Salon Helvetique had a
distinctive color of its own, and was always tinged with the strong
convictions and exalted ideals of the Swiss pastor's daughter, who
passed through this world of intellectual affluence and moral laxity
like a white angel of purity--in it, but not of it. The center of a
choice and lettered circle which included the most noted men and women
of her time, she brought into it not only rare gifts, a fine taste, and
genuine literary enthusiasm, but the fresh charm of a noble character
and a beautiful family life, with the instincts of duty and right
conduct which she inherited from her simple Protestant ancestry.
She lacked a little, however, in the tact, the ease, the grace, the
spontaneity, which were the essential charm of the French women. Her
social talents were a trifle theoretical. "She studied society," says
one of her critics, "as she would a literary question." She had a theory
of conducting a salon, as she had of life in general, and believed
that study would attain everything. But the ability to do a thing
superlatively well is by no means always implied in the knowledge of
how it ought to be done. Social genius is as purely a gift of nature
as poetry or music; and, of all others, it is the most subtle and
indefinable. It was a long step from the primitive simplicity in which
Suzanne Curchod passed her childhood on the borders of Lake Leman to the
complex life of a Parisian salon; and the provincial beauty, whose
fair face, soft blue eyes, dignified but slightly coquettish manner,
brilliant intellect, and sparkling though sometimes rather learned
conversation had made her a local queen, was quick to see her own
shortcomings. She confessed that she had a new language to learn, and
she never fully mastered it. "Mme. Necker has talent, but it is in
a sphere too elevated for one to communicate with her," said Mme.
du Deffand, though she was glad to go once a week to her suppers at
Saint-Ouen, and admitted that in spite of a certain stiffness and
coldness she was better fitted for society than most of the grandes
dames. The salon of Mme. Necker marks a transition point between two
periods, and had two quite distinct phases. One likes best to recall her
in the freshness of her early enthusiasm, when she gave Friday dinners,
modeled after those of Mme. Geoffrin, to men of letters, and received
a larger world in the evening; when her guests were enlivened by
the satire of Diderot, the anecdotes of M