Returning from my Breton journey, I reached my mother's house in York
Street on the 23rd of July, 1839, and on the 26th of the same month
left London with her to visit my married sister in her new home at
Penrith, where Mr. Tilley had established himself as Post Office
surveyor of the northern district. His home was a pretty house
situated between the town and the well-known beacon on the hill to the
north of it.
The first persons I became acquainted with in this, to me, entirely
new region, were Sir George Musgrave, of Edenhall, and his wife, who
was a sister of Sir James Graham. My brother-in-law took me over to
Edenhall, a lovely walk from Penrith, and we found both Sir George
and Lady Musgrave at home. We--my mother and I--had not at that
time conceived the idea of becoming residents at Penrith. But when
subsequently we were led to do so, we found extremely pleasant and
friendly neighbours at Edenhall, and though not in strict chronology
due in this place, I may throw together my few reminiscences of Sir
George.
He was the _beau-idéal_ of a country gentleman of the old school. He
rarely or never went to London--not, as was the case with some of his
neighbours, because the expense of a season there was formidable, for
his estate was a fine one, and he was a rich man living largely within
his income, but because his idea was, that a country gentleman's
proper place was on his own acres, and because London had no
temptations for him. He was said to be the best landlord in the
county, and really seemed to look upon all his numerous tenants,
and all their labourers, as his born subjects, to whom protection,
kindness, assistance, and general looking after were due, in return
for their fealty and loyal attachment. I think he would have kicked
off his land (and he was a man who could kick) any man who talked in
his hearing of the purely commercial relationship between a landlord
and his tenants. Of course he was adored by all the country side. No
doubt the stout Cumberland and Westmoreland farmers and hinds were
good and loyal subjects of Queen Victoria, but for all practical
purposes of reverence and obedience, Musgrave was king at Edenhall.
Lady Musgrave was a particularly lady-like woman, the marked elegance
of whose breeding might, with advantage, have given the tone to many a
London drawing-room. I have seen her surrounded by country neighbours,
and though she was _velut inter ignes luna minores_, I never saw the
country squire's or country parson's wife, who was not perfectly happy
and at ease in her drawing-room, while unconsciously all the time
taking a lesson in good breeding and lady-like manners. She was
thoroughly a help-meet for her husband in all his care for his people.
I believe that both he and she were convinced at the bottom of their
hearts that Cumberland and Westmoreland constituted the choicest,
best, and most highly civilised part of England. And she was one of
those of whom I was thinking, when in a former chapter I spoke of
highly educated people whom I had known to affect provincialism of
speech. Lady Musgrave always, or perhaps it would be more correct to
say generally, called a cow a "coo," and though I suspect she would
have left Westmoreland behind if evil fate had called her to London,
on her own hill-sides she preferred the accents of the native speech.
Sir George had, or affected to have, considerable respect for all the
little local superstitions and beliefs which are so prevalent in
that "north countree." And the kindness with which he welcomed us as
neighbours, when we built a house and came to live there, was shown
despite a strong feeling which he had, or affected to have, with
regard to an incident which fatally marked our _début_ in that
country.
We bought a field in a very beautiful situation overlooking the ruins
of Brougham Castle and the confluence of the Eden with the Lowther,
and proceeded to build a house on the higher part of it. But there was
a considerable drop from the lower limit of our ground to the road
which skirted the property, and furnished the only access to it. There
was some difficulty, therefore, in contriving a tolerable entrance
from the road for wheel traffic, and it was found necessary to cause a
tiny little spring that rose in the bank by the roadside to change
its course in some small degree. The affair seemed to us a matter of
infinitesimal importance, but Sir George was dismayed. We had moved,
he said, a holy well, and the consequence would surely be that we
should never succeed in establishing ourselves in that spot.
And surely enough we never did so succeed; for, after having built a
very nice little house, and lived in it one winter and half a summer,
we--for I cannot say that it was my mother more than I, or I more than
my mother--made up our minds that "the sun yoked his horses too far
from Penrith town," and that we had had enough of it. Sir George,
of course, when he heard our determination, while he expressed
all possible regret at losing us as neighbours, said that he knew
perfectly well that it must be so, from the time that we so recklessly
meddled with the holy well.
He was the most hospitable man in the world, and could never let many
days pass without asking us to dine with him. But his hospitality was
of quite the old world school. One day, but that was after our journey
to Italy and when he had become intimate with us, being in a hurry to
get back into the drawing-room to rejoin a pretty girl next whom I had
sat at dinner, I tried to escape from the dining-room. "Come back!"
he roared, before I could get to the door, "we won't have any of your
d--d forineering habits here! Come back and stick to your wine, or by
the Lord I'll have the door locked."
He was, unlike most men of his sort, not very fond of riding, but was
a great walker. He used to take the men he could get to walk with him
a tramp over the hill, till they were fain to cry "Hold! enough!" But
_there_ I was his match.
