Or
Memoirs of That Interesting Periodof the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein,
Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813,and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript,by Her Son.
Translated from the French
London:
Printed for
Treuttel and Wurtz, Treuttel Jun. and Richter,
Foreign Booksellers to his Royal Highness Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coberg,
30, Soho Square.
1821
Howlett & Brimmer, Printers,10, Filth Street, Soho Square.
PREFACE BY THE EDITOR (Augustus, Baron de Stael-Holstein.)
The production which is now submitted to the reader, is not acomplete work, and ought not to be criticized as such. It consistsof Fragments of her Memoirs, which my mother had intended tocomplete at her leisure, and which would have probably undergonealterations, of the nature of which I am ignorant, if a longer lifehad been allowed her to revise and finish them.
This reflection was sufficient to make me examine most scrupulouslyif I was authorized to give them publicity. The fear of any sort ofresponsibility cannot be present to the mind, when our dearestaffections are in question; but the heart is agitated by a painfulanxiety when we are left to guess at those wishes, the declarationof which would have been a sacred and invariable rule. Nevertheless,after having seriously reflected on what duty required of me, I amsatisfied that I have fulfilled my mother's intentions, in engagingto leave out in this edition of her works*, no productionsusceptible of being printed. My fidelity in adhering to thisengagement gives me the right of disavowing beforehand, all which atany future period, persons might pretend to add to this collection,which, I repeat, contains every thing, of which my mother had notformally forbid the publication.
(* Les Oeuvres completes de Madame la Baronne de Stael, publiees parson Fils. Precedees d'une notice sur le caractere et les ecrits deMadame de Stael, par Madame Necker de Saussure. Paris, 17 vols. 8vo.and 17 vols. in 12mo.)
The title of TEN YEARS' EXILE, is that of which the authoressherself made choice; I have deemed it proper to retain it, althoughthe work, being unfinished, comprises only a period of seven years.The narrative begins in 1800, two years previous to my mother'sfirst exile, and stops at 1804, after the death of M. Necker. Itrecommences in 1810, and breaks off abruptly at her arrival inSweden, in the autumn of 1812. Between the first and second part ofthese Memoirs there is therefore an interval of nearly six years. Anexplanation of this will be found in a faithful statement of themanner in which they were composed.
I will not anticipate my mother's narrative of the persecution towhich she was subjected during the imperial government: thatpersecution, equally mean and cruel, forms the subject of thepresent publication, the interest of which I should only weaken. Itwill be sufficient for me to remind the reader, that after havingexiled her from Paris, and subsequently sent her out of France,after having suppressed her work on Germany with the most arbitrarycaprice, and made it impossible for her to publish anything, even onsubjects wholly unconnected with politics; that government went sofar as to make her almost a prisoner in her own residence, to forbidher all kind of travelling, and to deprive her of the pleasures ofsociety and the consolations of friendship. It was while she was inthis situation that my mother began her Memoirs, and one may readilyconceive what mus