Chapter V · 1813-1816. (continued 2)

As you rise in the scale of language I descend, for I do not recollect enough of German even to decypher the short story you have sent to me. It is as completely locked up from me as if it were written in modern Greek—of which, by the bye, I am quite tired. Every one is prating and writing and publishing about Greece and modern Greek. Have you read Leake’s Researches? He is, you know, a brother diplomat. The Edinburgh Review for February, 1815, has minced him up in a very amusing way. The dish is pungent, and excites appetite, but not for Mr. Leake’s book. Lord —— is going to marry Mrs. ——, a fat, fair, and fifty card-playing resident of the Crescent. They each received anonymous letters abusive of the other, compared them, and became better friends than ever.

TO THE SAME.

Bursledon Lodge, March 5, 1816.

The objection you make to Roderick struck me forcibly, though late. Perhaps in description of country scenery it excels every poem except The Seasons; and some of the finer feelings of the heart are admirably portrayed, both in their sources, progress, and consequences. I think the hinge on which the poem turns is radically ignoble, and forms its principal defect. It is in parts highly pathetic. From the time Florinda and Roderick join Count Julian till her death, I know nothing more affecting. In short, it is a fine epic; and I believe I prefer it to any poetical work by any living author. I am not surprised it is not much admired as yet; and I found a few lines to-day in Dryden which seem so applicable to the subject that I will copy them here:—

‘A well-weighed, judicious poem, which at its first appearance gains no more upon the world than to be just received, and rather not blamed than much applauded, insinuates itself by insensible degrees into the liking of the reader; and whereas poems which are produced by the vigour of imagination only have a gloss upon them at first which time wears off, the works of judgment are like the diamond, the more they are polished the more lustre they receive.’

I cannot think why I have copied this, as I am very angry when I receive a word in your letters not your own.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Bursledon Lodge, April 1, 1816.

I have just bought Edgeworth’s Readings on Poetry. Professing to explain the popular poetry in daily use, the author devotes thirty-six pages to Parnell’s Pandora[56]—a poem little read, though admirably written. Any person who has frequented society could have told him that half the lovers of poetry know not that this piece exists. In another point of view it was an injudicious choice. It is a bitter satire upon women, full of finesse and talent, but the spirit of it is wholly unintelligible to the young. A boy would not understand it, and on a girl the vulgar exclamation, ‘What a beautiful figure would Pandora make at a masquerade,’ will rather produce the effect of causing her to long for the garland, the veil, and the crown, and perhaps for the masquerade, which had better have been left out, than inspire her with any disgust of the character. I am surprised how to reconcile the choice of this poem, and the remarks on it, with the practical good sense of Edgeworth Town. There is also a bitterness of sarcasm on the females of the present day expressed in some of these remarks (see p. 85), quite unworthy of that mint. I do believe the girls of the present day have not lost the power of blushing; and though I have no grown-up daughters, I enjoy the friendship of some who might be my daughters; in whom the greatest delicacy and modesty are united with perfect ease of manner and habitual intercourse with the great world. Pray do not communicate these remarks in any shape to Edgeworth Town. Your peculiarly gentle and even diffident feelings do not permit you to know how much unsought-for criticism offends.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ., FRANKFORT.

Bursledon Lodge, April, 1816.

I received about the same time your delightful volume and magnificent present. I am absolutely Queen of Pekin and Canton. You have obliged me very much by this affectionate proof of your recollection and of your desire to please. Besides, these beautiful specimens of art will often, often furnish me with an occasion of conversing about my son; and as love is the same in all ages, I shall be able to say, ‘’Tis a present from him,’ with as much pride as Mad. de Sévigné felt when she was dressed in her brocade petticoat, and said, ‘C’est un présent de ma fille.’ I hope the light of your own eyes may soon be turned on your vases and jars, which are placed in great order in the drawing-room, at least as many as the drawing-room can possibly contain. Mr. T., who was as anxious de faire valoir your gift, as if I had not admired it sufficiently myself, assisted me in all the nervous task of unpacking—that is, he assisted me as the coachman in La Fontaine assisted the fly on the wheel. Enfin, voilà nos gens dans la plaine; and very little damage had occurred, none from want of care on your side in the packing. Mr. T. did the honours, and was affronted if there was any light and shade in my admiration, if I did not think every cup, saucer, jar, vase, and grinning magot, equally beautiful.

