Princess Potemkin is a Russian, but she has all the grace,
softness, winning manner of the Polish ladies. Oval face, pale,
with the finest, softest, most expressive chestnut dark eyes. She
has a sort of politeness which pleases peculiarly, a mixture of
the ease of high rank and early habit with something that is
sentimental without affectation. Madame le Brun is painting her
picture. Madame le Brun is sixty-six, with great vivacity as well
as genius, and better worth seeing than her pictures, for though
they are speaking she speaks.
Another visit the sisters paid, which will interest the readers of
Madame de la Rochejaquelin's memoirs of the war in the Vendée:--
In a small bedroom, well furnished, with a fire just lighted, we found
Madame de la Rochejaquelin on the sofa; her two daughters at work, one
spinning with a distaff, the other embroidering muslin. Madame is a fat
woman with a broad, round, fair face and a most benevolent expression,
her hair cut short and perfectly grey as seen under her cap; the rest of
the face much too young for such grey locks; and though her face and
bundled form all squashed on to a sofa did not at first promise much of
gentility, you could not hear her speak or hear her for three minutes
without perceiving that she was well-born and well-bred.
Madame de la Rochejaquelin seems to have confided in Miss Edgeworth.
'I am always sorry when any stranger sees me, _parce que je sais
que je détruis toute illusion. Je sais que je devrais avoir l'air
d'une héroïne._' She is much better than a heroine; she is
benevolence and truth itself.
We must not forget the scientific world where Madame Maria was no less
at home than in fashionable literary cliques. The sisters saw something
of Cuvier at Paris; in Switzerland they travelled with the Aragos. They
were on their way to the Marcets at Geneva when they stopped at Coppet,
where Miss Edgeworth was always specially happy in the society of Madame
Auguste de Staël and Madame de Broglie. But Switzerland is not one
of the places where human beings only are in the ascendant; other
influences there are almost stronger than human ones. 'I did not
conceive it possible that I should feel so much pleasure from the
beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this country. The
first moment when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an era in my life--a
new idea, a new feeling standing alone in the mind.' Miss Edgeworth
presently comes down from her mountain heights and, full of interest,
throws herself into the talk of her friends at Coppet and Geneva, from
which she quotes as it occurs to her. Here is Rocca's indignant speech
to Lord Byron, who was abusing the stupidity of the Genevese. 'Eh!
milord, pourquoi venir vous fourrer parmi ces honnêtes gens?' There is
Arago's curious anecdote of Napoleon, who sent for him after the battle
of Waterloo, offering him a large sum of money to accompany him to
America. The Emperor had formed a project for founding a scientific
colony in the New World. Arago was so indignant with him for abandoning
his troops that he would have nothing to say to the plan. A far more
touching story is Dr. Marcet's account of Josephine. 'Poor Josephine! Do
you remember Dr. Marcet's telling us that when he breakfasted with her
she said, pointing to her flowers, "These are my subjects. I try to make
them happy"?'
Among other expeditions they made a pilgrimage to the home of the
author of a work for which Miss Edgeworth seems to have entertained a
mysterious enthusiasm. The novel was called 'Caroline de Lichfield,' and
was so much admired at the time that Miss Seward mentions a gentleman
who wrote from abroad to propose for the hand of the authoress, and who,
more fortunate than the poor Chevalier Edelcrantz, was not refused by
the lady. Perhaps some similarity of experience may have led Maria
Edgeworth to wish for her acquaintance. Happily the time was past for
Miss Edgeworth to look back; her life was now shaped and moulded in
its own groove; the consideration, the variety, the difficulties of
unmarried life were hers, its agreeable change, its monotony of feeling
and of unselfish happiness, compared with the necessary regularity, the
more personal felicity, the less liberal interests of the married. Her
life seems to have been full to overflowing of practical occupation
and consideration for others. What changing scenes and colours, what a
number of voices, what a crowd of outstretched hands, what interesting
processions of people pass across her path! There is something of her
father's optimism and simplicity of nature in her unceasing brightness
and activity, in her resolutions to improve as time goes on. Her young
brothers and sisters grow to be men and women; with her sisters'
marriages new interests touch her warm heart. Between her and the
brothers of the younger generation who did not turn to her as a sort
of mother there may have been too great a difference of age for that
companionship to continue which often exists between a child and a
grown-up person. So at least one is led to believe was the case as
regards one of them, mentioned in a memoir which has recently appeared.
But to her sisters she could be friend, protector, chaperon, sympathising
companion, and elder sister to the end of her days. We hear of them all
at Bowood again on their way back to Ireland, and then we find them all
at home settling down to the old life, 'Maria reading Sévigné,' of whom
she never tires.