PARIS, RUE DE LILLE,
Oct. 31, 1802.
I left off at the Hôtel de Courlande. We were told there was a fine view of Paris from the leads; and so indeed there is, and the first object that struck us was the Telegraph at work! The first voiture de remise (job-coach in plain English) into which we got, belonged to—whom do you think?—to the Princess Elizabeth. The Abbé Edgeworth had probably been in this very coach with her. The master of this house was one of the King's guards, a Swiss. Our apartments are all on one floor. The day after our arrival M. Delessert, he whom M. Pictet describes as a French Rumford, invited us to spend the evening with his mother and sister. We went: found an excellent house, a charming family, with whom we felt we were perfectly acquainted after we had been in the room with them for five minutes. Madame Delessert, [Footnote: The benevolence of the generous Madame Delessert is said to be depicted in one of the stories in Berquin's Ami des Enfans.] the mother, an elderly lady of about sixty, has the species of politeness and conversation that my Aunt Ruxton has: I need not say how much I like her. Her daughter, Madame Gautier, has fine large black eyes, very obliging and sensible, well dressed, not at all naked: people need not be naked here unless they choose it. Rousseau's Letters on Botany were written for this lady; he was a friend of the family. She has two fine children of eight and ten, to whose education she devotes her time and talents. Her second brother, François Delessert, about twenty, was educated chiefly by her, and does her great credit, and what is better for her, is extremely fond of her: he seems the darling of his mother, François mon fils she calls him every minute. In his countenance and manners he is something like Henry; he has that sober kind of cheerfulness, that ingenuous openness, and that modest, gentlemanlike ease which pleases without effort, and without bustle. Madame Gautier does not live at Paris, but at a country house at Passy, the Richmond of Paris, about two miles out of town. She invited us to spend a day there, and a most pleasant day we passed. The situation beautiful, the house furnished with elegance and good sense, the society most agreeable. M. Delessert père, an old sensible man, the rest of the family, and Madame de Pastoret, [Footnote: Madame de Pastoret is the "Madame de Fleury" of Miss Edgeworth's story. She first established infant schools in France.] a literary and fashionable lady, with something of Mrs. Saunderson's best style of conversation: M. de Pastoret, her husband, a man of diplomatic knowledge; Lord Henry Petty, son of Lord Lansdowne, with whom my father had much conversation; the Swiss Ambassador, whose name I will not attempt to spell; M. Dumont, [Footnote: M. Pierre Etienne Louis Dumont, tutor to Lord Henry Petty (afterwards the famous second Marquis of Lansdowne), had translated Bentham's Traités sur la Législation, and Théorie des Peines et des Récompenses. He became an intimate friend and much-valued critic of Miss Edgeworth.] a Swiss gentleman, travelling with Lord Henry Petty, very sensible and entertaining, I am sorry that he has since left Paris; M. d'Etaing, of whom I know nothing; and last, but indeed not least, the Abbé Morellet, [Footnote: The author of several works on political economy and statistics; born 1727, died 1819.] of whom you have heard my father speak. O! my dear Aunt Mary, how you would love that man, and we need not be afraid of loving him, for he is near eighty. But it is impossible to believe that he is so old when one either hears him speak, or sees him move. He has all the vivacity, and feeling, and wit of youth, and all the gentleness that youth ought to have. His conversation is delightful, nothing too much or too little; sense, and gaiety, and learning, and reason, and that perfect knowledge of the world which mixes so well but so seldom with a knowledge of books. He invited us to breakfast, and this morning we spent with him. My dearest Aunt Mary, I do wish you had been with us; I know that you would have been so much pleased. The house so convenient, so comfortable, so many inventions the same as my father's. He has a sister living with him, Madame de Montigny, an amiable, sensible woman: her daughter was married to Marmontel, who died a few years ago: she alas! is not at Paris.
