Madame Necker

“ All Madame Geoffrin's friends, as we know, had to submit to be scolded; but probably few showed under the infliction the magnanimity of Madame Necker, who must have possessed all the power of submission peculiar to self-questioning souls. The calm old lady, ensconced in her own peculiar chair, whether in Paris or at St. Ouen, in the midst of the sparkling society to which she had perseveringly fought her way, was disturbed in her serenity by no presage of misfortune. ”

“ Very sensitive, yet very submissive, and quite incapable of resentment, Germaine threw herself with characteristic passionate ardour into the task of winning her mother's praise. How complacently Madame Necker must have accepted the homage implied in these efforts, it is easy to imagine. A little contempt for the child's impetuosity helped to give her the firmness necessary for moulding, according to her own notions, the nature so plastic, yet so vital, thus placed within her grasp. ”

“ M. Necker, who detested literary women, had looked with but scanty favour on his daughter's passion for writing, and it is probable that, as long as she was exclusively under Madame Necker's rule, he did not feel for her more than the commonplace sort of affection which a busy and serious-minded father bestows on a little girl.
During her childhood Germaine herself lavished all her warmest affection on her mother, being apparently drawn to her by the subtle attraction which a very deep and reserved nature exercises on an excitable one. ”

“ She had no alternative but to resign herself, and therefore, silently and coldly as was her wont, she accepted the situation. Nevertheless, she was neither reconciled to it, nor felt the same interest in Germaine again. Years afterwards, the bitterness that she had hoarded in her soul betrayed itself in one little phrase. Madame Necker de Sausanne was congratulating her on her daughter's astonishing powers. "She is nothing," said Madame Necker, coldly, "nothing to that which I would have made her." ”

“ On the brink of the irrevocable, even the pride of controversy may come to be a little thing; and Buffon’s wearied spirit perhaps recoiled from further speculation on the eternal problem of futurity. And to be at one, in that supreme moment, with the pitying woman who had come to solace his final agony, may have weighed with him above the praise and blame over which the grave was to triumph forever.
Madame Necker delighted in making herself miserable, and the melancholia natural to him probably caused Thomas to be the most thoroughly congenial to her of all her friends. ”

“ The young are apt to think their parents superior to the rest of the world. The claims which M. and Madame Necker possessed to real superiority, from their virtues and talents, naturally added to the warmth of their daughter's affection. The distinction in which they were held made the path of her life bright; and even the first check that occurred in her father's career tended to excite still more her admiration for him, as opposition gives form and strength to every power exerted to overcome it. ”

“ The tomb at Coppet in which she rests, together with her husband and daughter, was built in conformity with her wishes, and in great part under her eyes. She died on 6th May, 1794. M. Necker felt her death acutely, and for months not even his daughter’s sympathy could console him. Madame Necker had one of those self-tormenting natures which poison the existence of others in embittering their own. Too noble to be slighted, and too exacting to be appeased, they work out the doom of unachieved desires ”

“ All made love to her, and, misled by the studied warmth of pompous eloquence with which she proclaimed her delight in their society, they not rarely persuaded themselves that they had added her to the list of their conquests, and were chagrined and not a little disgusted later to discover that the only man she cared for was her husband. Indeed, she bored everybody with praise of M. Necker, composing and reading aloud in her own salon a preposterous portrait of him, in which she compared him to most things in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth, from an angel to a polypus. ”

“ Holroyd, Deyverdun, Madame Necker were more to him than all the great people with whom he now became acquainted. Necker and his wife came over from Paris and paid him a long visit in Bentinck Street, when his laurels were just fresh. "I live with her" he writes, "just as I used to do twenty years ago, laugh at her Paris varnish, and oblige her to become a simple reasonable Suissesse. The man, who might read English husbands lessons of proper and dutiful behaviour, is a sensible, good-natured creature." ”

“ On her death, in 1794, Necker was solaced by the affection and friendship of their accomplished daughter, Madame de Staël, since generally recognized as one of the most distinguished women who ever lived. In 1800 he was visited by Bonaparte, when marching to Marengo. Necker expired in the year 1803, and was buried in the grounds at Coppet, by the side of his departed spouse.
This famous man was not endowed with that splendid genius which has elevated many from obscure situations [81] to positions of power and dignity; but his industry was untiring, and his integrity beyond question. ”

“ By the time that the King of Poland's bonne maman wrote that little note to Madame Necker, the wife of the Genevese banker had founded a salon as brilliant and crowded as Madame Geoffrin's own. She had achieved this in a few years, whereas Madame Geoffrin for the same task, and in spite of her wealth and generosity, had required a quarter of a century. ”

“ Silent themselves when they might have spoken, they leave an unanswered question in the hearts of their survivors. Monsieur Necker, with his exaggerated consciousness, must have asked himself repeatedly if he had cared for his strange and loving wife enough. ”

“ Necker unveiled the progress which the first consul of the republic was making towards a throne. This untimely disclosure of his secret ways injured Bonaparte: he spoke bitterly of Necker, and said of madame de Staël that she should not visit Paris again, since she conveyed such false impressions to her father.
Love for this father was the master passion of madame de Staël's life. She looked on him as the wisest and best of men; but, more than this, his kindness and sympathy gifted him with something angelic in her eyes. ”

“ Needless to say that opinions such as these never found their way into Madame de Staël’s mind. On occasions—perhaps too frequently renewed—the portals of that enchanted palace were guarded by her heart. In her view, everything might yet be saved, were Necker only listened to and obeyed. “Every day he will do something good and prevent something bad,” she wrote to the reactionary and angry Gustavus, and thus betrayed that preoccupation with the individual, his virtues or his crimes, which, for all her intellect, blinded her not rarely to the essential significance of things. ”

