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Famous Women.
MADAME DE STAËL.
* * * * * *
_Already published_:
GEORGE ELIOT. By Miss Blind.
EMILY BRONTË. By Miss Robinson.
GEORGE SAND. By Miss Thomas.
MARY LAMB. By Mrs. Gilchrist.
MARGARET FULLER. By Julia Ward Howe.
MARIA EDGEWORTH. By Miss Zimmern.
ELIZABETH FRY. By Mrs. E. R. Pitman.
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY. By Vernon Lee.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. By Mrs. E. R. Pennell.
HARRIET MARTINEAU. By Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller.
RACHEL. By Mrs. Nina H. Kennard.
MADAME ROLAND. By Mathilde Blind.
SUSANNA WESLEY. By Eliza Clarke.
MARGARET OF ANGOULÊME. By Miss Robinson.
MRS. SIDDONS. By Mrs. Nina H. Kennard.
MADAME DE STAËL. By Bella Duffy.
* * * * * *
[Illustration]
MADAME DE STAËL.
by
BELLA DUFFY.
Boston:
Roberts Brothers.
1887.
Copyright, 1887,
By Roberts Brothers.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
PREFACE.
Unpublished correspondence—that delight of the eager biographer—is not
to be had in the case of Madame de Staël, for, as is well known, the De
Broglie family either destroyed or successfully hid all the papers which
might have revealed any facts not already in possession of the world.
The writer of the present brief memoir has, consequently, had to fall
back upon the following well-known works:
The _Correspondance_ of the Abbé Galiani, of Mme. Du Deffand, of
Rahel Varnhagen, and of Schiller; the _Memoirs_ of Marmontel, of Mme.
D’Arblay, of Mme. de Rémusat, of Mme. d’Abrantè, of Bourrienne, and of
the Comte de Montlosier; Ticknor’s _Letters_; Châteaubriand’s _Mémoires
d’Outre Tombe_; De Goncourt’s _Histoire de la Société Française
pendant la Révolution_, and _Histoire de la Société Française pendant
le Directoire_; Lacretelle’s _Dix Années d’Épreuve_; Michelet’s _Le
Directoire_, _Le Dix-huit Brumaire_, and _Jusqu’à Waterloo_; _Le Salon de
Madame Necker_, by Vicomte d’Haussonville; _Studies of the Eighteenth
Century in Italy_, by Vernon Lee; Byron’s _Letters_; Benjamin Constant’s
_Letters to Mme. Récamier_; _Coppet and Weimar_; _Les Correspondants de
Joubert_, by Paul Raynal; _Les Causeries du Lundi_, and other studies by
Ste. Beuve; Droz’ _Histoire du Règne de Louis XVI._; Villemain’s _Cours
de Littérature Française_; the fragments from Constant’s _Journals_,
recently published in the _Revue Internationale_; Sismondi’s _Journals_
and _letters_; and sundry old articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_;
besides various other volumes, of which the list would be long and
wearisome to detail.
BELLA DUFFY.
CONTENTS.
Chap. Page.
I.—THE MOTHER 1
II.—GERMAINE 9
III.—GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE 20
IV.—NECKER’S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH 34
V.—MADAME DE STAËL IS COURAGEOUS
FOR HER FRIENDS 51
VI.—RETURNS TO COPPET 69
VII.—THE TRANSFORMED CAPITAL 78
VIII.—MADAME DE STAËL MEETS NAPOLEON 93
IX.—NEW FACES AT COPPET 108
X.—MADAME DE STAËL VISITS GERMANY 127
XI.—MADAME DE STAËL AND AUGUSTE
SCHLEGEL AT ROME 141
XII.—MADAME DE STAËL’S SECOND MARRIAGE 162
XIII.—ENGLAND AGAIN 180
XIV.—CLOSING SCENES 196
XV.—HER WORKS 207
MADAME DE STAËL.
CHAPTER I.
THE MOTHER.
“My dear friend having the same tastes as myself, would certainly wish
always for my chair, and, like his little daughter, would beat me to make
me give it up to him. To keep peace between our hearts, I send a chair
for him also. The two are of suitable height and their lightness renders
them easy to carry. They are made of the most simple material, and were
bought at the sale of Philemon and Baucis.”
Thus wrote Madame Geoffrin to Madame Necker when the intimacy between
them had reached such a pitch as to warrant the introduction into the
Necker salons of the only sort of chair in which the little old lady
cared to sit.
The “dear friend” was M. Necker, and the “little daughter” of the house
must then have been about four or five years old, for it was in the
very year of her birth (1766) that Madame Geoffrin took her celebrated
journey to Poland, and it was some little time after her return that she
became intimate with Germaine Necker’s parents.
They were still in the Rue de Cléry. M. Necker’s elevation to the
Contrôle Général was in the future and had probably not been foreseen; it
is possible that even the _Éloge de Colbert_, which betrayed his desire
for power, had not yet appeared; nevertheless, he was already a great
man. His controversy with the Abbé Morellet, on the subject of the East
India Company, had brought him very much into notice; and, although his
arguments in favor of that monopoly had not saved it from extinction,
they had caused his name to be in everybody’s mouth.
His position as Minister for the Republic of Geneva gave him the entry to
the Court of Versailles, and brought him into contact with illustrious
personages, who otherwise might have disdained a mere wealthy foreigner,
neither a noble nor a Catholic. His well-filled purse completed his
popularity, for it was not seldom at the service of abject place-hunters
and needy literati. Moreover, he had been fortunate in his choice of a
wife.
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.
