Chapter III · 1801-1806.

My Mother returned to England in the spring of 1801, and presently passed over to Ireland. Of the period, somewhat more than a year, which elapsed before her next visit to the Continent, I find few memoranda, and fewer still which need to be published. I make an extract or two.

Aug. 11, 1801.—Arrived at Mr. Alcock’s, Wilton, near Enniscorthy, an uncle of mine by marriage, and a worthy, valuable man. I find the Rebellion is the prominent object in the minds of his family, as it is, more or less, of most who have passed through it. It is their principal epoch, and seems to have divided time into two grand divisions, unmarked by any lesser periods; before, and after, the Rebellion. The first of these seems to resemble Paradise before the Fall. They had then good servants, fine flowers, fine fruit, fine horses, good beer, and plenty of barm—that indispensable requisite in rural economy. Since that period of perfect felicity, the servants have been unmanageable, the horses restive, the beer sour, the barm uncome-at-able, and all things scarce and dear. Great part of the evils complained of are undoubtedly felt; some are imaginary, and some arise from causes which are not so important or so pleasant to put forward as the word Rebellion.

Aug. 13.—Went to visit my farms near Gorey, accompanied by Mr. Alcock. Mr. B——, my principal tenant, though a rich and thriving farmer, lives in a state of dirt which really shocked me. He attributed some part of it to the Rebellion—of the rest he seemed unconscious. His wife seems dawdling, indolent, and, like most of the lower and middling Irish, oppressed by either a real or affected melancholy. That it is sometimes the last, particularly in the presence of those they consider their superiors, my own observation has convinced me. A variety of causes operate to produce this effect. The chief of these seems to be an idea that the higher class have a sort of jealousy of the prosperity of their inferiors, and a fear, in some cases too well founded, that the increasing opulence and happiness of the tenant will excite unreasonable and disproportioned exactions on the part of the landlord. Mr. B. invited me to dinner, offering ‘to kill a sheep in a crack.’

Oct. 31.—The latter part of the month I have passed with Mr. and Mrs. C——. They are good people from instinct and habit, and they have lived in the country, a situation most favourable to characters such as theirs.

Nov. 12-17.—From Mr. C——’s came to Castleton on a visit to Mr. Cox. From Mr. Benjamin Cox, brother to the master of the house, I have received great instruction on a subject to which I had hitherto devoted so little time or thought, that I was perhaps more ignorant of it than of any other with which females are supposed to be conversant. He has talked to me of religion, of the God who created, the Saviour who redeemed, the Spirit who sanctifies; without affectation, without parade, he introduces this important topic; and, though lowly and meek to a degree I have seldom witnessed, no raillery or opposition ever drives him from his stronghold, or induces him to give up the defence of the saving truths of Christianity. His practice and his theory are in perfect harmony, and his life an excellent comment on his creed. Charitable to the extent of not only relieving, but seeking, objects of distress with whom to share his entire income—generous even to bestowing one-third of his fortune at three-and-twenty on a brother richer than himself; self-denying, humble, contented, devoted to retirement, not from incapacity to shine in the world or to enjoy its pleasures, but from an opinion that retirement is, with certain exceptions, favourable to virtue. This opinion has enabled him to conquer all those inducements to quit an obscure and monotonous life that arise from a pleasing appearance, an attractive address, a voice the most harmonious and persuasive, considerable knowledge, and favourable prospects of advancement and preferment in any profession he might have chosen. The Church alone, he declares, would have suited him; but from that he is excluded by the Thirty-nine Articles, to all of which he thinks he cannot conscientiously subscribe.

I will abandon for once a rule which I have laid down for myself in the present volume, which is, to let the writer pourtray herself, and to introduce no other portraiture, my own or others; and I will here quote some words of Mrs. Leadbeater,[34] one of my mother’s most honoured friends, and with whom she maintained the most frequent correspondence, describing the beginnings of an acquaintance which presently ripened into a friendship, only to be interrupted by death, and ever esteemed by my mother a signal blessing of her life. They occur in the Annals of Ballitore, a work which Mrs. Leadbeater left behind her in manuscript, and which, when published, as I believe it is on the point of being, will be found to contain, with other matters of interest, a very vivid description of social life in Ireland during the time of the Rebellion. The reader will easily understand that, had I felt at liberty to touch the passage, one or two words might not have remained exactly as they are, and altogether I would gladly have set the whole at a somewhat lower key of admiration; but I must leave it as I find it. These are Mrs. Leadbeater’s words:—

‘The inn on the high road from Dublin to Cork was completed, and was let to Thomas Glaizebrook. It attained a goodly reputation. One night, just as we were retiring to rest, a messenger came down from the landlord to say that a lady had arrived late, that the house was full to overflowing, and there was no room for her to take refreshment in, that she sate on the settle in the kitchen reading, waiting until she could obtain an apartment; that she would be glad of the meanest bed in the house, being much fatigued; could we be so kind as to assist our tenant in this strait? My husband went up at once for her, and brought her down in a carriage here, when we found from her attendants that she was a person of much consequence. She retired to rest, after expressing grateful thanks, and we thought would pass away with the morrow. But not so. Her servants told us that she had an estate in the neighbourhood, that she had appointed her agent to meet her at Ballitore inn, proposing to take her tenants from under the middleman to her own protection;—that she had been ten years the widow of a Colonel, and had one son. I had seen but little of her the night before; when she entered my parlour the next day, I was greatly struck with her personal appearance. My heart entirely acquits me of being influenced by what I had heard of her rank and fortune. Far more prepossessing than these were the soft lustre of her beautiful black eyes, and the sweetness of her fascinating smile; her dress was simply elegant, and her fine dark hair, dressed according to the present fashion, in rows of curls over one another in front, appeared to me to be as becoming as it was new. These particulars are not important, except to myself; to me they are inexpressibly dear, because they retrace the first impressions made on me by this most charming woman, who afterwards gratified me by her friendship. Melesina St. George, such was the name of the lovely stranger, spent two weeks in our house. She asked permission, in the most engaging manner, to remain here rather than return to the inn. Providence had been liberal in granting to her talents and dispositions calculated for the improvement and happiness of all around her, while her meekness and humility prevented the restraint of her superiority being felt, without taking from the dignity of her character. I was surprised and affected when I beheld her seated on one of the kitchen chairs in the scullery, for coolness, hearing a tribe of little children of her tenants sing out their lessons to her. I wished for her picture drawn in this situation, and for its companion I would choose Edmund Burke making pills for the poor. It was with difficulty I prevailed upon her to bring her little school into our parlour, because, as she said, she would not bring them into her own. Admiring her method of instructing, I told her she would make an excellent schoolmistress; she modestly replied, with her enchanting smile, not an excellent one, but she had no dislike to the employment, and had contemplated it as a means of subsistence when the Rebellion threatened to deprive her of her property. She came to Ballitore again, and had apartments at the inn, where she entertained us with kind, polite attention, and amused her leisure with taking sketches of the views from thence with a pen and ink, not having her pencils, &c. &c., with her, thus cheerfully entertaining herself with what was attainable.’

The following letter is the firstfruits of a correspondence which continued for a quarter of a century.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

1802.

Your prose Ballitore[35] resembles a highly finished Dutch painting; in which one of the best artists has represented village scenery and manners, and where one is not only struck by the general effect, but amused and interested by the details, which all bear to be separately examined. Your minutest touches have their value, and the whole wears the stamp of truth and nature. As a faithful portrait of the manners of a small but interesting circle, it is really curious, and will become more so every day, as those minute particulars, neglected by the historian, and exaggerated by the novelist, increase in value as they increase in years. They throw the strongest light on the progress of luxury, and the changes of modes and customs; so perhaps many of the most trifling circumstances you have recorded may furnish matter whence our great-grandchildren may draw important conclusions.

In the spring of 1802, France, after having been closed for nine years, again became for a short period accessible, by the Peace of Amiens, to English travellers. What my Mother intended should be a short vacation ramble to Paris with her son, took a shape altogether different, and in fact fixed the whole fashion of her after life. Detained at Paris, first by indisposition, then by her approaching marriage, and lastly, by her husband’s captivity, her sojourn there continued, not for a few weeks only, but for five years. Of the period anterior to her detention I can find only the journal of the first three weeks; from which I shall make some extracts. They differ little from the observations of any other curious and intelligent sight-seer; still, as the Paris of that day was to be so soon shut up anew against English visitors, I may be excused for finding room for them.

July 5, 1802.—Landed at Calais, where, besides the pleasure of escaping from a ship, one feels at Dessein’s Hotel the satisfaction of treading classic ground, and sees Yorick, his interesting French widow, and his incomparable monk, gliding about in every apartment. While my imagination offered me these mild and gracious figures, my eyes presented me with Arthur O’Connor and a group of his associates. His features are regular and his person good. At the moment I saw him, he had a dark and scowling but sensible expression. He wore a green handkerchief as a neckcloth, and a tricoloured cockade. Before I could obtain leave to land my carriage, I was forced to sign a bond to bring it back to England within four months, under a penalty of twelve hundred francs—a testimony of the superior excellence of English carriages very inconvenient to travellers.

