Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 1/Letter 121
To MRS. EDGEWORTH.
CANTERBURY, April 21.
I wrote to your dear father the history of our visit to Mr. Wren's at Wroxall Abbey, and Kenilworth, and Warwick, and Stratford-upon-Avon, and our pleasant three hours at Oxford. When we were looking at the theatre, Mr. Biddulph told us, that when all the Emperors and Kings came with the Regent, the theatre was filled in every part; but such was the hush you could have heard a pin drop till the Prince put his foot upon the threshold, when the whole assembly rose with a tremendous shout of applause. The Prince was supremely gratified, and said to the Emperor of Russia, "You heard the London mob hoot me, but you see how I am received by the young gentlemen of England!"
When Lord Grenville was installed as chancellor, he was, the instant he look his seat, assailed with loud hisses and groans. Mr. Biddulph said he admired the dignity with which Lord Grenville behaved, and the presence of mind of the Bishop of Peterborough (Parsons), who said in Latin, "Either this disturbance must instantly cease, or I dismiss you from this assembly!" Dead silence ensued.
PARIS, PLACE DU PALAIS BOURBON,
April 29.
One moment of reward for two days of indescribable hurry I have at this quiet interval after breakfast, and I seize it to tell you that Fanny is quite well: so far for health. For beauty, I have only to say that I am told by everybody that my sisters are lovely in English, and charmantes in French. Last night was their début at Lady Granard's—a large assembly of all manner of lords, ladies, counts, countesses, princes, and princesses, French, Polish, and Italian: Marmont and Humboldt were there. I was told by several persons of rank and taste—Lady Rancliffe, the Countess de Salis, Lady Granard, Mrs. Sneyd Edgeworth, and a Polish Countess, that my sister's dress, the grand affair at Paris, was perfection, and I believed it! Humboldt is excessively agreeable, but I was twice taken from him to be introduced to grandeurs, just as we had reached the most interesting point of conversation.
May 3rd.
On Sunday we went with the Comtesse de Salis and the Baronne de Salis, who is also Chanoinesse, but goes into the world in roses and pink ribbons nevertheless, and is very agreeable, moreover, and with M. Le Baron, an officer in the Swiss Guards, an old bachelor, to St. Sulpice, to hear M. Fressenus. He preached in the Kirwan style, but with intolerable monotony of thumping eloquence, against les Liberaux, Rousseau, etc.; it seemed to me old stuff, ill embroidered, but it was much applauded. Mem.: the audience were not half so attentive or silent at St. Sulpice as they were at the Théâtre Français the night before.
After church a visit to Madame de Pastoret. Oh, my dear mother, think of my finding her in that very boudoir, everything the same! Fanny and Harriet were delighted with the beauty of the house till they saw her, and then nothing could be thought of but her manner and conversation. They are even more charmed with her than I expected: she is little changed.
After a ball at the Polish Countess Orlowski's (the woman who is charmed with Early Lessons, etc.), where Fanny and Harriet were delighted with the children's dancing—they waltzed like angels, if angels waltz—after this ball I went with the Count and Countess de Salis and La Baronne—I was told that the first time it must be without my sisters—to the Duchesse d'Escars, who receives for the King at the Tuileries: mounting a staircase of one hundred and forty steps. I thought the Count's knees would have failed while I leaned on his arm; my own ached. A long gallery, well lighted, opened into a suite of little low apartments, most beautifully hung, some with silk and some with cashmere, some with tent drapery, with end ottomans, and lamps in profusion. These rooms, with busts and pictures of kings, swarmed with old nobility, with historic names, stars, red ribbons, and silver bells at their button-holes: ladies in little white satin hats and toques, with a profusion of ostrich or, still better, marabout powder-puff feathers; and the roofs were too low for such lofty heads.
