THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.
THE
BOOK
OF THE
BOUDOIR.
BY
LADY MORGAN.
“Je n’enseigne pas; je raconte.”
MONTAIGNE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1829.
LONDON:
SHACKELL AND BAYLIS, JOHNSON’S-COURT, FLEET-STREET.
TO THE READER.
The first page of the following work tells “its being’s aim and object.”
It is not worth the gravity of a preface; and will probably escape the
distinction of a criticism. It is of a species scarcely admitted into
the dignity of British literature; and belongs to that light class of
writing in which the French alone excel. Its character is essentially
egotistical, and its style inevitably careless. Time and labour might
perhaps have cleared it of both these faults, and have rendered it a
better work: but it would not then have been the work it was intended to
be—if, indeed, it was intended to be any thing.
The MS. volumes, from which its pages were extracted, have composed
themselves; and I have copied not always what was best, but what was
safest and most inoffensive. Living, as I occasionally have lived, among
whatever is most noted, eminent, and distinguished, with reminiscences
of all, I have yet confined myself to the mention of those to whom we
are already posterity, or to those who have been so much and so long
before the world, as to have become the property of the public. In all, I
have found much good; and of all, I have said much: for, whatever party
calumny may have put forth to the contrary, any severity which may have
appeared in my writings has been directed against principles rather than
persons. I have written, “from my youth, up,” under the influence of one
great and all pervading cause, Ireland and its wrongs. Truth to tell, it
was not a very gracious inspiration; and it frequently opposed opinions,
inevitably tinctured with bitterness, to a temperament, which those who
know me in private life, will vouch for being as cheery and as genial,
as ever went to that strange medley of pathos and humour,—the Irish
character.
But the day is now fast approaching, when all that is Irish will fall
into its natural position; when fair play will be given to national
tendencies, and when the sarcastic author of the O’Donnels and the
O’Briens, having nothing to find fault with, will be reduced to
write, “_à l’eau rose_,” books for boudoirs, or albums for ladies’
dressing-rooms. Among the multitudinous effects of catholic emancipation,
I do not hesitate to predict a change in the character of Irish
authorship.
I cannot, however, give this little work to the public without a word as
to its title; because I never will, knowingly, contribute to a delusion,
however innocent. All who have the supreme felicity of haunting great
houses, are aware, that those odd books, which are thrown on round
tables, or in the recesses of windows, to amuse the lounger of the
moment, and are not in the catalogue of the library, are frequently
stamped, in gold letters, with the name of the room to which they are
destined: as thus;—“Elegant Extracts, Drawing-room;” “Spirit of the
Journals, Saloon,” &c. &c. As my Book of the Boudoir kept its place in
the little room which bore that title, and was never admitted into my
bureau of official authorship, it took the name of its _locale_, which,
by the advice of Mr. Colburn, it retains.[1] I must, however, here
declare, for the sake of truth, and the benefit of country ladies, that
the word Boudoir is no longer in vogue in any possible way; that it is
a term altogether banished from the nomenclature of fashion; and that
I could scarcely have given my work a title less likely to advance its
interests with the enlightened of the _bon ton_. This is an important
fact, which I have only recently discovered. It is a subject upon which
much, no doubt, may be said; but as I am going to France, I will reserve
all I have to say till my return, in the conviction that _les lumières du
siècle_, on a point so important, will there be afforded me, and every
circumstance connected with the “rise, decline, and fall of the Boudoir”
will be communicated without reserve or restriction. Till then, and in
the glorious hope of returning to my poor, native country, an emancipated
Protestant, I take my leave of that gracious public, of whom, whether at
home or abroad, I have never had reason to complain, and whose grateful
servant I have the honour to subscribe myself
SYDNEY MORGAN.
_April 4th, 1829, Kildare Street, Dublin._
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
Page
My Book 1
Egoism and Egotism 7
Love in Idleness 21
Raconteurs 25
Eternity 51
Horne Tooke 53
Richard Kirwan, Esq. 54
Très-Distingué 89
Aux Petits Soins 91
Rapidity 92
My First Rout in London 98
Lord Erskine 117
Lord Castlereagh 127
Meddlers 133
Philosophy of Grammar 134
My Visiting Book 138
Foreign Visitors 148
Irish Union 156
Human Machinery ib.
Suicide 157
External Existence 158
Eclectics 159
Attitudes of Grief 160
Religious Diabolism 168
Fêtes, Parties, and Soirées 170
Doctrine of Causation 191
The Countess D’Albany 193
Irish Reliquaries 197
The Cadenas 201
Tofino 202
Religions 206
Tower of Babel 207
Mathematical Ladies 208
Cardinal Gonsalvi 212
French Poetry 223
Idleness of Genius 226
Frankness 232
Manœuvrers 236
Wonderful Children, and Good Mothers 237
Toys and Trinkets 248
Fauteuil—Bergère—Arm-chair—Episcopal Seat 257
The Spirit of the Age 267
The Key of the Book Case 281
Apothecaries 288
Maxims—Portraits 291
Human Animality 298
My Reviewers 302
Exclamations 316
Irish Judges 318
At the Head of his Profession 319
The Charitable Bazaars of Dublin 320
THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.
MY BOOK.