July 7, Abbéville.—The appearance of the harvest during these two days’ journey exceeds every idea I had formed of plenty. Almost the whole country is under tillage, chiefly of wheat, intermixed, however, with other grain, with flax, and with vegetables. When I saw the peasant girls leading their lean cows by a rope to pick up a scanty meal on the edge of the road, I could have wished for the intermixture of meadow. There were no animals whatever grazing; but with the whole country thus under tillage, nothing but sour black bread was to be seen in the common post-houses, though they were kept by farmers; and at one village where I wished to buy a little white bread, it was searched for in vain.

July 8, Breteuil.—Where is the gaiety we have heard of from our infancy as the distinguishing characteristic of this nation? Where is the original of Sterne’s picture of a French Sunday? I have seen to-day no cessation from toil, no intermixture of devotion, and repose, and pleasure. I have seen no dance, I have heard no song. But I have seen the pale labourer bending over the plentiful fields, of which he does not seem, if one may judge from his looks, ever to have enjoyed the produce; I have seen groups of men, women, and children, working under the influence of a burning sun (for the heat at present is extraordinary, such as has not been remembered since the year 1753), and others giving to toil the hours destined to repose, even so late as ten o’clock at night. Indeed, to judge from the extenuated appearance of the peasantry, one would conclude they were overworked and underfed. The children, however, give a promise of becoming a hardy race, and seem healthy, strong, and blooming.

July 9, Paris.—A shocking accident took place at the close of my journey. My postilion, in spite of my repeated orders to the contrary, galloped through the streets with six horses, three abreast, and unfortunately threw down an elderly man and woman of the lower class, who were severely wounded by the horses. A crowd instantly gathered, but they behaved with the greatest moderation; and though I got out of the carriage to see what could be done, none among them blamed or insulted me as the cause of the accident; neither was anything pilfered in the general confusion, either from our persons or from the carriage. The police officers were sent for, who instantly exonerated me from all blame by saying I appeared une dame timide, who did not like to drive fast; and, after making the best arrangements I could think of in the confusion of the moment for the poor sufferers, we were allowed to proceed. I found the journey infinitely fatiguing from the heat of the weather, and the inns more expensive than in England, with much worse living and less civility. The journey from London to Paris cost me above fifty guineas. I travelled with a courier, a man servant, and my son.

July 12.—In the evening walked in the garden of the Tuileries. The total want of verdure and the straightness of the stems of the trees, which rise without a leaf to a considerable height, made me fancy myself in a room where a number of lofty poles had been placed, and adorned with branches. Still, I acknowledge the walk to be magnificent, though not delicious.

July 13.—Saw the manufacture of Gobelin tapestry. My guide first brought me into a long room well-lighted and well-aired, where about a dozen men were working at what is called la haute lisse. They sat behind their frames; the weft is perpendicular, and they weave it from the bottom upwards. The picture, thus growing from the ground, faces the spectator, and the artist has not the pleasure of seeing any but the mechanical progress of his work. All in this room were employed on fine historical paintings, either French originals or copies from good Italian masters. I then followed to another room, where were the workers à la basse lisse. These work on a frame placed horizontally, and remove each second thread by a pedal worked with their feet in the usual manner; whereas à la haute lisse they remove the threads only with their hands. These persons, not above half a dozen in number, were copying flowers, game, &c., and working from pictures almost defaced by time. I suspect the haute lisse has superior merits. I could not compare them, as the tapestry of la basse lisse cannot be seen while working, its right side being turned down. The guide owned it was less healthful to the artists, and did not pretend it had any advantage to balance this defect.

‘Mais pourquoi donc le continuer?’

‘Ah, c’est l’ancienne mode. On travailloit comme cela au temps de Louis XIV., quand les Gobelins furent premièrement établis.’ After this satisfactory explanation, he led me to the finished pieces, which are indeed very beautiful.

From the Gobelins we went to the Hameau de Chantilly, a tolerable little garden, fitted up by its proprietor with all that can attract such visitors as usually frequent these places—a hundred little dirty rooms by way of cottages, a swing, a place to ride in the ring, seats, tables, a green pond with three or four boats, and above all, every sort of boire et manger at an instant’s warning, but at an exorbitant price.

July 15.—The celebration of the anniversary of Buonaparte’s birth, and of the signature of the Concordat. Went to Nôtre Dame to see the consecration of the Archbishop of Lyons, uncle to the First Consul. The various branches of this ceremony, which was performed by Cardinal Caraffa, the Pope’s Legate, were so puerile and multifarious, that, being unsupported by fine music, which is an essential in the effect of the Catholic form of worship, it became extremely tiresome. There was nothing to remind one of praise or adoration, nor during the whole service did I see any appearance of devotion. In the Tribunes was a strange medley of persons, apparently of every rank. We went late, but were given front places by two good-natured women, who, in their plain but clean dresses, trimmed with Valenciennes lace, though made in the simplest form, gave me the idea of being still what the most valuable part of the class of moyenne bourgeoisie once was. An immense crowd assembled outside, in the hope, which was not gratified, of seeing the First Consul. In the evening the hope of seeing Buonaparte brought me again. His canopy was prepared nearly opposite to that of the Archbishop of Paris, but somewhat nearer the sanctuary. However, he came not, nor did he leave the Tuileries the whole day. About nine o’clock we walked about the streets to see the illuminations. They were certainly more brilliant than those of London as to the quality of the light, lamps in the open air having a better effect than tallow candles behind glass. The whole area of the Place Vendôme was strewed with pyramids, which looked better than any other forms, possibly from being nearest to the natural shape assumed by fire. This spot, rendered extremely beautiful only by the adornment of this terrific element, seemed fit for the pleasure-garden of Satan, and reminded one of the noble description of the Hall of Eblis given in the Caliph Vathek. At ten in the evening, a single and very mediocre firework was let off; by which the people, who expected something finer, and had stood for hours to see it, were much dissatisfied.

July 16.—Went to hear the Abbé Sicard’s lecture on the manner of teaching the deaf and dumb. The Abbé has a very animated and agreeable countenance; his pupils have more beauty than is usually seen in an equal number of children who possess all their senses; and they have in general a happy union of vivacity and calmness in their expression. He receives a pension from Government; and every Department has a right to send to him its deaf and dumb children.

July 17.—The Louvre. When I walk among the best Grecian statues, I feel a sort of dignified calmness take possession of my soul. A secret influence seems to overshadow me, that keeps off all little and agitating ideas. Pictures please, statues both please and elevate.

July 18.—The Louvre, again. The pictures which occupied me were two: 1. Rubens’ Descent from the Cross, taken from the Cathedral at Antwerp—a beautiful and tragical scene. The tenderness and grief of the Virgin, who seems to fear the body should be injured by too rough a seizure—the variety of the figures, which, without affecting contrast, all differ in age, expression, attitude, and situation—the exquisite posture of the dead Christ, and the charms of execution and colouring, which rob a subject in itself horrible of all that can inspire horror, entitle this picture to the unbounded applause it has received. 2. A Holy Family, by Raphael. The colouring of this picture is very purple. Whether this is owing to the restauration and varnish of which the French are so liberal, I know not. It is a beautiful piece. As to restauration, it certainly requires great industry and knowledge; but it provokes me to see the French, when they have restored a picture, forget they have not painted it.

Saw Andromaque, that interesting piece which bears so imposing a character, that it deserves to occupy the evening of a day devoted to Grecian sculpture. We will not examine whether the characters possess real greatness; they wear that splendid counterfeit most fit for tragedy, and all possess it in different degrees. All are highly impassioned, all bear names we have lisped with respect from our infancy, and all are dignified by their misfortunes and those of their family. Orestes was performed by Talma, and with infinite skill. His face and figure are fine. He was incomparably dressed in a white robe, seemingly of the quality of a Turkish shawl, which fell in folds of very picturesque drapery: it was embroidered round the edge with a deep antique pattern in gold; and he perfectly realized the dress and attitudes of Grecian sculpture. His voice is deep and susceptible of variety. I cannot say he affected me, but the fault was probably my own. Mˡˡᵉ Duchesnois, a débutante, played Hermione, and bids fair to be a favourite. Her ugliness resists all the art of dress and all the illusion of stage light. Her voice has no great power; her attitudes are forced and Etruscan; but she feels strongly, and has an abandon in the expression of her feelings, which, though it appeared to me to ‘overstep the modesty of Nature,’ gave great satisfaction to the audience. When I thought her disgustingly violent, those about me cried out, ‘Voilà ce que s’appelle sentir;’ and a gentleman told me, that were she a pretty woman, ‘elle embraserait la salle.’

July 19.—The Louvre. Guido’s sweet picture of the union of Design and Colouring pleased me much; but I know not why he makes both appear so melancholy. I must suppose they are going to paint the likeness of a lost friend. No picture I remarked to-day gave me more pleasure than a head by Raphael of a boy of fifteen. It is not ideal beauty, but it is the beauty of real life heightened with all the charms of sweet and sensible expression.