Most of my readers have probably heard of the "Luck of Edenhall," for
besides Longfellow's[1] well-known poem, the legend relating to it
has often been told in print. I refer to it here merely to mention a
curious trait of character in Sir George Musgrave in connection with
it. The "Luck of Edenhall" is an ancient decorated glass goblet, which
has belonged to the Musgraves time out of mind, and which bears on it
the legend:--
"When this cup shall break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Edenhall."
[Footnote 1: Subsequently to the publication of his poem Musgrave
asked Longfellow to dine at Edenhall, and "picked a crow" with him on
the conclusion of the poem, which represents the "Luck" to have been
broken, which Sir George considered a flight of imagination quite
transcending all permissible poetical licence.]
After what I have written of Sir George and the holy well, which we so
unfortunately moved from its proper site, it will be readily imagined
that he attached no small importance to the safe keeping of the
"Luck;" and truly he did so. But instead of simply locking it up,
where he might feel sure it could neither break nor fall, he would
show it to all visitors, and not content with that, would insist
on their taking it into their hands to examine and handle it. He
maintained that otherwise there was no fair submission to the test of
luck, which was intended by the inscription. It would have been mere
cowardly prevarication to lock it away under circumstances which took
the matter out of the dominion of "luck" altogether. I wonder
that under such circumstances it has not fallen, for the nervous
trepidation of the folks who were made to handle it may be imagined!
I made another friend at Penrith in the person of a man as strongly
contrasted with Sir George Musgrave as two north-country Englishmen
could well be. This was a Dr. Nicholson, who has died within the last
few months, to my great regret, for I had promised myself the great
pleasure of taking him by the hand yet once again before starting on
the journey on which we may, or may not meet. He was my senior by a
few years, but not by many. Nicholson was a man of very extensive
reading and of profound Biblical learning. It may be deemed surprising
by others, as it was, and is, to me, that such a man should have been
an earnest and thoroughly convinced Swedenborgian--but such was the
case. And I can conscientiously give this testimony to the excellence
of that creed--that it produced in the person of its learned
north-country disciple at least one truly good and amiable man. Dr.
Nicholson was emphatically such in all the relations of life. He was
the good and loving husband of a very charming wife, the unremittingly
careful and affectionate father of a large family, a delightful host
at his own table, an excellent and instructive companion over a cigar
(hardly correctly alluded to in the singular number!) and a most
_jucundus comes_ in a tramp over the hills.
Amusing to me still is the contrast between those Cumberland walks
with Sir George and my ramblings over the same or nearly the same
ground with the meditative Swedenborgian doctor;--the first always
pushing ahead as if shouldering along a victorious path through life,
knowing the history of every foot of ground he passed over, interested
in every detail of it, and with an air of continually saying "Ha!
ha!" among the breezy trumpets of those hills, like the scriptural
war-horse; the second with his gaze very imperfectly turned
outward, but very fruitfully turned inward, frequently pausing with
argumentative finger laid on his companion's breast, and smile half
satirical half kindly as the flow of discourse revealed theological
_lacunae_ in my acquirements, which, I fear, irreparably and most
unfairly injured the Regius professor of divinity in the mind of the
German graduate. For Nicholson was a theological "doctor" by virtue of
a degree from I forget what German university, and had a low estimate,
perhaps more justified at that day than it would be now, of the extent
and calibre of Oxford theological learning. He was himself a disciple,
and an enthusiastic admirer of Ewald, a very learned Hebraist, and an
unflagging student.
I was more capable of appreciating at its due value the extent and
accuracy of his knowledge upon another subject--a leg of mutton! It
_may_ be a mere coincidence, but certainly the most learned Hebraist
it was ever my lot to know was also the best and most satisfactory
carver of a leg of mutton.
Nobody knows anything about mutton in these days, for the very
sufficient reason that there is no mutton worth knowing anything about.
Scientific breeding has improved it off the face of the earth. The
immature meat is killed at two years old, and only we few survivors of a
former generation know how little like it is to the mutton of former
days. The Monmouthshire farmers told me the other day that they could
not keep Welsh sheep of pure breed, because nothing under an eight-foot
park paling would confine them. Just as if they did not jump in the days
when I jumped too! Believe me, my young friends, that George the Third
knew what he was talking about (as upon certain other occasions) when he
said that very little venison was equal to a haunch of four-year-old
mutton. And the gravy!--chocolate-coloured, not pink, my innocent young
friends. Ichabod! Ichabod!
My uncle, too, Mr. Partington--who married my father's sister, and
lived many years chairman of quarter sessions at Offham, among the
South Downs, near Lewes--there was a man who understood mutton! A
little silver saucepan was placed by his side when the leg of mutton,
or sometimes two, about as big as fine fowls, were placed in one
dish before him. Then, after the mutton had been cut, the abundantly
flowing gravy was transferred to the saucepan, a couple of glasses of
tawny old port, and a _quantum suff._ of currant jelly and cayenne
were added, the whole was warmed in the dining-room, and then--we ate
mutton, as I shall never eat it again in this world!
