Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  The Abbé de St. Remi here ceased to speak; and D’Alonville, impressed with the deepest concern for his unhappy friend, whose misfortunes he allowed to be greater than his own, could only assure the Abbé, that what little he could do, during their journey, to soothe a heart thus torn with the most afflicting uncertainties, he would most cheerfully endeavour to do. The Abbé than gave him some hints of the sort of conversation he wished him to hold with de Touranges, and they soon after parted for the night, being early the next morning to set out on their second days journey towards Prague.

  AVIS AU LECTEUR.

  THERE was, an please your honor,” said Corporal Trim, “There was a certain king of Bohemia, who had seven castles.”

  A modean modern Novelist, who, to write “in the immediate taste,” has so great a demand for these structures, cannot but regret, that not one of the seven castles was sketched by the light and forcible pencil of Sterne: for, if it be true, that books are made, as he asserts, only as apothecaries make medicines, how much might have been obtained from the king of Bohemia’s seven castes, towards the castles which frown in almost every modern novel?

  For my part, who can now no longer guild chateaux even en Espague, I find that Mowbray Castle, Grasmere Abbey, the castle of Rock March, the castle of Hauteville, and Rayland Hall, have taken so many of my materials to construct, that I have hardly a watch tower, a Gothic arch, a cedar parlour, or a long gallery, an illuminated window, or a ruined chapel, left to help myself. Yet some of these are indispensibly necessary; and I have already built and burnt down one of these venerable edifices in this work, yet must seek wherewithal to raise another.

  But my ingenious cotemporaries contemporaries have fully possessed themselves of every bastion and buttress — of every tower and turret — of every gallery and gateway, together with all their furniture of ivy mantles, and mossy battlements; tapestry, and old pictures; owls, bats, and ravens — that I had some doubts whether, to avoid the charge of plagiarism, it would not have been better to have earthed my hero, and have sent him for adventures to the subterranious town on the Chatelet mountains in Champagne, or even to Herculaneum, or Pompeii, where I think no scenes have yet been laid, and where I should have been in less danger of being again accused of borrowing, than I may perhaps be, while I only visit “The glympses of the moon.”

  On giving the first volume however to a friend to peruse, and hinting at the difficulty I was sensible of in finding novelty from my dark drawings, he bade me remember the maxim so universally allowed— “Que rien n’est beau que le vrai.”I asked him how it were possible to adhere to le vrai, in a work like this. But I believe I shall be better understood if I relate our conversation in the way of dialogue.

  Friend.— “I do not mean to say that you can adhere to truth in a book which is avowedly a fiction; but as you have laid much of the scene in France, and at the distance of only a few months, I think you can be at no loss for real horrors, if a novel must abound in horrors; your imagination however fertile, can suggest nothing of individual calamity, that has not there me exceeded. Keep therefore as nearly as you can to circumstances you have heard related, or to such as might have occurred in a country where murder stalks abroad, and calls itself patriotism; where the establishment of liberty serves as a pretence for the violation of humanity; and I am persuaded, though there may be less of the miraculous in your work; though it may resemble less A woman’s story at a winter’s fire

  Authoriz’d by her grand dam,

  SHAKESPEARE.

  yet it will have the advantage of bearing such a resemblance to truth as may best become fiction, and that you will be in less danger of having it said, that Fancy still cruises, when poor Sense is tired.

  YOUNG.

  But I have another remark to make on the book I have read. — Give me leave to ask if you are going to make in it the experiment that has often been talked of, but has never yet been hazarded; do you propose to make a novel without love in it?”

  Author. — Certainly not.

  Friend. — Then I am really in greater pain for you — for I am afraid you will again incur the charge of immorality, and intend to make your hero in love with Madame D’Alberg, a married woman.

  Author. — I have no such design.

  Friend. — Well, I really am at a loss then to comprehend your plan; for I have now read the greater part of the first, volume, and except your Adriana, your Madame D’Alberg, I see nobody who can possibly be intended for your heroine.