July 22.—Saw David’s beautiful picture of the Sabine women reconciling their husbands and fathers. It is seen in an apartment of the Louvre, at thirty-six sous a-head. He is the first French painter, I believe, who has taken this method of reimbursing himself. The picture is very large. Romulus, a fine spirited figure, is in the act of lifting his spear to strike Tatius, who actually projects from the canvas. Hersilia throws herself between. She is standing, her arm extended, in the attitude of one breathless with haste and apprehension. Romulus, on the right, has his back to the spectators, and his face is seen in profile. I am not quite satisfied with his figure. Those of Tatius and Hersilia are admirable. These three form the foreground, combined with a group of lovely children; a graceful female figure embraces Tatius’ knees; another, on the ground, points to an infant scarcely six months old. The Roman leader of cavalry is seen sheathing his sword; some of the enemies are already disarmed, and you see that the rest will soon be so. David has admirably united the most attractive brilliancy of colouring with the appearance of the dust raised by the contending armies. The background is formed by the troops, through which the women have forced their way. Some of the soldiers are indistinctly seen holding up their helmets in sign of peace; and there are several females in different postures, who all excite a sufficient degree of subordinate interest to give life to the whole picture.

July 25.—Again the Abbé Sicard.—‘Pour le pont qui conduit du monde visible au monde intellectuel, voici comme je le construis. J’ai un portrait de Mossieu, fort ressemblant, d’à peu près deux pieds de haut, que je fais descendre. Tous mes sourds-muets l’appellent Mossieu. Je l’appelle le faux Mossieu; ils font de même. Je l’appelle lui-même le vrai Mossieu; ils m’imitent. Je fais remonter le portrait, et je le dessine moi-même. Je leur dis, “Mais j’ai aussi un vrai Mossieu; où est-il, puisque je puis le copier?” Ils me répondent quelquefois, que je l’ai dans mes pieds, dans mes mains. Mais la plupart me répondent, que c’est dans ma tête; tant il est naturel à l’homme d’y placer le siège des opérations intellectuelles. Mais je leur demande, “Est-ce que je puis couper, plier ce vrai Mossieu qui est dans ma tête?” non; “Et puis qu’il a cinq pieds dix pouces de haut, comment puis je le placer dans ma tête?” Ils conviennent donc que j’ai dans la tête une espèce de toile, sur laquelle les objets se dessinent, absolument différente d’aucun être qu’ils connoissent déjà, puis qu’elle peut recevoir des objets beaucoup plus grands qu’elle-même, les retenir, et les reproduire à volonté. Ils avoient déjà soupçonné quelque chose de cette vérité. Ils désirent savoir la nature de cet être. Je souffle sur leur main, j’ouvre une porte, je leur fais sentir le vent; je leur explique que comme mon souffle, comme le vent, existent et produisent des effets, quoique nous ne pouvons les voir, les plier, ou les couper, de même manière existe cet être qui retient le portrait du vrai Mossieu—cet être auquel dès ce moment nous donnons le nom de souffle, de spiritus, d’esprit enfin.’

In the evening, went to the garden of the Tuileries, where the trees are old and varied enough to rescue it from the class of French gardens in general, which are sandy flats, where straight poles, with bushes on their tops, are planted in straight lines.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Paris, March 8, 1803.

Nothing else [but ill health] should have detained me so long at Paris, a place which in cold weather I think excessively disagreeable and peculiarly unwholesome. In fine weather, when a stranger can visit the various works of art which the tempest has assembled here from every quarter of the globe, it is highly interesting; and it is encircled by so many delightful gardens, that one may pass the summer here without feeling one’s absence from the country. Yet I have never seen a spot where I should more grieve at fixing my residence, nor a nation with which I should find it so difficult to coalesce. A revolution does not seem to be favourable to the morals of a people. In the upper classes I have seen nothing but the most ardent pursuit after sensual or frivolous pleasures, and the most unqualified egotism, with a devotion to the shrines of luxury and vanity unknown at any former period. The lower ranks are chiefly marked by a total want of probity, and an earnestness for the gain of to-day, though purchased by the sacrifice of that character which might ensure them tenfold advantage on the morrow.[36] You must not think me infected with national prejudice. I speak from the narrow circle of my own observation and that of my friends; and I do not include the suffering part of the nation, who have little intercourse with strangers, and who form a society apart. I have been presented to Buonaparte and his wife, who receive with great state, ceremony, and magnificence. His manner is very good, but the expression of his countenance is not attractive. Curran says he has the face of ‘a gloomy tyrant.’ Another has compared him to a corpse with living eyes: and a painter remarked to me that the smile on his lips never seemed to accord with the rest of his features. I have the pleasure of sending you a little picture, very like him, which may enable you to form your own opinion.

And now let me thank you a thousand times for your most flattering and beautiful verses, in which you have decked me with merits that I owe entirely to your partial friendship and lively imagination. I do not, however, wish you to awaken from the illusion; on the contrary, I feel a pride and pleasure in reflecting that, strong as is your discernment, your affection for me is still stronger.

Mrs. Leadbeater, to whom this last letter was written, was at this time comparatively a recent friend; this may perhaps explain the absence in it of any reference to the writer’s approaching marriage, which took place at the English Embassy in Paris very shortly after the letter was written. She and my father, who had not very long been called to the bar, were on the point of returning to England, when they were overtaken by the somewhat abrupt termination of the Peace of Amiens. They, like so many other residents and travellers in France, had been quieted in the near prospect of war, by the assurance that, according to the universal rule in such cases, full opportunity would be given for quitting the hostile soil. How far the conduct of our Government palliated, or, as pleaded by Napoleon, justified, the course which he took in detaining the English whom he found in France at the moment when war broke out, need not be entered upon here, and as little the general story of their detention. How they in whom I have nearest interest, found their way to Orleans, a brief memorandum of my father’s will explain. ‘Aug. 7, 1803.—Left Paris with a passport granted by Junot, for Tours; arrived at Orleans on the 10th; waited on the Commandant, to obtain permission to remain in case Mrs. T.’s health should require it. He seemed much surprised we had not preferred Orleans to Tours: “Il est deux fois plus grand.” I replied that Orleans seemed a very charming town. He talked to me on politics, a subject I did not wish to enter on—set out with a profession of impartiality, and blaming both Governments for the war; but could not hold it two sentences: “Pourquoi est-ce que vous-autres Messieurs veuillent garder la Malte?” “Je n’en sais rien, Monsieur, je suis ici prisonnier de guerre.” It was with difficulty I could persuade him of the indelicacy of pressing me on the subject.’

My Mother, as I perceive from letters addressed to her, maintained a tolerably active correspondence with England during the time of this her constrained residence in France, which endured for four years, till the spring of 1807; but with one or two exceptions, the only letters of hers during this period which have reached my hands, are written to her husband, whose detention she shared; and selections from these will follow. A word or two may be necessary to explain the circumstances under which they were written, and some of the references which they contain. While my father was, so to speak,’ascriptus glebæ,’ and confined by his parole to Orleans and its immediate vicinity, she was at liberty to move freely in the interior of the country, with no other restraints than those which she shared with the French themselves; indeed, could at any moment have obtained with little difficulty a passport allowing her to return to England. More than once she had actually obtained one, although when it came to the point, and under the doubt whether she would be permitted to rejoin her husband, she never could bring herself to use it. Every year during their detention at Orleans she paid a visit of several weeks to Paris, and in 1804 two visits—having always on these occasions the same object in view—namely, to make the most of what little interest it was possible there to command, either for the mitigation of the character of his detention, or the bringing of it to an end altogether. Sometimes it was necessary to employ all interest to prevent his being sent to Verdun, where the great body of the English were detained. It was accounted no little favour to be allowed to remain at Orleans, and more than once a relegation to the remoter depot, in all respects a most undesirable residence, seemed imminent. At other times the object was not so much that his position might not be made worse, but that it might be amended, and that he might be permitted to reside, as a few of the more favoured English were, at Paris, instead of in a dull country town—or, if this could not be granted, that he might be allowed to visit Paris for a few weeks, in the hope that, this once permitted, he would not be again sent away. Or if friends seemed willing to exert themselves, and the French Government appeared more favourably disposed, as it was during Fox’s negotiation for peace immediately after his advent to power, a bolder request would be urged; namely, that he might have leave to return to Ireland for six months on his parole, his interests there suffering much through his absence; or even that he might be permitted to return definitively home, with no obligation to replace himself in his captivity. This, as is well known, not a few of the English, one by one, obtained; and at length, early in the year 1807, by exactly what interest I know not, he obtained, after a captivity of four years, such a permission of unconditional return; in this more fortunate than many of his countrymen, whose detention was only brought to an end by the advance of the allied armies into France in 1814.

