MRS. PHILLIPS writes to Mrs. Lock early in April: “I must say something of Juniper, whence I had an irresistible invitation to dine yesterday and hear M. de Lally-Tollendal read his ‘Mort de Strafford,’ which he had already recited once, and which Madame de Staël requested him to repeat for my sake . . . . He is extremely absorbed by his tragedy, which he recites by heart, acting as well as declaiming with great energy, though seated.
. . . “M. Talleyrand seemed much struck with his piece, which appears to me to have very fine lines and passages in it, but which altogether interested me but little.”
Mrs. Phillips describes M. de Lally as “large and fat,” and as possessing “nothing distingué in manner.” It is evident that on this first introduction she did not greatly admire him. But a little later on, when she knew him better, she felt very differently. His was, in fact, an heroic nature. He had spent many years of his earlier life in endeavouring to clear the memory of his father from an unjust accusation of treason for which he had suffered death. The Comte de Lally had been Governor of Pondicherry when that town was captured by the English, and was accused by his countrymen of treacherously delivering it into their hands. It was not till nearly twenty years had elapsed after the execution of the Count that his son obtained a reversal of the iniquitous judgment.
Mrs. Phillips concludes her letter by remarking: “M. Malouet has left [Juniper Hall]. La Princesse d’Hénin is a very pleasing, well-bred woman; she [also] left the next morning with M. de Lally.”
Malouet was staying at that time in London with the Princesse d’Hénin. His health had suffered much from the perilous times he had passed through in Paris, and we hear but little of his doings. There is, however, an allusion to his being at Mickleham in a letter from Lally-Tollendal to M. d’Arblay, written a few months later, in which he says: “I am sure Miss Burney will have heard you talk of our poor Louis XVI. with the same emotion which drew tears from the eyes of Malouet and from my own the last time we walked and talked together.”
We should like to mention here the fact that Malouet was the intimate friend of Mallet du Pan, and that the two men had, so to speak, stood shoulder to shoulder “through the first three years of the Revolution.” Malouet is described by Mallet’s son as “a man who possessed every virtue which can distinguish a public man and form an inestimable and useful citizen” and as their “best and dearest friend.”[]
The Princesse d’Hénin was the intimate friend of Lafayette and of his family. In the “Memoires de Lafayette,” published by his descendants, the writer remarks that “most of the letters written during his captivity were addressed to her.” While his wife and almost all his relations and friends “were immured in the prisons of the Terreur, Madame d’Hénin was the centre of their correspondence, and endeavoured to give to each consolation and intelligence of the others.”
Mrs. Phillips writes to Fanny: “After I had sent off my letter to you on Monday, I walked on to Juniper, and entered at the same moment with Mr. Jenkinson and his attorney - a man whose figure strongly resembles some of Hogarth’s most ill-looking personages, and who appeared to me to be brought as a kind of spy, or witness of all that was passing. I would have retreated, fearing to interrupt business, but I was surrounded and pressed to stay by Madame de Staël with great impressement, and with much kindness by M. d’Arblay and all the rest. Mr. Clark was the spokesman, and acquitted himself with great dignity and moderation; Madame de Staël now and then came forth with a little coquetterie pour adoucir ce sauvage Jenkinson. ‘What will you, Mr. Jenkinson, tell to me; what will you?’ M. de Narbonne, somewhat indigne de la mauvaise foi, and excédé des longueurs de son adversaire, was not quite so gentle with him, and I was glad to perceive that he meant to resist, in some degree at least, the exorbitant demands of his landlord.
“Madame de Staël was very gay and M. de Talleyrand very comique this evening; he criticised, amongst other things, her reading of prose with great sang froid. ‘Vous lisez très mal la prose,’ he said. ‘There is a kind of chant in your voice - a sort of rhythm, followed by a monotonous intonation, which is not at all good. It is as if you were reading poetry aloud. Celà a un fort mauvais effet.’
