dwelling, many persons were drawn to it by the attraction of her
singular story. Not long before, a young and handsome lady, incognita,
but evidently of high birth, had spent a whole day there. Her curiosity
greatly excited, Mademoiselle Jacquemart said to her on her departure,
smilingly, "Queen or shepherdess, leave me your name, that it may always
recall to me one of the most delightful souvenirs of my hermit-life."
"Well," replied the unknown, in the same spirit, "pass me your album,
and you shall know me as a very sincere admirer of your merit."
She immediately wrote a few lines in the album and departed in haste,
while Mademoiselle Jacquemart was reading the following quatrain,
improvised in her honour by the Princess Radzivil:--
"Reine ou bergere je voudrais
Dans ce doux lieu passer ma vie,
Partageant avec vous, amie,
Ou ma cabane ou mon palais."
[Queen or shepherdess, I fain
In this sweet spot my life would spend,
Sharing with thee, gentle friend,
Or palace grand or cottage plain.]
Before quitting the Crimea, Madame de Hell visited another distinguished
woman, also a solitary, who, in a terribly tragic scene, had nearly lost
her life. The Baroness Axinia lived at Oulou-Ouzon, and this was her
story:
She was married at a very early age to a man much older than herself.
The ill-assorted union was as unhappy as such unions generally are. The
Baroness Axinia was beautiful, and drew around her a crowd of admirers,
whose flatteries she did not reject, though it does not appear that she
listened to professions of love which could have dishonoured her. In a
jealous frenzy, not unnatural in the circumstances, her husband struck
her with his dagger, and at the same time killed a young man whom for a
long time he had regarded as a friend. The result was an immediate
separation. The Baron settled upon her a considerable estate, and, in
addition, a handsome income. She had the consolation, moreover, of
being allowed to retain by her side the youngest of her daughters, and
thenceforth she resigned herself to a life of solitude, keeping hid
within her bosom the secret of her sorrow, her regret, and, perhaps, her
remorse.
Ten years passed, and the baroness never crossed the borders of her
estate. This self-imposed penance, so rigidly observed, may be accepted,
we think, as a sufficient acknowledgment of the errors of her
thoughtless youth.
"At our first interview," says Madame de Hell, "she seemed to me a
little timid, nay, even wild (_sauvage_)--a circumstance amply justified
by her exceptional position. But, in the course of a few days, this
constraint passed away, and a warm intimacy sprang up between us.
"From the first days of my visit, I remarked with lively surprise that
our hostess was incessantly assailed by a crowd of pretty tomtits, who
pecked at her hair and hands with truly extraordinary familiarity. The
baroness, after enjoying my astonishment, told me that two years before
she had brought up a couple of tomtits, and given them their liberty;
and that, in the following year, the couple returned with their brood,
who were easily taught to take their food from the hands of their
charming protectress. Other birds soon imitated their example, and thus
the beautiful solitary came to represent, undesignedly, one of the most
charming creations of Georges Sand, the bird-charmer, in her novel of
'Teverino.'"
In one of her walks with Madame de Hell, the baroness conducted her new
friend to the scene of the tragic drama which had broken up her life.
The house, entirely abandoned by the Baron, was inhabited only by a
Tartar, its guardian--a man of wild and gloomy aspect, whom the sight of
his mistress seemed to stupefy. While he was opening the doors and
windows, which had been kept closed since the fatal catastrophe, a
wretched half-starved looking dog, shivering in spite of the sunshine,
crawled out of a corner, the wonderful instinct of these animals having
made him conscious of the presence of his mistress. The latter,
overwhelmed with emotion, burst into tears: "Poor Salghir! poor
Salghir!" she cried, and was unable to utter another word.
When she had recovered herself, she turned to Madame de Hell, and bade
her observe how the seal of sorrow and forgetfulness was set upon
everything. Formerly the very stones of the court had breathed of life,
and sunshine, and youth; formerly that poor dog had been bright and
well-favoured, and as happy as are all things that are loved. "But now,"
she exclaimed, "look at these ruins, these crawling mosses; yonder
shattered wall, the grass which has obliterated the traces of my
footsteps, and agree with me that a kind of curse weighs upon the spot.
