BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2307, 14 November 1914, Page 5

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

"THE.CELEBRATED MADAME CAMPAN." . Among'the many memoirs and remin"isconws dealing with court and Bocial life during the French Revolution, and the First . Empire, the journals of Madame Campan enjoy a well-deserved reputation.. .Unfortunately, m the original, they run into five stout volumes, which, contain not a little irrelevant and rather tedious detail. The . only English translation, in.four volumes, is ■badly doiie, and'there was 'therefore room for'the excellent one volume biography, which, written-by ; Miss V. M. Montagu, under the title of "The Cel&■brated Madame Campari," has recently been published by Mr.' Evcleigli Na6h. Madame' Campan justly deserves to bo numbered"' amongst the celebrities o.f the Involution and' the First Empire. A lady who acted' as "lectrice" or "•reader" to the 'daughters of "Louis the Well-Beloved," and as a special lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, who witnessed the horrors of the Revolution. surviving to become the principal of the most famous and most; fashionable ladies' boarding-school in France,, and who rendered most valuable assistance to Napoleon in' the raising' of the.-social atmosphere of his' Court, had 'a career which was well worth' describing in detail. Madame was the keenest and shrewdest of observers of the Court society of hertime, and the memoirs and correspondence'upon which Miss Montagu has drawn so. freely, in the composition of her. entertaining and historically instruo-." tive biography prove her to have. been, a'woman of good principles, one keenly , alive to the follies'of her time, ana ■honestly ' anxious that • her young charges,' the daughters of the noblest, of French families, should receive a moral' training as careful as was their educational instruction.

Marie Antoinette's . Confidant. As "serving woman" to Marie Antoinette, Madame Campan was in a position to see the unfortunate Queen in the most intimate-relations, ■ and the description she. gives of the Court life just: previous to the- Revolution forms one of the most interesting features of her Memoirs. She : was entangled in that very mysterious intrigue,; " The Affair of the Diamond Necklace," and "on'this and other occasions tried hard to combat the Queen's natural frivolity And 'unconcern for the really important affairs-of State, in which she had nevertheless no small voice. The story of those terrible-days when Paris blazed with revolution, the story of the flight to Varenhes,, and the fiasco which was its .'sequel, the vile brutality displayed towards the members . of the Royal family whilst in the' Conciergerie by their , odious guards—all this has been told in scores of well-known works on the period.' In Miss Montagu's book it loses nothing in the retelling, for, hero we have, from Madame Cainpan's Memoirs, the record of an eye-witness of many epoch-making, events arid scenes. Madame herself had a narrow escape from the guiUotine, to which she would inevitably have been .. doomed had it not been: that the! death- of Robespierre. brought the Reign of Terror to an end, and enabled France again to breathe freely. The Governess of . the Bonapartes. Deprived by the Revolution of her Court-functions, Madame Campan start--ed at the Yilla Montagne'le Be) Air (Saint Germain : eri-Laye) the boardingschool. which;-.was to render her name famous throughout France. Early in her scholastic career she >liad as pupils .girls'-.wjjo.; as - women 'were destined to shine at the brilliant Court of the First Consul, afterwards the Emperor Napoleon. His stepdaughters, Hortense and Emilie' de Beauharnais", and.'his sisters, the beautiful Paulino (afterwards to become so notorious by her shamelessly open amours) aud Caroline Bonaparte, were amongst : her pupils. ,'THe First" Consul,'with that passion and genius for organisation for which he was always so noted, took the keenest personal interest in. the school. Madame was no doubt'glad: enough to get rid of'his sister-Pauline,but of Hortense de Beauha'rnais' she remained the confidant and good counsellor for many, years; and the correspbudence between . mistress and pupil does credit alike to . the heart arid good senseof each. " It became, the'fashion 1 amongst the great ladies of Napoleon's Court to. send their daughters; to the St. Germain establishment! Miss Montagu, puts the. Social position of the school -very'neatly when.sho 6ays:—". . \ -Mme. Cam-, pan's establishment was the hyphen, so .to speak, between*the courtly .past of Versailles and'the brilliant- present of the Imperial, Court." To lier ; old pupil, Hortense, now Queen of. .Holland,, "Maman"—as Napoleon always affectionately called her —wrote triumphant-' ly:—"Thanks to my former;; position, and to the kmdiiess of your, august family, I .have lately at least: sixty petitions or letters begging me to undertake the education of various little girls; I have been obliged to write polite refusals."' Later on, the school was moved to an "historic oliateau' at Ecouen, ffhere, until the' fall of the Empire, the former' lectrice af ! tlie Dauphine, the "serving-woman" of Marie Antoinette, and the instructor of the Bonapartes and Beauharnais, presided over what was called, the Imperial Establishment of the Legion of. Honour. Here she received the Emperor, who frequently sought her advice, and here the great man would condescend to examine Madame's charges, who danced before him, and had to face .a battery of questions from the Imperial visitor who, on one occasion, even examined the stockings they were knitting, ''.opening them, slipping his hand' into .them, and turning them inside-out, just a-j if-he were a good housewife."