“They talked over a number of their friends and acquaintance with the utmost unreserve and sometimes with the most comic humour imaginable - M. de Lally, M. de Lafayette, la Princesse d’Hénin, la Princesse de Poix, and a M. Guibert,
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M. DE TALLEYRAND
an author, who was, Madame de S. told me, passionately in love with her before she married, and innumerable others.”
We fancy we see the whole scene, and can picture to ourselves the cynical look on Talleyrand’s face as he censures Madame de Staël’s method of reading aloud, for we have sat in the very room where it took place - the same in which the émigrés and the Phillipses and the Locks so often met together - the sculptured drawing-room of Juniper Hall.
Whilst in company with these celebrated talkers it is interesting to turn to their remarks upon the art of conversation.
Talleyrand observed one day to his secretary, M. Colmache:[] “Talk not to me of books . . . . They can express neither surprise nor fear - the very anger which they convey has been all premeditated . . . . They are ‘composed’ by men, and are even greater hypocrites than they . . . but the causeur is himself, and speaks as he feels and thinks . . . . Even Louis Quatorze, whose Bastille yawned so greedily for those who dared to write a syllable against the justice of his measures, was known to wince beneath the lash of the witty causeurs of his day; he felt he was powerless against their attacks, and was compelled to flatter and to pardon, as Richelieu, that greater tyrant still, had been forced to do before him.
. . . “These witlings are as troublesome as summer flies,” said the magnificent monarch one day to Colbert, who had reported to him an epigram which he had heard in the salon of Madame Cornel.
“Yes, sire, and just as unconquerable,” replied Colbert.
Madame de Staël takes a different tone. “Conversation in France,” she says, “is not, as elsewhere, merely a means of communicating ideas and sentiments, or of conveying directions concerning the business of life; it is an instrument upon which we love to play, and which cheers and invigorates the mind as music does in some countries or wine in others.
“Bacon,” she says, “has truly observed that conversation is not a road which leads direct to a house, but a path along which we may roam hither and thither at our pleasure.”
It seems to us that the charm of the old French salons was due perhaps as much to the listeners as to the talkers. “There is an eloquence of heart,” says a French writer, “as well as of outward expression, and it often belongs in equal measure to him who speaks and to him who listens.” Surely this hidden partnership is necessary for the unconstrained flow and perfect development of conversation.
Sydney Smith, who knew Talleyrand in after life, says “he never talked till he had finished and digested his dinner, a slow process with him, but nobody’s wit was of so high an order as Talleyrand’s when it did come, or has stood so well the test of time.”
We feel tempted to insert two of his sayings to Madame de Staël, at the risk of repeating what may be already well known. The first is related by Samuel Rogers, the second by M. Pichot.
“Talleyrand was a great admirer of Madame Récamier and Madame de Staël, the first for her beauty, the other for her wit. Madame de Staël asked him, one day, if he found himself with both of them in the sea on a plank and could only save one, which it would be; to which he replied, ‘Ah! Madame de Staël knows so many things, doubtless she knows how to swim!’”
“When ‘Delphine’ appeared it was said that Madame de Staël had described herself as Delphine, and had described Talleyrand as Madame de Vernon. Meeting the authoress soon afterwards, Talleyrand remarked, in his most gentle tone of voice, ‘I hear that both you and I appear in your new book, but disguised as women.’”
CHAPTER XIV. A GROW
ING ATTACHMENT
“OUR Juniperians,” writes Mrs. Phillips, “went to see Paine’s Hill yesterday, and had the good nature to take my little happy Norbury.”
The French colony had managed, by sharing the expense, to purchase a cabriolet, a hooded one-horse chaise which held two people inside, and had a “dicky” behind for a servant. At the back of the vehicle there was a small window. Talleyrand, Narbonne, and the other gentlemen, we are told, used to take turns in riding behind, but as they could by no means bear to be excluded from the animated conversation that flowed from within the vehicle, they broke the window pane, and thus came in for their due share! Madame de Staël declares that she never heard more brilliant talk than on these occasions.
