Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  Now for the pathetic part. This poor girl sold a novel in four volumes for ten guineas to Lane. My father is afraid, though she has considerable talents, to recommend her to Johnson, lest she should not answer. Poor girl, what a pity she had no friend to direct her talents; how much she made me feel the value of mine!

  To MISS SOPHY RUXTON. BRUSSELS, Oct. 15, 1802.

  After admiring on the ramparts of Calais the Poissardes with their picturesque nets, ugly faces, and beautiful legs, we set out for Gravelines, with whips clacking in a manner which you certainly cannot forget. The stillness and desolation of Gravelines was like the city in the Arabian Tales where every one is turned into stone. Fortifications constructed by the famous Vauban, lunes, and demi-lunes, and curtains, all which did not prevent the French from trotting through it.

  We left Gravelines with an equipage at which Sobriety herself could not have forborne to laugh: to our London coach were fastened by long rope traces six Flemish horses of different heights, but each large and clumsy enough to draw an English waggon. The nose of the foremost horse was thirty-five feet from the body of the coach, their hoofs all shaggy, their manes all uncombed, and their tails long enough to please Sir Charles Grandison himself. These beasts were totally disencumbered of every sort of harness except one strap which fastened the saddle on their backs; and high, high upon their backs, sat perfectly perpendicular, long-waisted postillions in jack-boots, with pipes in their mouths. The country appeared one vast flat common, without hedges, or ditches, or trees, tiled farmhouses of equal size and similar form at even distances. All that the power of monotony can do to put a traveller to sleep is here tried; but the rattling and jolting on the paved roads set Morpheus and monotony both at defiance. To comfort ourselves we had a most entertaining Voyage dans les Pays Bas par M. Breton to read, and the charming story of Mademoiselle de Clermont in Madame de Genlis’s Petits Romans. I never read a more pathetic and finely written tale.

  Dunkirk is an ugly, bustling town. Strange-looking charettes, driven by thin men in cocked hats, — the window-shutters turned out to the streets and painted by way of signs with various commodities. A variety of things, among them little shifts, petticoats, and corsets, were fairly spread upon the ground on the bridges and in the streets. The famous basin, about which there have been such disputes, is little worth. Voltaire wonders at the English and French waging war “for a few acres of snow”; he might with equal propriety have laughed at them for fighting about a slop-basin. The pont-tournant is well worth seeing, and for those who have strong legs and who have breakfasted, it is worth while to climb the two hundred and sixty-four steps of the tower. Whilst we were climbing the town clock struck, and the whole tower vibrated, and the vibration communicated itself to our ears and heads in a most sublime and disagreeable manner.

  At Dunkirk we entered what was formerly called L’ancien Brabant, and all things and all persons began to look like Dutch prints and Dutch toys, especially the women with their drop earrings, and their necklaces like the labels of decanters, their long-waisted, long-flapped jackets of one colour, and stiff petticoats of another. Even when moving the people all looked like wooden toys set in motion by strings — the strings in Flanders must be of gold: the Flemings seem to be all a money-making, money-loving people: they are fast recovering their activity after the Revolution.

  The road to Bruges, fifty feet broad, solidly paved in the middle, seems, like all French and Flemish roads, to have been laid out by some inflexible mathematician: they are always right lines, the shortest possible between two points. The rows of trees on each side of these never-ending avenues are of the ugliest sort and figure possible: tall poplars stripped almost to the top, as you would strip a pen, and pollarded willows: the giant poplar and the dwarf willow placed side by side alternately, knight and squire. The postillions have badges like the badges of charity schools, strapped round their arms; these are numbered and registered, and if they behave ill, a complaint may be lodged against them by merely writing their names on the register, which excludes them from a pension, to which they would be entitled if they behaved well for a certain number of years. The post-houses are often lone, wretched places, one into which I peeped, a grenier, like that described by Smollett, in which the murdered body is concealed. At another post-house we met with a woman calling herself a servante, to whom we took not only an aversion, but a horror; Charlotte said that she should be afraid, not of that woman’s cutting her throat, but that she would take a mallet and strike her head flat at one blow. Do you remember the woman in Caleb Williams, when he wakens and sees her standing over him with an uplifted hatchet? Our servante might have stood for this picture.

