Corinne, Volume 1 | Page 2

Corinne.
If there had been only one difference between this and its author's
earlier attempt at novel-writing, that difference would have given
Corinne a great advantage. Delphine had been irreverently described by
Sydney Smith, when it appeared a few years earlier, as "this dismal
trash which has nearly dislocated the jaws of every critic with gaping."
The Whigs had not then taken up Madame de Stael, as they did
afterwards, or it is quite certain that Mr Sydney would not have been
allowed to exercise such Britannic frankness. Corinne met with gentler
treatment from his friends, if not from himself. Sir James Mackintosh,
in particular, was full of the wildest enthusiasm about it, though he
admitted that it was "full of faults so obvious as not to be worth
mentioning." It must be granted to be in more than one, or two
important points a very great advance on Delphine. One is that the easy
and illegitimate source of interest which is drawn upon in the earlier
book is here quite neglected. Delphine presents the eternal French
situation of the "triangle;" the line of Corinne is straight, and the only

question is which pair of three points it is to unite in an honourable way.
A French biographer of Madame de Stael, who is not only an excellent
critic and an extremely clever writer, but a historian of great weight and
acuteness, M. Albert Sorel, has indeed admitted that both Léonce, the
hero of Delphine, who will not make himself and his beloved happy
because he has an objection to divorcing his wife, and Lord Nelvil, who
refuses either to seduce or to marry the woman who loves him and
whom he loves, are equal donkeys with a national difference. Léonce is
more of a "fool;" Lord Nelvil more of a "snob." It is something to find a
Frenchman who will admit that any national characteristic is foolish: I
could have better reciprocated M. Sorel's candour if he had used the
word "prig" instead of "snob" of Lord Nelvil. But indeed I have often
suspected that Frenchmen confuse these two engaging attributes of the
Britannic nature.
A "higher moral tone" (as the phrase goes) is not the only advantage
which Corinne possesses over its forerunner. Delphine is almost
avowedly autobiographical; and though Madame de Stael had the wit
and the prudence to mix and perplex her portraits and her
reminiscences so that it was nearly impossible to fit definite caps on the
personages, there could be no doubt that Delphine was herself--as she
at least would have liked to be--drawn as close as she dared. These
personalities have in the hands of the really great masters of fiction
sometimes produced astonishing results; but no one probably would
contend that Madame de Stael was a born novelist. Although Delphine
has many more personages and much more action of the purely novel
kind than Corinne, it is certainly not an interesting book; I think,
though I have been reproached for, to say the least, lacking fervour as a
Staelite, that Corinne is.
But it is by no means unimportant that intending readers should know
the sort of interest that they are to expect from this novel; and for that
purpose it is almost imperative that they should know what kind of
person was this novelist. A good deal of biographical pains has been
spent, as has been already more than once hinted, on Madame de Stael.
She was most undoubtedly of European reputation in her day; and
between her day and this, quite independently of the real and

unquestionable value of her work, a high estimate of her has been kept
current by the fact that her daughter was the wife of Duke Victor and
the mother of Duke Albert of Broglie, and that so a proper respect for
her has been a necessary passport to favour in one of the greatest
political and academic houses of France; while another not much less
potent in both ways, that of the Counts d'Haussonville, also represents
her. Still people, and especially English people, have so many
non-literary things to think of, that it may not be quite unpardonable to
supply that conception of the life of Anne Louise Germaine Necker,
Baroness of Stael-Holstein, which is so necessary to the understanding
of Corinne, and which may, in possible cases, be wanting.
She was born on the 22nd of April 1766, and was, as probably
everybody knows, the daughter of the Swiss financier, Necker, whom
the French Revolution first exalted to almost supreme power in France,
and then cast off--fortunately for him, in a less tragical fashion than that
in which it usually cast off its favourites. Her mother was Suzanne
Curchod, the first love of Gibbon, a woman of a delicate beauty, of
very considerable mental and