by Mary Morris
I had to pass over, I was informed, the most fertile and best cultivated tract of country in Norway. The distance was three Norwegian miles, which are longer than the Swedish. The roads were very good; the farmers are obliged to repair them; and we scampered through a great extent of country in a more improved state then any I had viewed since I left England. Still there was sufficient of hills, dales, and rocks, to prevent the idea of a plain from entering the head, or even of such scenery as England and France afford. The prospects were also embellished by water, rivers, and lakes, before the sea proudly claimed my regard; and the road running frequently through lofty groves, rendered the landscapes beautiful, though they were not so romantic as those I had lately seen with such delight.
It was late when I reached Tønsberg; and I was glad to go to bed at a decent inn. The next morning, the 17th July, conversing with the gentlemen with whom I had business to transact, I found that I should be detained at Tønsberg three weeks; and I lamented that I had not brought my child with me.
The inn was quiet, and my room so pleasant, commanding a view of the sea, confined by an amphitheatre of hanging woods, that I wished to remain there, though no one in the house could speak English or French. The mayor, my friend, however, sent a young woman to me who spoke a little English, and she agreed to call on me twice a day, to receive my orders, and translate them to my hostess.
My not understanding the language was an excellent pretext for dining alone, which I prevailed on them to let me do at a late hour; for the early dinners in Sweden had entirely deranged my day. I could not alter it there, without disturbing the economy of a family where I was as a visitor; necessity having forced me to accept of an invitation from a private family, the lodgings were so incommodious.
Amongst the Norwegians I had the arrangement of my own time; and I determined to regulate it in such a manner, that I might enjoy as much of their sweet summer as I possibly could;—short, it is true, but “passing sweet.”
I never endured a winter in this rude clime; consequently it was not the contrast, but the real beauty of the season which made the present summer appear to me the finest I had ever seen. Sheltered from the north and eastern winds, nothing can exceed the salubrity, the soft freshness of the western gales. In the evening they also die away; the aspen leaves tremble into stillness, and reposing nature seems to be warmed by the moon, which here assumes a genial aspect; and if a light shower has chanced to fall with the sun, the juniper the underwood of the forest, exhales a wild perfume, mixed with a thousand nameless sweets, that, soothing the heart, leave images in the memory which the imagination will ever hold dear.
Nature is the nurse of sentiment—the true source of taste—yet what misery, as well as rapture, is produced by a quick perception of the beautiful and sublime, when it is exercised in observing animated nature, when every beauteous feeling and emotion excites responsive sympathy, and the harmonized soul sinks into melancholy, or rises to extasy, just as the chords are touched, like the aeolian harp agitated by the changing wind. But how dangerous is it to foster these sentiments in such an imperfect state of existence; and how difficult to eradicate them when an affection for mankind, a passion for an individual, is but the unfolding of that love which embraces all that is great and beautiful.
When a warm heart has received strong impressions, they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; and the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly retracing them. I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect views I have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast; even when gazing on these tremendous cliffs, sublime emotions absorb my soul. And, smile not, if I add, that the rosy tint of morning reminds me of a suffusion, which will never more charm my senses, unless it reappears on the cheeks of my child. Her sweet blushes I may yet hide in my bosom, and she is still too young to ask why starts the tear, so near akin to pleasure and pain?
I cannot write any more at present. Tomorrow we will talk of Tønsberg.
FLORA TRISTAN
(1803–1844)
The life of the reformer Flora Tristan was rescued from obscurity in 1925 when her unfinished journal, Tour de France, an account of her campaign for workers’ rights in French industrial towns, was published. The woman who would be grandmother to artist Paul Gauguin was a charismatic leader whose early death from typhoid fever put an end to her work in France to create a universal workers’ union that would facilitate equal rights for women. Tristan’s trip alone to Peru in 1833 (to stake a claim to her family’s fortune), which she wrote about in Peregrinations of a Pariah, marked the beginning of her political awakening. But her reformist zeal was most profoundly reflected in her outrage with laws pertaining to the sanctity of marriage: at a time when divorce was illegal in France, she left her husband, André Chazal, in 1825, resumed her maiden name, and then battled fiercely for more than a decade over custody of their two children. The landmark battle ended when the courts declared the couple legally separated after Chazal shot Tristan in the back; she recovered and Chazal served seventeen years in jail.
