Chapter III · 1801-1806. (continued 2)

Paris, Jan., 1806.

Kitty is, I believe, settled. Her plausible manner of abusing us, and of telling her own story, is such that the hotel-keeper here, and all my tradespeople, think her a very ill-used person; and trifling as is this prejudice against me, I have been accustomed to being so much considered a good kind of person at least, that it frets me. I believe she has gone about to everybody I know, of every rank; for all have said to me with an air of coldness and mystery, ‘Quoi, votre femme-de-chambre vous quitte—c’est bien extraordinaire. Elle vous aimait tant. Elle vous a servie si long temps.’ Antoine was as busy for her at the prefecture as her counsel. I am sorry I am awakened from my beau rêve about the good qualities of servants, to two truths—one, that a servant who has lived with you ten years, will prefer to you the partner who has arrived yesterday; the next, that although they may be at the point of the sword together, they will always unite against you. The expression of the ancient, ‘humble friends,’ was not half so just as that of the modern antique, the old Duke of Queensberry, whom I heard say, ‘They are spies upon you, whom you pay yourself.’ I am afraid the ancient philosopher had not so many to attend on him as ‘old Q.,’ and was not so good a judge.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Feb., 1806.

I went yesterday with Mr. S. to Mons. ——, an artist, to see some very fine drawings. They are chiefly copies from Raphael, and one of the ‘Last Supper,’ of Leonardo da Vinci, which is beautiful. He values them, I believe, too highly, as he asks a hundred louis for this last, and the others in proportion. He uses no colours but sepia, a soupçon of yellow, the same of blue, and some white body colour. From thence I returned to dine at Mrs. F——’s with Mrs. —— and Mr. Crispy. Mrs. ——, with a volubility seldom equalled, gave me all the details possible of her domestic management, tending to prove that she was at once as fine a lady and as good a housekeeper as any in Paris—that she lived magnificently, had a great establishment, and spent a very large fortune with the highest degree of taste and economy united. Amongst other details, she was so minute as to tell me that on the last great dinner she gave to twenty-four persons, she saw 134 pounds of beef cut up merely for soup and sauces. I was a little astonished at this aldermanic puff, and everybody else showed symptoms of surprise, the greater in proportion to their knowledge of housekeeping. I forgot to say the little baronet, our former fellow-lodger, also dined there; whiskers and eyebrows were all japanned and blackened like your boots, and a light couleur de rose on his cheeks, and his figure set up as if he had got a pair of Coutant’s new corsets; and after we left the room, he showed love-letters to the gentlemen. It is a great comfort to the poor husbands whose wives expect constancy and all their affections, that gallantry seems to have got into such hands as it has of late. I declare it seems to me as if that vice had seen its best days, and was fallen into complete disrepute. I hope it will not rise again till Fred’s character is formed; for though some escape with undiminished sensibility and refinement, I think the dispositions of nine men out of ten are miserably injured by it for all the rest of their lives.

I laughed out loud at your description of the Pétillant; and I must say I have a generosity of soul about a good story, which makes me uneasy at having no one to tell it to. I feel about it like a hospitable epicure about a delicacy, quite uneasy, if I must feast on it alone.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Feb., 1806.

I had rather a pleasantish day at the Baroness’s. Mad. de Richelieu is a very pleasing old dame de l’ancienne cour. There were some others of her society, and they all showed me that sort of politeness which, when thoroughly ground into the manners, bears the semblance of interest and preference. I met also a gentleman who lodges in the house, and whose servant ran up to him on the day of my arrival, to announce it, telling him I was la veuve d’un Général tué à la bataille d’Austerlitz. So because I was not sémillante, but dressed en couleurs tendres, I must be described as a Melpomene.

