THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE
Ex Libris
ISAAC FOOT
LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL
l *L*w1
LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS
OF
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL
BY
M. C. M. SIMPSON
1 Ah, pour moi, il n'y a de ruisseau qui vaille celui de la Rue du Bac "
MADAME DE STAEL
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
260.5"
(The rights of translation and of reproduction art reserved.}
PREFACE.
SOON after the death of my dear old friend Madame Mohl, I
wrote down a few reminiscences of her, which appeared in the
form of an article in Macmillaris Magazine for September,
1883.
Her relations and friends had given me all the assistance
that was possible in so short a time ; they were much pleased
with the little sketch when it appeared, and they earnestly
desired that it might be expanded, for much had been sup-
pressed for want of space, and that it might be put into a less
ephemeral form.
Mr. Macmillan kindly gave me permission to do this. If,
therefore, my readers remember to have seen some portions
of this book before, I would refer them to the article and
assure them that I have borrowed (without acknowledgment)
only from myself.
To those who knew and loved Madame Mohl, her salon,
of which so much has been said, was of far less interest
than herself. Kind as she was in inviting us to meet the
people we wished to see and to know, it was her own per-
sonality that attracted us above all others. It was not the
entertaining and instructive hours spent in company with
so many distinguished people that we valued most ; it was
the occasions when we found her alone, when she did not
" receive." She would then pour out unrestrained her fund of
anecdote of the days gone by, and give way to her irresistibly
VI PREFACE.
droll and peculiar views of life ; always, however, in spite of
occasional paradox, combining them with a high tone of
morality which never degenerated into commonplace.
In absence she never forgot her friends ; she wrote to
them continually ; I have upwards of one hundred letters to
myself; and as soon as it was known that I contemplated
the present publication, many of her other friends were so^
kind as to send me letters and recollections. The difficulty
has been in selection. Many of M. Mohl's letters have also
been sent to me; they are full of interest, humour, and
originality.
Madame Mohl wrote as she spoke, without stopping to
choose her words or to reflect on the effect she was producing.
She wrote upon her knee, anywhere, even while she was
talking, and she seldom read over her letters before she sent
them. They do not pretend, therefore, to be like Horace
Walpole's, highly finished models of style ; but much of the
raciness and perfect naturalness of her conversation will be
found in them.
The charm of manner, the cordial sympathy, the delightful
way in which one saw the first gleam of a bright idea strike
her mind in her expressive countenance, her merry laugh, can
live only in our recollection. Even in her last years, when her
mind was failing, if the right spring were touched the instru-
ment would again give forth its melody ; but these intervals
were few. She was longing for rest, and we could not wish to
keep her with us ; yet all who loved her will never cease to
feel the blank caused by the loss of the charming companion,
and, above all, of the faithful, constant, and affectionate friend.
M. C M. SIMPSON.
KENSINGTON, February 12, 1887.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY LIFE (FROM 1793 TO 1830).
J AGE
Scotch and Irish extraction Love for Cold Overton Turbulence Religious
impressions Madame de Stael Miss Benger Habits in London and
Paris Pop teas Early admirers Quinet Thiers Fauriel Acquaint-
ance with Manzoni and other Italian friends Mohl arrives in Paris
Oriental studies His visit to England Lives with Ampere Miss Clarke
at the studios Revolution of 1830 Early friends ... ... ... I
CHAPTER II.
FROM 1830 TO HER MARRIAGE IN 1847.
Acquaintance with Madame Recamier^ Apartments in the Abbaye-au-Bois
Madame Recamier's circle Ampere's account of it M. Mohl in England
Friendship with Sir Graves Haughton Letter on the queen's coronation
The Clarkes settle in the Rue du Bac Miss Haughton's and Lady
Verney's description of their life Appointment given to M. Mohl on his
return He stimulates the Nineveh discoveries, and fights Botta's battles
Is naturalized a Frenchman Visits Germany Becomes a member of the
Academy Death of Fauriel Grief of M. Mohl and Miss Clarke Death
of Mrs. Clarke Her daughter returns to Paris Letter to M. Mohl
Marriage
CHAPTER III.
FROM 1847 TO 1850.
Madame Mohl's account of her marriage The Friday evenings now begin in
the Rue du Bac Madame Quirins' description of them Last days of
Madame Recamier's salon Revolution of 1848 Legouve's lectures-
Death of Chateaubriand Visit to Germany Political events M. and
viii CONTENTS.
PAGE
Madame Mohl adopt their niece Ida Her description of the life in the
Rue du Bac First acquaintance with the Stanleys on the Lago Maggiore
The Arconatis introduce us to M. and Madame Mohl ... ... 46
CHAPTER IV.
TO THE coup D'ETAT (1851-52).
Early married life Opposition between France and Germany Attempts of
Russia Political and industrial stagnation Waiting for the president's
next move Fear of the Rouges Michelet Germany should unite under
one head Horror of music Expectation of a coup d'etat Haug and
Kinkel President at Dijon Madame Mohl in London Expedition to
the Euphrates Alarm in the Assembly The coup d'etat succeeds from
fear of socialism Indignation at Lord Palmerston's approval Love for
England Recollections of the Rue du Bac during the Empire ... ... 65
CHAPTER V.
FROM THE COUP D*ETAT TO THE CRIMEAN WAR (1852-1854).
Opinions Receptions at the Institut Pertz on Stein Restriction of the press
The Empire coming Visit to Austria and Hungary Schloss Hainfield
Tyrolese travelling Dinner-party Madame Ranke's sonnet Death of
Mrs. Martin Life in London Life at Cold Overton Travelling acquaint-
ance Invalids Pleasures of convalescence Indignation at imperial
luxury ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 90
CHAPTER VI.
1854-1857.
Character of Louis Napoleon Analysis of vanity Truth British Gallery
Mismanagement of Crimean War Visit to Austria and Hungary Mrs.
Jameson Madame de Goethe Mrs. Gaskell Madame de Circourt and
her salon Mrs. Holland and her salon Garden and dinner parties in
London Madame Ristori Scene in the Rue du Bac Madame Casti-
glione Acquaintance with the Wilsons Letter to Mrs. Bagehot on her
marriage ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 120
CHAPTER VII.
1858-1861.
The attentat Free speaking in salons Madame Mohl visits her grandfather's
tomb Music-meeting at Hereford Julius Mohl's delight in London
Violent fancies Carlyle Wordsworth Browning Madame Roland and
the French Revolution Marriage of Ida Mohl Cats Julius Mohl presi-
dent of the Academy Peace of Villafranca Commercial treaty Madame
Mohl's article Mrs. Gaskell Madame Mohl at Oxford Visit to Hungary
The Ober Ammergau ... ... ... ... ... ... 138
CONTENTS. ix
CHAPTER VIII.
1860-61.
PACE
Refinement introduced by the prtcieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet Madame
de Maintenon Sympathy necessary to a writer A new generation of
habitues in the Rue du Bac Lomenie Montalembert New review
Hungarians and Poles Decrees of Louis Napoleon Abolition of passports
Causes of so many rascals flocking to London Reception of Lacordaire
at the Academy Over-activity in England Austro-Prussian War China
Education of nieces Young ladies in England Ristori Lamartine a
tirelire Papal affairs Madame Tastu Heroism of the Americans
Slavery The trireme Demolition of old Paris Madame Mohl correcting
her proofs Frystone Grandmother's picture The Abbe Chateauvieux
and " Memoires de St. Helene " Mexican affair ... ... ... 171
CHAPTER IX.
1862-63.
Position of women in England In Greece Country squires despise women
Mothers sneered at Selfishness of fathers Improvement due to French
chivalry Decline of the empire Letter to Princess Batthyany with her
book Exhibition of 1862 Archbishop Whately's story Visit to the Cir-
courts Friendship in France Women in France and England Young
Italians Sanson's lesson at the Conservatoire Montalembert's daughter
takes the veil His distress Sale of stamps in the Tuileries Dean
Stanley's marriage Norma for young ladies Progress in France just
before the Revolution of 1 789 ... ... ... ... ... 188
CHAPTER X.
1864-1866.
Dissipation of puffy ignorance Renan " Causeries Parisiennes" Thinking
prevents readiness State of Germany Schleswig Holstein No society
without eating Terror of a revolution Bals costumh Morality of
Madame Mohl's friends Reception of emperor at the play Prevost-
Paradol's lectures interdicted Respect for age in Paris Bishop Jeune
Montalembert and Renan Guizot and Metternich Death of young
German Death of Ampere Sanson's lectures Difficulty of composing
parties Ampere and Lomenie Visit of Queen Victoria to the deanery
Frystone The fine arts Julius Mohl on Petersthal The Queen of
Holland Milan The Manzonis Tired of travelling Mrs. Gaskell's
" Cranford " Importance of occupation to women Letters of sympathy
Love for Mr. Senior Illness of Miss Carter Duchess Colonna Death
of Miss Carter Death of Lincoln Lanfrey's "History of Bonaparte "-
"Causeries Parisiennes" Emancipation of the serfs Of slaves Effect
of war Scotland Quiet life Old books Ida's visit Petulance Vanity
Exhibition " Shah Nameh" German visitors Liebreich A trouble-
some funeral ... ... ... ... ... ... 205
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
1867-1869.
PACK
Cousin's death His mission His will Mignet Barthelemy Visitors
during the Exhibition Nandor French marriages Emperor of Russia's
popularity Love for living English girls Cats and lambs German
handwriting Flirtations Ardent friendships French Bourgeoises Mrs.
Frewen Turner's accident Queen of Holland's visit Stors Madame de
Boufflers Dull evening Thiers Spurious letters of Pascal and Newton
Emperor of Austria Power of attention Schools Selfishness in youth
Education in America Energy of Madame Mollien Berryer and Guizot
M.Doudan English Sunday Importance of speaking French Evils of
awkwardness Love for sister Absurdity and selfishness of English
fathers A "dot" necessary Old and new fashioned love-making in
England Mistake to cultivate bores Senior's " Ireland " Prevost-
Paradol Visit to Rome ... ...229
CHAPTER XII.
SIEGE AND COMMUNE (1870-71).
Ollivier's ministry Death of the Due de Broglie Friendship in France
Government melting like snow Ignorance of foreign diplomats L. N.
fears the democracy Workmen flock to Paris Guizot's grief Respect
for age in France Madame Mohl as housemaid Death of Montalembert
Breakfast for Lord Russell Highwayman's horse Departure of Nandor
Children's minds should not be stretched Inferiority of women owing
to their trying exclusively to please men Painted statues Regnault's
colouring The Hohenzollern affair Horror of the war Exile Life in
London .Siege of Paris Disorganization of railways and means of trans-
port Heroism of Julie The Commune Demonstration of " Friends of
Order " Trochu Cheap edition of the Terror Imprisonment of arch-
bishop and clergy Cannonades Loss of memory Success of Jew
Emigration Commune refuses indemnity Village in flames Dufaure's
house ransacked and Princess Mathilde's Orgies of the mob State of
Paris The nation will right itself Committee of Public Safety Theodore
Parker An fgoutier director of the National Library Proposed destruc-
tion of monuments Arbitrary arrests Imprisonment of Monseigneur
Perny Carte de s&rete Appropriation of public money by Communists
Thiers' house ransacked Colonne Vendome An organ-grinder minister
Reasons for staying in Paris To protect one's property Marriage laws
altered Desertion of the streets Thiers Scarcity of provisions Paris in
flames Petroleuses Victory of the Versaillois Frightful reprisals
Thiers Intense thirst Madame Mohl returns to Paris State of the town
Every one in mourning Senior's journals Thiers Empress of Russia
at Petersthal Priests in Germany Paris in October ... ... ... 252
CONTENTS. XI
CHAPTER XIII.
FROM THE WAR TO M. MOHL*S DEATH (1871-1876).
PAGE
Death of Nicholas Tourguenieff His noble character Longing for a kitten
" Le Shah de Perse " Illness of the Prince of Wales State of Paris
Importance of sociability German women Due d'Aumale's receptions
Government should return from Versailles Thiers in advance of the nation
Smart handkerchiefs Hideous fashions Trouble to reconstruct her
society Projects must be hatched in secret Exactions of America Leon
Say Thiers England and Louis Napoleon New gown Feeling
against Germans Influence of human beings on each other Love the
foundation of all good Fortitude of the Says Death of M. Cochin
" Violet, or the Danseuse " Death of Lady C. Locker Death of Hugo
Mohl Grief of Julius Money to Viennese children Beauty of sister
Pere Hyacinthe Helplessness of English people Periodicals in the Rue
dn Bac Horror of marriage without love Insecurity of French invest-
ments The Droit pushes against Thiers Lytton Bulwer Duchess
Colonna Flatness of society Louis Napoleon did more mischief than the
war Wish to visit Berlin Delight in conversation Katchimoffski
Death of M. Doudan, of Madame Arconati, and Princess Belgiojoso
Treatment of M. Reynouard by Louis Napoleon Determines to fight with
life Ampere's love-letters The Duchesse de Berri The Branche atnZe
will never be restored Death of Madame Pauline de Witt Grief and
fortitude of Guizot Madame C Wonderful singing Bishop Temple
English weddings Death of Lady W. Russell Illness of Lady Augusta
Stanley Anxiety of Madame Mohl State of politics Destruction of
forests Scarcity of hay Failing health of Julius Mohl Visit to Knows-
ley Lord Odo Russell's singing Judges and marshals Curious state of
politics Illness of Julius Mohl His wife's anxiety His death ... 307
CHAPTER XIV.