After a most fatiguing morning at all the impertinent and pertinent dressmakers and milliners, we finished by the dear delight of dining with Madame Gautier at Passy. The drive there was delicious: we found her with her Sophie, now a matron mother with her Caroline, like what Madame Gautier and her Sophie were in that very room eighteen years ago. All the Delessert family that remain were assembled except Benjamin, who was detained by business in Paris. Madame Benjamin is very handsome, nearer the style of Mrs. Admiral Pakenham than anybody I know; François the same as you saw him, only with the additional crow's-feet of eighteen years, sobered into a husband and father, the happiest I ever saw in France. They have three houses, and the whole three terraces form one long pleasure-ground. Judas-tree, like a Brobdingnag almond-tree, was in full flower; lilacs and laburnums in abundance. Alexandre Delessert takes after the father—good, sensible, commercial conversation. He made a panegyric on the Jews of Hamburgh, who received him at their houses with the utmost politeness and liberality. This was à propos of Walter Scott's Jewess, and, vanity must add, my own Jew and Jewess, who came in for more than their due share.
Bank-notes were talked of: François tells me that the forging of bank-notes is almost unknown at Paris: the very best artists—my father's plan—are employed.
Tuesday we were at the Louvre: many fine pictures left. Dined at home: in the evening to Madame de Pastoret's, to meet the Duchesse de Broglie: very handsome, little, with large soft dark eyes: simple dress, winning manner, soft Pastoret conversation: speaks English better than any foreigner I ever heard: not only gracious, but quite tender to me.
After Madame de Pastoret's we went to the Ambassador's and were received in the most distinguished manner. We saw crowds of fine people and conversed with Talleyrand, but he said nought worth hearing.
May 20.
Paris is wonderfully embellished since we were here in 1803. Fanny and Harriet are quite enchanted with the beauty of the Champs Élysées and the Tuileries gardens: the trees are out in full leaf, and the deep shade under them is delightful. I had never seen Paris in summer, so I enjoy the novelty. Some of our happiest time is spent in driving about in the morning, or returning at night by lamp or moonlight.
Lady Elizabeth Stuart has been most peculiarly civil to "Madame Maria Edgeworth et Mesdemoiselles ses soeurs," which is the form on our visiting tickets, as I was advised it should be. The Ambassador's hotel is the same which Lord Whitworth had, which afterwards belonged to the Princess Borghese. It is delightful! opening into a lawn-garden, with terraces and conservatories, and a profusion of flowers and shrubs. The dinner was splendid, but not formal; and nobody can represent better than Lady Elizabeth. She asked us to go with her and Mrs. Canning to the opera, but we were engaged to Madame Recamier; and as she is no longer rich and prosperous, I could not break the engagement.
We went to Madame Recamier's, in her convent—L'Abbaye aux Bois, up seventy-eight steps; all came in with the asthma: elegant room, and she as elegant as ever. Matthieu de Montmorenci, the ex-Queen of Sweden, Madame de Boigne—a charming woman, and Madame la Maréchale de Moreau—a battered beauty, smelling of garlic, and screeching in vain to pass for a wit.
Yesterday we had intended to have killed off a great many visits, but the fates willed it otherwise. Mr. Hummelaur, attached to the Austrian Embassy, came; and then Mr. Chenevix, who converses delightfully, but all the time holding a distorting magnifying glass over French character, and showing horrible things where we thought everything was delightful. While he was here came Madame de Villeneuve and Madame de Kergolay. Scarcely were they all gone, when I desired Rodolphe to let no other person in, as the carriage had been ordered at eleven, and it was now near two. "Miladi!" cried Rodolphe, running in with a card, "voilà une dame qui me dit de vous faire voir son nom."
It was "Madame de Roquefeuille," with her bright, benevolent eyes: and much agreeable conversation. There is a great deal of difference between the manners, tone, pronunciation, and quietness of demeanour of Madame de Pastoret, Madame de Roquefeuille, and the little old Princess de Broglie Revel, who are of the old nobility, and the striving, struggling of the new, with all their riches and titles, who can never attain this indescribable, incommunicable charm. But to go on with Saturday: Madame de Roquefeuille took leave, and we caparisoned ourselves, and went to Lady de Ros. She was at her easel, copying very well a portrait of Madame de Grignan, and it was a very agreeable half-hour. Lady de Ros and her daughter are very agreeable people. She has asked Fanny to meet her three times a week, at the Riding-House, where she goes to take exercise.
