_June 4._
Is it not curious that, just when you wrote to us, all full of Mrs.
Strickland at Edgeworthstown, we should have been going about everywhere
with Mr. Strickland at Paris? I read to him what you said about his
little girl and Foster as he was going with us to a breakfast at
Cuvier's, and he was delighted even to tears.
We breakfasted at Passy on our way here: beautiful views of Paris and
its environs from all the balconied rooms; and Madame François showed us
all their delightful comfortable rooms--the bed in which Madame Gautier
and Madame François had slept when children, and where now her little
Caroline sleeps. There is something in the duration of these family
attachments which pleases and touches one, especially in days of
revolution and change.
We arrived here in good time. La Celle [Footnote: La Celle St. Cloud,
built by Bachelier, first valet de chambre of Louis XIV., afterwards
sold to Madame de Pompadour, who sold it again in two years.] is as old
as Clotwold, the son of Clovis, who came here to make a hermitage for
himself--La Cellule. Wonderfully changed and enlarged, it became the
residence of Madame de Pompadour. The rooms are wainscotted: very large
_croissées_ open upon shrubberies, with rose acacias and rhododendrons
in profuse flower: the garden is surrounded by lime-trees thick and
high, and cut, like the beech-walk at Collon, at the end into arches
through the foliage, and the stems left so as to form rows of pillars,
through which you see, on one side, fine views of lawn and distant
country, while on the other the lime-grove is continued in arcades,
eight or nine trees deep.
To each bedroom and dressing-room there are little dens of closets and
ante-chambers, which must have seen many strange exits and entrances in
their day. In one of these, ten feet by six, the white wainscot--now
very yellow--is painted in gray, with monkeys in men's and women's
clothes in groups in compartments, the most grotesque figures you can
imagine. I have an idea of having read of this cabinet of monkeys, and
having heard that the principal monkey who figures in it was some real
personage.
The situation of La Celle is beautiful, and the country about it. The
grounds, terraces, orchards, farmyard, dairy, etc., would lead me too
far, so I shall only note that, to preserve the hayrick from the
incursion of rats, the feet of the stand, which is higher than that in
our back yard, are not only slated, but at the part next the hay covered
with panes of glass: this defies climbing reptiles.
M. and Madame de Vindé are exactly what you remember them; and her
grand-daughter, Beatrice, the little girl you may remember, is as kind
to Fanny and Harriet as M. and Madame de Vindé were to their sister.
Mr. Hutton wrote to me about a certain Count Brennar, a German or
Hungarian--talents, youth, fortune--assuring me that this transcendental
Count had a great desire to be acquainted with us. I fell to work with
Madame Cuvier, with whom I knew he was acquainted, and he met us at
breakfast at Cuvier's; and I asked Prony if M. and Madame de Vindé would
allow me to ask the Count to come here; and so yesterday Prony came to
dinner, and the Count at dessert, and he ate cold cutlets and good
salad, and all was right; and whenever any of our family go to Vienna,
he gave me and mine, or yours, a most pressing invitation thither--which
will never be any trouble to him.
I have corrected before breakfast here all of the second volume of
_Rosamond_, [Footnote: The sequel, or last part of _Rosamund._] which
accompanies this letter. We have coffee brought to us in our rooms about
eight o'clock, and the family assemble at breakfast in the dining-room
about ten: this breakfast has consisted of mackerel stewed in oil;
cutlets; eggs, boiled and poached, _au jus_; peas stewed; lettuce
stewed, and rolled up like sausages; radishes; salad; stewed prunes;
preserved gooseberries; chocolate biscuits; apricot biscuits--that is to
say, a kind of flat tartlet, sweetmeat between paste; finishing with
coffee. There are sugar-tongs in this house, which I have seen nowhere
else except at Madame Gautier's. Salt-spoons never to be seen, so do not
be surprised at seeing me take salt and sugar in the natural way when I
come back.
Carriages come round about twelve, and we drive about seeing places in
the neighbourhood--afterwards go to our own rooms or to the _salon_, or
play billiards or chess. Dinner is at half-past five; no luncheon and no
dressing for dinner. I will describe one dinner--Bouilli de boeuf--large
piece in the middle, and all the other dishes round it--rôtie de
mouton--ris de veau piqué--maquereaux--pâtes de cervelle--salad. 2nd
service; ufs aux jus--petits pois--lettuce stewed--gâteaux de
confitures--prunes. Dessert; gâteaux, cerises, confiture d'abricot et de
groseille.
Hands are washed at the side-table; coffee is in the saloon: men and
women all gathering round the table as of yore. But I should observe,
that a great change has taken place; the men huddle together now in
France as they used to do in England, talking politics with their backs
to the women in a corner, or even in the middle of the room, without
minding them in the least, and the ladies complain and look very
disconsolate, and many ask, "If this be Paris?" and others scream
_ultra_ nonsense or _liberal_ nonsense, to make themselves of
consequence and to attract the attention of the gentlemen.
