Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women — Madame De Stael, Part 1
MADAME DE STAEL
Far from gaining assurance in meeting Bonaparte oftener, he intimidated me daily more and more.
I confusedly felt that no emotion of the heart could possibly take effect upon him.
He looks upon a human being as a fact or as a thing, but not as a fellow-creature.
He does not hate any more than he loves; there is nothing for him but himself; all other things are so many ciphers.
The force of his will lies in the imperturbable calculation of his selfishness.
--_Reflections_ [Illustration: MADAME DE STAEL] Fate was very kind to Madame De Stael.
She ran the gamut of life from highest love to direst pain--from rosy dawn to blackest night.
Name if you can another woman who touched life at so many points!
Home, health, wealth, strength, honors, affection, applause, motherhood, loss, danger, death, defeat, sacrifice, humiliation, illness, banishment, imprisonment, escape.
Again comes hope--returning strength, wealth, recognition, fame tempered by opposition, home, a few friends, and kindly death--cool, all-enfolding death.
If Harriet Martineau showed poor judgment in choosing her parents, we can lay no such charge to the account of Madame De Stael.
They called her "The Daughter of Necker," and all through life she delighted in the title.
The courtier who addressed her thus received a sunny smile and a gentle love-tap on his cheek for pay.
A splendid woman is usually the daughter of her father, just as strong men have noble mothers.
Jacques Necker was born in Geneva, and went up to the city, like many another country boy, to make his fortune.
He carried with him to Paris innocence, health, high hope, and twenty francs in silver.
He found a place as porter or "trotter" in a bank.
Soon they made him clerk.
A letter came one day from a correspondent asking for a large loan, and setting forth a complex financial scheme in which the bank was invited to join.
M.
Vernet, the head of the establishment, was away, and young Necker took the matter in hand.
He made a detailed statement of the scheme, computed probable losses, weighed the pros and cons, and when the employer returned, the plan, all worked out, was on his desk, with young Necker's advice that the loan be made.
"You seem to know all about banking!"
was the sarcastic remark of M. Vernet.
"I do," was the proud answer.
"You know too much; I'll just put you back as porter."
The Genevese accepted the reduction and went back as porter without repining.
A man of small sense would have resigned his situation at once, just as men are ever forsaking Fortune when she is about to smile; witness Cato committing suicide on the very eve of success.
There is always a demand for efficient men; the market is never glutted;
the cities are hungry for them--but the trouble is, few men are efficient.
"It was none of his business!"
said M. Vernet to his partner, trying to ease conscience with reasons.
"Yes; but see how he accepted the inevitable!"
"Ah!
true, he has two qualities that are the property only of strong men: confidence and resignation.
I think--I think I was hasty!"
So young Necker was reinstated, and in six months was cashier, in three years a partner.
Not long after, he married Susanna Curchod, a poor governess.
But Mademoiselle Curchod was rich in mental endowment: refined, gentle, spiritual, she was a true mate to the high-minded Necker.
She was a Swiss, too, and if you know how a young man and a young woman, countryborn, in a strange city are attracted to each other, you will better understand this particular situation.
Some years before, Gibbon had loved and courted the beautiful Mademoiselle Curchod in her quiet home in the Jura Mountains.
They became engaged.
Gibbon wrote home, breaking the happy news to his parents.
"Has the beautiful Curchod of whom you sing, a large dowry?"
inquired the mother.
"She has no dowry!
I can not tell a lie," was the meek answer.
The mother came on and extinguished the match in short order.
Gibbon never married.
But he frankly tells us all about his love for Susanna Curchod, and relates how he visited her, in her splendid Paris home.
"She greeted me without embarrassment," says Gibbon, resentfully;
"and in the evening Necker left us together in the parlor, bade me good-night, and lighting a candle went off to bed!"
Gibbon, historian and philosopher, was made of common clay (for authors are made of clay, like plain mortals), and he could not quite forgive Madame Necker for not being embarrassed on meeting her former lover, neither could he forgive Necker for not being jealous.
But that only daughter of the Neckers, Germaine, pleased Gibbon--pleased him better than the mother, and Gibbon extended his stay in Paris and called often.
"She was a splendid creature," Gibbon relates; "only seventeen, but a woman grown, physically and mentally; not handsome, but dazzling, brilliant, emotional, sensitive, daring!"
Gibbon was a bit of a romanticist, as all historians are, and he no doubt thought it would be a fine denouement to life's play to capture the daughter of his old sweetheart, and avenge himself on Fate and the unembarrassed Madame Necker and the unpiqued husband, all at one fell stroke--and she would not be dowerless either.
Ha, ha!
