Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  We have had but one day’s rain since we left you; if we had picked the weather we could not have had finer. The country through which we came from Brussels was for the most part beautiful, planted in side-scenes, after my father’s manner, you know. The English who can see nothing worth seeing in this country, must certainly pass through it with huge blinkers of prejudice.

  PARIS, Wednesday.

  We arrived about three o’clock, and are lodged for a few days at the Hôtel de Courlande. I forgot to tell you that we saw an officer with furred waistcoat, and furred pockets, and monstrous moustache; he looked altogether very like the Little Gibbon in Shaw’s Zoology, only the Little Gibbon does not look as conceited as this man did.

  We are now, my dear Aunt Mary, in a magnificent hotel in the fine square, formerly Place Louis Quinze, afterwards Place de la Revolution, and now Place de la Concorde. Here the guillotine was once at work night and day; and here died Louis Seize, and Marie Antoinette, and Madame Roland: opposite to us is the Seine and La Lanterne. On one side of this square are the Champs Élysées.

  To MRS. MARY SNEYD. PARIS, RUE DE LILLE, Oct. 31, 1802.

  I left off at the Hôtel de Courlande. We were told there was a fine view of Paris from the leads; and so indeed there is, and the first object that struck us was the Telegraph at work! The first voiture de remise (job-coach in plain English) into which we got, belonged to — whom do you think? — to the Princess Elizabeth. The Abbé Edgeworth had probably been in this very coach with her. The master of this house was one of the King’s guards, a Swiss. Our apartments are all on one floor. The day after our arrival M. Delessert, he whom M. Pictet describes as a French Rumford, invited us to spend the evening with his mother and sister. We went: found an excellent house, a charming family, with whom we felt we were perfectly acquainted after we had been in the room with them for five minutes. Madame Delessert, [Footnote: The benevolence of the generous Madame Delessert is said to be depicted in one of the stories in Berquin’s Ami des Enfans.] the mother, an elderly lady of about sixty, has the species of politeness and conversation that my Aunt Ruxton has: I need not say how much I like her. Her daughter, Madame Gautier, has fine large black eyes, very obliging and sensible, well dressed, not at all naked: people need not be naked here unless they choose it. Rousseau’s Letters on Botany were written for this lady; he was a friend of the family. She has two fine children of eight and ten, to whose education she devotes her time and talents. Her second brother, François Delessert, about twenty, was educated chiefly by her, and does her great credit, and what is better for her, is extremely fond of her: he seems the darling of his mother, François mon fils she calls him every minute. In his countenance and manners he is something like Henry; he has that sober kind of cheerfulness, that ingenuous openness, and that modest, gentlemanlike ease which pleases without effort, and without bustle. Madame Gautier does not live at Paris, but at a country house at Passy, the Richmond of Paris, about two miles out of town. She invited us to spend a day there, and a most pleasant day we passed. The situation beautiful, the house furnished with elegance and good sense, the society most agreeable. M. Delessert père, an old sensible man, the rest of the family, and Madame de Pastoret, [Footnote: Madame de Pastoret is the “Madame de Fleury” of Miss Edgeworth’s story. She first established infant schools in France.] a literary and fashionable lady, with something of Mrs. Saunderson’s best style of conversation: M. de Pastoret, her husband, a man of diplomatic knowledge; Lord Henry Petty, son of Lord Lansdowne, with whom my father had much conversation; the Swiss Ambassador, whose name I will not attempt to spell; M. Dumont, [Footnote: M. Pierre Etienne Louis Dumont, tutor to Lord Henry Petty (afterwards the famous second Marquis of Lansdowne), had translated Bentham’s Traités sur la Législation, and Théorie des Peines et des Récompenses. He became an intimate friend and much-valued critic of Miss Edgeworth.] a Swiss gentleman, travelling with Lord Henry Petty, very sensible and entertaining, I am sorry that he has since left Paris; M. d’Etaing, of whom I know nothing; and last, but indeed not least, the Abbé Morellet, [Footnote: The author of several works on political economy and statistics; born 1727, died 1819.] of whom you have heard my father speak. O! my dear Aunt Mary, how you would love that man, and we need not be afraid of loving him, for he is near eighty. But it is impossible to believe that he is so old when one either hears him speak, or sees him move. He has all the vivacity, and feeling, and wit of youth, and all the gentleness that youth ought to have. His conversation is delightful, nothing too much or too little; sense, and gaiety, and learning, and reason, and that perfect knowledge of the world which mixes so well but so seldom with a knowledge of books. He invited us to breakfast, and this morning we spent with him. My dearest Aunt Mary, I do wish you had been with us; I know that you would have been so much pleased. The house so convenient, so comfortable, so many inventions the same as my father’s. He has a sister living with him, Madame de Montigny, an amiable, sensible woman: her daughter was married to Marmontel, who died a few years ago: she alas! is not at Paris.