Last night, as we circled round the fire in the little red room in
Kildare Street, by courtesy called a boudoir, talking about everything,
anything, and nothing at all, I happened to give out some odds and ends,
that amused those who, truth to tell, are not among the least amusable;
when somebody said, “Why do you not write down all this?” and here is
a blank book placed before me for the express purpose. But I suspect
there is no talking upon paper, as one talks “_les pieds couchés sur
les chenets_.” I feel, at least at this moment, that there is all
the difference in the world between sitting bolt upright, before a
marble-covered, blue-lined, lank, ledger-looking, Threadneedle-street
sort of a volume, for the purpose of opening a running account with one’s
own current ideas, and the sinking into the downy depths of an easy
chair, and “then and there, without let and molestation” (as the old
Irish passport has it), giving a careless and unheeded existence to the
infinite deal of nothings which lie latent in the memories of all such,
as have seen and heard much, and have been “over the hills and far away.”
“Thoughts that breathe” will not always write; “words that burn” are
apt to cool down as they are traced; visions that “come like shadows,”
will also “so depart;” and the brightest exhalations of the mind, which
are drawn forth by the sunny influence of social confidence, like other
exhalations, will dissipate by their own lightness, and (beyond the reach
of fixture or condensation) “make themselves air, into which they vanish.”
I never, in my life, kept a common-place-book for preserving such
“Cynthias of the minute.” I have even an antipathy to all albums and
vade-mecums, and such charitable repositories for fugitive thoughts, and
thoughtless effusions—reveries which were never _rêvés_—and impromptus
laboured at leisure. I hardly think I can bring myself to open a regular
saving bank for the odd cash of mind, the surplus of round sums placed
at legal interest in the great public fund of professed authorship: “_on
renvoye tout cela à la pédantisme_.”
Still, however, in the days of pure pedantry, the days of the Scaligers,
Pasquiers, Balzacs, and Thuanuses, genius and simplicity, and high
philosophy too, found frequent shelter in such daily ledgers of
spontaneous thought, and feeling. “Each day of my life is a page in my
book,” says the learned Menage, who scribbled his agreeable Ana, while
Mesdames Sévigné and Deshoulières sat disputing in his chimney corner, on
the merits of coffee, and of Racine, or the fashion of an _hurlubrelu_.
It was such a book, lying temptingly open on the old oak table in the
gothic library of the château Montaigne, that led the charming “_Michel,
gentilhomme Perigordin_,” to note down, (in the pauses of more studied
composition) those natural and amusing things, which, as he himself
quaintly expresses it, come, “_à saute et à gambade_.”[2] But then I am
not Menage nor Montaigne.
The danger of a book like this, lies in the lure it holds out to
egotism. There it is, always ready to receive the perilous confidences
of self-love and self-complacency, like an old lady’s humble companion,
or the confessor of a voluble devotee. “The reason,” says the always
quotable Madame de Sévigné, “why devotees love their confessors, is the
pleasure they have in talking of themselves, even when they have nothing
good to tell: ‘_on aime tant à parler de soi_.’”[3] Oh, the terrible
truth!
There is something too not less dangerous in the way-laying of such a
book for every passing impression. What little sensations, which the
world should never know, may there find permanency! What opinions may
there be recorded, which to broach, were proscription! What honest
indignation may there find vent against the falseness of the professed
friend, or the vileness of the successful enemy,—feelings which it is
vain to express, and undignified to expose. What mere ebullitions of
temperament may there assume the shape of habitual sentiment—though even
in the writing, they dissipate with the breaking forth of a sun-beam, or
lose their acrimony with the shifting of a north-east wind.
Had I not then better cast away this volume, “white and unwritten
still,” ere it bear evidence against me; and leave to “some hand more
calm and sage—the leaves to fill,” who haply may make it the nucleus of
one of those annuals, never destined to be perennial, or the repertory
for some _souvenir_, soon to be forgotten? Such a book may have its
value. It may preserve a sort of proof impression of one’s self, taken
at various sittings, and in various aspects; and thus give one portrait
more to the gallery of human originals, to illustrate the great mystery
of identity,—that volatile subject, which changes as we analyse it.
For even the hand which traced the first line of this farrago, is not
the same agent of the same volition, with that which will write the
last; though the being, in which it resides, is still technically the
same. To leave such an auto-transcript behind one, may assist the moral
anatomist in his demonstrations, as the bequeathing what is called
“our mortal remains” to the dissecting-knife promotes the science of
the physiologist. In either case, there is much to pity, and much to
wonder at; but what is most marvellous and admirable in both, is the
inscrutable mystery by which the complicated machinery is set in motion,
independently of the subject in which it works; constructed, perfected,
moving, stopping!—the power unknown, the end unguessed! At this point,
neither books nor bodies can be further of use. The anatomist drops his
knife, the moralist his pen. At this point too I must drop mine: not that
I am “weary of conjecture,” for I like the animating and enterprising
excursion, even when it proves nothing; but,—I must dress for a ball!
Oh! what a refuge is folly against philosophy; what a shield is pleasure
against persecution! How many have been burned at the stake, who never
would have paid that terrible penalty had they learned to waltz! How
many have been broken on the wheel, who would have escaped its tortures,
had they been cut short in their unpardonable search after truth, by the
necessity of dressing for a ball!
EGOISM AND EGOTISM.
