Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.

THE
BOOK
OF THE
BOUDOIR.

BY
LADY MORGAN.

“Je n’enseigne pas; je raconte.”
MONTAIGNE.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1829.

LONDON:
SHACKELL AND BAYLIS, JOHNSON’S-COURT, FLEET-STREET.

TO THE READER.

The first page of the following work tells “its being’s aim and object.” It is not worth the gravity of a preface; and will probably escape the distinction of a criticism. It is of a species scarcely admitted into the dignity of British literature; and belongs to that light class of writing in which the French alone excel. Its character is essentially egotistical, and its style inevitably careless. Time and labour might perhaps have cleared it of both these faults, and have rendered it a better work: but it would not then have been the work it was intended to be—if, indeed, it was intended to be any thing.

The MS. volumes, from which its pages were extracted, have composed themselves; and I have copied not always what was best, but what was safest and most inoffensive. Living, as I occasionally have lived, among whatever is most noted, eminent, and distinguished, with reminiscences of all, I have yet confined myself to the mention of those to whom we are already posterity, or to those who have been so much and so long before the world, as to have become the property of the public. In all, I have found much good; and of all, I have said much: for, whatever party calumny may have put forth to the contrary, any severity which may have appeared in my writings has been directed against principles rather than persons. I have written, “from my youth, up,” under the influence of one great and all pervading cause, Ireland and its wrongs. Truth to tell, it was not a very gracious inspiration; and it frequently opposed opinions, inevitably tinctured with bitterness, to a temperament, which those who know me in private life, will vouch for being as cheery and as genial, as ever went to that strange medley of pathos and humour,—the Irish character.

But the day is now fast approaching, when all that is Irish will fall into its natural position; when fair play will be given to national tendencies, and when the sarcastic author of the O’Donnels and the O’Briens, having nothing to find fault with, will be reduced to write, “_à l’eau rose_,” books for boudoirs, or albums for ladies’ dressing-rooms. Among the multitudinous effects of catholic emancipation, I do not hesitate to predict a change in the character of Irish authorship.

I cannot, however, give this little work to the public without a word as to its title; because I never will, knowingly, contribute to a delusion, however innocent. All who have the supreme felicity of haunting great houses, are aware, that those odd books, which are thrown on round tables, or in the recesses of windows, to amuse the lounger of the moment, and are not in the catalogue of the library, are frequently stamped, in gold letters, with the name of the room to which they are destined: as thus;—“Elegant Extracts, Drawing-room;” “Spirit of the Journals, Saloon,” &c. &c. As my Book of the Boudoir kept its place in the little room which bore that title, and was never admitted into my bureau of official authorship, it took the name of its _locale_, which, by the advice of Mr. Colburn, it retains.[1] I must, however, here declare, for the sake of truth, and the benefit of country ladies, that the word Boudoir is no longer in vogue in any possible way; that it is a term altogether banished from the nomenclature of fashion; and that I could scarcely have given my work a title less likely to advance its interests with the enlightened of the _bon ton_. This is an important fact, which I have only recently discovered. It is a subject upon which much, no doubt, may be said; but as I am going to France, I will reserve all I have to say till my return, in the conviction that _les lumières du siècle_, on a point so important, will there be afforded me, and every circumstance connected with the “rise, decline, and fall of the Boudoir” will be communicated without reserve or restriction. Till then, and in the glorious hope of returning to my poor, native country, an emancipated Protestant, I take my leave of that gracious public, of whom, whether at home or abroad, I have never had reason to complain, and whose grateful servant I have the honour to subscribe myself

SYDNEY MORGAN.

_April 4th, 1829, Kildare Street, Dublin._

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

Page

My Book 1

Egoism and Egotism 7

Love in Idleness 21

Raconteurs 25

Eternity 51

Horne Tooke 53

Richard Kirwan, Esq. 54

Très-Distingué 89

Aux Petits Soins 91

Rapidity 92

My First Rout in London 98

Lord Erskine 117

Lord Castlereagh 127

Meddlers 133

Philosophy of Grammar 134

My Visiting Book 138

Foreign Visitors 148

Irish Union 156

Human Machinery ib.

Suicide 157

External Existence 158

Eclectics 159

Attitudes of Grief 160

Religious Diabolism 168

Fêtes, Parties, and Soirées 170

Doctrine of Causation 191

The Countess D’Albany 193

Irish Reliquaries 197

The Cadenas 201

Tofino 202

Religions 206

Tower of Babel 207

Mathematical Ladies 208

Cardinal Gonsalvi 212

French Poetry 223

Idleness of Genius 226

Frankness 232

Manœuvrers 236

Wonderful Children, and Good Mothers 237

Toys and Trinkets 248

Fauteuil—Bergère—Arm-chair—Episcopal Seat 257

The Spirit of the Age 267

The Key of the Book Case 281

Apothecaries 288

Maxims—Portraits 291

Human Animality 298

My Reviewers 302

Exclamations 316

Irish Judges 318

At the Head of his Profession 319

The Charitable Bazaars of Dublin 320

THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.

MY BOOK.

