Spence, who saw this clever and eccentric lady during the following year at Rome, describes her as brilliant, irregular, and erratic as a comet; at once wise and imprudent, “the loveliest, most disagreeable, best-natured, cruellest woman in the world; all things by turns, and nothing long.”
Three foreign travellers in England have pleasantly remarked upon an old custom which would now be considered more honoured in the breach than the observance. The custom alluded to is that of kissing. Chalcondyles, the Greek, who visited our respected ancestors between four and five centuries ago, was highly surprised, delighted, and edified with this novel mode. He says of it:—“As for English females and children, their customs are liberal in the extreme. For instance, when a visitor calls at a friend’s house, his first act is to kiss his friend’s wife; he is then a duly installed guest. Persons meeting in the street follow the same custom, and no one sees anything improper in the action.” Nicander Nucius, another Greek traveller, of a century later, also adverts to this oscillatory fashion. “The English,” he says, “manifest much simplicity and lack of jealousy in their habits and customs as regards females; for not only do members of the same family and household kiss them on the lips with complimentary salutations and enfolding of the arms round the waist, but even strangers when introduced follow the same mode; and it is one which does not appear to them in any degree unbecoming.”
The third commentator is Erasmus, and it is astonishing how lively the Dutchman becomes when expatiating on this ticklish subject. Writing from England to Andrelinus in 1499, he says unctuously:—“They have a custom too which can never be sufficiently commended. On your arrival, you are welcomed with kisses. On your departure, you are sent off with kisses. If you return, the embraces are repeated. Do you receive a visit, your first entertainment is of kisses. Do your guests depart, you distribute kisses amongst them. Wherever you meet them they greet you with a kiss. In short, whichever way you turn, there is nothing but kissing. Ah! Faustus, if you had once tasted the tenderness, the fragrance of these kisses, you would wish to stay in England, not for a ten years’ voyage, like Solon’s, but as long as you lived.”
I leave to the bachelors to pronounce upon the merits of this custom—which must have had its disadvantages too;—a qualified remark which I the more feel bound to make, as, were I to join in the ecstatic laudation of the grave Dutchman,—why, to use Hood’s words,
“I have my fears about my ears, I’m not a single man!”
Let us now turn from English fashions to French incidents. Some years ago, the summer evening habitués of the Champs Elysées used to find amusement in listening to an open-air entertainment of some singularity. A pale, thin, fragile, but bright-eyed and intellectual-looking girl of perhaps ten or twelve years of age used to appear in the most crowded part of the walk, an hour or so before sunset, attended by an old woman who carried a violin, a tin cup, and a carpet. While the girl stood apart for a moment, with something of a rapt look, the old woman spread the carpet, put down the cup at one corner, and scraped a preliminary air upon the violin. The air was not always appropriate to the drama that was to follow, for the favourite overture of the performer was “Ma’m’selle Pinson est une blonde!”—and that was like making “Yankee Doodle” or “Nancy Dawson” pass as introductory symphonies to ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Macbeth.’
However, the orchestra having terminated the prelude, the girl stepped on to the carpet, with the air of a little tragedy queen, and recited long tirades from Racine and Corneille. But then she recited them superbly; and despite her air of suffering and her exceedingly poor attire, she produced such an effect upon her hearers that while she rested, the audience were never weary of filling the cup carried round by the old woman, with sous and half-franc pieces, in order to encourage her to new efforts. The collection was always a large one; and when the delicate-looking child retired, all palpitating and with a flush upon her cheek, of which it were difficult to say whether it were the flush of her own triumph or that of death destined to triumph over her, the acclamations and cordial compliments of her hearers greeted her as she passed.
Well, a winter had gone, and a summer had come, but with it did not come to the loiterers in the Elysian fields the Tragic Muse whom they were disposed and eager to welcome. But during the year a marvellous child appeared on the stage of the Gymnase Dramatique. She came like a meteor and so departed. The truth was, that her friends saw at once that she was too good for that stage, and she was withdrawn, in order to appear on one more classical. Well do I remember that we loiterers in the shady avenues that lead to Neuilly used to dispute, and we youths the loudest of all, as to whether the débutante of the Gymnase was or was not the inspired nymph that used in the public highway to create as much delight as Duchesnois herself before the critical pit of the “Français.”
The dispute was not to be determined by us, and in the meantime we spoke of our absent delight as of a lost Pleiad, and so the year wore away. And then came the eventful night on which a girl, of whom no one had previously heard by the name which she now wore, glided on to the stage of the Théâtre Français, and in a moment awoke French Tragedy out of the shroud in which she had been decently enveloped since Duchesnois had laid her down to die. The name of the girl was Rachel; and so pale and unearthly was she, yet so inspired in her look, so commanding, so irresistible, that every one was not only ready to acknowledge the new sovereign of the tragic throne, but all Paris declared that the Rachel who was now famous for ever was no other than the poor girl who used to stand on a carpet in the Champs Elysées and recite Racine for sous and half-franc pieces.