And verse is one of them—this most of all.”
MADAME DE GENLIS.
This celebrated writer, whose maiden name was Stephanie Felicité Ducrest de St. Aubin, has left a voluminous memoir of her life and times, written at the age of eighty, which is interesting for the portraits of celebrated characters, in which it abounds, as well as the delineations it affords of her education, her feelings, and her experience. Of this we have made the following abstract, generally in her own words, which will present the leading incidents of her eventful career:—
“I was born,” says she, “on the 25th of January, 1746, on a little estate in Burgundy, near Autun, called Champcéri. I was born so small and so weakly that they would not venture to put me in clothes; and, a few moments after my birth, I was on the point of losing my life. I had been placed in a down pillow, of which, to keep me warm, the two sides were folded over me and fastened with a pin; and, thus wrapped up, I was laid upon an arm-chair in the room. The judge of the district, who was almost blind, came to pay his visit of compliment to my father; and as, in his country fashion, he separated his huge flaps to sit down, some one saw that he was going to place himself 183 in the arm-chair where I was. Luckily, he was prevented from sitting down, and I escaped being crushed to death.
“I experienced in my childhood a series of unfortunate accidents. At eighteen months old, I fell into a pond, out of which I was extricated with great difficulty: at the age of five, I had a fall, and received a severe wound on the head: as a great deal of blood flowed from it, it was thought unnecessary to bleed me; but a deposit, formed in the head, burst at the ear after forty days, and, contrary to expectation, I was saved. A short time afterwards, I fell into the kitchen fire: this accident did not injure my face, but there are to this day two marks of it on my body. Thus often was endangered, in its earliest years, that life which was afterwards to prove so checkered.
“My father sold the estate of Champcéri when I was two years old. He had a house at Cosne, to which he removed, and passed three years there. The recollection of that house, of its superb garden, and beautiful terrace, upon the Loire, and of the chateau of Mienne, a league from Cosne, where we went so often, remains indelibly engraved on my memory. Passing by that road, thirty-five years after, I instantly recognized the chateau, though I was but five years old when we quitted Cosne. My father purchased the marquisate of St. Aubin, an estate most desirable from its situation, its extent, and its titular and seigniorial rights. I have never thought, without a feeling of tenderness, of this spot, once so dear to me, in which six years of innocence and happiness glided away.
“When we were once fixed at St. Aubin, my education began to be attended to. Mademoiselle Urgon, the village schoolmistress, taught me to read. Having an excellent memory, I learnt with great facility; and at the end of six or seven months, I read with ease. I was brought up with a brother fifteen months younger than myself, of whom I was exceedingly fond; with the exception of the hour set apart for reading, we were allowed to play together all day long. We passed part of the day in the court-yard, or in the garden; and in the evening we played in the drawing-room.