Egoism and egotism—what a difference! The one a vice, the other a
weakness of temperament. The one inspires aversion, for it is always
unsocial; the other awakens ridicule, for it is frequently absurd. Egoism
is in a great degree referable to modern manners, and it is among the
drawbacks on civilization. Egotism is of all ages, and more an affair
of structure than of convention. The egotist must be a very vain man,
but he may be a gifted, and generally is an amiable one. If he had many
serious defects to hide, he would not so frankly give himself up to
public inspection. The pains he takes to canvass for public suffrage is
a proof that he values opinion; but the worst of it is, that the egotist
entrenches on the self-importance of others—that irremissible sin in
society, where every man is his own hero, whatever he may be to his
_valet de chambre_.
Egotism, when accompanied by endowments, is infinite in its resources.
When it cannot relate, it exhibits; but it must always be before the
scene, and occupy the audience. It is seldom found among the heaven-born
members of high society; because egoism and not egotism is the inherent,
almost organic vice of that class. The egoist is one who, uncalled upon
by his necessities for exertions, and led by breeding to resolve all
things into self—who, without effort to make, or suffrage to court, feels
not the value of public opinion, or, feeling it, believes himself above
it. Divested of warm affections, and independent of all sympathy, he is
ever on the side of taste; because no predominant impulse leads him to
its violation. He breaks no form of conventional propriety, nor shocks
a prejudice of time-honoured ignorance. Devoted to self-gratification,
he never seeks it by any greater risk, than comports with his habitual
ease, and place in society. His gallantry, even when profligate, is
passionless, and calculating; it is an air, not an enjoyment—an item
in his ostentatious externals—an addition to the sum of his superfluous
luxuries.
The school of egoists is of recent date. As an affair of temperament, the
vice must in all ages have shewn itself individually, where it dared;
but as a _ton_, as a fashion, the founder of the sect was the Duc de
Richelieu. Among the English aristocracy and their humble followers may
be found his chief disciples. In France, the revolution “scotch’d the
snake,” if it did not “kill it.” For glory and distinction, the motives
of action in the latter generation in France, are too demonstrative, for
the self-recoiling _morgue_ of concentrated egoism. Napoleon’s gallant
marechals were all heroes, and may have been egotists; but egoism
belonged not properly to their new blood nor to their arduous habits.[4]
Although the physiological causes of egoism must exist in all ranks and
classes, (for selfishness is pretty generally distributed in all,) yet
the egoist _par excellence_ must be especially sought amongst the idlers
of fashion, who, if not occupied with themselves, have nothing else to
be busied about. Egotists exist more among men of stirring lives, who
have been forced before the world. Heroes make excellent egotists; they
bring their excuse along with them, and render their vanity respectable,
by the events on which it is founded. It was the egotism of the Moorish
“great captain” which won Desdemona, in spite of his dingy hue; and I
remember being once a little grazed myself by an _enfilade de batterie_
of egotistical heroism, directed against my love of the marvellous, by
one of the great captains of the present age. _Dio buono!_ how I used to
open my eyes and “incline my ear,” while he, like a chevalier of old,
or like “Æneas after supper,” related the tale of his own prowess! With
what delight, evening after evening, I hung upon his well-recited “feats
of broils and battles,—” apart from the egoistical circles, in which the
chances of notoriety had associated us, and which, (composed of “half the
curled darlings of the nation,”) was as worn out on the subject of my
hero and his victories, as on every other; so that I was generally left
“sole auditress,” while he
“From year to year,
The battles, sieges, fortunes he had passed,
Ran through.”
I remember, one evening, while thus occupied, observing a group of
exquisites of both sexes looking slily at us, and laughing _sous cape_.
Though then in my noviciate of fashion, I knew enough of the great
world, to be aware that a ridicule was worse than a crime; and like all
_parvenus_, fearful of incurring the ban of the empire into which I had
been admitted, I planted my hero just as he was planting his victorious
standard “on the moslem walls.” Flying to that great legislator of _ton_,
whose word was then the charter of others, as well as mine, in such
affairs, I asked “What is the matter? What have I done, Lord A——?”
“Nothing, child; only you are a spoony, that’s all.”
“A spoony! what is a spoony?”
“Something that is easily taken in;—at the gambling table, by a black
leg—in society, by a bore?”
“But who is a bore?”
“Oh, by Jove! if you have not found out _that_, you must be left to your
fate.”
“But why is —— a bore?”
“Because all egotists are bores. It is really very amusing to see you,
like a little _gobe-mouche_, swallowing with avidity, what has surfeited
us all long ago. What a God-send you must be to him! There is nothing
like a fresh importation from Ireland.”
I bridled up like a charmer in Richardson’s novels, and replied pertly,
“I prefer an egotist with genius, to an egotist without it, at all times.”
“That’s your affair, dear; but now, at least, you are a purchaser with
notice.”
“I have not, however, had notice to quit—so I will return to my egotist,
and leave you to your egotists;—who has the better bargain?”
“We shall see,” said Lord A——, drily.
He was right. I was obliged to give in, during a fierce combat and a
long siege; and so I _struck_ long before the enemy hauled down a single
colour.
