Madame de Staël. Bella Duffy
predestined all her life to struggle, to consume herself to ashes—like the Arabian princess who fought with the djinn—succumbed for the time to her mother’s will, by the annihilation of everything that was inalienably herself. The spell lasted as long as the tyranny which had created it; but once freed from the thraldom, wandering with her young cousin through the avenues of St. Ouen, drinking in the freshness of the shadowy glades, and acting innocent little dramas, Germaine became more natural and, in her mother’s eyes, more commonplace. Madame Necker lost interest in her, drew frigidly away from her, and even began to feel some jealousy of the new-born affection between the father and child.
When Germaine was fifteen, M. Necker fell from power. A few months previously he had published his Compte Rendu, and roused the enthusiasm of France. He had been the idol of the hour, and his name was in everybody’s mouth. From all sides, from nobles and bourgeois alike, letters of praise and congratulation poured in upon him. Among these was an anonymous epistle, written by Germaine, and immediately recognized by her father, who knew the author’s style.
She was transported with joy and triumph, and probably understood her father’s achievements better than two-thirds of the people who applauded them. For she was endowed with a marvellous quickness and completeness of comprehension, and, where she loved, her sympathy was flawless. She was always willing to welcome and adopt the thought of another, and never seemed to guess how much of force and brilliancy it owed to the illuminating power of her own vivid intellect.
On M. Necker’s retirement from the Ministry of Finance he came to St. Ouen, followed in his retreat by the pity and praise of the best and brightest minds of France. His daughter, seeing more of him than ever, now, in the greater leisure which he enjoyed, and regarding him as the heroic victim of an infamous political cabal, soon conceived for him an affection that amounted to idolatry. On his side he was enchanted with her humorous gayety, and lent himself to her playfulness in the not rare moments when Germaine’s small sum of years got the better of her large amount of intelligence.
One day Madame Necker had been called from the dining-room, during meal time, on some domestic or other business. Returning unexpectedly, she heard a good deal of noise, and, opening the door, stood transfixed with amazement on seeing her husband and daughter capering about, with their table-napkins twisted round their heads like turbans. Both culprits looked rather ashamed of themselves when detected, and their spirits fell to zero beneath the lady’s frozen glance.
The Neckers, in spite of the ex-minister’s so-called “disgrace,” continued surrounded with friends, so that from fifteen to twenty, at which latter age she married, Germaine’s days were one long intellectual triumph.
Her portraits read aloud to the guests, were eagerly received and enthusiastically applauded. She wrote one of her father, in competition with her mother; but when Monsieur Necker was appealed to on the respective merits of the two compositions, he wisely declined to pronounce any opinion. His daughter, however, divined his thoughts: “He admires Mamma’s portrait,” she said, “but mine flatters him more.”
Her own merits inspired the wits surrounding her in their turn. A portrait by Guibert described her as a priestess of Apollo, with dark eyes illumined by genius, black, floating curls, and marked features, expressive of a destiny superior to that of most women. This was an ornamental way of saying that Germaine was not beautiful. She was, in fact, very plain, strangely so, considering that she had magnificent eyes, fine shoulders and arms, and abundant hair. What spoilt her was the total want of grace. When talking, she was much too prodigal of grimace and gesture, and, if eloquent and convincing, was also overpowering.
She felt too much on every subject, and carried other people’s small stream of platitudes along in the rushing tide of her own emotions, till her hearers were left exhausted and admiring, but also a little resentful. She disconcerted the very persons whom she most revered by only pausing long enough in her talk to grasp their meaning, and feed her own thought with it till that glowed more consumingly than ever, while all the time what she felt, what they felt, and what she imagined that they meant to say was proclaimed in loud, harsh accents, most trying to sensitive nerves.
All this time she was busily writing, and her father, who nicknamed her Mademoiselle de Ste. Ecritoire, could not correct the tendency, even by his unceasing raillery. In a comedy entitled Sophie, ou les Sentiments Secrets, she scandalized Madame Necker, by selecting for a subject the struggles of a young orphan against the passion inspired in her by her guardian, a married man. To this period belong also Jane Grey and Montmorency, both tragedies, and various novelettes.
When Germaine was nearing twenty, the question of her marriage came under discussion; and serious consideration was then, for the first time, accorded to a suitor whom her large fortune had long attracted.
This was the Baron de Staël Holstein, Secretary to the Swedish Embassy. He seems to have been one of the elegant and amiable diplomatists whom the Courts of Europe in those days turned out by the score. He had wit and good manners, as he had also the golden key of the Court Chamberlain; otherwise, his personality was insignificant in the extreme.
He was fortunate, however, in serving under a very popular ambassador, the Count de Creutz; and in representing a king who, both for political and personal reasons, was anxious to keep on good terms with France. Gustavus III. of Sweden adored Paris, and was in continual correspondence with Madame de la Mark, Madame d’Egmont, Madame de Boufflers, and anybody who would keep him conversant with the gossip of the Tuileries and Versailles. The Count de Creutz having the intention of shortly retiring, it was understood that the Baron de Staël Holstein was to be his successor. That gentleman, who comprehended his own interests, and was head-over-ears in debt, lost no opportunity of persuading the Swedish King’s trio of witty correspondents, who in their turn were careful to impress on Gustavus, as well as on Louis XVI. and his Queen, that the next Swedish ambassador must be endowed with a splendid fortune.
A grand marriage was, of course, to be the means of achieving this; and Mademoiselle Germaine Necker, an heiress and a Protestant, was fixed upon for the bride.
The delicate negotiations lasted for some considerable time, during which period the prize the Baron sought was disputed by two formidable rivals—William Pitt and Prince George Augustus of Mecklenburg, brother of the reigning Duke. Madame Necker warmly supported Pitt’s suit, and showed great displeasure at being unable to overcome her daughter’s obstinate aversion to it. Seeing how distinguished the Englishman already was, and how brilliant his future career promised to be, one wonders a little at Germaine’s rejection of him. Probably the secret of her determination lay in the passionate adoration which she had now begun to feel for her father, on whom—as all his friends and partisans assured her—the eyes of misery-stricken France were fixed as on a savior.
The idea of quitting France in such a crisis, at the dawn, so to speak, of her father’s apotheosis, would naturally be intensely repugnant to her; and possibly for that very reason Madame Necker, always a little jealous of the sympathy between her husband and her daughter, warmly advocated Pitt’s claims. A painful coldness ensued between mother and daughter, and lasted until the former happened to fall dangerously ill. Then Germaine’s feelings underwent a revulsion of passionate tenderness; and in the touching reconciliation which ensued between parent and child, Mr. Pitt and his suit were forgotten.
Prince George Augustus of Mecklenburg was even less fortunate, being refused by both Monsieur and Madame Necker, with a promptitude which he fully deserved. For he had nothing to recommend him but his conspicuous position, and had very impudently avowed that he sought Mademoiselle Necker’s hand only for the sake of her enormous dower.
The ground being thus cleared for Madame de Bouffler’s protégé, that energetic lady set to work to obtain from Gustavus a promise not to remove the Baron, now ambassador, from France for a specified long term of years.
This assurance that they would not be parted from their daughter having been given to the Neckers, and formally embodied in a clause of the marriage settlement, the document was signed by the King and Queen of France, and several other illustrious personages, and the wedding celebrated on the 14th January, 1776.
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