Monsieur St. Quintin’s establishment was well calculated to interest the observant child, and of her schoolmaster and his associates she has given us an amusing and picturesque description.
“He had been secretary to the Comte de Moustiers, one of the last Ambassadors, if not the very last, from Louis Seize to the Court of St. James’s. Of course he knew many emigrants of the highest rank, and, indeed, of all ranks; and being a lively, kind-hearted man, with a liberal hand and a social temper, it was his delight to assemble as many as he could of his poor countrymen and countrywomen around his hospitable supper-table. Something wonderful and admirable it was to see how these Dukes and Duchesses, Marshals and Marquises, Chevaliers and Bishops, bore up under their unparalleled reverses! How they laughed and talked, and squabbled, and flirted,—constant to their high heels, their rouge, and their furbelows, to their old liaisons, their polished sarcasms, their cherished rivalries! For the most part, these noble exiles had a trifling pecuniary dependency; some had brought with them jewels enough to sustain them in their simple lodgings in Knightsbridge or Pentonville; to some a faithful steward contrived to forward the produce of some estate, too small to have been seized by the early plunderers; to others a rich English friend would claim the privilege of returning the kindness and hospitality of by-gone years.”
Many of them eked out a precarious living by teaching languages, fencing, dancing and music; while some, like Monsieur St. Quintin, were fortunate in being able to found and carry on an educational establishment on a somewhat large scale.
Although shy and awkward, home-sick and lonely, little Mary soon found much in the Hans Place establishment to interest and amuse her. Like all other similar establishments, it contained an element of exclusiveness fostered by the snobbish half-dozen great girls who, being “only gentlemen’s daughters, had no earthly right to give themselves airs.” These the little country girl did not take seriously enough to give her cause for trouble. But she noticed them, nevertheless, and watched with youthful contempt their successful attempts to ostracize other less-favoured girls than themselves. Her memories of such incidents are epitomized very charmingly in her Recollections, wherein she records the pathetic story of Mademoiselle Rose, and the triumph over her tormentors of the neglected, snubbed and shy poor Betsy. It reads almost like a “moral tale,” but is saved from the general mediocrity of such effusions by its honest ring of indignation, of sweet girlish sympathy with the suffering of her fellow-pupil and governess, and of denunciation of the thoughtless ones.
Mademoiselle Rose was the granddaughter of an aged couple among the émigrés who gathered at Madame St. Quintin’s supper parties. They bore noted names of Brittany and had possessed large estates, but now having lost these and their two sons and been driven from their country, they were dependent on the charity of others, and on what their granddaughter Rose could earn by straw-plaiting to make into the fancy bonnets then in vogue. Mademoiselle Rose deserves to live in our minds, she was so brave. “Rose!” says Miss Mitford; “what a name for that pallid drooping creature, whose dark eyes looked too large for her face, whose bones seemed starting through her skin, and whose black hair contrasted even fearfully with the wan complexion from which every tinge of healthful colour had flown!” Even when she accompanied her grandparents to the supper parties she always brought her work, and rarely put it down during the whole evening, so ceaseless was the toil by which she laboured to support the aged couple now cast upon her duty and her affection.
At length it became necessary to find some other means of income apart from the straw-plaiting, and so Mademoiselle Rose was installed as a governess in the St. Quintin establishment, “working as indefatigably through our verbs and over our exercises as she had before done through the rattle of the tric-trac[6] table and the ceaseless chatter of French talk,” now and again putting in a word for her straw-plaits which in these new circumstances had to be made during a scanty leisure, and her insistent desire for the sale of which she made no effort to conceal.
At this juncture arrived Betsy, a child of nine, the daughter of a cheese-merchant in the Borough, and therefore considered as fair game by the vulgar and vain daughters of gentlemen. She came with her father, who although he stayed but five minutes, was so typical a John Bull in voice and bearing that the elegant French dancing-master who received him shrugged himself almost out of his clothes with ill-concealed disgust. “I rather liked the man,” says Miss Mitford; “there was so much character about him, and, in spite of the coarseness, so much that was bold and hearty.”
The disgust of the dancing-master was not lost upon him, for his parting injunction to the mistress of the establishment was “to take care that no grinning Frenchman had the ordering of his Betsy’s feet. If she must learn to dance, let her be taught by an honest Englishman.”
The conduct of both parent and dancing-master was a cue indeed for the gentlemen’s daughters, of which they quickly took advantage, to the great discomfort of poor Betsy, who, discarding Mary Mitford’s advances, sought and found silent comfort with Mademoiselle Rose. It was only silent comfort she obtained, the comfort of suffering souls in sympathy with each other, for neither knew the other’s language, and the only solace they obtained was in working together over the straw-plaits, in which Betsy quickly became adept. By some means the child was made aware of Mademoiselle Rose’s story, which had then become more poignant by reason of the fact that, although an opportunity had presented itself, by arrangement with the First Consul, for the re-admission of her grandparents to France and possibly for the ultimate recovery of some of their property, it could not be grasped, as they were all too poor to bear the expense. So poor Rose sighed over her straw-plaits, and submitted. Shortly afterwards Betsy was summoned home and begged permission to take one of Rose’s bonnets to show her aunt, with a view to purchase, a request which was granted. Two hours later Betsy reappeared in the schoolroom together with her father. The scene which ensued must be told in Miss Mitford’s own words.
“‘Ma’amselle,’ said he, bawling as loud as he could, with the view, as we afterwards conjectured, of making her understand him—‘Ma’amselle, I have no great love for the French, whom I take to be our natural enemies. But you’re a good young woman; you’ve been kind to my Betsy, and have taught her how to make your fallals; and, moreover, you’re a good daughter, and so’s my Betsy. She says that she thinks you’re fretting because you can’t manage to take your grandfather and grandmother back to France again; so, as you let her help you in that other handiwork, why you must let her help you in this.’ Then throwing a heavy purse into her lap, catching his little daughter up in his arms, and hugging her to the honest breast where she hid her tears and her blushes, he departed, leaving poor Mdlle. Rose too much bewildered to speak, or to comprehend the happiness that had fallen upon her, and the whole school the better for the lesson.”