The egotism of Lord Nelson went far beyond that of any of his “great
competitors.” Not that he talked much of his feats, (for “little would
he have graced his tale in speaking of himself”;) but he listened with
the frankest approbation to the verse or song that celebrated his
exploits; assisting at his own apotheosis with as much devotion, as any
of the votarists who brought incense to his altar. There was nothing so
characteristic, or amusing, as the scenes in which he and Lady Hamilton
exhibited together, adoring and adored; during that short epoch of
their fashion, which policy or caprice granted them, in spite of the
frailty and the vulgarity of the one, and the very obvious intellectual
mediocrity of the other. The stage was generally some saloon of supreme
_bon-ton_; the audience, the members of the exclusive circles; and the
prima donna, Lady Hamilton, whose ample person seemed to dilate before
the piano-forte, while her fine full eyes were turned languidly on the
hero of her theme and inspiration, and she sang, at the top of her Poll
of Plymouth voice, the adulating ode, or the deifying cavatina. Meantime,
the conquering hero “leaned over her, enamoured,” bearing chorus, beating
time, and echoing every pæan, raised to his own glory by London lyrists
and Neapolitan laureates.
It was said of Napoleon, “_c’est la moitié d’un grand homme_.”[5] This is
more than can be said of every hero: for some there are, not more than a
third part.
There are anecdotes extant of that ‘royal’ hero, “_Roi, le plus roi,
qui onc fut jamais_,” Louis XIV. which afford a precedent, if not an
excuse for the equally ridiculous vanity and egotism of the immortal Lord
Nelson. “_Le soir on chanta chez Madame de Maintenon_,” says Dangeau,
“_une ode de l’Abbé Genest ‘à la louange du Roi,’ la musique est de La
Lande; et le Roi la trouva si bonne que, quand elle fut finie, il la fit
recommencer._”[6]
Lord Erskine was so noted for talking of himself, that he obtained the
_sobriquet_ of Counsellor Ego. He could scarcely have chosen a more
interesting subject. Actors and actresses are apt to be egotists. They
live so much before the public, that they suppose the world to be always
engaged with them; and yet live so little in the world, that their sphere
of observation is limited to themselves and their profession, and to
their successes and their wrongs, before and behind the scenes, _et voilà
tout_.
The highest order of egotism, and by far the most delightful and
beneficial to society, is autobiography. Where the life, indeed, of
the writer is the mere every day personal adventures of pretending
mediocrity, it is an impertinent imposition, and meets its just reward in
contempt and oblivion. But the egotism of genius, when mingled with great
public events, illustrative of peculiar stages in society, is a debt due
to posterity, which should be paid: it will not fail to be received with
gratitude and delight. Thus have been received the memoirs of all the
great men who have written; and of all the agreeable women who have left
behind them those charming pictures of society, as well as of themselves,
which women only know how to sketch. They are among the great benefactors
of humanity; and the gracious sensations they excite render their works a
better course of morals than any prescribed by collegiate discipline, or
found in the crude pages of didactic essays. As long as we are occupied
and amused, we are seldom vicious; and (to reverse a trite quotation,)
“angels are better than men, because they are happier;”—so, down with
the Doctors of the Sorbonne; and “one cheer more” for the Doctors De
Motteville, La Fayette, De Nemours, De Staël, De Montpensier.
I grieve to be unable to add some fair British writers to this list
of sparkling memoirists: but the female authorship of these realms is
too serious, perhaps too passionate, for the task. English women can
write upon nothing but love and religion; and therefore they write
little besides novels—serious or frivolous, sacred or profane. Wit and
philosophy are very sparingly conferred upon them.
The few female auto-biographists who have graced the literature of
England, were confined to the stirring times of the commonwealth,
when the pressure of circumstances, by acting upon the strongest and
finest feelings of woman, developed her intellect, and forced her upon
active and even perilous existence. The two most brilliant instances
of this charming _genre_ of egotism are to be found in the memoirs of
the fantastic Duchess of Newcastle, and in those of the heroic Mrs.
Hutchinson;—both admirable illustrations of their respective classes,
at the epoch in which they flourished; the one, of the pure, unmixed
aristocracy of England; the other of its gentry, or highest grade of
middle life.
In the long list of biographical egotism, I know but of two persons who
have got out of the scrape handsomely; Cæsar, the tactician in taste
as in war, with his third person,——and Bonaparte, who talks of his
splendid views, and wondrous combinations, in a manner that makes the
individuality of the man disappear before his powerful and personified
intellect. I allude to the sketches and scraps dictated by him to Las
Casas, &c. at St. Helena. His life was a perfect epic—one great dramatic
action. What a subject he would have been for Shakspeare! There is
nothing of scenic effect in Richard the Third, or Julius Cæsar, finer
than the picturesque situations so carelessly traced by the military pen
of Rovigo. For instance—Bonaparte crossing the Red Sea at the head of his
legions, precisely where Moses led his Israelites; the peril in which his
dauntless daring placed his devoted followers; and his saving them by one
of those rapid decisions of mind which characterize the ingenuity, as
well as the firmness of genius. In all great exigencies, the man, as well
as “the woman, _who deliberates_, is lost!”