WIDOWHOOD.
1876-1883.
Madame Mohl's utter prostration and despair Sensation caused by the death
of Julius Mohl Speeches at his funeral Letters to Dean Stanley and
Lady Derby The " Shah Nameh " Development of mind in the East
Visit to Bournemouth Bulgarian atrocities Visit to Berlin Effect of
want of air Return to Paris Editorial troubles Thiers in 1870 Last
meeting with him Lady Eastlake's articles Titian and Correggio
England should support Turkey Disappointment about article in the
Edinburgh Opening of the Exhibition of 1878 Abhorrence of Russia
Remorse at having left her husband Absence of mind Julius Mohl's
letters Sudden visit to England Max Miiller's article Asia more
venerated abroad than in England Lock-jaw in the country Miss
Weston's recollections Madame Mohl in 1879 Lady Derby's letters
XI 1 CONTENTS.
PAGE
Kinglake's book Visits Bournemouth again Reception at home in former
times Julius Mohl's reports Happiness in marriage Hard winter Ice
The Seine frozen Importance of the rivers Effect of thaw Civilization
in India France before the Revolution Madame de Remusat's book
Gladstone and D'Israeli Good sense better than eloquence Le*on Say
ambassador Visit to Holland House Senior's "Conversations" Mrs.
Bagehot's visit Memory Death of Dean Stanley Visit to Cornwall
Gardens Sad last letter Madame Mohl's illness At rest ... ... 347
ILLUSTRATIONS.
SKETCH OF MADAME MOHL, DRAWN IN PASTEL, BY HERSELF Frontispiece
PHOTOGRAPH OF MADAME MOHL'S SALON ... ... To face page 65
PHOTOGRAPH OF VIEW FROM THE WINDOW ... ,, 171
SKETCH OF M. MOHL, DRAWN IN PEN AND INK, BY Miss
BONHAM CARTER ... ... ... ... ,, 37
LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY LIFE (FROM 1793 TO 1830).
Scotch and Irish extraction Love for Cold Overtoil Turbulence Religious
impressions Madame de Stae'l Miss Benger Habits in London and Paris
Pop teas Early admirers Quinet Thiers Fauriel Acquaintance with
Manzoni and other Italian friends Mohl arrives in Paris Oriental studies
His visit to England Lives with Ampere Miss Clarke at the studios
Revolution of 1830 Early friends.
MARY CLARKE, afterwards Madame Mohl, was born in
Millbank Row, Westminster, in 1793, the youngest of three
children, of whom the eldest was Eleanor, Mary's only and
dearly loved sister, while the second, a boy, died in infancy.
On her mother's side she was of Scotch extraction. One of
her ancestors, a Hay, of Hope, fought for William III. at
the battle of the Boyne, she preserved the sword he wore on
that occasion to the end of her life, it hung over her bed, and
she prized it as a precious relic. Another Hay took part in
the rebellion of the Young Pretender, and was condemned to
be hanged at Carlisle. His friends knew he was to be respited,
but no respite arrived, and two of them rode day and night to
London to obtain the official paper from the prime minister,
the Duke of Newcastle. The duke, who was well known for
his absence of mind, said that there was no pardon for John
2 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Hay, on which they begged to be allowed to search his pockets,
and the pardon was there. They rode full speed back to
Carlisle, and arrived just in time to save his life, for he was to
have been executed that morning. He said "the bitterness
of death was past."
Mary's grandparents, Captain and Mrs. David Hay, lived,
as many English and Scotch did at that time, at Dunkerque,
till driven thence by the gathering storm of the French
Revolution.
Captain Hay died early, and his widow lived ever after-
wards with their only child, who married Mr. Clarke, of West-
minster, in the year 1785.
It was to her father's family that Mary owed her extra-
ordinary vivacity : her grandfather, Andrew Clarke, was an
Irishman : he left wife and family to follow the fortunes of
the Stuarts, and was never heard of more ; but in recogni-
tion of his services the Stuarts accorded a small pension to
his son.
In the year 1791, Mrs. Clarke, who never seems to have
taken root in England (her chest was delicate, and she hated
the atmosphere), went with her mother and daughter to
Toulouse. The Revolution was then in full swing, and they
intended to return to England by sea, but did not, on account
of a presentiment of Mrs. Hay which was fortunate, for the
vessel they were to have sailed in was wrecked on the Good-
win Sands. They travelled, therefore, through Paris, and
little Eleanor never forgot the terrible scenes they witnessed,
nor how sad it was to see the royal family in the chapel of
the Tuileries, looking so melancholy after their return from
Varennes, and the poor little dauphin playing in the garden.
It was not until ten years afterwards that Mary, at that
time eight years old, first saw the country of her adoption.
Her father never would be persuaded to leave England, and
her mother suffered so much from the climate that she and
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
Mrs. Hay determined to live chiefly in the south of France,
paying, however, long visits every year to Mr. Clarke, who
kept with him his elder daughter, from whom he never would
be parted, while little Mary was given up to the care of her
mother.
Eleanor represented the Scotch element ; she was quiet,
beautiful, and dignified. When she was about twenty-two
she married Mr. Frewen Turner, of Cold Overton, in Leicester-
shire, and Brickwall, in Sussex, a member of Parliament, who
lived in the same street with Mr. and Miss Clarke, and was so
much struck by Eleanor's beauty that he fell passionately in
love with her at first sight, and, although thirty years older,
succeeded in gaining her heart. The marriage was a very happy
one, and he extended his good will to his young sister-in-law,
who had for him the greatest regard and affection. Cold
Overton became for her, for nearly eighty years, a second
home, and she thus describes her feeling for it in a letter
written in 1861 to Miss Bonham Carter:
Cold Overton, July 12.
I have been wondering what you are all about, but not at your
silence, as you have but too much to do ; however, I should like
to have a word about you. I came here Saturday \ my sister
wanted me to come over, and I am fonder of the place than I am of
any place in the world, so I was glad to come once more and
wander about in the groves and alleys in which I have so often gone
dreaming and building castles that never were realized. I suppose I
am so fond of it because the total absence of incident leaves me
more leisure for my dreamy life than I ever have anywhere else, and
as one can crowd more thoughts and images and events into one day
of mere mental activity than in ten years one can realize, I may really
say I have lived centuries in this place, and only a few years in Paris
or any other. Be the reason what it may, it is impossible to express
what a delicious day I had on Saturday. Having got here by nine
o'clock, I had a whole year's worth of thought ; but all the analyzing
I am capable of could not explain to me why I enjoyed it so much.
4 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
There are but two or three servants, the carpets are up, the cur-
tains down, all the house in papillottes except two rooms ; the grass
plots overgrown with long impertinent herbs of no name except the
botanists', nettles not rare; many insurrectionary branches come
against all law into one's face in the alleys; the paths are almost
obliterated; some stray rose will peep out in the midst of bushes
and weeds in the shrubberies ; and all this makes it a place more
delicious to me than the rambles about Lago Maggiore. I wonder
if I could get tired of it ! It seems impossible. All my past life comes
before me with a vividness it never has in any other place ; it is like
reading myself over again. Unfortunately, we go Wednesday morn-
ing back to , a very good place ; but I never know where to sit
down in it somehow. I feel adrift, like a shell-fish pulled off of its
rock by a violent tempest. I can't think there. I said to D ,
who asked me where I was going, " I'm looking for a place to think
in." She laughed, but she did not understand it. Pray, do you feel
so in Paris? I always fancy people must feel so in a new place, yet
not when they are travelling. M. Fauriel used to be so fond of ruins
because of the dreamy faculty which they excited. I should think
any one bred in a ruinous old solitary castle by the sea-shore, with
trees, however, near, could not live to think anywhere else. I'm
thankful I was not, as it is bad to be such an oyster even as I am.
By her own account Mary was a troublesome child, from
her intense turbulence and espieglerie.
My Scotch grandmother (she writes to Lady Augusta Stanley in
1870) used to say when I was a plague, " Mary, you are as impudent
as a highwayman's horse." Now, I look upon this as a valuable
historical recollection, because when my grandmother was young
highwaymen were so common on the roads round London that their
horses were instructed to stop at the door of the stage-coach, opened
by the riders, while the trembling traveller fumbled for his purse, and
the horse poked his head into the carriage, poor fellow ! not knowing
how ill he was looked upon.
To curb this turbulence Mary was sent to school at a
convent in Toulouse. She always entertained a friendly
feeling for the nuns, who, however, did not succeed in
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 5
quenching her vivacity, or in influencing her religious opinions.
Indeed, the atmosphere of her home was not favourable to
their growth. Mrs. Hay had been intimate with Hume, and
all the distinguished men in Edinburgh, she was deeply
imbued with the philosophy of the eighteenth century, and
it was to the introductions furnished by Hume that she and
her daughter owed their first acquaintance with the rising
men in France. But Mary was never an unbeliever or a
republican, although she used to say, " Je me suis faite
Lutherienne pour plaire a M. Mohl ; " she was faithful to the
Church of her birth ; her little red-and-gold morocco-covered
Prayer-book always, to the end of her life, lay on her dressing-
table ; she went regularly to church when in England, and
abhorred anything like profane conversation as much as she
did coarseness of every kind. She was a staunch Royalist,
loved our queen, revered the Orleans family, longed to see
the Comte de Paris on the throne, and always said that Louis
Philippe's fall was occasioned by his humanity in not choosing
to fire on the people. She hated tyranny in every shape, in
that of a mob as well as in the form of a despot or of a sect.
After Mr. Clarke's death, his widow and her mother left
the south of France, and came with little Mary to live in Paris.
One of her most lively recollections was seeing, from the back
of a trooper's horse, the allies enter Paris, in 1813. The late
Lord Houghton told me in June, 1885, that he had seen a
sketch of the scene in some exhibition in Paris, with Madame
Mohl perched on the horse behind a bold dragoon. When
she was about fifteen, her mother, considering her to be
wanting in conventional manners, sent her to spend a year
with her sister at Cold Overton : she amused herself there
considerably, riding all over the country with her brother-
in-law, whose pet she became ; but although she loved her
sister dearly, she said that she rejoiced when she returned to
her mother and liberty. She idolized her mother, and she
6 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
often told me that her mother had the sweetest temper of
any one she ever had known, and that she owed her unfailing
spirits to never having been snubbed by her.
She continued, however, to pay yearly visits to England.
She had always longed to see Madame de Stael, and on one
of these visits she heard that the great authoress was staying
at a hotel in London ; so she resolved to see her, but she
had no introduction, and Madame de Stael was not easily
approached. It was thus that she told us how she accom-
X
plished her object :
My dear, I happened to have a little money in my pocket, so
slipped out of the house, called a coach, and ordered the man to
drive me to the hotel (she was not clear as to where it was). I had
heard that Madame de Stael was looking out for a governess, and I
resolved to offer myself. I was shown in ; Madame de Stael was
there, and the brattikin (a little boy). She was trh grande dame,
very courteous, asked me to sit down, said I looked very young, and
proceeded to ask me my capabilities. I agreed to everything, for
I wanted to have a little talk with her. Of course I couldn't have
taught him at all, I could never have been bothered with him. So
at last she repeated that I was too young, and bowed me out. This
was the only time I saw Madame de Stael, and I never told anybody
when I got home.
In a letter to Miss Wyse, she thus describes her glimpse of
London society while on a visit to Mrs. and Miss Benger :
I think your making Paris your home a wise thing. I may be
mistaken, but the habits of London appear to me dreadful compared
to those here. Who can pop in in London to dinner or evening
tea ? The only pop tea you can have is at five ; now, that is an hour
to be made useful, not for play : I often catch myself, at eight or
nine, wishing you would come in to the social cup. What I com-
plain of in London is that their habits were like those in other countries
when I was young. I lived some weeks with two ladies, mother and
daughter,* the latter was wondrous clever. They dined at five,
* Miss Benger's portrait hung in the salon of the Rue du Bac.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
drank tea at eight, and they were not out of the pale of humanity,
though not fashionable. Many and many a time a young lawyer or
otherwise clever man would pop in and stay an hour perhaps, to
talk. This clever daughter might be about thirty, which I, being
about fourteen, thought very old, yet I was a grown person
chattered like a magpie, interlarded with French. I was taken about
as a curiosity to many other teas at the same hour. No doubt these
were not fashionable people, but they were very cultivated and
literary. Now, since that time, literary people have dwindled into
the fancy of being fashionable, and it has ruined their society. No
doubt these were the remains I may say the tail of the days when
Dr. Johnson was the delight of all London at Mrs. Thrale's, the
brewer's wife. It was after dinner, and not at all late eight, nine,
or ten, I suppose. Those evenings in the last century left a good
long tail among people of moderate means and sociable lively brains.
But being invited to a tea-party at nine was still feasible and
common in 1820 to 1830; not among fashionable, but among culti-
vated people lawyers, doctors, and literary folk. The ruin of this
large cultivated middle-class has been the vulgar hankering for
fashionable, fine, and frivolous people. What a pity they could not
see that they lost all the real pleasures of society by this absurd
weakness. Miss Edgeworth saw it coming on, and often attacks
it with her steady good sense, but she lived long enough to see the
old habits crushed and killed for ever. There's no society in
London now none, none !