Last night, as we circled round the fire in the little red room in Kildare Street, by courtesy called a boudoir, talking about everything, anything, and nothing at all, I happened to give out some odds and ends, that amused those who, truth to tell, are not among the least amusable; when somebody said, “Why do you not write down all this?” and here is a blank book placed before me for the express purpose. But I suspect there is no talking upon paper, as one talks “_les pieds couchés sur les chenets_.” I feel, at least at this moment, that there is all the difference in the world between sitting bolt upright, before a marble-covered, blue-lined, lank, ledger-looking, Threadneedle-street sort of a volume, for the purpose of opening a running account with one’s own current ideas, and the sinking into the downy depths of an easy chair, and “then and there, without let and molestation” (as the old Irish passport has it), giving a careless and unheeded existence to the infinite deal of nothings which lie latent in the memories of all such, as have seen and heard much, and have been “over the hills and far away.” “Thoughts that breathe” will not always write; “words that burn” are apt to cool down as they are traced; visions that “come like shadows,” will also “so depart;” and the brightest exhalations of the mind, which are drawn forth by the sunny influence of social confidence, like other exhalations, will dissipate by their own lightness, and (beyond the reach of fixture or condensation) “make themselves air, into which they vanish.”

I never, in my life, kept a common-place-book for preserving such “Cynthias of the minute.” I have even an antipathy to all albums and vade-mecums, and such charitable repositories for fugitive thoughts, and thoughtless effusions—reveries which were never _rêvés_—and impromptus laboured at leisure. I hardly think I can bring myself to open a regular saving bank for the odd cash of mind, the surplus of round sums placed at legal interest in the great public fund of professed authorship: “_on renvoye tout cela à la pédantisme_.”

Still, however, in the days of pure pedantry, the days of the Scaligers, Pasquiers, Balzacs, and Thuanuses, genius and simplicity, and high philosophy too, found frequent shelter in such daily ledgers of spontaneous thought, and feeling. “Each day of my life is a page in my book,” says the learned Menage, who scribbled his agreeable Ana, while Mesdames Sévigné and Deshoulières sat disputing in his chimney corner, on the merits of coffee, and of Racine, or the fashion of an _hurlubrelu_. It was such a book, lying temptingly open on the old oak table in the gothic library of the château Montaigne, that led the charming “_Michel, gentilhomme Perigordin_,” to note down, (in the pauses of more studied composition) those natural and amusing things, which, as he himself quaintly expresses it, come, “_à saute et à gambade_.”[2] But then I am not Menage nor Montaigne.

The danger of a book like this, lies in the lure it holds out to egotism. There it is, always ready to receive the perilous confidences of self-love and self-complacency, like an old lady’s humble companion, or the confessor of a voluble devotee. “The reason,” says the always quotable Madame de Sévigné, “why devotees love their confessors, is the pleasure they have in talking of themselves, even when they have nothing good to tell: ‘_on aime tant à parler de soi_.’”[3] Oh, the terrible truth!

There is something too not less dangerous in the way-laying of such a book for every passing impression. What little sensations, which the world should never know, may there find permanency! What opinions may there be recorded, which to broach, were proscription! What honest indignation may there find vent against the falseness of the professed friend, or the vileness of the successful enemy,—feelings which it is vain to express, and undignified to expose. What mere ebullitions of temperament may there assume the shape of habitual sentiment—though even in the writing, they dissipate with the breaking forth of a sun-beam, or lose their acrimony with the shifting of a north-east wind.

Had I not then better cast away this volume, “white and unwritten still,” ere it bear evidence against me; and leave to “some hand more calm and sage—the leaves to fill,” who haply may make it the nucleus of one of those annuals, never destined to be perennial, or the repertory for some _souvenir_, soon to be forgotten? Such a book may have its value. It may preserve a sort of proof impression of one’s self, taken at various sittings, and in various aspects; and thus give one portrait more to the gallery of human originals, to illustrate the great mystery of identity,—that volatile subject, which changes as we analyse it. For even the hand which traced the first line of this farrago, is not the same agent of the same volition, with that which will write the last; though the being, in which it resides, is still technically the same. To leave such an auto-transcript behind one, may assist the moral anatomist in his demonstrations, as the bequeathing what is called “our mortal remains” to the dissecting-knife promotes the science of the physiologist. In either case, there is much to pity, and much to wonder at; but what is most marvellous and admirable in both, is the inscrutable mystery by which the complicated machinery is set in motion, independently of the subject in which it works; constructed, perfected, moving, stopping!—the power unknown, the end unguessed! At this point, neither books nor bodies can be further of use. The anatomist drops his knife, the moralist his pen. At this point too I must drop mine: not that I am “weary of conjecture,” for I like the animating and enterprising excursion, even when it proves nothing; but,—I must dress for a ball!

Oh! what a refuge is folly against philosophy; what a shield is pleasure against persecution! How many have been burned at the stake, who never would have paid that terrible penalty had they learned to waltz! How many have been broken on the wheel, who would have escaped its tortures, had they been cut short in their unpardonable search after truth, by the necessity of dressing for a ball!

EGOISM AND EGOTISM.

Egoism and egotism—what a difference! The one a vice, the other a weakness of temperament. The one inspires aversion, for it is always unsocial; the other awakens ridicule, for it is frequently absurd. Egoism is in a great degree referable to modern manners, and it is among the drawbacks on civilization. Egotism is of all ages, and more an affair of structure than of convention. The egotist must be a very vain man, but he may be a gifted, and generally is an amiable one. If he had many serious defects to hide, he would not so frankly give himself up to public inspection. The pains he takes to canvass for public suffrage is a proof that he values opinion; but the worst of it is, that the egotist entrenches on the self-importance of others—that irremissible sin in society, where every man is his own hero, whatever he may be to his _valet de chambre_.

