Have you been at St. Maurice? If you have not, I cannot give you an idea of the surprise and delight we felt at the first sight of the view going down through the archway! But what a miserable town! After Fanny had sketched from the window of the inn a group of children, we finished our evening by hearing Dumont read, incomparably well, Les Chateaux d’Espagne. In the night we were awakened by the most horrible female voice, singing, or rather screeching, in the passage — the voice of a person having a goître, and either mad or drunk. There had been a marriage of country people in the house, and this lady had drunk a little too much. We heard Dumont’s door open, and he silenced or drove her away.
Next morning we went, on part of the Simplon route which Buonaparte made, to St. Gingulph, where we spent some hours on the Lake. Dumont told us he had been there with Rogers, who was so delighted with its beauty, that instead of one he spent six days there.
Not having met the Moilliets as expected at St. Maurice, we became very anxious about them; but upon our arrival at Pregny next day, found them all very quietly there. Mrs. Moilliet’s not being very well kept them at home. Nothing can be kinder than they are to us.
We dined two days after our return to Pregny at Coppet: the Duke and Duchess de Broglie are now there, and we met M. de Stein, [Footnote: Carl, Baron Stein, the Minister of Frederick William IV. of Prussia.] a great diplomatist, and M, Pictet Deodati, of whom Madame de Staël said, if one could take hold of Pictet Deodati’s neckcloth, and give him one good shaking, what a number of good things would come out!
MALAGNY, DR. MARCET’S, Sept.
We came here last Friday, and have spent our time most happily with our excellent friend Mrs. Marcet. His children are all so fond of Dr. Marcet, we see that he is their companion and friend. They have all been happily busy in making a paper fire-balloon, sixteen feet in diameter, and thirty feet high. A large company were invited to see it mount. It was a fine evening. The balloon was filled on the green before the house. The lawn slopes down to the lake, and opposite to it magnificent Mont Blanc, the setting sun shining on its summit. After some heart-beatings about a hole in the top of the balloon, through which the smoke was seen to issue — an evil omen — it went up successfully. The sun had set, but we saw its reflection beautifully on one side of the balloon, so that it looked like a globe half ice, half fire, or half moon, half sun, self-suspended in the air. It went up exactly a mile. I say exactly, because Pictet measured the height by an instrument of a new invention, which I will describe when we meet. The air here is so clear, that at this height we saw it distinctly.
M. Pictet de Rochemont, brother to our old friend, has taken most kind pains to translate the best passages from my father’s Memoirs for the Bibliothèque Universelle. We were yesterday at his house with a large party, and met Madame Necker de Saussure — much more agreeable than her book. Her manner and figure reminded us of our beloved Mrs. Moutray: she is deaf, too, and she has the same resignation, free from suspicion, in her expression when she is not speaking, and the same gracious attention to the person who speaks to her.
CHATEAU DE COPPET, Sept. 28,
8 A.M.
We came here yesterday, and here we are in the very apartments occupied by M. Necker, opening into what is now the library, but what was once that theatre on which Madame de Staël used to act her own Corinne. Yesterday evening, when Madame de Broglie had placed me next the oldest friend of the family, M. de Bonstettin, he whispered to me, “You are now in the exact spot, in the very chair where Madame de Staël used to sit!” Her friends were excessively attached to her. This old man talked of her with tears in his eyes, and with all the sudden change of countenance and twitchings of the muscles which mark strong, uncontrollable feeling.
There is something inexpressibly melancholy, awful, in this house, in these rooms, where the thought continually recurs, Here Genius was! here was Ambition, Love! all the great struggles of the passions; here was Madame de Staël! The respect paid to her memory by her son and daughter, and by M. de Broglie, is touching. The little Rocca, seven years old, is an odd, cold, prudent, old-man sort of a child, as unlike as possible to the son you would have expected from such parents. M. Rocca, brother to the boy’s father, is here: handsome, but I know no more. M. Sismondi and his wife dined here, and three Saladins, father, mother, and daughter. M. de Staël has promised to show to me Gibbon’s love-letters to his grandmother, ending regularly with “Je suis, mademoiselle, avec les sentimens qui font le désespoir de ma vie,” etc.