  Bruges is a very old, desolate-looking town, which seems to have felt in common with its fellow-towns the effects of the Revolution. As we were charged very high at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, at Dunkirk, my father determined to go to the Hôtel de Commerce at Bruges, an old strange house which had been a monastery: the man chamber-maid led us through gallery after gallery, up stairs and down stairs, turning all manner of ways, with a bunch of keys in his hand, each key ticketed with a pewter ticket. There were twenty-eight bed-chambers: thank heaven we did not see them all! I never shall forget the feeling I had when the door of the room was thrown open in which we were to sleep. It was so large and so dark, that I could scarcely see the low bed in a recess in the wall, covered with a dark brown quilt. I am sure Mrs. Radcliffe might have kept her heroine wandering about this room for six good pages. When we meet I will tell Margaret of the night Charlotte and I spent in this room, and the footsteps we heard overhead — just a room and just a night to suit her taste.

  In the morning we went to see the Central School; it is in what was an old monastery, and the church belonging to it is filled with pictures collected from all the suppressed convents, monasteries, and churches. Buonaparte has lately restored some of their pictures to the churches, but those by Rubens and Raphael are at Paris. In the cabinet of natural history there is the skeleton and the skin of a man who was guillotined, as fine white leather as ever you saw. The preparations for these Écoles Centrales are all too vast and ostentatious: the people are just beginning to send their children to them. Government finds them too expensive, and their number is to be diminished. The librarian of this École Centrale at Bruges is an Englishman, or rather a Jamaica man, of the name of Edwards. Brian Edwards was his great friend, and he was well acquainted with Johnson the bookseller, and Dr. Aikin, and Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld. Mr. Edwards and his son had often met Lovell at Johnson’s, and spoke of him quite with affection. The two sons spent the evening with us, and they and their father accompanied us next morning part of our way to Ghent. We went by the canal barque, as elegant as any pleasure-boat I ever was in. My father entertained the Edwards with the history of his physiognomical guesses in a stage-coach. The eldest son piques himself upon telling character from handwriting. He was positive that mine could not be the hand of a woman, and then he came off by saying it was the writing of a manly character! We had an extremely fine day, and the receding prospect of Bruges, with its mingled spires, shipping, and windmills, the tops of their giant vanes moving above the trees, gave a pleasing example of a Flemish landscape, recalling the pictures of Teniers and the prints of Le Bas. We had good and agreeable company on board our barque, the Mayor of Bruges and his lady; her friend, a woman of good family; and an old Baron Triste, of a sixteen-quartering family. At the name of Mayor of Bruges, you probably represent to yourself a fat, heavy, formal, self-sufficient mortal — tout au contraire: our Mayor was a thin gentleman, of easy manners, literature, and amusing conversation: Madame, a beautiful Provinciale. M. Lerret, the Mayor, found us out to be the Edgeworths described by M. Pictet in the Journal Britannique. Since we came to France we have found M. Pictet’s account very useful, for at every public library, and in every École Centrale, the Journal Britannique is taken, and we have consequently received many civilities. It was Sunday, and when we arrived at Ghent, all
the middling people of the town in their holiday clothes were assembled on the banks of the canal according to custom to see the barque arrive: they made the scene very cheerful. The old Baron de Triste, though he had not dined, and though he had, as he said of himself, “un faim de diable,” stayed to battle our coach and trunks through an army of custom-house officers. We stayed two days at Ghent, and saw pictures and churches without number. Here were some fine pictures by that Crayer of whom Rubens said, “Crayer! personne ne te surpassera!” Do not be afraid, my dear Sophy, I am not going to overwhelm you with pictures, nor to talk of what I don’t understand; but it is extremely agreeable to me to see paintings with those who have excellent taste and no affectation. At the École Centrale was a smart little librarian, to whom we were obliged for getting the doors of the cathedral opened to us at night: we went in by moonlight, the appearance was sublime; lights burning on the altar veiled from sight, and our own monstrous shadows cast on the pillars, added to the effect. The verger took one of the tall candles to light us to some monuments in white marble of exquisite sculpture. There were no pictures, but the walls were painted in the manner of the Speaker’s room at the Temple, and by the master who taught De Gray. This kind of painting seems to suit churches, and to harmonise well with sculpture and statues.