My Mother’s letters during this period touch very seldom on public matters. The notices of Consular and Imperial France are slight and of no great interest. There is, moreover, about all such notices a visible caution, an evident sense that what was written might very possibly come under other eyes besides those for which it was intended. But in addition to this, she was, in the nature of things, remote from the centres of intelligence. The society in which the detained English could move was of necessity very limited. Attentions to them were not supposed to be favourably regarded by the Emperor. The good French houses which were open to them, were a very few of the old régime; and many circumstances combined to throw the English together, while yet the number of them was too small to allow much selection among them of congenial society. But for all this, the letters do contain glimpses of some of the French celebrities of this time, as the Abbé Delille, Isabey the miniature painter, Mad. Récamier, Mˡˡᵉ Raucourt, Mˡˡᵉ Duchesnois, Berthier, and others; and a lively, though not always a very flattering, picture of those our English compatriots and their way of living among themselves. If it should seem to any that they retail too many of the trivialities of social life, it must be remembered that they were written to cheer and enliven, if possible, a very dull captivity, made at the moment far more cheerless by her own absence; and that everything was welcome which might contribute to this end. The letters are unfortunately—unfortunately that is, for me, who would otherwise have been spared no little trouble—for the most part without their dates, nor have they postmarks to supply this want. Knowing the exact months of each year, during which they must have been written, I have, by one help or another, put most of those which I publish in their right order; but I am not confident that I have done this with all.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Paris, April, 1804.

I think I live here as if I was under the ban of the Holy Roman Empire. Is not that the phrase? No mortal comes near me. I wish the interdict was raised. I shall expect to be denied fire and water. Indeed, the last is so scarce in this house, and the first is so dear at Paris, that it is almost the same thing. I wish the sentence of excommunication was recalled.

I have read Werther, faute de mieux. I still admire it as an eloquent picture of love, which must always enchant those who have not drank at the fountain-head; but I find that the vivid colouring of a great attachment makes all shadows and representations appear at once faint and affected. ‘I have heard the nightingale,’ as the Athenian answered, when he was invited to hear an actor imitate her notes; and for the rest of my life I can never be extremely delighted at what my imagination used formerly to embrace as the height of perfection. I regret the sensibility I wasted on Werther, as a girl, and shall never let it appear in my house now I am a mother of a family. I picked it up at an old lady’s, where my grandfather took me to sit at the corner of the table, while he played his rubber. I borrowed it, brought it home, got it by heart, thought every one who did not admire it enthusiastically had a ‘flinty heart,’ shed torrents of tears over it, adopted its opinions, and laid the first stone of that false taste by which I was for some years subjugated.

I am delighted you went to the Marets. It is of consequence that you, as a prisoner, should be liked; and I wish them to lay all the sauvagerie of our life upon me. Nothing I should like more than their saying, ‘Il est très aimable, et il le seroit encore plus sans sa femme, qui est bien bizarre.’ I wish I could soufflé this to Mad. d’Oisonville for one society, and Mad. Baudot for another, and it would soon be echoed about and be received as one of the dozen established phrases which form the whole conversation of Orleans.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, April, 1804.

After much driving about after General Hardy’s address, I at last obtained it, and drove to his lodgings, with my letter to him in my hand, enclosing a copy of the memorial to General Berthier. I deliberated, should I send up the letter, or see him, when I found he was visible. I recollected your advice to speak, and it decided me. It was dusk, for I could not get the address till late. I walked under a dark and dirty porte cocher, where the carriage could not turn in, and up a very narrow staircase au second. The variety of my thoughts while walking upstairs would fill a page. Will he think me very forward? Shall I be too much embarrassed to speak? Shall I find a levée of young officers? Is General Hardy an impudent dashing young Irishman (for I knew he was our countryman), and will he think it civil to make love to me? I was a little reassured in passing through an ante-room, and seeing a very domestic-looking couvert bourgeois for four people. I walked into the inner room with trepidation, and there, to my comfort, saw two quiet-looking women, a modest and pretty girl, and a tall, fair, pleasing-countenanced man of about fifty, with a very gentle, civil address. He read my letter, looked at my memorial, and from what he promised, and the certainty he seemed to have that he would be the judge of our petition (unless Berthier had some private reason for or against it), I have little, I may say almost no doubt, that our affair is nearly done. Nothing could exceed the civility and appearance of interest I received from the whole party. I trembled so at the beginning I could hardly speak; but, like all constitutionally timid and morally courageous people, after the first instant I was bold as a lion.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, April, 1804.

I went last night to see Mˡˡᵉ Raucourt[37] in Semiramis with the lady I mentioned in my last. No one sees me. I go dressed like a housekeeper, with my prodigious large old brown Orleans bonnet, get into a shut-up loge, and bribe the box-keeper to let no one else in. Semiramis gave me no pleasure. A woman who has coolly assassinated her husband, merely to reign alone, cannot be made interesting by any subsequent events; and her inflated grandeur, though not in my opinion imposing, throws all the other characters so much into shade that you care little what becomes of them. It was prodigiously applauded, being a piece of great pomp and show, and the heroine having so much of what is now called caractère. But what was most curious, was the frantic manner in which the women applauded Lafont. Several of these were like so many Bacchantes. He is good-looking, without noblesse; but does not affect me in the least.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, April 18, 1804.

I was at a largish party last night at the Baroness’s. Through some mistake I did not receive her invitation till the same morning, so conceived it was a little English society, and went in my morning dress. I felt a little awkward amongst the long trains, feathers, bijous, and laces of about a dozen women who were very magnifique, among whom not the least so was Lady Clavering; but I did not suffer so much as poor Lady I——, who, though much more dressed than me, was not prepared for strangers, and did nothing but look down on herself, and examine her dress with an air of mortification and humility, which struck me as so great a ridicule, that it made me ashamed of being at all disconcerted.

I have just been with Lady ——. She received me as women usually do visitors sent by their husbands—c’est tout dire—civil and icy; she never asked a single question about him, whether he looked well or ill, whether we saw much of him, in short, not one token of interest.... Remember not to let Lord —— think I was otherwise than very civilly and properly received. I dread your excessive sincerity and impossibility of disguising any feeling; but I love, and above all respect, you for it.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, April, 1804.

My child is asleep in his cradle. Kitty is boudé-ing in the little street room, and Antoine extremely woful, as he always is now when she boudés. Sally is pert, active, and very happy because I scolded Kitty last night. Pierre is asleep, and the horses are, I believe, very uncomfortable, if I may judge by the way in which they crawl, and the miserable look they have, so different from their sleek dowager trot of Orleans. Certainly a woman has no business with horses; and the lady who married because her carriage never was at the door in time, had as good a reason as many very wise people who seem to have taken those who afford no excuse whatever. However, no woman has a right in France to rail against matrimony, for certainly, in the Anglo-Parisian set, every fault seems on the side of the wives. I went to choose Mrs. F——’s veil for her, and she was as worrying as any one could be about such a trifle. I have a sort of delicacy about those who seem subservient, that extends itself to shopkeepers, though I know that in most places they make one pay for the trouble one gives; and I really felt ashamed of the way she pulled about, and tumbled, and tried on the most valuable laces. The struggle between Sueur’s civility and her alarm was very comical.

It would have been a stiff holding back not to have called on Lady —— after what he had said. I told you she was icily civil; but I am always amused by hearing Mrs. F., to whom she was icily rude, say what a charming creature she has been to her, how fond they are of one another, and how much better she loves Lady —— than any creature in the world, &c. &c. There certainly is this convenience in rank, that it seems to save the trouble of being civil to nine-tenths of those who have none; and who think if a titled person does not turn them out of the room, they are remarkably kind.

The lady’s wearing Lady T——’s clothes cannot surprise me, as I know one here, who told me she was commissioned to send a supply of millinery to a friend in the country, and that she wore it all a few times; also that she sold her some of her own old things, putting new ribbon, &c., on the wearing points. She told me this, apropos of nothing, in a way that showed she was so far from thinking it dishonest, it did not even strike her as shabby, or cunning, but what every one would do in the same case.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, May, 1804.

It is certain the Captain[38] is au secret, it is said in irons, but this I doubt. The precautions pour l’époque du couronnement are infinite; no persons to have passports from any town but such as are mandé, except on the most urgent business, and of them a weekly list to be sent to Paris; the name of every individual to whom a place in a window is let or given, to be sent to the police; the Departments to come at different times, and not to meet till the ceremony, lest they should cabal. It is rather provoking that I refused Mrs. F——’s offer of a place in a window that gives on the Pont Neuf, where I should have seen the cortège going, better than from any other spot in Paris; and she has since given it away. Forty-two louis are now paid for a window, eighteen francs for places at the risk of people’s lives, on scaffolding; such a crowd to see the crown of the Empress at Foncier’s, that it was a service of danger. I went at a moment when she had sent for it to try on, and did not repeat the attempt.

Some say Mad. de Montmorenci asked for her place of Dame de Palais, and has projets de conquérir the Unconquered. She is about thirty-six—a plain face, fine figure, beaucoup de tournure, infinite taste in dress, médiocrement d’esprit, but great enjouement, mixed with languor and perfect usage du monde. Such, at least, is what she appeared to me in my short burst of dissipation in Paris. She was presented in a robe of velvet, couleur de cérise (the colour of mine), covered with stars, and richly embroidered all round with gold. Her curtsey on presentation was said to be the most graceful possible, &c. &c. &c.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, May, 1804.

I have just opened a book in which I find a paragraph so suitable to our detention, and the close intimacy and dependence on each other which have followed it, that I cannot help transcribing—‘Quand on est parfaitement heureuse par ses affections, c’est peut-être une faveur de la Providence que certains revers resserrent encore vos liens par la force même des choses.’ This struck me as very just, and what ought to silence all our murmurs on the subject of our detention. It is really gratifying to find we have been happy without any of the usual interests of life, without society, without plan, without fixed occupation, without enjoying either the beauties of nature or the refined accommodations and luxuries of art, and, on my part, without even health. It seems a hint to us not to confide that happiness of which we are already sure in each other, to any other projects but those which arise from affection, and tend to make our children capable of the same species of enjoyment as ourselves. For my own part, I feel so strongly qu’il faut respecter le bonheur, that I never will again form a wish that you should pursue any scheme of ambition or advancement. A quoi bon? In living for ourselves position would be useless, and our fortune is already equal to our wishes, and of a nature which, without effort, will, in the common course of things, insensibly and moderately increase, so as to keep pace with the increasing advance around us. When absent from you, I exist only in my reflections, and all those I have made since we parted are of this stamp.

I have been asked for every evening to Mrs. Latten’s, and have never gone yet, which I mention to show you how little you need regret my retirement; for I am convinced that if I had opportunities of going out, I should not use them; yet I like the Lattens. She is pretty and civil, and he has the sort of animal spirits which always excite mine, and I think him remarkably clever, till he leaves the room, and then I find I cannot recollect one thing he has said which might not have come from any other person.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, May, 1804.

I have got an Annual Register for 1803, through Sir M. C., and am blinding myself over it day and night. I wish it was to be had, and I would send it to you. This is the night of the fête for the Emperor at the opera. I have been too miserly to take a box, and have been a little tempted to go to the orchestra, which is the resource of those who have not boxes; but I feel so strongly that it is not my place, that nothing I could see from thence would make up to me for that idea. So between my avarice and my pride I shall lose the only brilliant fête open to a stranger; but I have been formerly so used to find my pleasures come unsought, that when I am to purchase and look for them, I feel myself ill-used and inclined to bouder at home. I went muffled up last night with Mrs. Sheldon to see Mˡˡᵉ Duchesnois in Esther. The house very thin, though almost all the good actors appeared in tragedy or comedy. Mˡˡᵉ Duchesnois is the sweetest creature in Esther I can conceive—so innocent, so harmonious, so touchante, so timid, so animated, so young in mind as well as appearance. She gives me in that part the idea of a little white dove, and I have an extraordinary respect for talents which can so represent the flames of Phèdre and the purity of Esther.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, May, 1804.

My angel child being comfortable and quiet at five this day, I ventured to dine with the Lattens to meet the Abbé Delille. I found him much changed, as it is many years since I saw him. But he, being now almost blind and always très galant, addressed several compliments to the favourable recollection he retained of me, which would have been then within the pale of that exaggeration authorized by the habits of society, but were now ridiculous. This little foolish circumstance took off from the pleasure I should otherwise have felt in being next to him, and in finding he remembered every trifle relative to our former meeting (mem.—he is sixty-four[39]). He was very entertaining; but as an old man, repeating anecdote on anecdote, whereas formerly he conversed; and from loss of teeth he no longer recites with that exquisite charm which once gave me so much pleasure. My first thought was, when he began, that now you would never hear him recite as I did formerly. He gave some beautiful lines on Ariosto, sparkling, close, and like a firework. He makes him ‘l’enfant du goût et de la folie.’[40] Altogether, it was the pleasantest day I have had in Paris. A French gentleman, on finding the Abbé could not recollect some lines I had asked for on Rousseau, drew his chair close to mine, saying, ‘Eh bien, Madame, puisque Monsieur l’Abbé ne veut pas réciter ses vers, je vous en dirai des miens,’ and set out immediately.

TO THE SAME.

Estampes, Oct., 1804.

I think you will be amused with the Memoirs of St. Simon,[41] though written so incorrectly as to be sometimes unintelligible on first reading. They are more inaccurate as to punctuation than any book I ever saw; and you will frequently detect faults in the stopping so marked, that by a trifling change you can find a meaning in what, as now printed, appears absolute nonsense. You will see that those women who excited the envy of others paid very dear for their admission into the brilliant parties so extolled by Mad. de Sévigné. Once in that coach which she compares to Paradise, they must not presume to feel dust, sun, cold, heat, fatigue—always full-dressed, always tight-laced, always in high spirits, and always with great appetites. Pray read the chapter, which is curious. The author shows a strong mind, and paints with shadows as well as lights, which distinguishes him from most of those who have described the hero of that day.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Oct., 1804.

I send you a little allegory, the first I ever wrote. It amused my tristesse for above an hour, and I see I shall again be a scribbler.

THE BIRTH OF CALUMNY.

Dulness, who was daughter to the roving nymph Idleness, and whose other parent was unknown, found herself so favoured and enriched by the fondness of Wealth, one of her reputed fathers, and the most powerful, perhaps, amongst them, that she was often highly caressed, distinguished, and even invited to usurp the honours due to Learning and to Wit. Indeed, she was in many external circumstances peculiarly fortunate; though fond of tumult, noise, and show, she generally escaped unhurt from the dangers into which this taste seduced her; she seldom found her steps pursued by the prying eyes of Curiosity, and the snakes of Envy were scarcely ever seen to hiss at her as she passed. Her outward appearance, neither formed to excite admiration nor disgust, was that which many philosophers have professed to think we ought to desire for ourselves, and for the objects of our love. Her eyes never sparkled with intelligence, her cheeks never mantled with sensibility; but no irregularity was discoverable in her features, and when crowned with her favourite wreath of poppies, there were not wanting flatterers who attributed dignity to the slowness of her movements and the complacency of her countenance.

Amongst the foremost of these was Malice. He knew that Pride and Apathy, who would both have fain claimed her for their child, had joined to form her a shield of curious texture, which even his keen and poisoned arrows had no power to pierce. He felt a kind of involuntary respect for one who could repel without effort what caused such exquisite pain to Beauty, to Genius, and to Virtue. On the other hand, she had a faint glimmering of gratitude to him, because her only enemy, the fiend Ennui, by whom she was constantly followed and often tormented, and who had the power of raising fogs and mists against which her shield was no defence, immediately fled when Malice advanced; for though frequently companions in other societies, they seldom appeared together before her eyes.

These circumstances in time gave Malice opportunities of paying successful court to one whom he saw enriched by the gifts of Wealth, and shielded from almost every species of accident or enmity by the hands of Pride and Apathy. He finally obtained her, and their union was followed by the birth of a daughter, to whom they gave the name of Calumny, and whom, in spite of her piercing and discordant cries, they cherished with equal fondness. Her mother prevailed on Credulity to be her nurse, and her father engaged Envy as her governess. Dulness insisted on forming her understanding, and Malice undertook the management of her heart, while each promised to second the other, even in the department they had resigned.

Such was the parentage and birth of Calumny. It would be superfluous to say more of one whose empire is so widely spread, and whose attributes are therefore so universally known.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Nov., 1804.

At a private party last night, I saw a Spanish girl dance the bolero and the fandango with castanets to a Spanish guitar, played by a Spaniard. He sung to the bolero. The music, his voice, the instrument, were all very touching. By the bye, the Spanish guitar, with Spanish tunes, sung by a man’s tenor, is the most affecting music to me in the world. It was all I could do last night to avoid exposing myself, and it would have been very strange in appearance, while looking on at a gay dance; and I am sure no soul in the room but me listened to the music. The girl was pretty, with eyes so admired by the French, à fleur de tête, not ‘odious sunk eyes;’ and she held herself so much up and back as to have what Mons. Récamier very accurately called ‘un air martial.’ She sat by me, and told me all she was to do, in the beginning of the evening, and said she had danced the bolero and fandango at the Duchess of Somebody’s at Madrid, and was supposed to dance it perfectly, ‘parceque pour cela il ne faut pas beaucoup de mouvements des pieds, mais infiniment de grâce.’ She also told me she was thirteen, and the lady before her was her sister—two mistakes, I believe, as she looked about eighteen, and Mons. Récamier told me the other lady was her mother, who chooses to pass for her sister. Her costume was very pretty, and the applause was extreme; but none so loud in their applauses, admires, and broad flattery to her, and almost everybody else, as was the F——. Some women, conscious of envy, take this vulgar mode of hiding it. Frenchwomen, to do them justice, never do; you scarcely ever hear them admire another woman. The F. told the Baroness, who had a silver trimming, that ‘it was all beauty, modesty, and elegance, like herself,’ and many other things to different people de cette force là.

The company was totally a different class from what I had seen last year. If I was settled here I would not dress and go out, to mix with the society to which only the English can now be admitted. One always gains some advantages in the first circle, and one finds some members of the corps diplomatique in other places, as one moves about; but once away from Paris, one would never hear of or see again those in the set our compatriotes live with at present.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Nov., 1804.