Napoleon as Match-maker, The • bost proof of Napoleon's confidence in the' excellence' of the training, moral, . as. well as- educational,'; which 'Madame, Campan gave her pupils, is fcuad in the fact that lio was, wont to select wives therefrom for such of his Generals for whom lie had not a princess handy. Marshal Davout, for instance, having informed the First Consul that lie was 'about to be: married, tho following conversation took place: "To Mdlle.'Leclerc? I think it- ; a very suitable match." "No, General, to Mme. " "To Mcllle. Leclerc": Napoleon' interrupted, laying stress upon tho name. 'Not only is tho marriage suitable, but I wish it to take place immediately." "But, sire, I have long loved Mme. -—; she is now free, and nothing shall make mo give her up." "Nothing, except my will," retorted the First Consul, fixing' his eagle eye upon his visitor. "You will now go straight to Mme. Campan's, at Saint Germain, and you will ask to seo your future wife. You will be introduced to her by her' brother, General Lcclerc, who 1 ■ is now talking to my wife. He will go with you. Mile. Aimeo Leclerc will comc up to Paris this evening. You will order the wedding presents, which must be handsome, as I am going to act father to the young lady. I will'seo about tho . dowry and the trousseau, and tho marriage shall 'be celebrated as. soon as the necessary formalities liavo been fulfilled." And sure enough Davout did ko to Saint Germain and saw the youue

lady whom, by the way, he thought "very insipid," aud the marriage duly took place a few days later. One of tlio bride's first purchases was' a magnificent China dinnor scrvico for her old governess.

The Dye That Failed. Another of good "Maman" Campan's pupils, to be married to one of Napoleon's intimates, was a Mile. Felicite Fodoas Barbazan, a distant relative of Mmo. Bonaparte. This young lady was "selected" by the First Consul as a, bride for his Minister of Police, the famous Savary. "Slio was," says Miss Montagu, . "a handsome brunette with a ffne figure, jet black hair, and a generous disposition, which she showed when she rerused to neglect Josephine after the latter's divorce. Unfortunately, Felicite, soon after her marriage, took it into her head that she, should .like to become a blonde,- and so she became one, but • with such disastrous results, that when dressed up to appear at the Imperial Court, everybody noticed . a strong resemblance to Aunt Sally of joyous memory." • After the Restoration.

After the collapse of Napoleon's power, poor "Maman" Campan fell upon evil times. Despite her great services to Marie Antoinette, she was treated with coldness, even with deliberate cruelty; by the'restored Bourbons. When she appealed to the Duchess d'Angouleme for assistance she was bluntly told she would have "done better to have stayed at Saint Germain," and 'her' audience was closed very abruptly. She had brought up and married her two nieces, who became marecliales and' duchesses, "a la mode de Napoleon," she had educated 1200 . girls, many 'of whom had' made brilliant marriage's,'but she was an old woman-and had but few real friends. The new. regime; or rather the restored old regime, would have none of her, her friendship' with Napoleon being accounted a • dire offence, and she retired to the quiet provincial town of Nantes with but . a. meagre remainder of what should have been quite'a respectable fortune had she been as good a business woman as a schoolmistress. She died in 1822, of cancer, a brave old dame to the end. ' The story of her life and of her life's work •is well worth' reading. Several portraits of historical interest adorn'■ Miss Montagu's admirable work. (Price, 155.)