Notwithstanding this sweeping denunciation, written when
mind and strength were failing, she enjoyed herself immensely
in London indeed, she would not otherwise have been the
very grateful person she always with truth described herself
as being, for she was as much loved and appreciated here as
in France.
To return, however, to her early life. When first in Paris,
her life was very migratory. The three ladies took an apart-
ment in the Rue Melee, an old street in old Paris, which
Madame Mohl loved dearly to visit and look up at the
windows in later days ; then in the Rue Tournon, and the Rue
8 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
du Vieux Colombian It was not till 1820, after Mrs. Hay's
death, that they went to live in the Rue Bonaparte, called at
that time the Rue des Petits Augustins. Strict economy was
then necessary, for Mrs. Clarke had lost a great part of* her
income on account of a lawsuit. She never, either here or
elsewhere, attempted to form a salon until after 1838 ; and
it was only after 1847 that Mary, as Madame Mohl, began
the celebrated Friday evenings in the Rue du Bac.
Mary had many devoted admirers among the young men
who visited in the Rue des Petits Augustins. One of them
was Quinet, the well-known historian, from whom she pre-
served a whole heap of letters. Another was Thiers. When
he first arrived in Paris from Marseilles to push his fortunes,
he was introduced to Mrs. and Miss Clarke as to people who
might help him on. " What can you do ? " asked Mrs.
Clarke. " Je sais manier la plume," was the reply. She in-
troduced him to the editor of the Constitutionnel, and the
first article he wrote was in praise of a piece of sculpture
executed by a friend of Mrs. Clarke's. He was greatly
attracted by Mary, and at one time took to coming every
evening and staying till long past midnight. One day the
porter, who had become exasperated, called out to Miss
Clarke, " Mademoiselle, j'ai quelque chose a vous dire. Si ce
petit 6tudiant qui vient ici tous les soirs ne s'en va pas avant
minuit je fermerai la porte et j'irai me coucher. II pourra
dormir sous la porte cochere, $a le guerira." She never
knew how deep was the impression she produced until some
weeks before his death, when she met him at the Isle Adam,
in the house of her friend, Madame Chevreux. She thus
describes the interview in a letter written to Lady Derby in
1877:
My friends at Stors were very busy and ardent about the elections
for their department, and invited Thiers, whom they had known for
eight or nine years, to come and grace the assembly of voters by his
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
presence on the election day Sunday, August 5. I had not seen
him since the great change in '70, or probably two or three years
before. He was a different man had lost all the vivacity that espe-
cially distinguished him. He shook hands and was civil to the
electors, friendly with the candidates, but the ancient spirit I missed.
As he saw me unexpectedly, he came up with something of his
former warmth, and stood and sat with me most of the time while
the crowd was pushing about the house and grounds. Whether our
early days came back more vividly than they had ever done, when
I had seen him at my house or long after had met him elsewhere,
I know not, but it seemed a foreboding that it would be the last, for
he was quite profuse in his remembrances of the days when he used
to come every night, when I was about seventeen, and when he met
the friends who used to come also every night. My dear mother
spoilt me, and was hospitable to these habitues who made our room
most nights their resting-place, to whom Thiers at that time was
inferior and subordinate. He used to outstay them all, and never
seemed to have enough of talk in those days. All that, indeed, was
before he became a public man. I had seen him long since from
time to time, and he dined with us now and then within the last
twenty years, and never seemed to think of our former intimacy ; but
on this day all the interval was forgotten, all seemed to return, and
he talked of nothing but those early days, and when he bade good-bye
to M. Chevreux he said how pleased he had been to have met me
once more that it had recalled all the pleasantest days of his life.
Of course his death, just a month after, now gives to this last
interview a solemnity I did not think of at the time, for I was more
struck with the loss of his wonderful vivacity than with the sort of
serious turn that he seemed to give to our meeting.
In the following year, in spite of her friends' remon-
strances, Madame Mohl insisted on going to the anniversary
ceremony of his death, bearing the fatigue of standing for
hours in the broiling sun.
A more serious lover in her young days was M. Auguste
Sirey. To him Mary was sincerely attached, and would have
married him had it not been for his early death. In old
age she would tell the story with much pathos, and end by
io LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
saying, " My dear, I feel as if I were talking of some one else,
it is so long ago." She drew for him a portrait, of which
I have a photograph. It is pretty and piquant, but it does
not recall her to me so vividly as the sketch she afterwards
gave to M. Mohl when she thought he was going to India,
and which forms the frontispiece to this volume.
None of the friends of that period exercised so strong and
so lasting an influence over Mary's life as Claude Fauriel.
He was born in 1772; was, consequently, twenty-one years
older than she was. Although he died professor at the
College de France, he began life in the army, became secre-
tary to General Dugommier, and was afterwards attached to
the staff of Fouche. His instincts were republican, and,
although the excesses of the French Revolution induced him
to hail Napoleon Bonaparte as a saviour, he soon found that
the saviour was a tyrant in disguise. He could not endure
to serve under such a chief as Fouche ; he abandoned
politics for literature, settled in Paris, where he became
acquainted with the most distinguished members of the
Socie'te' d'Auteuil. He knew a great many languages, and
translated several masterpieces, besides writing some very
interesting books.* He was a man full of rare and endearing
qualities, enthusiastically beloved by his friends, both men
and women. There appeared in the Journal des Dttats of
July, 1885, two letters written to him, one by Madame de
* In 1824 he published " Les Chants Populaires de la Grece Moderne," and in
1833 "Les Origines des Epopees Chevaleresques ; " also a history of Provencal
poetry. He was devoted to the beautiful widow of the Girondist Condorcet until
her death, in 1822, and he left in her hands, unknown to his contemporaries, a
curious history of Bonaparte's refgn. It was so outspoken that, if its existence had
been suspected, it would have been destroyed and the author imprisoned. It was,
therefore, not even signed, and it passed into the keeping of the Institut, with other
papers of Condorcet. Its authorship was only solved in 1883, when, after the
death of M. and Madame Mohl, another collection of manuscripts was bequeathed
to the Institut, among which were some letters of Fauriel, and the handwriting
was recognized as identical with the mysterious manuscript, which was therefore
published in 1885 under the title of " Les Derniers Jours du Consulat," edited by-
Monsieur Lalanne.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 11
Stael, the other by Mary Clarke ; but their passionate tone
does not prove anything more than ardent friendship, for
those were the days of exalted sentiment and high pressure,
as may be seen in the pages of " Corinne " and " Delphine,"
" Adolphe," " Rene," and a host of other novels of the period.
Fauriel must have been fifty years old when Mary first knew
him. He was a man of established European reputation and
great talent, and she seems to have cherished for him the
sort of enthusiastic devotion and reverence often felt by a
young girl for a man of double her age, of superior ability
and high character, by whose attention she feels flattered
as well as gratified. Of marriage there never appears to have
been a question. Her ideas, indeed, of love were of the most
exalted kind. She thought that a woman should stand
on a pedestal to be served, as she was by M. Mohl for
seventeen, or, we may venture to say, for forty-six years ; to
step down, to lose her reserve and her dignity, was intolerable
in her opinion. She shared the notions of Madame de
Rambouillet, and the " Princesse de Cleves " was her favourite
novel.*
When I visited Paris in the spring of 1886 I obtained,
through the kindness of M. Leon Say and M. Lalanne, who
showed them to me, access to the papers of Fauriel. Madame
de Stael was not the only lady besides Mary Clarke who was
captivated by his charm. There are numbers of letters, both
from men and women, which testify to the influence he
exercised, many of them in the sentimental style of the
period. He was exceedingly handsome, with lovely eyes,
thick curling hair, and a very bright and sweet expression,
as may be seen in the life-sized portrait, drawn in chalks, by
Madame Condorcet, which hangs up in the library of the
Institut, one of the five branches of the Academic Frangaise.
* A romance of the sixteenth century, written in the eighteenth, by Madame de
la Fayette. It is full of tender and exalted sentiment.
12 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Fauriel was no more than Mary Clarke's dearest and most
intimate friend, and in the winter of 1823 he joined her and
her mother in Switzerland, and accompanied them to Italy,
where he had an invitation to spend the winter with Man-
zoni, who had the greatest esteem and almost reverence for
Fauriel, as appears in their letters, which Madame Mohl
presented, in 1880, to the Public Library of Milan.*
Mrs. and Miss Clarke established themselves in a lodging,
and spent every evening with Manzoni, through whom they
were admitted into the best society. From this journey may
be dated Mary's love for Italy and Italian art, and some of
her most lasting friendships were made at Milan the Arco-
natis and their numerous clan, Trottis, Collegnos, Viscontis,
Trivulzis, the Princess Belgiojoso, and many others.
It was after they returned to Paris, and again through the
medium of M. Fauriel, that Mary met for the first time the
man whose strong sense, great ability, lofty character, and
constant affection made him the mainstay of her later life.
Julius Mohl was born at Stuttgart the 23rd October, 1800. His
father was a high official in the civil service of the kingdom of
Wiirtemberg, and his three brothers all rose to eminence in their
respective branches of study Robert, the eldest, as a jurist and
liberal politician ; Moritz, as a national economist ; Hugo, as a
botanist. The education of these four boys was carried on, as is
generally the case in German families, as much at home as at school,
for the German system of sending boys to a gymnasium, which is a
Government day-school, throws a great deal of responsibility and
actual work on the father and mother at home. As is generally the
case with distinguished men, we hear that in the case of Mohl, too,
his mother was a lady of a highly cultivated mind, combining a great
charm of manner with force and originality of character, and devoting
herself quite as much to the training of her children as to the
humbler cares of her household. Julius showed early signs of love
of knowledge. He finished his school career at eighteen, and went
to Tubingen to study theology. Becoming dissatisfied with the
* Some of them are printed in Gubernatis' notice, " II Manzoni ed il Fauriel."
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 13
narrow and purely theological treatment of Christianity, Hebrew
proved to him, what it has proved to many scholars, a rail to slide
from ecclesiastical to Oriental studies. Though in 1822 he was
actually appointed to a small living, Julius Mohl felt more and more
attracted by Eastern studies, and resolved in 1823 to go to Paris,
where alone at that time there existed in the College de France a
school of Oriental learning. He attended at first the lectures of De
Sacy on Arabic and Persian, and of Abel Re"musat on Chinese. He
did not at once, as is so much the fashion now, devote himself to
one special language, but tried to become an Oriental scholar in the
true sense of the word. He wished to become acquainted, as he
expressed it himself at the time, " with the ideas that have ruled man-
kind," particularly in the earliest ages of Eastern history. He seems
soon to have endeared himself to several of the leading Oriental
scholars at Paris, and the society in which they moved, the charm of
their manner and conversation, the largeness of their views, seem to
have produced a deep impression on the mind of the young scholar,
just escaped from the narrow chambers of the Tubingen seminary,
and the traditional teaching of its learned professors. In 1826 the
Wiirtemberg Government, wishing to secure the services of the
promising young Orientalist, gave him a professorship of Oriental
languages at Tubingen, allowing him at the same time to continue
his studies at Paris. In 1830 and 1831 Mohl went to England, and
here gained the friendship of several Oriental scholars, some of them
servants of the old East India Company. He then seems to have
conceived the plan of passing some years in India; and when he
failed in this he returned to Paris, which had already become his
second home.
At Paris he continued for some time his Chinese studies, and
produced as their fruit his edition of a Latin translation of two of
the canonical books, the "Shi-king" and "Y-king" (1830, 1837,
and 1839). These translations had been made by two Jesuits,
Lacharme and Regis, in the first half of the last century, but had
never been published.
At the same time, Persian became more and more his spedalite.
So early as 1826 the French Government entrusted the young
German student with an edition and translation of the " Shah
Nameh," the famous epic poem of Firdusi. The poem was to form
part of the "Collection Orientale," a publication undertaken by
14 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Government, and carried out in so magnificent and needlessly
extravagant a style that it altogether failed in the object for which it
was intended viz. to bring to light the treasures of Eastern litera-
ture. To Mohl this undertaking became the work of his life ; nay,
it was not quite finished at the time of his death. In preparation for
his great work he published in 1829, with Olshausen, "Fragments
Relatifs a la Religion de Zoroastre." The printing of the first
volume of the Persian epic began in the year 1833, and in the same
year he resigned his professorship at Tubingen, where he had never
lectured, and determined to settle at Paris.*
The three elder brothers Mohl came to Paris together.
Robert was attached to the Wtirtemberg legation ; Moritz
went into all the economical questions of the day, and studied
the manufactories of Paris and Havre ; while Julius devoted
himself to his Oriental studies. The great naturalist Cuvier
had a very agreeable salon, and it was there that Julius Mohl
first saw Jean Jacques Ampere, who was declaiming his
verses to an admiring audience. " Anything like show-off,"
his niece writes, " was disagreeable to the quiet, self-contained
German. Je n'en revenais pas," he said. "Yet the two men, so
unlike in every respect, seem to have taken an instantaneous
liking to each other, and from the year 1831 to Mohl's
marriage, in 1847, they lived under the same roof (first in the
Rue du Bac and afterwards in the Rue de Crenelle), and many
are the amusing stories told of their manage. Ampere was pas-
sionate, impulsive, demonstrative, and restless, but he shared
with Mohl a childlike singleness of heart and an absolute
freedom from self-interest. They both disregarded trifles,
and were superior to vulgar considerations ; but while
Ampere's money affairs were in the utmost confusion, Mohl's
were always in perfect order. He had a genius for finance,
and by means of care and well-chosen investments he
managed in later years their little fortune so well that
* From Max Miiller's article in the Contemporary, for which the materials
were furnished by Madame Mohl.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 15
M. and Madame Mohl died in comparative affluence. In
the menage with Ampere his part was that of the careful
housewife. They were fortunate in their porters, M. and
Madame Felix, both of whom were characters, and devoted
to their lodgers. When Ampere was ill, Madame Felix
used to send him up a tisane of a different colour every day,
"to amuse him," as she said. M. Fe"lix had been in the
army, and was fond of recounting his adventures, which
Mohl wove into a narrative and read aloud to the old man,
who was so moved at the recital that he burst into tears.