I often wonder the comparison between women and magpies has not been enlarged upon, taking their common love of hoarding into account. It is astonishing to what an extreme we carry this passion. My last female acquaintance, however, exceeds all I have ever met. I thought my aunt ——, Lady Yarmouth, and Mrs. F., were pretty strong instances; but this lady excels them all. She has the most extraordinary hoards of every kind of wearable, every sort of bijou, and is avidly inquisitive in search of more, more. Really, if women hoarded money, a younger child would sometimes be unexpectedly provided for; but it must be a provoking thing to a very generous husband to see them buying up necessaries and trifles, which every hour can present, as if they feared the day would come on which they would not have a guinea to dispose of. It always gives me the idea of a femme entretenue, who is ‘making hay while the sun shines.’ This lady is collecting antiques, collecting precious stones, collecting lace—literally collecting; for on asking my opinion about giving 260 louis for a trimming, she said, ‘I have more in England, to be sure, than I can ever wear, but I can always dispose of that.’ What noblesse Paris gives to the way of thinking!

Paris, Nov., 1804.

I was last night at a thé of Mrs. P——’s, with one set of French country dances. It was one of those little parties she gives continually to practise and improve her very indifferent talent for dancing, in which she never can excel. I should not make such a little remark, if she would allow one to think she danced to amuse herself; but she cannot refrain from telling how much she studies, and how many lessons she has had, and how she hopes to do better; and how she can dance ‘pretty well for an Englishwoman;’ but that something or other interferes at the present moment, &c. &c. There were no fine dancers amongst the ladies, and only Mons. Lafitte (who looks like a flying hair-dresser) among the men. There were, however, more pretty women than I have seen in so small a society, and four or five of the noted Parisian beauties. Mad. Récamier was there, and looked much handsomer than ever I saw her before; indeed, I thought her very handsome, for the first time. She danced very heavily and genteelly, in the French country dances; somewhat like an English married woman—no steps, but a very good air.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Dec., 1804.

I was yesterday evening with all the English at Colonel ——’s. I played three rubbers of twenty sous casino with my Baroness and the Copes; never looked to the right hand or the left, and walked off. It is certain that being perfectly happy at home totally takes away one’s relish for the amusements one meets abroad. I always used to deny this, and conceived it was a vulgar error, and could argue very prettily upon the delight of mixing a certain degree of dissipation with the highest domestic happiness; but my mind is not expansive enough for both; and I now begin to see the truth of the commonplace observation, that people become less gay, and agreeable to the world, by being married and fond of each other. It is not because one loses one’s spirits, but because one makes involuntary comparisons between the gêne and the unsatisfactoriness of common life, and the perfect confidence and fulness of pleasure in the company of those one loves.

The complaint here that the race of good servants is extinct, is not, I believe, ill-founded. The equalizing education of the Revolution, and the idea instilled so industriously into that class that servitude was at an end, and that the relation of master and servant was not that of a bargain, but of usurpation, together with the deep and growing love of spectacle and contempt of religion, must all unite to give grounds for this complaint.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Dec., 1804.

I never saw anything so affecting on any stage as the despair of Antiochus when he finds his brother assassinated, and doubts whether his mother or his bride was the murderer. It is the most déchirante situation I ever saw; and the whole last act of Rodogune is the finest display of theatrical effect and of the art of moving the passions. I now yield Racine up for Corneille. Mˡˡᵉ Raucourt, in my little opinion, is as far above Mˡˡᵉ Duchesnois as Mˡˡᵉ Duchesnois is above Mˡˡᵉ George. She bears the stamp of the character impressed on her whole air. She is always Rodogune, never Mˡˡᵉ Raucourt. You see her front rongé de remords, and wrinkled with artifice. You find her eye speak as much as her lips, nay, more; and she has the uncommon power of giving dignity to the blackest crimes. I wished much for you.

I saw Mrs. S—— this evening. I was surprised to see how much less well-looking her pretty daughter is at home than au bal. I am sure this is in the air of France; for in London a fine girl is prettier at home, at her ease, in her white dress and in her hair, than ever she is abroad; but this young lady had the lounge, the home-stoop, the loose dress, the big shawl, and the neglected hair, of a French beauty chez elle.

L—— has grown ten years older since I was last here. I believe, in spite of his apparent insouciance, he frets inwardly about the total want of all that domestic comfort which results from affection. Indeed, men or women who afficher indifference on that subject often do it to hide strong feelings.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Dec., 1804.

I do not think I shall often go into public with that party, for we were stuffed eleven in a box, a thing as disagreeable as it is vulgar. We were ourselves nine—rather more than enough; but the Violent Gentleman introduced two odd women, whom the rest of the party hardly spoke to; one of them was a prettyish girl, whom he says he admires for her ‘mental Qualifications.’ [Make the Qua very broad, as he pronounces it.] She was certainly very humble to join a party where the women took no notice of her. I was very sorry to be jumbled with such heterogeneous matter; but the house was empty, else people must have laughed to see seven females in one box, like bees in a glass hive.

Mrs. F. gave me this day her two young ladies to take to the Bois de Boulogne. I found they knew, by name or sight, all the Parisian young men, without being acquainted with any. It is astonishing how some young ladies acquire this knowledge, and can class every marriageable man according to his exact species and order, without any help from personal acquaintance.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, July, 1805.

I could not resist blinding myself with Mad. de Sévigné, whom for the first time I really taste and admire. She gives one, in the pleasantest and most easily remembered way, a very clear idea of the difference of manners, hours, value of money, &c. &c., in her time, from what they are at present. This is a very subordinate merit to her feeling, wit, humour, and spirit; but still it is a merit, particularly to me, who can never remember such circumstances except when they are connected with something which interests or amuses. I have always said that love depends on the merit of the person who feels, not who inspires it. This is universally felt, though not always allowed. These letters which I have just read are a strong proof of it. They are filled from the beginning to the end with the praises of Mad. de Grignan’s perfections; yet one shuts the book quite indifferent about her, and really attached to Mad. de Sévigné, of whose character one knows but little, this all-pervading attachment excepted.

Have you a mind for a new French idiom? On my remonstrating with the hostess at Estampes for charging seven francs for the horses, she answered, ‘Madame, vous ne pensez pas que je vous étrange.’ Pray remember the new verb.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, July, 1805.

Thérèse dit que Paris est si beau, ‘que les yeux lui en font mal.’

‘C’est si beau, que les yeux m’en font mal’—on pourrait philosopher sur cette idée, appliquée aux plaisirs d’une grande ville. Son costume, qui contrastait avec une calêche, a un peu attiré les yeux, dans une ville où tout le monde entend toutes les convenances de l’habillement; ce qui me prive de la commodité de la mener quelquefois dans les boutiques: car je lui ferais du tort si je la faisais quitter son habillement de paÿsanne. Ou elle le reprendrait à regret, ou ses parents la blâmeraient de l’avoir quitté. Les femmes qu’on voit à pied actuellement dans les rues, sont plus élégantes que je ne me rappelle de les avoir jamais vues. La symmétrie et la légèreté de leurs tailles, les grâces de leur maintien, et le goût de leur parure, sont plus frappantes que dans aucun autre moment que je puis me rappeler. Elles portent presque toutes le blanc orné des couleurs à la fois gaies, vives, et délicates, et elles paraissent toutes entre dix-huit et vingt-cinq ans. Je crois qu’aprés cette époque on les envoie en province.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, July, 1805.

Mrs. —— has just the no manner which, without being civil, always puts those at their ease who have not been used to good society; and though good-looking, has what I have heard some of the London women call, something ‘ordinary’ in her air, which counteracts the effects of a dress the most magnifique as to expense so completely, that it cannot écraser the plainest. Mad. Demidoff has the same tournure (but without any pretensions whatever to beauty). I have just seen a gown of hers (Mad. Demidoff) at 260 louis, composed of one yard-and-half square of Brussels lace. Mad. Sueur brought it to show me, as a sop to Cerberus, for having disobliged me about Mrs. C——’s cloak. She is so civil and obliging (for she did all she could about that commission), that I pay her without regret, while I grudge all the other saucy marchandes with whom I have any dealings.

I saw a birutsche to-day, which the Baroness has bought for 150 louis. It seems to my eyes clumsy, and has no resemblance to an English carriage, except in being perfectly plain. It is the ‘coloured gown,’ but without the air of a first-rate mantua-maker. It is all green, and looks like a great Muscovite duck. I asked the coachmaker to let me know when he had a good second-hand one, but in the true spirit of ‘Ne voulez-vous pas que je gagne?’ he assured me there was never any such thing. Certainly the Baroness encourages tradespeople to talk such nonsense; for though an extremely sensible, unaffected woman, her manner to them savours of a simplicity I cannot remark in her general character. It may possibly arise from not having always had the disposal of so much money as at present, and therefore thinking it beneath her to make the slightest effort to obtain the value of it.

Erard has, in the simplest manner possible, without saying one phrase, lent me a pianoforte, which is to come home to-morrow. This is very German; no people are so silently obliging.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, July, 1805.

Isabey[42] cannot give me a séance for a fortnight. After having had painters begging one to sit without their having any emolument by it, but merely to put one’s picture in their atelier, it seems odd not to be able to get one for money. I will write a poem called ‘The Progress of Woman;’ a fine occasion to show one’s skill in the degradation of the tints. I look, however, to living my vanities over again in my daughters.