One feels, one divines that life has been arrested here by one of those
fatal crises which involve everything in ruin. Alas, this house is a
striking proof of it! It had a youth, a freshness, a coquettishness of
its own, when I was young, and fair, and a coquette; now it is gloomy,
dank, degraded...."
"Because you are old and ugly?" said Madame de Hell, smiling, "is not
that the logical consequence of your reasoning! But, you see, the first
looking-glass would flatly contradict it. Come, in spite of the somewhat
greenish hue of our surroundings, look at that soft, gentle, and still
youthful countenance, those brilliant eyes, that flowing hair, and tell
me if it be all in harmony with the unattractive aspect of the scene
before you."
"Oh, undoubtedly I have not yet arrived physically," she answered with a
faint smile, "at this degree of old age, but if you could read to the
bottom of my heart, you would see it as gloomy and as desolate as these
chambers with their want of light and air."
The baroness led her guest into every apartment, explaining the
destination of each with feverish volubility. On entering her former
bedchamber, she turned pale, and pointed with a gesture to her husband's
portrait, separated from her own by an antique clock, the motionless
hands of which added to the melancholy of the scene. Madame de Hell
bestowed a long gaze on the haughty and sombre countenance of the baron.
His rough, strongly-marked features were the very emblem of brutal
strength, and she felt herself tremble all over in thinking of what his
wife must have suffered in the first years of their union. Her unhappy
past seemed almost justified by the hard ferocious countenance of such a
husband. As for the baroness, there was about her portrait a
significantly haggard air. "I carried her out," says Madame de Hell,
"upon the balcony, where, overcome by her emotions, the influences of
the place, and that yearning after sympathy which is so powerful in
solitude, she opened her heart to me, and told me a simple but pathetic
story of all that she had endured.
"The promise that I would hold sacred the confidences of that shattered
heart compels me to leave my narrative imperfect. Two days later I
embarked on board the steamer _St. Nicholas_, gazing with inexpressible
regret at the shores of the Tauric peninsula as they gradually blended
with the horizon, their broken outline melting finally into the mists of
evening."
That Madame de Hell to a habit of close and profound observation, added
very remarkable powers of description, will be apparent, we think, from
the preceding summary, brief as it necessarily is, of her record of
travel in the Caucasus and the Crimea.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] A verst is equal to 3,500 feet.
[6] Except when broken by the war of 1855.
[7] A. W. Kinglake: "Invasion of the Crimea," Vol. i., c. 1, 6th
edition.
[8] See Carlyle's "Biographical Essays, Sec. Diamond Necklace;" also, H.
Vizetelly's "True Story of the Diamond Necklace."
MADAME HOMMAIRE DE HELL.
III.
Madame de Hell and her husband spent the winter of 1841 at Odessa.
Thence, in the following year, they repaired to Moldavia--a country
which was just beginning to revive from the barbarism and desolation in
which the Turkish rule had so long condemned it to linger. Under the
prudent and energetic management of the Aga Assaki, "The Moldavian Bee"
and "The Gleaner" announced the resurrection of liberal thought and the
patriotic sentiment in literary articles, nearly all signed by Moldavian
names and written in the national language.
In the young Princess Morosi, the daughter of the Aga Assaki, afterwards
married to Edgar Quinet, Madame de Hell learned to know and love a
charming wit and a rare beautiful nature. She studied the French poets
with assiduity, and her great ambition was to visit France, little
thinking that she would one day become French by her marriage with the
illustrious French writer.
In the Caucasian steppes our traveller's life had been singularly calm
and serene; in Moldavia it was agitated and disturbed by mundane
occupations, by official receptions, balls, concerts, dinners, the
theatre, and the thousand and one responsibilities of social life. Worn
and weary with the monotonous round of pretended pleasures, she
frequently looked back with regret to the solitudes of the Caspian. Yet
the event which delivered her from it was one that caused her a very
keen anxiety. Her husband was attacked by one of the malarious fevers of
the Danube, and in order to recover his health was compelled to throw up
his engagement and return to France, after some years of almost constant
travel and exploration.