Whether the friends paused in their discourse to admire the beauties of nature, we do not know. At any rate, it is not likely that Madame de Staël did, for she is said to have exclaimed on one occasion to a friend, “I would not take the trouble to throw open my window to look for the first time upon the Bay of Naples, but I would willingly go a thousand miles to converse, for the first time, with a man of genius.” And when a friend, visiting her at Coppet, went into raptures at the sight of Lake Lemon, “Oh!” cried she, “give me rather the gutter in the Rue du Bac!”
The French, as a nation, perhaps, do not quite enter into the beauties of landscape scenery as we do. It has been shrewdly observed that “the Englishman admires nature, while the Frenchman admires the way in which he admires nature.”
Little Norbury had become a favourite with the émigrés, as the reader may have noticed, and often accompanied them in their walks or drives. There is a letter, preserved in the Burney family, written about him in broken English by M. de Narbonne, addressed to Charles Burney. The child was spending a few days at the time with his uncle at Hammersmith, and Narbonne, happening to be in London, had taken him out for the day.
“J beg Dr. Charles Burney to be excused for not having taken back the little Norbury at the fixed hour; but very awkwardly J mistook my way, and the poor little man should have missed his dinner if J would have not forced him to come with me in town. J am very unhappy to have lost an occasion more of being acquainted with Dr. Burney, who will be, J hope, as kind for me as the rest of his family.
L. DE NARBONNE.”
During the absence of her friends at Paine’s Hill, Mrs. Phillips received the visit of an English neighbour. “In the evening,” she writes, “came Miss F . . . . She talked of our neighbours, and very shortly and abruptly said, ‘So, Mrs. Phillips, we hear you are to have Mr. Nawbone and the other French company to live with you. Pray is it so?’
“I was, I confess, a little startled at this plain inquiry, but answered as composedly as I could, setting out with informing this bête personage that Madame de Staël was going to Switzerland to join her husband and family in a few days, and that of all the French company none would remain but M. de Narbonne and M. d’Arblay, for whom the captain and myself entertained a real friendship and esteem, and whom he had begged to make our house their own for a short time, as the impositions they had had to support from their servants, &c., and the failure of their remittances from abroad, had obliged them to resolve on breaking up house-keeping.
“I had scarcely said thus much when our party arrived from Paine’s Hill; the young lady, though she had drunk tea, was so obliging as to give us her company for near two hours, and made a curious attack on M. de N., upon the first pause in wretched French, though we had before, all of us, talked no other language than English.
“Our evening was very pleasant when she was gone. Madame de Staël is, with all her wildness and blemishes, a delightful companion, and M. de N. rises upon us in esteem and affection every time I see him: their minds, in some points, ought to be exchanged, for he is as delicate as a really feminine woman, and evidently suffers when he sees her setting les bienséances aside, as it often enough befalls her to do.”
“She has many faults,” said one who knew her well, “but much that would be faulty in others is not so in her . . . . Her open-hearted, frank nature and kind of honesty and truthfulness make her very attractive.” “She is a woman by herself,” said Lord Byron, “and has done more than all the rest of them together, intellectually - she ought to have been a man.”
“I must go back to Monday,” writes Mrs. Phillips “to tell you something that passed which struck and affected me very much. M. de Talleyrand arrived at Juniper to dinner, and Madame de Staël, in a state of the most vehement impatience for news, would scarce give him time to breathe between her questions; and when she had heard all he could [Page I38] tell her, she was equally impetuous to hear all his conjectures. She was evidently elated with hopes of such success as would give peace, security and happiness to them all, yet scarce dared give way to all her flattering expectations.
“M. de Talleyrand’s hopes were alive likewise, though he did not, like her, lose his composure and comic placidness of manner. After some conversation had followed, ‘For my part,’ continued he, laughing, ‘I own I should greatly like to do some fighting.’
. . . “‘You think so,’ said M. de N., with sadness, ‘because you do not live in Juniper - near to Norbury and to Madame Philippe - because you live in Woodstock Street.’
“‘ Well,’ said M. de Talleyrand, ‘I give you my word, it would afford me real pleasure to fight those rascals.’