  Author. — Alas! my dear Sir! if you had yourself ever seen much of that part of the critical world who descant on novels, you would be aware of the extreme difficulty of the task that a Novelist has to execute: — besides that the number of strange situations under which the heroes and heroines have been represented, are so numerous as to leave hardly any new means of bewildering them in difficulties, there are such objections continually made to some part or other of our fabricated stores, as have continually reminded me of the fable of the Man, his Son, and his Ass. I have been assailed with remonstrances on the evil tendency of having too much of love — too much of violent attachments in my novels; and as I thought in the present instance, the situation of my hero was of itself interesting enough to enable me to carry him on for some time without making him violently in love, I was determined to try the experiment.

  Friend. — I am afraid it is an experiment you must not carry too far. I do not believe that the generality of novel reader, and it is to those you must look, will agree with you sage advisers, who were, I suppose, ladies far advanced in life.

  Author. — They were indeed. — One was an authoress; one who is herself above all the weaknesses of humanity, and whose talents give to her character a peculiar hardness, which is all placed to the account of her understanding.

  Friend. — And the others?

  Author. — Were women no longer young, and who now assume a sort of stoicism quite opposite to their former sentiments and habits of life.

  Friend. — To such I should listen without any great deference, and when they discover that the stories you have invented turn too much on the passions of love, ask them what are the subjects of those books of mere entertainment, which are now classics? — Ask them while they put into the hands of their daughters novels that have for years been considered as written in the cause of virtue, and by which our mothers, I suppose, set their minds, whether they can seriously object to any one page of your five-and-twenty volumes, as immoral, or even improper, in the imagination of the most prudish censurer. But on some future occasion I may give you more fully my opinion of English novels. I speak not of the trifles which issue every day from the press to satisfy the idlest readers of a circulating library, but such as deserve to be read by persons who have other purposes in reading than to pass a vacant hour, or escape for a few moments from the insipid monotony of prosperity, by adventures; of fables, that only a distempered imagination can produce, or a vitiated taste enjoy.

  Author. — I shall be extremely obliged to you for your opinion, which cannot fail to entertain and edify me; though I believe, as far as relates to the business of novel writing, I shall never have occasion to avail myself of your judgment.

  Friend. — Why so?

  Author. — Because I think I have taken my leave for ever of that species of writing.

  Friend. — Your imagination then is exhausted?

  Author. — Perhaps not. — In the various combinations of human life — in the various shades of human character, there are almost inexhaustible sources, from whence observation may draw materials, that very slender talents may weave into connected narratives; but in this as in every other species of composition, there is a sort of fashion of the day. Le vrai which you so properly recommend, or even le vrai semblance, seems not to be the present fashion. I have no pleasure in drawing figures which interest me no more than the allegoric personages of Spencer: besides, it is time to resign the field of fiction before there remains for me only the gleanings, or b
efore I am compelled by the caprice of fashion to go for materials for my novels, as the authors of some popular dramas have lately done, to children’s story books, or rather the collection which one sees in farm houses; the book of apparitions; or a dismal tale of an haunted house, shewing how the inhabitants were forced to leave the same by reason of a bloody and barbarous murder committed there twenty years before, which was fully brought to light.

  Friend. — Well! but if you should change your mind, I can furnish you with such a ghost story.

  Author. — I thank you — but I have no talents that way; and will rather endeavour, in whatever I may hereafter produce, (if I am still urged by the same necessity as has hitherto made me produce so much,) to remember, whenever it can be remembered with advantage, Que rien n’est beau que le vrai.

  CHAPTER XII.

  “I’m English born, and love a grumbling noise.”

  BRAMSTON.

  IN the capital of Bohemia the three wanderers remained no longer than was necessary to refresh themselves after the fatigues they had passed, and to enable them to undertake those which were to come in their way to Dresden. De Touranges, whose sufferings were of that sort for which time itself can apply no remedy, was, during these few days, in a state of mind that gave the greatest concern to his two friends; and the Abb — de St. Remi hardly ever left him so apprehensive was he that his fortitude would yield to his despair; while D’Alonville, either from his milder disposition, or because he knew the worst that could, as an individual, befal befall him, bore his misfortunes with greater calmness, and applied himself to soothe his more unhappy friend. Yet could he not offer hope he did not himself feel; and was conscious in this case of the inefficacy of all those common topics of consolation which are so generally dwelt upon, but of so little use in alleviating real affection.