On their arrival they were received with the welcome earned by their
patience of investigation and strenuous pursuit of knowledge. While the
young and already celebrated engineer was rewarded with the Cross of the
Legion of Honour, his wife, who had shared his labours and his perils,
and co-operated with him in the production of his fine work on the
Steppes, was honoured with the special attention of M. Villemain, then
Minister of State. Shortly after her return she gave to the world a
volume of poetry, entitled "Reveries of a Traveller," a work strongly
written, thoughtful, and emotional, which has never obtained the
reputation it fully deserves.
In 1846 the two travellers departed on a second expedition to the East,
which was cut short by the premature death of M. de Hell. His widow
returned to Paris towards the close of 1848, so crushed beneath the
calamity that had overthrown her household gods, that, as she has since
acknowledged, she never slept without the hope that her sleep might know
no waking in this world, but might prove the means of re-uniting her
with her beloved husband. However, she was of too clear an intellect and
too strong of heart not to recognize that the ties of duty bound her to
this world; she had to bring up and educate her children, and to
complete and publish the important works her husband had begun. While
thus engaged, she contributed several articles on the East to the
_Presse_ and numerous other journals. In 1859 she published her own
narrative of adventure and travel in the steppes of the Caucasus. Great
political changes have occurred since Madame de Hell's visit to that
region, which have profoundly affected the character of its people and
their social polity; so that her account of it, as well as her account
of the Crimea, must be read with the necessary allowances. These,
however, will not detract from Madame de Hell's unquestioned merit as a
close and exact observer, endowed with no ordinary faculty of polished
and incisive expression, and a fine capacity for appreciating and
describing the picturesque aspects of nature. She wields a skilful brush
with force and freedom; her pictures are always accurate in composition
and full of colour.
Her later years have shown no decay of her resolute and active spirit.
She has accomplished a tour in Belgium, another in Italy, a visit to
London, and several excursions into the South of France. In 1868 she
proceeded to Martinique, where her eldest son had for some years been
established. We believe she has published her West Indian experiences
and impressions. But we have given up to Madame de Hell as much of our
limited space as we can spare, and now take leave of her with the
acknowledgment that among modern female travellers she deserves a high
rank in virtue of her intelligence, her sympathies, and her keen
sensibility to all that is beautiful and good.
MADAME LEONIE D'AUNET.
Among the crowd of lady travellers to whom this nineteenth century has
given birth, the able and accomplished Frenchwoman, so widely known by
her pseudonym of Madame Leonie d'Aunet, merits a passing allusion.
Remove from her the mask she is pleased to assume before the public, and
she stands revealed as Madame Biard, the wife of the great humoristic
painter, whose "Sequel of a Masquerade," "Family Concert," "Combat with
Polar Bears," and other pictures, are not less highly esteemed by
English than by French connoisseurs. Born about 1820, she is twenty
years younger than her husband, whom, in 1845, she accompanied in his
excursion to Spitzbergen; an excursion which opened with, by way of
prologue, a rapid tour through Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Norway. Of
the tour and the excursion she has published a brilliant narrative,
which it is impossible to read without pleasure, so polished is the
style, and so sharply defined are the descriptions. Her literary skill
gives her an advantage over the great majority of female travellers,
whose diaries and journals, from want of it, are often bald, colourless,
and diffuse. On the other hand, she is deficient in sympathy; she judges
rather with the intellect than with the heart, which is at least as
necessary to the formation of a fair and intelligent opinion. Her mind,
however, is so keen and so incisive, so prompt to seize the most curious
facts, so apt in discovering characteristic details, that even when she
speaks of places and peoples with whom we are all familiar, she compels
us to listen, and irresistibly holds our attention. It has been said
that in some respects her manner is that of the elder Dumas, but while
she is more honest and less given to exaggeration she does not rise to
the same literary standard. The famous author of "Anthony" is still
first master in the art, more difficult than the world in general
believes it to be, of recording the experiences of travel; he is a
master in it, because he does not make the attempt, which must always be
unsuccessful, of minutely recording every particular that comes under a
traveller's notice, and because he is gifted beyond ordinary measure
with the art and _verve_ of the _raconteur_. Persons and situations he
knows how to group in the most effective manner; incidents assume their
most dramatic form; scenes are worked up so as to produce a definite
impression on the reader's mind.
