MADAME DE GENLIs DISCUSSED.
Windsor, Monday Evening.—Madame de la Fite, who calls upon me daily, though I am commonly so much engaged I can scarce speak to her for a moment, came to desire I would let her bring me M. Argant,[215] who was come to Windsor to show some experiment to the king.
Madame de la Fite has long pressed me with great earnestness to write to Madame de Genlis, whose very elegant little note to me I never have answered. Alas! what can I do? I think of her as of one of the first among women—I see her full of talents and of charms—I am willing to believe her good, virtuous, and dignified;—yet, with all this, the cry against her is so violent and so universal, and my belief in her innocence is wholly unsupported by proof in its favour, or any other argument than internal conviction, from what I observed of her conduct and manners and conversation when I saw her in London, that I know not how to risk a correspondence with her, till better able to satisfy others, as well as I am satisfied myself: most especially, I dare not enter into such an intercourse through Madame de la Fite, whose indiscreet zeal for us both would lead her to tell her successful mediation to everybody she could make hear her. Already she has greatly distressed me upon this subject. Not content with continual importunity to me to write, ever since my arrival, which I have evaded as gently as possible, to avoid giving her my humiliating reasons, she has now written Madame de Genlis word that I am here, belonging to the same royal household as herself; and then came to tell me, that as we were now so closely connected, she proposed our writing jointly, in the same letter.
All this, with infinite difficulty, I passed over,—pleading my little time; which indeed she sees is true. But when M. Argant was here, she said to me, in French, “M. Argant will immediately wait upon Madame de Genlis, for he is going to Paris; he will tell her he saw us together, and he will carry her a letter' from me; and surely Miss Burney will not refuse M. Argant the happiness of carrying two lines from one lady so celebrated to another?” I was quite vexed; a few lines answer the same purpose as a few sheets; since, once her correspondent, all that I am hesitating about is as completely over, right or wrong, as if I wrote to her weekly.
As soon as they left me, I hastened to my dear Mrs. Delany, to consult with her what to do. “By all means,” cried she, “tell the affair of your difficulties whether to write to her or not, to the queen: it will unavoidably spread, if you enter into such a correspondence, and the properest step you can take, the safest and the happiest, is to have her opinion, and be guided by it. Madame de Genlis is so public a character, you can hardly correspond with her in private, and it would be better the queen should hear of such an intercourse from yourself than from any other.”
I entirely agreed in the wisdom of her advice, though I very much doubted my power to exert sufficient courage to speak, unasked, upon any affair of my own. You may be sure I resolved to spare poor Madame de la Fite, in my application, if I made it: “to write, or not to write,” was all I wanted to determine; for the rest, I must run any risk rather than complain of a friend who always means well....
An opportunity offered the next morning, for the queen again commanded me to follow her into her saloon; and there she was so gentle, and so gracious, that I ventured to speak of Madame de Genlis.
It was very fearfully that I took this liberty. I dreaded lest she should imagine I meant to put myself under her direction, as if presuming she would be pleased to direct me. Something, I told her, I had to say, by the advice of Mrs. Delany, which I begged her permission to communicate. She assented in silence, but with a look of the utmost softness, and yet mixed with strong surprise. I felt my voice faltering, and I was with difficulty able to go on,—so new to me was it to beg to be heard, who, hitherto, have always been begged to speak. There is no absolutely accounting for the forcible emotions which every totally new situation and new effort will excite in a mind enfeebled, like mine, by a long succession of struggling agitations. I got behind her chair, that she might not see a distress she might wonder at: for it was not this application itself that affected me; it was the novelty of my own situation, the new power I was calling forth over my proceedings, and the—O my Susan!—the all that I was changing from—relinquishing-of the past—and hazarding for the future!
With many pauses, and continual hesitation, I then told her that I had been earnestly pressed by Madame de Genlis to correspond with her; that I admired her with all my heart, and, with all my heart, believed all good of her; but that, nevertheless, my personal knowledge of her was too slight to make me wish so intimate an intercourse, which I had carefully shunned upon all occasions but those where my affection as well as my admiration had been interested; though I felt such a request from such a woman as Madame de Genlis as an honour, and therefore not to be declined without some reason stronger than my own general reluctance to proposals of that sort; and I found her unhappily, and I really and sincerely believed undeservedly, encircled with such powerful enemies, and accused with so much confidence of having voluntarily provoked them, that I could not, even in my own mind, settle if it were right to connect myself with her so closely, till I could procure information more positive in her favour, in order to answer the attacks of those who asperse her,[216] and who would highly blame me for entering into a correspondence with a character not more unquestionably known to me. I had been desirous to wait, suspended, till this fuller knowledge might be brought about; but I was now solicited into a decision, by M. Argant, who was immediately going to her, and who must either take her a letter from me or show her, by taking none, that I was bent upon refusing her request.
The queen heard me with the greatest attention, and then said, “Have you yet writ to her?”
No, I said; I had had a little letter from her, but I received it just as the Duchess of Portland died, when my whole mind was so much occupied by Mrs. Delany, that I could not answer it.
“I will speak to you then,” cried she, “very honestly; if you have not yet writ, I think it better you should not write. If you had begun, it would be best to go on; but as you have not, it will be the safest way to let it alone. You may easily say, without giving her any offence, that you are now too much engaged to find time for entering into any new correspondence.”
I thanked her for this open advice as well as I was able, and I felt the honour its reliance upon my prudence did me, as well as the kindness of permitting such an excuse to be made.
The queen talked on, then, of Madame de Genlis with the utmost frankness; she admired her as much as I had done myself, but had been so assaulted with tales to her disadvantage, that she thought it unsafe and indiscreet to form any connection with her. Against her own judgment, she had herself been almost tormented into granting her a private audience, from the imprudent vehemence of one of Madame de G.'s friends here, with whom she felt herself but little pleased for what she had done, and who, I plainly saw, from that unfortunate injudiciousness, would lose all power of exerting any influence in future. Having thus unreservedly explained herself, she finished the subject, and has never started it since. But she looked the whole time with a marked approbation of my applying to her.
Poor Madame de Genlis! how I grieve at the cloud which hovers over so much merit, too bright to be hid but not to be obscured.