Well! _revenir a nos moutons_ we never, never shall! So we must, alas!
do the reverse in returning to my Penrith reminiscences.
I remember specially an excellent old fellow and very friendly
neighbour, Colonel Macleod, a bachelor, who having fallen in love with
a very beautiful spot, in the valley of the Lowther, built an ugly
brick house, three stories high, because, as he said, he was so greedy
of the view, forgetful apparently that he was providing it mainly for
his maid servants. Then there was the old maiden lady, with a name
that might have been found in north-country annals at almost any
date during the last seven hundred years, who mildly and maternally
corrected my sister at table for speaking of _vol-au-vent_, telling
her that the correct expression was _voulez-vous!_ My sister always
adopted the old lady's correction in future, at least when addressing
her.
Then there were two pretty girls, Margaret and Charlotte Story, the
nieces of old De Whelpdale, the lord of the manor. I think he and Mrs.
De Whelpdale never left their room, for I do not remember to have ever
seen either of them; nor do I remember that I at all resented their
absence from the drawing-room when I used to call at the manor house.
One of the girls was understood to be engaged to be married to a far
distant lieutenant, of whom Penrith knew nothing, which circumstance
gave rise to sundry ingenious conceits in the acrostic line, based on
allusions to "his story" and "mystery!" I wonder whether Charlotte is
alive! If she is, and should see this page, she will remember! It was
for her sake that I deserted, or tried to desert, Sir George's port,
as related above.
We left Penrith on that occasion without having formed any decided
intention of establishing ourselves there, and returned to London
towards the end of August, 1839. During the next two months I was hard
at work completing the MS. of my volumes on Brittany. And in November
of the same year, after that long fast from all journeying, my mother
and I left London for a second visit to Paris. But we did not on this
occasion travel together.
I left London some days earlier than she did, and travelled by Ostend,
Cologne, and Mannheim, my principal object being to visit my old
friend, Mrs. Fauche, who was living at the latter place. I passed
three or four very pleasant days there, including, as I find by my
diary, sundry agreeable jaunts to Heidelberg, Carlsruhe, &c. My mother
and I had arranged to meet at Paris on the 4th of December, and at
that date I punctually turned up there.
I think that I saw Paris and the Parisians much more satisfactorily on
this occasion than during my first visit; and I suspect that some of
the recollections recorded in these pages as connected with my first
visit to Paris, belong really to this second stay there, especially I
think that this must have been the case with regard to my acquaintance
with Chateaubriand, though I certainly was introduced to him at the
earlier period, for I find the record of much talk with him about
Brittany, which was a specially welcome subject to him.
It was during this second visit that I became acquainted with Henry
Bulwer, afterwards Lord Dalling, and at that time first secretary of
the British legation. My visits were generally, perhaps always, paid
to him when he was in bed, where he was lying confined by, if I
remember rightly, a broken leg, I used to find his bed covered with
papers and blue-books, and the like. And I was told that the whole, or
at all events the more important part of the business of the embassy
was done by him as he lay there on the bed, which must have been for
many a long hour a bed of suffering.
Despite certain affectations--which were so palpably affectations, and
scarcely pretended to be aught else, that there was little or nothing
annoying or offensive in them--he was a very agreeable man, and was
unquestionably a very brilliant one. He came to dine with me, I
remember, many years afterwards at my house in Florence, when he
insisted (the dining-room being on the first floor) on being carried
up stairs, as we thought at the time very unnecessarily. But for
aught I know such suspicion may have wronged him. At all events his
disability, whatever it may have been, did not prevent him from making
himself very agreeable.
One of our guests upon that same occasion (I must drag the mention of
the fact in head and shoulders here, or else I shall forget it), was
that extraordinary man, Baron Ward, who was, or perhaps I ought to say
at that time had been, prime minister and general administrator to the
Duke of Lucca. Ward had been originally brought from Yorkshire to be
an assistant in the ducal stables. There, doubtless because he knew
more about the business than anybody else concerned with it, he soon
became chief. In that capacity he made himself so acceptable to the
Duke, that he was taken from the stables to be his highness's personal
attendant. His excellence in that position soon enlarged his duties
to those of controller of the whole ducal household. And thence, by
degrees that were more imperceptible in the case of such a government
than they could have been in a larger and more regularly administered
state, Ward became the recognised, and nearly all-powerful head,
manager, and ruler of the little Duchy of Lucca. And I believe the
strange promotion was much for the advantage of the Duke and of the
Duke's subjects. Ward, I take it, never robbed him or any one else.
And this eccentric specialty, the Duke, though he was no Solomon,
had the wit to discover. In his cups the ex-groom, ex-valet, was not
reticent about his sovereign master, and his talk was not altogether
of an edifying nature. One sally sticks in my memory. "Ah, yes! He was
a grand favourite with the women. But _I_ have had the grooming of
him; and it was a wuss job than ever grooming his hosses was!"
Ward got very drunk that night, I remember, and we deemed it fortunate
that our diplomatist guest had departed before the outward signs of
his condition became manifest.
