Chapter XII: Part II (2)

It was the night of her First Confession. “Sœur Bichon[16] had come to see my nurse, and while Mademoiselle Gioul, my maid, was undressing me, Sœur Bichon said to me that she recommended herself to my prayers (for although I said them in common with the class downstairs, they made me say them again before putting me to bed). I said to Sœur Bichon: ‘What do you want me to ask God for you?’ She said: ‘Pray to Him to make my soul as pure as yours is at this moment.’ I said then, aloud, at the end of my prayers: ‘Oh! my God, grant to Sœur Bichon that her soul may be as white as mine ought to be at my age, if I had profited by all the good lessons that have been given me.’ My nurse was delighted with the way I had arranged this prayer, and hugged me, as did Sœur Bichon and Mademoiselle Gioul. When I was in bed, I asked was it a sin to pray for la grise (a gray cat which, like Mère Quatre-Temps, sometimes suffered from the attentions of Hélène and little Choiseul, if one had only space to tell the tale). My nurse and Sœur Bichon said it would be, and that I should not talk of la grise to the good God.

“Afterwards as I was not sleepy, Sœur Bichon came to my bed, and said that if I died that night, I should go straight to Paradise. I asked her what I should see in Paradise. And she said to me, ‘Picture to yourself, dearie, that Paradise is a great big hall, all made of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones. Le bon Dieu is sitting on a throne. Jesus Christ is on His right hand, and the Blessed Virgin on His left, the Holy Ghost is leaning over His shoulder, and all the Saints are passing up and down before Him.’ While she was telling me this, I fell asleep.”

And so we leave her, dreaming of Heaven, in her little white convent bed, poor little Hélène Massalski.

II.—ANNA GREEN WINSLOW

(_Boston 1771—1773_)

In 1771, the very year little Hélène Massalski was passed through the wicket of the grill of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, and dressed in her pensionnaire’s uniform to begin her adventurous school career, a demure little maiden in far off America sat her down to write _her_ diary too. It is impossible to imagine a greater or more piquant contrast than that between the little Catholic girl in her French convent, and the little Puritan who was sent to her “Aunt Deming” in Boston by her parents in Nova Scotia to be “finished” by Boston teachers. While Hélène was “spoiling her hand” scribbling memoirs which nobody could read but herself, and getting Mlle. de Choiseul to write her “copy-book” for her so as to avoid trouble with M. Charme, her writing-master, little Anna Green Winslow was recording in careful penmanship the events of her Puritan day “for the edification of her ‘Hond. Mamma’” and her own practice in “making letters even.” Poor little girl! one feels that something more than the chill of the Boston winter has got into her frail little body; and one wishes for something better than the warmth of “Unkle Joshua’s” fire to cheer her on bitter days on her way from school. For in truth she is a very likeable little person, this “Pilgrim’s daughter,” and one feels that in a kindlier atmosphere she would have blossomed into something very dear and sweet. Sometimes in the midst of her notes of “Mr. Hunt’s” and “Mr. Beacon’s” sermons, one comes across the most naïve confession of personal vanity, and one cannot help loving her for it. It was all very well for Mr. Beacon to tell her that “true beauty consisted in holiness”; and to show her “Hond. Mamma” that she had been paying attention she even took the pains to copy his very words—his “lastly” to his dear young friends: “Let me tell you, you’l never be truly beautiful till you’re like the king’s daughter, all glorious within, all the ornimints you can put on while your souls are unholy make you the more like white sepulchres garnished without, but full of deformyty within. You think me very unpolite, no doubt, to address you in this manner, but I must go a little further and tell you, how cource soever it may sound to your delicacy, that while you are without holiness, your beauty is deformyty—you are all over black and defiled, ugly and loathsome to all holy beings, the wrath of the great God lies upon you, and if you die in this condition, you will be turned into hell, with ugly devils, to eternity.” That might be so; but it did not deter a certain little girl from “dressing all (even to loading) of her best” for “Miss Soley’s constitation” (“a very genteel, well-regulated assembly,” she informs her mamma). “I was dressed in my yellow coat, black bib and apron, black feathers on my head, my past (_i.e._, paste) comb, and all my past garnet marquesett and jet pins, together with my silver plume—my loket, rings, black collar round my neck, black mitts, and two or three yards of blue ribbon (black and blue is high taste), stripped tucker and ruffels (not my best) and my silk shoes compleated my dress.” Nor was there much consolation in the thought of “interior whiteness” on occasions when there seemed danger of Aunt Deming making her wear “‘the black hatt with the red Dominie.’ For the people will ask me what I have got to sell as I go along the street if I do, or how the folk at New Guinie do? Dear Mamma, you don’t know the fation here—I beg to look like other folk. You don’t know what a stir would be made in Sudbury-street, were I to make my appearance there in my red Dominie and black Hatt.”

