The following smart account of the late Madame de Genlis, is translated
from that very piquant French paper the Figaro of the 4th January:--
She nearly died the day she came into the world; a mere chance saved
her; and the noble lady lived eighty-five years. What a misfortune, not
only for the Ducrest and the Genlis, if the clumsy Bailiff who sat down
in the arm-chair where the infant prodigy had been left by the careless
nurse, had crushed under the ample and heavy developement of his various
femoral muscles, the hope of French literature! The concussion would
have despoiled us of a hundred volumes, and Heaven can witness what
volumes! History in romances; morality in proverbs; and religion in
comedies. This is what the world of letters would have lost,--society
would have lost a very different thing.
Such a nose as never was possessed before; a nose modelled by Love
himself, and celebrated by ten court poets, and which the censer of
praise was as unable to improve as a certain tumble which its owner had
in infancy. Hands the most beautiful that could be, and which Madame de
Genlis put up for exhibition during twenty years, upon the strings of
a harp, now passed into a proverb. A form without fault, and which made
the delight of the Palais Royal parties in the open air. A foot, alike
triumphant at the Court and at the _Porcherons_. Eyes capable of
making an impression upon the running footman of M. de Brancas, and of
an innumerable crowd of dukes, lawyers, officers, and men of letters.
A genius!--oh! for her genius, if she had not been encumbered with
so much modesty, Madame de Genlis would have shone by it alone in the
_first_ rank; through feminine modesty she remained in the second.
Philosophy may breathe again. The author of "The Evenings at the Castle"
was the Attila of philosophers;--she crushed Voltaire, considering him
as a _mauvais sujet_; pursued Diderot and d'Alembert; breasted
Rousseau; refuted the Encyclopaedia; and was always of the party in
favour of the Altar and the Throne, excepting only the clay when the
revolution of 1789 commenced.
Foul-mouthed people allege Madame de Genlis to have been a great
coquette, which, is a calumny. She was virtue itself. No doubt she was
the object of rude assaults; public declarations, scenes of despair,
disguises, eulogies in verse, madrigals in prose--all were employed to
seduce her affections; but she resisted always. To revenge her cruelty,
they attacked her morals, and epigrams rained on her. She replied by
her Memoirs--rather diffuse confessions, which Lavocat (the publisher)
contrived to dilute further--but edifying, and which have demonstrated
that if Mad. de Genlis was not canonized in her life-time, it was
because there is no longer any religion to speak of, or that she
neglected to cultivate interest with the Pope.
One poet had the audacity to put up Madame de Genlis' honour at the
Exchange for a dollar; the ladies of the Directory exclaimed against
this; the Countess herself said nothing: she despised the exaggeration
which nobody could credit. In truth, Madame de Genlis was quite as good
as the particular Queen, whose modesty was only to fall before the
millions of a Cardinal-Duke.
Mirabeau boasted, in one of his letters, that he had communicated
his own tenderness to the charming tigress; but Mirubeau was a vain,
good-for-nothing coxcomb, and the boudoir on four wheels which he
presented as the theatre of his triumph, was a horrible invention. The
proof is, that Madame de Genlis says nothing whatever about it in her
Memoirs. Posterity should be just towards the illustrious Countess, and
accept, as sincere, her revelations. Let us, then, consider her as the
most virtuous of women; as the least arrogant; the most sensible; the
most learned; for all, in fine, that she desired to appear; for Madame
de Genlis never said what was untrue; she solemnly declares so.
Madame de Genlis had a talent that was very dear to her, but the title
of a good housewife was that she coveted above all the rest. I can never
forget the following circumstance, exemplifying the _naîf_ vanity
of the pretension to be without pretension, which the noble lady
sometimes assumed. I was anxious to see this celebrated person, and
wrote to ask the favour of a brief interview. She appointed the
following day. At twelve o'clock I presented myself;--Madame de Genlis
was writing; she laid down her pen, and obligingly offered me a seat,
then said--"Allow me, sir, to finish my _pot an feu_; above being a
woman of letters, I value myself as a good housewife." And the Countess
scraped the carrots and the leeks, tied them up, put them into the
soup-kettle, skimmed the meat, and neither forgot cloves nor fried
onions. Then taking off her kitchen apron, came with very good grace to
offer herself to my curiosity We talked upon art and literature; and
I must say that she did not speak of her harp more than twice, of her
talent for acting more than once, or of her facility of writing--very
much more than six times.
Madame de Genlis died almost suddenly, and was employing herself as
usual, when death struck her. She leaves two works, which will, no
doubt, be published as soon as a bookseller is found to put them
together, and idlers seem disposed to read them. The King offered her
rooms in the Tuileries, and she had replied to his gracious proposal
the evening before she died.
Louis Philip never forgot his preceptor--Madame de Genlis is said to
have had some desire to be forgotten by her pupil.--_New Monthly
Magazine._
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