probably belongs to some of my friends; for I am connected with nearly
all the old noblesse of the province.”
“It is the Château des Rochers, Madame!”
“The Château des Rochers!” reiterated Madame de ——.
“The château of Madame de Sévigné!” I exclaimed, with almost breathless
delight.
The stranger bowed assent. “Eh, mon dieu! qui est donc le châtelain?
to what noble family has it descended? The Sévignés are extinct; and I
believe Les Rochers were bequeathed to the Duchesse de Simiane by her
illustrious grandmother.”
“Les Rochers have fallen into various hands within the last half-century,
Madame. It was sold, with other national property, at the Revolution. The
present proprietor is a rich gentleman of the province, Le Baron de ——.
He is at present in Paris; but there will be no difficulty in showing you
the château, which may amuse away the time till your carriage is set to
rights.”
Madame de ——, who had not heard the name of the present proprietor
of Les Rochers, whispered me, “Ah! ma belle, ce Monsieur le Baron
d’aujourd’hui est sans doute un de la Bande Noire,”[42] coldly declined
the proposition, and as rest, to her, was always enjoyment, she patiently
resigned herself to the agreeable infliction of remaining tranquilly
in the carriage; while Félicie, who descended to give Sylphide an
airing, immediately seated herself on a mossy bank by the road side; and
Hypolite, mounting one of the coach-horses, rode off for the smith, the
smoke of whose forge was visible at a short distance.
The idea of visiting Les Rochers, whence so many of the inimitable
letters of the most charming writer in the world were written, appeared
to me rather a pleasant dream, than a reality. I could scarcely credit
my luck. So taking the stranger’s offered arm, I promised Madame de
—— a speedy return, and proceeded to the shrine of “Notre Dame des
Rochers,” with as much devotional enthusiasm as ever carried a jubilee
pilgrim across the Pontine Marshes, from the Abruzzi to St. Peter’s.
Having cut across the little orchard, we were still involved in a woody
copse, which gave us only partial gleams of the white towers of the
château. “Envoyez-moi de la vue, et je vous enverrai des arbres,”[43]
writes Madame de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan: and the request is still
applicable to the site, which is covered with trees, to the total
exclusion of some charming views, which, with a little effort, might
be happily commanded from the building. The château and its mass of
antique towers stand upon an esplanade, after the manner of the feudal
edifices of France. _La cour du château_, spacious and gloomy, is shut
in by a ponderous iron gate, through which I gazed with a fluttering
heart, while the old porter, summoned by the stranger, went for his keys
to give us admission. Nothing could be more antique and picturesque
than the architecture, tinged and partially lighted, as it was, by a
brilliant sunset. The château is said to date its erection as far back as
the fourteenth century; and its high antiquity was verified by a spiral
flight of stairs, cut out of a tower in the _corps de logis_; which was
flanked by two other towers,—the whole bordered by grim Gothic heads, and
monstrous nondescript representations of animals, which incrusted the
upper part of the building, from the springing of the roof to its summit.
One little tower stood apart, built in the same grotesque style, except
that its roof resembled an extinguisher.
“That,” said my cicerone, “is a modern building. It is the chapel
mentioned in Madame de Sévigné’s letters, built by her for _le bien bon_,
the amiable and witty Abbé de Coulanges.”
The porter now gave us admittance; and as we paused before the
interesting edifice, which, with Turkish barbarity, had been recently
white-washed, he exclaimed, “It is another thing now, _pardie_, to what
it was before the Revolution, with its green and brown walls, and moss,
and ivy, and birds’ nests, and what not!—Mais nous avons changés tout
cela—nous avons reblanchi toutes ces vieilles masures, à la chaux; et
encore donné trois couches bien épaisses en dehors et en dedans.”[44]
The old porter then waddled on before us, and the stranger observed,
in a low voice, as if replying to the disgust my looks involuntarily
expressed, “Monsieur le Concierge, it seems, has never read the letters
of Madame de Sévigné. They have indeed changed this most interesting of
all sites into a grotesque _métairie_;” and pointing to a _lavoir_ and
stables decorated with Corinthian columns, the curé added, “And yet this
is not the worst!”