  There were many French arrived at Prague before them, and some who had left France very lately. The accounts these persons gave of the situation of affairs at Paris, their conjectures and apprehensions, were by no means calculated to appease the solicitude that tortured De Touranges. He fled, therefore, as much as possible from their society, and seemed relieved when with his two friends he again set forward on his journey.

  Though no complaint escaped him, it was easy to see that the Abbé de St. Remi had suffered very much from the fatigue of travelling the greater part of the way on horseback between Vienna and Prague; D’Alonville, therefore, who already entertained the sincerest esteem for that excellent man, took some pains to procure for him a more commodious conveyance; and at length found a man who engaged to carry two persons and part of the baggage of the whole party to Dresden, in a kind of cabriolet, drawn by two horses, which he was to drive himself. For his own conveyance D’Alonville hired an horse of the same person, and another for De Touranges’ servant. Matters being thus arranged, they left Prague five days after their arrival there.

  From the time when the retreat of the combined armies from Champaign, had given so fatal a blow to the hopes of the French royalists, until the present hour, D’Alonville had been so much agitated by solicitude, or overwhelmed by sorrow; so continually suffering in his own person, or for those he loved, that he had never had time to look back on past events with coolness, or steadily to contemplate the prospect before him; but now, as slowly, and often at a distance, he followed the carriage in which his friends were seated, through the deep sands, and over the mountainous forests of Bohemia, the dreary stillness of every thing around him, the heavy gloom of a December sky, and the dark solemnity of the woods of fir through which the road often lay for many miles together, were united to produce reflection, retrospection, and regret.

  His thoughts naturally reverted to those happy days of which fortune, rank, youth, and health, flattered him with a long continuance; when his father considered him with affectionate pride, as the second hope and support of a noble house; and beheld with exultation the world around him, eager to do justice to the early promise of merit in a beloved son. He could not but recollect many scenes of former felicity, which were passed for ever; a few months only had elapsed, and now, without any fault of his own, he was an exile, and in comparison of his former situation, a better, wandering in the woods of Bohemia, without any certain purpose, and by no means assured of what he was to expect at the end of his journey, or indeed where that journey was to end.

  In mournful contrast to the brilliant prospects of his youth, the miseries that had been crowded into the short space of two years, and particularly those that had marked the two last months, recurred to him in all their horrors. The defection of his brother, and the anguish it inflicted on the Viscount de Fayolles; the precipitate journey his father had made to the frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian armies; their retreat, and all the horrors that followed it; the dreadful nights he passed between the time that his father was wounded, and his deplorable death; the castle of Rosenheim, and its inhabitants; their eventful journey to Coblentz, and his return to Rosenheim; with his subsequent mortifying disappointment in being dismissed from the friendship of the Rosenheim family, through the infamous arts of Heurthofen, all passed through his mind as an uneasy and distressing dream is recalled after a restless night; but with this melancholy difference, that all these events, which a little time before would, if they could have been prophesied, have appeared more improbable than the wildest fiction of a disordered imagination, were now too real; and, while to look back was thus afflicting, the future was hid in hideous obscurity. What had happened, had so baffled every conjecture that might from experience or analogy have been made on the probable courses of human events, that the most sanguine mind could distinguish, in what was to come, nothing on which it might rest with hope. The most timid could hardly be accused of yielding too much to fear.