Egotism, when accompanied by endowments, is infinite in its resources. When it cannot relate, it exhibits; but it must always be before the scene, and occupy the audience. It is seldom found among the heaven-born members of high society; because egoism and not egotism is the inherent, almost organic vice of that class. The egoist is one who, uncalled upon by his necessities for exertions, and led by breeding to resolve all things into self—who, without effort to make, or suffrage to court, feels not the value of public opinion, or, feeling it, believes himself above it. Divested of warm affections, and independent of all sympathy, he is ever on the side of taste; because no predominant impulse leads him to its violation. He breaks no form of conventional propriety, nor shocks a prejudice of time-honoured ignorance. Devoted to self-gratification, he never seeks it by any greater risk, than comports with his habitual ease, and place in society. His gallantry, even when profligate, is passionless, and calculating; it is an air, not an enjoyment—an item in his ostentatious externals—an addition to the sum of his superfluous luxuries.

The school of egoists is of recent date. As an affair of temperament, the vice must in all ages have shewn itself individually, where it dared; but as a _ton_, as a fashion, the founder of the sect was the Duc de Richelieu. Among the English aristocracy and their humble followers may be found his chief disciples. In France, the revolution “scotch’d the snake,” if it did not “kill it.” For glory and distinction, the motives of action in the latter generation in France, are too demonstrative, for the self-recoiling _morgue_ of concentrated egoism. Napoleon’s gallant marechals were all heroes, and may have been egotists; but egoism belonged not properly to their new blood nor to their arduous habits.[4]

Although the physiological causes of egoism must exist in all ranks and classes, (for selfishness is pretty generally distributed in all,) yet the egoist _par excellence_ must be especially sought amongst the idlers of fashion, who, if not occupied with themselves, have nothing else to be busied about. Egotists exist more among men of stirring lives, who have been forced before the world. Heroes make excellent egotists; they bring their excuse along with them, and render their vanity respectable, by the events on which it is founded. It was the egotism of the Moorish “great captain” which won Desdemona, in spite of his dingy hue; and I remember being once a little grazed myself by an _enfilade de batterie_ of egotistical heroism, directed against my love of the marvellous, by one of the great captains of the present age. _Dio buono!_ how I used to open my eyes and “incline my ear,” while he, like a chevalier of old, or like “Æneas after supper,” related the tale of his own prowess! With what delight, evening after evening, I hung upon his well-recited “feats of broils and battles,—” apart from the egoistical circles, in which the chances of notoriety had associated us, and which, (composed of “half the curled darlings of the nation,”) was as worn out on the subject of my hero and his victories, as on every other; so that I was generally left “sole auditress,” while he

“From year to year,
The battles, sieges, fortunes he had passed,
Ran through.”

I remember, one evening, while thus occupied, observing a group of exquisites of both sexes looking slily at us, and laughing _sous cape_. Though then in my noviciate of fashion, I knew enough of the great world, to be aware that a ridicule was worse than a crime; and like all _parvenus_, fearful of incurring the ban of the empire into which I had been admitted, I planted my hero just as he was planting his victorious standard “on the moslem walls.” Flying to that great legislator of _ton_, whose word was then the charter of others, as well as mine, in such affairs, I asked “What is the matter? What have I done, Lord A——?”

“Nothing, child; only you are a spoony, that’s all.”

“A spoony! what is a spoony?”

“Something that is easily taken in;—at the gambling table, by a black leg—in society, by a bore?”

“But who is a bore?”

“Oh, by Jove! if you have not found out _that_, you must be left to your fate.”

“But why is —— a bore?”

“Because all egotists are bores. It is really very amusing to see you, like a little _gobe-mouche_, swallowing with avidity, what has surfeited us all long ago. What a God-send you must be to him! There is nothing like a fresh importation from Ireland.”

I bridled up like a charmer in Richardson’s novels, and replied pertly, “I prefer an egotist with genius, to an egotist without it, at all times.”

“That’s your affair, dear; but now, at least, you are a purchaser with notice.”

“I have not, however, had notice to quit—so I will return to my egotist, and leave you to your egotists;—who has the better bargain?”

“We shall see,” said Lord A——, drily.

He was right. I was obliged to give in, during a fierce combat and a long siege; and so I _struck_ long before the enemy hauled down a single colour.

The egotism of Lord Nelson went far beyond that of any of his “great competitors.” Not that he talked much of his feats, (for “little would he have graced his tale in speaking of himself”;) but he listened with the frankest approbation to the verse or song that celebrated his exploits; assisting at his own apotheosis with as much devotion, as any of the votarists who brought incense to his altar. There was nothing so characteristic, or amusing, as the scenes in which he and Lady Hamilton exhibited together, adoring and adored; during that short epoch of their fashion, which policy or caprice granted them, in spite of the frailty and the vulgarity of the one, and the very obvious intellectual mediocrity of the other. The stage was generally some saloon of supreme _bon-ton_; the audience, the members of the exclusive circles; and the prima donna, Lady Hamilton, whose ample person seemed to dilate before the piano-forte, while her fine full eyes were turned languidly on the hero of her theme and inspiration, and she sang, at the top of her Poll of Plymouth voice, the adulating ode, or the deifying cavatina. Meantime, the conquering hero “leaned over her, enamoured,” bearing chorus, beating time, and echoing every pæan, raised to his own glory by London lyrists and Neapolitan laureates.

It was said of Napoleon, “_c’est la moitié d’un grand homme_.”[5] This is more than can be said of every hero: for some there are, not more than a third part.