I know nothing of the Byron separation, but from report, reflected, refracted, and far remote from the fountain-head. We know how he was spoiled by flattery, or rather by just praise, and self-indulgence; and we know she was, unluckily, young, lovely, of great mental endowments and acquirements, an heiress, highly allied, an only child, educated by doting parents, and had as yet received no lessons from the great instructors, time and sorrow. Strike out any of these circumstances, and she might have been more suited to yield to the caprices of temper, and the irritability of genius. I suspect they were a pair of spoiled children, and that each might have been happier with a thousand others.

My Mother often contemplated an English translation of a selection of Mad. de Sévigné’s Letters, her favourite book; I do not, however, find among her papers any letters translated, but only the following.

Preface to an English translation of Mad. de Sévigné’s Letters:—

Madame de Sévigné has not yet appeared in any English dress but one which has obscured her charms; and those who have not an intimate acquaintance with her own language are as yet entire strangers to a writer the most interesting and amusing. A moderate knowledge of French, such as will enable us to read with pleasure Bossuet, Fénélon, Racine, and La Bruyère, is insufficient for the perfect comprehension of her letters, filled as they are with French idioms, allusions to proverbial expressions, to well-known passages in favourite authors, and to the historical events of the time. It is hoped that the following translation and explanatory notes will be acceptable to those who are yet unacquainted with this charming writer.

The little that can be known of her history has been so often repeated, it seems superfluous to insert it here; yet as a few of my readers may desire some information here, I will briefly mention that she was an heiress, and of a noble family; that she was born in the year 1627, and in the reign of Louis XIII.; that she married at eighteen the Marquis de Sévigné, a dissipated and profligate young man, who was killed in a duel in 1651, leaving her a widow at the age of twenty-four, with one son and one daughter; that she was adorned with beauty of the most attractive kind, and with first-rate abilities, highly improved by education; that, in spite of these dangerous gifts, she passed through the ordeal of a licentious Court with an unblemished reputation, educated her children with affection and judgment, regulated their pecuniary concerns with discretion, established them both in marriages which seem to have been honourable and happy to a degree very uncommon in her time. Anything more that is known of Mad. de Sévigné may be collected from the following letters, for her history is all domestic. It might abate the present ardour of our females in quest of notoriety, did they remark that one of those women who have obtained the highest celebrity, never sought for it, but, pursuing the quiet path of maternal affection, has, like the glowworm, involuntarily attracted admiration by her native brightness.

May I be permitted to hint to mothers, that the letters of Mad. de Sévigné are not a collection suited to extreme youth, though hitherto made a medium for learning the French language? They are unintelligible to a beginner; and if they had not this radical fault, we must still inquire whether the confidential letters of a lively communicative Parisian mother, that mother being in the centre of a corrupt court, and writing as news all the gallantries of the day, ought to enter into the studies of very young girls, however moral the writer might be in her own conduct? In short, let not Mad. de Sévigné be introduced to any one who is not of an age to appreciate her merits, and to understand from her general conduct both where she speaks ironically, and where she disapproves, though she does not happen to censure. In the present selection the passages we allude to are not introduced.

May 16, 1816, Pulteney Hotel, London.—We breathe imperial air, as we occupy a part of the hotel inhabited last year by the Russian Emperor; and the waiter assured me, with a complacent attention to my feelings, that he always wrote in the same spot that I had selected for the purpose. He does not seem to have inspired much respect; though in answer to my inquiry whether he had left the house in as dirty a state as I had heard, the waiter justified him, and said, ‘We have had others full as dirty.’

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Bursledon Lodge, June 14, 1816.

Deeply do I sympathize with your anxiety, and eagerly do I wish for another letter to say your dear daughter is better. Do not, I pray, delay it. There is everything in favour of her recovery, but, alas! I know how precarious the heart feels all these everythings to be when a beloved object is in question. Our fears are magnified in that case, as well as our hopes, and it is most fortunate that they bear divided sway.