We were now in the hall of the château, and followed our cicerone
through the apartments not closed against the intrusion of strangers;
but all had been so recently and thoroughly changed to the modern
style of decoration, that there was scarcely any object left to recal
_la bellissima madre_, except her portrait by Mignard, which was
placed over _le poële_ in the dining-room. Dark, low, and narrow, this
apartment could not have been the room in which Madame de Sévigné so
often entertained the splendid governor of the province and his lady,
the high-bred Palatine, with the jovial, gay, and witty visitors, the
Coulanges, Pomenars, and others of rank and talents, whom the assembling
of the States General at Rennes brought to the château. Nothing now
remained as it had been even so recently as the year 1810.
“Every thing has been destroyed and effaced,” whispered the stranger:
“and even the _cabinet de lecture_ and the bedchambers of Madame de
Sévigné and Madame de Grignan (where the portrait of _la belle et fière
comtesse_ still hangs) have undergone a similar and equally barbarous
alteration.”
As these classical and historical apartments were locked up, and as
time pressed, and the sun was sinking, we hurried on to the gardens and
grounds, so often described by Madame de Sévigné. But still change,
barbarous, pitiless change prevailed. New walls, new terraces, new
orangeries destroyed all those precious associations so intimately
connected with the old. They had also recently cut down those _allées_,
planted and watched with such maternal tenderness by Madame de Sévigné;
and as their sites were pointed out to me, I could not avoid exclaiming,
“Helas! qu’est devenu ce bosquet enchanté?”
“Que voulez-vous, Madame?” asked the old gardener, pettishly. “We have
cut them down to make chicken-hatches for Madame.”
The stranger, to console me, exhibited the phenomenon of the echo, so
often cited to Madame de Grignan, and which, as it could not be turned to
any account for the hen-coops, still remains in all its original mystery.
“L’allée de ma fille still existed in 1810,” said my guide, as evident a
Sevignite as myself; “but there now remains not one of those venerable
witnesses, which so often shaded and sheltered in their promenades the
tenderest of mothers and the most adored of daughters. Not one old and
silent confidant exists of those _piquantes causeries_ between the witty
_maman beauté_, and that _trésor de folie_, her still wittier son,—of
the strange but humorous confessions, followed by such mild reprimands,
and such sarcastic pleasantries,—and of those aveux _naïfs de l’aimable
vaurien_, who in one night at Lansequenet _mangeait 500 gros chênes à
sa mère_, and who, brave as Condé, _spirituel_ as St. Evremont, had
entered the lists with Dacier, concerning Horace, had lived with Racine,
laughed with Molière, jilted Ninon, _se grisait par bon air_, committed
a thousand follies, confessed them all a thousand times to his _belle
maman_, and, always forgiven, continued to repent old pleasures at Les
Rochers, and to solicit new, on his return to Paris.”
I inquired in vain for those formal and venerable _allées_, ornamented
with so many pretty devices, and consecrated by such recollections;—all
had fallen victims to the axe of the terrible Baron Breton. Their names,
however, still survived; and I had the melancholy pleasure of walking
over the ground which was still known as “l’Allée Royale,” “l’Allée du
Point du Jour,” “l’Allée de Tremaine,” and “l’Allée de l’Infinie.” At the
farther extremity of the Allée Royale, a semi-circular seat of verdure,
commanding a delicious view of the _coteaux boisés_ of the immediate
neighbourhood, invited us to a momentary halt. This was the charming
spot, whence Madame de Sévigné wrote so many of her letters,—“la Place
de Madame.” It was decorated with a fine old orange-tree, which had been
removed from its vast green-house, in a wooden _caisse_, by the stranger
himself, in the absence of the baron. While we gazed on the rich and
lovely vista, the sunlight gradually faded from the summits of the
loftiest trees, the shadows deepened, and the necessity of returning was
acknowledged with regret, and obeyed with reluctance.