There was no real need on M. Mohl's part for any great
privation. His parents were by no means ill off, according
to the notions of Germany at that time. They held a very
high social position, and gave their sons an unusually good
education, travels included, for which each of the three
received a certain sum ; but while Robert and Moritz went
back in time to Germany, Julius preferred remaining in Paris
to returning to Tubingen, where the professorship of Hebrew
was long kept open for him. He was too proud, however, to
ask for more money from his parents, who naturally were
annoyed at his abandoning his native country.
Julius Mohl attached himself with filial affection to M.
Fauriel, and another lifelong friend was Dr. Roulin. These
three and Ampere, when he was in Paris, spent every
evening with Mrs. and Miss Clarke. " One winter," Madame
Mohl told me, " they went abroad, but I would not let any
one else come in the evening, lest it should contrairy them
when they came back. I read such a number of books ! "
Her love of books was intense (in a letter to her niece Ida
she says, "If there were no more books, the best thing to do
would be to hang one's self, for life would not be worth
having "), and she was almost equally fond of art, especially
Greek art. She was a thorough artist, and her taste was
as accurate as it was independent. She saw in a moment
1 6 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
the good and the weak points in a picture or a statue. She
drew for her own amusement to within a very few years
of her death, and in her early days studied assiduously in
the ateliers of M. Belloc and Madame Juillerat (n/e Clotilde
Gerard, who taught drawing in pastels). She copied pictures
in the Louvre, but only for a very short time, as she soon gave
up painting in oils.
One of the friends of those days, Madame Quirins (then
Miss Sophie Haughton), writes to me
I cannot imagine whence arose that ridiculous story of the
wreath of flowers which she carried in her apron to the Louvre, and
put on to go to the receptions of Princess Belgiojoso. When that
lady came to Paris Miss Clarke had long given up painting in the
galleries, which were, besides, always shut up at four o'clock not
exactly the hour for evening dress receptions then or now. She was
certainly careless in her dress, keeping very much to the fashions of
her youth, but not to that ridiculous extent.
Another of the few surviving friends of those days, Miss
Bostock, writes
In January, 1830, I went with my father and mother to Paris,
where we remained for two years. In 1831 Mrs. Reid came to stay
with us, and we all became intimate with Mrs. and Miss Clarke.
Though I was a very young girl, my recollections of the time, being
mostly delightful, are very vivid, none more delightful than of Miss
Clarke, so that I have her before me as distinctly as if months,
instead of years, had passed meanwhile. Most of the English were
frightened away by the July Revolution ; those who remained, I
suppose, were drawn together. I remember hearing from Mary
Clarke's own lips her adventurous expedition during the fighting, and
her crawling over the Pont Neuf below the parapet. She was very
enthusiastic about the " three glorious days."
In the old Paris days she was quite the most amusing person
I had ever seen. The extraordinary words she used in speaking
English I still call to mind. My father said they were good old
disused English.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 17
To any one who knew her in 1850, I have to say that in 1830
she was just the same her figure, her dress, her hair, her attitudes,
her gestures. I am sure that the curled hair and frilled neck were
not assumed oddities, but the costume of her youth in which she
persevered.
The adventurous expedition to which Miss Bostock
alludes was described by Miss Clarke in a very interesting
and entertaining letter to M. Mohl, at that time in England.*
She tells him how she walked alone from the Faubourg St.
Germain to the house of her friend, Josephine, in the very
thick of the fighting ; how she was obliged to stay there two
nights, and returned home again alone, on the Thursday
morning, amid shots and rioters and barricades. Mrs. Clarke's
political interests seem to have overcome her maternal anxiety,
for she exclaimed on her daughter's return, " For Heaven's
sake, tell me some news ; I have been in agonies." " But I
assured you, mamma, that I would not run any risks," replied
Mary. " Oh, I was not uneasy about you ; my anxiety was
for the poor people."
Both mother and daughter were on the liberal side, and
to the end of her life Madame Mohl was an enthusiastic
Orleanist.
Although surrounded by delightful men-friends, it was an
annoyance to Mary that scarcely any women were included
in her mother's society. She seized eagerly, therefore, the
opportunity for making acquaintance with her young fellow-
students in Madame Juillerat's atelier ; with Mademoiselle
Josephine Ruotte, who became one of the most intimate
friends of both M. and Madame Mohl until her death, which
preceded that of Madame Mohl by only two years ; with Miss
Louise Swanton, the daughter of an Irish gentleman who had
* Although M. Lalanne kindly gave me a copy of the whole letter, as it is
very long and most of it has already been published, want of space obliges me to
suppress it.
C
1 8 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
married a French lady, and by whom Mary was especially
captivated.
As a young girl (Madame Quirins writes) Miss Swanton was a
perfect vision of beauty, and to the end of her life she resembled a
Madonna, always keeping her beautifully cut features and placid, serene
expression. The brouille between them seems to have been caused
by the jealous attachment of Mademoiselle Adelaide Montgolfier for
Miss Swanton. Deformed in person, but of a most amiable, affec-
tionate disposition, Adelaide clung with ardent affection to her
beautiful friend, sharing her literary labours, and leaving no room
for any other close friendship.
To the end of her life Madame Mohl's petulance was a
source of mortification and regret to herself.
I had scarcely seen any ladies (she writes in her old age to
Lady William Russell), on account of the retired life my mother
led, so I had no mistrust, and said everything that was uppermost
when I was cross. My grandmother recommended me to turn my
tongue in my mouth seven times before I spoke.
It is probable, therefore, that, as in most misunderstandings,
there were faults on both sides ; but in later years, when the
beautiful Louise had become the wife of the artist, M. Belloc,
the quarrel was made up by Miss Emma Weston, an American
lady to whom Madame Mohl was much attached, and who
told her that Madame Belloc had carefully preserved every
note she had received from Madame Mohl, and bitterly re-
gretted their estrangement. Madame Mohl flew to her, and
they became once more united. The three old friends (M. and
Madame Belloc and Madame Mohl) loved to talk once more
of their early days " quand elle etait jeune," M. Belloc
would say, " Mademoiselle Marie avait tant d'esprit qu'elle
en donnait meme aux plus betes." Her spirits, her entrain,
were inconceivable. When Madame Belloc lost her husband,
then over eighty, in 1866, there was no trouble spared by
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
Madame Mohl in helping her to settle her affairs, and to
obtain a good price for the works of art she was obliged to
sell, many of which Madame Mohl bought herself (her nieces
remember seeing her come home in a cab laden with them),
in order to return them later on to her old friend.
The day, however, was fast approaching when she was to
have as many distinguished friends among women as among
men. This was due in a great measure to her intimacy with
Madame Recamier.
20 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER II.
FROM 1830 TO HER MARRIAGE IN 1847.
Acquaintance with Madame Recamier Apartments in the Abbaye-au-Bois
Madame Recamier's circle Ampere's account of it M. Mohl in England
Friendship with Sir Graves Haughton Letter on the queen's coronation
The Clarkes settle in the Rue du Bac Miss Haughton's and Lady Verney's
description of their life Appointment given to M. Mohl on his return
He stimulates the Nineveh discoveries, and fights Botta's battles Is
naturalized a Frenchman Visits Germany Becomes a member of the
Academy Death of Fauriel Grief of M. Mohl and Miss Clarke Death of
Mrs. Clarke Her daughter returns to Paris Letter to M. Mohl Marriage.
IN a letter to Lady William Russell, written in 1868, Madame
Mohl describes her first introduction to the charmed circle of
the Abbaye-au-Bois :
Madame Recamier inhabited three apartments in the Abbaye-au-
Bois at three different times. Accuracy is lengthy and a bore, yet
I will be as accurate as I can. I think it was about 1817, at her
husband's second failure, that her father bought her, for her life, an
apartment on the first floor, sur la rue, the handsomest in the whole
building, and paid down 30,000 francs. The convent wanted ready
money, and sold several of the exterior apartments to get it, but it
was still inhabited by an old, old lady ; and meantime she had a very
shabby, three-cornered thing, au troisrtme, for two or three years,
after which she hired one on the first floor, entre four et jardin, not
so handsome as her own bought one, which she let, because being
over the street it was noisy. The abbaye was all the fashion from
1815 to 1830. The fine ladies with ecorne reputations went to it to
mend them ; the ex-beauties retired to it, like Madame de Sable", " on
avait tout de suite de 1'esprit;" but, in 1830, all priests, convents,
devotion, fell a hundred per cent. In 1831 my mother had been
plagued by landlords' cheating, one had taken away the staircase,
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
and people could only see us for three weeks by coming up a ladder.
(I was edified at Cousin's agility; he was thirty-five years younger
than now so was I, even I.) I did not manage landlords in those
days, so I said to my mother, "Let us try to lodge in a convent;
perhaps we shall be less plagued." Two or three gentlemen
Ampere was one, who came very often to see us in the evening were
habitues of Madame Rdcamier's. She was always curious about the
haunts of her habitues^ and they had told her of this one. My
mother had lost part of her lungs, was an habitual invalid, and
scarcely ever went out in the evening, she was very fond of politics
a great Liberal ; abhorred la Branche ainee. So my youth was spent
at home, instead of evening amusements, balls, etc. The Young
France liked an evening haunt of their own opinions, where they
found also a lively young lady; besides, they were not spoiled by
the fine society, who despised them. And this is the source of my
intimacy with so many who are now no longer the Jeune France,
and some older such as Benjamin Constant, Lafayette, Thiers,
Mignet, Cousin, Scheffer, Augustin Thierry, Carrel, Victor Hugo,
Ampere, and many others, were glad to come to talk politics with
my mother and nonsense with me. When two of these mentioned
my mother's idea to Madame Recamier, whose apartment was at a
discount now that religion was out of fashion, she said to them, " I
should like to have these ladies pour locataires ; tell them so." The
rent was somewhat higher than we could afford. She sent us word
that she would let it at the price we could give, so we went there in
1831. She had quite a passion for me, and used to come for the
first two or three years every night, bringing all those who came to
her ; and, as the salon was large, she invited her company there,
and I made tea.
Madame Recarnier's health declined, and she wanted her large
salon ; so, after living at the abbaye seven years, we left it. Madame
Recamier's part joined our apartment, and she joined the two
together, and occupied them for the last ten years of her life. The
salon is large, with four windows, two on the Rue de Sevres, two on
a terrace, well proportioned, with the east and south sun.
In a conversation with Mr. Senior, Madame Mohl said-
One of the most wonderful of Madame Rdicamier's powers was
the devotion which she excited among her friends a devotion which
22 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
did not end with herself, but could be turned at her will towards
third persons. Ampere was her slave that was little; but she made
him the slave of M. de Chateaubriand, whom he disliked. For
love of Madame Recamier he visited his own rival, and his preferred
rival, M. de Chateaubriand, at his own hotel every day ; wrote
articles for him in the papers, and learned stories to amuse him.
Paul David, her husband's nephew, dined with her every day for
thirty years. During the last four years of her life her eyes would
not permit her to read. David was a bad reader at the best, and
loss of teeth for he was of about her own age had not improved
him. David read to her every day for hours, and when he found
that his bad reading annoyed her, he took lessons. It was to him
that she confided the letters which she wished to be burned.
I should like to tell you a story of Ampere, only I am afraid that
you will put it into your journal.
Senior. I dare say that I shall.
Madame Mohl. Well, I will run my chance. When Ampere was
twenty-one and Mademoiselle Amelie was about eighteen, he used to
come every day to the abbaye. Some one suggested to Madame
Recamier that something might be growing up between the two
young people. Madame Recamier one evening hinted to M. Ampere
this suggestion. He hid his face in his hands and burst into tears.
At last he said, "Ce n'est pas elte." Madame Recamier told me the
story ; she was forty-four years old when this occurred.
In Mr. Senior's journal at Tocqueville, in 1861, we find
Ampere's account of the Abbaye.
" I suppose," I said to Ampere, " that nothing has ever been
better than the salon of Madame Recamier?"
"We must distinguish," said Ampere. " As great painters have
many manners, so Madame Recamier had many salons. When I
first knew her, in 1820, her habitual dinner-party consisted of her
father, her husband, Ballanche, and myself. Both her father, M.
Bernard, and her husband were agreeable men. Ballanche was
charming.
" Perhaps the most agreeable period was at that time of Chateau-
briand's reign, when he had ceased to exact a tete-a-tete, and Ballanche
and I were admitted at four o'clock. The most illustrious of the
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 23
partie carree was Chateaubriand ; the most amusing, Ballanche. My
merit was that I was the youngest. Later in the evening Madame
Mohl Miss Clarke, as she then was was a great resource. She is
a charming mixture of French vivacity and English originality, but I
think that the French element predominates. Chateaubriand, always
subject to ennui, delighted in her. He has adopted in his books
some of the words which she coined. Her French is as original as
the character of her mind, very good, but more of the last than of
the present century."
