The Story of My Life, volumes 1-3

by Augustus J. C. Hare

"I think if one stayed here long, one would quite feel the necessity of sinning occasionally to avoid the danger of becoming intolerant of petty faults and unsuitablenesses, from living with those so entirely without them."

"Carstairs, Sept. 18.—This is a large and comfortable house, and Mr. Monteith is busied with various improvements in the grounds. One improvement I should certainly make would be the destruction of a horrible tomb of a former possessor of the place, an atheist relation, with an inscription 'to the Infernal Deities.' No wonder that the avenue leading to the tomb is said to be haunted."

It was during this summer that old Lady Webster died.[352] She had long been a conspicuous figure in our home neighbourhood, and had seemed to possess the secret of eternal youth. In my childhood she reigned like a queen at Battle, but the Websters had several years before been obliged to sell Battle to Lord Harry Vane (afterwards Duke of Cleveland), chiefly because there were five dowager Lady Websters at once, all drawing jointures from the already impoverished property. Of these ladies, three, usually known as "the good Lady Webster," "Grace, Lady Webster," and "the great Lady Webster," lived much at Hastings. When the great Lady Webster died, she left several sons, and it was a subject of much comment at the time that, when her will was opened, she was found to have left nothing to any of them. Her will was very short. She left everything she possessed in the world to her dear and faithful companion Madame Bergeret. It excited many unkind remarks, but those who learnt the real facts always admitted that, in the crowning act of her life, Lady Webster had only acted with that sense of justice and duty which had ever been her characteristic. The story is this:[353]—

Towards the latter part of the last century there lived at an old manorial farm in Brittany a female farmer named Bergeret. Her ancestors had owned the farm, and had cultivated their own land for hundreds of years, and Madame Bergeret herself was well known and highly respected through all the neighbouring country, charitable to her poorer neighbours, frank, kind, and unfailingly hospitable to those in her own rank of life. She lived bounteously, kept an open house, and spent in beneficence and hospitality the ample income which her lands brought her.

One day she was surprised by a visit from her next neighbour, a man named Girard, in her own class of life, whose family had always been known to her own, and who had possessed the neighbouring farm. He told her that he felt she would be shocked to hear that he had long been acting a part in making himself appear much better off than he was; that he had lost a great deal of money in speculation; that all was on the eve of being divulged; that if he could manage to keeps things going till after the next harvest, he might tide over his misfortunes, but that otherwise he must be totally ruined, lose everything he had, and bring his wife and children to destitution; and by the recollection of their old neighbourhood and long intimacy he adjured Madame Bergeret to help him. Madame Bergeret was very sorry—very sorry indeed, but she told him that it was impossible; and it really was. She lived amply up to her income, she had laid nothing by: she was well off, but all she had came from her lands; her income depended upon her harvest; she really had nothing to give to her poor neighbour, and she told him so—told him so with a very heavy heart, and he went away terribly crestfallen and miserable.

When Girard was gone, Madame Bergeret looked round her room, and she saw there a collection of fine old gold plate, such as often forms the source of pride to a Breton yeoman of old family, and descends like a patent of nobility from one generation to another, greatly reverenced and guarded. Madame Bergeret looked at her plate, and she said to herself, "If this was sold, it would produce a very large sum; and ought I, for the sake of mere family pride, to allow an old and honourable family to go to destitution?" And she called her neighbour back, and she gave Girard all her gold plate. The sum for which he was able to sell it helped him through till after the harvest; soon afterwards he found an opportunity of disposing of his Breton lands to very great advantage, and removed to another part of the country. He thanked Madame Bergeret, but he did not seem to realise that she had made any great sacrifice in his behalf; and she, resting satisfied in having done what she believed to be right, expected no more.

Some years afterwards, Madame Bergeret, being an old woman, placed her Breton lands in the hands of an agent, and removed with her two children to Paris. The great French Revolution occurred while she was there, and the Reign of Terror came on, and Madame Bergeret, who belonged to a Royalist family of loyal Brittany, was arrested: she was thrown into the prison of La Force, and she was condemned to death.

The Madame Bergeret I knew in another generation recollected being with her little brother in a room on the Rue St Honoré on the day on which a hundred and twenty persons were to suffer in the Place Louis XV. She saw them pass down the street to execution in twenty-two tumbrils; but when the last tumbril came beneath the window, the friends who were with her in the room drew down the blinds; not, however, before she had recognised her own mother in that tumbril, with all her hair cut off, that the head might come off more easily.

All the way to the place of execution, Madame Bergeret consoled and encouraged her companions, and she assented to their petition that she should suffer last, that she would see them through the dread portal before her. Therefore, when her turn at length came, the ground around the scaffold was one sea of blood, for a hundred and nineteen persons had perished that day. Thus, on descending the steps of the cart, Madame Bergeret slipped and stumbled. This arrested the attention of the deputy who was set to watch the executions. He started, and then rushed forward saying, "This woman has no business here. I know her very well; she is a most honest citoyenne, or, if she is not, I know quite well how to make her so: this woman is not one to be guillotined." It was Girard.

Now Madame Bergeret was quite prepared for death, but the sudden revulsion of her deliverance overcame her and she fainted. Girard carried her away in his arms, and when she came to herself she was in bed in a house in a quiet back-street of Paris, and he was watching over her. He had removed to Lyons, and, with the sudden changes of the time, had risen to be deputy, and being set to watch the executions, had recognised the woman who had saved him. By the help of Girard, and after many hairbreadth escapes, Madame Bergeret reached the coast, and eventually arrived in England. She then made her way to the only person she knew, a lady who had once spent some time in her Breton village, a Mrs. Adamson. Her daughter played with and was brought up with the little Miss Adamson. When Miss Adamson married Sir Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey, Mademoiselle Bergeret (her mother being dead) went with her and lived at Battle as a sort of companion to Lady Webster and nursery-governess to her boys. For fifty years she never received any salary, and having, through the changes of things in France, inherited something of her mother's Breton property, she twice sacrificed her little all to pay the debts of the Webster family. Therefore it was that, in the close of life, Lady Webster felt that her sons might provide for themselves, but that, having very little to bequeath, the one person she could not leave destitute was "her dear and faithful companion and friend, Madame Bergeret."