From time to time during these early months he would suddenly find
himself in the midst of a constellation of grandmothers and aunts who
would briefly take him in their arms, and then leave him to return to their
daily social round.
Benjamin Constant almost never speaks about the first five years of his life, and it is
not difficult to see why. During those years he wanted for nothing material. As an infant
prodigy he was doted on and spoiled, his every utterance was applauded, and he soon
learned how to captivate an audience of female relatives. Nevertheless his later life seems
to tell a different and sadder story about the pattern of his childhood experience. Let us
begin with the first catastrophe of his existence, the loss of his mother. There is no way of
knowing how such a separation can affect so young a baby, and child psychologists
maintain a prudent silence on the subject. All the evidence tends to suggest that the
effects of what happened to Constant could have been mitigated, as common sense would
suggest, by the establishment of a continuous and loving bond with a substitute for the
mother, for example a nurse. Whether this happened in Constant’s case we do not know.
Constant’s father Juste was a highly impulsive and quarrelsome man and, for all we
know, may have changed his son’s nurses as he would later change his tutors—often. The
long-term effects of such treatment have been exhaustively documented in our own
century, notably by such clinical specialists as Michael Rutter and the late John Bowlby,
and several of their conclusions remind us unmistakably of Benjamin Constant.^4
But before considering them, there is another crucial factor to consider in respect of
Henriette de Constant’s death: the reaction to it of her husband. We saw a moment ago
the extraordinary effect of grief on Juste de Constant, a seizure which brought him close
to death. And we can add to this the knowledge of the couple’s happiness during the
sixteen months of their marriage (22 July 1766 to 10 November 1767), a fact about which
Gustave Rudler was sceptical when he wrote his magisterial 1909 study La Jeunesse de
Benjamin Constant, but which the correspondence surrounding Henriette’s death seems
to confirm. Losing her left Juste de Constant in total disarray, the more remarkable for his
being in normal circumstances a stern and exceptionally strong-willed personality. He
had, for a while, no idea what to do with himself or his son. Then his composure
returned, he made arrangements for Benjamin’s immediate future and left to rejoin his
regiment in Holland. Thereafter Juste returned periodically to Lausanne, and we can
easily imagine the bewilderment of his young son whose pattern of life his return
disrupted and who would become attached to him on each visit only to undergo another
inevitable separation.
Yet perhaps more important even than repeated separation was Juste’s attitude towards
Benjamin. Portraits of Benjamin Constant from early childhood to middle age reveal a
striking facial resemblance to Henriette, whose sandy hair he also inherited.^5 Each sight
of his son would renew Juste’s sense of loss, a grief it was not in his character to display,
but which it would be only too natural for Benjamin to glimpse now and then. The
mystery of death, and especially that of one’s own mother, is, of course,
incomprehensible to a very young child, and it must certainly have troubled one as
precocious and intelligent as Benjamin Constant. A look or a cross word from his father,
the gossip of a servant, perhaps, would be enough to suggest to him that he had some part
in the mystery. Not knowing anything about the physical details of birth, Benjamin felt
nonetheless some responsibility for what occurred after his own. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Benjamin constant 10