Another scene, still more picturesque, occurred the night before the
battle of Austerlitz,—the moon shining at its full upon the field,
strewn with legions of the brave, who all, save the watch guards,
slept,—how many soon to sleep for ever!—the emperor, in the midst of
his army, stretched upon straw, under a rude shed, raised over his head
by the tenderness of his soldiers, and sleeping so profoundly that his
aid-de-camp was compelled to shake him roughly, when it was necessary
that he should be roused to learn some movement of the enemy—his
instantly vaulting on his saddled horse—his gallop to the outpost, and
perilous survey of the Russian manœuvre—his return to his bivouac—his
being recognised by the drowsy troops, whose rest his horse’s tramp had
broken,—their cry of _vive l’empereur!_—the lighting of straw torches, a
spontaneous honour to their chief, till the whole field blazed—his return
to his couch, and to that deep sleep from which he was to awaken to the
crowning victory of his great career, that laid the throne of the western
Cæsars at his feet, and placed the destiny of the emperors of the East in
his hands!
One picture more, and I have done. The time, the evening before the
battle of Jena, when Napoleon found the artillery, which was to open the
action, blocked up in a rocky ravine, from which it could neither advance
nor retreat. His concentrated rage, his terrible silence, unbroken by one
reproach of the unskilful commandant—his instant decision, activity, and
remedy of the evil. Resuming his first vocation of a working engineer, he
hastily gathers the cannoniers round him, distributing to one a torch,
to another a pickaxe. Then placing himself at their head, he clears the
brambles, cleaves the rocks, and opens a passage for the guns; and when
the first carriage has passed, returns again to those obedient slumbers,
which, like all else, then awaited on his powerful will. “_J’ai toujours
devant les yeux_,” says Rovigo, “_ce qui se paroît sur les figures de ces
canonniers, en voyant l’Empereur éclairer lui-même, un falot à la main,
les coups rédoublés dont il frappoit les rochers._”[7]
That the life of such a man should be written from the refuse of the
_entresols_ of the Tuileries, and the gossip of London drawing-rooms!
None but a soldier should write the life of a soldier, if he has not the
egotism to write it himself. I am sure the Duke of Wellington is of my
opinion; and I hope he will furnish documents to some of his own gallant
aids-de-camp and companions, to write his military memoirs, beyond the
reach of national prejudices and sordid self-interest, to falsify and to
disfigure his deeds and intentions. Let him not trust to the promises
of living adulation. Be the fate of his imperial competitor his beacon
and guide. As to his legislative memoirs, they are written in two
words:—Catholic Emancipation!
LOVE IN IDLENESS.
“This Signor Junio’s giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, lord of folded arms.”
How few love-novels are written now! The market is closed, and the
commodity out of date. A Scotch gentleman visited us some time back, and
amused himself, while the conversation was occupied by a group of morning
callers, in examining the books in my husband’s study. He had pitched
on a shelf of natural history, and his attention dwelt on Lacépède’s
voluminous work on fishes. As he ran over the volumes successively,
his voice rising in a climax of tone, with his increasing surprise, he
exclaimed—“Fesh, fesh, fesh, hey! Sirs, what sax bukes all on fesh!!!”
How many hundred thousand of _bukes_ have been written “_all upon
love_;” from the loves of Petrarch, in a thousand and one sonnets, to Mr.
Moore’s “Loves of the Angels,” in one elegant volume! In what various
ways too, the subject has been treated, from “Cassandra,” and “Le Grand
Cyrus,” in folio, to the Nouvelle Héloise, in four goodly thick volumes!
and so on to Werter, in a primmer size, which, bound in black velvet,
was hung by a gold chain round the neck of its fair readers, before the
age of sentiment had passed away! Sooner than write on love, a modern
novellist has recourse to the Newgate Calendar, and the police reports of
the Morning Herald.
The fact is, that there is less love in the world than there was; and the
stock is daily diminishing. The reason is clear—there is less idleness,
and consequently less of the concentration which goes to make passion.
That terrible school-master too, who has, some how or other got abroad,
whips out poor little Love, wherever he finds him,—“a domineering
pedant o’er the boy;” and the utilitarians will not hear of the brat,
with his anti-Malthusian doctrines, but hunt him from the boudoir to
the tread-mill, to suffer and repent, with other young offenders.
Cultivation, business, and education, are “the very beadles to an
humorous sigh.”
The idlest nations are ever the most gallant; and Doctors’ Commons would
have little to do, if the _désœuvrés_ of fashion were reduced to assume
the moral and physical activity of the _tiers-état_. The semi-civilized
great are idle and intemperate: idle, by their institutions, which, being
those of despotism, exclude the mass from a participation in national
concerns; and intemperate, because wealthy idleness gives the desire and
the means of excess. What scenes of wassailing and riot passed among the
courtiers of Henry the VIIIth and Francis the Ist; and amongst those of
Charles the IId, and the early part of the reign of Louis the XIVth.
In the highest state of savagery, men are governed by appetite; in the
highest degree of civilization they are guided by _convenance_. The
Esquimaux, always in the field, and the Englishman always before the
public, and occupied with commerce, politics, science, and the arts, have
neither of them leisure to love, after the fashion of the Petrarchs and
the Rousseaus.
Even now, however, we may have what the French of our days call “_un
sentiment_,” which is a very pretty amusing thing, leaving no scar
behind—heart, conscience, and character, all intact, “_pourvu qu’on est
sage_,” (as a Frenchwoman said to me the other day): an _item_ in the
code of conduct, by the by, never looked for in the days of old French
gallantry.
RACONTEURS.[8]
I am not aware of any word in the English language that precisely answers
to the French “_raconteur_;” and, therefore, I suspect that the gift
which it indicates is not in the catalogue of English accomplishments.