I have been much gratified by Mr. White’s acquaintance, short as was our interview. His open, intelligent countenance, and an ease of manner which princes might envy, make a strong impression at first sight. Why is it that some among the Society of Friends possess an ease of manner, hardly ever met in the first approaches of those in the great world who are most anxious to acquire it? I believe it may partly arise from your never being trammelled by all those forms with which our children are embarrassed, and which may have an effect on the manners like back-boards, collars, and braces on the body. I wish we may see Mr. White here, for it is like seeing a person in a dream, to receive a short visit in the bustle and hurry of a London hotel.

You do me too much honour in supposing me well dressed. I am rather negligently than carefully; I mean negligent, as opposed to fashionable and studied, but not to neat or fresh; and as I think there cannot be too little seen of my present changed appearance, I always wear a veil and shawl when I can, partly, perhaps, from pride, but partly from modesty, having observed how much pains are thrown away by my cotemporaries to make their exposures tolerable, ‘et pour réparer des années les outrages irréparables.’ I am, besides, of an indolent disposition on many subjects, and dress is one. I hate shopping, dislike conferences with milliners and dressmakers, fidget while anything is trying on, and give no credit to the pert Miss who always assures me the most expensive of her caps is exactly the one which becomes me the best.

TO THE SAME.

Aug. 29, 1816.

In whatever disposition of mind I may be when I receive your letters, their effect on me is the same:—

and none tend more to elevate and ameliorate my heart than those in which you describe the passage of any of your beloved circle from this world to a better. You and yours live in a peaceable atmosphere of family affections, of well-directed energies, and of pure religious sentiments, which seems so fit a preparation for a superior existence, that the loss of one of your friends seems more like a sad and tender separation than that total and frightful disruption which in other cases fills the mind with awe and terror. The loss of your admirable niece must be deeply felt by those who knew her; and the frequent instances in which we see parents survive their children, turns the balance of happiness greatly in favour of the childless. But perhaps I ought not to say this. It is ungrateful to that Providence which has blessed you and me with deserving and hopeful families, and, upon a second thought, I even believe it is untrue.

I do not feel there is any merit in my avoiding egotism. It is rather an effect of education than disposition, for I am naturally communicative; but I was brought forward almost a child as a puppet upon the theatre of the world—where no one is permitted to speak of self,—and wisely too, since nine times in ten the truth would not be spoken.

I admired the verses on the death of Sheridan. I believe the other person you mention, to have been applauded in early life far beyond his merits. When I first saw, and occasionally conversed with him, he had long past ‘the liquid dew and morn of youth,’ and had suffered much from ‘contagious blastments;’ ‘all was false and hollow.’ At an earlier period higher hopes were entertained.

We are just reading Rimini, and are crammed with description till we are crop-full. Pity that one who now and then reminds us of Dryden, and who really sees and feels, should thus bury himself in the exuberance of detail; and instead of allowing you to look quietly at the object he describes, turn it round and round, and force you, like a showman, to examine it on all sides, ‘about, above, and underneath.’ There are some admirable lines in Boileau’s Art Poétique, ending ‘Et je me sauve enfin à travers le jardin,’ which I refer you to, as exactly apposite to Hunt’s account of a palace garden; yet when he touches on the feelings of the heart, and describes the dignified yet natural penitence of the guilty lovers, he is admirable, and the beauty of his thoughts overcomes all the peculiarities of his style. He has written a silly dedication to Lord Byron, with an affectation of familiarity unsuitable to a public address, and in colloquial phrase, which I must agree with Johnson in thinking ‘unfit for a printed letter.’

Sept. 18, 1816.—Read Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters. I pity Mr. Wortley in the beginning of their acquaintance. There are marks of sincerity and love in his letters, whereas I suspect her of only following up a design to marry him from motives of prudence; and she certainly does show great address in both piquing and soothing him, without ever committing herself.

Sept. 20.—Of the numerous class who have affected ‘to wear a window in the breast,’ we feel little confidence in any but Montaigne and Rousseau. Mad. Roland tries to persuade herself and us that she follows their steps; but the head and heart alike refuse to believe her. She seems never to forget the effect to be produced by what she writes. She may speak truth, but it is truth presented with selection and address; while Montaigne and Rousseau abandon themselves to the current of their thoughts, apparently indifferent to the impression they will make on their readers.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Bath, Oct. 1, 1816.

No letter from you, but the weather is so fine I cannot participate in ——’s fears of your having been drowned. I dined yesterday with the ——s; only the ——s and the ——s. Mr. —— was sensible enough in his talk, but I wish he had not told me in his wife’s hearing something about having thrown himself away,—which sounded very odd,—and being very low-spirited in consequence in his youthful years, but having reconciled himself to it by degrees. Lady M. has a great desire to please the present and criticize the absent. At the same time, I think her a pleasing as well as valuable woman; but the spirit of petty criticism is so strong in us Irish, that scarcely any degree of goodness lulls it to sleep. I am becoming in too great request as a chaperone, which I must stifle, as I have no taste for duennaship. Miss E—— is growing stouter and stouter in her manners, and she and the N——s stump about the room with a deportment which appears to me a mixture of a ploughboy going over rough ground and a grenadier marching to the charge. A lady asked me yesterday in a half-audible whisper, ‘Who is that strange-looking ghost?’ ‘Lady Prudentia ——.’ It was curious to see the effect of the first of these three words. She was spell-bound. Regret at having lost a good acquaintance, and remorse at having called an Earl’s daughter a strange-looking person, with surprise at the simplicity and external humility which reigns in that school, were all visibly depicted on her countenance.

Adieu. I have mused much on you since we parted, ‘chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies,’—bitter only in the thought that time and chance happen to those who love, as to others.

TO THE SAME.

Bath, Oct., 1816.

As to Mrs. M., she only thinks aloud, and shows what other women, equally devoid of sense with herself, keep to themselves. I can bear her very well; but those who envy others perfect self-satisfaction, and groundless but happy-making vanity, must dislike her. Indeed, it can only be groundless vanity that makes any one happy. Any other kind is enlightened even by its own successes to see their futility. ‘A coup sûr si la vanité a rendu quelqu’un heureux, celui là était un sot.’ So says Rousseau, and Mrs. M. is a practical commentary.

I am reading Mrs. Marcet’s Political Economy. It is all Say, thrown into dialogue, with the objections which might be made. This is a good plan for chemistry, where a well-educated and thinking person may begin the book entirely ignorant of the subject. But it is a bad plan for political economy, on which every one has some information, more or less. One has not patience to be stopped every minute by a foolish objection, to which one knows the answer. It may do as an elementary book; but though I could read her Chemistry, I cannot read this; and I should suppose the effect would be similar on all grown people. It shows a laudable spirit of industry, but I think it unfair to Say, of whom it is a sort of unavowed translation; for though she professes it to give the quintessence of other authors, all of it which I have read, except what is avowedly quoted, is cribbed from him without even changing his phrases. She is very nonsensical about the Poor Laws, saying that the diffusion of education will give the poor a ‘spirit of dignity and independence’ that will prevent them from taking advantage of them. Now, the answer to this position is, that the willingness and eagerness of the poor to become paupers—to receive from the taxes levied on their fellow-subjects money or support, for which no equivalent is given by them—has kept pace with, instead of being checked by, the diffusion of education; and that education never yet made any man refuse a sinecure, which is relief from the kingdom instead of the parish.

I have found a person here who almost openly forms herself on my model, and quotes my old sayings, long forgotten by me, as authority; but I have gone over so much ground since, that she is like a Catholic, who obeys the early Councils, without knowing that two or three others since that time have promulgated different decrees; and, as I am not the Pope, I am sometimes puzzled to reconcile them.

—— is going to receive his wanderer again. I cannot laugh at him, as others do. In a man, not otherwise deficient in sense and firmness, so much confiding love for a wife—against experience,—against probability,—against hope,—against advice,—against all but affection,—is in my eyes interesting, and partakes of the feelings a superior being might have for erring mortals.