Having begged permission, therefore, to gather a little _bouquet_ from
the orange-tree which shaded “la Place de Madame,” I again accepted the
arm of the courteous cicerone. As we proceeded towards the carriage,
my thoughts were so completely transported to the days of the La
Rochefoucaulds, the Coulanges, and the La Moussés, that, forgetting the
lapse of a century, and of events that had doubled that interval, I
inquired if any of the family of the amusing Mademoiselle du Plessis,
the _bas bleu_ of Vitri, and the subject of Madame de Sévigné’s humorous
delineations, were still in the neighbourhood.[45] He replied, that of
the _dramatis personæ_ of Les Rochers, of all those who had played such
amusing and characteristic parts in the correspondence of Madame de
Sévigné, he knew but one name that had survived the lapse of time and the
general _bouleversement_. It was that of Pilois.
“What!” I said, “the favourite and venerable gardener of Madame
de Sévigné, who planted those very trees under whose shade we are
walking?[46] Do any of his descendants reside here?”
“His great grandson has the honour of addressing you,” he replied, bowing.
We were now within view of the carriage; and taking from my neck a little
cross of Irish bogwood, I requested him to accept of it, as a small token
of acknowledgment for the pleasure I had derived through his means, in
being permitted to visit the shrine of the goddess “of my idolatry,” and
to enjoy a conversation with the descendant of her faithful friend and
domestic, to whose character his illustrious lady had communicated a
classic and deathless interest. The good clergyman blushed, bowed, and
accepted my offering, with as much courtesy, and a feeling apparently
as deep, as if it had been of “one entire and perfect crysolite.” The
spring was now patched up, and pronounced capable of carrying us to
Rennes. We therefore bade a hasty adieu to our accidental acquaintance,
and soon lost sight of the ancient and memorable towers of Le Château des
Rochers.[47]
STRAWBERRY HILL.
“Some cry up Gunnersbury,
For Sion some declare,
And some say that with Chiswick House
No villa can compare;
But ask the beaux of Middlesex,
Who know the country well,
If Strawberry Hill—if Strawberry Hill
Don’t bear away the bell.”
_Earl of Bath’s Ballad on Strawberry Hill._
Lord Byron has somewhere observed, that it has long been the fashion
for the _canaille_ of literary criticism to vituperate Horace Walpole,
“because he was a gentleman.” An unfounded observation, which the
“Edinburgh Review” has successfully refuted,—and refuted upon the
testimony of a deeper experience, and more intimate knowledge of the
science of literary economy (if the phrase may be allowed,) than could
have been attained by one, whose high rank, and high genius, alike placed
him far beyond the dabblings of literary intrigue, or the possibility of
intellectual subserviency.
If ministers of state best know every man’s price in the political
market, if they are best acquainted with the inherent littleness of that
“poor human nature,” to the corruptibility of which they have the means
of applying such powerful stimulants, such resistless temptations,—the
editors of an influential party and periodical work best know of what
stuff those “Swiss of the press” are made, who deal out opinion according
“to the measure that is measured unto them” by their taskers,—of what
mixed metal the current coin of literary criticism is composed, which
ductile, though base, takes the mark of any dye impressed on it by the
master-worker of the mint. The Edinburgh Reviewers, therefore, told Lord
Byron, and told him truly, that, as a body, the periodical critics of the
day bore no malice against Lord Orford, because he was “a gentleman,”
and that, far from rank being injurious to literary fame, even _he_,
Lord Byron, _the star of the ascendant_, stood indebted for the lenity
with which the author of “Don Juan” was treated by the most orthodox
reviewers in England, at least as much to the elevation of his rank, as
to the loftiness of his genius—to his “gentle blood,” as to his splendid
talents. The fact is, that if
“A saint in crape be twice a saint in lawn,”
an author in a coronet has _twice_ the chance of obtaining a favourable
judgment, that can be expected by mere plebeian talent, which has only
its original merits to plead for those “sins” which all literary “flesh
is heir to.”