The English declaim better than they converse, and argue better than they
declaim. Free institutions have favoured their successful cultivation of
oratory; habits of public business have made them good logicians: but I
doubt that any moral or political combination would have made them good
_raconteurs_. The talent is too much an affair of temperament; which
institutes and education may direct, but cannot change. It is this that
constitutes national character, that renders the modern Frenchman in so
many respects what Cæsar found the Gaul; and preserves in the English
yeoman of the nineteenth century, much of the moral physiognomy of the
rude conquerors at Agincourt, and of the sturdy companions of Wat Tyler.
One cannot well conceive a Greenlander being nursed into a Horace, or a
negro into a Newton: one might as reasonably speculate on a potatoe being
cultivated into a pine-apple, or a mulberry being grafted to the size and
flavour of a melon.
The English temperament is too bilious, reflective, and abstracted, to
lend itself to the art of light and pleasant narration; its affections
are too deeply seated, its gaiety too fitful, its humour too cumbrous;
but with a Frenchman, it is a natural endowment; and every epoch of
the literary history of France can furnish its contingent of good
_raconteurs_. In the earlier ages, the gift was turned to a profession;
and its most eminent professors, under the denomination of _Conteurs_,
went from province to province, and from château to château, sure of a
brilliant reception, and a liberal recompense, in return for the story
they ingeniously invented, or the anecdote they pleasantly detailed.
“Fableaus sont or moult en course,
Mainte deniers en ont en bourse
Cil qui les content.”
_Fab. MSS. du Roi._
In modern France this talent, which always obtained a vogue, occasionally
made a fortune. Every _salon_ was thrown open to the _raconteur_; and the
reputation commenced at the _petits soupers_ and _boudoirs_ of private
individuals, received its seal from the admiration of the court and the
favour of the monarch. The love of anecdote is a propensity, perhaps a
weakness, inherent in royalty: and a Buonaparte and a Bourbon were alike
indebted for some of their most agreeable moments to the most charming
_raconteur_ that perhaps even France has produced. Both, with royal
impatience, were wont to cut a proser short in his tedious tale; and,
the same habit of command dictating to either despot precisely the same
phrase, both would exclaim, “_Allons, Denon, contez-nous cela!_”
The talent which, by its animation, renders French society so agreeable,
has found its way into French literature. The “_j’ai oui dire_” of
Brantome is always the prelude to some quaint and curious detail; and the
delightful Montaigne owes his deathless reputation less to the learning
of which he was so proud, than to the art, which he himself contemned
as _bavardage_. Of the exquisite narrations of Madame de Sévigné it
is almost superfluous to speak. Her details are all pictures; and her
commonest incidents derive an intense interest from her happy manner
of narrating them. What a difference between the love adventures of
Madame de Montpensier and the Duc de Lauzun, as told in the ponderous
autobiography of the dull and dogged princess, and as sketched in the
pages of Madame de Sévigné! The modern dramatist, who has produced the
story of Pomenars on the French stage, has added nothing to the dramatic
effect of her exquisite narration.
Ninon de l’Enclos possessed the happy talent _de bien raconter_, in
such perfection, that when Molière read to her the first draft of his
Tartuffe, and she related to him an adventure, of which she had been
herself the _Elmire_, he declared, that if his piece had not been already
written, he would not have undertaken it: so much was her Tartuffe
superior to his own. (“_Tant il se seroit cru incapable de rien mettre
sur le théâtre d’aussi parfait, que le Tartuffe de Mademoiselle de
l’Enclos._”)
The immediate successor to these gifted women was Mademoiselle de
Launay (Madame de Staël). Her narrative of her first interview with her
patroness, the Duchesse de Ferté, is a brilliant illustration of the
peculiarity of the art: and her well known, “_Allons, Mademoiselle,
parlez un peu religion; vous direz en suite autre chose_;”[9] has passed
into a proverb. This fascinating talent is always notable for the _naïve_
simplicity of manner that accompanies it—for that spirited frankness,
which affectation (the quality of the false and the feeble) cannot,
in all its assumption, accomplish. The gift is rarely and somewhat
capriciously dispersed in society. It is sometimes possessed by persons,
not otherwise distinguished; and genius, even of the highest order,
is often wholly divested of it. I may be wrong; but I doubt if any
circumstance could have bestowed it on the late celebrated Madame de
Staël. The whole character and bent of her mind seems to have led another
way. Her temperament, and the structure of her intellect were too German,
too alembicated: while the school of Thomas and of Madame de Necker,
in which she was brought up, was too _précieuse_ not to have stifled
any predisposition she might have possessed, to the natural graces,
indispensable to a graphic narrator.
Mounted on the pedestal of her reputation, and twisting between her
finger and thumb the laurel branch, which she always wielded (a _tic_
or an emblem), Madame de Staël stood, like her own Corinne, in the
centre of her circle, as if waiting at once for her audience and her
inspiration: and when she was satisfied of the adequate proportion of
both, she gave out her metaphysical and political oracles in measured
phrases; exhibiting an eloquence, which, whether she explained the
doctrines of Kant, or opened the views of Necker, was more calculated to
command admiration, than to excite delight. This was all very fine,—very
intellectual; but it was not the thing desired in a good _raconteur_.