I told you I had met Mr. Don at dinner at F——’s; but I did not tell you he was dans un transport de bourgeois at having accidentally spoken to the Emperor in a retired part of the Bois de Boulogne, at a hunt, and informed him which way the stag went. The Emperor did not perhaps like to find himself tête-à-tête there with a tall young Englishman, and was still less pleased, I suppose, at finding the person was one who remained here contrary to his last orders, and had escaped the vigilance of his police and surveillance about two months. In short, poor Mr. Don’s civility cost him two nights’ lodging in prison and a removal to Verdun.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, July, 1805.

The Emperor has adopted an idea which I admire very much, of having a small garden under his windows, into which no creature ever enters, except himself and the Empress. I think the idea of having a little sacred spot, very beautiful; and I wonder it has never been thought of, as it is almost as practicable as it is refined.

I now find the convenience of having been well taught French. It is certain, the advantages of those branches of education rigid moralists consider as only ornamental, such as foreign languages, &c., are much oftener felt in life than it appears possible they could be when the matter is theoretically considered. Mothers who cultivate them as marriage-traps are mistaken; for, generally speaking, men do not marry women for what are called accomplishments; and upon the whole, except drawing, I think they deter as many as they attract. One man is afraid of a ‘learned lady,’ another of having his house the rendezvous of wits and poets, of actors, or fiddlers, or singers, &c. &c. The stragglers who marry for them are those whose mothers and sisters are remarkably unaccomplished, and who therefore overrate little acquirements.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, July, 1805.

Just home from a very pleasant dinner at Lord ——’s. The party were Hunt, Visconti, another savant, and the Italian who invited me to his house in Italy three years ago, but who did not know me again. She thanked me in the prettiest and most expressive manner for our civility, &c., to Lord ——, and said the time he passed with us were the only pleasant moments he had at Orleans. He appears to great advantage in his own house; and with her one is immediately at one’s ease: I felt more so in two minutes than I can be with any woman in Orleans after two years, so great is the difficulty of an Englishwoman’s coalescing with a French one. In the evening she showed me a number of fine broderies, laces, antiques; and as I love les belles choses like a woman, and am as little envious of them as a man, I was very much amused at tumbling them over. She is magnifique à l’excès, beyond any woman I have yet seen. She presses me greatly to lodge in their hotel, and took me to see apartments in it. Like a true woman, she seems to think nothing good enough for herself, nor too bad for any one else; for, I assure you, I can never think without laughing of the miserable trou she wanted to stuff me into, and to persuade me was comfortable. She begs I will go there every evening. The flame of friendship crackled and burned, and ten years ago I should have put myself anywhere to be near a person who seemed to express such a fancy for me, and talked so confidentially, telling me how much her family disliked her marrying Lord ——; how differently she would act, were it to do again, &c. &c.; but I have lost my goût for sudden female intimacies; with me they have always led to vexation.

Berthier was at Cobenzl’s; so think how ill-natured to prevent me from going. There is a vast difference between asking a favour from a great person, when they are in the midst of business, and have their refusing powers all up in arms, and soliciting when they are in good humour, and surrounded by all that unbends the mind.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, July, 1805.

Twelve at night. Just returned from the F——’s. I went from faiblesse and indolence, not knowing how to refuse peremptorily when people beg fiercely....

On reading over my letter, I feel ashamed to have guessed at Mrs.——’s little motives long before you, who have so much more penetration in matters of consequence. The reason is probably because a man is always treated with more kindness and bienveillance in proportion as he has any advantages which succeed in society; while a woman, in proportion to these advantages, though they may be the means of her being flattered and distinguished, is always the object of a degree of malice and ingenious spitefulness from her own sex, and from such men as resemble women in their worst qualities, which very soon enlightens her on the subject, and enables her to descry from afar the attacks of envy and littleness. A man never excites these feelings, except he is placed in a petite ville, or a country neighbourhood, with such characters as the poor sufferer in question.

In the midst of his civility, our countryman threw in yesterday with great address, that ‘none of the English were sent on the late occasion to Verdun, except those who had been teasing the Minister with applications.’ Il me voyoit venir de loin, and was beforehand with me.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, July, 1805.

General Berthier was very civil; I was not forced to wait in an ante-room, as I expected, with a variety of people in the same situation, but received as a visitor. He seemed unwilling to enter into any detail, and rather put aside all my attempts to give it to him. He asked me where you were, and seemed to know nothing about us. I said at Orleans. He said, were you not sent to Verdun? I told him you had got leave to stay at Orleans on account of your illness, and that the favour I asked was, leave for you to come to Paris to be treated by your physician here. He answered, ‘J’aimerais mieux qu’il reste à Orléans. Pourquoi ne pas rester à Orléans? c’est une belle ville; il y a d’excellens médecins.’ I dwelt on your wish for a particular physician here, &c. &c. He said that this physician might go to you, that the French were all sent out of London, and that no English could come to Paris. I said you were Irish (to which he seemed to allow no weight), and said that I had hoped you would not be an exception to the indulgence he had shown aux malheurs particuliers. He said, at this moment no indulgence could be shown. I dwelt upon illness; he said, in that case, everybody would be ill, and that if one was allowed to come to Paris, all the others would expect it, and that nobody was allowed to come. I had the boldness to contradict him, and quote F., upon which he said, ‘Eh bien, nous verrons; qu’il reste à Orléans, et avec le temps je pourrais accorder quelque chose de plus peut-être. Mais il y avait des circonstances particulières dans la position de Monsieur F. Je ferai ce que je pourrais, mais n’en parlez pas, car cela entraine.’ I do not here remember the words, but the idea was that others would plague him. ‘Vous restez à Paris?’ ‘Non, mon Général, je pars tout de suite pour Orléans.’ ‘Je voudrais que vous pourriez rester deux ou trois jours, et revenir içi à la même heure Mardi.’ ‘Vous me donnez donc l’espoir d’accorder cette grâce?’ He was then very diplomatic, with ‘Nous verrons,’ and speeches that were neither yes nor no; but the result is that I am to go again, Tuesday. I then asked, how they were to know at Orleans that you were not to be sent to Verdun, and he said he would write on Monday. I had then to persecute him to write to-night, which he promised. What do you think of all this? I assure you he has left me in complete doubt. Certainly his reception and manner, &c., may give hope, if the stories Mrs. F. and Lady C. tell of his difficulty of access are true; but we do not know whether they are or not. The latter says she has been five weeks trying in vain to see him, or get at some one who can; and I wrote to you, I believe, that the former said she went every day for three weeks together in vain. At the same time he was very guarded in not making any promise.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Aug., 1805.

Mrs. F. came yesterday again at three, and I only got rid of her by sending for a carriage, and setting her down where she was to dine, at the other end of the world, and out of the way of any affairs of my own. In the evening she ordered her carriage to wait for her here, and came again. She is the most terrible little caricature of the most determined dissipation I ever saw. It consoles one for being farouche, and not showing to advantage in society, when one sees how much more disagreeable the opposite extreme of living for the world may become. Other people whom one finds tiresome one loses in a great town, especially when they live three miles off; but her unfortunate activity multiplies her into twenty little facettes, all ready to blind your eyes and scratch your fingers.

Poor Mr. Palmer looks very ill. Indeed, my eyes are grown difficile, for it appears to me that people in general, whom I had known of old, look much worse than they are entitled to do by the lapse of time. Mad. Visconti, who has been detected by her Italian friends as having a grand-daughter of fifteen, and being fifty-six, and Vestris the younger, who is said to be fifty-four, both of whom I saw last night, are the only persons who persuade me of the truth of Hufeland’s doctrine, that those who do not live to two hundred are carried off prematurely, and that sixty is the flower of one’s youth.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Aug., 1805.

Isabey is a fine exact likeness-taker; but if he had read Winckelmann, he would know that as a painter cannot give the advantage of life and variety, he is bound to advance to the boundaries of the beau ideal, as far as he can consistently with resemblance, in order to endeavour to make some compensation. I saw a likeness of Mad. Cabarrus, beautifully done, but with a cruel truth of resemblance in the nose, which to those who do not carry her idea in their heads from having seen her, makes it a very disagreeable negro-ish picture. Mine is growing formal and frightful, and just me when I am tired of my company. I showed him your picture. As he has no pretensions to looks, he praised your beauty much; but he praised the painting just as one pretty woman, one actor, one musician, praises another, c’est-à-dire, d’une manière froide, triste et contrainte. Any person that applauds warmly a person going, and still more following, in the same road, is deceitful;—I mean if they have ever brought their wares to market, and sought for admiration. Those who have not, can praise with sincerity. I am sure he admired it much, so you may safely tell Bertrand all he would like to hear. He begged leave to keep it to show to his élèves, pour leur donner de l’émulation. I am sure he thinks Bertrand too good to come to Paris, and Madame desired me to advise him to go to Russia, where he would soon make his fortune.

TO THE SAME.

Fontainebleau, Aug., 1805.

