Thus the first year of her marriage was largely an apprenticeship as a secretary and proof-reader. In order to be better prepared for her duties, she determined to follow the lectures in natural history and botany at the Jardin des Plantes. This study, begun for practical reasons, was in reality a delight and a recreation; for she had already a decided taste for science, and was even something of an observer. The lectures led to her forming one of the most satisfactory relations of her life, that with Bosc, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and well known in Paris for his original work. Bosc took an active interest in Madame Roland and her husband, and was of great use to them in their studies, as well as a most congenial comrade. In fact, they saw almost no one but him at this time. Absorbed in her husband and her new duties, Madame Roland relished no one who was not in some way essential to that relation. Even Sophie was neglected; only six letters to her during the year 1780, after the marriage, appearing in the published collection, and evidently from their contents they are about all she wrote.
The year was broken towards its close by a two months’ visit to the Beaujolais, where Roland’s family lived. That she was heartily welcomed by her new relatives and charmed by her visit, her reports to Sophie show. “We are giving ourselves up like school children to the delights of a country life,” she wrote from Le Clos, “seasoned by all that harmony, intimacy, sweet ties, pleasant confidences, and frank friendship can give. I have found brothers to whom I can give all the affection that the name inspires, and I share joyfully bonds and relations which were unknown to me.” When she returned to Paris she declared that she was delighted with her trip, that the separation from her new family was painful in the extreme, and that the two months with them were passed in the greatest confidence and closest intimacy.
From Paris they went to Amiens, which was to be their home for some time. The old city, with its glorious cathedral, its remnants of middle age life, and its industrial atmosphere, interested her but little. In fact, she never had an opportunity to get very near to it. The first year of her stay she was confined by the birth of her only child, Eudora. Good disciple of Rousseau that she was, she concluded to nurse her baby herself, in defiance of French custom, and naturally saw little of Amiens society.
When she was able to go out, Roland’s work had become so heavy that she had little time for anything but copying and proof-reading. He was preparing a serious part of the famous Encyclopédie méthodique, the continuation of the work of Diderot and D’Alembert. Of this great undertaking four volumes—numbers 117–120—are devoted to manufactures, arts, and trades; the first three of these are by Roland, and appeared in 1784, 1785, and 1790.
The plan Roland followed in this work is an excellent example of the methodic mind of the man, bent on analyzing the earth and its contents, and putting into its proper place there each simplest operation, each smallest article. He devised an ingenious diagram in which he classified according to the historic, economic, or administrative side everything he treated—one is obliged to master this system before he can find the subject he wants to know about. A botanical analysis is play beside it. Roland’s contributions to the Encyclopédie méthodique are valuable no doubt, but one needs a guide-book to find his way through them.
Roland’s attempt to run over everything which directly or indirectly concerned his subject, and the enormous number of notes he made, encumbered his work wofully. He could not resist the temptation to use everything he had at hand, and as a result his articles are frequently diffuse and badly arranged, though always full of instruction, even if it is sometimes a little puerile. Neither could he resist the temptation to condemn and to argue.
But though burdened with details sometimes irrelevant, not properly and sufficiently digested, too personal, indulging in much criticism of his authorities, not to say considerable carping, the volumes on manufactures and arts are a colossal piece of work, most valuable in their day, but which never had their full credit because of the stormy times in which they appeared, and, perhaps, not a little too, because of the chaotic series of encyclopedias to which they belonged; for certainly there could with difficulty be a greater mass of information published in a more inaccessible shape than that in the Encyclopédie méthodique.
It was in arranging notes, copying, polishing, and reading proofs of articles on soaps and oils, dyes and weaving, skins and tanning, that Madame Roland spent most of her time from 1780 to 1784. A part of the work which was more happy was the botanizing they did. During their four years at Amiens, she made, in fact, a very respectable herbarium of Picardy.
Of society she saw less than one would suppose, since the Cannets were here, and since her husband occupied so prominent a place. She did, of course, see Sophie and Henriette, but not often. Roland did not wish her to be with them much, and she, obedient to his wishes, complied. They had one intimate friend—a Dr. Lanthenas that Roland had met in Italy, and who, since their marriage, had become a constant and welcome visitor in their home. Then there were their acquaintances in the town—but for them she cared but little.
Indeed, she was thoroughly submerged in domestic life. She seems to have had no thought, no desire, no happiness outside of her husband and her child. A great number of her letters written at this period to Roland, who was frequently away from home, have been preserved; one searches them in vain for any interest in affairs outside her house. She wrote pages of her bonnes, of the difficulty of finding this or that in the market, of the price of groceries, of the repairs to be made, above all, of her own ills and of those of Eudora, and she counselled Roland as to his plasters and potions. Her absorption in her family went so far that public questions rather bored her than otherwise, as this remark in a letter in 1781 shows: