(1st March, 1853.)
The numbers for the election of President of France in favor of
Louis Napoleon were for against 7119791 1119
Look through the back of this against the candle, or the fire, or
any light.
My Very Dear Friend: Having a note to send to Mrs. Sparks, who has
sent me, or rather whose husband has sent me, two answers to Lord
Mahon, which, coming through a country bookseller, have, I suspect,
been some months on the way, I cannot help sending it enclosed to
you, that I may have a chat with you _en passant_,--the last, I
hope, before your arrival. If you have not seen the above curious
instance of figures forming into a word, and that word into a
prophecy, I think it will amuse you, and I want besides to tell you
some of the _on-dits_ about the Empress. A Mr. Huddlestone, the head
of one of our great Catholic houses, is in despair at the marriage.
He had been desperately in love with her for two years in
Spain,--had followed her to Paris,--was called back to England by
his father's illness, and was on the point of crossing the Channel,
after that father's death, to lay himself and £30,000 or £40,000 a
year at her feet, when the Emperor stepped in and carried off the
prize. To comfort himself he has got a portrait of her on horseback,
which a friend of mine saw the other day at his house. Mrs. Browning
writes me from Florence: "I wonder if the Empress pleases you as
well as the Emperor. For my part, I approve altogether, and none the
less that he has offended Austria by the mode of announcement. Every
cut of the whip on the face of Austria is an especial compliment to
me, or so I feel it. Let him heed the democracy, and do his duty to
the world, and use to the utmost his great opportunities. Mr. Cobden
and the peace societies are pleasing me infinitely just now in
making head against the immorality--that's the word--of the English
press. The tone taken up towards France is immoral in the highest
degree, and the invasion cry would be idiotic if it were not
something worse. The Empress, I heard the other day from high
authority, is charming and good at heart. She was brought up at a
respectable school at Clifton, and is very English, which does not
prevent her from shooting with pistols, leaping gates, driving four
in hand, and upsetting the carriage if the frolic requires it,--as
brave as a lion and as true as a dog. Her complexion is like marble,
white, pale, and pure,--the hair light, rather sandy, they say, and
she powders it with gold dust for effect; but there is less physical
and more intellectual beauty than is generally attributed to her.
She is a woman of very decided opinions. I like all that, don't you?
and I like her letter to the press, as everybody must." Besides
this, I have to-day a letter from a friend in Paris, who says that
"everybody feels her charm," and that "the Emperor, when presenting
her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked radiant with
happiness." My Parisian friend says that young Alexandre Dumas is
amongst the people arrested for libel,--a thorough _mauvais sujet_.
Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. He was
always, I believe, expensive, like all those French _littérateurs_.
You don't happen to have in Boston--have you?--a copy of "Les
Mémoires de Lally Tollendal"? I think they are different
publications in defence of his father, published, some in London
during the Emigration, some in Paris after the Restoration. What I
want is an account of the retreat from Pondicherie. I'll tell you
why some day here. Mrs. Browning is most curious about your
rappings,--of which I suppose you believe as much as I do of the
Cock Lane Ghost, whose doings, by the way, they much resemble.
I liked Mrs. Tyler's letter; at least I liked it much better than
the one to which it was an answer, although I hold it one of our
best female privileges to have no act or part in such matters.
Now you will be sorry to have a very bad account of me. Three weeks
ago frost and snow set in here, and ever since I have been unable to
rise or stand, or put one foot before another, and the pain is much
worse than at first. I suppose rheumatism has supervened upon the
injured nerve. God bless you. Love to all.
Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.