  My father did not present any of his letters of introduction till yesterday, because he wished that we should be masters and mistresses of our own time to see sights before we saw people. We have been to Versailles — melancholy magnificence — La petite Trianon: the poor Queen! and at the Louvre, or as it is now called, La Musée, to see the celebrated gallery of pictures. I was entertained, but tired with seeing so many pictures, all to be admired, and all in so bad a light, that my little neck was almost broken, and my little eyes almost strained out, trying to see them. We were all extremely interested yesterday seeing what are called Les Monuments Français — all the statues and monuments of the great men of France, arranged according to their dates in the apartments of the ancient Monastery des Augustins. Here we saw old Hugh Capet, with his nose broken, and King Pepin, with his nose flattened by time, and Catherine de Medicis, in full dress, but not in full beauty, and Francis I., and dear Henry IV.

  We have been to the Théâtre Français and to the Théâtre Feydau, both fine houses: decorations, etc., superior to English: acting much superior in comedy; in tragedy they bully, and rant, and throw themselves into Academy attitudes too much.

  R.L. EDGEWORTH to MISS CHARLOTTE SNEYD. PARIS, Nov. 18, 1802.

  Maria told you of M. and Madame de Pastoret; in the same house on another floor — for different families here have entire “apartments,” you observe the word, in one house — we met M. and Madame Suard: [Footnote: M. Suard was editor of the Publiciste.] he is accounted one of the most refined critics of Paris, and has for many years been at the head of newspapers of different denominations; at present he is at the head of La Publiciste. He is prudent, highly informed, not only in books, but in the politics of different states and the characters of men in all the different countries of Europe. Madame Suard has the remains of much beauty, a belle esprit, and aims at singularity and independence of sentiment. Would you believe it, Mr. Day paid his court to her thirty years ago? She is very civil to us, and we go to their house once a week: literati frequent it, and to each of them she has something to say.