In contrast with Hélène’s exciting experiences, little Anna Green’s sedate goings to and fro to writing school to Master Holbrook, or “dansing-school” to Master Turner, or sewing school to Madam Smith seem very tame indeed. It is quite an adventure for her “to be overtaken by a lady who was quite a stranger to her,” and to be accosted by her with “how do you do, Miss?” “I answered her, but told her I had not the pleasure of knowing her.” She then asked, “What is your name, Miss? I believe you think it is a very strange question to ask, but have a mind to know.” It turns out that the lady is an old friend of Nanny’s mother, and sends her all kinds of affectionate messages, including one “to come up and live on Jamaîcaplain,” the attraction being “a nice meeting-house, and a charming minister, and all so cleaver.” Sometimes when there is absolutely nothing to tell, Nanny copies out, “with her Aunt’s leave,” something which pleased that good lady very much, “and which I hope will please you, my Papa and Mamma.” It turns out to be a rather dull joke wherein Mr. W., “who don’t set up for an Expositor of Scripture, yet ventures to send Dr. Byles a short comment on 1 Cor. ix. 11[17] in the shape of a dozen pounds of chocolate.” To which the Dr. returned the following very pretty answer: “Dr. Byles returns respects to Mr. W. and most heartily thanks him for his judicious practical Familie Expositor, which is in Tast.” To do Nanny justice, this “joke” is more in the “tast” of Aunt Doming than her own, for the little lady has a charming sense of humour, and sometimes employs it very prettily even against herself. She was subject on occasions to “egregious fits of laughterre,” and can give the drollest description of some things that tickle her fancy. For instance, a “heddus roll” which Mr. D., the barber, made for her. “This famous roll is not made _wholly_ of a red _cow tail_, but is a mixture of that and horsehair (very coarse) and a little human hair of yellow hue, that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. made it all carded together and twisted up. When it first came home, aunt put it on, and my new cap on it; she then took up her apron and measured me, and from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I measured above an inch longer than I did downward from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than virtue and modesty without the help of fals hair, red cow tail, or Mr. D.”

Poor “Mr. D.” He does not seem to have been the beau idéal of barbers. Here is a picture of him at work. “In the course of my peregrination, as Aunt calls it, I happened into a house where D. was attending the lady of the family. How long she was at his opperation I know not. I saw him twist, and tug, and pick, and cut off whole locks of grey hair at a slice (the lady telling him she would have no hair to dress the next time) for the space of an hour and a half, when I left them, he seeming not to be near done.”

She certainly needed her sense of humour, for nothing could be more depressing than the company she was forced to keep. If she wasn’t ill herself, “with a whitloe on my fourth finger, and something like one on my middle finger,” and being ‘seasoned’ by Aunt Deming with Globe Salts, she was visiting sick relations and neighbours. She goes to see Aunt Storer, and “finds Unkle Storer so ill that he keeps chamber. As I went down I call’d at Mrs. Whitwell’s and must tell you Mr. and Mrs. Whitwell are both ill, Mrs. Whitwell with rheumatism.” Later on: “It has been a very sickly time here, not one person that I know of but has been under heavy colds (all laid up at Unkle Storer’s).” The climate seems to have been abominable. Almost every entry deals with the weather, and it is only well on in May that there is any mention of warmth. Even in June we read: “All last week till Saterday very cold and rainy.” A snowstorm keeps her from dining with “Unkle Joshua” on 6th December, and another from Mrs. Whitwell’s on the 14th. Christmas Eve, 1771, was “the coldest day we have had since I have been in New England,” and all folk abroad “have to run to keep themselves warm.” The rain of Sunday froze on Monday, so that “walking was so slippery and the air so cold that Aunt choses to have me for her scoller these days.” February 13th was “a bitter cold day.” February 18th, “bitter cold” again. On February 22nd the weather entry reads: “Since about the middle of December ult. we have had till this week a series of cold and stormy weather—every snowstorm (of which we have had abundance) except the first ended with rain, by which means the snow was so hardened that strong gales at N.W. soon turned it and all above ground to ice, which this day seven-night was from one to three, four, and, they say, in some places five feet thick, in the streets of this town. Last Saturday morning we had a snowstorm come on, which continued till 4 o’clock, p.m., when it turned to rain, since which we have had a warm air with many showers of rain, one this morning a little before day, attended with thunder. The streets have been very wet, the water running like rivers all this week, so that I could not possibly go to school.”

In spite of the weather Anna and Aunt Deming go to “meeting” with great frequency, sometimes favoured by kind neighbours like Mr. Soley and “Mr. Wales” with seats in their chaise. Anna is always supposed to write down the text and as much of the sermon as she can in her diary, and as sometimes Aunt Deming puts in her pen, the effect is slightly like that produced by the elder Mr. Weller’s letter to Sam. She likes Mr. Hunt’s sermons best, though she does not “understand all he said about the external and internal evidence” for the authenticity of the Bible. On an occasion when Mr. Hunt preached on “The Decrees of God” Anna had “set down some of his observations on a loose sheet of paper. But my Aunt says that a Miss of 12 years’ old can’t possibly do justice to the nicest subject in Divinity, and therefore had better not attempt a repetition of particulars, that she finds lie (as may be easily concluded) somewhat confused in my young mind. She also says that in her poor judgment, Mr. Hunt discoursed soundly, as well as ingeniously, upon the subject, and very much to her instruction and satisfaction.”