We were engaged to Cuvier's in the evening, and went first to M. Jullien's, in the Rue de l'Enfer, not far from the Jardin des Plantes, and there we saw one of the most extraordinary of all the extraordinary persons we have seen—a Spaniard, squat, black-haired, black-browed, and black-eyed, with an infernal countenance, who has written the History of the Inquisition, and who related to us how he had been sent en pénitence to a monastery by the Inquisition, and escaped by presenting a certain number of kilogrammes of good chocolate to the monks, who represented him as very penitent. But I dare not say more of this man, lest we should never get to Cuvier's, which, in truth, I thought we never should accomplish alive. Such streets! such turns! in the old, old parts of the city: lamps strung at great distances: a candle or two from high houses, making darkness visible: then bawling of coach or cart-men, "Ouais! ouais!" backing and scolding, for no two carriages could by any possibility pass in these narrow alleys. I was in a very bad way, as you may guess, but I let down the glasses, and sat as still as a frightened mouse: once I diverted Harriet by crying out, "Ah, mon cher cocher, arrêtez;" like Madame de Barri's "Un moment, Monsieur le Bourreau." It never was so bad with us that we could not laugh. At last we turned into a porte-cochère, under which the coachman bent literally double: total darkness: then suddenly trees, lamps, and buildings; and one, brighter than the rest by an open portal, illuminating large printed letters, "Collège de France."
Cuvier came down to the very carriage door to receive us, and handed us up narrow, difficult stairs into a smallish room, where were assembled many ladies and gentlemen of most distinguished names and talents. Prony, as like an honest water-dog as ever; Biot (et moi aussi je suis père de famille), a fat, double volume of himself—I could not see a trace of the young père de famille we knew—round-faced, with a bald head and black ringlets, a fine-boned skull, on which the tortoise might fall without cracking it. When he began to converse, his superior ability was immediately apparent. Then Cuvier presented Prince Czartorinski, a Pole, and many compliments passed; and then we went to a table to look at Prince Maximilian de Neufchatel's Journey to Brazil, magnificently printed in Germany, and all tongues began to clatter, and it became wondrously agreeable; and behind me I heard English well spoken, and this was Mr. Trelawny, and I heard from him a panegyric on the Abbé Edgeworth, whom he knew well, and he was the person who took the first letter and news to the Duchesse d'Angoulême at Mittau, after she quitted France. She came out in the dead of the night in her nightgown to receive the letter.
Tea and supper together: only two-thirds of the company could sit down, but the rest stood or sat behind, and were very happy, loud, and talkative: science, politics, literature, and nonsense in happy proportions. Biot sat behind Fanny's chair, and talked of the parallax and Dr. Brinkley. Prony, with his hair nearly in my plate, was telling me most entertaining anecdotes of Buonaparte; and Cuvier, with his head nearly meeting him, talking as hard as he could: not striving to show learning or wit—quite the contrary; frank, open—hearted genius, delighted to be together at home, and at ease. This was the most flattering and agreeable thing to me that could possibly be. Harriet was on the off-side, and every now and then he turned to her in the midst of his anecdotes, and made her completely one of us; and there was such a prodigious noise nobody could hear but ourselves. Both Cuvier and Prony agreed that Buonaparte never could bear to have any answer but a decided answer. "One day," said Cuvier, "I nearly ruined myself by considering before I answered. He asked me, 'Faut-il introduire le sucre de betrave en France?' 'D'abord, Sire, il faut songer si vos colonies——' 'Faut-il avoir le sucre de betrave en France?' 'Mais, Sire, il faut examiner——' 'Bah! je le demanderai à Berthollet.'"
This despotic, laconic mode of insisting on learning everything in two words had its inconveniences. One day he asked the master of the woods at Fontainebleau, "How many acres of wood are here?" The master, an honest man, stopped to recollect. "Bah!" and the under-master came forward and said any number that came into his head. Buonaparte immediately took the mastership from the first, and gave it to the second. "Qu'arrivait-il?" continued Prony; "the rogue who gave the guess answer was soon found cutting down and selling quantities of the trees, and Buonaparte had to take the rangership from him, and reinstate the honest hesitater."