Madame d'Aunet, as a popular novelist, knows when writing that she can
count upon her thousands of readers. But this is a fact which we wish
she could have forgotten or ignored. For, keeping it always before her,
she is led to weigh with critical timidity every word, every phrase, and
to elaborate each sentence until, in the old Greek phrase, we "smell the
oil." Those passages of glowing description which at first marched on so
freely and fully, come to an abrupt pause. The language, formerly so
vigorous and incisive, becomes vague, colourless, hesitating; or, very
frequently, gets upon stilts and assumes an air of pretentious
affectation. The writer has evidently forgotten, in her over-scrupulous
regard for the artistic and picturesque, that nothing is so attractive
as simplicity. And Madame d'Aunet is always most charming when she is
most natural--that is, when she is herself; when she writes
spontaneously, and fully possessed by her subject, without casting
anxious glances at the reader to see if he admires this polished period
or catches that apt allusion. Therefore, we are compelled to indicate as
a defect--which, if not very great, might as well have been avoided--a
certain affectation and coquetry of style, displaying the solicitude of
the artist rather than the frank simplicity of the story-teller.
Something of this fault the English reader notes in Mr. Kinglake's
"Eoethen."
In speaking of Belgium and Holland, Madame d'Aunet lets drop some
felicitous expressions, some pregnant and rememberable phrases, which
give the reader an exact idea of the manners of the inhabitants and of
the land they dwell in. The touch is delicate, but always firm and
true.
As to the Hollanders, she says:--
"These people have not the love of cleanliness, but its cultus."
Referring to the two Dutch towns which are the most rigorously watched
over, she says:--
"Saardam is a page, and Broek a vignette, from the history of Holland.
"The people of Broek have neither the taste for, nor the love of,
cleanliness; it is with them a fanaticism, a fetichism. A certain means
of ensuring from them a favourable reception is the avoidance, not of
vices, but dirt."
In Norway, Madame d'Aunet visited Christiania, Drontheim, and other
localities; but it is Man rather than Nature that interests her. Nor did
she penetrate far enough inland to gain a satisfactory conception of the
character of the Norwegian scenery. In the heart of the Dovrefeld
Mountains are grand and sublime landscapes of peak and ravine, cataract
and forest, not inferior to the most famous scenes in Switzerland.
Norway can boast of the finest waterfall in Europe: that of the
Maan-ily, or Riukan-foss, which is as majestically beautiful as the
cascade of Gavarni or the falls of Schaffhausen--which, indeed, has
sometimes been compared to Niagara itself.
Mons. Gainvard's expedition quitted Hammerfest, the northernmost town in
Scandinavia, and after a voyage of some weeks in duration, approached
the gloomy coast of ice-bound Spitzbergen. The ice-fields and the
icebergs inspired Madame d'Aunet with profound emotion, and, in
describing them, she breaks out into what may be called a lyrical cry.
"These Polar ices," she exclaims, "which no dust has ever stained, as
spotless now as on the first day of the creation, are tinted with the
vividest colours, so that they look like rocks composed of precious
stones: the glitter of the diamond, the dazzling hues of the sapphire
and the emerald, blend in an unknown and marvellous substance. Yonder
floating islands, incessantly undermined by the sea, change their
outline every moment; by an abrupt movement the base becomes the summit;
a spire transforms itself into a mushroom; a column broadens out into a
vast flat table, a tower is changed into a flight of steps; and all so
rapidly and unexpectedly that, in spite of oneself, one dreams that some
supernatural will presides over those sudden transformations. At the
first glance I could not help thinking that I saw before me a city of
the fays, destroyed at one fell blow by a superior power, and condemned
to disappear without leaving a trace of its existence. Around me hustled
fragments of the architecture of all periods and every style:
campaniles, columns, minarets, ogives, pyramids, turrets, cupolas,
crenelations, volutes, arcades, facades, colossal foundations,
sculptures as delicate as those which festoon the shapely pillars of our
cathedrals--all were massed together and confused in a common disaster.