"Was Chateaubriand himself," I said, "agreeable?"
" Delightful," said Ampere. " Tres entrain, tres facile a vivre,
beaucoup d'imagination et de connaissances."
" Facile a vivre? " I said. " I thought that his vanity had been
difficile et exigeante."
" As a public man," said Ampere, " yes ; and to a certain
degree in general society. But in intimate society, when he was no
longer posing, he was charming. The charm, however, was rather
intellectual than moral.
" I remember his reading to us a part of his memoirs, in which he
describes his early attachment to an English girl, his separation from
her, and their meeting many years after, when she asked his protec-
tion for her son. Miss Clarke was absorbed by the story. She
wanted to know what became of the young man, what Chateaubriand
had been able to do for him. Chateaubriand could answer only in
generals that he had done all he could, that he had spoken to the
minister. But it was evident that, even if he had really attempted to
do anything for the son of his old love, he had totally forgotten the
result. I do not think that he was pleased at Miss Clarke's attention
and sympathy being diverted from himself.
" Later still in Madame Recamier's life, when she had become
blind, and Chateaubriand deaf, and Ballanche very infirm, I had to
try to amuse persons who had become almost unamusable."
" What has Ballanche written?" I asked.
" A dozen volumes," he answered. " Poetry, metaphysics on all
sorts of subjects, with pages of remarkable vigour and finesse, con-
taining some of the best writing in the language, but too unequal
and desultory to be worth going through."
" How wonderfully extensive," I said, " is French literature !
Here is a voluminous author, some of whose writings, you say, are
24 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
among the best in the French language, yet his name, at least as an
author, is scarcely known. He shines only by reflected light, and
will live only because he attached himself to a remarkable man and
to a remarkable woman."
M. Mohl did not share in the general admiration for
Madame Re"camier. His niece tells me that he thought the
lady " artificial and sophisticated, and her salon a Vanity Fair.''
Everything in the nature of affectation and ostentation being
so intolerable to him, one can quite understand the charm
which Miss Clarke's perfect naturalness of mind and manner
exercised over him from the first.
While she and her mother were settling into the Abbaye-
au-Bois, Julius Mohl was in England, there was some question
of his going with Sir John Malcolm to Persia; and half a
century later, when I was sitting alone one evening with
Madame Mohl in the Rue du Bac, she showed me the
original of the picture which has been chosen as a frontispiece
to this volume.* " I gave this, my dear," she said to me, "to
M. Mohl when I thought he was going to the East, and I
found it last autumn in his desk." She was much touched
by the fidelity with which he had, unknown to her, treasured
it. It is in pastels, the complexion pink and white, the eyes
a light brown ; it was still like her the same innocent,
childlike, yet piquant expression, the same brightness. There
was no regular beauty in the features. The upper lip was
long, and it was a minois chiffonnt ; but it was a very in-
teresting face. The little ringlets were there which had now
turned from brown to grey, and from grey to white. Her
niece, Miss Martin, tells me that she had not been able to
open the desk. She brought it to Cold Overton, at last a
locksmith succeeded ; and there lay the little portrait, to-
* It is now among M. Fauriel's papers at the Institut, where I have just seen
it, and was again struck by its attractiveness.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
gether with the letters of introduction which had been
showered on M. Mohl by his English friends.
There was, however, an attraction for M. Mohl in Paris
which surpassed every other.
" My uncle," Madame von Schmidt writes, " loved my aunt
dearly for years before they married. Her lively wit, her
childlike innocence, her kindness of heart, and her fickle
temper made her so attractive to him." Many years after-
wards M. Mohl was honoured by an interview with the Queen
and Prince Albert at Balmoral. Her Majesty asked him
why, loving Germany so much, he had given up his native
country for France. He replied, " Ma foi, madame, j'etais
amoureux." For eighteen years he spent every evening with
her when in Paris, and when they were separated they
frequently corresponded, partly in French and partly in
English.
The following letter, written in 1838, contains an interest-
ing account of our queen's coronation : *
Grenville Street, Brunswick Square, June 29, 1838.
CHER PUPS,
I was in Westminster Abbey yesterday from five in the
morning to half-past four in the afternoon. I saw the queen who
has a charming countenance and all the dukes, and peers, and
bishops, and archbishops, and all these people with crowns on their
heads, and the peeresses all in diamonds, and trains held up by
pages in short, I never saw such a number of grand folks ; and
when I saw Wellington, I wept like a calf from tender emotion.
The queen had a train twelve yards long, carried by eight pretty
young ladies dressed in white, and without trains ; they had wreaths
of white roses on their heads, and their dresses were trimmed with
white roses and green leaves. I never saw anything so pretty. They
* She always addressed him as "Pups" in her letters, probably because he
was so much the younger of the three friends (M. Fauriel, Mohl, and herself) ; but
she never spoke of him or to him except as Mr. Mohl, or "my spou;e." I am
very sorry that these letters and those of Madame von Schmidt have to be trans-
lated. They lose their charm in English.
26 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
were followed by eight ladies-in-waiting, who carried nothing, but
who had pale-blue trains, and plumes of white feathers on their heads ;
their trains were carried by pages. All the peeresses had long red
trains ... in short, trains played the principal part in the ceremony.
The music was splendid, and the whole thing very amusing. That
robber Soult was cheered, which made me very indignant; but I
was assured the reason was that we wanted to make up to him for
having beaten him long ago. The Turks also were much cheered ;
they all looked humpbacked, as you know. I was obliged to get up at
a quarter past three, and to be in the carriage at four, so as to reach
the abbey at five ; and we did not get home till six. I was nearly
dead. I went with Miss Smirke, and I went to bed at her house
directly after dinner, and slept for thirteen hours without interruption.
So I am quite well to-day, but I never remember having been so
tired in my life.
I have just seen Lady Byron ; she looks rather prim. There is a
refinement about her, but she is not pretty the least in the world.
She does not seem to me to have much natural cleverness, but to
be observant and like information. She is very devout, and she seems
altogether to be an honest, respectable woman, not amusing, but not
stupid either. . . .
Adieu. The Princess Belgiojoso has written to ask me to
breakfast this morning. I am just going there.
No signature of any kind. She never signed her letters
to M. Mohl till after their marriage.
Soon after their return to Paris, Mrs. and Miss Clarke
left the Abbaye-au-Bois for the apartment in the Rue du
Bac, which Mary was to occupy for the rest of her life. It
was a very convenient one. They had the fourth story for
their kitchen, servants', and spare room that comfortable
hospitable room, with the little dressing-room, to which her
English friends were so kindly welcomed. The servants'
rooms were as well furnished as her own ; she consulted their
comfort in every way, and they were devoted to her. When
I knew them, M. and Madame Mohl lived on the third floor,
which consisted of two drawing-rooms divided from each
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 27
other by a glass door, a large library, a dining-room, and
bedroom. The drawing-room had two large windows looking
into the garden of the foreign missionaries, which was full
of trees and flowering shrubs, and gave a feeling of country
although it was in the midst of Paris, which formed a back-
ground to the picture, with the dome of the Invalides and
spire of Ste Clotilde rising in the distance. The drawing-room
was not smart in any way, but it was full of comfortable
seats, not stiffly arranged, as is often the case in French
houses.
It was now that Miss Clarke, having greatly extended
her circle of acquaintances at the Abbaye-au-Bois, began
to form a salon of her own. Mrs. Clarke had grown very
infirm from the effects of an accident. She had broken
her thigh-bone, and if it had not been for the intelligent
nursing of her daughter, would never have walked again.
Madame Mohl often talked to me of her anxiety, and of all
the alleviations she thought of to render her mother's confine-
ment less irksome. Foremost among them was the devotion
of their friends. She never again took any active part in
society, but was content to sit in the chimney corner and
enjoy the amusement provided for her by her brilliant
daughter.
Among the friends M. Mohl made in England, perhaps
the most valuable was Sir Graves Haughton, and their inti-
macy continued until his death, in 1849.
His two nieces, the Miss Haughtons, settled in Paris.
The elder became an invalid, and M. Mohl used to visit her
every day to the end of his life. The younger, Madame
Quirins, was one of the most assiduous and devoted friends
of Madame Mohl from 1839 to the day of her death. She
cheered her last years, and was one of the group who knelt
round the bedside of their old friend, and caught the last
words she whispered on earth.
28 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Madame Quirins writes
It was in the winter of 1839-40 that we first knew Miss Clarke.
We were then mere children, and she was very kind to us. She was
already settled in the Rue du Bac. In that winter, as well as in the
two or three following, her receptions were very brilliant. She gave
children's parties on Saturday evenings from eight to eleven, to which
we were invited. The children played and danced in the large
drawing-room (afterwards M. Mohl's study) ; the second salon was
sacred to the older guests. The small salon of later years was then
an aviary, which Miss Clarke had arranged with great taste to amuse
her mother, a lifelong invalid, who was seldom able to leave the
house. Miss Clarke's Saturday receptions were a source of great
enjoyment to all her young friends, foremost among whom was
Mademoiselle Marie Cornillot (now Madame de Thury), the daughter
of one of her earliest friends ; the presence of the distinguished
company in the other room being not the least part of the pleasure.
Going back to the dear old times, I remember seeing there Madame
Re"camier, the Princess Belgiojoso, pale with large black eyes, form-
ing a striking contrast one evening to Lady Bulwer, who was bloom-
ing with health and beauty. A lady remarked that one looked like
a living, the other like a dead, empress. Mrs. Trollope and her two
sons, Thomas and Anthony, were habitues of Miss Clarke's salon for
several years. Count Gonfalonieri, the Italian refugee, used to play
with us at Blind-man's Buff, seeming to enjoy the fun as much as we
did. Count Rossi, afterwards assassinated in Rome, and his son, a boy
of twelve or thirteen, who would not dance, as he said a man should
fight, and not dance. The Greek Ambassador came in magnificent
national costume. The first evening he presented himself the maid
told him he had made a mistake ; it was not a bal costume. Besides
these, there were M. Moritz Mohl (always called M. Mohl frere),
Ranke, M. Fauriel, M. Roulin, Ampere, Sir Graves Haughton, M.
and Madame Paul Juillerat, M. and Madame Nicholas Tourgue"nieff,
M. de Lome"nie (then quite young), M. and Madame Tastu,
M. Mercier the sculptor, and a host of others.
Nearly every evening M. Mohl, M. Fauriel, and M. Roulin
passed a couple of hours, from eight till ten, with Miss Clarke, and
other intimate friends often dropped in. The deaths of Mrs. Clarke
and M. Fauriel put an end to the delightful weekly receptions, which
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 29
were only resumed after the marriage of Miss Clarke with M. Jules
Mohl, in 1847.
Soon after Mrs. and Miss Clarke were settled in the Rue
du Bac, they made the acquaintance of the Nightingale
family, who, with their numerous connections, continued to
the end to be among their dearest friends.
Lady Verney, at that time Miss Parthenope Nightingale,
gives the following sketch of her acquaintance with Madame
Mohl :
We first knew Miss Clarke in the winter of 1839-40, which we
spent at Paris on our return from Italy. She took affectionately to
the whole family, and was exceedingly kind to Florence and me, two
young girls full of all kinds of interests, which she took the greatest
pains to help. She made us acquainted with all her friends, many
and notable, among them Madame Recamier. I know now, better
than then, what her influence must have been thus to introduce an
English family (two of them girls, who, if French, would not have
appeared in society) into that jealously guarded sanctuary, the most
exclusive aristocratic and literary salon in Paris. We were asked,
even, to the reading by Chateaubriand, at the Abbaye-au-Bois, of
his " Me"moires d'Outre-Tombe," which he could not wait to put
forth, as he had intended when writing them, until after his death
desiring, it was said, to " escompter les louanges " he expected but
hardly received. This hearing was a favour eagerly sought for by
the cream of the cream of Paris society at that time. " Comment
done, madame," said Miss Clarke one night to Madame Recamier,
" avez-vous fait pour avoir toujours regu toutes les opinions chez vous,
et qu'on ne s'y est jamais querell ? Comment avez-vous pu parler
de maniere a etre si agre"able a tous les partis les plus extremes?"
" Mais vous savez que j'ai toujours fait un peu d'opposition." " Bien
doucement cependant." " Non pas, et toujours un peu a tout le
monde."
When Madame Recamier desired the large apartment for herself,
the Clarkes moved to a ' ^tel " in the Rue du Bac, in which they
took very cheerful rooms, looking over the gardens of the " Missions
e'trangeres " to the Dome des Invalides. The rooms below were
30 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
inhabited by Chateaubriand and his wife, with whom Miss Clarke
was always on most friendly terms. Here it was that we found her
and her mother, and met in their salon the best political, literary,
and scientific society of the day, including a dash of fine ladies and
men of the world. Nothing could be more agreeable : everybody
brought his or her best, which the hostess knew well how to extract,
while her mother, a beautiful old lady, put in a word occasionally
from her armchair by the fire. The little menage was very com-
fortable, and even pretty. Elie de Beaumont the geologist, Roulin
the traveller and naturalist, Cousin, Mignet, and Villemain, Guizot,
De Tocqueville, Barthelemy St. Hilaire (afterwards Ministers of
Foreign Affairs), Madame Tastu the poetess, and Thiers, were her
constant visitors. Many years afterwards, after the Franco-German
War, when Thiers was at the head of affairs, M. Mohl said to Madame
Mohl before me, " Madame, why did you not marry M. Thiers
instead of me, for now you would have been Queen of France ? "
All the Italian refugees Princess Belgiojoso, Madame Mojon
(Bianca Milesi), Count Arrivabene, Ferrari, General Collegno (after-
wards Ambassador at Paris) frequented her salon ; but the intimates
were MM. Fauriel and Mohl. The first, great on mediaeval and
Provencal lore ; the second, one of the first Orientalists of Europe,
great at the Institut, Professor of Persian, greater still in his almost
omniscient knowledge and his wise thought. These two spent every
evening regularly with the Clarkes, and, as we found, assisted in
doing the honours of the house. I remember how they used to help
in boiling the kettle over the wood fire and the brass dogs to make
the tea.
