I cannot help thinking that the deep and indelible impression thus made by Mrs. Jordan upon an humble unsophisticated servant girl exemplifies her kind and winning manners better than the most laboured harangues of a whole host of biographers.
Madame Ducamp meanwhile had been fidgeting about, and arranging every thing to show off her cottage to the greatest advantage; and without further conversation, except as to the price of the tenement, we parted with mutual “assurances of the highest consideration.”
I renewed my visits to the old woman; but her stories were either so fabulous or disconnected, and those of Agnes so unvaried, that I saw no probability of acquiring further information, and lost sight of Mrs. Jordan’s situation for a considerable time after her departure from Boulogne. I thought it, by-the-bye, very extraordinary that neither the mistress nor maid said a word about any attendant of Mrs. Jordan, even although it was not till long after that I heard of Col. Hawker and Miss K * * * * having accompanied her from England. After Mrs. Jordan left Boulogne, it appears that she repaired to Versailles, and subsequently, in still greater privacy, to St. Cloud, where, totally secluded, and under the name of Johnson, she continued to await, with agitated impatience, in a state of extreme depression, the answers to some letters, by which was to be determined her future conduct as to the distressing business that had led her to the continent. Her solicitude arose not so much from the real importance of this affair as from her indignation and disgust at the ingratitude which she had experienced, and which by drawing aside the curtain from before her unwilling eyes, had exposed a novel and painful view of human nature.
At that period I occupied a large hotel adjoining the Bois de Boulogne. Not a mile intervened between us; yet, until long after Mrs. Jordan’s decease, I never heard she was in my neighbourhood. There was no occasion whatever for such entire seclusion; but the anguish of her mind had by this time so enfeebled her, that a bilious complaint was generated, and gradually increased. Its growth did not appear to give her much uneasiness—so dejected and lost had she become. Day after day her misery augmented, and at length she seemed (we were told) actually to regard the approach of dissolution with a kind of placid welcome!
The apartments she occupied at St. Cloud were in a house in the square adjoining the palace. This house appeared to me large, gloomy, cold, and inconvenient; just the sort of place which would tell in description in a romance. It seemed almost in a state of dilapidation. I could not, I am sure, wander over it at night without a superstitious feeling. The rooms were numerous, but small; the furniture scanty, old, and tattered. The hotel had obviously once belonged to some nobleman; and a long, lofty, flagged gallery stretched from one wing of it to the other, which looked over a large uncultivated garden, and a charming country beyond. But Mrs. Jordan’s chambers were wretched: no English comforts solaced her latter moments! In her little drawing-room, a small old sofa was the best piece of furniture: on this she constantly reclined, and on it she expired.[[37]]
[37]. When I first saw Mrs. Jordan’s abode at St. Cloud, it was on a dismal, chilly winter’s day, and I was myself in corresponding mood. Hence perhaps every cheerless object was exaggerated, and I wrote on the spot the above description. I have again viewed the place: again beheld with melancholy interest the sofa on which Mrs. Jordan breathed her last. There it still, I believe, remains; but the whole premises have been repaired, and an English family has now one wing, together with an excellent garden, before overgrown with weeds: the two melancholy cypress-trees I first saw upon the little terrace yet remain. The surrounding prospect is undoubtedly very fine; but I would not, even were I made a present of that mansion, consent to reside in it one month;—in winter, not one night!
The account given to us of her last moments, by the master of the house, was very affecting: he likewise thought she was poor, and offered her the use of money, which offer was of course declined. Nevertheless, he said, he always considered her apparent poverty, and a magnificent diamond ring which she wore, as quite incompatible, and to him inexplicable. I have happened to learn since that she gave four hundred guineas for that superb ring. She had also with her, as I heard, many other valuable trinkets; and on her death, seals were put upon all her effects, which I understand still remain unclaimed.
From the time of her arrival at St. Cloud, it appears, Mrs. Jordan had exhibited the most restless anxiety for intelligence from England. Every post gave rise to increased solicitude, and every letter she received seemed to have a different effect on her feelings. Latterly she appeared more anxious and miserable than usual: her uneasiness increased almost momentarily, and her skin became wholly discoloured. From morning till night she lay sighing upon her sofa.