Henry Bulwer, by mere circumstance of synchronism, has suggested the
remembrance of Ward, Ward has called up the Duke of Lucca, and he
brings with him a host of Baths of Lucca reminiscences respecting his
Serene Highness and others. But all these _must_ be left to find their
places, if anywhere, when I come to them later on, or we shall never
get back to Paris.
It was on this our second visit to _Lutetia Parisiorum_ that my mother
and I made acquaintance with a very specially charming family of the
name of D'Henin. The family circle consisted of General le Vicomte
D'Henin, his English wife, and their daughter. The general was a
delightful old man, more like an English general officer than any
other Frenchman I ever met. Madame D'Henin was like an Englishwoman
not unaccustomed to courts and wholly unspoiled by them. Mademoiselle
D'Henin, very pretty, united the qualities of a denizen of the inmost
circles of the fashionable world with those of a really serious
student, to a degree I have never seen equalled. They were great
friends of the Bishop of London, and Mademoiselle D'Henin used to
correspond with him. She was earnestly religious, and I remember her
telling me of a _démêlé_ she had had with her confessor. She had told
him in confession that she was in the habit of reading the English
Bible. He strongly objected, and at last told her that he could not
give her absolution unless she promised to discontinue the practice.
She told him that rather than do so, she would take what would be to
her the painful step of declaring herself a Protestant, whereupon he
undertook to obtain a special permission for her to read the English
Bible. Whether he did really take any such measures I don't know, and
I fancy she never knew; but the upshot was that she continued to read
the heretical book, and nothing more was ever said of refusing her
absolution.
I have a large bundle of letters from this highly accomplished young
lady to my mother. Many passages of them would be interesting and
valuable to an historian of the reign of Louis Philippe. She writes at
great length, and her standpoint is the very centre of the monarchical
side of the French political world of that day. But as I am _not_
writing a history of the reign of Louis Philippe, I must content
myself with extracting two or three suggestive notices.
In a letter dated from Paris, 19th July, 1840, she writes:--"You shew
much hospitality towards your royal guests. But I assure you it will
not in this instance be taken as an homage to superior merit--words
which I have heard frequently applied here to John Bull's frenzy
about Soult, and to the hospitality of the English towards the Duc de
N[emours], When I told him how much I should like to be in his place
(_i.e._, about to go to England), he protested that he would change
places with no one, '_quand il s'agissait d'aller dans un aussi
delicieux pays, que cette belle Angleterre, que vous avez si bonne
raison d'aimer et d'admirer._'"
On the 29th of August in the same year she writes at great length of
the indignation and fury produced in Paris by the announcement of
the Quadruple Alliance. She is immensely impressed by the fact that
"people gathered in the streets and discussed the question in the open
air." "Ireland, Poland, and Italy are to rise to the cry of Liberty."
But she goes on to say, "Small causes produce great effects. Much of
this warlike disposition has arisen from the fact of Thiers having
bought a magnificent horse to ride beside the King at the late
review." She proceeds to ridicule the minister in a tone very
naturally suggested by the personal appearance of the little great man
under such circumstances, which no doubt furnished Paris with much
fun. But she goes on to suggest that the personal vanity which
made the prospect of such a public appearance alluring to him
was reinforced by "certain other secondary but still important
considerations of a different nature, looking to the results which
might follow from the exhibition of a war policy. This desirable end
being attained beyond even the most sanguine hopes, the martial fever
seems on the decline."
Now all this gossip may be accepted as evidencing the tone prevailing
in the very inmost circles of the citizen king's friends and
surroundings, and as such is curious.
Writing on the 8th of October in the same year, after speaking at
great length of Madame Laffarge, and of the extraordinary interest
her trial excited, dividing all Paris into Laffargists and
anti-Laffargists, and almost superseding war as a general topic
of conversation, she passes to the then burning subject of the
fortification of Paris, and writes as follows--curiously enough,
considering the date of her letter:--
"Louis Philippe, whose favourite hobby it has ever been, from the idea
that it makes him master of Paris, lays the first stone to-day. Some
people consider it the first stone of the mausoleum of his dynasty.
I sincerely hope not; for everything that can be called lady or
gentleman runs a good chance of forming part of the funeral pile. The
political madness which has taken possession of the public mind is
fearful. Foreign or civil war! Such is the alternative. Thiers, who
governs the masses, flatters them by promises of war and conquest. The
_Marsellaise_, so lately a sign of rebellion, is sung openly in the
theatres; the soldiers under arms sing it in chorus. The Guarde
Nationale urges the King to declare war. He has resisted it with all
his power, but has now, they say, given way, and has given Thiers
_carte blanche_. He is in fact entirely under his control. The
Chambers are not consulted. Thiers is our absolute sovereign. We call
ourselves a free people. We have beheaded one monarch, exiled three
generations of kings merely to have a dictator, '_mal né, mal fait, et
mal élevé_.' There has been a rumour of a change of ministry, but no
one believes it. The overthrow of Thiers would be the signal for a
revolution, and the fortifications are not yet completed to master it.