from PEREGRINATIONS OF A PARIAH
When you go from Arequipa to Islay you have the sun behind you and the wind in front, so you suffer far less from the heat than you do when going from Islay to Arequipa. I stood up to the journey very well; besides, my health had improved and I felt better able to endure its rigours this time. At midnight we arrived at the inn and I threw myself fully dressed upon my bed while supper was being prepared. Mr. Smith had a miraculous talent for making light of difficulties, and now he saw to everything—food, muleteers, animals—with remarkable speed and tact. Thanks to him we had a very good supper, after which we all stayed up talking, for none of us could sleep. At three in the morning we set out once more; the cold was so bitter that I wore three ponchos. When dawn appeared I was overcome with an irresistible desire for sleep and begged Mr. Smith to let me rest for just half an hour; I threw myself upon the ground and without giving the servant time to put down a mat for me I fell into so deep a sleep that nobody dared attempt to make me more comfortable. They let me sleep for an hour and I felt all the better for it; we were by then in the open pampa, so I mounted the horse and crossed the vast expanse at a gallop, in fact I managed the horse so well that Lieutenant Monsilla could not keep up with me, much less the two lancers. In the end Mr. Smith himself had to beg me to have mercy on his fine Chilean mare as he was afraid I would wear her out.
At midday we reached Guerrera, where we made a halt; we ate beneath the fresh shade of the trees, then arranged our beds on the ground and slept until five. We climbed the mountain at an easy pace and reached Islay at seven. Great was the surprise of Don Justo when he saw me. He is extremely kind and hospitable to all travellers and showed me particular attention. Islay was greatly changed since my previous stay. This time I was not invited to any balls. Nieto and his brave soldiers had laid the town waste in the twenty-four hours they had spent there; as well as requisitioning food they had practised every kind of extortion to obtain money from the unfortunate inhabitants. The good Don Justo never stopped repeating: “Ah! mademoiselle, if I were younger I would leave with you; these endless wars have made it impossible to live here. I have already lost two of my sons, and I expect any day to hear of the death of the third, who is in Gamarra’s army.”
I stayed three days in Islay waiting for our ship to leave, and I would have been very dull without the company of Mr. Smith, who also introduced me to the officers of an English frigate moored in the bay. I am happy to say that I have never met officers as distinguished for their manners and their intelligence as those of the Challenger; they all spoke French and had spent several years in Paris. They were
in town clothes and their dress was remarkable for its immaculate cleanliness and elegant simplicity. The commander was a superb man, the ideal of masculine beauty. He was only thirty-two, yet a profound melancholy weighed upon him; all his words and deeds were tinged with a sadness which was painful to behold. I asked one of his officers the reason for this, and he said: “Ah! yes, mademoiselle, he has good cause for sadness; for seven years he has been married to the loveliest woman in England; he loves her to distraction, just as she loves him, yet he must live apart from her.”
“What is the reason for this separation?”
“His profession; as he is one of our youngest captains he is always being sent on remote postings of three or four years’ duration. We have been in these latitudes for three years, and we shall not be in England for another fifteen months. Judge for yourself what cruel suffering so long an absence causes him!”
“To say nothing of his wife!… But has he no fortune, then, to remain in a career which causes him and the woman he loves such torture?”
“No fortune! He has five thousand pounds a year of his own, and his wife, the richest heiress in England, brought him two hundred thousand; she is an only child and will have twice as much again on the death of her father.”
I was astonished. “Then tell me, monsieur, what power is it that obliges your commander to live apart from his wife for four years, to languish on board his frigate and condemn so beautiful a woman to tears and grief?”
“It is necessary for him to attain a high position; our commander obtained this rich heiress from her father only on condition that he became an admiral. The young couple agreed, and to fulfil their promise he will have to stay at sea for at least another ten years, for with us, promotion depends on seniority.”
“So he accepts that he must live another ten years separated from his wife?”
“Yes, he must, in order to keep his promise; but when that time is up, he will be an admiral, he will enter the House of Lords, perhaps become a government Minister and end up one of the most powerful figures in the state. It seems to me, mademoiselle, that to attain such a position it is worth suffering for a few years!”
Ah! I thought, for the sake of such paltry tokens of grandeur men will trample underfoot everything that is most sacred! God himself was pleased to endow these two beings with every gift, beauty, brains and wealth; and the love they bear each other should have ensured for them a happiness as great as our nature is capable of enjoying; but the arrogance of a crazy old man has destroyed this prospect of earthly felicity: he insists that the best twenty years should be struck out of his children’s lives. When they are reunited the wife will have lost her beauty, the husband his illusions; but he will be an admiral, a peer of the realm, a Minister, etc. What ridiculous vanity!