Think of my having given a breakfast to-day. My company were the F——’s, who expressed a wish to hear Tarchi, and who, according to the custom of the world, attended more to their veal cutlets and their chat, than to us, to Tarchi’s evident displeasure. She had thought of learning from him, and as she is a tolerable musician, with a harsh voice, he might have made something of her; but the twelve francs she could not submit to, and takes Blanquini at six, who will teach her nothing. So much for economy. You may see I have nothing to say on the grand point, by beginning with these frivolités. I called again on the bella Italiana, who did not return my former visit, but I swallow couleuvres now. I send you a note, a volunteer from my Irishman. You see by his writing apropos of nothing, he seems to take a certain interest in our business. Fred is gros et gras and florid; and admired, as whatsoever deserves to be so always is in a great town, where pretensions do not come so close as elsewhere. The unaffected admiration the F——s show of him gives me continual pleasure. Both the ladies nurse him, literally nurse him, for half an hour together. He thinks Mrs. F.’s violent manner and clamorous talk is to amuse him, and when she is engaged in general conversation he coos at her with evident acknowledgment.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Feb., 1806.

The Emperor was last night at the Théâtre François, where the applause was very moderate. It is said he goes to the opera to-morrow, notwithstanding which scarce a third of the boxes are taken. The ladies of Paris are a little mortified that the few balls and fêtes of this winter are interrupted by his arrival, instead of receiving fresh vigour, as was expected. He has announced his desire that all the great ones intended for him should be put off till May; and the small ones, no one knows why, have felt a sort of contre-coup. Mad. Duboyne’s, however, took place last night; but it made so much sensation as proved that a ball was a scarce thing. How different from London, where half a dozen East Indians might give one the same night, and out of their own circle no one know a word about it. I do not wonder the class of women who place their happiness in show and entertainments, and whose rank and fortune do not allow them to briller in that way in London, are very anxious to settle here. I think it fortunate for England that it is not known how easy it is; and that the respect for the elegance and manners of Paris awes a London citizen’s wife, or we should have a rebellion amongst them against their husbands, who would be brought over here to perish of ennui, like poor Cope.

Poor Fred is here, ‘wasting his beauty on the desert air;’ for I know no one who receives morning visits. I proposed bringing him to show to one lady; but she seems to think a woman, who had been established once before, having taken a husband since her daughter came out, is the most odious of all monopolies, forestalling and regrating; and, though unaccountably civil in other things, she threw cold water on the offer, and always turns any conversation which could lead to the idea.

I have just seen McMahon. I must tell you a pretty trait of Lord Elgin. He obtained, somehow or other, a statement of Mad. Thiebault’s case; assembled all the first physicians at Paris, had a consultation, and sent the opinion resulting from it to the General. I think it was a trait of genius in good-nature.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Feb., 1806.

Lady Clavering’s party was very good indeed—rooms well furnished, well lighted, well disposed—agreeable music, by professors, a good supper (which I saw, though I did not wait till people sat down), and everything going off, not like a first or second party (which it was), but as if they were given habitually. The company were of the ancien régime, or English. The F—— was so dirty last night I was ashamed of her; as the French, who deny us goût, allow us une propreté exquise; and she had a muslin of such extraordinary beauty and costliness, it could not escape observation; and ‘I assure you, ma’am, it looked as if it had cleaned the floor.’ I heard Gérat for the first time, the Orpheus of France. They swear by him. I confess I liked his singing a simple romance, of which the words and music are Rousseau’s, most exceedingly. I find it is possible for French music, rendue by a French singer, to delight me. By the bye, the last phrase is a strong proof that, whatever people assume steadily and boldly, one yields to them at last; for here am I, giving Jean Jaques to the French, and merely because ils l’ont crié, je le répète après eux. Unluckily, I went too late to hear Gérat sing Italian. The Baroness, who is a good judge, and has, I hear, been a good singer in her day, disliked it much, and so does Tarchi; but from his manner of singing the romance, I am afraid I should have approved.