“ If such were the widow's ideas, they were doomed to disappointment; for very soon after Necker's introduction to Suzanne he made a transfer of his affections to her. He left, however, for Geneva, without declaring his sentiments; and Mademoiselle Curchod, once again in love, and once again in despair, poured out her feelings in a long letter to Moulton. That ever faithful friend did his best to bring things to a happy termination, by taking care that M. Necker, during his sojourn in Geneva, should hear nothing but praise of Suzanne. ”

“ Necker divined in the young hero a strength of will to which his own hesitating nature was a stranger; while Napoleon, on his side, penetrating but prejudiced, contemptuously described the once august financier in two words, “A banker and an Idealist.” With his usual cynicism, he attributed Necker’s visit to the desire of employment; whereas Madame de Staël affirmed that her father’s chief object was to plead her cause. In this he was so far successful that residence in France was for some time at least assured to her. ”

“ As dame de compagnie, Mademoiselle Curchod journeyed with Madame Vermenoux to the French capital, [51] and carried off one of her lovers, M. Necker, under her very eyes. The popular tradition is that Madame Vermenoux was well tired of M. Necker and of Mademoiselle Curchod also, and so cheerfully gave them both her blessing, remarking with malice as well as wit: "They will bore each other so much that they will be provided with an occupation." ”

“ No popularity could have resisted such successive blows; and Necker was popular no longer. Still, Madame de Staël touchingly begs the world, in her writings, not to allow itself to be turned from the paths of virtue by the spectacle of a good man so persecuted by fate. She claims our admiration for a series of quixotic acts, and is perpetually insisting on the amazing magnanimity which would not allow her father to become base because he had ceased to be useful. ”

“ Anne Marie Louise Germaine Necker was born at Paris on April 22, 1766. In 1787 she was married--unhappily--to Baron de Staël-Holstein, Swedish Ambassador at Paris. She was in peril during the Terror, but escaped to Switzerland. A few years afterwards she showed keen political activity against Napoleon, who respected her hostility so profoundly that he would not suffer her to approach Paris. Madame de Staëls "Corinne, or Italy," is accounted one of her two masterpieces, the other one being "On Germany." ”

“ She believed that her soul communed with his in prayer, and that it was to his intercession that she owed all the good that befell her. Whenever she met with any piece of good fortune, she would say, “It is my father who has obtained this for me.”
In happier days, this passion sometimes was the occasion of scenes not a little amusing to the bystanders. Her cousin and biographer, Madame de Necker Saussure relates the following anecdote: She had 111 come to Coppet from Geneva in Necker’s carriage, and had been overturned on the way, but received no injury. ”

“ They called her "The Daughter of Necker," and all through life she delighted in the title. The courtier who addressed her thus received a sunny smile and a gentle love-tap on his cheek for pay. A splendid woman is usually the daughter of her father, just as strong men have noble mothers.
Jacques Necker was born in Geneva, and went up to the city, like many another country boy, to make his fortune. He carried with him to Paris innocence, health, high hope, and twenty francs in silver. ”

“ Necker envied the daughter's cleverness, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end, than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate, the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father the affection which her mother neither received nor sought.
It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage was arranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who then represented the court of Sweden at Paris. Many eyebrows were lifted when this match was announced. ”

“ Necker was always quite frank and outspoken, often showing a cutting harshness and a rigor which, as was said, was little in harmony with her bare neck and arms—a style then in vogue at court. She never judged persons by their reputations, but by their esprit; thus, it was possible for her to receive people of the most diverse tendencies. When the Marquise de La Ferté-Imbault, one of the few virtuous women of the time, and of the highest aristocracy, was invited to attend the salon of Mme. Necker and was told that the Maréchale de Luxembourg, Mme. ”

“ This period of Mme. Necker's career shows her character on a very engaging side. Loving her husband with a devotion that verged upon idolatry, she was rich in the friendship of men like Thomas, Buffon, Grimm, Diderot, and Voltaire, whose respectful tone was the highest tribute to her dignity and her delicacy. But the true nature of a woman is best seen in her relations with her own sex. There are a thousand fine reserves in her relations with men that, in a measure, veil her personality. ”

“ It is impossible that one so serious and so earnest as Mme. Necker should have cherished such passionate friendships for her own sex, if she had been as cold or as calculating as she has been sometimes represented. Her intimacy with Mme. ”

“ It explains and apologizes, I think, for those wildly warm expressions in which she has indulged, when speaking of Necker's character, and which might perhaps sound strange, if uttered by a less energetic personage, or if applied to those sort of parents who are usually met with in common life. The woman who has been allowed by the general voice of her cotemporary judges to be "the greatest writer of a female, that any age, or any country, has produced;" (nay even by one distinguished genius [8] has been called "the most powerful author, whether man or woman, of her day;") ”

“ Yet continual power produces arrogance, and the soul unchecked finally believes in its own omniscience.
Of course such a matrimonial prize as the daughter of Necker was sought for, even fought for. But the women who can see clear through a man, like a Roentgen ray, do not invite soft demonstration. They give passion a chill. Love demands a little illusion; it must be clothed in mystery. And although we find evidences that many youths stood in the hallways and sighed, the daughter of Necker never saw fit by a nod to bring them to her feet. ”

“ The friend of savants and philosophers, she had neither read nor studied books, but she had studied life to good purpose. Though superficial herself, she had the delicate art of putting every one in the most advantageous light by a few simple questions or words. It was one of her maxims that "the way not to get tired of people is to talk to them of themselves; at the same time, it is the best way to prevent them from getting tired of you." Perhaps Mme. Necker was thinking of her when she compared certain women in conversation to "light layers of cotton wool in a box packed with porcelain ”