There are anecdotes extant of that ‘royal’ hero, “_Roi, le plus roi, qui onc fut jamais_,” Louis XIV. which afford a precedent, if not an excuse for the equally ridiculous vanity and egotism of the immortal Lord Nelson. “_Le soir on chanta chez Madame de Maintenon_,” says Dangeau, “_une ode de l’Abbé Genest ‘à la louange du Roi,’ la musique est de La Lande; et le Roi la trouva si bonne que, quand elle fut finie, il la fit recommencer._”[6]

Lord Erskine was so noted for talking of himself, that he obtained the _sobriquet_ of Counsellor Ego. He could scarcely have chosen a more interesting subject. Actors and actresses are apt to be egotists. They live so much before the public, that they suppose the world to be always engaged with them; and yet live so little in the world, that their sphere of observation is limited to themselves and their profession, and to their successes and their wrongs, before and behind the scenes, _et voilà tout_.

The highest order of egotism, and by far the most delightful and beneficial to society, is autobiography. Where the life, indeed, of the writer is the mere every day personal adventures of pretending mediocrity, it is an impertinent imposition, and meets its just reward in contempt and oblivion. But the egotism of genius, when mingled with great public events, illustrative of peculiar stages in society, is a debt due to posterity, which should be paid: it will not fail to be received with gratitude and delight. Thus have been received the memoirs of all the great men who have written; and of all the agreeable women who have left behind them those charming pictures of society, as well as of themselves, which women only know how to sketch. They are among the great benefactors of humanity; and the gracious sensations they excite render their works a better course of morals than any prescribed by collegiate discipline, or found in the crude pages of didactic essays. As long as we are occupied and amused, we are seldom vicious; and (to reverse a trite quotation,) “angels are better than men, because they are happier;”—so, down with the Doctors of the Sorbonne; and “one cheer more” for the Doctors De Motteville, La Fayette, De Nemours, De Staël, De Montpensier.

I grieve to be unable to add some fair British writers to this list of sparkling memoirists: but the female authorship of these realms is too serious, perhaps too passionate, for the task. English women can write upon nothing but love and religion; and therefore they write little besides novels—serious or frivolous, sacred or profane. Wit and philosophy are very sparingly conferred upon them.

The few female auto-biographists who have graced the literature of England, were confined to the stirring times of the commonwealth, when the pressure of circumstances, by acting upon the strongest and finest feelings of woman, developed her intellect, and forced her upon active and even perilous existence. The two most brilliant instances of this charming _genre_ of egotism are to be found in the memoirs of the fantastic Duchess of Newcastle, and in those of the heroic Mrs. Hutchinson;—both admirable illustrations of their respective classes, at the epoch in which they flourished; the one, of the pure, unmixed aristocracy of England; the other of its gentry, or highest grade of middle life.

In the long list of biographical egotism, I know but of two persons who have got out of the scrape handsomely; Cæsar, the tactician in taste as in war, with his third person,——and Bonaparte, who talks of his splendid views, and wondrous combinations, in a manner that makes the individuality of the man disappear before his powerful and personified intellect. I allude to the sketches and scraps dictated by him to Las Casas, &c. at St. Helena. His life was a perfect epic—one great dramatic action. What a subject he would have been for Shakspeare! There is nothing of scenic effect in Richard the Third, or Julius Cæsar, finer than the picturesque situations so carelessly traced by the military pen of Rovigo. For instance—Bonaparte crossing the Red Sea at the head of his legions, precisely where Moses led his Israelites; the peril in which his dauntless daring placed his devoted followers; and his saving them by one of those rapid decisions of mind which characterize the ingenuity, as well as the firmness of genius. In all great exigencies, the man, as well as “the woman, _who deliberates_, is lost!”

Another scene, still more picturesque, occurred the night before the battle of Austerlitz,—the moon shining at its full upon the field, strewn with legions of the brave, who all, save the watch guards, slept,—how many soon to sleep for ever!—the emperor, in the midst of his army, stretched upon straw, under a rude shed, raised over his head by the tenderness of his soldiers, and sleeping so profoundly that his aid-de-camp was compelled to shake him roughly, when it was necessary that he should be roused to learn some movement of the enemy—his instantly vaulting on his saddled horse—his gallop to the outpost, and perilous survey of the Russian manœuvre—his return to his bivouac—his being recognised by the drowsy troops, whose rest his horse’s tramp had broken,—their cry of _vive l’empereur!_—the lighting of straw torches, a spontaneous honour to their chief, till the whole field blazed—his return to his couch, and to that deep sleep from which he was to awaken to the crowning victory of his great career, that laid the throne of the western Cæsars at his feet, and placed the destiny of the emperors of the East in his hands!

One picture more, and I have done. The time, the evening before the battle of Jena, when Napoleon found the artillery, which was to open the action, blocked up in a rocky ravine, from which it could neither advance nor retreat. His concentrated rage, his terrible silence, unbroken by one reproach of the unskilful commandant—his instant decision, activity, and remedy of the evil. Resuming his first vocation of a working engineer, he hastily gathers the cannoniers round him, distributing to one a torch, to another a pickaxe. Then placing himself at their head, he clears the brambles, cleaves the rocks, and opens a passage for the guns; and when the first carriage has passed, returns again to those obedient slumbers, which, like all else, then awaited on his powerful will. “_J’ai toujours devant les yeux_,” says Rovigo, “_ce qui se paroît sur les figures de ces canonniers, en voyant l’Empereur éclairer lui-même, un falot à la main, les coups rédoublés dont il frappoit les rochers._”[7]

That the life of such a man should be written from the refuse of the _entresols_ of the Tuileries, and the gossip of London drawing-rooms! None but a soldier should write the life of a soldier, if he has not the egotism to write it himself. I am sure the Duke of Wellington is of my opinion; and I hope he will furnish documents to some of his own gallant aids-de-camp and companions, to write his military memoirs, beyond the reach of national prejudices and sordid self-interest, to falsify and to disfigure his deeds and intentions. Let him not trust to the promises of living adulation. Be the fate of his imperial competitor his beacon and guide. As to his legislative memoirs, they are written in two words:—Catholic Emancipation!