Prony is, you know, one of the most absent men alive. "Once," he told me, "I was in a carriage with Buonaparte and General Caffarelli: it was at the time he was going to Egypt. He asked me to go. I said, I could not; that is, I would not; and when I had said those words I fell into a reverie, collecting in my own head all the reasons I could for not going to Egypt. All this time Buonaparte was going on with some confidential communication to me of his secret intentions and views; and when it was ended, le seul mot, Arabie, m'avait frappé l'oreille. Alors, je voudrais m'avoir arraché les cheveux," making the motion so to do, "pour pouvoir me rapeller ce qu'il venait de me dire. But I never could recall one single word or idea."
"Why did you not ask Caffarelli afterwards?"
"I dared not, because I should have betrayed myself to him."
Prony says that Buonaparte was not obstinate in his own opinion with men of science about those things of which he was ignorant; but he would bear no contradiction in tactics or politics.
May 29.
Madame Recamier has no more taken the veil than I have, and is as little likely to do it. She is still beautiful, still dresses herself and her little room with elegant simplicity, and lives in a convent[1] only because it is cheap and respectable. M. Recamier is living; they have not been separated by anything but misfortune.
We have at last seen a comedy perfectly well acted—the first representation of a new piece, Les Folliculaires: it was received with thunders of applause, admirably acted in every character to the life. It was in ridicule of journalists and literary young men.
LA CELLE, M. DE VINDÉ'S COUNTRY HOUSE,
June 4.
Is it not curious that, just when you wrote to us, all full of Mrs. Strickland at Edgeworthstown, we should have been going about everywhere with Mr. Strickland at Paris? I read to him what you said about his little girl and Foster as he was going with us to a breakfast at Cuvier's, and he was delighted even to tears.
We breakfasted at Passy on our way here: beautiful views of Paris and its environs from all the balconied rooms; and Madame François showed us all their delightful comfortable rooms—the bed in which Madame Gautier and Madame François had slept when children, and where now her little Caroline sleeps. There is something in the duration of these family attachments which pleases and touches one, especially in days of revolution and change.
We arrived here in good time. La Celle[2] is as old as Clotwold, the son of Clovis, who came here to make a hermitage for himself—La Cellule. Wonderfully changed and enlarged, it became the residence of Madame de Pompadour. The rooms are wainscotted: very large croissées open upon shrubberies, with rose acacias and rhododendrons in profuse flower: the garden is surrounded by lime-trees thick and high, and cut, like the beech-walk at Collon, at the end into arches through the foliage, and the stems left so as to form rows of pillars, through which you see, on one side, fine views of lawn and distant country, while on the other the lime-grove is continued in arcades, eight or nine trees deep.
To each bedroom and dressing-room there are little dens of closets and ante-chambers, which must have seen many strange exits and entrances in their day. In one of these, ten feet by six, the white wainscot—now very yellow—is painted in gray, with monkeys in men's and women's clothes in groups in compartments, the most grotesque figures you can imagine. I have an idea of having read of this cabinet of monkeys, and having heard that the principal monkey who figures in it was some real personage.
The situation of La Celle is beautiful, and the country about it. The grounds, terraces, orchards, farmyard, dairy, etc., would lead me too far, so I shall only note that, to preserve the hayrick from the incursion of rats, the feet of the stand, which is higher than that in our back yard, are not only slated, but at the part next the hay covered with panes of glass: this defies climbing reptiles.
M. and Madame de Vindé are exactly what you remember them; and her grand-daughter, Beatrice, the little girl you may remember, is as kind to Fanny and Harriet as M. and Madame de Vindé were to their sister.
Mr. Hutton wrote to me about a certain Count Brennar, a German or Hungarian—talents, youth, fortune—assuring me that this transcendental Count had a great desire to be acquainted with us. I fell to work with Madame Cuvier, with whom I knew he was acquainted, and he met us at breakfast at Cuvier's; and I asked Prony if M. and Madame de Vindé would allow me to ask the Count to come here; and so yesterday Prony came to dinner, and the Count at dessert, and he ate cold cutlets and good salad, and all was right; and whenever any of our family go to Vienna, he gave me and mine, or yours, a most pressing invitation thither—which will never be any trouble to him.
