Chapter VIII: Foreign Life (3)

The cause which led to Mrs. Frewen seeing Marie Antoinette at that time was in itself very curious. She was returning from the south with her mother (Mrs. Clarke) and her grandmother. They reached Bordeaux, where they were to embark for England in a "smack." Their luggage was already on board; but, on the night before starting, the grandmother had a vivid dream that the smack was lost with all on board. In the morning she declared that nothing on earth should induce her to go in it. The daughter remonstrated vigorously about expense, but the old lady stood firm. They were able to take off their smaller things, but all their larger luggage had to be left. The smack went down on the Goodwin Sands and all was lost; so the family came to Paris.[143]

Of all the evenings I spent at Paris, the most interesting was one with the Archbishop, who kindly invited me to his old country château of Issy, once a palace of the Prince de Condé, and very magnificent. The Archbishop, however, only inhabited the porter's lodge, and all the rest was left deserted. The Archbishop was playing at bagatelle with his chaplains when we entered, upon which he seated himself opposite to us (De Costa went with me) in an arm-chair. He was a fine old man with grey hair, dressed in cardinal's robes and crimson stockings, with the chain of a Grand Almoner of France round his neck. There was only one light in the high dark room, a lamp close to his shoulder, which threw a most picturesque light over him, like a Rembrandt portrait. He inquired about my visits to the different "religious" in Paris, and spoke regretfully of the difficulties encountered by the Petites Sœurs des Pauvres. Then he talked to De Costa about his medical studies and about phrenology. This led him to the great Napoleon, of whose habits he gave a very curious account. He said that he believed his strange phrenological development was caused by his extraordinary way of feeding--that he never was known to take a regular meal, but that he had a spit on which a chicken was always roasting at a slow fire, and that whenever he felt inclined he took a slice. When demolished, the chicken was instantly replaced. It was the same with sleep: he never went to bed at regular hours, only when he felt sleepy. We had been warned that the Archbishop himself went to bed at nine, as he always rose at four; so at nine I got up and kissed his ring, as we always did then to the cardinals at Rome, but the kind old man insisted on coming out after us into the passage, and seeing that we were well wrapped up in our greatcoats.

In October, Aunt Kitty (Mrs. Stanley) came for a few days to Paris, and going about with Arthur Stanley was a great pleasure.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Paris, Oct. 19, 1858._--I have been much disturbed by my dearest
mother's writing twice to Aunt Kitty to urge upon me the duty of
instantly deciding upon some situation. It seems so useless to make
oneself miserable in the interval because situations and
professions do not drop from the clouds whenever one chooses to
call for them. You know how I have dreaded the return to England,
simply because I knew how wearing the family onslaught would be
directly I arrived, and that all peace would be at an end, and it
certainly was not likely to mend matters to write to complain to
the Stanleys of how grievously I had disappointed you, and that
therefore I must decide instantly! If my mother will consider, she
will see that it is no question of exerting oneself. I know exactly
what there is to be had and what there is not, and we both know how
extremely improbable it is that I could get _anything_ without some
knowledge of modern languages, at least of French. This therefore
is evidently the first point, and whilst one is employed all day
long in struggling and striving to attain it, is it not rather hard
to see letters from England about waste of time, want of effort,
&c.?

"Were I to take an office in London _now_, the pay might possibly
be as much as £60 a year, without any vacation, or any hope of
advance in life, and even in the most miserable lodgings it would
be difficult to live in London under £200 a year. However, if my
mother hears of anything which she wishes me to take, I will
certainly take it.

]

"Aunt Kitty has been very kind, and I have enjoyed going about with
Arthur. Yesterday we went to the Conciergerie, where, by help of
the Archbishop's letter and an order from the Préfecture of Police,
we contrived to gain admittance. It is in the centre of Louis the
Ninth's palace, of which it was once the dungeon, and has been very
little altered. The room in which Marie Antoinette was confined for
two months before her execution has scarcely been changed at all.
There are still the heavy barred doors, the brick floor, the cold
damp smell, the crucifix which hung before the window and kneeling
before which she received the viaticum, the place where the bed
stood, upon which the Queen could not lie down without being
watched by the guards--who never took their eyes off--from the
wicket opposite. Opening out of the Queen's prison is the small
narrow chamber in which Robespierre was confined for one day, but
where he never slept--brought there at eight, tried at eleven,
executed at four. This opens into a large room, now the chapel,
once the prison of Madame Elizabeth, and afterwards the place in
which the Girondists held their last dreadful banquet before
execution, when they sang the Marseillaise around the dead man on
the table, and are said to have composed 'Mourir pour la Patrie.'