LOVE IN IDLENESS.

“This Signor Junio’s giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, lord of folded arms.”

How few love-novels are written now! The market is closed, and the commodity out of date. A Scotch gentleman visited us some time back, and amused himself, while the conversation was occupied by a group of morning callers, in examining the books in my husband’s study. He had pitched on a shelf of natural history, and his attention dwelt on Lacépède’s voluminous work on fishes. As he ran over the volumes successively, his voice rising in a climax of tone, with his increasing surprise, he exclaimed—“Fesh, fesh, fesh, hey! Sirs, what sax bukes all on fesh!!!” How many hundred thousand of _bukes_ have been written “_all upon love_;” from the loves of Petrarch, in a thousand and one sonnets, to Mr. Moore’s “Loves of the Angels,” in one elegant volume! In what various ways too, the subject has been treated, from “Cassandra,” and “Le Grand Cyrus,” in folio, to the Nouvelle Héloise, in four goodly thick volumes! and so on to Werter, in a primmer size, which, bound in black velvet, was hung by a gold chain round the neck of its fair readers, before the age of sentiment had passed away! Sooner than write on love, a modern novellist has recourse to the Newgate Calendar, and the police reports of the Morning Herald.

The fact is, that there is less love in the world than there was; and the stock is daily diminishing. The reason is clear—there is less idleness, and consequently less of the concentration which goes to make passion. That terrible school-master too, who has, some how or other got abroad, whips out poor little Love, wherever he finds him,—“a domineering pedant o’er the boy;” and the utilitarians will not hear of the brat, with his anti-Malthusian doctrines, but hunt him from the boudoir to the tread-mill, to suffer and repent, with other young offenders. Cultivation, business, and education, are “the very beadles to an humorous sigh.”

The idlest nations are ever the most gallant; and Doctors’ Commons would have little to do, if the _désœuvrés_ of fashion were reduced to assume the moral and physical activity of the _tiers-état_. The semi-civilized great are idle and intemperate: idle, by their institutions, which, being those of despotism, exclude the mass from a participation in national concerns; and intemperate, because wealthy idleness gives the desire and the means of excess. What scenes of wassailing and riot passed among the courtiers of Henry the VIIIth and Francis the Ist; and amongst those of Charles the IId, and the early part of the reign of Louis the XIVth. In the highest state of savagery, men are governed by appetite; in the highest degree of civilization they are guided by _convenance_. The Esquimaux, always in the field, and the Englishman always before the public, and occupied with commerce, politics, science, and the arts, have neither of them leisure to love, after the fashion of the Petrarchs and the Rousseaus.

Even now, however, we may have what the French of our days call “_un sentiment_,” which is a very pretty amusing thing, leaving no scar behind—heart, conscience, and character, all intact, “_pourvu qu’on est sage_,” (as a Frenchwoman said to me the other day): an _item_ in the code of conduct, by the by, never looked for in the days of old French gallantry.

RACONTEURS.[8]

I am not aware of any word in the English language that precisely answers to the French “_raconteur_;” and, therefore, I suspect that the gift which it indicates is not in the catalogue of English accomplishments.

The English declaim better than they converse, and argue better than they declaim. Free institutions have favoured their successful cultivation of oratory; habits of public business have made them good logicians: but I doubt that any moral or political combination would have made them good _raconteurs_. The talent is too much an affair of temperament; which institutes and education may direct, but cannot change. It is this that constitutes national character, that renders the modern Frenchman in so many respects what Cæsar found the Gaul; and preserves in the English yeoman of the nineteenth century, much of the moral physiognomy of the rude conquerors at Agincourt, and of the sturdy companions of Wat Tyler. One cannot well conceive a Greenlander being nursed into a Horace, or a negro into a Newton: one might as reasonably speculate on a potatoe being cultivated into a pine-apple, or a mulberry being grafted to the size and flavour of a melon.

The English temperament is too bilious, reflective, and abstracted, to lend itself to the art of light and pleasant narration; its affections are too deeply seated, its gaiety too fitful, its humour too cumbrous; but with a Frenchman, it is a natural endowment; and every epoch of the literary history of France can furnish its contingent of good _raconteurs_. In the earlier ages, the gift was turned to a profession; and its most eminent professors, under the denomination of _Conteurs_, went from province to province, and from château to château, sure of a brilliant reception, and a liberal recompense, in return for the story they ingeniously invented, or the anecdote they pleasantly detailed.

“Fableaus sont or moult en course,
Mainte deniers en ont en bourse
Cil qui les content.”

_Fab. MSS. du Roi._

In modern France this talent, which always obtained a vogue, occasionally made a fortune. Every _salon_ was thrown open to the _raconteur_; and the reputation commenced at the _petits soupers_ and _boudoirs_ of private individuals, received its seal from the admiration of the court and the favour of the monarch. The love of anecdote is a propensity, perhaps a weakness, inherent in royalty: and a Buonaparte and a Bourbon were alike indebted for some of their most agreeable moments to the most charming _raconteur_ that perhaps even France has produced. Both, with royal impatience, were wont to cut a proser short in his tedious tale; and, the same habit of command dictating to either despot precisely the same phrase, both would exclaim, “_Allons, Denon, contez-nous cela!_”

The talent which, by its animation, renders French society so agreeable, has found its way into French literature. The “_j’ai oui dire_” of Brantome is always the prelude to some quaint and curious detail; and the delightful Montaigne owes his deathless reputation less to the learning of which he was so proud, than to the art, which he himself contemned as _bavardage_. Of the exquisite narrations of Madame de Sévigné it is almost superfluous to speak. Her details are all pictures; and her commonest incidents derive an intense interest from her happy manner of narrating them. What a difference between the love adventures of Madame de Montpensier and the Duc de Lauzun, as told in the ponderous autobiography of the dull and dogged princess, and as sketched in the pages of Madame de Sévigné! The modern dramatist, who has produced the story of Pomenars on the French stage, has added nothing to the dramatic effect of her exquisite narration.

