RECAMIER, JEANNE FRANCOISE JULIE ADE LAIDE (1777-1849), a famous Frenchwoman in the literary and political circles of the early 19th century, was born on Dec. 4, at Lyons. Her maiden name was Bernard. She was married at fifteen to the banker Jacques Recamier (d. 1830), who was more than old enough to be her father. From the early days of the consulate to almost the end of the July monarchy her salon in Paris was one of the chief resorts of literary and political society that pretended to fashion. The habitues of her house included many former royalists, with others, such as Bernadotte and Gen eral Moreau, more or less disaffected to the government. Through her friend Madame de Stael, Madame Recamier became acquainted with Benjamin Constant (q.v.). She was eventually exiled from Paris by Napoleon's orders. After a short stay at Lyons she pro ceeded to Rome, and finally to Naples, where she was on good terms with Murat and his wife, who were then intriguing with the Bourbons. She persuaded Constant to plead the claims of Murat in a memorandum addressed to the congress of Vienna, and also induced him definitely to oppose Napoleon during the Hundred Days. Her husband had sustained heavy losses in 1805, and she visited Madame de Stael at Coppet in Switzerland. In her later days she lost most of the rest of her fortune; but she con tinued to receive visitors at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, the old Paris convent to which she retired in 1814. Here Chateaubriand was a
constant visitor, and in a manner master of the house; but even in old age, ill-health and reduced circumstances Madame Recamier never lost her attraction. She numbered among her admirers Mathieu de Montmorency, Lucien Bonaparte, Prince Augustus of Prussia, Ballanche, J. J. Ampere and Constant, but none of them obtained over her so great an influence as did Chateaubriand, though she suffered much from his imperious temper. Her sin cerest affection seems to have been for Prosper de Barante, whom she met at Coppet. She died in Paris on May 11, There are well-known portraits of her by Louis David in the galleries of the Louvre, and by Francois Gerard in the possession of the prefecture of the Seine. In 1859 Souvenirs et correspondances tires des papiers de Madame Recamier, was edited by Mme. Lenor mant. See Mme. Lenormant's Madame Recamier, les amis de sa jeunesse et sa correspondance intime (1872) ; Mme. Mohl, Madame Recamier, with a sketch of the history of society in France (1829 and 1862) ; • also Guizot in the Revue des deux mondes for December 1859 and February 1873 ; H. Noel Williams, Madame Recamier and her Friends (London, 1901) ; E. Herriot (Eng. trans., by Alys Hallard), Madame Recamier et ses amis (1904) (elaborate and exhaustive) ; L. de Launay, Un amoureux de Madame Recamier; journal de J. J. Ampere (1927) .