I am sorry to have to add that Anna was a dreadfully bigoted young person, and would not keep Christmas, “as the Pope and his associates have ordained.” Moreover, she has a horror of anything savouring of “episcopacie.” She is properly contemptuous of Dr. Pemberton’s and Dr. Cooper’s “gowns.” “In the form of episcopal cassocks we hear the Docts. design to distinguish themselves from the inferior clergy by these strange habits (at a time too when the good people of New England are threatened with and dreading the coming of an episcopal bishop).” She pokes irreverent fun at the doctors’ sleeves: “I don’t know whether one sleeve would make a full-trimmed negligee as the fashion is at present, though I can’t say but it might make one of the frugal sort, with but scant trimming ... Aunt says when she saw Dr. P. roll up the pulpit stairs, the figure of Parson Trulliber recorded by Mr. Fielding occurred to her mind, and she was really sorry a congregational divine should, by any instance, give her so unpleasing an idea.”

She had her politics, too, as well as her religious convictions, though there are only slight indications in the diary of the storm that was to burst so soon, and of which Boston was to be the centre. She speaks incidentally of the famous “Boston Massacre” (1770), when the British troops sent to Boston to enforce the Townshend Acts fired at and killed several unarmed citizens (and, as Daniel Webster said, the Revolution began,) as the “murder of the 5th March last.” She had an account of the first anniversary celebrations of the Boston Massacre, “yesterday’s publick performances and exhibitions” ready to send to her “hond. Mamma,” “but Aunt says I need not write about ’em because no doubt there will be printed accounts.” She could have wished to be there herself, but could not, her face being swollen with a heavy cold. She knew James Lovell, the famous Boston patriot, who delivered the Anniversary Address. “Master Jimmy Lovell,” she calls him in another place. _A propos_ of a “very beautiful white feather hat,” for the purchase of which she had long been saving up “papa’s kind allowance,” we learn she is, “as we say, a daughter of liberty. I chose to wear as much of our own manufactory as possible.” In which respect she is very much in the “fation,” as she dearly loves to be. “Daughters of liberty,” we read elsewhere, “held spinning and weaving bees, and gathered in bands pledging themselves to drink no tea till the obnoxious Revenue Act was repealed.” Young unmarried girls joined in an association with the proud declaration, “We, the daughters of those Patriots who have appeared for the public interest, do now with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of foreign tea.” When she went “a-visiting to Colonel Gridley’s with Aunt, and had danced with Miss Polly Deming to the ‘musick of the minuet’ sung by Miss Becky Gridley, the Colonel brought in the talk of Whigs and Tories, and taught me the difference between them.”

But in reality one suspects she understood even less of Col. Gridley’s political lecture than of Mr. Beacon’s sermon—and led her quiet life from day to day without the slightest suspicion of the great events whose shadows were thus cast before. She got through her day’s work—whether it were “spinning 30 knots of linning yarn (partly), new-footing a pair of stockings for Lucinda, reading a part of the pilgrim’s progress, coppieing part of my text journal,” or, as on the 9th March, a “piece-meal” day’s work, when she “sew’d on the bosom of unkle’s shirt, mended two pair of gloves, mended for the wash two handkerchiefs (one cambrick), sewed on half a border of a lawn apron of aunt’s, read part of the xxist chapter of Exodus, and a story in the ‘Mother’s Gift,’” without suspecting that anything more exciting was in store for her than the “constitations” of which she has given us such a graphic picture.

Very dull, I am afraid, these gatherings would have seemed to Hélène Massalski, accustomed to her brilliant school balls during the carnival, when “they left aside their school uniforms, and the mothers vied with each other in dressing their daughters,” or to her representations of “Esther,” when their costumes were designed after those of the Comédie Française, and Hélène, as Esther, wore a gown all white and silver, sparkling with diamonds valued at over one hundred thousand crowns, lent by the Duchesses de Mortemart, de Gramont, and de Choiseul. But little Anna Green Winslow thought them perfectly delightful, and told her mamma about them very prettily:—

“I told you I was going to a constitation with Miss Soley. I have now the pleasure to give you the result, viz., a very genteel, well-regulated assembly which we had at Mr. Soley’s last evening, Miss Soley being mistress of the ceremony. Mrs. Soley desired me to assist Miss Hannah in making out a list of guests, which I did some time since. I wrote all the invitation cards. There was a large company assembled in a handsome, large, upper room in the new end of the house. We had two fiddles, and I had the honour to open the diversion of the evening in a minuet with Miss Soley.... Our treat was nuts, raisins, cakes, wine, punch hot and cold, all in great plenty. We had a very agreeable evening from five to ten o’clock. For variety we woo’d a widow, hunted the whistle, threaded the needle, and while the company was collecting, we diverted ourselves with playing of pawns, no rudeness, mamma, I assure you.”

In contrast to Madame de Rochechouart, _grande dame_ to her exquisite finger tips, grave, gracious, beautiful and intellectual, poor Aunt Deming, with her laboured jokes about “Mr. Calf,” and her appreciation of Dr. Byles, cuts a sorry figure. We feel genuine compassion for poor Nanny, obliged to spend so much time with her. Nothing can better illuminate “Aunt Deming’s” character than a letter of hers to her “dear neice,” when her “dear neice” had left her to go home to her mother. She begins by congratulating her on having had a less “troublesome journey” than she (Aunt Deming) anticipated. “I was always unhappy in anticipating trouble—it is my constitution, I believe—and when matters have been better than my fears, I have never been so dutifully thankful as my bountiful benefactor had a right to expect. This also, I believe, is the constitution of all my fellow-race.”