Mad. de Mouravieff, my old Russian friend, has been here, and passed most of the evening: her news is, that the German Countess who stole Demidoff’s diadem is to be tried to-day, and ’tis thought she will have her head shaved by the bourreau, and be imprisoned two years. Divoff’s gaming-table, where she played high, is supposed to be the source of her crime. Mad. Mouravieff has brought her seven children here; and she told me that when my old Baron heard she had that number, he said, ‘Ah, fi, c’est bien bourgeois.’ Think of the Divoffs ruining themselves solely by her toilette, for neither had any other expense that their fortune could not easily support. You may see, by the style of my news, that I have passed the evening in a female tête-à-tête.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.

Paris, Feb. 23, 1806.

You will wonder at seeing me date again from Paris, which can have no attraction for me at present; an English person being, equally from choice and necessity, separated from all French society, and there not being any straggling English left with whom I have the least acquaintance. Lady ——’s house was a great resource to me when I was last here, as she was always at home, and to a very pleasant society; but she obtained a passport for England about five months ago. I hear, however, she soon intends returning. At present our hopes are very sanguine for peace. I am just at this instant returned from seeing the image of war, or at least a preparation for it, in the Emperor’s parade, which is now a finer sight than when you saw it, as the houses then in the Carrousel, opposite to the Tuileries, have been pulled down, and the emplacement made regular and greatly increased. This gives for the parade a most beautiful locale; and you know what effect scenery has upon every similar exhibition.

My business at Paris has been the old work of trying to get a passport on parole for Mr. Trench’s going to Ireland; or else permission for him to live here in the capital, instead of being confined to a miserable country town. I have little hope of success; but, like the spider, as soon as one of my webs is destroyed, I set about spinning another with undiminished activity.

I wish I could send you some of the many useful and pleasant objects of literature, taste, and agrément with which Paris abounds; but I can find no one who will take the smallest parcel to England. Indeed, at present I know no person going. I am therefore reduced to sending you a dry and vulgar hundred pounds, with which I beg you will buy something pretty, and fancy it is your mother’s choice.

I am delighted to find you have acquired such facility in writing, as I perceive in your letters, and that you take such pains to form your style. I believe there is no trouble more fully and frequently repaid, no expense of time which brings such immense interest in worldly profit and pleasure.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Paris, Feb. 24, 1806.

Antoine procured us the best places possible to see the parade: a window, au premier, in apparently a private house, opposite the Tuileries, where there were none but what seemed very good company, and where Fred was extremely admired. He interests every creature who sees him. There are people who in youth have that gift, which I look at as separate and independent of every other merit, charm, or advantage; and it certainly contributes highly to happiness, and facilitates everything. I fancy it was that which Venus breathed over Æneas, or Ascanius—I forget which of them—in the Æneid; for I can never bring myself to think it was mere personal grace, which one supposes the descendants of the goddess must have possessed naturally, and which is too material a thing for the refined Virgil to have had only in his thoughts. I stayed with him there from before twelve till past four, dévorée d’ennui, except as I received pleasure from his: and, by the bye, it is a species of complaisance I never had for any other human being; for though I think I am complaisant (perhaps I am very much mistaken, like many others whom I have known entertain the same opinion of themselves, to which opinion they never made a convert), it is certainly not in that way, nor ever was; in spite of the lectures both of Baron Bretueil, and of another, whose judgment I more respected; who each of them used to tell me that in order to be a distingué person in any line, one must learn to bear ennui, and so conceal it under smiles. For the first time I saw, in the same room with him, a pair of eyes which rivalled his, belonging to a little nice interesting girl about eight years old. Hers were much darker, of the Indian, Portuguese, and Jew black, with jet eyebrows much pencilled and immense eyelashes. After due deliberation I gave his the preference, as more susceptible of variety of expression, and equally capable of mirth as of melancholy, whereas the jet kind can only mark the soft and serious passions.

I possess no continuous journal of my Mother’s during her constrained residence in France, though I believe she kept one. I have not found more than a few entries, made in a volume by themselves, and all referring to the death of the eldest child of her second marriage, mentioned more than once in the foregoing letters—then, indeed, its only child; for a daughter, subsequently born, had only lived a few days. The impression which this loss made, as will be seen by the many subsequent allusions to it, was profound and lasting.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.

