Mme. du Châtelet was the one great femme savante of that century. In the preface to her Traduction des Principes Mathématiques de Newton, Voltaire wrote: "Never was a woman so savante as she, and never did a woman merit less the saying, she is a femme savante. She did not select her friends from those circles where there was a war of esprit, where a sort of tribunal was established, where they judged their century, by which, in recompense, they were severely judged. She lived for a long time in societies which were ignorant of what she was, and she took no notice of this ignorance. The words precision, justness, and force are those which correctly describe her elegance. She would have written as Pascal and Nicole did rather than like Mme. de Sévigné; but this severe firmness and this tendency of her esprit did not make her inaccessible to the beauties of sentiment."
Maupertuis, the astronomer, wrote: "What a marvel, moreover, to have been able to combine the fine qualities of her sex with the sublime knowledge which we believe uniquely made for us! This enterprising phenomenon will make her memory eternally respected."
CHAPTER IX
SALON LEADERS--(CONTINUED)
MME. NECKER, MME. D'EPINAY, MME. DE GENLIS: MINOR SALONS
It seems strange indeed that in a century in which the universal impulse was toward pleasure, and sameness of personality was visible everywhere, the types of great women showed such an absolute dissimilarity. The contrast between the natural inclinations of Mme. Necker, the wife of the great minister of finance, and the atmosphere in which she lived, makes the study of her a most interesting one. Born in Switzerland, the daughter of Curchod, a poor Protestant minister, "with patriarchal morals, solid education, and strong good sense," this moral and stern woman was thrown into the midst of depraved elegance, refined licentiousness, and physical debauchery. Sincere, chaste, enthusiastic, and essentially religious, she remained so amidst all the corruption and physical and mental degeneracy of the age.
Critics have made much ado over her marriage, a union of pure love and mutual inclinations, amidst the marriages of mere convenience and the gallant liaisons, such as those of Mme. du Deffand and le Président Hénault, and Mme. d'Epinay and Grimm. The matrimonial selection of Susanne Curchod was natural in a girl of her serious make-up, her moral education and her pure ancestry of the strict Protestant type. As a girl of sixteen, she had given evidence of remarkable mental ability and had acquired a wide knowledge--physics, Latin, philosophy, metaphysics--when she was sent to Lausanne, possibly with the idea of meeting a future husband with whom she could become thoroughly acquainted before giving up her independence. There she became the centre of a group or academy of young people, who, under her leadership, discussed subjects of every nature. At first she showed a tendency toward préciosité and the spirit of the blue-stocking rather than toward the seriousness and dignity which marked her later career.
It was at Lausanne that she met and fell in love with Gibbon, the English historian; this love affair met with opposition from Gibbon's father, and, after the death of the father of his fiancée, a calamity which left her poor and necessitated her teaching for a living, the Englishman, by his actions and manner toward her, compelled the breaking of their engagement. When, later in life, he went to her salon, they became intimate friends, enjoying "the intellectual union which had been impossible for them in their earlier days."
Thus, at the age of twenty-four, Mlle. Curchod, beautiful, virtuous, and accomplished, and at the height of her reputation in a small town in Switzerland, was left an orphan. She was taken to Paris by Mme. de Vermenoux, a wealthy widow, who was sought in marriage by M. Necker, banker and capitalist; but, as she was unable to make up her mind to a definite answer, his attention was attracted to her young companion. The result was that, after a few months' sojourn in Paris, Mlle. Curchod became the wife of M. Necker, an event which caused rejoicing from Lausanne to Geneva. Their characters are well portrayed in two letters, written by them to their friends after their marriage. M. Necker wrote, in reply to a letter of congratulation:
"Yes, sir; your friend (Mlle. Curchod) was indeed willing to have me, and I believe myself as happy as one can be. I cannot understand how it can be you whom they congratulate, unless it is as my friend. Will money always be the measure of opinion? That is pitiable! He who wins a virtuous, kind, and sensible woman--has he not made a good transaction, whether or not she be seated on sacks of money? Humanity, what a poor judge you are!"