I have corrected before breakfast here all of the second volume of Rosamond,[3] which accompanies this letter. We have coffee brought to us in our rooms about eight o'clock, and the family assemble at breakfast in the dining-room about ten: this breakfast has consisted of mackerel stewed in oil; cutlets; eggs, boiled and poached, au jus; peas stewed; lettuce stewed, and rolled up like sausages; radishes; salad; stewed prunes; preserved gooseberries; chocolate biscuits; apricot biscuits—that is to say, a kind of flat tartlet, sweetmeat between paste; finishing with coffee. There are sugar-tongs in this house, which I have seen nowhere else except at Madame Gautier's. Salt-spoons never to be seen, so do not be surprised at seeing me take salt and sugar in the natural way when I come back.
Carriages come round about twelve, and we drive about seeing places in the neighbourhood—afterwards go to our own rooms or to the salon, or play billiards or chess. Dinner is at half-past five; no luncheon and no dressing for dinner. I will describe one dinner—Bouilli de boeuf—large piece in the middle, and all the other dishes round it—rôtie de mouton—ris de veau piqué—maquereaux—pâtes de cervelle—salad. 2nd service; ufs aux jus—petits pois—lettuce stewed—gâteaux de confitures—prunes. Dessert; gâteaux, cerises, confiture d'abricot et de groseille.
Hands are washed at the side-table; coffee is in the saloon: men and women all gathering round the table as of yore. But I should observe, that a great change has taken place; the men huddle together now in France as they used to do in England, talking politics with their backs to the women in a corner, or even in the middle of the room, without minding them in the least, and the ladies complain and look very disconsolate, and many ask, "If this be Paris?" and others scream ultra nonsense or liberal nonsense, to make themselves of consequence and to attract the attention of the gentlemen.
But to go on with the history of our day. After coffee, Madame de Vindé sits down at a round table in the middle of the room, and out of a work-basket, which is just the shape of an antediluvian work-basket of mine, made of orange-paper and pasteboard, which lived long in the garret, she takes her tapestry work: a chair-cover of which she works the little blue flowers, and M. Morel de Vindé, pair de France, ancien Conseiller de Parlement, etc., does the ground! He has had a cold, and wears a black silk handkerchief on his head and a hat over it in the house; three waistcoats, two coats, and a spencer over all. Madame de Vindé and I talk, and the young people play billiards.
When it grows duskish we all migrate at a signal from Madame de Vindé, "Allons, nous passerons chez M. de Vindé;" so we all cross the billiard-room and dining-room, and strike off by an odd passage into M. de Vindé's study, where, almost in the fire, we sit round a small table playing a game called Loto, with different-coloured pegs and collars for these pegs, and whoever knows the game of Loto will understand what it is, and those who have never heard of it must wait till I come home to make them understand it. At half-past ten to bed; a dozen small round silver-handled candlesticks, bougeoirs, with wax candles, ready for us. Who dares to say French country-houses have no comforts? Let all such henceforward except La Celle.
The three first days we were here M. de Prony and Count de Brennar were the only guests, the Count only for one day. M. de Prony is enough without any other person to keep the most active mind in conversation of all sorts, scientific, literary, humorous. He is less changed than any of our friends. His humour and good-humour are really delightful; he is, as Madame de Vindé says, the most harmless good creature that ever existed; and he has had sense enough to stick to science and keep clear of politics, always pleading "qu'il n'etait bon qu'à cela." He accompanied us in our morning excursions to Malmaison and St. Germain.
Malmaison was Josephine's, and is still Beauharnais's property, but is now occupied only by his steward. The place is very pretty—profusion of rhododendrons, as under-wood in the groves, on the grass, beside the rivers, everywhere, and in the most luxuriant flower. Poor Josephine! Do you remember Dr. Marcet telling us that when he breakfasted with her, she said, pointing to her flowers: "These are my subjects; I try to make them happy."
