I last night sent a folio sheet to Sophy, giving the history of
ourselves as far as Brussels, where we spent four days very much to our
satisfaction: it is full of fine buildings, charming public walks, the
country about it beautiful. In the Place Royale are two excellent
hotels, Hôtel d'Angleterre and Hôtel de Flandres, to which we went, and
found that Mr. Chenevix and Mr. Knox were in the other.
My father thought it would be advantageous to us to see inferior
pictures before seeing those of the best masters, that we might have
some points of comparison; and upon the same principle we went to two
provincial theatres at Dunkirk and Brussels: but unluckily, I mean
unluckily for our _principles_, we saw at Brussels two of the best Paris
actors, M. and Madame Talma. The play was Racine's _Andromaque_
(imitated in England as the _Distressed Mother_). Madame Talma played
Andromaque, and her husband Orestes: both exquisitely well. I had no
idea of fine acting till I saw them, and my father, who had seen
Garrick, and Mrs. Siddons, and Yates, and Le Kain, says he never saw
anything superior to Madame Talma. We read the play in the morning, an
excellent precaution, otherwise the novelty of the French mode of
declamation would have set my comprehension at defiance. There was a
ranting Hermione, who had a string too tight round her waist, which made
her bosom heave like the bellows of a bagpipe whenever she worked with
her clasped hands against her heart to pump out something like passion.
There was also a wretched Pyrrhus, and an old Phoenix, whose gray wig I
expected every moment to fall off.
Next to this beautiful tragedy, the thing that interested and amused me
most at Brussels were the dogs: not lap-dogs, but the dogs that draw
carts and heavy hampers. Every day I beheld numbers of these
_traîneaux_, often four, harnessed abreast, and driven like horses. I
remember in particular seeing a man standing upright on one of these
little carriages, and behind him two large hampers full of mussels, the
whole drawn by four dogs. And another day I saw a boy of about ten years
old driving four dogs harnessed to a little carriage; he crossed our
carriage as we were going down a street called La Montagne de la Cour,
without fearing our four Flemish horses. La Montagne de la Cour is a
very grand name, and you may perhaps imagine that it means a MOUNTAIN,
but be it known to you, my dear aunt, that in Le Pays Bas, as well as in
the County of Longford, they make mountains of molehills. The whole road
from Calais to Ghent is as flat and as straight as the road to Longford.
We never knew when we came to what the innkeeper and postillions call
mountains, except by the postillions getting off their horses with great
deliberation and making them go a snail's walk--a snail's gallop would
be much too fast. Now it is no easy thing for a French postillion to
walk himself when he is in his boots: these boots are each as large and
as stiff as a wooden churn, and when the man in his boots attempts to
walk, he is more helpless than a child in a go-cart: he waddles on,
dragging his boots after him in a way that would make a pig laugh. As
Lord Granard says, "A pig can whistle, though he has a bad mouth for
it," [Footnote: A long argument on genius and education, between Lady
Moira and Mr. Edgeworth, had been ended by Lord Granard wittily saying,
"A pig may be made to whistle, but he has a bad mouth for it."] I
presume that _by a parity of reasoning_ a pig may laugh. But I must not
talk any more nonsense.
We left Brussels last Sunday (you are looking in your pocket-book, dear
Aunt Mary, for the day of the month; I see you looking). The first place
of any note we went to was Valenciennes, where we saw houses and
churches in ruins, the effect of English wars and French revolutions.
