Born at Crassier in the Canton of Vaud, 1739; died at Lauzanne,
1794.
Her father was a Protestant pastor, who educated her. At the age
of twenty she had a perfect and intimate knowledge of modern and
classical literature. She was tall and handsome, her manners amiable
and dignified. Her parents were poor; she was therefore obliged to give
private lessons in families. Gibbon, the historian, knew and admired,
and even desired to marry her. His father, however, absolutely refused
his consent on account of Mdlle. Curchod’s want of means.
Having lost both her parents she went to Paris as the companion of a
Mdme. de Verenenon, a rich widow. Mdme. Verenenon possessed a suitor,
one Monsieur Necker, a wealthy banker of about thirty-two years of age.
When M. Necker met the young companion he transferred his affections to
her, and they were married in 1764. Their union was a very happy one.
Mdme. Necker’s salon was one of the most agreeable and cultured in
Paris, her _habitués_ being Buffon, Thomas, St. Lambert, Suard,
Marmontel, Saurin, Duclosé, Diderot, D’Alembert, De la Harpe, Guibert,
Abbé Delille, Abbé Arnaud, Abbé Morellet, Comte de Creutz, Duc d’Azeu,
Marquis de Caraccioli. Her greatest friends were Buffon and Thomas.
During her husband’s first Ministry, Mdme. Necker occupied herself
particularly with the Paris Hospitals, then in a deplorable condition,
and at the moment when the Revolution drove her from France, she was
busy arranging a model hospital she had founded at her own expense.
She died, aged fifty-four, at Lausanne.
She had an only daughter, the celebrated Madame de Staël, born in
1766. The relations of mother and child were, unfortunately, never
happy, as the amiable, pious, but rigid Calvinist mother could in no
way understand the character or disposition of her brilliant daughter.
M. Necker, on the contrary, made his child his friend and companion
from her early girlhood, and in consequence a violent jealousy existed
between the mother and daughter, which as years went on embittered both
their lives, and continued until Mdme. Necker’s death. M. Necker died
ten years later, in 1804.