Orleans, June 12, 1806.

... You will not wonder that I cannot write more fully at present, when you hear that Heaven has been pleased to take from me, not many days ago, my lovely and doted on child. I will not attrister you with any account of the circumstances, all of which were calculated to deepen my anguish. I will only tell you the blow was the more unexpected, as till his last illness his health and strength were equal to his beauty; while his grace, sprightliness, and intelligence, made him appear as if expressly sent from Heaven to be the solace of our captivity. The loss of my infant daughter, which seemed heavy at the time, shrinks into nothing when compared with this. She was merely a little bud; he was a lovely blossom which had safely passed all the earliest dangers, and gave clearest promise of delicious fruit. God bless you; I hope you will be more fortunate than your poor mother, and never know from experience the pain she has now three times endured.

June 24, 1806.—My Frederick’s sufferings are over with respect to himself, but they still exist in my bosom. I still feel and lament them. I consider that my sins have been visited upon him, and that I was the author of them all. Oh, my child, my child! your fever, your cough, your difficulty of breathing, the nauseous draughts that were forced upon you, your restlessness, your blindness, your blisters, your torments—how has my hard heart survived them all? When those beautiful eyes from whence a stream of light and pleasure ever flowed into my bosom grew dim and closed—when those lovely hands felt for the little refreshments you could be prevailed on to take, and which you could no longer see—when that voice once so strong and sweet, grew too feeble to make its wants and wishes known—and when, finally, the last breath forsook those lips from whence had flowed music and perfume—when I saw you cold and motionless before me, how came it my heart did not break at once? You are now forgot, or nearly so, by all but me. Your beauty so vaunted, your intelligence so admired, your goodness of heart, your generosity, your strong affection, all are as if they had never existed. Yet, perhaps, you do not sleep; perhaps your spirit, though yet disunited from your body, awaits its union with consciousness and enjoyment, every stain of original sin effaced by the merits of our Redeemer; perhaps you are permitted to protect and watch over me, to detach me from this vain world, and guide me to that which you inhabit—‘Là-haut, là-haut, là-haut.’

June 26.—‘Il devroit y avoir dans le cœur des sources inépuisables de douleurs pour de certaines pertes. Ce n’est guère par vertu ou par force d’esprit qu’on sort d’une grande affliction. L’on pleure amèrement, et l’on est sensiblement touché; mais l’on est ensuite si foible ou si léger, qu’on se console.’—La Bruyère.

I believe this applies to every loss but that of a lovely and beloved child, who is not only the flower of one’s present path, but the object of one’s future hopes, and in whom one sees an ever-widening perspective of happiness. But Bruyère was not a mother. He who formed the human heart speaks on such an occasion, of ‘lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.’ No man, no father, however affectionate, can conceive a mother’s grief; this I always believed, and am now convinced of.

Aug. 12.—I now view the whole creation expanding into the full bloom and ripeness I had promised to show him, and had anticipated his seeing and enjoying. The fruits hang on those trees, whose blossoms I exultingly compared with his complexion, whose perfume I traced in his sweeter breath. All nature is bright, vivid, animated; he pale, cold, and silent, ‘in his narrow cell for ever laid,’ and with him, his mother’s highest joy and fairest hopes. The gay perspective of that happiness he was born to receive and to impart, has melted ‘into air, into thin air.’ A fine prospect now reminds me that he who took such early delight in the beauties of nature is no longer here to give me a reflected pleasure, stronger than what I have ever felt from immediate gratification. His quick sensibility gave me every hope that my inventive fondness would make the happy days of infancy still happier; and all the visions I had formed on that exhaustless subject, now recur to increase my regrets by the unceasing comparison of the future I had painted with the dark and sad reality.