  At Madame de Pastoret’s we met M. Degerando [Footnote: Marie Joseph Degerando, writer on education and philosophy, 1772-1842.] and M. Camille Jordan. Not Camille de Jourdan, the assassin, nor Camille Desmoulins, another assassin, nor General Jourdan, another assassin, but a young man of agreeable manners, gentle disposition, and much information; he lives near Paris, with his Pylades Degerando, who is also a man of much information, married to a pretty sprightly domestic woman, who nurses her child in earnest. Camille Jordan has written an admirably eloquent pamphlet on the choice of Buonaparte as first consul for life; it was at first forbidden, but the Government wisely recollected that to forbid is to excite curiosity. We three have had profound metaphysical conferences in which we have avoided contest and have generally ended by being of the same opinion. We went, by appointment, to Madame Campan’s — she keeps the greatest boarding-school in France
— to meet Madame Recamier, the beautiful lady who had been nearly squeezed to death in London. How we liked the school and its conductress, who professes to follow Practical Education, I leave to Maria to tell you. How we like Madame Recamier is easily told; she is certainly handsome, but there is nothing noble in her appearance; she was very civil. M. de Prony, [Footnote: Gaspard Clair François Marie Riche, baron de Prony, the great mathematician, 1755-1839.] who is at the head of the Engineers des Ponts et Chaussées — civil engineers — was introduced to us by Mr. Watt. I forgot to speak of him; he has just left Paris. M. de Prony showed us models and machines which would have delighted William. M. l’Abbé Morellet’s niece next engaged our attention; she and her husband came many leagues to see us; and we met also Madame de Vergennes, Madame de Remusat, and Madame Nansoutit, all people of knowledge and charming manners. Madame Lavoisier and the Countess Massulski, General Kosciusko, Prince Jablounski, and Princess Jablounska, and two other Princesses, I leave to Maria. Mons. Edelcrantz, private secretary to the King of Sweden; Mons. Eisenman, a German; Mons. Geofrat, the guardian from Egypt of the Kings of Chaldea and seven Ibises; Mons. de Montmorenci — that great name: the Abbé Sicard, who dines here to-morrow; Mons. Pang, Mons. Bertrant, Mons. Milan, Mons. Dupont, Mons. Bareuil the illuminati man, and Mr. Bilsbury, I leave to her and Charlotte.

  MRS. EDGEWORTH to MRS. MARY SNEYD. PARIS, Nov. 21, 1802.

  Mr. Edgeworth’s summary of events closed, I believe, last Thursday. Friday we saw beauty, riches, fashion, luxury, and numbers at Madame Recamier’s; she is a charming woman, surrounded by a group of adorers and flatterers in a room where are united wealth and taste, all of modern execution and ancient design that can contribute to its ornament — a strange mélange of merchants and poets, philosophers and parvenus — English, French, Portuguese, and Brazilian, which formed the company; we were treated with distinguished politeness by our hostess, who concluded the evening by taking us to her box at the Opera, where, besides being in company with the most fashionable women in Paris, we were seen by Buonaparte himself, who sat opposite to us in a railed box, through which he could see, but not be seen.

  Saturday we saw the magnificent Salle of the Corps Legislatif, and in the evening passed some hours in the agreeable society of Madame de Vergennes and her daughters. Sunday we were very happy at home. Monday morning, just as we were going out, M. Pictet was announced; we neither heard his name nor distinctly recollected his looks, he is grown so fat and looks so well, more friendly no man can be. I hope he perceives we are grateful to him. The remainder of that day was spent in the gallery of pictures, where we met Mr. Rogers, the poet, and Mr. Abercrombie. The evening was spent with M. Pictet at his sister’s, an agreeable, well-informed widow, with three handsome daughters. Tuesday we went to the National Library, where we were shown a large number of the finest cameos, intaglios, and Roman and Greek medals, and many of the antiquities brought from Egypt; and in the evening we had again the pleasure of M. Pictet’s company, and of the charming Madame de Pastoret, who was so obliging as to drink tea with us. Yesterday we had the pleasure of being at home, when several learned and ingenious men called on us, and consequently heard one of the most lively and instructive conversations on a variety of topics for three hours: as I think it is Mr. Edgeworth’s plan to knock you down with names, I will just enumerate those of our visitors, Edelcrantz, a Swede, Molard, Eisenman, Dupont, and Pictet the younger. After they went, we paid a short visit to the pictures and saw the Salle du Tribunat and the Consul’s apartments at the Tuileries: on the dressing-table there were the busts of Fox and Nelson. At our return home we saw the good François Delessert and another man, who was the man who took Robespierre prisoner, and who has since made a clock which is wound up by the action of the air on mercury, like that which Mr. Edgeworth invented for the King of Spain. He told us many things that made us stare, and many that made us shiver, and many more that made us wish never to see him again.

  In the evening we went to Madame Suard’s. Don’t imagine that these ladies are all widows, for they have husbands, and in many instances the husband vaut mieux que la femme. At Madame Suard’s we met the famous Count Lally Tolendal and the Duc de Crillon. This morning Maria has gone with the Pictets to see the Abbé Sicard’s deaf and dumb.

