Parma.
Dearest Kitty,--It is but seldom I have to bespeak your indulgence on
the score of my brevity, but I must do so now, overwhelmed as I am with
occupation, and scarcely a moment left me that I can really call my own.
Mamma's letter to old Molly will have explained to you the great fortune
which has befallen James, and, I might add also, all who belong to
him. And really, dearest, with all the assurance the evidence of my own
senses can convey, I still find it difficult to credit such unparalleled
luck. Fancy beauty--and such beauty,--youth, genius, mind, rank, and a
large fortune, thrown, I may say, at his feet! She is Spanish, by the
mother's side; "Las Caldenhas," I think the name, whose father was a
grandee of the first class. Her own father was the General Count de
St. Amand, who commanded in the celebrated battle of Austerlitz in
the retreat from Moscow. I 'm sure, dearest, you 'll be amazed at my
familiarity with these historical events; but the truth is, she is a
perfect treasury of such knowledge, and I must needs gain some little by
the contact.
I am at a loss how to give you any correct notion of one whose
universality seems to impart to her character all the semblance of
contradictory qualities. She is, for instance, proud and haughty, to
a degree little short of insolence. She exacts from men a species of
deference little less than a slavish submission. As she herself says,
"Let them do homage." All her ideas of life and society are formed on
the very grandest scale. She has known, in fact, but one "set," and
that has been one where royalties moved as private individuals. Her very
trinkets recall such memories; and I have passed more than one morning
admiring pearl ear-rings, with the cipher of the Czarawitsch; bracelets
with the initials of an Austrian Archduke, and a diamond cross, which
she forgot whether it was given her by Prince Metternich or Mehemet Ali.
If you only heard her, too, how she talks of that "dear old thing, the
ex-King of Bavaria," and with what affectionate regard she alludes to
"her second self,--the Queen of Spain," you 'd feel at once, dearest
Kitty, that you were moving amidst crowns and sceptres, with the rustle
of royal purple beside, and the shadow of a thronely canopy over you. In
one sense, this has been for us the very rarest piece of good fortune;
for, accustomed as she has been to only one sphere,--and that the very
highest,--she does not detect many little peculiarities in papa's and
mamma's habits, and censure them as vulgar, but rather accepts them as
the ways and customs among ordinary nobility. In fact, she thinks the
Prince, as she calls papa, the very image of "Pozzo di Borgo;" and mamma
she can scarcely see without saying, "Your Majesty," she is so like the
Queen Dowager of Piedmont.
As to James, if it were not that I knew her real sentiments, and that
she loves him to distraction,--merely judging from what goes on in
society,--I should say he had not a chance of success. She takes
pleasure, I almost think, in decrying the very qualities he has most
pretension to. She even laughs at his horsemanship; and yesterday went
so far as to say that activity was not amongst his perfections,--James,
who really is the very type of agility! One of her amusements is to
propose to him some impossible feat or other, and the poor boy has
nearly broken his back and dislocated his limbs by contortions that
nothing but a fish could accomplish. But the contrarieties of her nature
do not end here! She, so grave, so dignified, so imperious, I might even
call it, before others, once alone with me becomes the wildest creature
in existence. The very moment she makes her escape to her own room, she
can scarcely control her delight at throwing off the "Countess," as she
says herself, and being once again free, joyous, and unconstrained.
I have told her, over and over again, that if James only knew her in
these moods, that he would adore her even more than he does now; but
she only laughs, and says, "Well, time enough; he shall see me so one of
these days." It was not till after ten or twelve days that she admitted
me to her real confidence. The manner of it was itself curious. "Are you
sleepy?" said she to me, one evening as we went upstairs to bed; "for,
if not, come and pay me a visit in my room."