Friday, Nov. 1, 1816.—My beloved child, my docile, gentle, joyous, affectionate Bessy, resumed by Heaven at seven o’clock this morning.

TO THE HONOURABLE MISS AGAR.

Bursledon Lodge, Nov. 1, 1816.

The lovely one is gone. I am more deeply wounded than religion permits. Pity and pray for me. My visit to you is not to be thought of; I would not sadden any society by my presence. God bless you, and long preserve to you the objects of your dearest affections. My beautiful blossom, whose loveliness I had diminished in order to surprise you—foolish, wicked vanity—died as she had lived, loving every one better than herself. The last phrase she uttered, except those expressive of her latest wants and pains, was a desire the window-curtain might be withdrawn, that she might look at the stars. A little before, she had asked her afflicted maid if she thought she would go to heaven. Keep this note. I like to think she will not be forgotten.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Bursledon Lodge, Nov. 4, 1816.

You are so kind to me, my dearest friend, that I should feel wanting in due respect for friendship so tender if I suffered you to hear from common report that my lovely blossom is now in her little coffin, where I have just kissed her beautiful marble brow; for she was and is beautiful, though I restrained myself from talking of her personal perfections. What is more important, she was heavenly-minded as far as four years and three months would admit. I am well in health, and I hope I am resigned; but you know how the loss of an only daughter, who to the weakness of mortal eyes appeared faultless, and who had all the attractions which endear a child to strangers as well as friends—you know how it must darken the remaining years of a mother, past the age of hoping for any new blessings, but clinging too eagerly to those she already possessed. God bless you, and preserve you from such affliction.

Nov. 10, 1816.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ., FRANKFORT.

Bursledon Lodge, Nov., 1816.

It will be a relief to you to hear that my health is unimpaired by an affliction, of which you cannot know the extent without having witnessed the delightful qualities and endearing habits of the lovely little being it has pleased Heaven to resume.

You have too much feeling to be ignorant of the irreparable loss a mother incurs by being deprived of an only daughter, such a joy-inspiring creature, gifted with every endowment of mind and body desired either by the wise or the unwise—gentle, gay, blooming, beautiful, and affectionate. I looked to her for consolation under the total privation of your society I am likely to suffer, and in all the other calamities which may occur in the destiny of an affectionate woman. A son may be alienated by an unfeeling wife, a husband may be seduced by a mistress; but a daughter is a benignant star, shining through the clouds of adversity, and embellishing every scene of joy, her mother’s companion in sorrow, her attendant in sickness; it is on her a mother relies to close her eyes, and cherish her remembrance, which the scenes of busy life may soon efface from the breast of man. I spoke of her but little, partly from a natural tendency in the heart to silence on what interests it very deeply, and partly that I feared to show my triumph and exultation. She was my secret hoard of promised pleasure and gratification; and I had a sort of dread of letting in too much light on the fairy picture of happiness.

I have not thought it right to omit the following letter, though in one sentence it is a repetition of that immediately preceding.

TO MRS. TUITE.

Bursledon Lodge, Dec. 20, 1816.

I thank you for the sympathy you express in my deep affliction, and am aware (for I am practised in sorrow), of the effects of time and religion. Truly does Wallenstein say, under deplorable calamity,

But how much must one suffer before the weapon loses its edge. A daughter is a benignant star, shining through the clouds of adversity, and the chief embellishment of every scene of joy; a mother’s companion in sorrow, her ministering angel in sickness. It is on her a mother relies to close her eyes, and to cherish that remembrance of her, the scenes of busy life may soon efface from the breasts of others. Uninterested as I always am, except by what touches my affections, I seem to be more so now than ever; and have lost almost the only link which connected me strongly with my own sex, in their common pursuits and amusements. The flowers in my path are gone, and although when I look at my sons I must say, ‘my banks are fringed with many a goodly tree,’ yet I cannot cease to lament my fallen blossom:—

Dec. 25, 1816.—We arrived last night in London, the populous, the powerful. It was grievous, as I sat with my children, to see the little circle had closed in, and lost its loveliest flower, its brightest gem, since last Christmas-day, when I looked round on it with perhaps too much pride.