“‘Why, what pleasure could there be,’ said M. de N., with a mixture of douceur and sadness which was very touching, ‘in killing poor wretches whose worst crimes are ignorance and folly? If war could be made simply against Marat, Danton, Robespierre, M. Egalité, and a few hundred more of such villains, I might myself find satisfaction in it.’
“After this the conversation was supported by Madame de Staël and M. de Talleyrand, who, by the way, is going to sell all his books, and who
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NORBURY PARK, ENTRANCE SIDE
very placidly said to-day, ‘I shall give up my house in Woodstock Street; it is too expensive.’
. . . “Poor Madame de Staël has been greatly disappointed and hurt,” remarks Mrs. Phillips to Fanny, “by the failure of the friendship and intercourse she had wished to maintain with you . . . . She asked me if you would accompany Mrs. Lock back into the country. I answered that my father would not wish to lose you for so long a time at once, as you had been absent from him as a nurse so many days.
“After a little pause, ‘But is a woman in tutelage for her whole life in this country?’ she said. ‘It seems to me that your sister might be a girl of fourteen.’
“I did not oppose this idea, but enlarged rather on the constraints laid upon females, some very unnecessarily, in England - hoping to lessen her dépit; it continued, however, visible in her countenance, though she did not express it in words.”
Fanny Burney had been visiting the Locks in their London house, where the two Miss Locks had both been ill. Soon afterwards the family returned to Norbury.
“Sunday, after church, I walked up to Norbury,” writes Mrs. Phillips. “There, unexpectedly, I met all our Juniperians, and listened to one of the best conversations I have ever heard; it was on literary topics, and the chief speakers Madame de Staël, M. de Talleyrand, Mr. Lock, and M. Dumont, a gentleman on a visit of two days
OLD CONSERVATORY, NORBURY PARK
at Juniper, a Genevois, homme d’esprit et de lettres.”
M. Dumont was the friend of Jeremy Bentham and the editor of many of his works. He was also intimate with the Edgeworth family, and from all we read of him in Maria Edgeworth’s “Letters,” he seems to have been a man of a singularly amiable and attractive character.
“On Monday I went, by invitation, to Juniper to dine,” continues Mrs. Phillips, “and before I came away at night a letter arrived express to Madame de Staël. On reading it the change in her countenance made me guess the contents. It was from the Swedish gentleman who had been appointed by her husband to meet her at Ostend; he wrote from that place that
he was awaiting her arrival. She had designed walking home with us by moonlight, but her spirits were too much oppressed to enable her to keep this intention.”
Madame de Staël’s marriage, as is well known, was not a happy one. Her husband was many years older than herself, and he was unfortunately a spendthrift.
“M. d’Arblay walked home with Phillips and me,” continues the writer. “Every moment of his time has been given of late to transcribing a MS. work of Madame de Staël on ‘L’Influence des Passions.’ It is a work of considerable length, and written in a hand the most difficult possible to decipher.
“On Tuesday we all met again at Norbury, where we spent the day. Madame de Staël could not rally her spirits at all, and seemed like one torn from all that was dear to her. I was truly concerned.
“After giving me a variety of charges, or rather entreaties, to watch and attend to the health, spirits, and affairs of the friends she was leaving, she said to me. Et dites à Mlle. Burney je ne lui en veux pas du tout - that I quit the country loving her sincerely, and without any feelings of rancour.
“I assured her earnestly, and with more words than I have room to insert, not only of your admiration, but affection, and sensibility of her worth, and chagrin at seeing no more of her. I hope I exceeded not your wishes; mais il n’y avait pas moyen de resister.
“She seemed pleased, and said, ‘Vous êtes bien bonne de me dire celà,’ but in a low and faint voice, and dropped the subject.
“Before we took leave M. d’Arblay was already gone, meaning to finish transcribing her MS. I came home with Madame de Staël and M. de Narbonne. The former actually sobbed in saying farewell to Mrs. Lock, and half-way down the hill her parting from me was likewise very tender and flattering.
“I determined, however, to see her again, and met her near the school[] on Wednesday morning with a short note and a little offering which I was irresistibly tempted to make her. She could
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 719