  Lost in these contemplations, D’Alonville often lingered behind his friends, and arrived at the places where they stopped, some time after them. As the same horses were to draw them all the way to Dresden, and the man to whom they belonged had bargained that he was to take his own time, they were to be four days in reaching that town from Prague, though it is not much above seventy English miles. On the the third of these days D’Alonville had walked with his two friends up a steep ascent in order to relieve the horses. The Marquis and the Abbé had again entered their chaise, and were descending on the other side, where D’Alonville rather chose to walk, as his horse was fatigued, and the road slippery from sleet which was still falling; when arriving at an angle which had before concealed the road from him, he saw a past chaise which, in descending also, appeared to have been overturned by the fall of one of the horses; and two strangers and their servants were endeavouring to get the horse up. D’Alonville saw the cabriole in which his friends were, stop, and the Abbé de St. Remi was already out of it, to lend what assistance he could to the travellers. He hastened on himself as fast as the road would allow; and when he came near the carriages tied his horse to a tree and went forward to offer his services to the gentlemen, whom he now learned from a servant who could speak French, were Englishmen, travelling in their own chaise with post horses to Dresden, on their way through Germany from Italy to England. These gentlemen, one of whom appeared younger than the other, though neither of them were above six or seven and twenty, were employed in disengaging the suffering animal, who had in failing dragged the chaise over him, broke the shaft, and seemed to be stunned if not killed by the violence of the all. D’Alonville understood, and could speak a little English; and while he lent what help seemed in his power, he could not avoid remarking how differently the two travellers proceeded. He who appeared the eldest of them, in every strong term which the English language so copiously affords, cursed all foreign postillions, post horses, and post masters. He swore that on the whole Continent there was not one of any sort of these worth a damn; and that a man had better go to the devil at once, than put himself in the way of having any thing to do with such hellish cattle and such infernal scoundrels. All this eloquence was e
ntirely lost on the German postillion, who, without moving a muscle of his broad face, and with his short pipe still in his mouth, had very calmly taken off the other horses, fastened them to a tree, and now began with equal composure to unbuckle, untie, and unstrap the intricacies of the harness, entangled around the fallen horse; intricacies of which he alone was probably master. The furious gentleman was for cutting them without hesitation; and his companion seemed only solicitous to deliver the poor animal as immediately as possible from the painful situation in which he lay, to which the violence and noise of his friend seemed by no means likely to contribute. An English servant, under the directions of the former gentleman, appeared to act with the most intelligence, while and Italian valet stood aghast, and without undertaking to help or to advise himself, seemed to be addressing his favorite saint for assistance; till a volley of oaths from the other Englishman, who called him a macaroni son of a b — h, and asked him what he stood quivering there for; roused him from his pious appeal; and though he did not understand the force of the exhortation, urged him to spring forward. But here again he was wrong — and for this misapplied zeal received only a repulse— “Why you landsided rascal, get out of the way, and be cursed to you. Don’t you see that here are more already than do any good? Come, you Monsieur, (addressing himself to the Marquis’s servant) here, lend us a lift on this side. — Pooh! damn it, not so — here, this way. — I’ll be cursed if he or any of his countrymen, know the head of a horse from the tail!” By this time the horse was so far released that he could have got up had he been able; but it appeared he was so much hurt that he could not rise, and was at all events disqualified from proceeding. There were three, however, left, which were sufficient to take the carriage to the next post-house; but much yet remained to do before it could move. The shaft was to be spliced, and one of the wheels damaged in the fall to he put in a condition to perform the rest of the journey. “Dire were the oaths and deep the cursings” from the mouth of the apparently irritable Englishman, before this could be accomplished. And, notwithstanding the discouragement of his rough manners, for which his friend repeatedly apologized to D’Alonville, and to the Abbé de St. Remi, in French as soon as he found that one of them understood English, they both staid and lent every possible assistance till the vehicle was put in a condition to proceed with safety. The Abbé, who from his age and character might well have executed himself from taking any trouble at all, where there were so many others, then slightly touched his hat and returned to his own chaise, where the Marquis de Touranges, who did not believe his interference necessary, and who had formed no very favorable ideas of the travellers, from what little he understood of the conversation of one of them, had remained a quiet spectator of the bustle; and was indeed in a few moments after it began so entirely absorbed in his own sad reflections, that nothing but the loud voice and furious oaths of one of the strangers could have made the least impression upon him. When the Abbé however returned to take his feat by him, the younger of the two Englishmen followed him, and in polite term renewed his acknowledgments. The Abbé in return, assured him he was glad he had been of any service, and wished him a good journey. The cabriole then proceeded, and De Touranges said, “one is surprized to hear French, and even good French, if it were not for the vile accent it is spoken with, form the mouth of those half-savages.”