After condoling with her “neice” on her indisposition as well as that of Flavia and her mamma, she goes on to her own pet theme: “I’m at too great a distance to render you the least service, and were I near, too much out of health to—some part of the time—even speak to you. I am seized with exceeding weakness at the very seat of life, and to a greater degree than I ever before knew. Could I ride, it might help me, but that is an exercise my income will not permit. I walk out whenever I can. The day will surely come when I must quit this frail tabernacle, and it may be soon—I certainly know I am not of importance enough in this world for anyone to wish my stay—rather am I, and do I consider myself a cumberground. However, I shall abide my appointed time, and I desire to be found waiting for my change.”

No wonder it was a relief for a little girl to get out even to see Madam Storer’s funeral, or to visit Elder Whitwell’s rheumatic wife, or to see “my Unkle Ned, who has had the misfortune to break his legs.” She very much enjoyed a “setting-up” visit she paid to “Aunt Suky” to see the latter’s new baby; more, one suspects, for the opportunity it gave her of “dressing up just as if I was to go to the ball,” than for the sake of Nurse Eaton’s “tow-cakes,” which cost her a “pistoreen” in good money. “I took care to eat them before I paid for them,” she remarks shrewdly. She loves babies, one can see, and sends affectionate messages to her own little baby brother. On one occasion he “has made an essay for a post script to your letter, mamma. I must get him to read it to me when he comes up, for two reasons, the one is because I may have the pleasure of hearing his voice, the other because I don’t understand his characters. I observe that he is mamma’s ‘Ducky Darling.’”

“Cousin Charles Storer” seems to have been interested in the little girl’s reading. He lends her “Gulliver’s Travels abreviated,” which “Aunt says I may read for the sake of perfecting myself in reading a variety of composures.” With her “nihil obstat” Aunt Deming slips in an incidental lesson on “literary history.” “She sais farther that the piece was desin’d as a burlesque upon the times in which it was wrote, and Martimas Scriblensis and Pope Dunciad were wrote with the same design and as parts of the same work, tho’ wrote by three several hands.” Later on, Aunt Storer lent her three of cousin Charles’ books to read, “viz., The puzzeling cap,[18] the female Oraters, and the History of Gaffer too-shoes.” She got the “History of Joseph Andrews abreviated” for a New Year’s Gift, and began “Sir Charles Grandison”—whether she ever finished it or not. The works of Fielding and Samuel Richardson “abreviated” seem to have been favourite books for children, and figure in booksellers’ lists of the period as suitable for the “Instruction and Amusement of all good Boys and Girls,” together with “The Brother Gift, or the Naughty Girl Reformed”; “The Sister Gift, or the Naughty Boy Reformed,” and “Mr. Winlove’s Moral Lectures.”

Compared with Hélène, who read the best literature of the day, under the careful eye of Madame de Rochechouart, and was saturated in the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine from her theatrical triumphs, poor Anna’s literary pabulum seems very thin stuff indeed.

In 1773, Anna’s parents came from Nova Scotia to live in Marshfield, and their little daughter left Aunt Deming’s house to return to them. At this date, the diary therefore comes to an end.

She lived to hear of some of the greatest battles of the War of the Revolution, and must have been rather puzzled which side to pray for, seeing her own family divided on the question. But soon she was beyond all earthly troubles, for she died of consumption in 1779.

PAMELA AT BELLECHASSE

The Schooldays of Lady Edward Fitzgerald

“Pale, pretty Pamela!” So charming a picture she makes, in her husband’s letters to his mother, as she sits in the window by the garden of Kildare Lodge, daintily stitching for her baby; or out in the garden (while _he_ sits in the window) “busy in her little American jacket planting sweet pea and mignonette”; or in stately Leinster House, making for him a point of light in its gloom, of comfort in its loneliness, with her baby in her arms, “her sweet, pale, delicate face bending over it, and the pretty look she gives it,” that our hearts are hers for all time. Even the sordid story of the after years cannot alienate them from her. For us, in Ireland, whatever France may have done with her during the hard and pitiless “twenties” of the nineteenth century, she lives for ever, set by her husband’s love in an atmosphere of eternal youth, of eternal romance—lovely and pale, and sweet—Lord Edward’s girl-wife.

This is why, having come across, in the _Mémoires_ of her mother, Madame de Genlis, an account of the education shared by Pamela with the Orléans children at the Convent of Bellechasse, I felt convinced that my readers would be grateful to me for setting the story of it down at the end of this book I have gathered, not of hero-lays indeed, but of tales of little girls’ school lives in many ages and many lands.

Apart altogether from our special interest in Pamela, as Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s wife, it is true that Madame de Genlis is too important a figure in the history of education to be passed over in silence. Through Miss Edgeworth’s _Moral Tales_, in which it is impossible to mistake her influence, her ideas have influenced middle-class education in Ireland as far down as the present generation at least (as distinct from the “rising” generation, which will doubtless be preserved from them by the thoughtfulness of our Education Boards in prescribing Miss Edgeworth’s works for examination purposes). In this connection it would be extremely interesting to inquire how far the outlook of the Irish Bourgeoisie, which gives such offence to Mr. Yeats, can be laid at the charge of Madame de Genlis.