  Mr. Edgeworth has not yet seen Buonaparte: he goes to-morrow to wait on

  Lord Whitworth as a preliminary step. It is a singular circumstance that

  Lord Whitworth, the new Ambassador, has brought to Paris the same

  horses, and the same wife, and lives in the same house as the last

  Ambassador did eleven years ago: he has married the widow of the Duke of

  Dorset, who was here then.

  In England many are the tales of scandal that have been related of the Consul and all his family: I don’t believe them. A lady told me it was “vraiment extraordinaire qu’un jeune homme comme lui ait de moeurs si exemplaires — et d’ailleurs on ne s’attend pas qu’un homme soit fidèle à une femme qui est plus agée que lui: mais si agée aussi! Il aime la soumission plus que la beauté: s’il lui dit de se coucher à huit heures, elle se couche: s’il faut se lever à deux heures, elle se leve! Elle est une bonne femme, elle a sauvé bien des vies.”

  Has Maria told you that she has had her Belinda translated into French by the young Count de Segur, an amiable young man of one of the most ancient families of France, married to a grand-daughter of the Chancellor d’Aguesseau? Many people support themselves by writing for journals, and by translating English books, yet the price of literature seems very low, and the price of all the necessaries of life very high. The influx of English has, they say, doubled the price of lodgings and of all luxuries.

  MARIA EDGEWORTH to MRS. RUXTON. PARIS, Dec. 1, 1802.

  I have been treasuring up for some time everything I have seen and heard which I think would interest you; and now my little head is so full that I must empty it, or it would certainly burst. All that I have seen and heard has tended to attach me more firmly to you by the double effect of resemblance and of contrast. Every agreeable person recalls you; every disagreeable, makes me exclaim, how different, etc.

  I wish I could paint the different people we have seen in little William’s magic-lanthorn, and show them to you. At Madame Delessert’s house there are, and have been for years, meetings of the most agreeable and select society in Paris: she has the courage absolutely to refuse to admit either man or woman of whose conduct she cannot approve; at other houses there is sometimes a strange mixture. To recommend Madame Delessert still more powerfully to you, I must tell you that she was the benefactress of Rousseau; he was, it is said, never good or happy except in her society: to her bounty he owed his retreat in Switzerland. She is nobly charitable, but if it were not for her friends no one would find out half the good she does. One of her acts of beneficence is recorded in Berquin’s Ami des Enfans, but even her own children cannot tell in which story it is. Her daughter, Madame Gautier, gains upon our esteem every day.

  Turn the handle of the magic-lanthorn: who is this graceful figure, with all the elegance of court manners, and all the simplicity of domestic virtue? She is Madame de Pastoret. She was chosen preceptress to the Princess in the ancien régime in opposition to the wife of Condorcet, and M. de Pastoret had I forget how many votes more than Condorcet when it was put to the vote who should be preceptor to the Dauphin at the beginning of the Revolution. Both M. and Madame de Pastoret speak remarkably well; each with that species of eloquence which becomes them. He was President of the First Assembly, and at the head of the King’s Council: the four other ministers of that council all perished! He escaped by his courage. As for her, the Marquis de Chastelleux’s speech describes her: “Elle n’a point d’expression sans grace et point de grace sans expression.”

  Turn the magic-lanthorn. Here comes Madame Suard and Monsieur, a member of the Academy: very good company at their house. Among others Lally Tolendal, who is exceedingly like Father Tom, and whose real name o
f Mullalagh he softened into Lally, said to be more eloquent than any man in France; M. de Montmorenci, worthy of his great name.

  Push on the magic-lanthorn slide. Here comes Boissy d’Anglas: a fine head! Such a head as you may imagine the man to have who, by his single courage, restrained the fury of one of the National Assemblies when the head of one of the deputies was cut off and set on the table before him.