Let none think themselves truly miserable till they have seen the last moments of the object they have best loved on earth; and if that object were not their child, let them still own themselves far, far from a mother’s anguish; and if that child were not lovely, promising, full of sensibility, affection, and intelligence—if it has not boasted such a flow of health and spirits as set all apprehension at defiance—if they do not accuse themselves of errors and deficiencies in that care which might have preserved it—if they have not seen it suffer under torments inflicted by the hand of man—if they have not been an agent in its sufferings, through vain and dubious hopes of cure, then is theirs a bed of roses when compared to mine.

Sept. 1.—I received this day my passport for England, and my husband his, giving him permission to accompany me as far as Brussels. Four months ago this would have made me happy. Now it is too late. But why such poignant regrets for anything which can occur in this passing world? L’éternité ne tardera point à mettre fin à la scène de la vie, qui lui sert d’introduction. Elle s’avance vers nous comme les flots d’un vaste océan, prêts à engloutir tout ce qui appartient à l’humanité, et à ne laisser subsister que le souvenir de nos vertus, et le repentir de nos fautes.

Sept. 2.—Je ne sais plus comment marche le temps; il me semble que tout ce qui s’est passé dans mon âme depuis le septième jour de Juin n’a pu avoir lieu dans une espace aussi courte; cependant il est bien vrai, c’est ce jour là que j’ai reçu le dernier soupir de mon enfant. Pourquoi le son de l’airain a-t-il pris quelque chose de si lugubre? Chaque fois qu’il retentit, j’éprouve un frémissement involontaire. Pauvre Frédéric! chaque coup t’éloigne de moi; chaque instant que s’écoule repousse vers le passé l’instant où je te voyais encore; le temps l’éloigne, le dévore; ce n’est plus qu’une ombre fugitive que je ne puis saisir, et ces heures de félicité que je passais près de toi sont déjà englouties par le néant! Les jours vont se succéder, l’ordre général ne sera plus interrompu; et pourtant tu seras loin d’ici. Le printemps reparaîtra sans toi, et mes tristes yeux ouverts sur l’univers n’y verront plus la beauté ravissante de mon enfant. Quel désert! Je me perds dans une immensité sans rivage; je suis accablée de l’éternité de la vie; c’est en vain que je me débats pour échapper à moi-même, je succombe sous le poids d’une heure, et pour aiguiser mon mal la pensée, comme un vautour déchirant, vient m’entourer de toutes celles qui me sont encore réservées. Lorsque je veux fixer ma pensée sur l’idée que jamais je ne le reverrai, un instinct confus la repousse; il me semble quand la nuit m’environne, et que le sommeil pèse sur l’univers, que peut-être sa perte aussi n’est qu’un songe. Mais je ne puis m’abuser longtemps; il est trop vrai—Frédéric n’est plus; sa main glacée est restée sans mouvement dans la mienne; son beau corps est devenu pâle, froid, immobile; et un silence profond, éternel, a succédé à cette respiration entrecoupée et difficile, que j’avais seule écoutée dans le monde pendant son effroyable maladie. La mort et mon Frédéric! non, il m’est impossible d’unir ces deux idées! N’était-il pas la vivacité, la force, la jeunesse en sa fleur, la beauté même? N’avait il pas une surabondance de ce principe vivifiant que nous appelons la vie? Ne semblait-il pas, qu’être près de lui, c’était être en sûreté? et l’embrasser, n’était ce pas embrasser la perfection elle-même. Quand j’ai visité pour la première fois la chambre qui a été sa dernière demeure, quelle vide! quel silence! Je l’ai quittée; j’y suis revenue; je l’ai quittée encore; j’ai erré dans la maison pour me sauver de moi-même. Often in that room, I involuntarily turn towards the glass which reflected his last looks, and expect to find some outline, some trace, some shade of him.

What relics? one poor, solitary lock of shining hair; the little, simple clothes that he embellished; not a picture, not an image of that loveliness unparalleled!

The following lines, ‘On being pressed to go to a Masqued Ball not many months after the Death of my Child,’ belong evidently to this time:—