How Miss Clarke's conversation was regarded, we heard one
night from Madame Tastu, who, speaking of Be'ranger, and how
delightfully natural he was, and how he ran on for hours untired
and untiring, said, " II n'y a que lui et Mademoiselle Clarke que je
puis e"couter pendant des heures, et sans fatigue ; qu'elle est pleine
d'esprit ! "
After we returned to England, Madame Mohl, when she visited
her sister in Leicestershire, came to see us every year, either at Embley
or at Lea Hurst, and generally stayed three weeks or a month with
us : always bright, lively, and witty, without effort, very keen yet full
of kindly sympathies, interested in everything (except gossip, which
she could not " abide ") ; reading all the new books, of which there
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 31
were many, at my father's house, or, if there were none she fancied,
burying herself in Montaigne, Horace Walpole, Thiebault's "Frederick
the Great," etc. I can see her now, lying curled up in a great arm-
chair, or in a corner of the sofa, with a large quarto on her knees.
If we had a houseful, she enjoyed the people exceedingly, and
took pains to make herself agreeable to everybody, small and great,
young and old, alike. If we were alone, she was quite as happy
with our home circle always occupied, reading, writing, and drawing
cheerful, equable, original, but above all true: she never said a
thing because it was the fashion of the day or the popular mode of
thought, but only because she felt it. All her opinions on literature,
art, poetry, politics, and philosophy were de son cru, not second-
hand, but grown out of the stuff of which her own mind was made,
cultivated as it had been by intercourse with some of the cleverest
men of the day, French, German, and English.
Lady Verney continues
There was a deeper side to her character. Her passion of affec-
tion for her friends, and her helpfulness for those who wanted help,
prevented the intellectual side, which was so strong, from ever get-
ting hard. She was a survival, almost the last, of the brilliant
society which arose in Paris out of the ashes of the French Revolu-
tion and the Napoleonic despotism, and which died out again in the
Franco-German War.
After his return from England, M. Mohl was appointed
assistant-secretary, then secretary, and finally president of the
Societe Asiatique.
That society (M. Max Miiller writes) was in fact his pet child
through good and evil days. In his report of the year 1843, he
calls attention to the first publication of Oriental cylinders by
A. Cullimore, and to a similar collection then preparing under the
auspices of M. Lajard, a French scholar, best known by his vast
researches on the worship of Mithra, and not to be confounded
with Austen Henry Layard, who will appear later on the stage.
In the same year Mohl announces a more important fact. M.
Botta, then French Consul at Mosul, had carried on excavations
32 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
at Nineveh, encouraged to do so by M. Mohl. M. Maury, as
President of the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, tells
us, " C'est surtout d'apres ses indications que Botta retrouvait
les restes des palais des rois de Ninive." Botta's first attempts
were rewarded by the wonderful discovery of Assyrian bas-reliefs
and inscriptions. Mohl, on communicating M. Botta's letters to
the Asiatic Society of Paris, says, " These are the only specimens
of Assyrian sculpture which have hitherto come to light, and the
excavations of M. Botta will add an entirely new chapter to the
history of ancient art." The French Government, justly proud of
the discoveries of its consul, lost no time in securing the treasures he
had found. Mohl did all he could to persuade the French authorities
to give Botta the aid he required in order to continue his explora-
tions, and he impressed on the members of the Asiatic Society the
duty of publishing as many of the newly discovered inscriptions as
their means would allow them. He felt, in fact, very sanguine at
that time, that after the progress which Burnouf and Lassen had
made in deciphering the first class of these inscriptions namely, the
Persian the two other classes, the so-called Median and Baby-
lonian, would soon have to surrender their secrets likewise. They
were all written with the same wedge-shaped letters, and though it
was easy to see that the number of independent signs, or groups of
wedges, was far larger in the Median than in the Persian, and again
far larger in the Babylonian than in the Median inscriptions, yet as
there existed trilingual documents, and as it was known in particular
that the great inscription of Behistun was repeated three times, on
three different tablets, in three different alphabets, and in three
different languages, it seemed but natural that after the Persian edict
had been deciphered, the Median and Babylonian could offer no
very formidable resistance. In this expectation M. Mohl and his
friends, as we shall see, were sadly disappointed. Still every year
brought some new light, and in every one of his annual addresses
M. Mohl reports progress with unflagging enthusiasm.
He thus describes his difficulties in the following letters to
Sir Graves Haughton :*
* With the exception of a few letters to Lady William Russell, all M. MohPs
letters are written in English. I have allowed the occasional German idioms to
remain unaltered.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 33
Paris, May 10, 1843.
MY DEAR HAUGHTON,
I have little to tell you from here. The Oriental people
are doing nothing, or fighting like dogs. The quarrel between Julien
and Panthier has burnt out a little, because nobody would read any
longer their bickerings. Now D seems to have been bit by some
rabid animal, and I hear he is attacking everybody in some news-
paper ; but I have seen nothing of the matter, and some young nettles
are growing up who want to burn themselves into notoriety. It is a
ridiculous fit. P is at last gone mad, and is in some maison de
sante ; it was high time. It seems Oriental literature is a dangerous
study.
June 8, 1843.
I have found to-day, to my great horror, this letter, begun a
month ago ; but I have been bothered to such a degree since this
time that it has slipped unobserved. I have read my report at the
Society, which as usual draws on me the holy indignation of all
those of whom I speak, and particularly of every one of whom I have
found nothing to say. " Human nature," as Sam Slick says, and
particularly pedant nature. I suppose it has always been the same.
Ranke is here ; he has written a celebrated history of Popedom, and
one of the Reformation. He reminds one of Thiers, bubbling over
with most horrible French, which almost chokes him.
Botta has made great discoveries in Nineveh the ruins of a
palace all covered with sculptures and inscriptions. The sculptures
have quite the Persepolitan character. He sent me some raw
sketches of some of them, which I showed to Duchatel, and got
three thousand francs for continuing the fouilles. I shall print the
letters and lithograph the sketches, bad as they are. Ampere is
going to Egypt, and plagues me to accompany him, but I have
neither the time nor the desire to do so. There has been a report
that Fresnel had perished in a shipwreck on the Red Sea, but he
has written since. He escaped in a curious manner. He was at
Suez and ready to embark in an Arab ship, but four hours before he
fell from an ass and broke his shoulder-blade, which kept him in
Suez for a fortnight, during which the vessel which had gone perished,
with all on board. There is some one coming, so I must conclude,
if I wish this letter to go off at all.
D
34 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Paris, June 22, 1843.
MY DEAR HAUGHTON,
I am overburthened with business, because, besides my
own, I have to fight Botta's battles here. He is consul in Mosul,
and has discovered there an Assyrian palace covered with sculptures
and inscriptions. He sends me his discoveries, and I must com-
municate them to the ministers to get money for him, have them
inserted in the Moniteur, get the designs lithographed and published
in the journal, etc., all which costs me more trouble and time than
I can tell. However, it is very curious, and he must be supported.
He has to do with a savage Pasha, who stops the works from time
to time, puts the workmen into prison to torture them, because he
pretends Botta has found stores of gold and diamonds ; and then I
must go to the minister and preach to him about Semiramis and the
necessity of upholding his own consul.
There is not much news, political or literary, anywhere ; only the
old heart-burnings and paltry dissensions everywhere. Miss Clarke
is well, and so are Fauriel and Burnouf. I need not tell you how
happy I shall be to see you again here.
About this time Julius Mohl was naturalized a Frenchman.
His family seems to have become reconciled to the step, and
he never failed to visit them every year. He writes again to
Sir Graves Haughton :
I have just come back here from a watering-place, where I have
been with my father, and from travelling about in the mountains,
where I have been to visit the seats of some friends of mine and to
enjoy the fine air. ... I have just been with the king for an hour.
He was on his /// de repos, so he made me sit down, and we talked of
all sorts of things as fast as we could. He is a very good man, but
the inconvenient thing is that you can only talk of what he leads to,
and are not allowed to start a subject, and in consequence of this
arrangement I could not talk to him of what I wanted to tell him.
He told me he would see me again, but this will probably be at a
dinner or ball, where one cannot talk freely.
My laziness here has had a great advantage, as my eyes have
very much recovered. Miss Clarke is at her sister's seat at Cold
Overton. B is on the Rhine with his family. I wonder they are
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 35
not scandalized by the gay sabbaths and other misdoings of this
dancing country. Perhaps they have not begun their balls, but their
life is always very ungodly on Sundays.
Ever yours,
J. MOHL.
To his family in Germany (Madame von Schmidt writes) his
visits were periods of pure enjoyment and rejoicing. From my
earliest childhood I remember how my grandparents, my parents,
and uncles looked forward to Uncle Julius' coming from Paris as to
the great interest of the year. In those times, in 1840 and there-
about, a journey from Paris to Wurtemberg was an affair of many
days ; public news were scanty. My uncle was inexhaustible in
telling interesting stories eagerly listened to by his three brothers at
my grandfather's house at Stuttgart. The only one surviving now
is Moritz, the economist. He has been member of the Wurtemberg
Chambers for more than thirty years, and the present prosperity of
Wurtemberg is in a great measure owing to his incessant labours.
The fourth and youngest, Hugo, died first, in 1871. You may
imagine how proud my grandmother was of her four sons, whom she
had brought up so well ; their conversation must have been delightful.
I was too much of a child to appreciate it, but I remember their
merry laughter to this day ; for all of them had a very keen sense of
humour. My father was the only one who married early; Uncle
Moritz and Uncle Hugo remained unmarried. As for Uncle Moritz,
his love for Uncle Julius, after his mother's death, was the one great
affection of his life. The three brothers knew my aunt as Miss
Clarke in Paris, and delighted in her company.
In 1844 M. Mohl was made a member of the Academy,
the coveted object, ever since its institution by Richelieu, of
all men of intellectual distinction in France (the Emperor
Louis Napoleon among others), and all Paris flocks to hear
the speeches at its public meetings.
In the same year a great sorrow fell upon M. Mohl and
Miss Clarke, in the loss of their friend Fauriel. M. Mohl
writes to Sir Graves Haughton that he is " almost crazy with
grief," and in announcing the death to Manzoni he writes
36 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
September 21, 1844.
I heard from Madame Arconati that you had the kindness to
send to Miss Clarke the original of the portrait you had of him, and
I beg you to believe that you could not have done anything more
agreeable to the person who loved Fauriel more than all the world
besides, and who is suffering from his death more than any one
else.
She is at present in England, and very poorly, which has probably
hindered her from writing herself to thank you.
M. Fauriel left all his lectures and manuscripts to Miss
Clarke, who, with the help of M. Mohl, found her best conso-
lation in attempting to do justice to the memory of their friend
by deciphering and publishing them.
From one of her yearly visits to England Mrs. Clarke
never returned, but remained with her elder daughter at
Brickwall,in Sussex, and at St. Leonard's, to be nursed by her
maid Jane, who was devoted to Mrs. Clarke, and yet could
never be persuaded to cross the Channel. One of her great-
grand-daughters, Mrs. Powel, writes of her
My great-grandmother was a remarkable woman. I only re-
member her in the dim distance as a slight little old lady, in a grey
satin gown and mobcap, sitting over the fire in a little low chair.*
She died in the year 1846, at St. Leonard's, where she spent the last
six months or so of her life, and was buried in our mausoleum at
Northam Church, the village where my father's place, called " Brick-
wall," is situated. I can remember as a child watching the funeral
procession from the attic windows of our old home.
The following letter, written by Mary to M. Mohl not long
before her mother's death, is full of sad recollections and
experiences :
St. Leonard's, August 8, 1846.
f CHER PUPS,
Your last letter but one plunged me into such deep
gloom, that I was in agonies for the five or six days which passed
* We recognize the likeness to Madame Mohl in this picture. f Translation.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 37
before I received your last, which interested me extremely, besides
calming my anxiety. I was not in a great hurry to answer it, because
I fancy that, as you are running about from pillar to post, you may
not receive this letter ; however, if it should be lost, I am resigned
to my fate.
My mother is neither better nor worse, and the doctor told my
sister that in spite of her constant suffering she is not in more
danger than she was last year ; and my sister told me this morning
that if I wanted to leave I might do so next month, as she is expect-
ing Selina to stay here. I replied that in that case I would go in
the middle of next month. I hope to finish arranging the Italian
lectures.* I have been studying Dante all this time with great atten-
tion, and as I have done a great deal already, I think I shall soon
come to the end. I am very sorry that I did not publish the Pro-
vengal lectures at my own expense, for they would have been printed
much sooner. Besides my prods, I must go home to renew the lease
of my apartment ; and I must see the landlord. It is necessary for
me to go, if only for a fortnight. It will distress my poor mother ;
but what can I do ? She is so deaf that she does not hear unless
one screams in her ear, and her head is so weak that she can in-
terest herself in nothing. Miss Bailey has lent me some books, and
has often been to see me, she is a great comfort to me ; for it is
hard to spend more than six months absolutely deprived of all
sympathy or conversation, always thrown in on one's self and
witnessing such perpetual suffering not to speak of sad recollec-
tions !
