Childhood
Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in Paris, France. Her father was the prominent Swiss banker and statesman Jacques Necker, who was the Director of Finance under King Louis XVI of France. Her mother was Suzanne Curchod, almost equally famous for being the early love of Edward Gibbon, being the wife of Necker herself, and being the mistress of one of the most popular salons of Paris. Mother and daughter had little sympathy for each other. Mme Necker, despite her talents, her beauty and her fondness for philosophic society, was strictly decorous, somewhat reserved, and wanted to bring up her daughter with the discipline of her own childhood. Anne Louise was from her earliest years energetic and boisterous. She began very early to write, though not to publish. She was said to have injured her health by excessive study and intellectual excitement. But in reading all the accounts of Mme de Staël's life which come from herself or her intimate friends, it must be carefully remembered that she was the most distinguished and characteristic product of the period of sensibility — the singular fashion of ultra-sentimentalism — which required that both men and women, but especially women, should be always palpitating with excitement, steeped in melancholy, or dissolved in tears. Still, her father's dismissal from the ministry and the consequent removal of the family from the busy life of Paris were probably beneficial to her.
During part of the next few years, they resided in the Swiss village of Coppet at the Château de Coppet, her father's estate on Lake Geneva, which she herself made famous. But other parts were spent in travelling, chiefly in southern France. They returned to Paris, or at least to its neighborhood, in 1785, and Mlle Necker resumed writing miscellaneous works, including a novel, Sophie, printed in 1786, and a tragedy, Jeanne Grey, published in 1790.
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Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
““Come; see the oxen kneel,
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—David Elkind (20th century)