The French Editions and English Translations of the Memoires of Madame de Staal-Delaunay

Abstract

THE RECENT PUBLICATION, in the collection Le Temps retrouve, of Madame de Staal-Delaunay's Memoires' has once again done great injustice to the complex personality of that affecting woman. The introduction, prepared by the late Gerard Doscot, remained unrevised after his death, and much of it reinforces the misconceptions that have so long obscured the reality of Madame de Staal's merit. More than two hundred years after her death Madame de StaalDelaunay remains an elusive figure. In life, her position as chambermaid, reader, and companion of the duchesse du Maine placed her in the shadow of that imperious, wilful princess. Since then successive editions of the Memoires have followed the tradition which sees in Madame de Staal only the recorder of the glittering, futile world of Sceaux. Gerard Doscot, like his predecessors, has lavished the greatest care on the royal genealogy. His introduction dwells lovingly on the quasi-royal court of Sceaux when, at the close of Louis XIV's seemingly unending reign, the intrigues of his now-legitimized natural sons made of Madame du Maine the Queen of Hearts in Madame de Staal's Wonderland. Once more the luster of the impetuous childlike duchess overshadows the true identity, the fiercely independent character, of the woman who undertook her own remembrance of things past to alleviate the silent despair, the suffocating melancholy of her long years of service. The Memoires, probably written in 1741 when their author was fifty-seven years old, were published in 1755, five years after the death of Madame de Staal. They were well received, with a few res-