Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 49, November, 1861 | Page 2

death, tears must follow it, and the sense of void left by the loss of a
true friend, noble and loyal-hearted, if mistaken. With this confession
of sympathy with the woman, we begin the critical consideration of the
memoirs of herself she has given to the world.
These memoirs begin at the earliest possible period, including the lives
of her parents and grandparents. The latter were illustrious on one side,
obscure on the other. She tells us that by her paternal grandmother she
was allied to the kings of France, and by her maternal grandfather to
the lowest of the people. The grandmother in question was the natural
daughter of the famous Maréchal de Saxe, recognized and educated,
but finally left with slender resources, and married to M. Dupin de
Francueil, an accomplished person of good family and fortune, greatly
her senior. To him she bore one child, a son named Maurice, after the
great soldier. As might have been expected, her widowhood was early
and long, for her aged partner soon dropped from her side, beloved and
regretted. George tells us that her grandmother was wont to insist that
an old man can be more agreeable in the marital relation than a young
one, and that M. Dupin de Francueil, elegant, accomplished, and
devoted to her happiness, had in his life left nothing for her imagination
to desire or her heart to regret.
As this lady is one of the heroines of the "Histoire de ma Vie," we
cannot do it justice without lingering a little over her portraiture. She is
described as tall, fair, and of a Saxon type of beauty. Her manners
would seem to have been _de haute école_, and her culture was on a

large and noble scale. Austere in her morals, her faith was the deistic
philosophy of the ante-revolutionary period; but, like other people of
noble mind, instead of making doubt a pretext for license, she brought
up virtue to justify the latitude of her creed, that the solid results of
conscience should entitle her to the free interpretation of doctrine. She
was chaste, benevolent, and sincere. Her mother had been a singer of
merit and celebrity, and she, the daughter, had both inherited her
musical talent, and had received one of those thorough musical
educations which alone make the possession of the art a pleasure and
resource. It must often occur to those who hear our young ladies sing
and play, that the accomplishment is little valued by them, save as an
outward social adornment.
Hence those ambitious and perfectly uninteresting performances with
which we are constantly bored in the fashionable musical world. It is
self-love which gives us those flat, empty _adagios_, those cold, keen
runs and embellishments. Love of the art has more modesty in the
undertaking, and more warmth in the execution. George says that she
has heard all the greatest singers of modern times, but that her
grandmother, in her old age, singing fragments of the operas of her own
time in a cracked and trembling voice, and accompanying herself on an
old harpsichord with three fingers of a palsied hand, always remained
to her a type of art above all others.
The first volume of these memoirs gives interesting notice of the
friendships which surrounded Madame Dupin during her married life.
These embraced various celebrities, historical and literary. Her husband
was the congenial friend of the best minds of the day, and was able,
among other things, to procure her the difficult pleasure of an interview
with Jean Jacques Rousseau, then living near her in great spleen and
retirement. We cannot do better than to give the relation of this in her
own words, as preserved by her grand-daughter. It is highly
characteristic of the parties and of the times.
"Before I had seen Rousseau, I had read the 'Nouvelle Héloïse' in one
breath, and at the last pages I found myself so overcome that I wept and
sobbed. My husband gently rallied me for this; but that day I could only
cry from morning till evening. During this, M. de Francueil, with the
address and the grace which he knew how to put into everything, ran to
find Jean Jacques. I do not know how he managed it, but he carried him

off, he brought him, without having communicated to me his intention.
"I, unconscious of all this, was not hastening my toilet. I was with
Madame d'Esparbès de Lussan, my friend, the most amiable woman in
the world, and the prettiest, _though she squinted a little, and was
slightly deformed._ M. de Francueil had come several times to see if I
was ready. I did not observe any marks of haste in my husband, and did
not hurry myself, never suspecting that he was there, the sublime