M. de Bonstettin — Gray the poet’s friend — told me that in Sweden, about thirty years ago, he saw potatoes in the corner of a gentleman’s garden as a curiosity. “They tell me, sir,” said the gentleman, “that in some countries they eat the roots of this plant!” Now they are cultivated there, and the people have become fond of them.
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With M. de Staël and Madame de Broglie Miss Edgeworth was particularly happy. It had been reported that Madame de Staël had said of Maria’s writings “que Miss Edgeworth était digne de l’enthousiasme, mais qu’elle s’est perdue dans la triste utilité.” “Ma mère n’a jamais dit ça,” Madame de Broglie indignantly declared, “elle était incapable!” She saw, indeed, the enthusiastic admiration which Maria felt for her mother’s genius, and she was gratified by the regard and esteem which Maria showed for her and her brother, and the sympathy she expressed in their affection for each other, and in their kindness to their little Rocca brother.
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MARIA to MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH. LYONS, HOTEL DU NORD, Oct. 22, 1820.
Lyons! is it possible that I am really at Lyons, of which I have heard my father speak so much? Lyons! where his active spirit once reigned, and where now scarce a trace, a memory of him remains. The Perraches all gone, Carpentiers no more to be heard of, Bons a name unknown; De la Verpilliere — one descendant has a fine house here, but he is in the country.
The look of the town and the fine facades of the principal buildings, and the Place de Bellecour, were the more melancholy to me from knowing them so well in the prints in the great portfolio, with such a radiance thrown over them by his descriptions. I hear his voice saying, La Place de Bellecour and l’Hotel de Ville — these remain after all the horrors of the Revolution — but human creatures, the best, the ablest, the most full of life and gaiety, all passed away.
It is a relief to my mind to pour out all this to you. I do not repent having come to Lyons; I should not have forgiven myself if I had not.
I have been writing to dear Mrs. Moilliet — nothing could exceed her kindness and Mr. Moilliet’s. Dumont was excessively touched at parting with us, and gave Fanny and Harriet La Fontaine and Gresset, and to me a map of the lake — of the tour we took so happily together.
To MRS. RUXTON. PARIS, Nov. 1820.
Never lose another night’s sleep, or another moment’s thought on the Quarterly Review [Footnote: An article on Maria Edgeworth’s Memoirs of her Father, full of doubt, ridicule, misrepresentation, and acrimony. Miss Edgeworth never read this Review till 1835, when she was induced to do so by a letter from Mr. Peabody alluding to it. It was then powerless to give her pain, for its anonymous falsehoods had long fallen into oblivion.] — I have never read and never will read it.
I write this merely to tell you that I have at last had the pleasure of seeing Madame la Comtesse de Vaudreuil, the daughter of your friend; she is an exceedingly pleasing woman, of high fashion, with the remains of great beauty, courteous and kind to us beyond all expectation. She had but a few days in Paris, and she made out two for us; she took us to the Conciergerie to see, by lamp-light, the dungeons where the poor Queen and Madame Elizabeth were confined, now fitted up as little chapels. In the Queen’s is an altar inscribed with her letter to the King, expressing forgiveness of her enemies. Tears streamed from the eyes of the young Countess de Vaudreuil, the daughter-in-law, as she looked at this altar, and the place where the Queen’s bed was. Who do you think accompanied us to this place? Lady B
eauchamp, Lady Longford’s mother, a great friend of Madame de Vaudreuil’s, with whom we dined the next day, and who had procured for us the Duc de Choiseul’s box at the Théâtre Français, when the house was to be uncommonly crowded to see Mademoiselle Duchenois in Athalie “avec tous les choeurs,” and a most striking spectacle it was! I had never seen Mademoiselle Duchenois to perfection before.
MRS. MARCET to MARIA EDGEWORTH. MALAGNY, Nov. 15, 1820.
