who are influential and rich as well—what do you do? Well… you roll up your sleeves, and reinvent the imperfect world of the former regime! And, you get busy building a society of fairness, where everyone can find a place according to abilities and talents, not birthright, a world where the arbitrariness of the will of one
(the absolute monarchy)
would leave room for a strong
constitution that would guarantee individual freedom, where the laws would apply in the same way to all regardless of one’s name; where the pursuit of happiness would be possible for everyone without the obligation to comply with the duty of obedience to society, to the dictates of birthright, or to the privileges of noble families. These humanistic ideas were those of Madame de Staël and her close friends, mostly aristocrats by birth (such as Louis de Narbonne, Mathieu de Montmorency, Talleyrand) who wanted to build this kind of society, and push it towards progress and happiness for all mankind.
To these ideas, Madame de Staël remained faithful throughout her life, determined to have them
endorsed by the society of her
time. We can say she stayed on that pathway of freedom, and fought on all fronts without fail.
The least known aspect of her life, also the most private, was without doubt her status as a business woman. Madame de Staël had, at first, no interest in financial affairs as such, and left her father—a finance genius—to manage the family fortune that he had, indeed, built himself. But after his death in 1804, she grasped the concept that what was worthy of her father could not possibly be unworthy of her, and against all odds, she began to follow very closely all financial investments, purchases of real estate, and
other transactions. Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours (French Economist, politician and diplomat who had invested largely in the United States*1) and James-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont (a wealthy and powerful aristocrat who became an American citizen*2) were in charge of finding acquisitions, and managing those pieces of property on her behalf in the United States, thus averting
This year, Madame de Staël celebrates her 250 Years Anniversary. Born on April 22, 1766, in Paris, 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, hostess of one of the most popular salons of Paris.
Portrait of Madame de Staël. Unknown credit. PD.
The Business
Woman
51 | Ceres Magazine | Spring 2016