Nicolas de Necker

“ Necker, the universal genius whose advent to the ministry was hailed as the panacea for all discords, and difficulties, and threatened dangers; Necker, the “Achilles of computation,” whose, vigorous hand and capacious brain were to seize France, tottering on the brink of some invisible gulf, and steady her ”

“ 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. ”

“ Necker passing, perhaps by mere accident, stopped his carriage, and expressing himself with some resentment for such treatment to a Prince of the blood and a friend of the people, ordered the bust to be taken to the Palais Royal, where it was washed, crowned with laurel, and thence, with Necker's own bust, carried to Versailles. The King's aunts, coming from Bellevue as the procession was upon the road, ordered the guards to send the men away who bore the busts, that the King and Queen might not be insulted with the sight. ”

“ Necker supplied the saw when he called together the States. Does your majesty ask what is to be done? One thing alone can be done,—insist on the separation of the orders.'
The queen looked down on the gravel and mused. The bishop continued: 'War has now been declared. M. Necker has allowed the orders to try their arms, and now they have proclaimed war and no quarter. He has temporised, he has left the orders to themselves, and by so doing, he has assured the victory to the strongest. I believe he has, throughout, determined that the Third Estate should conquer the others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first time I ever read it was at the desire of Mme. de Staël." Mme. de Staël herself says somewhere: "I do not believe all men resemble Adolphe, but only vain men." Simple as the observation is, we feel that it is written by a woman in self-defence; for Adolphe had struck home to Necker's daughter personally, had bared her deepest heart wound.
Anne Marie Germaine Necker was born in Paris in 1766. Her father, the great Genevese financier, became First Minister of France shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution, and his name was at that time the watchword of liberal France. ”

“ The wild current thus turned, the men, who in the morning had declared, ‘that liberty was safe, since Necker was allowed to watch over her,’ now accused him of ambition, and a desire to keep well with the court, by facilitating the return, or escape, of it’s minions. Such in fact was the inconstancy of a people, always running after theatrical scenes, that the tocsin was rung to denounce Necker as a courtier in one quarter of the city, at the very time the Palais 274Royal was illuminated to celebrate his return as a patriot. ”

“ This was a cruel blow to Madame Necker. A nature allowed to develop spontaneously, a mind virgin of the pruning-hook, were objects of as much horror to her as if they had been forbidden by Heaven. That her daughter, just at the final moment, when what was doubtless the mere preliminary course of study had been traversed, should be released from bondage and abandoned to her own impetuosity, was well-nigh insupportable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophy which was not her own. It is seen that she was indebted to the brains of others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth in Delphine and Corinne; but as the exponent of sensibility she remains unique. This woman was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, usually known as Mme. de Stael.
There was much about Mile. Necker's parentage that made her interesting. Her father was the Genevese banker and minister of Louis XVI, who failed wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances of France. ”

“ The marquise, by this time infinitely weary of men and things, appears soon to have tired of Madame Necker's declamations and M. Necker's superiority. Her final judgment on the wife was very severe, rather ill-tempered, and therefore unjust. Madame Necker was, she says, "stiff and frigid, full of self-consciousness, but an upright woman." Her liking for the husband held out longer, but finally succumbed to the discovery that, while very intelligent, he failed to elicit wit from others. "One felt oneself more stupid in his company than when with other people or alone." ”

“ 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. ”

“ What brings thousands to this quiet retreat every year? Because here lived and wrote and suffered the only person whom the great Napoleon feared, whom Galiffe, of Geneva, declared "the most remarkable woman that Europe has produced"; learned, rich, the author of Corinne and Allemagne, whose "talents in conversation," says George Ticknor, "were perhaps the most remarkable of any person that ever lived."
April 27, 1766, was the daughter of James Necker, Minister of Finance under Louis XVI., a man of fine intellect, the author of fifteen volumes ”

“ But Madame Necker, besides being young, rich, and handsome, was bitten with the prevailing craze for literature, could listen unwearingly for hours to the most laboured portraits and éloges, and, although herself the purest and most austere of women, would open her salon to any reprobate, provided only he were witty.
Madame Necker, first known to us as Suzanne Curchod, was the daughter of a Swiss pastor, and saw the light in the presbytery of Crassier in the Pays de Vaud. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The discontent of the great financiers and that of the courtiers was becoming every day more noisy, without as yet shaking the credit of M. Necker. “M. Necker wants to govern the kingdom of France like his little republic of Geneva,” people said: “he is making a desert round the king; each loan is the recompense for something destroyed.” “Just so,” answered M. de Maurepas: “he gives us millions, provided that we allow him to suppress certain offices.” “And if he were to ask permission to have the superintendents’ heads cut off?” ”

“ I cannot reconcile this with Necker's stay at Versailles. That he is playing a deep game is certain. It is reported that Madame Necker tastes previously every thing he swallows. (647) A vast camp is forming round Paris; but the army is mutinous—the tragedy may begin on the other side. They do talk of an engagement at Metz, where the French troops, espousing the popular cause, were attacked by two German regiments, whom the former cut to pieces. The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, who were at Paris, have thought it prudent to leave it ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On another occasion, when he accosted her in a gracious mood, she made bold to ask him what woman in France he was proudest of. "The woman who has most children," was the coarse rejoinder.
Mme. de Staël made frequent journeys to Coppet, her father's residence. This was another crime in the eyes of the First Consul, as Necker was supposed to have been helped by his talented daughter in his work, Politics and Finance—a book which Bonaparte resented furiously as an attack [Pg 536] on his own policy and system of finance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her last years were chiefly spent in the composition of her 'Considerations on the French Revolution,' in which she sums up the convictions of her life. It is one of her most valuable and most lasting books. The disproportioned prominence which is naturally assigned in it to Necker, and the manifest personal element in her antipathy to Napoleon, impair its weight, indeed, as a history; but few writers have criticised with more justice the successive stages of the Revolution, and few [150] books of its generation are so rich in political wisdom. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is he who overthrew the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold!"
"Sire!" exclaimed the young man, deeply agitated, "you are then not aware that my grandfather's estates were confiscated because he defended the king!"
"A fine defence, indeed! If I give a man poison, and then, when he lies in the death-struggle, give him an antidote, can you then maintain that I wished to save this man? It was in this manner that M. Necker defended Louis XVI. The confiscations of which you speak prove nothing. Robespierre's property was also confiscated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”