But Gibbon forgot that he was past forty, short in stature, and short of breath, and "miles around," as Talleyrand put it.
"I quite like you," said the daring daughter, as the eloquent Gibbon sat by her side at a dinner.
"Why shouldn't you like me--I came near being your papa!"
"I know, and would I have looked like you?"
"Perhaps."
"What a calamity!"
Even then she possessed that same bubbling wit that was hers years later when she sat at table with D'Alembert.
On one side of the great author was Madame Recamier, famous for beauty (and later for a certain "Beauty-Cream"), on the other the daughter of Necker.
"How fortunate!"
exclaimed D'Alembert with rapture; "how fortunate I sit between Wit and Beauty!"
"Yes, and without possessing either," said Wit.
No mistake, the girl's intellect was too speedy even for Gibbon.
She fenced all 'round him and over him, and he soon discovered that she was icily gracious to every one, save her father alone.
For him she seemed to outpour all the lavish love of her splendid womanhood.
It was unlike the usual calm affection of father and daughter.
It was a great and absorbing love, of which even the mother was jealous.
"I can't just exactly make 'em out," said Gibbon, and withdrew in good order.
Before Necker was forty he had accumulated a fortune, and retired from business to devote himself to literature and the polite arts.
"I have earned a rest," he said; "besides, I must have leisure to educate my daughter."
Men are constantly "retiring" from business, but someway the expected Elysium of leisure forever eludes us.
Necker had written several good pamphlets and showed the world that he had ability outside of money-making.
He was appointed Resident Minister of Geneva at the Court of France.
Soon after he became President of the French East India Company, because there was no one else with mind broad enough to fill the place.
His house was the gathering-place of many eminent scholars and statesmen.
Necker was quiet and reserved; his wife coldly brilliant, cultured, dignified, religious.
The daughter made good every deficiency in both.
She was tall, finely formed, but her features were rather heavy, and in repose there was a languor in her manner and a blankness in her face.
This seeming dulness marks all great actors, but the heaviness is only on the surface; it often covers a sleeping volcano.
On recognizing an acquaintance, Germaine Necker's face would be illumined, and her smile would light a room.
She could pronounce a man's name so he would be ready to throw himself at her feet, or over a precipice for her.
And she could listen in a way that complimented; and by a sigh, a nod, an exclamation, bring out the best--such thoughts as a man never knew he had.
She made people surprise themselves with their own genius; thus proving that to make a good impression means to make the man pleased with himself.
"Any man can be brilliant with her," said a nettled competitor; "but if she wishes, she can sink all women in a room into creeping things."
She knew how to compliment without flattering; her cordiality warmed like wine, and her ready wit, repartee, and ability to thaw all social ice and lead conversation along any line, were accomplishments which perhaps have never been equaled.
The women who "entertain" often only depress; they are so glowing that everybody else feels himself punk.
And these people who are too clever are very numerous; they seem inwardly to fear rivals, and are intent on working while it is called the day.
Over against these are the celebrities who sit in a corner and smile knowingly when they are expected to scintillate.
And the individual who talks too much at one time is often painfully silent at another--as if he had made New-Year resolves.
But the daughter of Necker entered into conversation with candor and abandon; she gave herself to others, and knew whether they wished to talk or to listen.
On occasion, she could monopolize conversation until she seemed the only person in the room; but all talent was brighter for the added luster of her own.
This simplicity, this utter frankness, this complete absence of self-consciousness, was like the flight of a bird that never doubts its power, simply because it never thinks of it.
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.
She was after bigger game--she desired the admiration and approbation of archbishops, cardinals, generals, statesmen, great authors.
Germaine Necker had no conception of what love is.
Many women never have.
Had this fine young woman met a man with intellect as clear, mind as vivid, and heart as warm as her own, and had he pierced her through with a wit as strong and keen as she herself wielded, her pride would have been broken and she might have paused.
Then they might have looked into each other's eyes and lost self there.
And had she thus known love it would have been a complete passion, for the woman seemed capable of it.
A better pen than mine has written, "A woman's love is a dog's love."
The dog that craves naught else but the presence of his master, who is faithful to the one and whines out his life on that master's grave, waiting for the caress that never comes and the cheery voice that is never heard--that's the way a woman loves!
A woman may admire, respect, revere and obey, but she does not love until a passion seizes upon her that has in it the abandon of Niagara.
Do you remember how Nancy Sikes crawls inch by inch to reach the hand of Bill, and reaching it, tenderly caresses the coarse fingers that a moment before clutched her throat, and dies content?
That's the love of woman!
The prophet spoke of something "passing the love of woman," but the prophet was wrong--there's nothing does.