I arrived last night at eleven—much frightened (without reason) at passing the forest so late. To-day I went out before breakfast, not to lose any opportunity; waited from ten till three in the roads, courts, and porter’s-lodge—Antoine a millstone, a damper, and an épouvantail, frightened at his shadow, and equally endeavouring to frighten me. At three every one said the Emperor would not go out to-day, and I found myself too weak to wait longer, from not having eaten a morsel. The Empress was walking in the garden, and I went to her, requesting she would appuyer the placet, of which I gave her a copy. She received it graciously, and asked if I had presented the placet itself. Upon my saying not, she desired me to give it to her, and she would. This I did, but consider it unlucky, as he is reputed to attend more to those immediately given to himself, than to those given in any indirect way. To-morrow I shall go again, and try for an opportunity to tell the Emperor I am the person who presented a placet through the Empress to him. The Empress seems to me, as I at first thought her on my presentation, exceedingly attractive. The face was entirely covered by a fine lace veil and large rich bonnet; but her figure and maintien are highly graceful and beautiful. She recollected my having been presented to her three years ago. A poor woman gave her a petition on her knees immediately after; and her distress and anxiety to make the woman get up was very interesting. Every one more than civil. I penetrated everywhere, in spite of the supposed difficulties.

TO THE SAME.

Fontainebleau, Aug., 1805.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of giving you a second proof of affection, and whether it succeeds or not, nothing can deprive me of the satisfaction I receive from the act. A travers all the embarrassments and tumults of a retour de chasse, guns firing, horses prancing, la meute des chiens, piqueurs, gamekeepers, guards, in short, a thousand objects, from each of which I should have fled on any other occasion, I delivered my placet to the Emperor, who received it willingly and graciously. He was just driving off in his calèche, after a successful hunt in the Park of Fontainebleau. Now the little agitation and fretfulness of the business is over, I have leisure to look back and be surprised at the kindness and politeness with which I was treated, and the respect I uniformly received in circumstances the least likely to inspire it. With the smallest knowledge of the local customs or entours, I should not have suffered any fatigue or inconvenience; but being a total stranger, without one common acquaintance here, and Antoine a millstone, as I said yesterday, I had every disadvantage. It was not true, but a mistake, that I could not go into the court I mentioned yesterday. The Empress had ordered women should not remain there; but the wife of the concièrge, whose apartment was in it, offered me her salon, newspapers, &c., where I was quite retired, and much better lodged than travellers usually are anywhere. I never in the whole business met the slightest incivility, insinuation, freedom, or rebuff. I glided everywhere, whether others were refused or not, and I met with every mark of interest and bienveillance. By the bye, the placet itself was a most pitiful performance, ten degrees lower than my address beginning ‘Etrangère et seule,’ which had something like style and energy. It is singular, too, that one who was First Secretary, &c., made me, against my own opinion, make an official mistake in it—Votre Majesté and Vous, instead of Elle. How few people know their own métier.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Aug., 1805.

The Baroness, Col. ——, Mrs. F——, and her young ladies, passed the evening here yesterday. Mrs. F. was in great spirits. While I was at Fontainebleau they had all dined with Lady ——, and danced in the evening. They were in such raptures with his dancing as I thought only Zephyr or Dupont could excite. I must tell you the —— show us particular respect in being so happy together before us; for they have the most disgraceful fights in the presence of others. Not a word of truth in Mrs. ——’s elopement. I regret all the good morality I wasted upon it. As to your insisting on my not telling you all the scandal I hear, I am sorry to say it is a vain command. Until I get a female friend, you must listen to it; for I will not be at the trouble, like Midas’ wife,[43] of digging a hole in the earth to tell it to; and ‘un secret est un pesant fardeau.’

We have really a curious set of Anglo-Parisians. Col. —— puts me in mind of some one in an English farce, when he tells one, à propos of nothing, how he and his wife always travel separately, with two equipages each; and how they never go to sea in the same ship, as ’twould be hazarding too much in one bottom; and how he ‘likes things in a Great Style, because he has always been accustomed to things in a Great Style.’ In short, if you were to be ever so angry, I must be diverted with these people, and must tell you what diverts me. My mind reposes on my little Baroness, who, I see, is quietly making the best of a tiresome husband, and, seeming completely meek and gentle, is yet always contriving to rein him in from exposing himself by heat of temper and vanity, which he is ever on the point of doing; educating her son so well, and giving all the credit of it to him; keeping clear of all the petite ville squabbles, civil to everybody, and intimate with none except one, to whom she is uniformly and impressively attentive.

Paris, Jan., 1806.

No woman dined at the Baroness’s but Mrs. ——, a banker’s wife, brimful of all sorts of vanity, but all easily ranged under three general heads—vanity of wealth, of extensive acquaintance, of accomplishments. She asked the Baroness and me to go home with her to a rehearsal of dancing, and I was obliged to go, as the Baroness would not leave me, and was visibly anxious not to lose the party. The rehearsal was dull, as the dancers were mediocre. The dancing-master attended, and it was exactly an academy. Mrs. —— told me she had had but seven lessons, and forgot she had told me a few months ago she had had but ten; so they go diminuendo. She also told me that she took particular pains when at Hamburg, ‘not to be more elegant than other people;’ and if you saw the little woman you would say she might have spared herself so very unnecessary an exertion.

I hear every one is reading Alphonsine. A lady, speaking of the author’s introducing un enfant de l’amour into all her novels, remarked, ‘Il n’y a rien de naturel dans les romans de Mad. de Genlis que les enfans.’

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Jan., 1806.

This morning I went with Mrs. —— to the Gallery. She is the same obliging creature as ever, and always ready to go anywhere. We had a sensible white-eyed German Minister, from some little Court, who took care of us, and knew enough to point out the most remarkable amongst the new paintings. Les Pestiférés is, I believe, fine in grouping and colouring; at least it looks very distingué amongst the figures like waxen images or scenes from the opera, without ensemble, expression, or truth, which form the greater part of the new Exhibition of historical painting. We hurried so much, as one always does the first time, that nothing struck me but Les Pestiférés, and a very pretty drawing by Isabey, in black and white, of the Emperor and Empress visiting the manufactory de Bazin, and some beautiful little highly-finished paintings that remind one of the Dutch pieces in point of nicety, and of Wright of Derby in the choice of subjects and the effects of perspective. I am not in the least ashamed of talking to you on subjects I know nothing about. I know that if by chance I make a lucky hit, you will give me credit for it; and that if I am guilty of the greatest error, you will not like me less; so I have a possibility of winning, and cannot lose.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Jan., 1806.

I have been asked yesterday and to-day to the F.’s, but sent an excuse each day. All I regret there now is Col. ——, for he is so like a character in an English farce, from his broad comic look, provincial accent, strange phraseology, undisguised vanity, and perpetual surprise and joy at finding himself a rich man, that though he provokes me at the moment, I laugh ten times a day by myself afterwards in recollecting him. I am sure if the playwriters and actors could lay hold of him, they would turn him to good account. He not only diverts me, but I feel a besoin of somebody to mimic him.

By the bye, Mr. F. and Col. —— are strong instances of what you have often said, that the Irish can sooner conquer the want of refinement in early life than those of other nations. Both entered late into the world, and both obtained an unexpected rise in circumstances. The one improves every day; the other has his vulgarity burnt in. The one may not please, but never offends; the other shocks some one or other in company every time he speaks.

It was very ill-natured of me not to seize the idea of our taking the little Yarico, and I shall be unhappy and feel remorse if you do not do it. If you find upon reniflé-ing that she is sweet (for some of them are insupportable), I will educate her for a little nursery-maid; if not, we will make of her something which comes less close. Pray let us not neglect this good action which Providence throws in our way.

TO THE SAME.

Paris, Jan., 1806.

In the evening we saw Mˡˡᵉ George in Phèdre. I have learned how liable one is to error in judging of merit except by comparison. Till I felt the ennui of seeing her in that part, and the damp it threw on the play in general, I did not perceive the full excellence of Duchesnois, who vivifies the whole piece. I am told I must not judge of her in that rôle, as it is of all she plays the least favourable to her looks, which are her only merit. The abandon, so necessary in the attitudes of Phèdre, betrays her want of mollesse and softness in her motions, and particularly displays those strangely-formed feet, of which the shape and movements are so uncommonly ugly; while her anxiety to hide their defects often gives her a constraint in the moments which ought to be the most devoted to passion. The chief merit of her expression, dignity, is lost in a character always given up to strong emotions; and its chief fault, harshness, is absolutely contrary to all one’s ideas of a creature

Mad. Demidoff called for her diamonds a day or two after her ball, to show a new aigrette to a lady of her acquaintance. Her maid, on opening the box, and missing this very bijou, fell into fits. She was taxed with either dishonesty or carelessness, as she had the care of her mistress’s jewels, and in defending herself, said that she suspected Madame (I forget the name), a German Countess, who was the intimate friend of Mad. D.,—did not live in the house, but dined there almost every day. Her grounds for this suspicion were that this lady had asked her to show the diamonds a very few days before, and had examined them narrowly. Mad. D. silenced her, and continued to have some suspicion she was the guilty person. The next time she saw her friend, she mentioned what the maid had said as to having shown them, which this lady positively denied. Upon this denial, the maid was so convinced of her guilt, that she insisted on a police-officer searching the house, which he did next morning, and found the aigrette in a cup of aqua fortis, where it had been left to dissolve the setting. She was of course immediately taken to prison. This is a mesquin mean story to return for your magnificent anecdote, but is now the chief subject of conversation.