MADAM HECKER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3929, 21 July 1937, Page 4

MADAM HECKER

HER ART AS A LISTENER. CONFIDANT OF MANY FAMOUS MEN. The wheel of time has performed many astonishing revolutions since the famous French Salons opened their doors to the wits and beauties of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The women of this brilliant period cultivated the art of making conversation by being excellent listeners! Their salons became the mirror of the age, wherein all the giants of literature and art reflected their own particular strength—and weakness. It is interesting to learn what training fitted a woman to become the confidante and friend of the famous men. Oddly enough, Suzanne Curchod, the future Madam Necker, whose salon became in time the forcing ground of revolutionaries, idealists and encyclopaedists, was the daughter of an Evangelical minister. Her quiet, methodical upbringing was indeed a far cry from those brilliant salons where wit flashed with rapierlike keenness, glancing across the polished surface of conversation, thrusting- home a point, pinning down an opponent. Suzanne’s father, discovering with delight, that his little daughter was quite clever, decided to educate her himself. He taught her Latin, geometry, physics and science, but she possessed, above all, feminine intuition, which may have outweighed solid reasoning power, thus producing a brilliant rather than a sound scholar. Suzanne could play the violin, and harpischord, also she painted with delicacy and charm. A biographer describes her as having very blue eyes, very fair hair and lovely complexion—slyly adding, “It does not seem at all wonderful that her father always had a large and ever-ready supply of young ministers from Geneva or Lausanne to help him with his services on Sundays.’ 1 Possessed of many accomplishments and one suspects blandishments she found it quite easy and natural to shine at the modest Protestant parties which she and her friends frequented. Suzanne Curchod had an ardent, loving heart, she was ripe fot intellectual companionship when she met Edward Gibbon, who had been sent to the Calvanist minister of Lausanne to wean him from the Church of Rome.

■With the impetuosity of a headlong nature the young girl lavished her love upon this complacent English youth, who permitted her to pour out the vials of her love and devotion, without himself returning anything but frigid acceptance of the precious gift. As his father frowned upon the alliance he who has been described as having “an enormous memory” allowed all tender thoughts of Suzanne to be erased from the tablets of his mind. Perhaps he was too occupied with compiling the tremendous mass of facts for his “Decline and Fall” to permit himself disquietude over the decline and fall of an over-impetuous young Frenchwoman. Poor Suzanne! Her love cooled but slowly even before such chilly reasoning; yet she had plenty of spirit, and when Gibbon had shown her in his guarded correspondence how little he cared for her, and demonstrated it by very casual treatment, when they met after four years’ separation at Voltaire’s house, she relieved her overburdened heart by writing her last letter to him. In it she thanked God for delivering her from “the greatest of misfortunes”—marriage with Gibbon !

At the age of 24 Suzanne became an orphan; she was so poor she was obliged to give lessons, but at this time the lonely, unhappy girl had the good fortune to meet a Madame de Vermenous. Madame, captivated by Suzanne’s beauty and wit, insisted on carrying her off to Paris. Here she introduced her to M. Necker, the rich banker, and no doubt engineered the marriage which enabled the obscure country girl to realise her ambitions.

When M. Necker became Minister for the Republic of Geneva at the French court Suzanne found her foot on the threshold of polite society, but the door remained obstinately ajar, revealing tantalising glimpses of the gay world which she so longed to conquer. How, then, did Madame Necker become the mistress of one of the most famous salons of the day? Though young, beautiful, rich and accomplished, she found it hard to establish herself. The aristocratic beauties of gay Paris resented the intrusion of the little Swiss Protestant. But since men of leters, philosophers, artists and aristocrats must, like lesser clay, often seek financial aid—it is easy to suppose that in approaching the generous banker they found it politic to frequent the salon of his wife.

At first each excused himself to the other, Diderot said he came because she “bothered him to do so.” They spoke in whispers about her artificial mind, pedantic language, yet they unfailingly came to her gatherings until her salon became an institution justly famed for its brilliant assemblage.

With all this glittering, head-turn-

ing life round her, the little Swiss Protestant clung tenaciously to her early religious training. It was at one of her famous dinners—no fewer than seventeen notable men of letters being present—that she resolutely opposed Pigalle, the sculptor, because he wished a proposed statue to Voltaire to have a figure depicted almost nude.

It is not alone as the mistress of a famous salon, however, that Madame Necker makes a claim upon the interest of posterity. She was the mother of that fiery, tempestuous spirit, the future Madame de Stael. But alas, that terrible wound inflicted upon her pride by the reluctant Gibbon, was opened afresh, and aggravated by a growing jealousy of her unusual daughter. She tortured herself by imagining M. Necker devoting himself wholly to his child. Perhaps it was not easy for an ambitious, emotional, ardent woman—who had already suffered cruel disappointment —-to watch her child stealing the affection and attention, not only of Monsieur, but of her salon’s most notable habitues.

Suzanne became more and more distrustful, morbid, self-centred as time drew on. Her closing years were marked by internal unrest and menaced by external upheaval. One evening in the July of 1789, when they were entertaining at dinner, M. Necker received a letter of banishment from Louis XVI., which he put in his pocket without a word. Later, when the guests departed he told Madame. Now he had need of her! From this time through the dismal years which followed she proved the greatest side of her nature, standing loyally by her husband’s side. M. Necker was to become once again the idol of the people, and with the fall of the Bastille, Louis was glad to recall the influential banker.

Such recall to power was but shortlived. The treacherous tide of the Revolution turned again, this time bearing M. Necker into final and complete retirement. Madame now became his all, no doubt she tasted in their seclusion that happiness which her heart had so long craved. Soon she became seriously ill, her husband lavished attention upon her, their brilliant daughter sang and read to her. Yet m 1795 when death was stealing upon her she still struggled pitifully against the canker of jealousy which had fretted the core of an upright, generous heart.