Ninon de l’Enclos possessed the happy talent _de bien raconter_, in such perfection, that when Molière read to her the first draft of his Tartuffe, and she related to him an adventure, of which she had been herself the _Elmire_, he declared, that if his piece had not been already written, he would not have undertaken it: so much was her Tartuffe superior to his own. (“_Tant il se seroit cru incapable de rien mettre sur le théâtre d’aussi parfait, que le Tartuffe de Mademoiselle de l’Enclos._”)

The immediate successor to these gifted women was Mademoiselle de Launay (Madame de Staël). Her narrative of her first interview with her patroness, the Duchesse de Ferté, is a brilliant illustration of the peculiarity of the art: and her well known, “_Allons, Mademoiselle, parlez un peu religion; vous direz en suite autre chose_;”[9] has passed into a proverb. This fascinating talent is always notable for the _naïve_ simplicity of manner that accompanies it—for that spirited frankness, which affectation (the quality of the false and the feeble) cannot, in all its assumption, accomplish. The gift is rarely and somewhat capriciously dispersed in society. It is sometimes possessed by persons, not otherwise distinguished; and genius, even of the highest order, is often wholly divested of it. I may be wrong; but I doubt if any circumstance could have bestowed it on the late celebrated Madame de Staël. The whole character and bent of her mind seems to have led another way. Her temperament, and the structure of her intellect were too German, too alembicated: while the school of Thomas and of Madame de Necker, in which she was brought up, was too _précieuse_ not to have stifled any predisposition she might have possessed, to the natural graces, indispensable to a graphic narrator.

Mounted on the pedestal of her reputation, and twisting between her finger and thumb the laurel branch, which she always wielded (a _tic_ or an emblem), Madame de Staël stood, like her own Corinne, in the centre of her circle, as if waiting at once for her audience and her inspiration: and when she was satisfied of the adequate proportion of both, she gave out her metaphysical and political oracles in measured phrases; exhibiting an eloquence, which, whether she explained the doctrines of Kant, or opened the views of Necker, was more calculated to command admiration, than to excite delight. This was all very fine,—very intellectual; but it was not the thing desired in a good _raconteur_. It is impossible to imagine such a Pythoness stepping down from her tripod, huddling herself into her shawl and easy chair, putting her feet on the fender, and carelessly and gaily giving herself up to “_raisonner pantoufle_;” to arrest and charm the attention by that “sweet and voluble discourse,” which pauses not to choose a theme, nor studies the art, by which it unconsciously fascinates the hearer.

It was the want, perhaps, of this happy simplicity, that lost Madame de Staël the suffrage of one, whose conquest was the sum of all her ambition. Willing to be won, Buonaparte refused to be lectured: and flying from the eloquent dictations of the daughter, as he had cut short the tedious dissertations of the father, he denominated the one a _phraseuse_,[10] and pronounced the other “_au-dessous de sa célébrité_.”[11]

If was, I believe, much about the time when he thus fled from the disserting financier, whose lengthiness, like his politics, were ill adapted to the rapid “_en avant_” of modern military and legislative manœuvres, that Buonaparte gave a willing audience to a pleasant _raconteur_, whom chance threw in his way, in the person of an humble minister of the Genevese church. Napoleon, with his unerring tact, soon detected the talent which was latent beneath the unpretending simplicity of his chance companion. The conversation turned upon Kant and his philosophy. “Can you understand it?” asked the Emperor, in his _brusque_ way. “Not a word, Sire,” replied the Curé. “Nor I neither,” rejoined Napoleon; “but Madame de Staël understands it all; (_Ni moi non plus; cependant Madame de Staël entend tout cela_);” and he laughed, and shewed his handsome teeth, delighted to find one clever man, at least, as dull as himself upon that vague and unsatisfactory doctrine.

To relate well, requires a minute and clear perception of particulars; which being strongly impressed on the mind, will be returned with all the truth, force, and illuminated effect, necessary to impress the auditor. Facts often appear too highly coloured, when they are but given in the same deep tone in which they were witnessed. Some minds receive their impressions of scenery, character, and incident, as an iron target receives the point of an arrow, which scarcely leaves a trace behind it; while others of more penetrable stuff, take the form of their objects with a depth and sharpness, fully proportionate to the force that stamps it. Between these two classes of intellects there is little sympathy; and the possessor of the first will consider as exaggerations of truth and nature, the narrative, which reflects the ideas of the latter in the full vigour of their original conception.

