_June 11th._--This day Euphemia and I went for the first time to Madame
Crosnier's. Catherine had gone for some time, and given us a very
strange account of it; but notwithstanding all she had said, it was
far worse than we had expected. There were twelve or fourteen English
girls, three Miss Stephens whom we had formerly seen at Bath, where
they did not look at all nice--they were here very well dressed and
genteel-looking; Miss Fuller, a daughter of General Fuller, who had
a French mamma, a complete little dandy; Miss Fitzgerald, who was a
little plague; Miss Molyneux, a nice little girl who had been left
there; Miss Julia Carpenter, and several others. The nicest were two
Miss Wergs. The eldest was scarcely nine years old. They were sweet,
pretty little girls, with good colours; they were a great contrast to
the French girls beside them. Ellen Werg told me that they had come to
France for their education, and that their papa liked it so much that
they were never going home again; but that they and their mamma hated
it. They used sometimes to cry when they heard the other girls talk of
going home, and say, 'Oh, I wish I was going too!' We used often to
see them at church; their papa was very crabbed-looking. They could
not speak a word of French: they left school about the same time as I
did without knowing a word more than when they came. Their mamma said
it was such a ruinous school they should stay no longer. The French
girls were the dirtiest, rudest set I ever saw. They wore very coarse
dark cotton frocks or black petticoats, dirty blue or red aprons with
pockets, spotted with ink, black worsted stockings, and listen shoes.
Some of them had large bunches of keys hung by their sides, and others
sashes and braces of broad scarlet galloon. One girl--Mademoiselle
Rose--was so dirty, that even Madame Crosnier used to speak to her
about it. She had on an old cotton frock bedaubed with ink, that did
not meet by three or four inches; through the gap one saw a pair of
dirty stays and an old striped worsted petticoat, and on the top of a
frock there was a gauze frill hanging in rags. Her hair was matted with
dirt. Some of the girls had pieces of green glass in their ears for
earrings, black velvet round their head, and gilt combs with the teeth
broken out stuck in their dirty, black, uncombed hair, which hung over
their faces. Their skins were dirty and yellow. The neatest of these
young ladies was a Mademoiselle Sélina--who was conceited-looking,
and Mademoiselle Joséphine. The girls' manners were as elegant as
themselves--they called each other names, and used the most vulgar
words. If in school-time any of them were speaking, and their teacher
reproved them, they answered, 'Vous mentez, Mademoiselle, vous êtes
menteuse, je ne parle pas.' Indeed, if they were doing a thing all
the time they were spoken to, they did not scruple to say they were
not. There were, beside Madame Crosnier, Mademoiselle Allemagne, the
first teacher; Mademoiselle Croissé, the drawing mistress, who also
taught in the schoolroom; and Annette, a kind of half teacher, who
had been one of the _young ladies_. I certainly never saw an English
kitchen-maid dressed in the way she was. A dirty cap without a border,
a black petticoat, a coarse blue gown tucked up like a bed-gown, a very
coarse kind of linen apron, and shoes down at the heels, completed
her dress. She used to go about with a broom sweeping the rooms. The
girls took it by turns to clean the schoolrooms once every week. They
used to tuck up their frocks, sweep the dirt into the _cabinet noir_
(or closet into which the litters were swept), and then throw a pail
of water on the floor and mop it up. Miss Stephens used to call it
her _malheureuse semaine_. The first morning we went earlier than
usual, school had not begun, and a number of dirty girls were sitting
or rather lying on the floor about the passages, looking like a set
of gypsies. We went upstairs to the _salle de dessin_. Mademoiselle
Croissé taught drawing. She was tall and sallow, and was reckoned
pretty. She had a pair of staring black eyes, and a great deal of long
black hair, which she seemed to admire very much, and used to bring
in pieces of butter in a curl-paper and grease it beside us. She had
done two very pretty drawings, which she kept to show. We sat down to
our drawing. Mademoiselle Croissé drew us an eye for a copy and left
us; we might do it or not, just as we pleased, she never looked near
us. Little Miss Fitzgerald had been learning drawing for a great many
months, but she had only drawn two or three sheets full all the time.
Nearly every day that I was there she did not even get out her paper,
but sat playing, talking, or running out of the room. Mademoiselle
Croissé used sometimes to stand at the window, and if she happened to
see a cat, she had such a dislike to the sight of cats that she was
obliged to send one of the girls from their drawing to drive these
animals away. At other times she was out of the room, or employed
with her own drawing, so that she had hardly time to tell us how our
drawings looked when we had done them. Once when we had just settled to
our drawings (Mademoiselle Croissé absent as usual), in came two of the
maids--'Mademoiselle, il faut sortir, car je vais baller la chambre';
we were therefore obliged to decamp. The servants were the rudest set I
ever saw. Catherine had a music mistress, Mademoiselle Pascal; but she
begged to have her no longer. One of the pianos would hardly sound, and
they had no additional keys. The mistress did not seem to understand
music very well, and she used to like heavy playing. I do not think
it is any credit in the French masters being cheap; at least, from
the specimens we saw here they got their money very easily. Monsieur
le Chevalier, the writing master, came once or twice a week; he used
to sit down at one end of the table, and never move; he had a curious
squeaking voice. I could never find out what he did except mending
pens, and those were so bad that we were obliged to get Madame Crosnier
to mend them afterwards;-she also gave us the copies: he never saw
what I had written the whole time. Euphemia one day said to one of the
English girls, 'Pray, is that man sitting there, mending pens, called a
writing master?' As for the dancing, it was quite a farce. We heard a
great deal about the _salle de danse_, so we imagined it to be quite a
fine place; but what did this beautiful _salle_ turn out to be, but a
passage leading to the schoolroom, in which we hung up our hats, etc.
There was not a chair in the place. It was to my astonishment that they
could dance at all in such a hole as it was. Monsieur Bréton taught
here. The girls dressed in the same elegant dresses as they generally
wore, and we used often to hear them laughing, crying, and romping. Of
course we did not learn.