"To-day Arthur and I went by rail to Versailles, and took a little
carriage thence to Port Royal. The country was lovely, the forest
red and golden with autumnal tints. In a wooded valley, with a
green lawn winding through it like a river, watered by a little
brooklet, are the remains of Port Royal, the farmhouse where Racine
and Pascal lived and wrote, the dovecot and fountain of Mère
Angélique, the ruins of the church, the cemetery and cross, and
'the Solitude' where the nuns sat in solemn council around a
crucifix in the middle of the woods. In the house is a collection
of old pictures of the celebrities connected with the place.
Arthur, of course, peopled the whole place in imagination and
description with the figures of the past, and insisted on our
'walking in procession' (of two) down the ruined church.

"We went on to Dampierre, a fine old château of the Duc de Luynes,
with green drives and avenues; and then to Chevreuse, where we
climbed up the hill to the ruined castle with machicolated towers
and a wide view over the orange-coloured woods, where the famous
Madame de Chevreuse lived."

]

"_Nov. 8._--The cold is almost insupportable! Parisians are so
accustomed to their horrible climate, that Madame Barraud cannot
understand my feeling it, and I have great difficulty in getting
even the one little fire we have, and am occupied all day in
shutting the doors, which every one else makes a point of leaving
open. Madame Barraud describes her own character exactly when she
stands in the middle of the room and says with a tragic voice, 'Je
suis juste, Monsieur, je suis bonne; mais, Monsieur, je suis
_sévère_!' She is excellent and generous on all great occasions,
but I never knew any one who had such a power of making people
uncomfortable by petty grievances and incessant fidgetting. Though
she will give me fifty times more food than I wish, nothing on
earth would induce her to light the fire in my bedroom, even in the
most ferocious weather, because it is not '_son habitude_'. 'La
bonne Providence m'a donné un caractère,' she said the other day,
recounting her history. 'Avec ce caractère j'ai fait un mariage de
convenance avec M. Barraud: avec ce caractère, étant veuve, j'ai
pris ma petite fille de douze ans, et je suis venue à Paris pour
faire jouer son talent: avec ce caractère, quand les fils de mon
mari m'ont fait des mauvaises tournées, je n'ai rien dit, mais je
les ai quittés pour toujours, parceque je n'ai pas voulu voir le
nom de mon mari paraître dans des querelles: je suis bonne,
Monsieur, je suis juste, c'est ma nature; mais, Monsieur, je suis
_sévère_; et je ne les reverrais _jamais_.' Just now she is
possessed with the idea--solely based upon her having a new pair of
shoes--that Marie, the maid, certainly has a lover concealed
somewhere, and she constantly goes to look for him under the
kitchen-table, in the cupboard, &c. She hangs up the chicken or
goose for the next day's dinner in the little passage leading to my
room, and in the middle of the night I hear stealthy footsteps, and
a murmur of 'Oh, qu'il est gras! Oh, qu'il sera délicieux!' as she
pats it and feels it all over."

At the end of November I returned to England. Two years after, when we were in Paris on our way to Italy, I went to the Rue des Saints-Pères. Madame Barraud was dead then, and her daughter, left alone, was lamenting her so bitterly that she was quite unable to attend to her work, and sat all day in tears. She never rallied. When I inquired, as we returned through Paris, Mademoiselle Barraud had followed her mother to the grave; constantly as she had been scolded by her, wearisome as her life seemed to have been made, the grief for her loss had literally broken her heart.

During the winter we were absent at Rome, our house of Lime was lent to Aunt Esther (Mrs. Julius Hare) and Mrs. Alexander. Two cabinets contained all our family MSS., which Aunt Esther knew that I valued beyond everything else. Therefore, she forced both the cabinets open and destroyed the whole--all Lady Jones's journals and letters from India, all Bishop Shipley's letters--every letter, in fact, relating to any member of the Hare family. She replaced the letters to my adopted mother from the members of her own family in the front of the cabinets, and thus the fact they had nothing behind them was never discovered till we left Hurstmonceaux, two years after. When asked about it, Aunt Esther only said, "Yes, I did it: I saw fit to destroy them." It was a strange and lasting legacy of injustice to bequeath, and I think I cannot be harsh in saying that only a very peculiar temperament could construe such an act into "right-doing."