Denon often told me that the best _raconteur_ he ever knew, except Voltaire, was Voltaire’s disciple, the Marquis de Vilette, the husband of _Belle et Bonne_. Ferney was a good school. Every one knows the anecdote of D’Alembert, Huber, and others, telling stories of robbers, _à qui mieux mieux_, and Voltaire, when called upon, beginning, in the tone of a gossiping old woman—“_Messieurs, il y avait une fois un fermier-général—Ma foi j’ai oublié le reste!_”[12] Denon told me his last visit to Voltaire was in 1776. He had been detained late at Geneva, and it was near midnight when he arrived at Ferney. He found the venerable patriarch sitting up to receive him, in that _salon_ now so familiar to every English traveller. He was in high health and spirits; and after supper the two delightful _raconteurs_ began to narrate—mutually excited, and mutually charmed. It was in vain that Madame Denis frequently came from her bed-room, in night-cap and slippers, to endeavour to get her uncle to bed. Voltaire, with the querulousness of a spoiled school-boy, resisting the similar attempt on the part of his nurse, pushed her away, with—“_Mais allez donc—qu’est-ce que ça fait, si je m’amuse?_”[13]

The influence which Denon himself obtained over time, and even sometimes over nature, (for “he could murder sleep,” by the exercise of this amusing gift,) was often exemplified upon ourselves, during our various residences at Paris. Denon kept intolerably late hours—we intolerably early ones. After a month of _bals-parés_—_soirées_—_réunions_—and _opéras_, we were obliged to give in, and to stay one night at home; and so issued orders accordingly, and sent the servants to bed.—When, lo! as the last lamp was put out, the last ember fading, and we were yawning our way to our bed-room, across the gloomy antechamber of our old hotel in the Fauxbourg St. Germain, a loud ring was heard, the great gate invisibly opening, creaked slowly on its hinges, and the wheels of a cabriolet came rattling over the paved court. Back we ran—lest our chamber lights should shine forth from the windows, and bring up the unseasonable intruder—while _Pierre_ the _frotteur_, putting in his melo-drama head, asked, interrogatively, “_Madame n’y est pas—n’est-ce pas?_” and then flew to forbid the nocturnal visitor. But it was in vain: he was already in the anti-room—and we heard the voice of Denon, saying “Go to bed, my good fellow—there, that will do;”—and in he came on the very tip-toe of excitation, humming “_On revient toujours_,” with applicable emphasis. He was all star, ribbon, and the legion of honour; in full dress, both in spirits and person. He had dined with one of the ministers; and had not yet got rid of the fervour of an agreeable party, where he had justified the partiality of Buonaparte, by charming even the ultras themselves.

He came to bestow all his brilliancy upon us, as he was wont to do on similar occasions; and we were as much bored at the delightful visit, as if it had been all the tediousness of those who know so well how to be tedious: so there we stood, yawning and smiling, with a sort of galvanic contortion, at once to show our courtesy and drowsiness, with each a chamber candlestick in hand, and reiterating “But we were going to bed, my dear Denon.”—“I see it,” said Denon, and gently taking my candle, he lighted the _bougies_ on the table—drew a chair for me near the fire—threw a log on the hearth, and, with a petitioning air, solicited “_encore un petit moment_.” “Our husband and ourself” exchanged looks of mutual annoyance, and yawned ostentatiously our unwilling assent; wondering at the influence of the miserable _physique_, or that any state of exhaustion could reduce us to so low an ebb, as not to relish the society of one we loved so well and admired so much.

Denon had that day made me a present of his superb work on Egypt (the large edition), and the enormous volume lay upon the ponderous marble table, in the centre of the room, which seemed by its strength to have been built on purpose to receive it. We had been looking over the plates, and Denon took out his pencil and wrote the names of some of the eminent persons whose portraits they contain. Then drawing close to the fire, he put on his _raconteur’s_ face, and gave us such curious and animated details of his sojourn in Egypt with Buonaparte—of his intimacy with Dessaix, and with others of the _notables_ of the expedition, together with the various scenes and circumstances incidental to the enterprise,—that insensibly we became as animated in our questions as he was in his narration.

From Egypt we got to the funeral of Dessaix on Mount St. Bernard, (a picture worthy of Poussin,) and thence to the German campaigns. He described the entrance into Potsdam, etched to the life, like a proof copy of one of his own engravings from Rembrandt or Paul Potter; not a light, not a shade was wanting! and the tones and gestures of the conqueror were given, as if he lived and moved before us. Their visit to Sans Souci, and the flattering interest with which Buonaparte inspected the apartments, where nothing had been changed since their occupation by Frederick the Great, were not left to mere narrative; they were acted to the life: and the plunder of the _armoires_ and _secrétaires_, were represented in a most robber-like manner. The emperor had the sword of Frederick for his share of the spoils; Denon’s booty was equally characteristic—a MS. _brouillon_ of the king’s poetry, in his royal autograph, with Voltaire’s corrections. Under some of the stanzas was written “_digne des meilleurs poëtes Français_;”[14] and under others the simple corrective criticism of “_fie donc!_” This was what Voltaire called “washing the king’s linen.”

The sympathy of Napoleon for his wounded soldiers, and his personal attention to them, have been often recorded. His anxious visits to the field of battle after the contest was decided—his feeling the pulse and wiping the wounds—his administering cordials with his own hands—are facts well known, which won him the love of his army, no less than his prowess. Denon had been with him in one of these pious visitations, and he was so affected by the dreadful spectacle, that it became the nightmare of his dream. He arose with the dawn and returned to the field, in the hope of rescuing some still living beings from the heaps of dead that strewed it. In the features of an officer, he thought he recognized a friend, and on examining more minutely, he perceived some tokens of lingering vitality. He endeavoured to extricate the body from the dead horse under which it lay; but his strength failed him. There was not a moment to be lost—looking round him for assistance, he observed two men taking their station on an overthrown piece of artillery, coolly surveying the scene, and writing in their tablets. They were easily recognised as the German commissaries of interment. He flew to solicit their assistance; but both replied in unison, “_Monsir, nous sommes ici pour enterrer les morts._” “_Bon_,” said Denon, “but you will surely assist me in saving the living.” Without pausing in their melancholy task, they again replied, “_Nous sommes ici uniquement pour enterrer les morts._” Denon in vain had recourse to persuasion, to bribes, to threats; nothing moved the phlegm of the Germans: they heard him out patiently, and repeated for the third time; “_Fous êtes ein bon Monsir, mais nous sommes ici pour enterrer les morts._”[15] This writes flatly; but when told most dramatically, with the impassibility of the German physiognomy, and the guttural German accentuation, it was irresistible; and thus our delightful _raconteur_ went on “from grave to gay,” with equal pathos and humour, making us laugh and cry, and winding us up and down at pleasure.