May not all these armaments be the precursors of some _coup d'état_? A
general gloom is over all around us. All the faces are long; all the
conversations are sad!"
This may be accepted as a thoroughly accurate and trustworthy
representation of the then state of feeling and opinion among the
friends of Louis Philippe's Government, whether _Parceque Bourbon_ or
_Quoique Bourbon_, and as such is valuable. It is curious too, to find
a staunch friend of the existing government, who may be said to have
been even intimate with the younger members of the royal family,
speaking of the Prime Minister with the detestation which these
letters again and again express for Thiers.
In a letter of the 19th November, 1840, the writer describes at great
length the recent opening of the Chamber by the King. She enlarges on
the intensity of the anxiety felt for the tenor of the King's speech,
which was supposed to be the announcement of war or peace; and
describes the deep emotion, with which Louis Philippe, declaring his
hope that peace might yet be preserved, called upon the nation to
assist him in the effort to maintain it; and expresses the scorn and
loathing with which she overheard one republican deputy say to another
as the King spoke, "_Voyez donc ce Robert Macaire, comme il fait
semblant d'avoir du coeur_!"
A letter of the 14th March, 1842, is written in better spirits and
a lighter tone. Speaking of the prevalent hostile feeling towards
England the writer wishes that her countrymen would remember
Lamartine's observation that "_ce patriotisme coûte peu! Il suffit
d'ignorer, d'injurier et de hair_." She tells her correspondent that
"if Lord Cowley has much to do to establish the exact line between
Lord Aberdeen's _observations_ and _objections_, Lady Cowley has
no less difficulty in keeping a nice balance between dignity and
popularity," as "the Embassy is besieged by all sets and all parties;
the tag and rag, because pushing is a part of their nature; the _juste
milieu_ [how the very phrase recalls a whole forgotten world!] because
they consider the English Embassy as their property; the noble
Faubourg because they are tired of sulking, and would not object
to treating Lady Cowley as they treated Colonel Thorn,[1] viz.,
establishing their quarters at the 'Cowley Arms,' as they did at
the 'Thorn's Head,' and inviting their friends on the recognised
principle, '_C'est moi qui invite, et Monsieur qui paie_'"
[Footnote 1: Colonel Thorn was an American of fabulous wealth, who was
for a season or two very notorious in Paris. He was the hero of the
often-told story of the two drives to Longchamps the same day; first
with one gorgeous equipment of _liveries_, and a second time with
other and more resplendently clothed retainers.]
Then follows an account of a fancy _bal monstre_ at the Tuileries,
which might have turned out, says the writer, to deserve that title
in another sense. It was believed that a plot had been formed for
the assassination of the King, at the moment, when, according to his
invariable custom, he took his stand at the door of the supper-room to
receive the ladies there. Four thousand five hundred tickets had been
issued and a certain number of these, still blank, had disappeared.
That was certain. And it was also certain that the King did not go to
the door of the supper-room as usual. But the writer remarks that the
tickets may have been stolen by, or for, people who could not obtain
them legitimately. But the instantly conceived suspicion of a plot is
illustrative of the conditions of feeling and opinions in Paris at the
time.
"For my part," continues Mademoiselle D'Henin, "I never enjoyed a
ball so much; perhaps because I did not expect to be amused; perhaps
because all the royal family, the Jockey Club, and the fastidious
Frenchwomen congratulated me upon my toilet, and voted it one of the
handsomest there. They _said_ the most becoming (but that was _de
l'eau bénite de Cour_); perhaps it was because the Dukes of Orleans,
Nemours, and Aumale, who never dance, and did so very little that
evening, all three honoured me with a quadrille. You see I expose to
you all the very linings of my heart I dissect it and exhibit all
the vanity it contains. But you will excuse me when I tell you of a
compliment that might have turned a wiser head than mine. The fame of
my huntress's costume (Mademoiselle D'Henin was in those days the very
_beau-idéal_ of a Diana!) was such that it reached the ears of the
wife of our butcher, who sent to beg that I would lend it to her to
copy, as she was going to a fancy ball!"
A letter of the 8th of August, 1842, written from Fulham Palace,
contains some interesting notices of the grief and desolation caused
by the sad death of the Duke of Orleans.