I cannot describe the bitter reflections this story caused me. Everywhere I encountered moral anguish; everywhere I saw that it proceeded from the evil prejudice that sets man against Providence, and I raged at the slow progress of human reason. I asked the handsome commander if he had any children. “Yes,” he replied, “a daughter as beautiful as her mother, and a son who is said to look very much like me; I have not seen him, he will be four years old when I do, if God permits it.” And the unhappy man repressed a sigh. He was still sensitive, because he was still young, but by the time he is fifty he will probably be as unfeeling as his father-in-law; and perhaps he will exact from his own son and daughter sacrifices as cruel as those imposed on him. This is how the prejudices which deprave our nature are transmitted; and the sequence will not be broken until there arise beings endowed by God with a firm will and resolute courage, who are prepared to suffer martyrdom rather than endure servitude.
On 30 April at eleven in the morning we sailed out of the Bay of Islay, and on 4 May at two in the afternoon we dropped anchor in the roads of Callao. This port did not seem to be as busy as Valparaiso. Recent political events had had a disastrous effect on trade and there were fewer ships than usual.
From the sea Lima is clearly visible on a hill surrounded by the mighty Andes. The size of the city, together with the imposing height of its many bell-towers, lend it an air of grandeur and enchantment.
We stayed at Callao until four o’clock waiting for the coach for Lima, which gave me ample time to examine the town. Like Valparaiso and Islay, Callao has grown so rapidly in the past ten years that after an absence of two or three years captains hardly recognise the place. The finest houses are owned by English or American merchants; they have large warehouses there, and their commercial activities give rise to continual movement between the port and the city some five miles away. Mr. Smith took me to the house of his correspondents, and here once more I found all the luxury and comfort characteristic of the English. The servants were English, and like their masters they were dressed just as they would have been in England. The house had a verandah, as do all the houses in Lima, and this is very convenient in hot countries, as it gives shelter from the sun and enables one to walk all round the house to take the air. This particular verandah was embellished with pretty English blinds. I stayed there for some time and could survey in comfort the only long wide street which constitutes the whole of Callao. It was a Sunday, and sailors in holiday attire were strolling about: I saw groups of Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Germans—in short, a mixture from nearly every nation—and I heard snatches of every tongue. As I listened to these sailors I began to understand the charm they find in their adventurous life and the enthusiasm it inspired in that true sailor Leborgne. When I tired of looking at the street I cast a glance into the large drawing-room whose windows overlooked the verandah, where five or six immaculately dressed Englishmen, their handsome faces calm and impassive, were drinking grog and smoking excellent Havana cigars as they swung gently to and fro in hammocks from Guayaquil suspended from the ceiling.
At last it was four o’clock and we climbed into the coach. The driver was French and all the people I found there spoke French or English. I met two Germans, great friends of Althaus, and immediately I felt at home. It was the first time I had been in a coach since I left Bordeaux, and the pleasure this gave me kept me happy all through the two-hour journey; I really thought I was back in civilisation.
The road out of Callao is bad, but after a mile or so it becomes tolerably good: very wide, smooth, and not too dusty. Just over a mile from Callao, on the right, lie the extensive ruins of some Indian city which had already ceased to exist when the Spaniards conquered the country. It would probably be possible to discover from Indian chronicles what this place was and how it came to be destroyed; but up to now the history of the Indians has not inspired sufficient interest in their conquerors for them to devote themselves to such research. A little further, on the left, is the village of Bella-Vista, where there is a hospital for sailors. Half-way to Lima, our driver stopped at an inn kept by a Frenchman, and after that, the city spread before us in all its magnificence, while the surrounding countryside provided a wealth of luxuriant vegetation in every shade of green: there were giant orange trees, clumps of bananas, lofty palms and many other species native to these regions, each with its distinctive foliage.
A mile or so before one enters the city the road is lined with great trees, and the effect of this avenue is truly majestic. There were quite a few people strolling on either side and several young men on horseback passed by our coach. I was told that this avenue is one of the principal promenades in Lima; among the women many were wearing the saya, and this costume struck me as so bizarre that it captured all my attention. Lima is a closed city, and at the end of the avenue we arrived at one of the gates. Its pillars are made of brick, and the façade, engraved with the arms of Spain, had been defaced. Officials searched the coach, just as they do at the gates of Paris. We went through much of the city; I thought the streets looked spacious and the houses quite different from the houses in Arequipa. Lima, so splendid from a distance, does not live up to its promise when you are inside; the houses
are shabby, the windows are unglazed, and their iron grilles create an impression of suspicion and constraint; at the same time it is depressing to see so little sign of life in the streets. The coach stopped at a pleasant-looking house from which emerged a large stout lady whom I recognised immediately from the description the gentlemen of the Mexicain had given me as Madame Denuelle. This lady opened the door of the coach herself, helped me to alight, and said in the most affable manner: “Mademoiselle Tristan, we have been impatiently awaiting your arrival for a long time. M Chabrié and M David have told us so much about you that we are very happy to have you with us.”
FRANCES TROLLOPE
(1780–1863)