In herself, that good lady united two oddly dissimilar educational traditions, that of Madame de Maintenon, and that of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau, perhaps, more because he was the fashion, and Madame de Maintenon by conscious selection. But there was one aspect of Madame de Maintenon’s system, which Madame de Genlis was, unhappily, unable to assimilate, because there was wanting in her own the deep and genuine piety which gives such strength to Madame de Maintenon.

It was in 1777, when the little twin Orléans Princesses were tiny babies, that Madame de Genlis (in accordance with a promise to their mother made before their birth: that she should take charge of their education), withdrew from her brilliant position as Court Lady at the Palais Royal, to the seclusion of the Convent of Bellechasse. She does not omit to point out what a sacrifice she was making, but then—what will she not do for her dear Duke and Duchess?

If the truth must be told, the sacrifice was more apparent than real. It is easy enough to gather from Madame’s own hints that her position at the Palais Royal, where she had made many enemies, was not altogether pleasant. Moreover, she was shrewd enough to see that in the new career as “gouvernante” of these royal children, there was a chance of distinction for a woman of her very real talents and intelligence which could never be gained at Court.

Clever actress and dramatist that she was, she never took more pains with her setting than on this occasion. She herself had drawn the plans “for the charming pavilion in the midst of the convent garden,” where she and her pupils were to live. Hers, too, of course, was the idea of the vine-covered pergola which connected it with the convent. The ceremony of installation was arranged, one may be sure, by her, though she passes it off as a “gentillesse” of the community. “I felt nothing but joy in entering this peaceable asylum where I was to exercise so sweet a sovereignty: I reflected that I should be able to give myself up to my real tastes, and I should be no longer exposed to the malice which had caused me such pain.”

There was not very much “seclusion” for the first few days, at all events. Everybody of her acquaintance, whether at the Palais Royal, or out of it, had heard so much of the establishment at Bellechasse that there was a rush to see it. Madame de Genlis, for all her “quiet” tastes, had the greatest pleasure in the world showing them round. “Everyone was enchanted with the place, which was really charming. I had in my room a large alcove, of which my bed only occupied the half; from it, there opened a passage, leading to the Princesses’ room, where a glass door without a curtain enabled me to see from my own bed everything that was going on. One of the rooms of the suite held in glass-cases my whole natural history collection. This and my bureau were all I had brought with me from the Palais Royal.” You will never guess why the “bureau” has such importance until Madame tells you that “she was the first woman to have a bureau,” and was very much criticised for it, though now it was all the fashion.

In those Rousseau days one took much thought for one’s dairy, and Madame de Genlis tells of one built by the Duke, and to which she had the pleasure of leading a charming milk-maid, after having married her to the young German gardener.

Rousseau and Madame de Maintenon are both in her mind when she tells us of the economy with which she managed the establishment—“such a remarkable economy that it has been much talked about,” she adds with complacence. “My first principle was to make up my account every day, and to know the price of things, and especially the quantities of food-stuffs given out every day in the kitchen for the different meals.... I knew exactly how much rice or vermicelli was needed for soup for four, eight, twelve persons. I knew the exact quantities required of sugar, jam, cream, oil, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, etc. I sent to the markets every week a man I could trust: he inquired in great detail about the price of all provisions, and brought me back the information in writing.” Details like these, constantly occurring in the Letters of Madame de Maintenon to her brother and young sister-in-law, gave Madame de Genlis the greatest pleasure.

She goes on to tell of the “delicious life” she leads at Bellechasse. She is relieved by her position from the “fag” of paying visits, but she can receive them very much at her ease. Men were received, this being a privilege of Princesses of the Blood Royal, but they had to leave at ten o’clock.... But, like Bourdalone going to preach at Saint Cyr, it is to be hoped that they took their dinner before they went, for, “to avoid useless expense, I had decided that none of my friends should dine at Bellechasse, except my husband, my brother, and my two sisters-in-law.” And these dined here but rarely.

She had hardly been installed when she got permission for her mother, and her two daughters to come and live with her, and we may feel sure that she early cast about in her mind for a reasonable pretext for introducing on the scene poor little Pamela, who was being brought up like a fisherman’s child in a little village in England.

In the meantime something really important and remarkable happened. The Duke came one evening to Bellechasse, and announced to Madame de Genlis that he should have to provide immediately a “gouverneur” for the two young Princes, whose manners were getting atrocious. He instanced the little Duke of Valois complaining of having to “tambourine” too long at his father’s door, and quoted a pun of the same little Prince, which was certainly not in the style of a Salon of the period. Their father came to consult Madame de Genlis on the choice of a “gouverneur.” She proposed several, and each met with an objection. M. de Schomberg would make the boys little pedants; the Chevalier de Durfort would pass on to them his own faults of over-emphasis and exaggeration; Monsieur de Thiars was too frivolous. “What about myself, then?” “Why not?” replied the Duke seriously. “His air and tone struck me greatly. I saw the possibility of something extraordinary and glorious, and I desired its realisation with all my heart.” As a matter of fact, before the Duke left the matter was settled, and Madame de Genlis had an honour and a title that no woman in France ever had before. Now the Ladies of the Palais Royal would know what was behind her retirement!