I have been passing through a sore trial, but I have suffered so
much in my life that I feel as if I could almost set Fortune at
defiance. But silence ! for she is a wild beast, whose attention it is
not safe to rouse.
Adieu, dear Pups. I am impatient for a letter from you, and I
fear that this one will never reach you.
We may imagine the grief which the loss of a mother,
so passionately loved, must have caused to her affectionate,
impulsive daughter. To the end of her life Madame Mohl
constantly talked of her, of her sweet nature, and she used to
* Fauriel's.
38 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
say her feeling for her " was too deep for words, and could
only be expressed by tears."
Miss Clarke returned to Paris ; but there were no more
brilliant reunions in the Rue du Bac after the death of M.
Fauriel and Mrs. Clarke.
In 1879, after her last irreparable loss, she alludes to this
earlier trial in a letter to Lady Eastlake.
I lost a dear friend thirty-seven years ago. He left me all his
papers and manuscripts ; they were very valuable. I could then spend
the whole day in reading, my memory was excellent. I was not
married, but Mr. Mohl was a great friend also of M. Fauriel. He
helped me, certainly, much by his advice ; but still I had then a
power of work which I have lost. I looked over and published
almost all his lectures, which he would never take the trouble to do
himself, and they must be good, for they sell now, and of those on
Dante the edition is all sold. I tell you this to prove that, if I do
not do my duty by my dear husband's memory, it is that I have no
longer the faculties that I had. This conviction breaks my heart;
for who will do it if I do not ?
A niece of Mrs. Nightingale's, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter,
became one of the most intimate friends and constant corre-
spondent of both M. and Madame Mohl, even before their
marriage. He wrote to her in 1846
I have very little to say for myself. I am occupied with this
great leviathan of a book, of which you have perhaps seen a volume
at Miss Clarke's. The third volume has appeared, and I am working
at the next. To enliven this dull occupation, I am fighting con-
stantly a quantity of Don Quixote battles, not of my own. I am
now preparing and priming for a new one, which will be long and
hard-fought. It is to convince M. Salvandy that he is not fit to
send out people on travels for the advancement of science. He has
150,000 francs a year for this purpose ; but he and his predecessors
send out incredible people to discover incredible things. For instance,
a few weeks ago they sent Alexander Dumas, the " romancier," to
Algiers. Another man, named Martin, they have sent to Germany,
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 39
where he has discovered the Niebelungen. A fellow called Belanger
has been sent to Turkey, to write a history of Turkey. The man
knows not a word of Turkish, or anything else. It were endless to
count up these blunders. And then, when these travellers come back,
they spend incredible sums of public money in publishing all sorts
of trash they have brought home. Now, I want Salvandy to vest the
power of sending out travellers in a permanent committee of com-
petent persons. The money the State finds is quite sufficient to
have all unknown countries explored scientifically and systematically ;
but you must send the right people, and on the right errand. But
ministers seem completely struck with blindness ; they seem incapable
of distinguishing between one man and another, and have an un-
fortunate knack of choosing the wrong one. But this will be a great
battle with him, and perhaps with his successors.
A few days ago I was on guard at the Tuileries. They put me
as a sentinel before the great entrance from twelve to two o'clock at
night. The corporal told me that I had nothing to do, and it was
useless to tell me the watchword, as the soldier on the other side of
the door would speak to the patrols. It was a clear and bitterly cold
night, and as I was to do nothing I sat down in the sentry box,
meditating on the new planet.* Many patrols passed me, but as I
said nothing they went on peaceably. At last came a captain of the
staff, who stopped a few paces from me, and we had the following
dialogue :
Captain. Factionnaire dormez-vous ?
/. Non, mon Capitaine.
Captain. Est-ce-que vous n'avez rien a me dire ?
/. Non, mon Capitaine.
Captain. Et pourquoi pas ?
7. Parce que mon caporal 1'a defendu.
Captain. Comment ! il vous a defendu de parler.
/. Exactement.
Captain. Ou est votre corps de garde ?
/. Au drapeau, allez-y leur donner un savon vous me ferez
plaisir.
Captain. Quelle sacre'e boutique !
Then he went off in a fume, but I do not know what came of it.
It is a wonderful institution.
* The planet Neptune.
40 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
52, Rue de Crenelle, December 22, 1846.
I have received yesterday your letter, and profit by the departure
of your cousin to thank you for it. I was very much surprised
in seeing that this errant dame, my brother's sister-in-law, has
lighted on you. I am glad to hear she has fallen into kind hands. I
ought to be proud of your appreciation of my countrywoman, but I,
for my part, am by far more partial to English women ; they have
more energy and more mind, it seems to me. It is true I have been
singularly fortunate in my English friends, and I have, in fact, not
lived much in Germany since I became of an age to have lady-
friends. But I am very much struck in Germany with the preten-
sion of the ladies to singular profundity, which produces a sort of
affectation very distasteful to me. It is true one is always much
struck with the particular defects of one's own people, because one
has naturally suffered from them, and a sore point is easily irritated.
From living constantly among literary people, I have got a sort of
infinite horror of their natural defects as a class. Sometimes they
make me laugh, and, in fact, it is a continual comedy, when one
knows the secret strings and springs of the creatures ; but sometimes
I am so vexed that I could wish reading and writing were abolished,
and would rather emigrate to the Caffres or other savages, where
literary glory is a thing unheard of. This very morning I have been
pestered to death in legislating between two fools, of whom one
wanted to fight the other (who is an abbe 1 , doctor, and professor of
theology), because the abb had not quoted him. If one should see
it in a comedy, one would think the man overdid his character ; but
the comedy of life is droller than anything the poets invent The
abbe" revenged himself in printing the story, and reminding his
enemy that he himself had worn the ecclesiastical cloth until he
married which is a fact ; but you may imagine what a fury this
specimen of theological venom produced. Isn't it a strange employ-
ment to be a juge de paix between these infuriated monsters,
kicking up such a dust for such a reason, and pulling caps in so
unseemly a manner for Madame Glory ?
Master Punch is forbidden here, but we do get commonly a sight
of him, because Sir Graves Haughton smuggles him in. The way of
doing this is very simple. One has only to fold up the paper so that
the title is not seen outside. The post rejects the paper when it sees
the title, throwing it in the fire, but they never take the trouble to
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 41
open the band, because they have no time for unrolling every day
thousands of English papers that come in.
I have not heard of Miss Julia, and am afraid she is frozen on
Mount Ararat, and cut off from communication with the lower world.
But there is somebody coming, so I must put an end to this scrawl.
Yours very sincerely,
J. MOHL.
Among the Mohl-Fauriel papers at the Institut is the
following letter, contained in two others, from Miss Clarke to
M. Mohl : *
Si vous n'etes pas nomme je vous e"pouserai si vous le de'sirez,
pour montrer a ces vieux pedans que je vous connais mieux en merite
qu'eux et leur singe de ministre, et la suite le leur prouvera. C'est
une chose re'flechie que je vous dis, faites vos reflexions et ne vous
pressez pas.
This was enclosed in one which said
Si jamais vous doutez de moi, ou m'en voulez, ouvrez ce billet,
ecrit un jour ou vos affaires allaient mal.
The outside letter of all throws a new light on the relations
between Miss Clarke and her two friends. It shows that she
had long ago found out that she was only one among the
many tender attachments of M. Fauriel, while she was the
single absorbing, and, as it proved, the lifelong passion of M.
* So much hung upon these letters, that the originals must be given. The
following are translations :
1. If you are not appointed, I will marry you, should you wish it, to show those
old pedants that I know your merits better than they or their ape of a minister, and
the future will prove this. I speak after serious consideration. Reflect seriously
on what I say, and do not reply hastily.
2. If ever you doubt me, or are angry with me, open this letter, written one
clay when fortune was against you.
3. I am not going out, and beg you to come. I wrote the enclosed letter
several days ago. I ask you not to open it for a month. Feelings which words
cannot express have made me keep it in my bag without giving it to you and yet
I wish you to know what I am ; and had you understood me six, or seven, or eight
years ago, you would have spared me incalculable pain. But may God forgive
you, for you also have been punished enough too much.
42 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Mohl, who, if he had dared, might have spared much suffering
to them both. Here is the letter :
Vendredi, le 4 me -
Je ne sors point, et vous prie de venir, il y a plusieurs jours que
j'ai e"crit la lettre ci-incluse, je vous prie de ne pas 1'ouvrir d'ici a un
mois. Des sentimens que la parole n'atteint pas me 1'ont fait garder
dans un sac sans vous la donner, pourtant je veux que vous sachiez
quelle je suis et il y a six ans, ou sept, ou huit, que si vous m'aviez
comprise vous m'auriez eVite" des peines incommensurables mais
que Dieu vous pardonne car vous avez i assez puni, et trop.
M. Mohl did not probably require much time for reflection
before accepting the prize which had attracted him for so
many years. There is a hint of his change of life in the
passage in the following letter about his " Faustus-like cavern."
That cavern has often been described to me with much laughter
by Madame Mohl how the books were heaped up, and four
carpets laid one on the top of the other, because the dear
books might never be disturbed.
May i, 1847.
MY DEAR Miss HILLY,
I have just been made Professor of Persian Literature at
the College of France, which is a drawback on my freedom of
movements. However, I do not despair of seeing you and yours in
the summer. I was to have got this same professorship eight years
ago, but the king chose to give it to M. Taubert, a peer of France,
for political reasons. Then it would have been a pleasure to me,
but now I care little for it. I put my name on the list because I
looked on it as my property. It is a strange thing, this life of ours,
where you always get your business done when you are become
indifferent to it, or nearly so. The College de France is a curious
institution, founded by Francis I. against the Sorbonne, and destined
to introduce the new branches of learning which the Reform had
fostered, as Hebrew, classical Greek, and Latin, etc. From this
time it has kept its privileges is not subject to or connected with
the university, and teaches all the sciences which find no room in
the teaching which the university gives. Every new science, like
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 43
geology, political economy, Chinese hieroglyphics, etc., finds there a
home to try to make its way to men's understandings. It is a very
beautiful institution, and ought to be the first in the world if it came
up to the idea which led to its foundation. It is open to everybody.
The most ragged boy may go in, and nobody has a right to ask who
he is ; and numbers of ladies come to hear the lectures which may
interest them. I recollect that even while I was following the
lectures of Chinese there attended a lady most regularly, she had a
thick green veil, which she kept down (I suppose not to distract us),
and nobody has ever seen her face.
I have been interrupted, and this letter has suffered for it ; indeed,
I can hardly ever write a letter from the beginning to the end. I
can compare myself to nobody under heaven but one of those
Capuchin friars whom you have seen in Italy, sitting all day long in
their confessional, hearing the strange stories of sinners of all sorts,
consoling the one and rebuking the other ; only my customers are
literary people, calling on me to tell me their enmities, the conspira-
tions of their rivals, their plans, and their helpless misery, their
inconceivable infatuation, and all the ills which this species is heir to.
Unfortunately, I seldom know a remedy for them, and can very
seldom convince them that their enemies are not so black and
malicious as they suppose. I don't know how I have come to be
confessor to so many people ; but so it is. And I could tell many a
tale of the innermost recesses of literary life, some very laughable,
some quite heart-rending. I do not know how it may be in England,
where literature is not the business of so large a class as here, and
where the interests and the ambition of literary people is not so easily
excited as here where your books may make a prime minister, or a
prophet, or anything of you. Then we have here a democratical
organization of literary concerns which exists nowhere else. Every
honour and every place is given by the votes of Academies and other
bodies, so we are living in eternally the same bustle as Cambridge was
in, according to your last letter, for the election of Prince Albert.
We are quiet enough, but all the soldiers, which made the
Nicholsons wonder, are required in the provinces for the keeping
open the roads for the corn which is brought to market. However,
we have fortunately no Ireland.* What can be done with such a
country ? People speak of bad legislation as the root of all evil
* This was the year of the potato famine.
44 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
there ; but I can see nothing in the legislation to explain in any way
this intense misery. It is all in the nature of the people. What can
you do with a nation in which not one in a hundred is capable of
managing his own affairs, and of keeping himself from spending all
he has in ostentation or in whiskey ? I have known many Irishmen,
but only one who did not live in perpetual trouble from want of pre-
caution and the most common foresight, and he was from Belfast,
and consequently most likely of Scottish blood.
I have been interrupted, but this time by very unexpected
visitors two fine ladies, one a singer, and the other an opera-
dancer from Munich. They brought me a letter, but what I am to
do for them is a mystery to me. They looked with astonishment at
my Faustus-like cavern, which I must soon leave, being driven out by
my books, but which is now in its perfection, and might do for any
necromancer. I suppose they gave up instantly any idea of my being
able to serve them, and in this they are right. They seem to be very
decent people, though, and have very good manners ; but what is
Hecuba to me ? You will find in the last Quarterly an article on
arrow-headed inscriptions. You will see from it how these old things
rise up and become living again ; and we are only in the beginning
of these discoveries. Every year will bring something new. I know
of two other of these ancient palaces, which I will get the French
Government to get dug out, and hope at least one of them will be the
palace of a King of India, of which we have until now no specimen.