So Germaine Necker, the gracious, the kindly, the charming, did not love.
However, she married--married Baron De Stael, the Swedish Ambassador.
He was thirty-seven, she was twenty.
De Stael was good-looking, polite, educated.
He always smiled at the right time, said bright things in the right way, kept silence when he should, and made no enemies because he agreed with everybody about everything.
Stipulations were made; a long agreement was drawn up; it was signed by the party of the first and duly executed by the party of the second part; sealed, witnessed, sworn to, and the priest was summoned.
It was a happy marriage.
The first three years of married life were the happiest Madame De Stael ever knew, she said long afterward.
Possibly there are hasty people who imagine they detect tincture of iron somewhere in these pages: these good people will say, "Gracious me!
why not?"
And so I will at once admit that these respectable, well-arranged, and carefully planned marriages are often happy and peaceful.
The couple may "raise" a large family and slide through life and out of it without a splash.
I will also admit that love does not necessarily imply happiness--more often 't is a pain, a wild yearning, and a vague unrest; a haunting sense of heart-hunger that drives a man into exile repeating abstractedly the name "Beatrice!
Beatrice!"
And so all the moral I will make now is simply this: the individual who has not known an all-absorbing love has not the spiritual vision that is a passport to Paradise.
He forever yammers between the worlds, fit for neither Heaven nor Hell.
* * * * * Necker retired from business that he might enjoy peace; his daughter married for the same reason.
It was stipulated that she should never be separated from her father.
She who stipulates is lost, so far as love goes--but no matter!
Married women in France are greater lions in society than maidens can possibly hope to be.
The marriage-certificate serves at once as a license for brilliancy, daring, splendor, and it is also a badge of respectability.
The marriage-certificate is a document that in all countries is ever taken care of by the woman and never by the man.
And this document is especially useful in France, as French dames know.
Frenchmen are afraid of an unmarried woman--she means danger, damages, a midnight marriage and other awful things.
An unmarried woman in France can not hope to be a social leader; and to be a social leader was the one ambition of Madame De Stael.
It was called the salon of Madame De Stael now.
Baron De Stael was known as the husband of Madame De Stael.
The salon of Madame Necker was only a matter of reminiscence.
The daughter of Necker was greater than her father, and as for Madame Necker, she was a mere figure in towering headdress, point lace and diamonds.
Talleyrand summed up the case when he said, "She is one of those dear old things that have to be tolerated."
Madame De Stael had a taste for literature from early womanhood.
She wrote beautiful little essays and read them aloud to her company, and her manuscripts had a circulation like unto her father's bank-notes.
She had the faculty of absorbing beautiful thoughts and sentiments, and no woman ever expressed them in a more graceful way.
People said she was the greatest woman author of her day.
"You mean of all time," corrected Diderot.
They called her "the High Priestess of Letters," "the Minerva of Poetry," "Sappho Returned," and all that.
Her commendation meant success and her indifference failure.
She knew politics, too, and her hands were on all wires.
Did she wish to placate a minister, she invited him to call, and once there he was as putty in her hands.
She skimmed the surface of all languages, all arts, all history, but best of all she knew the human heart.
Of course there was a realm of knowledge she wist not of--the initiates of which never ventured within her scope.
She had nothing for them--they kept away.
But the proud, the vain, the ambitious, the ennui-ridden, the people-who-wish-to-be, and who are ever looking for the strong man to give them help--these thronged her parlors.
And when you have named these you have named all those who are foremost in commerce, politics, art, education, philanthropy and religion.
The world is run by second-rate people.
The best are speedily crucified, or else never heard of until long after they are dead.
Madame De Stael, in Seventeen Hundred Eighty-eight, was queen of the people who ran the world---at least the French part of it.
But intellectual power, like physical strength, endures but for a day.
Giants who have a giant's strength and use it like a giant must be put down.
If you have intellectual power, hide it!
Do thy daily work in thine own little way and be content.
The personal touch repels as well as attracts.
Thy presence is a menace--thy existence an affront--beware!
They are weaving a net for thy feet, and hear you not the echo of hammering, as of men building a scaffold?
Go read history!
Thinkest thou that all men are mortal save thee alone, and that what has befallen others can not happen to thee?
The Devil has no title to this property he now promises.
Fool!
thou hast no more claim on Fate than they who have gone before, and what has come to others in like conditions must come to thee.
God himself can not stay it;
it is so written in the stars.
Power to lead men!
Pray that thy prayer shall ne'er be granted--'t is to be carried to the topmost pinnacle of Fame's temple tower, and there cast headlong upon the stones beneath.
Beware!
beware!!