She was so much afraid of any _contretemps_, that she even arranged the details before the Duke left. The boys’ tutors, M. de Bonnard and the Abbé Guyot and M. Le Brun, were to be kept on, and one of them was to escort the Princes from the Palais to Bellechasse every day at twelve, and escort them home again to the Palais at ten o’clock at night. “A country house was to be bought, in which we should spend eight months of the year; and I was to have complete control of their education. Knowing that I myself was to teach them history, mythology, literature, etc., which, together with the lessons I gave to the Princesses, would leave me not a moment’s leisure, the Duke offered me 20,000 francs. My reply was that no money could pay for such a charge, that only friendship could be its recompense. He insisted. I positively refused. It is therefore quite gratuitously that I have educated these Princes.”

The arrangement, as far as the boys went, was that they were to get up at seven and have their Latin lesson, and religious instruction from the Abbé; they were then to have an arithmetic class with M. Le Brun, who was to bring them to Bellechasse at twelve. The Abbé and M. Le Brun could stay there, or go away as they pleased until the dinner-hour, two o’clock. “After dinner, I took complete charge of the boys until nine, when the masters returned to supper and to bring the boys away. I asked M. Le Brun to keep a detailed journal of the way the boys spent their mornings, leaving a wide margin for my observations. I myself wrote the first pages. These pages contained particular instructions for M. Le Brun on the education of the Princes. M. Le Brun brought me this journal every morning; I read it immediately; I scolded or praised, punished or rewarded the boys, according to what I saw in it.”

She next gives a portrait of the Duke of Valois, the future Louis Philippe, at the age of eight. It appears his want of application was the most noticeable thing about him. “I commenced by making them read history. M. le duc de Valois paid absolutely no attention. He stretched, and yawned, and you can imagine my astonishment when I saw him sprawl back on the sofa on which we were sitting and settle his feet on the table! I put him in penance on the spot.”

It would appear that the young Prince bore no grudge when the reason of the thing was explained to him. “He loved reasoning, as other children like nursery-tales.” In spite of his “natural good sense,” it seems, however, that he had a most unreasoning aversion to two of the oddest things, dogs and the smell of vinegar. It was the business of his “gouverneur” to rid him of these aversions, and this was happily accomplished. Among his gifts was a most remarkable memory. “I flatter myself that I have succeeded in developing and cultivating this gift of nature.”

Languages were to be taught at Bellechasse, and as far as possible by the direct method. The “second Valet de Chambre” was a German, who not only played the piano very well, but understood the principles of his native language thoroughly. It was he who taught the Duke German. He had an Italian valet who was supposed to speak nothing but Italian to his young master, and an English tutor, “who gave him lessons in my own room.” But, and it is here that Madame de Genlis shows herself so astonishingly modern, what about utilising their play hours, too, for learning English by getting a little English-speaking child to play with them? Mr. Forth, who is buying horses for the Duke in England, receives the commission to look for one, and finds her in little, nameless, five-year-old Pamela, who, after a short delay, is installed at Bellechasse, and made to share the education of the Princes and Princesses of the Blood Royal!

It had been arranged that the Duke should buy a country-house for the children, and choice was made of Saint Leu, where they spent all the year except the winter. “In the beautiful park I had little gardens made for each of my pupils, which they dug and planted for themselves.” (So Pamela knew something about her business when she set about planting her “sweet pea and mignonette” in the garden at Kildare Lodge).

The children had a chemist and botanist among their teachers, a Monsieur Alyon, who accompanied them in all their walks, made them pick flowers, and taught them Botany. M. Alyon gave them, every summer too, a practical course in Chemistry, at which Madame de Genlis made a point of being present. A Pole, called Merys, who was very clever at black-and-white drawing, and water-colours, and had executed many commissions for the Duchess, was employed by Madame to prepare slides for an historical magic lantern. Four different sets of slides were painted by him, from written descriptions made by Madame, and in this attractive way the children learned their Bible History, Ancient History, Roman History, and History of China and Japan. The youngsters, we learn, took their turn week about lecturing with the lantern. Can anything be more modern?

Except, indeed, it be the way they learned Geography! She tells us of “a delightful game” she invented for her pupils. “I made them stage and play out in the garden, or inside the Château, according to the subject, the most celebrated voyages.” Everybody in the house, including Madame herself, had a rôle in these representations. They had wooden horses for the cavalcade; “the lovely river in the park represented the sea; a number of pretty little boats were our fleets. We had a wardrobe of suitable costumes. The best ‘Voyages’ we played were those of Vasco de Gamma and Snelgrove.”

Another device she had for teaching them history was to stage historic tableau. “I proposed the subjects, and M. Merys grouped the actors.” Those who were not performing had to guess the subject, which would be either historical or mythological. So successful were these “tableaux” that Madame got permission to build a regular little theatre for her children. It was so arranged that the back of the stage could open, if one so wished, and show “a long alley of the garden, all illuminated and adorned with garlands of flowers.” For this little theatre Madame wrote a great number of plays.

In this connection we are told of a success of Pamela. A “tableau” had been arranged representing “Venus and Psyche,” and the parts were taken by Pamela and her two half-sisters, Pamela’s rôle being that of “Love.” David, the great historical painter, was present, and his enthusiasm knew no bounds. It came nearer to his conception of ideal beauty than anything he had ever seen, he declared.