My father did not present any of his letters of introduction till yesterday, because he wished that we should be masters and mistresses of our own time to see sights before we saw people. We have been to Versailles—melancholy magnificence—La petite Trianon: the poor Queen! and at the Louvre, or as it is now called, La Musée, to see the celebrated gallery of pictures. I was entertained, but tired with seeing so many pictures, all to be admired, and all in so bad a light, that my little neck was almost broken, and my little eyes almost strained out, trying to see them. We were all extremely interested yesterday seeing what are called Les Monuments Français—all the statues and monuments of the great men of France, arranged according to their dates in the apartments of the ancient Monastery des Augustins. Here we saw old Hugh Capet, with his nose broken, and King Pepin, with his nose flattened by time, and Catherine de Medicis, in full dress, but not in full beauty, and Francis I., and dear Henry IV.
We have been to the Théâtre Français and to the Théâtre Feydau, both fine houses: decorations, etc., superior to English: acting much superior in comedy; in tragedy they bully, and rant, and throw themselves into Academy attitudes too much.
R.L. EDGEWORTH to MISS CHARLOTTE SNEYD.
PARIS, Nov. 18, 1802.
Maria told you of M. and Madame de Pastoret; in the same house on another floor—for different families here have entire "apartments," you observe the word, in one house—we met M. and Madame Suard: [Footnote: M. Suard was editor of the Publiciste.] he is accounted one of the most refined critics of Paris, and has for many years been at the head of newspapers of different denominations; at present he is at the head of La Publiciste. He is prudent, highly informed, not only in books, but in the politics of different states and the characters of men in all the different countries of Europe. Madame Suard has the remains of much beauty, a belle esprit, and aims at singularity and independence of sentiment. Would you believe it, Mr. Day paid his court to her thirty years ago? She is very civil to us, and we go to their house once a week: literati frequent it, and to each of them she has something to say.
At Madame de Pastoret's we met M. Degerando [Footnote: Marie Joseph Degerando, writer on education and philosophy, 1772-1842.] and M. Camille Jordan. Not Camille de Jourdan, the assassin, nor Camille Desmoulins, another assassin, nor General Jourdan, another assassin, but a young man of agreeable manners, gentle disposition, and much information; he lives near Paris, with his Pylades Degerando, who is also a man of much information, married to a pretty sprightly domestic woman, who nurses her child in earnest. Camille Jordan has written an admirably eloquent pamphlet on the choice of Buonaparte as first consul for life; it was at first forbidden, but the Government wisely recollected that to forbid is to excite curiosity. We three have had profound metaphysical conferences in which we have avoided contest and have generally ended by being of the same opinion. We went, by appointment, to Madame Campan's—she keeps the greatest boarding-school in France—to meet Madame Recamier, the beautiful lady who had been nearly squeezed to death in London. How we liked the school and its conductress, who professes to follow Practical Education, I leave to Maria to tell you. How we like Madame Recamier is easily told; she is certainly handsome, but there is nothing noble in her appearance; she was very civil. M. de Prony, [Footnote: Gaspard Clair François Marie Riche, baron de Prony, the great mathematician, 1755-1839.] who is at the head of the Engineers des Ponts et Chaussées—civil engineers—was introduced to us by Mr. Watt. I forgot to speak of him; he has just left Paris. M. de Prony showed us models and machines which would have delighted William. M. l'Abbé Morellet's niece next engaged our attention; she and her husband came many leagues to see us; and we met also Madame de Vergennes, Madame de Remusat, and Madame Nansoutit, all people of knowledge and charming manners. Madame Lavoisier and the Countess Massulski, General Kosciusko, Prince Jablounsk_i_, and Princess Jablounsk_a_, and two other Princesses, I leave to Maria. Mons. Edelcrantz, private secretary to the King of Sweden; Mons. Eisenman, a German; Mons. Geofrat, the guardian from Egypt of the Kings of Chaldea and seven Ibises; Mons. de Montmorenci—that great name: the Abbé Sicard, who dines here to-morrow; Mons. Pang, Mons. Bertrant, Mons. Milan, Mons. Dupont, Mons. Bareuil the illuminati man, and Mr. Bilsbury, I leave to her and Charlotte.
MRS. EDGEWORTH to MRS. MARY SNEYD.