I cannot make up my mind, my dear friend, to take my departure [Footnote: Mrs. Marcet was just setting out for Italy.] for a still more distant country without again bidding you adieu. I have hesitated for some time past, “Shall I or shall I not write to Miss Edgeworth?” for I felt that I could not write without touching on an article in the Quarterly — a subject which makes my blood boil with indignation, and which rouses every feeling of contempt and abhorrence. I might indeed refrain from the expression of these sentiments, but how could I restrain all those feelings of the warmest interest, the tenderest sympathy, and the softest pity for your wounded feelings? I well remember the wish you one day so piously expressed to me that your father could look down from heaven and see the purity and zeal of your intentions in writing his Memoirs; I am sure your HEAVENLY FATHER does see them. And I feel that this unjust, unchristian, inquisitorial attack will not only develop fresh sentiments of the tenderest nature in your friends, but also rally every human being of sound sense around you.
MARIA EDGEWORTH to MRS. EDGEWORTH. PARIS, Nov. 15, 1820.
You would scarcely believe, my dear friends, the calm of mind and the sort of satisfied resignation I feel as to my father’s Life. I suppose the two years of doubt and extreme anxiety that I felt, exhausted all my power of doubting. I know that I have done my very best, I know that I have done my duty, and I firmly believe that if my dear father could see the whole he would be satisfied with what I have done.
We have seen Mademoiselle Mars twice, or thrice rather, in the Mariage de Figaro and in the little pieces of Le Jaloux sans amour, and La jeunesse de Henri Cinq, and admire her exceedingly. En petit comité the other night at the Duchesse d’Escars, a discussion took place between the Duchesse de la Force, Marmont, and Pozzo di Borgo, on the bon et mauvais ton of different expressions — bonne société is an expression bourgeoise — you may say bonne compagnie or la haute société. “Voilà des nuances,” as Madame d’Escars said. Such a wonderful jabbering as these grandees made about these small matters. It put me in mind of a conversation in the World on good company which we all used to admire.
We have seen a great deal of our dear Delesserts, and of Madame de Rumford, [Footnote: First married to Lavoisier, the celebrated chemist, then to Count Rumford, the scientist, from whom she was separated for many years. She was now again a widow.] who gave us a splendid and most agreeable dinner. And one evening with the Princess Potemkin, who is — take notice — only a Princess by courtesy, as she has married a Potemkin, who is not a Prince, and though she was born Princess Galitzin, she loses her rank by marrying an inferior, according to Russian and French custom, and they are, with reason, surprised at our superior gallantry, once a lady always a lady. But whether Princess or not Princess, our Madame Potemkin is most charming, and you may bless your stars that you are not obliged to read a page of panegyric upon her. She was as much delighted to see us again, as we were to see her; she was alone with Madame de Noisville, that happy mixture of my Aunt Fox [Footnote: Mary, wife of Francis Fox, elder sister of Mr. Edgeworth and Mrs. Ruxton.] and Mrs. Lataffiere. We went from Madame Potemkin to Madame d’Haussonville’s, with her we found Madame de Bouillé playing at billiards, just in the attitude in which we had left her three months ago. Saturday I had a bad headache, but recovered in the evening; and Monday we dined at Madame Potemkin’s, where we met her aunt, a Princess Galitzin, a thin, tall, odd, very clever woman, daughter to that Prince Shuvaloff, to whom Voltaire wrote eternally, and she is imbued with anecdotes of that period, very well bred, and quick in conversation. She is always afraid of catching cold, and always wears a velvet cap, and is always wrapped up in shawls and pelisses in going from house to house — à cela près, a reasonable woman.
After leaving Madame Potemkin’s we went to see — whom do you think? Guess all round the breakfast-table before you turn over the leaf; if anybody guesses right, I guess it will be Aunt Mary.
Madame de la Rochejacquelin [Footnote: Widow of the Vendean hero.] — She had just arrived from the country, and we found ourselves in a large hotel, in which all the winds of heaven were blowing, and in which, as we went upstairs and crossed the ante-chambers, all was darkness, except one candle which the servant carried before us. In a small bedroom, well furnished, with a fire just lighted, we found Madame de la Rochejacquelin lying on a sofa — her two daughters at work — one spinning with a distaff, and the other embroidering muslin. Madame is a large fat woman, with a broad round fair face, with a most open benevolent expression, as benevolent as Molly Bristow’s or as Mrs. Brinkley’s. Her hair cut short, and perfectly gray, as seen under her cap; the rest of her face much too young for such gray locks, not at all the hard weatherbeaten look that had been described to us; and though her face and bundled form and dress, all squashed on a sofa, did not at first promise much of gentility, you could not hear her speak or see her for three minutes without perceiving that she was well-born and well-bred. She had hurt her leg, which was the cause of her lying on the sofa. It seemed a grievous penance, as she is of as active a temper as ever. She says her health is perfect, but a nervous disease in her eyes has nearly deprived her of sight — she could hardly see my face, though I sat as close as I could go to the sofa.
