TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
1802.
Your prose Ballitore[35] resembles a highly finished Dutch painting; in which one of the best artists has represented village scenery and manners, and where one is not only struck by the general effect, but amused and interested by the details, which all bear to be separately examined. Your minutest touches have their value, and the whole wears the stamp of truth and nature. As a faithful portrait of the manners of a small but interesting circle, it is really curious, and will become more so every day, as those minute particulars, neglected by the historian, and exaggerated by the novelist, increase in value as they increase in years. They throw the strongest light on the progress of luxury, and the changes of modes and customs; so perhaps many of the most trifling circumstances you have recorded may furnish matter whence our great-grandchildren may draw important conclusions.
In the spring of 1802, France, after having been closed for nine years, again became for a short period accessible, by the Peace of Amiens, to English travellers. What my Mother intended should be a short vacation ramble to Paris with her son, took a shape altogether different, and in fact fixed the whole fashion of her after life. Detained at Paris, first by indisposition, then by her approaching marriage, and lastly, by her husband’s captivity, her sojourn there continued, not for a few weeks only, but for five years. Of the period anterior to her detention I can find only the journal of the first three weeks; from which I shall make some extracts. They differ little from the observations of any other curious and intelligent sight-seer; still, as the Paris of that day was to be so soon shut up anew against English visitors, I may be excused for finding room for them.
July 5, 1802.—Landed at Calais, where, besides the pleasure of escaping from a ship, one feels at Dessein’s Hotel the satisfaction of treading classic ground, and sees Yorick, his interesting French widow, and his incomparable monk, gliding about in every apartment. While my imagination offered me these mild and gracious figures, my eyes presented me with Arthur O’Connor and a group of his associates. His features are regular and his person good. At the moment I saw him, he had a dark and scowling but sensible expression. He wore a green handkerchief as a neckcloth, and a tricoloured cockade. Before I could obtain leave to land my carriage, I was forced to sign a bond to bring it back to England within four months, under a penalty of twelve hundred francs—a testimony of the superior excellence of English carriages very inconvenient to travellers.
July 7, Abbéville.—The appearance of the harvest during these two days’ journey exceeds every idea I had formed of plenty. Almost the whole country is under tillage, chiefly of wheat, intermixed, however, with other grain, with flax, and with vegetables. When I saw the peasant girls leading their lean cows by a rope to pick up a scanty meal on the edge of the road, I could have wished for the intermixture of meadow. There were no animals whatever grazing; but with the whole country thus under tillage, nothing but sour black bread was to be seen in the common post-houses, though they were kept by farmers; and at one village where I wished to buy a little white bread, it was searched for in vain.