With what indulgence has not the accomplished, but titled Author of
“Matilda” been treated by the reviewing hierarchy of the day, even
in spite of the little _faux-pas_ which forms the ground-work of
his catastrophe,—in spite of the _vertu de moins_ of his _bon-ton_
heroine,—in spite of a moral produced by a cold in the head (when a
more legitimate source of poetical justice was at hand, in the fate and
story of many fair contemporary _délaissées_ in real life and living
frailty)—nay, in spite even of his whiggism, his liberalism, and his
anti-Austrianism; and when rebuked, how gently and with what a _patte de
velours_ has this lordly author been treated by the great conservators
of public and literary morals. What honours indeed have not been done
to the light and pleasant pages of one, who has so agreeably added to
the daily increasing list of noble authors,[48] and who is certainly
something more than “a wit among lords, and a lord among wits.” But who
among the literary toparchs, who are so ready to bring mediocrity into
fashion, and to patronize the usurpations that can never interfere with
their own acknowledged supremacy—who among the great fame-bestowing
reviewers, that “give and take away” the bubble reputation, or try to
do it, have turned out the author of “Crohoore of the Bill Hook,” and
“John Doe,” for public admiration? And yet in these two great pictures
of an unopened vein of national manners, there is as bold etching,
and as fine masses of _chiaro oscuro_, as were ever produced even by
the exquisite burin of the Scottish Rembrandt. It was not, then, the
gentility of Horace Walpole, that stood in the way of his preferment in
reviews, and his popularity with the members of literary coteries. Yet
that he has been borne down, from his own to the present time, both by
the corporate bodies, and by the honorary members of criticism, is quite
true—his claims to genius denied, his pretensions to taste ridiculed, his
style termed “slip-slop,” his “Historic Doubts” doubted, and his villa
at Strawberry Hill, which he himself has named “a paper fabric to hold
an assemblage of curious trifles,” selected as a _damning proof_ against
his antiquarianism, by the learned young gentlemen of the “old lady’s
logic”[49]—(the learning which draws fools from their obscurity)—who have
always affected to consider it as a “Gothic Vatican of Greece and Rome,”
and a standing monument of his ignorance of all true _virtù_. And yet
Horace Walpole _has_ established his claims to genius by its own highest
prerogative—original invention! His “Castle of Otranto” is the first of
its genus,[50] and has consecrated him the founder of that delightful
school of literary fiction, of which Radcliffe, Scott, and a host of far
inferior spirits, are but the disciples;[51] while his “Correspondence”
has supplied to British literature that elegant branch of familiar
composition, so long a desideratum. The letters of Horace Walpole have
almost the merit of original inventions, compared with all the printed
collections which preceded his own, (with the sole exception of those of
his contemporary, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.[52]) The letters of Howell
(deemed models in their time) had long been condemned by the standard
simplicity of modern taste, which loves epigrams, and hates essays; and
had already taken their places on the dusty shelves
“With all such reading as is never read.”
The quaint and peremptory style of Swift’s never _very familiar_
epistles (his Journal to Stella excepted), though certainly a pure and
sterling specimen of the English language of the Augustan day, wanted
that _laissez-aller_ charm, which is the perfection of letter-writing;
and Pope’s _Voiture_-like and _spirituel_ epistles, have all the air
of being got up for print, and were evidently as much intended for the
public and his publisher, as for his mistress or his friend.[53] Even
Addison’s “Letters,” (to whose style and “study” we are ordered by the
once colossal dictator of literature—ponderous but not powerful—already
a Hercules without his club—to “give up our days and nights,”—a false
and despotic counsel! as if every age has not necessarily its own
style, dependent upon the progress of society and the development of
human intellect and science)—even Addison’s “Letters,” cold, formal, and
studied, are as devoid of originality as the travels of which they are
supposed to be a journal;[54] while Richardson’s epistles to his literary
ladies are tiresome as the homilies of his own “good Mrs. Norton.” Gay
(and perhaps Arbuthnot sometimes) has alone given to his letters the
charm of that exquisite simplicity, which was the characteristic feature
of the talent of the English La Fontaine; and Sterne, whose letters,
though witty and agreeable, are affected, came rather too late to be
offered as an exception to the studied and pedantic style, which left
England without a good letter-writer, while France justly boasted so many.