[Illustration: 176]
I accepted the invitation; and after exchanging my evening robe for a
dressing-gown, hastened to the chamber. I could scarcely believe my
eyes as I entered! She was seated on a richly embroidered cushion on
the floor, dressed in Turkish fashion, loose trousers of gold-sprigged
muslin, with a small fez of scarlet cloth on her head, and a jacket of
the same colored velvet almost concealed beneath its golden embroidery;
a splendid scimitar lay beside her, and a most costly pipe, in pure
Turkish taste, which, however, she did not make use of, but smoked a
small paper cigarette instead.
"Come, dearest," said she, "turn the key in the door, and light your
cigar; here we are at length free and happy." It was in vain that I
assured her I never had tried to smoke. At first she would n't believe,
and then she actually screamed with laughter at me. "One would fancy,"
said she, "that you had only left England yesterday. Why, child, where
have you lived and with whom?" I cannot go over all she said; nor need
I repeat the efforts I made to palliate my want of knowledge of life,
which she really appeared to grieve over. "I should never think of
asking your sister here," said she; "there is a frivolity in all her
gayety--a light-heartedness, without sentiment--that I cannot abide;
but you, _ma chere_, you have a nature akin to my own. You ought, and,
indeed, must be one of us."
So far as I could collect, Kitty,--for remember, I was smoking my first
cigarette all this time, and not particularly clear of head,--there is a
set in Parisian society, the most exclusive and refined of all, who have
voted the emancipation of women from all the slavery and degradation
to which the social usages of the world at large would condemn them.
Rightly judging that the expansion of intelligence is to be acquired
only in greater liberty of action, they have admitted them to a freer
community and participation in the themes which occupy men's thoughts,
and the habits which accompany their moods of reflection.
Gifted, as we confessedly are, with nicer and more acute perceptions,
finer powers of discrimination and judgment, greater delicacy of
feeling, and more apt appreciation of the beautiful and the true, why
should we descend to an intellectual bondage? As dearest Josephine
says, "Our influence, to be beneficial, should be candidly and openly
exercised, not furtively practised, and cunningly insinuated. Let us
leave these arts to women who want to rule their husbands; our destiny
be it--to sway mankind!" Her theory, so far as I understand it, is that
men will not endure petty rivalries, but succumb at once to superior
attainments. Thus, your masculine young lady, Kitty,--your creature of
boisterous manners, slang, and slap-dash,--is invariably a disgust;
but your true "lionne," gifted yet graceful, possessing every manly
accomplishment and yet employing her knowledge to enhance the charms of
her society and render herself more truly companionable, the equal of
men in culture, their superior in taste and refinement, exercises a
despotic influence around her.
Men will quit the _salon_ for the play-table. Let us, then, be gamblers
for the nonce, and we shall not be deserted. They smoke, that they may
get together and talk with a freedom and a license not used before
us. Let us adopt the custom, and we are no longer debarred from their
intimacy and the power of infusing the refining influences of our sex
through their barbarism! As Josephine says, "We are the martyrs now,
that we may be the masters hereafter!"
I grew very faint, once or twice, while she was talking; and, indeed,
at last was obliged to lie down, and have my temples bathed with
eau-de-Cologne, so that I unluckily lost many of her strongest arguments
and happiest illustrations; but, from frequent conversations since, and
from reading some of the beautiful romances of "Georges Sand," I
have attained to, if not a full appreciation, at least an unbounded
admiration of this beautiful system.
Have I forgotten to tell you that we met the Prince of Pontremoli on our
way here?--a Serene Highness, Kitty! but as easy and as familiar as my
brother James. The drollest thing is that he has lived while in England
with all the "fast people," and only talks a species of conventional
slang in vogue amongst them; but for all that he is delightful,--full
of gayety and good spirits, and has the wickedest dark eyes you ever
beheld.
Dear Josephine's caprices are boundless! Yesterday she read of a black
Arabian that the Imaum of somewhere was sending as a present to General
Lamoriciere, and she immediately said, "Oh, the General is exiled now,
he can't want a charger,--send and get him for _me_." Poor James is
out all the morning in search of some one to despatch on this difficult
service; but how it is to be accomplished--not to speak of where the
money is to come from--is an unreadable riddle to