"Was there ever a more afflicting calamity!" she writes. "When last
I wrote his name in a letter to you, it was to describe him as the
admired of all beholders, the hero of the _féte_, the pride and honour
of France, and now what remains of him is in his grave! The affliction
of his family baffles all description. I receive the most touching
accounts from Paris. Some ladies about the Court write to me that
nothing can equal their grief. As long as the coffin remained in the
chapel at Neuilly, the members of the family were incessantly kneeling
by the side of it, praying and weeping. The King so far mastered his
feelings, that whenever he had official duties to perform, he was
sufficiently composed to perform _son métier de Roi_. But when the
painful task was done he would rush to the chapel, and weep over the
dead body of his son, till the whole palace rang with his cries and
lamentations. When the body was removed from Neuilly to Notre Dame,
the scene at Neuilly was truly heartrending. My father has seen the
King and the Princes several times since the catastrophe, and he says
it has done the work of years on their personal appearance, The Due de
Nemours has neither eaten nor slept since his brother died, and
looks as if walking out of his grave. Mamma wrote him a few lines
of condolence, which he answered by a most affecting note. Papa was
summoned to attend the King to the House, as _Grand Officier_, and
says he never witnessed such a scene. Even the opposition shed their
crocodile tears. Placed immediately near the King on the steps of
the throne, he saw the struggle between kingly decorum and fatherly
affliction. Nature had the victory. Three times the King attempted to
speak, three times he was obliged to stop, and at last burst into a
flood of tears. The contagion gained all around him. And it was only
interrupted by sobs that he could proceed. And it is in the face of
this despair, when the body of the prince is scarcely cold, that
that horrid Thiers and his associates begin afresh their infernal
manoeuvres!"
A letter of the 3rd April, 1842, contains among a quantity of the
gossip of the day an odd story, which, the writer says, "is putting
Rome in a ferment, and the clergy in raptures." I think I remember
that it made a considerable stir in ecclesiastic circles at the time.
A certain M. Ratisbonne, a Jew, it seems entered a church in Rome (the
writer does not say so, but if I remember rightly, it was the "Gesu"),
with a friend, a M. de Bussières, who had some business to transact in
the sacristy. The Jew, who professed complete infidelity, meantime was
looking at the pictures. But M. de Bussières, when his business was
done, found him prostrate on the pavement in front of a picture of the
Madonna. The Jew on coming to himself declared that the Virgin had
stepped from her frame, and addressed him, with the result, as he
said, that having fallen to the ground an infidel, he rose a convinced
Christian! Mademoiselle D'Henin writes in a tone which indicates small
belief in the miracle, but seems to accept as certain the further
facts, that the convert gave all he possessed to the Church and became
a monk.
I have recently--even while transcribing these extracts from her
letters--heard of the death, within the last few years, of the writer
of them. She died in England, I am told, and unmarried. Her sympathies
and affections were always strongly turned to her mother's country, as
indeed may be in some degree inferred from even those passages of her
letters which have been given. And I can well conceive that the events
which, each more disastrous than its predecessor, followed in France
shortly after the date of the last of them, may have rendered,
especially after the death of her parents, a life in France
distasteful to her. But I, and, I think, my mother also, had entirely
lost sight of her for very many years. Had I imagined that she was
living in England, I should undoubtedly have endeavoured to see her.
I have known many women, denizens of _le grand monde_, who have
adorned it with equally brilliant talents, equally captivating beauty,
equally sparkling wit and vivacity of intelligence. And I have known
many, denizens of the studious and the book world, gifted with larger
powers of intellect, and more richly dowered with the results of
thought and study But I do not think that I ever met with one who
possessed in so large a degree the choice product resulting from
conversance with both these worlds. She was in truth a very brilliant
creature.
Madame D'Henin I remember made us laugh heartily one evening by
telling us the following anecdote. At one of those remarkable
_omnium-gatherum_ receptions at the Tuileries, of which I have spoken
in a former chapter, she heard an American lady, to whom Louis
Philippe was talking of his American recollections and of various
persons he had known there, say to him, "Oh, sire, they all retain the
most lively recollections of your majesty's sojourn among them, _and
wish nothing more than that you should return among them again_!" The
Duke of Orleans, who was standing behind the King, fairly burst into a
guffaw.
There was a story current in Rome, in the days of Pius the Ninth,
which may be coupled with this as a good _pendant_. His Holiness, when
he had occupied the papal throne for a period considerably exceeding
the legendary twenty-five years of St. Peter, was one day very affably
asking an Englishman, who had been presented to him, whether he had
seen everything in Rome most calculated to interest a stranger, and
was answered; "Yes indeed, your Holiness, I think almost everything,
except one which I confess I have been particularly anxious to
witness--a conclave!"
Here are a few jottings at random from my diary, which may still have
some little interest.
"Madame Le Roi, a daughter of General Hoche, told me (22nd January,
1840), that as she was driving on the boulevard a day or two ago,
a sou piece was thrown with great violence at the window of her
carriage, smashing it to pieces. This, she said, was because her
family arms were emblazoned on the panel. Most of the carriages in
Paris, she said, had no arms on them for fear of similar attacks."
Then we were active frequenters of the theatres. We go, I find, to the
Français, to see Mars, then sixty years old, in _Les Dehors Trompeurs_
and in the _Fausses Confidences_; to the opera to hear _Robert le
Diable_ and _Lucia di Lammermuir_, with Persiani, Tamburini, and
Rubini; and the following night to the Français again, to see Rachel
in _Cinna_.
