She was not
a wit, but she possessed the gift of drawing out what was best in
others. Her biographers have blamed her that she had not a more
impressionable temper, that she was not more sympathetic. Perhaps (in
spite of her courage when she took up contributions in the churches
dressed as a Neo-Greek) she was always hampered by shyness. She
certainly attracted all the best and most gifted of her time, and had a
noble fearlessness in friendship, and a constancy which she showed by
following Madame de Stael into exile, and in her devotion to Ballenche
and Chateaubriand. She had the genius of friendship, a native sincerity,
a certain reality of nature--those fine qualities which so often
accompany the shy that we almost, as we read biography and history,
begin to think that shyness is but a veil for all the virtues.
Perhaps to this shyness, or to this hidden sympathy, did Madame Recamier
owe that power over all men which survived her wonderful beauty. The
blind and poor old woman of the Abbaye had not lost her charm; the most
eminent men and women of her day followed her there, and enjoyed her
quiet (not very eloquent) conversation. She had a wholesome heart; it
kept her from folly when she was young, from a too over-facile
sensitiveness to which an impressionable, sympathetic temperament would
have betrayed her. Her firm, sweet nature was not flurried by
excitement; she had a steadfastness in her social relations which has
left behind an everlasting renown to her name.
Pages:
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270