But Madame Necker, besides being young, rich and handsome, was bitten
with the prevailing craze for literature, could listen unweariedly
for hours to the most labored _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. The simple white house, with its green shutters, is still
to be seen, separated from the road by a little garden planted with fruit
trees. The Curchods were an ancient and respectable family whom Madame
Necker (it was one of her weaknesses) would fain have proved entitled
to patents of nobility. Some Curchods or Curchodis are found mentioned
in old chronicles as fighting beneath the banners of Savoy, and it was
from these that Madame Necker sought vainly to trace her descent. She
held a secret consultation for this cherished object with the Sieur
Chérin, genealogist to the King; but his decision disappointed her.
Chagrined, but not convinced—for her opinions were not easily shaken—she
carried home the precious papers and locked them up without erasing the
endorsement, _Titres de noblesse de la famille Curchod_, which she had
written with her own hand.
M. Curchod took pains to give his only daughter an unusually thorough and
liberal education. She knew Latin and a little Greek, “swept with extreme
flounce the circle of the sciences,” and was accomplished enough in every
way to attract the admiration, very often even the love, of sundry grave
and learned personages.
Mixed with her severe charm there must have been some coquetry, for at a
very early age she began making conquests among the young ministers who
arrived on Sundays at Crassier, ostensibly to assist M. Curchod in his
duties; and a voluminous correspondence, somewhat high-flown, as was the
fashion of the day, is extant, to prove that Suzanne possessed the art
of keeping her numerous admirers simultaneously well in hand. Verses,
occasionally slightly Voltairian in tone, were also addressed to her; and
later in life Madame Necker reproached herself for her placid acceptance
of the homage thus expressed, and owned that had she understood it better
she would have liked it less.
Suzanne’s parents, proud, no doubt, of their daughter’s talents and
accomplishments, took her after a while to Lausanne. That pleasant city,
since giving up its own political ideals and falling under the sway of
Berne, had lapsed into easy-going, intellectual ways, and even professed
a discreet and modified form of Voltairianism. Ever since the author
of the “Henriade” had dazzled it with his presence, it had been on the
look-out for illustrious personalities, and welcomed all foreigners who
showed any promise of literary distinction.
What with her pretensions to be a _bel-esprit_, her youth and beauty,
Mademoiselle Curchod captivated the town at once, and very soon had the
proud joy of founding an _Académie de la Poudrière_, and being elected
to preside over it under the fantastic name of Thémire. The members
of this intellectual society were of both sexes and all young. Their
duties consisted in writing _portraits_ of one another, and essays or
odes on subjects in general. Combined with these profound pursuits there
seems to have been a good deal of flirtation, and, doubtless, both the
scholasticism and the sentiment were equally to Suzanne Curchod’s taste.
During her stay in Lausanne she fascinated Gibbon, and, for the first
time in her career of conquest, fell in love herself. So profound was her
passion—or so profound, in her self-tormenting way, did she imagine it to
be—that she remained constant to her engagement during the four years of
Gibbon’s absence in England, and wrote him agitated, abject letters of
reproach, when he, alleging his father’s invincible objections, broke off
the engagement. Her devoted friend, Moulton, who appears to have loved
her all his life, was so touched by her despair, that, with Suzanne’s
own consent, he sought the mediation of Rousseau in order to bring the
recreant lover back to his allegiance. But the attempt was vain. Gibbon
showed himself as heartless as Mademoiselle Curchod had proved indulgent,
and when the lady, as a last resource, proposed that they should at least
remain friends, he declined the amiable offer as being “dangerous for
both.” Nevertheless, when they met again in Paris, some years later,
Mademoiselle Curchod, then married, welcomed Gibbon with kindness,
and even wrote him notes containing, here and there, allusions to the
past. For the age was evidently sentimental, and to cherish memories of
vanished joys, and make passing, pathetic reference to them, was a luxury
of which Madame Necker would have been the last to deprive herself.
On the death of her parents, Suzanne found herself obliged to seek for a
situation as governess, or companion. All her life, fortunate in making
and keeping the most devoted friends, she found plenty anxious to help
her in carrying out her plans. Among her sincerest admirers was the
charming Duchess d’Enville, whose sweetness, grace, and naïf enthusiasm
for Switzerland (as a kind of romantic republic, all shepherds and
shepherdesses, toy-châlets, natural sentiments and stage liberty) were so
characteristic of the age, and so admiringly celebrated in Bonstetten’s
letters. It was, in all probability, through her introduction at Geneva
that Suzanne became acquainted with Madame de Vermenoux, a rich Parisian
widow, who fell immediately under the young orphan’s charm, and, engaging
her as a companion, took her back to Paris. In that intellectual
centre—the promised land of all her thoughts—Suzanne speedily came into
contact with several interesting people, among others the delightful
Bonstetten, then still young in years, destined to be always young in
heart, and whom, in the course of this work, we shall often see among the
band of fervent admirers surrounding Madame de Staël.
Another frequent visitor at Madame de Vermenoux’s house was M. Necker, at
that time a partner in Thellusson’s bank, and already possessed of ample
means. He was a rejected suitor of the hostess, but continued on very
good terms with her, and perhaps was expected to propose a second time.
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. The device, if needed, was
most successful; for the banker returned to Paris with his mind made up.
He proposed without loss of time, and it is, perhaps, not too much to
say, that Mademoiselle Curchod jumped into his arms.
All the friends of the bride elect were delighted, and even Madame de
Vermenoux proclaimed her pleasure at the turn which affairs had taken.
Some little subsequent coolness, however, she must have manifested, for
the date fixed for the wedding was kept a secret from her. When the day
dawned, Suzanne stole out quietly and met M. Necker at the church door.
In what form the news was broken to the widow is not known; but any
annoyance she may have felt was not of long duration, for in after years
we find Madame de Vermenoux a frequent guest of the Neckers, and the
little daughter, born on the 22nd April, 1766, was named Germaine after
her.