True Pleasures (24 page)

Yet despite the big hair and bright makeup, despite the correctly feminist issues and domineering maternal banter, I was always struck, in the end, by how similar these women politicians were to their male counterparts. Like the men, these women had somehow de-sexed themselves. That's not to say that politicians didn't have sex lives, far from it: Canberra is a notoriously lusty city. Rather, that all those men and women in public life had consciously put their intimate selves and their professional selves into separate compartments. The bedroom was kept a long, long way from the office.

As I stroll past the Palais Bourbon, home to the French Parliament, and into the creamy heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, every now and then I pass an exquisite shop displaying finely embroidered bed linen or filmy hand-stitched silk nightgowns. The French are completely at home in the bedroom: in fact, for centuries bedrooms played an important role in French public life. The Bourbon Kings conducted a formal
lever
and
coucher
, often held in a large, grand room away from their actual sleeping quarters. It was a great privilege for a courtier to attend the King's rising and retiring ceremonies. Moreover, whenever the King presided over parliamentary sessions, he did so on a canopied bed, the
lit de justice
. This was a curious but apparently potent symbol of the King's divine, supreme power. Some think that Louis XVI sealed his fate when he fell asleep on his
lit de justice
, snoring his way through a critical parliamentary debate in the early stages of the Revolution.

The French bedroom had an important social function as well. The seventeenth-century salon hostesses often
received friends in their bedrooms. Many had little couches known as
ruelles
(little streets) built between their beds and the walls for their friends to lie upon while visiting. Bedrooms are still a source of uncomplicated fascination in France. I've been to see Marcel Proust's bedroom reconstructed in the Musée Carnavelet and Madame de Récamier's bedroom in the Louvre. The beds always seem remarkably small, as if an earlier France was populated by exquisite diminutives.

But right now there is only one French bedroom that really interests me. It belongs to a political activist who not only refused to be de-sexed by public life, but who openly smashed through the conventional demarcation lines between public life and private passion. She lived between the tumultuous years of 1766 and 1817 and her name was Germaine de Staël. She was, Lord Byron thought,
the first female writer of this, perhaps of any age
.

Germaine de Staël's bedroom was Europe's headquarters for liberal politics and progressive ideas. A succession of lovers – soldiers and statesmen, diplomats and scholars – owed their careers to her influence and inspiration. In between amorous exchanges she obtained their appointments and sinecures, she edited speeches and essays, she advised on tactics and policies, she clarified lines of thinking and corrected logical errors. None of which interfered in the least with her own enormous workload: writing essays and novels, hosting the most important salon in Europe and, finally, emerging as the leading dissident against Napoleon. All achieved without any official political appointment.

In the course of reading about the women of Paris, Germaine de Staël came as a major discovery to me. I felt quite shocked that I had never heard of her. I wanted to
say, well, I knew a bit about Napoleon and Wellington and Talleyrand. So why wasn't I told about Germaine de Staël? Hey?

In truth, Germaine de Staël's life story moves and disturbs me. There could be many reasons for this. One may be that her life raises the distinctly unsettling question of women and power.

I'm at number 52 rue de Varenne and standing in front of a plaque (again). There must be thousands of these plaques pasted around Paris, like postcards from history. But this is my favorite. Translated, it says:

Hôtel de Galliffet: Cultural Institute of Italy
Talleyrand made this the center of political life under the
Directory as Minister for Foreign Affairs. It was here that
Madame de Staël was presented to Napoleon Bonaparte on
3 January 1798, and the beginning of their mutual hostility.

Imagine a cold and beautiful winter's evening. The biggest party since the
ancien régime
is underway. Stepping from their carriages, five hundred guests stroll through this courtyard where rows of classical white columns are emblazoned with martial images: the vivid tents and banners recall Napoleon's recent heroics in Italy. Inside the lovely house the scent of amber lingers in the air, intensified by thousands of candles hung on low, glittering chandeliers. Flowers line the staircases. For the first time in France, the waltz is being played, and the thin dresses balloon gently as the women sway and turn. Dazzled by their own glamor, it gradually dawns upon the guests that they are being elected into a new French political elite.

And this is just what their host Talleyrand is trying to achieve, because tonight he inaugurates a new kind of aristocracy. With a new kind of king.

From her home around the corner in the rue du Bac, Germaine de Staël arrives at the ball, a colorful figure with her bright turban and dark curls. She sweeps through the courtyard, impervious to the glitzy atmosphere. She's seen this kind of thing before. Her Swiss father was a banker, one of the richest men in France. He served for a time as Louis XVI's finance minister. Her host, Talleyrand, was her first lover, and he owes his appointment as foreign minister to her political influence. She knows only too well the strengths and weaknesses of this new breed of politician. After all, most of them attend her salon. As far as Germaine de Staël is concerned, this phase of the Revolution has merely
put the villains-for-the-love-of-profit in the place of the villains-for-the-love-of-crime
.

As the ball reaches its climax Talleyrand, with his famous limp, slowly leads in his guest of honor: it's Josephine, gently regal in a thin gown and a diadem of antique cameos. But Germaine's focus is upon the man following behind – uniformed, modest, sallow, short, heroic Napoleon. Like many moderates, she believes his combination of revolutionary passion and military know-how may offer France the best hope of stability and democracy.