In the midst of a most interesting adventure—the scene Venice, the time a moonlight evening, the place a balcony in the palace Benzoni, and the heroine, the beautiful and well known “Biondina in Gondoletta,”—he paused abruptly, with a hushing movement of his finger, marking emphatically the deep swing of the clock in the Tuileries striking three. He arose all confusion and apologies, for having led us into such unseasonable vigils, and was hurrying off, when I detained him with, “but finish your story.” “_Trois heures bien sonnés_,”[16] replied Denon, already at the door; while I answered in the words of Voltaire, “_Mais qu’est-ce que ça fait, si je m’amuse?_” “_A la bonne heure_,” said Denon, triumphantly, “I saw on entering that I was a bore;[17] that you had taken your determination, and I took mine; so good morning—I’ll finish my story another time:” and with this trick of the tale-teller of the Arabian Nights, he tripped off as _leste_ at seventy, as at seventeen—sprang into his cabriolet, and rattled out, as he had rattled in, his horse and driver as much on the alert as himself. The whole thing was French, exclusively French—the _raconteur_, horse, driver, and cabriolet, included.

The Italians have never been celebrated as _raconteurs_; the organization, which gives them their _improvisatori_, is perhaps in precise opposition to the necessary qualifications of a _raconteur_. The sure, rapid, deep, but careless touching-off, which gives colloquial narration its charm and spirit, the imitative humour, inevitable mimicry, appropriate gesticulations, changeful accent, and vivid conception, of the fact or scene related, require quite another sort of _physique_ from that which forms the slow, solemn declaimer, and oracular _improvisatore_—who looks all in the clouds, warming his fancy with unearthly fires, and arranging his ready-made phrases and conventional rhymes, with eyes up-raised, and glance of fanciful abstraction—apart, and beyond all the graphic realities of life. Even in conversation, the Italians are more impressive than agreeable—more passionate than witty;—they talk in sentences _à longue haleine_, and forget that the world was made in six days—the first and greatest lesson given by Providence on the value of time, even within view of eternity!

The Italians complain of the disproportionate number of _seccatori_ (_Anglice_, bores) which creep into their circles; without accounting for the circumstance. But men who by their religion and institutions, are forbidden to think freely, or to discuss those great questions which concern the main facts of life, must be tied down to matters of minor importance. They are impelled to substitute words for deeds, and are rendered feeble, in their intellectual intercourse, because they are false in their political position. Still “their stars are more in fault than they.” Boccaccio was no bad _raconteur_; Ariosto knew how to relate; and from the _novellisti_ of the free states of Italy in her glorious middle ages, Chaucer and Shakspeare borrowed their most humorous details. Strong and stirring combinations will always produce striking and graphic delineations.

But of all the _raconteurs_ in the world, (the French excepted)—they, whose own story is so lamentable to relate, and so piteous to hear,—the poor Irish are the most humorous and amusing. So many causes, physical and political, have conspired to form and finish this talent in the Irish, that it would be irrelevant to the lightness of the present theme to enter on them. It is a curious fact, that Ireland, like France, had her _conteurs_, from the earliest periods; who, by the significant name of Dres-beartagh[18] (story-tellers), made a part of the establishment of great families down to the latter end of the 16th century. “The great men of their septs,” says Sir W. Temple, “among the many offices of their establishment, which continued always in the same family, had not only a physician and a poet, but a tale-teller. A very gallant gentleman of the north has told me, of his own experience, that in his wolf-huntings there, when he used to be in the mountains three or four days together, and lay very ill at nights, so that he could not well sleep, they would bring him one of these story-tellers, who, when he lay down, would begin a tale of a king, or a giant, or a dwarf and a damsel, and such rambling stuff; and continue it, all night long, in such an even tone, that one heard it going on whenever one awaked.”

This is not precisely the effect that a modern _raconteur_ would like to produce. But the talent, the gift, was there; and the whole scene connected with it, the wolf-hunter, the mountains, and the story-teller, are all curious and picturesque, and not a little illustrative of the wild and primitive state of Ireland, even down to the times of Sir William Temple, the patron and master of Swift.

One of the last Irish _conteurs_ by profession was still living about thirty years ago, in the county of Galway, and the fame of Cormac Common the _Fin-sgealaighthe_ or _Dres-beartagh_, the “man of talk,” has not yet passed away in that province, which is still the repertory of all that is most national in Ireland. Blind, poor, but gifted, Cormac early adopted a profession consonant to his position and his endowments. The tale he narrated, and the genealogical illustrations which he picked up in his wanderings, and which he eloquently adorned, were his passports alike to the mansions of the great, and to the cabin of the lonely—his letter of credit on the festivities of the wake, and his billet on the hospitality of the fair. He was a poet also, no less than a story-teller; and we owe to him the oft-told and beautiful tale of Ellen na Roon, which he threw into verse, and adapted to an air of his own composition. More than one Italian Syren has owed the enthusiastic raptures she has inspired in an Irish audience, to the notes of poor Cormac.