The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-07-20
XII. NINE. DE STAEL.

Centuries seldom divide in fact as
they do in mems minds the develop
ment of a nation or of literature.
But a combination of political and So
cial events makes the early years in
the nineteenth century truly epoch
making in French thought and art.
The year 1901 saw the first striking
work of Chateaubriand, whose ''Atala''
struck new note that for decades was
a dominant one. In 1902 came the
artistically less valuable but officially
more significant ''Delphine" of Nine.
de Stael, and this was followed in 1907
by her yet more striking "Corinne,
while already in 1910 she had finished
her epoch-making essay on Germany,
by which. as has been happily said, she
sowed the whole century with fertile
ideas and breathed into intellectual
France a wholly new spirit.
To understand how she did this and
to realize just what it was that she
did, we must know something of her
birth, her early training and her later
experiences, personal and political. She
was the daughter of the Genevese
banker Necker, noted finance minis
ter of Louis XVI. Her mother was
Suzanne Curchod, once beloved of the
cocious youth in one of the most bril-
liant of Partisan literary salons, sharp
ening her wits by conversation of some
of the keenest minds of that age,
molding her critical powers on great
though not always lovable models, and
nursing ambitions of an intellectual po-
sition as brilliant and as predominant
as that of her parents.
There, as young woman, she became
thoroughly interpenetrated with the
confident optimism of the eighteenth
century and an optimist she remained
to the last, through all the horrors of
the Terror and the despotic tyranny of
Napoleon. She believed in ideals as she
believed in herself. She was positive,
self-assertive, writing much and very
fond of conversation, in which she
could bear the leading part. Her mar
riage in 1856 to the Swedish ambassa-
dor, Baron Won Stael-Holstein, her
motherhood, her later affection for
Benjamin Constant, never seem to have
affected her independence. There must
have been something virile in her ap-
pearance if we may trust the reports
of contemporary writer's and painters.
which modern critic, Sorel, has thus
summarized:
Expressive features, a complexion
dark rather than fresh colored yet
growing lively in conversation, sculp-
turesque shoulders. powerful arms, ro-
bust hands, high forehead, black hair,
falling in thick curls, vigorous nose,
strongly marked mouth, prominent lips,
opened wide to life and speech, an ora
tors mouth. with a frank. good-hu-
mored smile, all the genius shining in
her eyes, her sparkling glances, deep
and gentle. in repose, imperious when a
flash crossed them. That flash came
when she spoke. 1t was by her speech
that she beguiled and persuaded and
conquered"
Her literary career began in 1888, two
years after her marriage, with Letters
on Rousseau" for whose social ideas
she proclaimed an ardent admiration.
The revolution began the next year and
divorced her from politics. She felt
obliged to leave Paris shortly before
the great September massacres of 1892,
and went to Coppet, in Switzerland,
and afterward TO England, engaging in
mild political intrigue and returning
to Paris after Robespierre's fall, to re-
main there with brief visits to Coppet
until she was expelled by Napoleon.
Her opposition TO the emperor was
instructive. 1t seemed to soothe her
vanity to feel that she could irritate
the compeIier OF states. She counted
exile as a vantage ground from which
to shoot her darts and nurse the pride