It is impossible to imagine such a Pythoness stepping down from her
tripod, huddling herself into her shawl and easy chair, putting her feet
on the fender, and carelessly and gaily giving herself up to “_raisonner
pantoufle_;” to arrest and charm the attention by that “sweet and voluble
discourse,” which pauses not to choose a theme, nor studies the art, by
which it unconsciously fascinates the hearer.
It was the want, perhaps, of this happy simplicity, that lost Madame
de Staël the suffrage of one, whose conquest was the sum of all her
ambition. Willing to be won, Buonaparte refused to be lectured: and
flying from the eloquent dictations of the daughter, as he had cut
short the tedious dissertations of the father, he denominated the
one a _phraseuse_,[10] and pronounced the other “_au-dessous de sa
célébrité_.”[11]
If was, I believe, much about the time when he thus fled from the
disserting financier, whose lengthiness, like his politics, were ill
adapted to the rapid “_en avant_” of modern military and legislative
manœuvres, that Buonaparte gave a willing audience to a pleasant
_raconteur_, whom chance threw in his way, in the person of an humble
minister of the Genevese church. Napoleon, with his unerring tact, soon
detected the talent which was latent beneath the unpretending simplicity
of his chance companion. The conversation turned upon Kant and his
philosophy. “Can you understand it?” asked the Emperor, in his _brusque_
way. “Not a word, Sire,” replied the Curé. “Nor I neither,” rejoined
Napoleon; “but Madame de Staël understands it all; (_Ni moi non plus;
cependant Madame de Staël entend tout cela_);” and he laughed, and shewed
his handsome teeth, delighted to find one clever man, at least, as dull
as himself upon that vague and unsatisfactory doctrine.
To relate well, requires a minute and clear perception of particulars;
which being strongly impressed on the mind, will be returned with all
the truth, force, and illuminated effect, necessary to impress the
auditor. Facts often appear too highly coloured, when they are but given
in the same deep tone in which they were witnessed. Some minds receive
their impressions of scenery, character, and incident, as an iron target
receives the point of an arrow, which scarcely leaves a trace behind it;
while others of more penetrable stuff, take the form of their objects
with a depth and sharpness, fully proportionate to the force that stamps
it. Between these two classes of intellects there is little sympathy; and
the possessor of the first will consider as exaggerations of truth and
nature, the narrative, which reflects the ideas of the latter in the full
vigour of their original conception.
Denon often told me that the best _raconteur_ he ever knew, except
Voltaire, was Voltaire’s disciple, the Marquis de Vilette, the husband
of _Belle et Bonne_. Ferney was a good school. Every one knows the
anecdote of D’Alembert, Huber, and others, telling stories of robbers,
_à qui mieux mieux_, and Voltaire, when called upon, beginning, in
the tone of a gossiping old woman—“_Messieurs, il y avait une fois un
fermier-général—Ma foi j’ai oublié le reste!_”[12] Denon told me his last
visit to Voltaire was in 1776. He had been detained late at Geneva, and
it was near midnight when he arrived at Ferney. He found the venerable
patriarch sitting up to receive him, in that _salon_ now so familiar to
every English traveller. He was in high health and spirits; and after
supper the two delightful _raconteurs_ began to narrate—mutually excited,
and mutually charmed. It was in vain that Madame Denis frequently came
from her bed-room, in night-cap and slippers, to endeavour to get her
uncle to bed. Voltaire, with the querulousness of a spoiled school-boy,
resisting the similar attempt on the part of his nurse, pushed her away,
with—“_Mais allez donc—qu’est-ce que ça fait, si je m’amuse?_”[13]
The influence which Denon himself obtained over time, and even sometimes
over nature, (for “he could murder sleep,” by the exercise of this
amusing gift,) was often exemplified upon ourselves, during our various
residences at Paris. Denon kept intolerably late hours—we intolerably
early ones. After a month of _bals-parés_—_soirées_—_réunions_—and
_opéras_, we were obliged to give in, and to stay one night at home;
and so issued orders accordingly, and sent the servants to bed.—When,
lo! as the last lamp was put out, the last ember fading, and we were
yawning our way to our bed-room, across the gloomy antechamber of our
old hotel in the Fauxbourg St. Germain, a loud ring was heard, the great
gate invisibly opening, creaked slowly on its hinges, and the wheels of
a cabriolet came rattling over the paved court. Back we ran—lest our
chamber lights should shine forth from the windows, and bring up the
unseasonable intruder—while _Pierre_ the _frotteur_, putting in his
melo-drama head, asked, interrogatively, “_Madame n’y est pas—n’est-ce
pas?_” and then flew to forbid the nocturnal visitor. But it was in
vain: he was already in the anti-room—and we heard the voice of Denon,
saying “Go to bed, my good fellow—there, that will do;”—and in he came
on the very tip-toe of excitation, humming “_On revient toujours_,” with
applicable emphasis. He was all star, ribbon, and the legion of honour;
in full dress, both in spirits and person. He had dined with one of the
ministers; and had not yet got rid of the fervour of an agreeable party,
where he had justified the partiality of Buonaparte, by charming even the
ultras themselves.
