M. Necker was much more loved by his child, and he understood her disposition better. He liked to draw her out and make her talk, and for that purpose he used playfully to tease her: she invariably met him with that mixture of gaiety and tenderness which characterized their intercourse. Deeply grateful for his affection, Anne put the utmost good-will in the execution of his slightest wish. When only ten years old, she was so struck by the admiration he showed for Gibbon the historian, that the idea occurred to her to marry him, and thereby secure to her father the constant presence of one whose conversation he so much appreciated. Undismayed by Gibbon's repulsive ugliness, the child actually made the proposal to him herself. What makes the comical incident more curious is the fact that her mother had been, when little more than a child, Gibbon's first love. It was said of Anne Necker that she had always been young, and yet had never been a child. Her favorite pastime was fashioning doll kings and queens, and making them act tragedies of which she improvised the various parts. This innocent amusement was at last forbidden by her Calvinistic mother, but Anne used to hide herself and carry on her dramatic little games in secret.
In her mother's salon, Anne early made the acquaintance of some of the clever men of the day—amongst others, Grimm, Marmontel, and the Abbé Raynal. At the age of nineteen her intellectual faculties had become developed in the highest degree, but so much to the detriment of her health as to cause the greatest alarm to her parents. The famous Dr. Tronchin was called in, and ordered the young invalid to be taken to the country, where the mind should lie fallow, and the time hitherto devoted to study be spent in the open air. No prescription could have been more unwelcome to Mme. Necker, for it involved a relaxation, or rather a complete abandonment, of the severe régime she had adopted for her daughter. As it turned out, this was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of hardening into a learned prodigy, Anne's moral nature was allowed to put forth its full luxuriance. Her father came constantly to St. Ouen, and in the charms of his daughter's society he sought rest from the cares of the ministry. In this pleasant retreat he and Anne learned, if possible, to love each other better. M. Necker was not, however, a foolishly fond parent; his tenderness never obscured his judgment; and Anne declared herself that his eye, so far from being blinded by affection, was quicker to detect her faults than her merits. "He unmasked all affectation in me," she writes; "from living with him, I came to believe that people could see clearly into my heart."
Anne made her entrée into society at an early age, and immediately assumed there the position her talents merited. As the daughter of a powerful minister, and a future heiress, it was supposed she would marry at once, but it was not so. Mlle. Necker attained the in those days comparatively mature age of twenty before she gave her hand to the Baron de Staël-Holstein, ambassador from the court of Sweden.
Immediately after her marriage, the Baronne de Staël was presented at court. On this occasion she acquired a character for eccentricity by omitting one of the innumerable court courtesies; but what stamped her irrevocably as an oddity was that, going a few days later to visit the Duchesse de Polignac, the young baroness walked into the room without her head-dress—she had dropped it in the carriage. Those who were inclined to laugh at her, however, soon desisted, seeing that she was herself the first to relate her misdemeanors, and to laugh at them.
But a great event was at hand which was to turn the current of Mme. de Staël's thoughts into other channels: the French Revolution broke out. The daughter of the minister who was the immediate cause of that volcanic eruption was not likely to remain a cool spectator of the national upheaving. Misled by her own enthusiasm for the laws and constitution of England, and still more by the ephemeral homage paid to Necker, who had made his cause triumphant in the king's cabinet, Mme. de Staël honestly believed that the dawn of true political liberty was at hand; but this short-lived chimera was changed to horror when she realized the true motives, the aim and object, of the demagogues. The arrest of Louis XVI. and the queen at Varennes filled her with regret, the sincerity of which it is impossible to doubt when we read her account of this event in the Considérations sur la Révolution Française.
Her knowledge of the men who were the prime motors of these momentous changes enabled her to foresee the terrible catastrophe of the 10th of August. With great courage and clear-sightedness, Mme. de Staël drew up a plan of escape for the royal captives. M. Bertrand de Moleville, one of the king's ministers, gives the details of this scheme, which its author forwarded with a letter to M. de Montmorin, one of his colleagues in the ministry. Her idea was to convey the royal family to the coast of Normandy, whence they were to sail for England. Whether the plan was practicable or not, was never tested; M. de Montmorin knew too well that it was utterly useless to place it before the king.
The murder of the king and queen filled the heart of Mme. de Staël with indignation and dismay. Such was the effect that this crime had upon her, that for a long time she was quite broken-hearted, all her faculties were absorbed and, as it were, paralyzed by the deeds of blood that were being perpetrated around her. When at last she roused herself to resume her pen, it was on behalf of the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette; she addressed to the monsters who then ruled France an article entitled "Défense de la Reine." We can easily imagine what consummate skill and prudence were necessary at such a moment in dealing with the tigers she was striving to disarm. But not even at this crisis would Mme. de Staël descend to flattery; her talent and her spirit were alike above such arts. While scorning to propitiate them by insulting the queen, or using any of those invectives against royalty then in vogue, she tried to merge the sovereign in the woman, the mother, and the devoted and courageous wife. Strong and deep reverence, joined to a delicate and ingenuous pity, breathe throughout this noble appeal.
If Mme. de Staël had written nothing else, this article alone would have sufficed to ensure her fame.
Shortly after the fall of Robespierre, she published two pamphlets, one entitled Reflections on Peace at Home, the other Reflections on Peace, addressed to Pitt and to the French. This latter work received a tribute of praise from Fox in the House of Commons.
Mme. de Staël took a deep interest in the government formed under the new constitution of 1795, but in her desire to become acquainted with the men who were likely to be chosen members of it, she formed intimacies with some who were unworthy of her; even her literary reputation suffered from these so-called friendships. The public rarely discriminates wisely between the character of an author and that of his or her surroundings.