RECAMIER, JEANNE FRANcOISE J'ELrE ADELAIDE BERNARD, DAME, perhaps the finest representative specimen, in later times, of that character peculiarly French, the •• woman of society," the potentate in petticoats, who sways the salon, and out of it becomes in doing so a sort of " unacknowledged legislator"—was born at Lyons in Dec., 1777. Her father was a hanker of that city, and, as well as her mother, was distin-. guished by much of the personal grace and charm which, in the daughter, seem to have culminated, as it were, in a form of almost typical perfection. She was beautiful, and in rare measure possessed, as the soul of her beauty, the woman's indefinable fascination, thefe ne sells quoi of he:• country. She was educated under the charge of an aunt in the convent of La Deserte; and at about the age of 15, she went to Paris to join her parents, who had some time before migrated thither. Shortly after, she was married to M. Jac ques Recamier, a rich banker about thrice her own age. The union is said to have been scarcely in the ordinary sense connubial (•` M. Meander n'evt jamais que des rapports paternels avec sec femme") but a mutual affection and respect informed it from the first, and consecrated it to the end, as passion might possibly have failed to do. A record of the splendid social triumphs of Mme. Recamier would involve notice of nearly all that was distinguished in Paris during a space of about fifty years. In that strange, impalpable, yet most real way, of which, in this country, we can have only a faint and also coarse conception, she became a power, and she continued so; and this despite changes of fortune, which, among vs, would have involved the extinction of even a more solid celebrity. To the famous 3Ime. de StaUl she was hound by ties of extreme affection and intimacy; and when her friend was banished from Paris, as having drawn on her the little jealousy of Napoleon, she lavished her sympathy on the brilliant exile. Sometime after, the complete ruin of her husband's fortunes induced her to accept en invitation from Mme. de staw to join her at Coppert in Switzerland (1806). Here she was thrown into the society of prince August of Prussia, and a mutual attachment ensued. It is supposed that, of all her innumerable admirers, he alone succeeded in touching her heart. A marriage was arranged, the necessary condition of which was
the consent of M. Recamier to a divorce. This was not refused; but his mild and touch ing remonstrance sufficed to divert from' her purpose a woman, on • the one hand, of generous and noble feeling. and probably, on the other, constitutionally incapable of any very vehement passion. The man whose brilliant prosperities she had shared, she shrunk from deserting in the decay of fortune which had by thiS time befallen him. The devotion of her princely lover continued till his death in 1845; but it does not appear that after his first distinct failure—though he frequently again met his beloved— Ids efforts to secure her were very vigorously renewed. The lady's genius for love does not seem to have been great; but for friendship, it was almost unexampled. The most distinguished ami of her later years was de Chateaubriand, who solaced himself in his peevish decline by an almost daily visit to her. In 1846 he became a widower, and he then wished to marry Mine. Becamier, a widow since 1830; but the lady declined the honor—wisely for herself and for M. de Chateaubriand. Till the last day of Chateau briand's life, he found—though Ids hand had been refused by her—in the friendship of Mine. Meander almost his only source of cheer and satisfaction. Chateaubriand died July 4, 1848, and Mine. Rkinnier followed him on May 11, 1849. She died not so much of grief as of cholera, a disease of which her dread had always been great; and dying, she left behind her a reputation which must continue to give her a historic place among the French queens of society. If not quite so brilliant as some of them, she was fh•ionsly much more correct than most, on a ground of virtue or of coldness. Specially brilliant she was not; but she seems to 1-ave moved in some atmosphere hreatlicd about of bewildering charm and fascination. Passion, in its fiercer sense, she had not in herself, nor does she seem much to have inspired it; but the genius of refined philander.
tag, as it is termed. was probably never more exquisitely embodied. See Sourenirs et Correspondrtnee tirA des Papiers de Mine. Meander (Par. 1859). .