  My dear friend, I have not room to say half I intended, but let me make what resolutions I please, I never can get all I want to say to you into a letter.

  To MISS CHARLOTTE SNEYD. CHANTILLY, Oct. 29, 1802.

  I last night sent a folio sheet to Sophy, giving the history of ourselves as far as Brussels, where we spent four days very much to our satisfaction: it is full of fine buildings, charming public walks, the country about it beautiful. In the Place Royale are two excellent hotels, Hôtel d’Angleterre and Hôtel de Flandres, to which we went, and found that Mr. Chenevix and Mr. Knox were in the other.

  My father thought it would be advantageous to us to see inferior pictures before seeing those of the best masters, that we might have some points of comparison; and upon the same principle we went to two provincial theatres at Dunkirk and Brussels: but unluckily, I mean unluckily for our principles, we saw at Brussels two of the best Paris actors, M. and Madame Talma. The play was Racine’s Andromaque (imitated in England as the Distressed Mother). Madame Talma played Andromaque, and her husband Orestes: both exquisitely well. I had no idea of fine acting till I saw them, and my father, who had seen Garrick, and Mrs. Siddons, and Yates, and Le Kain, says he never saw anything superior to Madame Talma. We read the play in the morning, an excellent precaution, otherwise the novelty of the French mode of declamation would have set my comprehension at defiance. There was a ranting Hermione, who had a string too tight round her waist, which made her bosom heave like the bellows of a bagpipe whenever she worked with her clasped hands against her heart to pump out something like passion. There was also a wretched Pyrrhus, and an old Phoenix, whose gray wig I expected every moment to fall off.

  Next to this beautiful tragedy, the thing that interested and amused me most at Brussels were the dogs: not lap-dogs, but the dogs that draw carts and heavy hampers. Every day I beheld numbers of these traîneaux, often four, harnessed abreast, and driven like horses. I remember in particular seeing a man standing upright on one of these little carriages, and behind him two large hampers full of mussels, the whole drawn by four dogs. And another day I saw a boy of about ten years old driving four dogs harnessed to a little carriage; he crossed our carriage as we were going down a street called La Montagne de la Cour, without fearing our four Flemish horses. La Montagne de la Cour is a very grand name, and you may perhaps imagine that it means a MOUNTAIN, but be it known to you, my dear aunt, that in Le Pays Bas, as well as in the County of Longford, they make mountains of molehills. The whole road from Calais to Ghent is as flat and as straight as the road to Longford. We never knew when we came to what the innkeeper and postillions call mountains, except by the postillions getting off their horses with great deliberation and making them go a snail’s walk — a snail’s gallop would be much too fast. Now it is no easy thing for a French postillion to walk himself when he is in his boots: these boots are each as large and as stiff as a wooden churn, and when the man in his boots attempts to walk, he is more helpless than a child in a go-cart: he waddles on, dragging his boots after him in a way that would make a pig laugh. As Lord Granard says, “A pig can whistle, though he has a bad mouth for it,” [Footnote: A long argument on genius and education, between Lady Moira and Mr. Edgeworth, had been ended by Lord Granard wittily saying, “A pig may be made to whistle, but he has a bad mouth for it.”] I presume that by a parity of reasoning a pig may laugh. But I must not talk any more nonsense.