Though Valenciennes lace is very pretty we bought none, recollecting
that though Coventry is famous for ribbons, and Tewkesbury for
stockings, yet only the worst ribbons, and the worst stockings are to be
had at Coventry and Tewkesbury. Besides, we are not expert at counting
Flemish money, which is quite different from French, and puzzling enough
to drive the seven sages of Greece mad. Even the natives cannot count it
without rubbing their foreheads, and counting in their hands, and
repeating _c'a fait, cela fait._ For my part I fairly gave the point up,
and resolved to be cheated rather than go distracted. But indeed the
Flemish are not cheats, as far as I have seen of them. They would go to
the utmost borders of honesty for a couronne de Brabant, or a
demi-couronne, or a double escalin, or a single escalin, or a plaquet,
or a livre, or a sous, or a liard, or for any the vilest denomination of
their absurd coin, yet I do not believe they would go beyond the bounds
of honesty with any but an English Milor: they are privileged dupes. A
maid at the hotel at Dunkirk said to me, "Ah! Madame, nous autres nous
aimons bien de voir rouler les Anglais." Yes, because they think the
English roll in gold.
Now we will go to Cambray, famous for its cambric and its archbishop.
Buonaparte had so much respect for the memory of Fénelon, that he fixed
the seat of the present Archbishopric at Cambray instead of at Lille, as
had been proposed. We saw Fénelon's head here, preserved in a church.
But to return from archbishops to cambrics. Our hostess at Cambray was a
dealer in cambrics, and in her bale of _baptistes_ she seemed literally
to have her being. She was, in spite of cambric and Valenciennes
lace--of which she had a dirty superfluity on her cap lined with
pink--the very ugliest of the female species I had ever beheld. We were
made amends for her by a most agreeable family who kept the inn at Roye:
their ancestors had kept this inn for a hundred and fifty years; the
present landlord and his wife are about sixty-eight and sixty, and their
daughter, about twenty, of a slight figure, vast vivacity in her mind
and in all her motions; she does almost all the business of the house,
and seems to love _papa et maman_ better than anything in the world,
except talking. My father formed a hundred good wishes for her: first,
when he heard her tell a story, she used such admirable variety of
action, that he wished her on the stage: then when she waited at supper,
with all the nimbleness and dexterity of a female harlequin, he wished
that she was married to Jack Langan, that she might keep the new inn at
Edgeworthstown: but his last and best wish for her was that she should
be waiting-maid to you and Aunt Mary. He thought she would please you
both particularly: for my part, I thought she would talk a great deal
too much for you. However, her father and mother would not part with her
for Pitt's diamond.
We saw to-day the residence of the Prince de Condé, and of a long line
of princes famous for virtue and talents--the celebrated palace of
Chantilly, made still more interesting to us by having just read the
beautiful tale by Madame de Genlis, "Mademoiselle de Clermont;" it would
delight my dear Aunt Mary, it is to be had in the first volume of the
_Petits Romans_, and those are to be found by Darcy, if he be not drunk,
at Archer's, Dublin. After going for an hour and a half through thick,
dark forest, in which Virginia might have lived secure from sight of
mortal man, we came into open day and open country, and from the top of
a hill beheld a mass of magnificent building, shaded by wood. I imagined
this was the palace, but I was told that these buildings were only the
stables of Chantilly. The Palace, alas! is no more! it was pulled down
by the Revolutionists. The stables were saved by a petition from the War
Minister, stating that they would make stabling for troops, and to
this use they are now applied. As we drove down the hill we saw the
melancholy remains of the Palace: only the white arches on which it was
built, covered with crumbled stone and mortar. We walked to look at the
riding-house, built by the Prince de Condé, a princely edifice! Whilst
we were looking at it, we heard a flute played near us, and we were told
that the young man who played it was one of the poor Prince de Condé's
chasseurs. The person who showed the ruins to us was a melancholy-
looking man, who had been employed his whole life to show the
gardens and Palace of Chantilly: he is about sixty, and had saved some
hundred pounds in the Prince's service. He now shows their ruins, and
tells where the Prince and Princess once slept, and where there _were_
fine statues, and charming walks.
We have had but one day's rain since we left you; if we had picked the
weather we could not have had finer. The country through which we came
from Brussels was for the most part beautiful, planted in side-scenes,
after my father's manner, you know. The English who can see nothing
worth seeing in this country, must certainly pass through it with huge
blinkers of prejudice.