So much for their life at Saint Leu during the summer. At Bellechasse in the winter they were equally busy and equally happy. “I had a turning-lathe put up in an ante-chamber, and all the children, as well as myself, learned to use it. We learned indeed everything that did not require brute force. We learned bookbinding and leather work, and made an enormous number of Morocco leather pocket-books, equal in workmanship to those manufactured in England; we went in for basket-making, making laces, ribbons, artificial flowers, marble paper, wood-gilding, all sorts of hair-work (even wig-making!) Finally, for the boys we had carpentry.” We learn that the future King of the French, Louis Philippe, was particularly good at carpentry. With the sole help of his little brother, the Duke de Montpensier, he made for a poor woman of Saint Leu, in whom he was interested, a great press, and a table with drawers, “both articles as well made as if they had been the work of a first-class joiner.”

Later on the Duke bought a seaside residence for the children, and here they learned to fish, and swim, and collect shells, and “acquire,” as Madame says, “all sorts of local information.”

In the midst of all this, the Revolution was brewing, and in a journey Madame took with her pupils through the North of France, one feels she did more than collect “local information.” She tried to make up her mind which side was going to win, and feeling certain it was not the King’s, she deliberately turned her pupils’ sympathies towards the Revolutionary Party.

“The desire of showing all sides to my pupils (a thing which on this occasion tempted me to take a rash step) brought me from Saint Leu to spend some days at Paris in order to see the people band together to storm the Bastille.” ... She gives a wonderful description of the great ponderous black building swarming over with people, and of the cheers that went up from the crowds, as stone after stone fell beneath the blows of the assailants.

Among the cheers none were louder than those of little Pam, though one wonders very much if she knew what they were about. There she stood in the “Garden of Beaumarchais,” and waved her dainty handkerchief, and hurt her pretty throat with cheers for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!

Did she know, I wonder, that in the street, there among the crowd of enthusiasts for Liberty, was a handsome young Irishman who had given up his title to throw his lot in with the people, and live up to its new doctrine of Equality? Did she know, I wonder, how she herself was to wear that title, and wear it as a crown set by a stranger people’s love?

Perhaps not. It was some months later that Lord Edward first saw the girl in the shadow of Madame de Genlis’ box at the opera. She reminded him of a dead lady whom he had loved with a boy’s romantic passion, and he asked for an introduction to Madame de Genlis.

A few days later Madame de Genlis was obliged to take Mademoiselle d’Orléans to Tournay. Lord Edward and an English friend accompanied them. Lord Edward, being much in charming Pamela’s society, lost his heart to her and proposed for her. Madame de Genlis stipulated for the consent of his mother, the Duchess of Leinster, and this being obtained, they were married at Tournay in 1793.

MARJORIE FLEMING

Sir Walter Scott’s “Pet Marjorie”

Room now in our “rosebud garden of girls” for the dear little Scottish lassie, Marjorie Fleming. For more than a hundred years she has been sleeping under the plain white marble cross in the graveyard of Abbotshall. Above her is the record of her life in length of years—of which the ninth was not complete: Marjorie Fleming. Born 1803; died 1811. Then, on the plinth, the name by which Sir Walter’s love has made her famous: Pet Marjorie. And yet none of the little girls whose stories I have told you is so well remembered as nine-year-old Marjorie, and none of them has counted so many distinguished men of letters for her admirers. Sir Walter Scott is only the first of a long list of great writers who have loved the little maid, though he was the only one of them who heard her voice repeating his ballads, and carried her proudly on his shoulder to set her at the head of his supper-table as Queen of the Revels. But seventy years after her death, Dr. John Brown (the Charles Lamb of Scotland) fell a victim to her fascinations, and wrote on her “the best book about a child that ever was written”; and when she was more than ninety years dead—she that had not lived nine—Mr. William Archer contributed a paper on her to the _Pall Mall Gazette_; Mr. Leslie Stephen has written a sketch of her life for the _Dictionary of National Biography_; while for the centenary of her birth (January 15, 1903) the _Story of Pet Marjorie_ was retold by L. MacBean.

What is the secret of her charm? I think it is this: that Marjorie is “a little child” in all the strange and beautiful connotation of the word. All the poetry Wordsworth has taught us to find in childhood goes to the making of Marjorie—with something more added:—

“Loving she is, and tractable, though mild,
And Innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes.”

The exquisite lines to six-year-old Hartley Coleridge might have been meant for her—

“whose fancies from afar were brought;
Who of her words did make a mock apparel,
And fitted to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol,”

with a difference to make her dearer. The children in Wordsworth “trail their clouds of glory” in a region into which we may only gaze from afar. Too rare is the atmosphere for our breathing; and we look at them a little wistfully, from another plane, feeling ourselves shut out from their “solitude” which to them is “blithe society.” Of that enchanted region of childhood, Marjorie alone has tried to make us free. The thrill the mother feels when her little one takes her into her confidence is ours to feel when we read Marjorie’s three diaries. That, I think, is what makes her so inexpressibly dear.

In Kirkcaldy, in 1803, Marjorie was born of good stock both in the paternal and maternal line. A grandfather who had fought for “Bonnie Prince Charlie” at Culloden on the Fleming side, and a grandfather who had distinguished himself in surgery, on the Rae side, were fit progenitors for romantic and clever Marjorie. Her Highland descent is well justified; for Marjorie, humorous, vivid, impulsive, high-spirited, and generous is a Celt to her finger-tips. Her face, too, as shown in Isa Keith’s sketches, has the Celtic characteristics, especially the deep-set eyes, with their indications of thought and humour, and the funny little mouth that could, one feels, coax and pout equally well.