I thought her personally, I observe, very attractive. But that, and
sundry other subsequent experiences, left me with the impression
that she was truly very powerful in the representation of scorn,
indignation, hatred, and all the sterner and less amiable passions of
the soul, but failed painfully when her _rôle_ required the exhibition
of tenderness or any of the gentler emotions. These were my
impressions when she was young and I was comparatively so. But when,
many years afterwards, I saw her repeatedly in Italy, they were not, I
think, much modified.
The frequent occasions on which subsequently I saw Ristori produced an
impression on me very much the reverse. I remember thinking Ristori's
"Mirra" too good, so terribly true as to be almost too painful for the
theatre. I thought Rachel's "Marie Stuart" upon the whole her finest
performance, though "Adrienne" ran it hard.
Persiani, I note, supported by Lablache and Rubini, had a most
triumphant reception in _Inez de Castro_, while Albertazzi was very
coldly received in _Blanche de Castille_. Grisi in _Norma_ was
"superb." "Persiani and P. Garcia sang a duet from _Tancredi_; it was
divine! I think I like Garcia's voice better than any of them. Nor
could I think her ugly, as it is the fashion to call her, though it
must be admitted that her mouth and teeth are alarming."
Then there were brilliant receptions at the English Embassy (Lord
Granville) and at the Austrian Embassy (Comte d'Appony). My diary
remarks that stars and gold lace and ribbons of all the Orders in
Christendom were more abundant at the latter, but female beauty at the
former. I remember much admiring that of Lady Honoria Cadogan, and
that of a very remarkably lovely Visconti girl, a younger sister of
the Princess Belgiojoso. But despite this perfect beauty, my diary
notes, that it was "curious to observe the unmistakable superiority
as a human being of the young English patrician." I remember that the
"sit-down" suppers at the Austrian Embassy--a separate little table
for every two, three, or four guests--were remarked on as a novelty
(and applauded) by the Parisians.
Then at Miss Clarke's (afterwards Madame Mohl) I find Fauriel, "the
first Provençal scholar in Europe," delightful, and am disgusted with
Merimée, because he manifested self-sufficiency, as it seemed to my
youthful criticism, by pooh-poohing the probability of the temple
at Lanleff in Brittany having been aught else than a church of the
Templars.
Then Arago reads an _Eloge_ on "old Ampère," of which I only remark
that it lasted two hours and a half. Then there was a dinner at Dr.
Gilchrist's whose widow our old friend Pepe, who for many years had
always called her "Madame Ghee-cree," subsequently married. My notes,
written the same evening, remind me that "I did not much like the
radical old Doctor (his wife was an old acquaintance, but I had
never seen him before); he is eighty, and ought to know better. Old
Nymzevitch (I am not sure of the spelling), the ex-Chancellor of
Poland, dined with us. He is eighty-four. When he said that he had
conversed with the Duc de Richelieu, I started as if he had announced
himself as the Wandering Jew. But, in fact, he had had, when a young
man, an interview with the Duc, then ninety. He was, Nymzevitch told
me, dreadfully emaciated, but dressed very splendidly in a purple
coat all bedizened with silver lace. He received me, said the old
ex-Chancellor, with much affable dignity."'
Then comes a breakfast with Pepe, at which I met the President
Thibeaudeau, "a grey old man who makes a point of saying rude, coarse,
and disagreeable things, which his friends call dry humour. He found
fault with everything at the breakfast table."
Then a visit to the Chamber (where I heard Soult, Dupin, and Teste
speak, and thought it "a terrible bear-garden)" is followed by
attendance at a sermon by Athanase Coquerel, the Protestant preacher
whose reputation in the Parisian _beau monde_ was great in those days.
He was, says my diary, "exceedingly eloquent, but I did not like his
sermon;" for which dislike my notes proceed to give the reasons, which
I spare the, I hope grateful, reader. Then I went to hear Bishop
Luscombe at the Ambassador's chapel, and listened to "a very stupid
sermon." I seem, somewhat to my surprise as I read the records of it,
to have had a pronounced taste for sermons in those days, which I fear
I have somehow outgrown. But then I have been very deaf during my
later decades.
Bishop Luscombe may perhaps however be made more amusing to the reader
than he was to me in the Embassy chapel by the following fragment of
his experience. The Bishop arrived one day at Paddington, and could
not find his luggage. He called a porter to find it for him, telling
him the name to be read on the articles. The man, very busy with other
people, answered hurriedly, "You must go to hell for your luggage."
Now, Luscombe, who was a somewhat pompous and very _bishopy_ man, was
dreadfully shocked, and felt, as he said, as if the porter had struck
him in the face. In extreme indignation he demanded where he could
speak with any of the authorities, and was told that "the Board"
was then sitting up stairs. So to the boardroom the Bishop went
straightway, and announcing himself, made his complaint. The chairman,
professing his regret that such offence should have been given,
said he feared the man must have been drunk, but that he should be
immediately summoned to give an account of his conduct. So the porter
in great trepidation appeared in a few minutes before the august
tribunal of "the Board."