  We left Brussels last Sunday (you are looking in your pocket-book, dear Aunt Mary, for the day of the month; I see you looking). The first place of any note we went to was Valenciennes, where we saw houses and churches in ruins, the effect of English wars and French revolutions. Though Valenciennes lace is very pretty we bought none, recollecting that though Coventry is famous for ribbons, and Tewkesbury for stockings, yet only the worst ribbons, and the worst stockings are to be had at Coventry and Tewkesbury. Besides, we are not expert at counting Flemish money, which is quite different from French, and puzzling enough to drive the seven sages of Greece mad. Even the natives cannot count it without rubbing their foreheads, and counting in their hands, and repeating c’a fait, cela fait. For my part I fairly gave the point up, and resolved to be cheated rather than go distracted. But indeed the Flemish are not cheats, as far as I have seen of them. They would go to the utmost borders of honesty for a couronne de Brabant, or a demi-couronne, or a double escalin, or a single escalin, or a plaquet, or a livre, or a sous, or a liard, or for any the vilest denomination of their absurd coin, yet I do not believe they would go beyond the bounds of honesty with any but an English Milor: they are privileged dupes. A maid at the hotel at Dunkirk said to me, “Ah! Madame, nous autres nous aimons bien de voir rouler les Anglais.” Yes, because they think the English roll in gold.

  Now we will go to Cambray, famous for its cambric and its archbishop. Buonaparte had so much respect for the memory of Fénelon, that he fixed the seat of the present Archbishopric at Cambray instead of at Lille, as had been proposed. We saw Fénelon’s head here, preserved in a church. But to return from archbishops to cambrics. Our hostess at Cambray was a dealer in cambrics, and in her bale of baptistes she seemed literally to have her being. She was, in spite of cambric and Valenciennes lace — of which she had a dirty superfluity on her cap lined with pink — the very ugliest of the female species I had ever beheld. We were made amends for her by a most agreeable family who kept the inn at Roye: their ancestors had kept this inn for a hundred and fifty years; the present landlord and his wife are about sixty-eight and sixty, and their daughter, about twenty, of a slight figure, vast vivacity in her mind and in all her motions; she does almost all the business of the house, and seems to love papa et maman better than anything in the world, except talking. My father formed a hundred good wishes for her: first, when he heard her tell a story, she used such admirable variety of action, that he wished her on the stage: then when she waited at supper, with all the nimbleness and dexterity of a female harlequin, he wished that she was married to Jack Langan, that she might keep the new inn at Edgeworthstown: but his last and best wish for her was that she should be waiting-maid to you and Aunt Mary. He thought she would please you both particularly: for my part, I thought she would talk a great deal too much for you. However, her father and mother would not part with her for Pitt’s diamond.

  We saw to-day the residence of the Prince de Condé, and of a long line of princes famous for virtue and talents — the celebrated palace of Chantilly, made still more interesting to us by having just read the beautiful tale by Madame de Genlis, “Mademoiselle de Clermont;” it would delight my dear Aunt Mary, it is to be had in the first volume of the Petits Romans, and those are to be found by Darcy, if he be not drunk, a
t Archer’s, Dublin. After going for an hour and a half through thick, dark forest, in which Virginia might have lived secure from sight of mortal man, we came into open day and open country, and from the top of a hill beheld a mass of magnificent building, shaded by wood. I imagined this was the palace, but I was told that these buildings were only the stables of Chantilly. The Palace, alas! is no more! it was pulled down by the Revolutionists. The stables were saved by a petition from the War Minister, stating that they would make stabling for troops, and to this use they are now applied. As we drove down the hill we saw the melancholy remains of the Palace: only the white arches on which it was built, covered with crumbled stone and mortar. We walked to look at the riding-house, built by the Prince de Condé, a princely edifice! Whilst we were looking at it, we heard a flute played near us, and we were told that the young man who played it was one of the poor Prince de Condé’s chasseurs. The person who showed the ruins to us was a melancholy- looking man, who had been employed his whole life to show the gardens and Palace of Chantilly: he is about sixty, and had saved some hundred pounds in the Prince’s service. He now shows their ruins, and tells where the Prince and Princess once slept, and where there were fine statues, and charming walks.