The Fleming nursery, when Marjorie made her first appearance in it, had already two occupants, five-year-old William and two-year-old Isabella. The presiding genius of the place was a certain Jeanie Robertson. Nurse Jeanie was very particular about teaching her young charges their Catechism, and Willie, at two years’ old, did her so much credit that she was fond of showing off her young theologian, for the benefit of some militia officers stationed in town. Jeanie put the questions in broad Scots, beginning with: “Wha made ye, ma bonnie man?” For the correctness of this, and the three next replies, Jeanie had no anxiety, but her tone changed to menace and her closed “nieve” (fist) was shaken in the child’s face as she demanded: “Of what are you made?” “Durrt” was the invariable reply, delivered in an uncompromising tone. Whereat Jeanie would cuff him, soundly. “Wull ye never learn to say ‘dust,’ ye thrawn deevil?”

Whether or not, it was from Jeanie that Marjorie learned to know so much about the “deevil” I cannot say. But, at all events, she had a very wholesome fear of him, mixed with a certain interest in her methods. Cousin Isa, later on, taught her how to get the better of him (as she taught her so many other useful things, as, for instance, to make “simecolings, nots of interrigation, pearids and commas.”) She advised her: “When I feel Satan beginning to tempt me that I flee from him and he would flee from me.” But in the meantime there was a certain horrible fascination in thinking of him going about “like a roaring lyon in search of his pray,” and finding it in a little girl who “behaved extremely ill in God’s most holy church,” and “would never attande” herself “nor let Isabella attand,” or in a little girl “who stamped with her feet and threw her new hat on the ground” when Isabella brought her upstairs to teach her “religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons.”

It was when Marjorie had just turned five that Cousin Isabella Keith engaged on the course of education thus comprehensively described. Isabella was hardly out of her teens herself, but to Marjorie she was the embodiment of all wisdom. “Isabella,” she says in the second journal, “teaches me everything I know, I am much indebted to her, she is learn, and witty and sensible.” Then in another place: “I hope that at 12 or 13 years old I will be as learned as Miss Isa and Nancy Keith, for many girls have not the advantage I have, and I am very very glad that Satan has not given bols and many other misfortunes.” The reference to “bols,” it must be explained, was suggested by the story of Job, in whom Marjorie was much interested, feeling bound by their common enmity against the “Divel.” “It was the same Divel that tempted Job that tempted me, I am sure, but he resisted Satan, though he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have escaped.”

Isabella Keith had come on a visit from her Edinburgh home to her aunt’s house at Kirkcaldy, and fell in love so deeply with her little cousin, that she begged to be allowed to take her back with her to Edinburgh to take charge of her education. The Flemings thought well of the plan, and in the summer of 1808 Marjorie left Kirkcaldy and went to live at her Aunt Keith’s house in No. 1, Charlotte-street, Edinburgh.

Young as she was, she had read all sorts of things before she had left home. She seems to have learned to read, as some children will, who grow up among books, almost unconsciously, and she made herself free of her father’s library in the most complete manner. Charles Lamb’s recipe for producing “incomparable old maids” had been tried in her case with extraordinary results. Like “Cousin Bridget” in _Mackery End_, “she was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage.” The plan may be all that Charles Lamb claims for producing “incomparable old maids,” but its effects on children are more questionable. Fortunately Marjorie seems to have got nothing worse from it than a vocabulary and stock of phrases that seem a little beyond her control, and a tremendous interest in romance, which cousin Isa has to keep in check. She is constantly losing her heart, now to “a sailer” who called here to say farewell; “it must be dreadful to leave his native country where he might get a wife and perhaps me, for I love him very much and with all my heart, but O I forgot Isabella forbid me to speak about love.” Again to Mr. Crakey, with whom she “walked to Crakyhall hand in hand in Innocence and metitation sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestick pleasure.” And yet again to “Philip Caddie, who paid no little attention to me, he took my hand and led me downstairs and shook my hand cordialy.” But indeed it was a very innocent kind of romance, and Cousin Isa need not have been alarmed, for Marjorie’s “own true love” was Cousin Isa herself. Indeed once she has got away from the jargon of books—Kotzebue’s _Pigeon and Fawny Rachel_ and _The Cottage Cook_, we hear no more of her as a “loveress” except it be of “swine, geese, cocks, and turkeys that made Ravelston so pleasant to me, indeed they are the delight of my heart.”

She had not been long in Edinburgh when she wrote to tell her sister all about it. The occasion was one of much solemnity, for, as she observes, “this is the first time I ever wrote a letter in my life.” In this letter she tells of the girls who play with her in the square, “and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painful necessity of putting it to death.” She draws a rather unflattering portrait of a certain Miss Potune, “a lady of my acquaintance,” and this in spite of the fact that “she praises me dreadfully.” “I repeated something out of Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may think I was primmed up with majestick pride, but upon my word I felt myself turn a little birsay.” Perhaps she felt that Miss Potune was only trying to flatter her, just as she was doing with Aunt Keith. “This horrid fat simpliton says that my aunt is beautiful, which is entirely impossible, for that is not her nature.”

She returns again to the subject of Miss Potune in her diary, into which we shall now be privileged to peep.