Good letter-writing is but good conversation carried on by the pen, a
familiar talking upon paper, the intimate chit-chat of the fire-side on
its travels by post, not invented solely for some “wretch’s aid,” but
resorted to by the fond and the feeling to cheat absence of its pang;
or by the intellectual, and the social, “for the better carrying on” of
that intercourse of mind and imagination, without which life is a blank;
or by the gay, and the gossiping, for the circulation of those petty
interests and every-day incidents and events, which, if important to
none, are resources to all, which prevent time from stagnating, and which
originate ideas, the lightness of which gives temporary relief from the
great penalties of existence, deep thinking and deep feeling. The best
letter, therefore, is that which makes the least demand upon the mind,
and the most upon the fancy and the heart. He who writes to be studied,
rarely writes to be read; he who writes to be admired, rarely writes to
please. Ye Sévignés, and ye Ninons,[55] to whom _l’esprit Rambouillet_
was a source of perpetual ridicule, I invoke the careless spirit that
pervades your delightful letters to attest the truth of the observation,
and to bear witness in favour of the only letter-writer in the English
language, who resembles or who rivals you! The letters of Horace Walpole
were written evidently _à trait de plume_,[56] carelessly and playfully,
and yet, like those of the goddess of his idolatry, they are eminently
“_propres à faire connaître les mœurs, le ton, l’esprit, les usages de
son tems_;” indeed he himself confesses, in one of his sketching details
of the day, thrown off at a heat for the amusement of George Montague,
and of his hero Harry Conway, (whose character and adventures, by the
by, give a sort of epic interest to his correspondence) that he was
“collecting the follies of the age for the benefit of posterity.” He was
in fact, and often unconsciously, the Dangeau of his times and class; and
in the course of his agreeable and epistolary gossiping, “enshrined in
amber” the ephemeral “flies” of fashion, the autocrats of high society,
who, insignificant in themselves, illustrate by their reigning manners
and vices the history of the age in which they flourish, as “Kitcats”
and “schemers,” the despots of Cornelis or Almack’s.[57] He has also
left some characters of men, whose names belong to history, finer and
truer than history herself could delineate. The true secret of Horace
Walpole’s unpopularity with a large class of professional and amateur
literati, who deny his claims to that reputation which genius alone
can give, is the unmitigated war, the _guerre à la mort_, which he
waged, almost from the go-cart to the tomb, against all pretension, and
against all unfounded and self-sufficient claims to distinction. He not
only attacked those influential _bodies corporate_, who have obtained
authority over public opinion, merely by assuming it,[58] but with
daring scepticism, and moral courage, he attacked the false gods of the
popular worship of his day, set up by bad taste, or imposed on credulity
by audacious talent.[59] He attacked the cant of Warburton,[60] and the
affectation of Rousseau. He attacked the buckram heroes and heroines
of Richardson, when it was “religion to adore them,”[61] and declared
Sir Charles a bore, and Clarissa a quiz! He attacked the authenticity
of Ossian, when it was deemed heresy to doubt it. He attacked the most
imposing historical fallacies, which ages had consecrated through party
prejudice down to the present times. He attacked scientific pedantry in
the “old lady’s logic,” and detected literary imposition in the person
of Chatterton. He attacked those solemn and sentimental vices of high
society, which were then beginning to make their way to England,—from
the voluptuous bowers of the Medici, to the sober mansions of the stern
and rigid English gentry:[62] and lastly, and worst, the head and front
of his offence, he attacked that loyalty which he himself terms “the
loyalty to Kings in possession,”—he attacked its _alma mater_, Oxford, as
a “nursery of bigotry and nonsense;”[63] and made war upon Toryism in its
strongest hold—divine-righted prerogative, and royal infallibility and
martyrdom.[64] For such an assailant there could be _point de salut_, and
there was none. The blockheads of pretension, more particularly, flew to
arms,—a powerful body in all times, “_car l’empire des bêtes est un fait
constaté dans l’histoire_:” and though two generations have nearly passed
away since the first blow was struck, still the rancour of assuming
mediocrity, wounded in its life-nerve, is a bequest that descends from
generation to generation:
“Et les envieux meurent, mais non pas l’envie.”