He came to bestow all his brilliancy upon us, as he was wont to do on
similar occasions; and we were as much bored at the delightful visit, as
if it had been all the tediousness of those who know so well how to be
tedious: so there we stood, yawning and smiling, with a sort of galvanic
contortion, at once to show our courtesy and drowsiness, with each a
chamber candlestick in hand, and reiterating “But we were going to bed,
my dear Denon.”—“I see it,” said Denon, and gently taking my candle,
he lighted the _bougies_ on the table—drew a chair for me near the
fire—threw a log on the hearth, and, with a petitioning air, solicited
“_encore un petit moment_.” “Our husband and ourself” exchanged looks
of mutual annoyance, and yawned ostentatiously our unwilling assent;
wondering at the influence of the miserable _physique_, or that any state
of exhaustion could reduce us to so low an ebb, as not to relish the
society of one we loved so well and admired so much.
Denon had that day made me a present of his superb work on Egypt (the
large edition), and the enormous volume lay upon the ponderous marble
table, in the centre of the room, which seemed by its strength to
have been built on purpose to receive it. We had been looking over the
plates, and Denon took out his pencil and wrote the names of some of the
eminent persons whose portraits they contain. Then drawing close to the
fire, he put on his _raconteur’s_ face, and gave us such curious and
animated details of his sojourn in Egypt with Buonaparte—of his intimacy
with Dessaix, and with others of the _notables_ of the expedition,
together with the various scenes and circumstances incidental to the
enterprise,—that insensibly we became as animated in our questions as he
was in his narration.
From Egypt we got to the funeral of Dessaix on Mount St. Bernard, (a
picture worthy of Poussin,) and thence to the German campaigns. He
described the entrance into Potsdam, etched to the life, like a proof
copy of one of his own engravings from Rembrandt or Paul Potter; not
a light, not a shade was wanting! and the tones and gestures of the
conqueror were given, as if he lived and moved before us. Their visit to
Sans Souci, and the flattering interest with which Buonaparte inspected
the apartments, where nothing had been changed since their occupation
by Frederick the Great, were not left to mere narrative; they were acted
to the life: and the plunder of the _armoires_ and _secrétaires_, were
represented in a most robber-like manner. The emperor had the sword
of Frederick for his share of the spoils; Denon’s booty was equally
characteristic—a MS. _brouillon_ of the king’s poetry, in his royal
autograph, with Voltaire’s corrections. Under some of the stanzas was
written “_digne des meilleurs poëtes Français_;”[14] and under others
the simple corrective criticism of “_fie donc!_” This was what Voltaire
called “washing the king’s linen.”
The sympathy of Napoleon for his wounded soldiers, and his personal
attention to them, have been often recorded. His anxious visits to the
field of battle after the contest was decided—his feeling the pulse and
wiping the wounds—his administering cordials with his own hands—are facts
well known, which won him the love of his army, no less than his prowess.
Denon had been with him in one of these pious visitations, and he was so
affected by the dreadful spectacle, that it became the nightmare of his
dream. He arose with the dawn and returned to the field, in the hope of
rescuing some still living beings from the heaps of dead that strewed
it. In the features of an officer, he thought he recognized a friend,
and on examining more minutely, he perceived some tokens of lingering
vitality. He endeavoured to extricate the body from the dead horse under
which it lay; but his strength failed him. There was not a moment to be
lost—looking round him for assistance, he observed two men taking their
station on an overthrown piece of artillery, coolly surveying the scene,
and writing in their tablets. They were easily recognised as the German
commissaries of interment. He flew to solicit their assistance; but both
replied in unison, “_Monsir, nous sommes ici pour enterrer les morts._”
“_Bon_,” said Denon, “but you will surely assist me in saving the
living.” Without pausing in their melancholy task, they again replied,
“_Nous sommes ici uniquement pour enterrer les morts._” Denon in vain had
recourse to persuasion, to bribes, to threats; nothing moved the phlegm
of the Germans: they heard him out patiently, and repeated for the third
time; “_Fous êtes ein bon Monsir, mais nous sommes ici pour enterrer les
morts._”[15] This writes flatly; but when told most dramatically, with
the impassibility of the German physiognomy, and the guttural German
accentuation, it was irresistible; and thus our delightful _raconteur_
went on “from grave to gay,” with equal pathos and humour, making us
laugh and cry, and winding us up and down at pleasure.
In the midst of a most interesting adventure—the scene Venice, the time
a moonlight evening, the place a balcony in the palace Benzoni, and the
heroine, the beautiful and well known “Biondina in Gondoletta,”—he paused
abruptly, with a hushing movement of his finger, marking emphatically the
deep swing of the clock in the Tuileries striking three. He arose all
confusion and apologies, for having led us into such unseasonable vigils,
and was hurrying off, when I detained him with, “but finish your story.”
“_Trois heures bien sonnés_,”[16] replied Denon, already at the door;
while I answered in the words of Voltaire, “_Mais qu’est-ce que ça fait,
si je m’amuse?_” “_A la bonne heure_,” said Denon, triumphantly, “I saw
on entering that I was a bore;[17] that you had taken your determination,
and I took mine; so good morning—I’ll finish my story another time:” and
with this trick of the tale-teller of the Arabian Nights, he tripped off
as _leste_ at seventy, as at seventeen—sprang into his cabriolet, and
rattled out, as he had rattled in, his horse and driver as much on the
alert as himself. The whole thing was French, exclusively French—the
_raconteur_, horse, driver, and cabriolet, included.