The grounds are admirably well taken care of, but the solitude and silence and the continual reference to the dead were strikingly melancholy, even in the midst of sunshine and flowers, and the song of nightingales. In one pond we saw swimming in graceful desolate dignity two black swans, which, as rare birds, were once great favourites. Now they curve their necks of ebony in vain.
The grounds are altogether very small, and so is the house, but fitted up with exquisite taste. In the saloon is the most elegant white marble chimney-piece my eyes ever did or ever will behold, a present from the Pope to Beauharnais. The finest pictures have been taken from the gallery; the most striking that remains is one of General Dessain, reading a letter, with a calm and absorbed countenance—two mamelukes eagerly examining his countenance. In the finely parqueted floor great holes appear; the places from which fine statues of Canova's were, as the steward told us, dragged up for the Emperor of Russia. This the man told under his breath, speaking of his master and of the armies without distinctly naming any person, as John Langan used to talk of the robbles (rebels). You may imagine the feelings which made us walk in absolute silence through the library, which was formerly Napoleon's: the gilt N's and J's still in the arches of the ceiling: busts and portraits all round—that of Josephine admirable.
At St. Germain, that vast palace which has been of late a barrack for the English army, our female guide was exceedingly well informed; indeed, Francis I., Henry IV., Mary de Medicis, Louis XIV., and Madame de la Valliere seem to have been her very intimate acquaintances. She was in all their secrets: showed us Madame de la Valliere's room, poor soul! all gilt—the gilding of her woe. This gilding, by accident, escaped the revolutionary destruction. In the high gilt dome of this room, the guide showed us the trap-door through which Louis XIV. used to come down. How they managed it I don't well know: it must have been a perilous operation, the room is so high. But my guide, who I am clear saw him do it, assured me his Majesty came down very easily in his arm-chair; and as she had great keys in her hand, and is as large nearly as Mrs. Liddy, I did not hazard a contradiction or doubt.
Did you know that it was Prony who built the Pont Louis XVI.? Perronet was then eighty-four, and Prony worked under him. One night, when he had supped at Madame de Vindé's, he went to look at his bridge, when he saw—but I have not time to tell you that story.
During Buonaparte's Spanish War he employed Prony to make logarithm, astronomical, and nautical tables on a magnificent scale. Prony found that to execute what was required would take him and all the philosophers of France a hundred and fifty years. He was very unhappy, having to do with a despot who would have his will executed, when the first volume of Smith's Wealth of Nations fell into his hands. He opened on the division of Labour, our favourite pin-making: "Ha, ha! voilà mon affaire; je ferai mes calcules comme on fait les épingles!" And he divided the labour among two hundred men, who knew no more than the simple rules of arithmetic, whom he assembled in one large building, and there these men-machines worked on, and the tables are now complete.
PARIS,
June 9.
All is quiet here now, but while we were in the country there have been disturbances. Be assured that, if there is any danger, we shall decamp for Geneva.
June 22.
We have spent a day and a half delightfully with M. and Madame Molé at Champlatreux, their beautiful country place. He is very sensible, and she very obliging. Madame de Ventimille was there, and very agreeable and kind, also Madame de Nansouti and Madame de Bezancourt, grand-daughter of Madame d'Houtitot: all remember you most kindly.
June 24.
You ask for Dupont de Fougères—alas! he has been dead some years. I went to see Camille Jordan, who is ill, and unable to leave his sofa; but he is fatter and better-looking than when we knew him—no alteration but for the better. He has got rid of all that might be thought a little affected—his vivacity being elevated into energy, and his politeness into benevolence; his pretty little good wife was sitting beside him.
Everybody, of every degree of rank or talent, who has read the Memoirs, speaks of them in the most gratifying and delightful manner. Those who have fixed on individual circumstances have always fixed on those which we should have considered as most curious. Mr. Malthus this morning spoke most highly of it, and of its useful tendency both in a public and private light. Much as I dreaded hearing it spoken of, all I have yet heard has been what best compensates for all the anxiety I have felt.