An _ensemble_ so strange, so marvellous, the artist's brush is unable to
reproduce, and the writer's words fail adequately to describe!
"This region, where everything is cold and inert, has been represented,
has it not? as enveloped in a deep and sublime silence. But the reader
must please to receive a very different impression; nothing can give any
fit idea of the tremendous tumult of a day of thaw at Spitzbergen.
"The sea, bristling with jagged sheets of ice, clangs and clatters
noisily; the lofty littoral peaks glide down to the shore, fall away,
and plunge into the gulf of waters with an awful crash. The mountains
are rent and splintered; the waves dash furiously against the granite
capes; the icebergs, as they shiver into pieces, give vent to sharp
reports like the rattle of musketry; the wind with a hoarse roar,
scatters tornadoes of snow abroad.... It is terrible, it is magnificent;
one seems to hear the chorus of the abysses of the old world preluding a
new chaos.
"Never before has one seen or heard anything comparable to that which
one sees and hears there; one has conceived of nothing like it, even in
one's dreams! It belongs at once to the fantastic and to the real: it
disconcerts the memory, dazes the mind, and fills it with an
indescribable sense of awe and admiration.
"But if the spectacle of the bay had something magical in it, ominous
and gloomy was the scene on shore. In all directions the ground was
white with the bones of seals and walruses, left there by the Norwegian
or Russian fishermen, who formerly visited these high latitudes for the
purpose of collecting oil; for some years, however, they have abandoned
a pursuit which was much more dangerous than profitable. These great
bones, bleached by time and preserved intact by the frost, seemed so
many skeletons of giants--the past dwellers in a city which had finally
been swallowed up by the sea.
"The long fleshless fingers of the seals, so like to those of the human
hand, rendered the illusion singularly striking and filled one with a
kind of terror. I quitted the charnel-house, and directing my steps very
cautiously over the slippery soil, penetrated inland. I found myself
very speedily in the middle of a cemetery; but this time, the remains
lying on the frozen snow were human. Several coffins, half open and
empty, had formerly been occupied by human bodies, which the teeth of
the white bear had recently profaned. As, owing to the thickness of the
ice, it is impossible to dig graves, a number of enormous stones had, in
primitive fashion, been heaped over the coffin-lids, so as to form a
defence against the attacks of wild beasts; but the stout limbs of "the
great man in the pelisse" (as the Norwegian fishers picturesquely call
the polar bear) had removed the stones and devastated the tombs; a
throng of bones strewed the shore, half broken and gnawed ... the
pitiful remains of the bears' banquet. I carefully collected them, and
replaced them piously in their proper receptacles.
"In the middle of this work of burial, I was seized with an
indescribable horror; the thought came upon me that I was doomed,
perhaps, to lay my bones among these dismembered skeletons. I had been
forewarned of the perils of our expedition. I had accepted the warning
and fancied that I comprehended all the hazard; yet these tombs made me
for the moment shudder, and for the first time I dwelt with regret on
the memories of France, my family, my friends, the blue sky, the gentle
and serene life which I had quitted in order to incur the risks of so
dangerous a voyage."
Madame d'Aunet, however, returned to Paris in safety, and satisfied with
her experiences of the Polar world, attempted no second expedition.
According to M. Cortambert, to whom I owe this sketch, she afterwards
resided in Paris, and edited several journals intended for women's
reading. She also produced some works of no inconsiderable merit.
FREDERIKA BREMER.
It seems reasonable enough that a good novelist should make a good
traveller; for to both is essential the possession of a faculty of quick
and accurate observation. Among the novelists of the nineteenth century
Frederika Bremer holds a distinguished position; we hope to show that
she merits a similar place among its travellers.