So she waylays him at the bottom of the stairs. She turns up again in the small salon. She pursues him on the way to the table. She tries every one of her conversational gambits. She is one of the most influential people in France and she can
help
Napoleon. She wants Napoleon to respond to her, to engage with her, to
recognize
her, yes, perhaps even to fall under her famous spell. But he doesn't.

The final conversation goes so badly that people talk about it for years.

‘General!' exclaims Madame de Staël. ‘Who most represents your idea of a wife?'

‘Mine!' replies Napoleon. Germaine persists.

‘That is simple enough, but what kind of woman would you admire the most?'

‘She who is the best housekeeper,' answers the hero
.

Finally Germaine demands of him: ‘Who is the greatest woman, alive or dead?'

Bonaparte looks at her. ‘The one who has made the most children,' he says
.

The plaque says that this was the beginning of their
mutual hostility
– the phrase binding these two great adversaries together: after all, only equals have
mutual
feelings.

But the truth is that the feeling wasn't, at first, mutual – it was only Napoleon who was hostile. And, really, I can understand why. It must have been infuriating to have the question of
woman
put to him so directly – it must have seemed like a full-frontal assault. From that moment, Napoleon viewed Germaine de Staël through the prism of her femininity: she had, effectively, demanded it. Until the day he died, Napoleon's epithets for Germaine de Staël never failed to allude to her gender:
That hussy Staël
, he called her. Or
that whore, and an ugly one at that
. Or
that mad woman
. Eventually she became just
that woman
.

Germaine de Staël, however, did not indulge in personal politics. In the absence of better leadership options for France, she set aside Napoleon's personal dislike. She continued to endorse him and engage with
him. Once she even turned up at Napoleon's little house in rue Chantereine. Told by the butler that Napoleon was naked in his bath she cried,
No matter, genius has no sex!

When Napoleon came back from Egypt and mounted a military coup against the Directory Government in November 1799, Germaine de Staël remained a reluctant supporter. But she had her limits. As Napoleon became more socially conservative, as he drifted towards totalitarianism and war-mongering, she pulled back. Pragmatic, yes, but she was never going to be an uncritical supporter of the emerging Napoleonic state.

On the evening of 4 January 1800, Germaine de Staël's lover Benjamin Constant was drafting his maiden speech to Napoleon's newly formed Tribunate. Benjamin Constant proposed to call for the Tribunate's independence and declare that otherwise
there would be nothing left but servitude and silence – a silence that all Europe would hear
. He knew this would provoke Napoleon's wrath. The same night there was a big gathering at Germaine de Staël's house. Half of Napoleon's cabinet and even several of his brothers were among the guests. Benjamin Constant warned Germaine,
‘Tonight your drawing room is filled with people whom you like. If I make my speech it will be deserted tomorrow
.' Germaine de Staël told her lover simply,
‘One must follow one's convictions.'

Events transpired as Benjamin predicted. Napoleon was angry at the speech and blamed not Benjamin Constant, but his mistress, Germaine de Staël. Her regular guests suddenly avoided her salon. For a period she was socially ostracized. The press was already falling under Napoleon's control and attacked Germaine de Staël:
It is not your fault that you are ugly, but it is your fault that you are an intriguer
.

Towards the spring of 1800, Germaine de Staël published
On Literature
. The topic was literature, but the theme was artistic freedom.

Its success meant that I was back in society's favor. My salon was crowded with people again, and I rediscovered the pleasure of talking – talking in Paris – which I must admit has always been the most stimulating pleasure I have ever known. My book said not one word about Bonaparte, but it did contain some very liberal sentiments, rather forcefully expressed
.

More than anyone else, except perhaps Germaine herself, Napoleon recognized the significant subversive power of Germaine de Staël's ‘liberal sentiments'. She was developing a coherent body of thought which challenged the dictatorial basis of his regime. He had his spies reporting her every conversation to him, receiving their reports as he sat in his bathtub.
I can smell her a mile away
, he steamed. At last he decided to neutralize this problematic political opponent. He asked his brother Joseph to find out what Madame de Staël wanted –
to stay in Paris? The restoration of funds owed by the French State to her father? What?
He should have known better.

‘It's not a question of what I want
,' said Germaine de Staël,
‘but of what I think
.'

Napoleon and Germaine de Staël came face to face for the last time in early 1801. She had prepared any number of things to say to the First Consul. But Napoleon merely looked at her low-cut gown and exposed bosom and said brutally,
‘You must have nursed all your children yourself, Madame?'

Of course I wondered: well, what did Madame de Staël say in response? Did she snap back a witty one-liner? Take
the humiliation and smile blankly? Flare up in anger? But history, in its infuriating way, does not record what happened next. I am sure, however, that I know how Germaine de Staël felt. She was a sensitive and reflective person. She felt the wound alright. It hurt. And there was worse to come.

In 1802, Napoleon made himself Consul for life. Having consolidated his position he now turned openly to menace. He said to his brother Joseph,
‘Serve notice to that woman … Advise her not to block my path, no matter what it is, no matter where I choose to go. Or else, I shall break her, I shall crush her.'