"Well, sir," said he in reply to the chairman's indignant questioning,
"what could I do? I was werry busy at the time. So when the gentleman
says as his name was Luscombe, I could do no better than tell him to
go to h'ell for his luggage, and he'd have found it there all right!"
"Oh! I see," said the chairman, "it is a case of misplaced aspirate!
We have spaces on the wall marked with the letters of the alphabet,
and you would have found your luggage at the letter L. You will see
that the man meant no offence. I am sorry you should have been so
scandalised, but though we succeed, I hope, in making our porters
civil to our customers, it would be hopeless, I fear, to attempt to
make them say L correctly." _Solvuntur risu tabulae_.
I find chronicled a long talk with Mohl one evening at Madame
Récamier's. The room was very full of notable people of all sorts, and
the tide of chattering was running very strong. "How can anything last
long in France?" said he, in reply to my having said (in answer to
his assertion that Cousin's philosophy had gone by) that it had been
somewhat short-lived. "Reputations are made and pass away. It is
impossible that they should endure. It is in such places as this that
they are destroyed. The friction is prodigious!"
We then began to talk of the state of religion in France. He said
that among a large set, religion was now _à la mode_. But he did not
suppose that many of the fine folks who _patronised_ it had much
belief in it. The clergy of France were, he said, almost invariably
very illiterate. Guizot, I remembered, calls them in his _History of
Civilisation doctes et crudits_, but I abstained from quoting him.
Mohl went on to tell me a story of a newspaper that had been about to
be established, called _Le Democrat_. The shareholders met, when it
appeared that one party wished to make it a Roman Catholic, and the
other an atheist organ. Whereupon the existence of God was put to the
vote and carried by a majority of one, at which the atheist party were
so disgusted that they seceded in a body.
I got to like Mohl much, and had more conversation, I think, with him
than with any other of the numerous men of note with whom I became
more or less acquainted. On another occasion, when I found him in his
cabinet, walled up as usual among his books, our talk fell on his
great work, the edition of the oriental MSS. in the _Bibliothèque
Royale_, which was to be completed in ten folio volumes, the first
of which, just out, he was showing me. He complained of the extreme
slowness of the Government presses in getting on with the work. This
he attributed to the absurd costliness, as he considered it, of the
style in which the work was brought out. The cost of producing that
first volume he told me had been over 1,600_l_. sterling. It was to be
sold at a little less than a hundred francs. Something was said (by
me, I think) of the possibility of obtaining assistance from the King,
who was generally supposed to be immensely wealthy. Mohl said that he
did not believe Louis Philippe to be nearly so rich a man as he was
supposed to be. He had spent, he said, enormous sums on the châteaux
he had restored, and was affirmed by those who had the means of
knowing the fact, to be at that time twelve millions of francs in
debt.
My liking for Mohl seems to have been fully justified by the
estimation he was generally held in. I find in a recently published
volume by Kathleen O'Meara on the life of my old friend, Miss Clarke,
who afterwards became his wife, the following passage quoted from
Sainte-Beuve, who describes him as "a man who was the very embodiment
of learning and of inquiry, an oriental _savant_--more than a
_savant_--a sage, with a mind clear, loyal, and vast; a German mind
passed through an English filter, a cloudless, unruffled mirror, open
and limpid; of pure and frank morality; early disenchanted with all
things; with a grain of irony devoid of all bitterness, the laugh of a
child under a bald head; a Goethe-like intelligence, but free from all
prejudice." "A charming and _spirituelle_ Frenchwoman," Miss O'Meara
goes on to say, "said of Julius Mohl that Nature in forming his
character had skimmed the cream of the three nationalities to which he
belonged by birth, by adoption and by marriage, making him deep as a
German, _spirituel_ as a Frenchman, and loyal as an Englishman."
I may insert here the following short note from Madame Mohl, because
the manner of it is very characteristic of her. It is, as was usual
with her, undated.
* * * * *
"MY DEAR MR. TROLLOPE,--By accident I have just learned that you are
in London. If I could see you and talk over my dear old friend (Madame
Récamier) I should be so much obliged and so glad. I live 68 Oxford
Terrace, Hyde Park. If you would write me a note to say when I should
be at home for the purpose. But if you can't, I am generally, not
always, found after four. But if you could come on the 10th or 12th
after nine we have a party. I am living at Mrs. Schwabe's just now
till 16th this month. Pray write me a note, even If you can't come.
"Yours ever,
"MARY MOHL."
* * * * *
All the capital letters in the above transcript, except those in her
name are mine, she uses none. The note is written in headlong hurry.
Mignet, whom I met at the house of Thiers, I liked too, but Mohl was
my favourite.
It was all very amusing, with as much excitement and interest of
all kinds crammed into a few weeks as might have lasted one for a
twelvemonth. And I liked it better than teaching Latin to the youth of
Birmingham. But it would seem that there was something that I liked
better still. For on March 30th, leaving my mother in the full swing
of the Parisian gaieties, I bade adieu to them all and once again
"took to the road," bound on an excursion through Central France.