But to go on with the history of our day. After coffee, Madame de Vindé
sits down at a round table in the middle of the room, and out of a
work-basket, which is just the shape of an antediluvian work-basket of
mine, made of orange-paper and pasteboard, which lived long in the
garret, she takes her tapestry work: a chair-cover of which she works
the little blue flowers, and M. Morel de Vindé, pair de France, ancien
Conseiller de Parlement, etc., does the ground! He has had a cold, and
wears a black silk handkerchief on his head and a hat over it in the
house; three waistcoats, two coats, and a spencer over all. Madame de
Vindé and I talk, and the young people play billiards.
When it grows duskish we all migrate at a signal from Madame de Vindé,
"Allons, nous passerons chez M. de Vindé;" so we all cross the
billiard-room and dining-room, and strike off by an odd passage into M.
de Vindé's study, where, almost in the fire, we sit round a small table
playing a game called Loto, with different-coloured pegs and collars for
these pegs, and whoever knows the game of Loto will understand what it
is, and those who have never heard of it must wait till I come home to
make them understand it. At half-past ten to bed; a dozen small round
silver-handled candlesticks, bougeoirs, with wax candles, ready for us.
Who dares to say French country-houses have no comforts? Let all such
henceforward except La Celle.
The three first days we were here M. de Prony and Count de Brennar were
the only guests, the Count only for one day. M. de Prony is enough
without any other person to keep the most active mind in conversation of
all sorts, scientific, literary, humorous. He is less changed than any
of our friends. His humour and good-humour are really delightful; he is,
as Madame de Vindé says, the most harmless good creature that ever
existed; and he has had sense enough to stick to science and keep clear
of politics, always pleading "qu'il n'etait bon qu'à cela." He
accompanied us in our morning excursions to Malmaison and St. Germain.
Malmaison was Josephine's, and is still Beauharnais's property, but is
now occupied only by his steward. The place is very pretty--profusion of
rhododendrons, as under-wood in the groves, on the grass, beside the
rivers, everywhere, and in the most luxuriant flower. Poor Josephine! Do
you remember Dr. Marcet telling us that when he breakfasted with her,
she said, pointing to her flowers: "These are my subjects; I try to make
them happy."
The grounds are admirably well taken care of, but the solitude and
silence and the continual reference to the dead were strikingly
melancholy, even in the midst of sunshine and flowers, and the song of
nightingales. In one pond we saw swimming in graceful desolate dignity
two black swans, which, as rare birds, were once great favourites. Now
they curve their necks of ebony in vain.
The grounds are altogether very small, and so is the house, but fitted
up with exquisite taste. In the saloon is the most elegant white marble
chimney-piece my eyes ever did or ever will behold, a present from the
Pope to Beauharnais. The finest pictures have been taken from the
gallery; the most striking that remains is one of General Dessain,
reading a letter, with a calm and absorbed countenance--two mamelukes
eagerly examining his countenance. In the finely parqueted floor great
holes appear; the places from which fine statues of Canova's were, as
the steward told us, dragged up for the Emperor of Russia. This the man
told under his breath, speaking of his master and of the armies without
distinctly naming any person, as John Langan used to talk of the robbles
(rebels). You may imagine the feelings which made us walk in absolute
silence through the library, which was formerly Napoleon's: the gilt N's
and J's still in the arches of the ceiling: busts and portraits all
round--that of Josephine admirable.
At St. Germain, that vast palace which has been of late a barrack for
the English army, our female guide was exceedingly well informed;
indeed, Francis I., Henry IV., Mary de Medicis, Louis XIV., and Madame
de la Valliere seem to have been her very intimate acquaintances. She
was in all their secrets: showed us Madame de la Valliere's room, poor
soul! all gilt--the gilding of her woe. This gilding, by accident,
escaped the revolutionary destruction. In the high gilt dome of this
room, the guide showed us the trap-door through which Louis XIV. used to
come down. How they managed it I don't well know: it must have been a
perilous operation, the room is so high. But my guide, who I am clear
saw him do it, assured me his Majesty came down very easily in his
arm-chair; and as she had great keys in her hand, and is as large nearly
as Mrs. Liddy, I did not hazard a contradiction or doubt.
Did you know that it was Prony who built the Pont Louis XVI.? Perronet
was then eighty-four, and Prony worked under him. One night, when he had
supped at Madame de Vindé's, he went to look at his bridge, when he
saw--but I have not time to tell you that story.
During Buonaparte's Spanish War he employed Prony to make logarithm,
astronomical, and nautical tables on a magnificent scale. Prony found
that to execute what was required would take him and all the
philosophers of France a hundred and fifty years. He was very unhappy,
having to do with a despot who _would_ have his will executed, when the
first volume of Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ fell into his hands. He
opened on the division of Labour, our favourite pin-making: "Ha, ha!
voilà mon affaire; je ferai mes calcules comme on fait les épingles!"
And he divided the labour among two hundred men, who knew no more than
the simple rules of arithmetic, whom he assembled in one large building,
and there these men-machines worked on, and the tables are now complete.