Madame de Staël. Bella Duffy
distinction the day on which the Maréchale de Luxembourg entered her salon. This charming old lady and exquisite grande dame, the arbiter of politeness and fine manners, was felicitously and untranslatably described by Madame du Deffand, in one delightful phrase, as “Chatte Rose!” Upon all those who met her at this period (when she was already nearly seventy), she seems to have produced the same impression of softness and elegance, of fine malice and caressing, irresistible ways.
Madame de Souza—that sweet little woman round whose name the perfume of her own roses still seems to cling—drew a portrait of the Maréchale in her novel Eugénie de Rothelin, under the name of the Maréchale de’Estouteville; nor did she, as Ste. Beuve tells us, forget to introduce, by way of contrast, in the person of Madame de Rieny, the pretty and winning Duchess de Lauzun, grand-niece of the Maréchale, and another flower of Madame Necker’s salon.
This little Duchess, “joli petit oiseau à l’air effarouché” (to quote Madame du Deffand once again), was so devoted an admirer of M. Necker, that, hearing somebody in the Tuileries Gardens blame him, she slapped the speaker’s face. Apart from this one outburst, which saves her from seeming too meek, she flits shadowy, sweet and pathetic, across the pages of her contemporaries. The record of her life, as we know it, is brief and touching. She kept herself unspotted from a most depraved world; loved a very unworthy husband and died, during the Terror, on the scaffold.
Another friend, and apparently a very sincere one, of Madame Necker, was Madame d’Houdetôt. Madame Necker seems to have accepted that interesting woman just as she was, including her relations with St. Lambert, whom the letters exchanged between the two ladies mention quite naturally. The affection which she felt for the mother was extended by Madame D’Houdetôt to the little daughter, and there are letters of hers extant describing visits which she had paid to Germaine, while Madame Necker was at Spa or Mont Doré for her health.
They were written to relieve the natural pain of absence on the parents’ part, and are full of praises of the child, of her engaging ways, her air of health, and her magnificent eyes.
CHAPTER III.
GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE.
In the brilliant world in which she awoke, Germaine very soon found her place. It is a very familiar little picture that which we have of her, seated on a low stool beside her mother at the receptions, and fixing on one speaker after another her great, astonished eyes.
Soon, very soon, she began to join in the conversation herself, and by the time she was ten or eleven years old she had grown into a person whose opinion was quite seriously consulted. Some of the friends of the house, Marmontel, Raynal and others, enchanted to have a new shrine in the same temple at which to worship, talked to her, wrote verses to her, and laid at her young feet some of the homage up to then exclusively devoted to Madame Necker.
That lady began by being enchanted at Germaine’s amazing powers, and set to work to educate her with characteristic thoroughness and pedantry. Everything that was strongest in her, family pride, the sense of maternal authority, the love of personal influence, the passion for training, seemed to find their opportunity in the surprising daughter whom Heaven had given her. She drove the child to study with unrelenting ardor, teaching her things beyond her age, and encouraging her at the same time further to exercise her intelligence by listening to conversations on all sorts of subjects. The consequence was that at eleven Germaine’s conversational powers were already stupendous. On being introduced to a child of her own age, a little Mademoiselle Hüber, who was her cousin, she amazed her new acquaintance by the questions she put to her. She asked what were her favorite lessons; if she knew any foreign languages; if she often went to the theatre. The little cousin confessing to having profited but rarely by such an amusement, Germaine was horror-stricken, but promised that henceforward the deficiency should be remedied, adding that on their return from the theatre they should both proceed to write down the subject of the pieces performed, with suitable reflections; that being, she said, her own habit. In the evening of this first day’s acquaintance, Mademoiselle Hüber, already sufficiently awe-struck, one must think, was further a witness to the attention paid to Germaine by her mother’s most distinguished guests.
“Everybody addressed her with a compliment or a pleasantry. She answered everything with ease and grace. … The cleverest men were those who took most pleasure in making her talk. They asked what she was reading, recommended new books to her and … talked to her of what she knew, or of what she had yet to learn.”
From her tenderest years Germaine wrote portraits and éloges. At fifteen she made extracts from the Esprit de Lois, with annotations, and about the same time the Abbé Raynal was very anxious that she should contribute to his great work an article on the Revolution of the Edict of Nantes.
But before this, when she was only twelve, the effects of such premature training had made themselves visible. Her feelings had been as unnaturally developed as her mind. Already that rich, abundant nature, so impetuous, generous, and fervid, which was at once the highest gift and deepest curse, had begun to reveal itself in an exaggerated sensibility. Praise of her parents moved her to tears; for the little cousin she had an affection amounting to passion; and the mere sight of celebrated people gave her palpitation of the heart. She did not care to be amused. What pleased her best was what pained her most, and her imagination was fed upon the “Clarissa Harlowe” school of novels.
By degrees her health began to fail, and at fourteen the collapse was so complete as to cause the most serious alarm. Tronchin was consulted, and prescribed absolute rest from study. 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. 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.”
Despatched from Paris to the pure air of St. Ouen, and ordered to do nothing but enjoy herself, the young girl quickly recovered her vivacity, and developed a charming joyousness. This new mood of hers, while gradually estranging her from her mother, drew her closer to her father. M. Necker, who detested literary women, had looked with but scanty favor 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. Madame Necker, pale, subdued in manner, restrained in gesture, surrounded with respectful adorers, revered by her husband, and flattered by her friends, seems to have filled her observant, imaginative little daughter with a feeling bordering on awe. Very sensitive, yet very submissive, and quite incapable of resentment, Germaine threw herself with characteristic passionate ardor 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. A good, nay, a noble woman, yet essentially a self-righteous one, she could comprehend perfection in nothing that did not, to a certain degree, resemble herself. Her ideas, her principles, her will, were, she conceived, to shape and fashion, restrain and re-create, this thing of fire and intellect, this creature