier for most of the critics of this great work to feel its artistic faults, its jarring metre, and c.u.mbrous forms, than to appreciate the transcendent n.o.bleness and wisdom wrought into it from the soul of its creator.

School-girl friendships are a proverb in all mouths. They form one of the largest cla.s.ses of those human attachments whose idealizing power and sympathetic interfusions glorify the world and sweeten existence.

With what quick trust and ardor, what eager relish, these susceptible creatures, before whom heavenly illusions float, surrender themselves to each other, taste all the raptures of confidential conversation, lift veil after veil till every secret is bare, and, hand in hand, with glowing feet, tread the paths of paradise Perhaps a more impa.s.sioned portrayal of this kind of union is not to be found in literature than the picture in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," which Shakespeare makes Helena hold before Hermia, when the death of their love was threatened by the appearance of Lysander and Demetrius:

Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us, O! is all forgot?

All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?