“I am always sorry,” said she, “when any stranger sees me, parceque je sais que je détruis toute illusion. Je sais que je devrais avoir l’air d’une héroine, et surtout que je devrais avoir l’air malheureuse ou épuisé an moins — rien de tout cela, hélas!”
She is much better than a heroine — she is benevolence and truth itself. She begged her daughters to take us into the salon to show us what she thought would interest us. She apologised for the cold of these rooms — and well she might; when the double doors were opened I really thought Eolus himself was puffing in our faces; we shawled ourselves well before we ventured in. At one end of the salon is a picture of M. de Lescure, and at the other, of Henri de la Rochejacquelin, by Gérard and Girardet, presents from the King. Fine military figures. In the boudoir is one of M. de la Rochejacquelin, much the finest of all — she has never yet looked at this picture. Far from being disappointed, I was much gratified by this visit.
To MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH. CALAIS, Dec. 5, 1820.
It is a great satisfaction to me, my dear Lucy, to feel that we are now so much nearer to you, and that before I finish this little note we shall be still nearer to you in the same United Kingdom, so that in eight days we can have an answer to questions about you; what a difference from the three long weeks we used to wait at Geneva.
And now, my dear Lucy, I must employ you to break to my mother an important secret. Choose a proper time for speaking to her on the subject, when she is not very busy, when her mind is at ease, that is, when you are pretty well. My aunts and Honora may be in the room, if you think proper. Begin by saying that I know both my mother and Lovell are so kind and have such confidence in me that I am sure they will not hastily object to the introduction of a new person into the family, though they may perhaps feel a little surprised at hearing of my having actually decided upon such a measure without writing first to consult them. I have actually brought with me from Paris, and intend, unless I am actually forbidden, to bring with me to Edgeworthstown, a French washerwoman. I cannot expect that Lovell should build a house for her, though I know he has long had it in contemplation to build a laundry; but my little French woman does not require a house, she can live in our house, if he and my mother, and my aunts please, and I will engage that she shall give no sort of trouble, and shall cost nothing. She is a sourde et muette, an elder
ly woman with a very good countenance, always cheerful, and going on with her own business without minding other people’s. She was recommended to me by Madame François Delessert, and has lived for some time in their family, much liked by all, especially by the children, for whom she washed constantly, till one of her legs was hurt, so that she cannot work now quite as well as formerly. But still she washed so as to give general satisfaction. Fanny and Harriet like her washing, and I am sure my aunts will like it and her very much; and I think she might, till some other place be found for her, sleep in my mother’s dressing-room.
And here, my dear Lucy, I beg you will pause and hear what everybody says about this washerwoman and this plan.
And after five minutes given to deliberation, go on and say, that if no better place can be found for my washerwoman, she may stand on my mother’s chimney-piece! [Footnote: A pretty little French toy given by Madame François Delessert.]
No more nonsense at present.
To MRS. EDGEWORTH. CALAIS, DESSIN’S HOTEL, Dec. 5, 1820.
Coming back to this place, to the same room where we were seven months ago, the whole seems to me and to my companions like a delightful dream, but in waking from Alps, and glaciers, and cascades, and Mont Blanc, and troops of acquaintance in splendid succession and visionary confusion, in waking from this wonderful dream, the sober certainty of happiness remains and assures us that all which has passed is not a dream. All our old friends at Paris are still more our friends than ever, and many new ones made. Every expectation, every hope that I had formed for this journey has been more than gratified, far surpassed by the reality; and we return with thorough satisfaction to our own country, looking to our dear home for permanent happiness, without a wish unsatisfied or a regret for anything we have left behind, except our friends.
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 661