Layard's discoveries in Nimrood are magnificent, and you will see
these next year in the British Museum. They are of Assyrian origin,
and he has had the good luck of finding one of them which has been
only moderately plundered before it was abandoned, so that he has
got quantities of arms and ornaments in bronze and ivory, the last
most beautifully carved.
May 7.
This letter will, I think, never come to an end. It has laid on
my table I do not know how long ; but I had troubles and most
miserable anxieties enough since this time. If I had room I should
describe to you the last election in the Academy, and how Madame
Re"camier and her court beat Louis Philippe and his favourite Vatoul,
who wished to be elected ; and how all the fair ladies in Paris fought
this complicated battle, and how my friend Ampere won it. It is
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
45
worthy of an epic poem in seven cantos. But I must send off this
scribble, else it will be buried again, and I shall appear more
ungrateful to you than is right.
The happiest period of Madame Mohl's life was fast
approaching. She was married in August, 1847.
46 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER III.
FROM 1847 TO 1850.
Madame Mohl's account of her marriage The Friday evenings now begin in
the Rue du Bac Madame Quirins' description of them Last days of Madame
Recamier's salon Revolution of 1848 Leyouve's lectures Death of Chi-
teaubriand Visit to Germany Political events M. and Madame Mohl
adopt their niece Ida Her description of the life in the Rue du Bac First
acquaintance with the Stanleys on the Lago Maggiore The Arconatis intro-
duce us to M. and Madame Mohl.
THE engagement between M. Mohl and Miss Clarke was kept
a profound secret, and as she was long past fifty, and her
fianct seven years younger, it is no wonder that she should
have disliked her marriage being talked of beforehand. The
difference of age between M. and Madame Mohl was, how-
ever, never perceptible, for she retained her childlike tempera-
ment and spirits to the last. But even when she was very
old, at a time when people are generally proud of the years
they have attained, she remained sensitive on the subject ; for
instance, when she was in England in 1870, it was impossible
to persuade her to fill in the census.
It has been said that when she was asked her age at the
Mairie she replied, " Monsieur, si vous insistez je me jetterai
par la fenetre mais je ne vous dirai pas mon age." The story
is apocryphal, but Madame Quirins says that one of the
timoins told her that when the bride's age was read out at the
Mairie, he blew his nose very hard in order to spare her
feelings.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 47
She often told me the story of her marriage, which used
to amuse me extremely. It was to this effect :
I gave my two servants warning, my dear, and told them I
was going to travel in Switzerland. You know it is necessary to put
up a placard the day before on the church you are going to be
married in, announcing the event. So I gave a little boy some money
to paste a play-bill over it at once, and waited at the corner of the
street to see it done. When the morning came I told my maid I
was going to a christening, as an excuse for putting on my best
clothes. I didn't know whether I was standing on my head or my
heels. After the ceremony I left Mr. Mohl and my witnesses at the
church-door, got into a coach, and told the man to drive to 100, Rue
du Bac (she lived at 120). I got out as soon as we arrived, paid the
driver, went into the porter's lodge, and asked if Madame Bertrand
was at home this was to give time for the coach to drive off. The
porter thought me very stupid. He assured me that no Madame
Bertrand had ever lived there, which I knew perfectly well. When I
got home I took off my fine clothes and my wedding-ring, and packed
up for my journey. My servants had no idea that I was married.
I did not see Mr. Mohl again for two days, when I met him and our
witnesses at the railway station. We all dined together, and Mr. Mohl
and I set off for Switzerland ; and then, luckily for me, the Due de
Praslin murdered his wife, and everybody talked about that, and
forgot me and my marriage.
She wrote to her sister, without any previous warning, that
"as an aunt was like a fifth wheel to a coach, she had been
married that morning to Mr. Mohl."
The following winter Madame Quirins writes
The parties were resumed, but on Friday instead of Saturday
evenings. The children had grown up ; many new friends were
added to their numbers. All enjoyed themselves as much as
formerly, if not more, and nothing gave dear Madame Mohl so much
pleasure as to see the young people amusing themselves. The dining-
room was given up to dancing, and the young people made tea in
the small salon. The inner salon, which you so well know, was more
than ever kept sacred to the more serious and distinguished guests.
48 , LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Among Madame Mohl's very intimate friends were Lady Elgin and
her daughters, Ladies Charlotte, Augusta and Frances Bruce, who
had also a very pleasant salon, to which many of Madame Mohl's
friends, both young and old, were kindly invited. Later on, as you
know, every distinguished person in Paris, whether French or foreign,
passed through Madame Mohl's salon.
M. Mohl brought thither all the savans of the Academy
and the Asiatic Society, and, although he had not her anima-
tion, added considerably to the attraction of the Rue du Bac.
All those (Madame Quirins continues) who had the privilege
of knowing M. Mohl intimately can bear witness to his great kindness
of heart, and the pleasure he took in rendering service to others,
often at the cost of great trouble to himself. Monseigneur Buquet,
Bishop of Surinam, told me that, although he had not the honour of
knowing M. Mohl, he had the greatest respect for him, and that he
had been greatly touched by his kindness to a French missionary
who had passed several years in Japan, and came to Paris to get a
French and Japanese dictionary published. M. Mohl kindly took
his interest in hand, and one evening went to him at eleven o'clock
to tell him that he had succeeded in obtaining the publication of his
work, and would not wait until the next day to announce this good
news to him. This is, of course, only one instance of his numerous
acts of kindness and thoughtfulness.
Fostered by the tender care of this excellent man, endowed
with extraordinary powers of enjoyment, and surrounded by
such interesting and attached friends, it may well be imagined
that Madame Mohl's middle life, in spite of her delicate health,
which was a great torment to her, became a very happy one,
and that her spirits soon regained the spring of which the sad
events of the last three years had bereft them. Madame von
Schmidt writes
My uncle took care of her in quite a motherly way. She looked
up to him with the greatest confidence, valued and trusted him. He
was never tired of telling her the best of his humorous stories, of
discussing scientific and literary subjects with her; he was ever sure
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 49
of her sympathy with his pursuits and studies. Society to her was
not frivolous amusement ; she thought highly of it, believed it to be
of vital importance in the lives of individuals and nations. Her
predilection for France was so strong precisely because society there
is, or was, of more importance than in any other country. She hated
everything in the shape of a coterie, but the free intercourse of clever
high-minded people, talk as an art, she valued more than anything.
She abhorred everything like ostentation and show. Her luxury was
good conversation.
Although Madame Mohl had now a salon of her own, every
afternoon, except Monday, found her at the Abbaye ; and
thither Chateaubriand, who had lost the use of his limbs, and
who lived on the ground-floor of the house the Mohls occupied,
was likewise carried every day. To Madame Recamier's also
came the members of the old aristocracy the Due de Laval,
Matthieu de Montmorency, etc. as well as all the intellectual
celebrities, some of whom were members of the Chamber, and
came in every day to relate what had taken place. Nothing
remarkable in private or public ever passed that was not known
there sooner than elsewhere. Whoever had first read a new
book came to give an account of it. La Jeune France was
represented by Benjamin Constant, Cousin, Villemain, Guizot,
Thierry, Mignet, Re*musat, Thiers, Tocqueville. Ampere came
every day. " His conversation," says Madame Mohl (and the
present writer can testify to the truth of her description) "his
conversation was like a stream of sparkling water, always
fresh, never fatiguing. His wit was so natural that you never
thought of anything but the amusement he gave you." To a
chosen few out of this circle, M. de Chateaubriand read his
" Memoirs," bit by bit as he wrote them. The effect was pro-
digious. In some of the scenes Madame Mohl said tears
would unconsciously steal down her face, to the great satisfac-
tion of the author. Here, too, Rachel recited the part of
Esther for a charitable subscription, and from that time never
E
50 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
undertook a new part without having given the first recital at
the Abbaye-au-Bois.
To us who are unable to command such stimulating intel-
lectual food, it maybe some consolation to find that those who
enjoyed it were not exempt from ennui. The most courted,
the idol of that society, M. de Chateaubriand himself, suffered
most severely from this malady. He often said he wished
that ennui would settle in his leg, for then he would cut
it off!
Madame Mohl, however, never, either then or afterwards,
seemed to know what it meant. She enjoyed life thoroughly,
and I have often heard her say she would like to begin again
and go through every bit of the past. She once said this
before Mr. Greg, who agreed with her. She continued that
there was only one woman she knew besides herself (Lady
Verney) who was of the same opinion, whereas almost all men
felt with her, and she believed it was because men's lives are
active and most women's passive, action being preferable to
endurance. In a letter to Miss Bonham Carter she wrote
" If I could catch back twenty years, I should walk upon clouds.
I shall leave all my undertakings not half fulfilled not a quarter. If
I could steal the life and youth out of some fool, I would. Oh for
the philosopher's stone ! not for gold, but for days."
In the winter of 1847 the inner circle of the society at the
Abbaye was broken by the death of Ballanche. Madame
Re"camier, who had just been couched, would not be restrained
from watching by his bedside and cheering his last hours. This
charitable act destroyed her sight, and her health suffered so
much that she was forced to go into the country to recruit.
During her absence, Madame Mohl went every day to M. de
Chateaubriand, who was alone and helpless,* to amuse him
and write a few lines from him to Madame Recamier. When
* Madame de Chateaubriand died in the beginning of 1847.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 51
she took leave, he would take her hand and say, with a look
of ineffable gratitude, "Adieu, madame; how good of you to
visit me in my utter misery ! "
The winter of 1847 passed away (Madame Mohl writes), no
one suspecting what 1848 was to bring, till the tocsin and cannons
of February, and the rising of the populace like the roarings of a
mad bull, put all common sense and moral feeling to flight. Terror
took possession of all ; a red spectre stood before every imagination.
During the time between February and the end of the civil war in
June, wherever you called, the ladies were sitting disconsolate, with
their hands in their laps, saying, " Providence alone can help us ! "
thus increasing by their imbecility the general malady.
Madame Mohl describes the Revolution in the following
letter to the Nightingale family :
March I, 1848.
DEAR EMDLEY FRIENDS ALL,
I only got yours this minute, and being determined to
write instantly, I put pen and ink by my side before I opened it
Hitherto we are safe enough, but I have my doubts as to the future.
I do not say for my own person, which I really think nothing about,
and if I did should not fear, having a friend or two in each party
except, perhaps, in the juste milieu, which I had come to detest. You
can't imagine how quick the whole thing came about. Tuesday I went
out to see the people go to the banquet in the Champs Elyse'es, very
peaceful they seemed, there was a stream of people along the road
from 8 a.m., not very thick; on coming back, the Chamber was sur-
rounded by dragoons, and crowds of blouses everywhere, bawling out,
" La ReTorme ! " but one had no idea how it would end. Wednesday
we heard of the change of ministry in the morning the regency in
the evening ; on Thursday, the republic ; all this with an accompani-
ment of popguns on all sides. Mr. Mohl served three nights last week
in the Garde Nationale to make a show, for they had not a ball, or
cartridge, or an ounce of powder in the whole arrondissement ; not
much more had they in the others. The people have on the whole
behaved well ; but if you heard his daily accounts of the nights he
spends ! the tipsy sovereigns we have ! There are so many episodes,
I know not which to choose. Old Madame Guizot and the three
52 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
children were hid at Madame Le Normant's, who was taken ill, pro-
bably in consequence of the fatigue, Madame Re"camier making
lamentation all day about it; so I set off Friday morning with a
letter to Madame Le Normant, to offer my house to them. I climbed
over barricades ; I crossed the Tuileries ; every window smashed ;
smoking heaps lying about ; people, or rather ragamuffins, picking up
and poking about them ; the garden full of canaille en blouse not a
well-dressed woman to be seen. However, I reached the Biblio-
theque in safety, in spite of the incessant popping of guns mere
mischief, for every lad had a gun ; they all went to the 6cole Militaire
on Thursday, and got, I think, sixty thousand cartridges and all the
guns in it The fact is the whole of the guns in Paris, except those
which the Garde Nationale had, are in the hands of the people.
My offer * was declined, and I came back through the Carrousel,
which showed the same physiognomy. Some of the barricades were
eighteen feet high and more, but there were little passages next the
houses, about two or three or so, not easy to find on account of the
crowds squeezing through. They were very civil, and one man
handed me over the barricade. The poor old lady, Madame Guizot,
had heard on Thursday the whole evening, " A bas Guizot ! " "A la
potence ! " and the Le Normants, whose windows are on the ground-
floor, were obliged to illuminate. She (Madame Guizot) is eighty-two
or eighty-four. Her husband was guillotined in the great revolution ;
she has worn mourning ever since. She never uttered a complaint
during the five days' uncertainty about her son, but yesterday, while
Madame Re"camier was there, she received a letter announcing his
safe arrival in our little old island, and she burst forth in prayer,
raising her hands to Heaven. It was very touching, especially her
silence till then. The children have joined their father; you will
probably see them in London, where they will excite great interest.
The obstinacy of the king and of the whole set has brought us to
this blouse-y government. Mr. Mohl is very gloomy on the subject ;
he says we are in the hands of savages ; others do nought but admire
the good sentiments they hear expressed by the people. A young
man of St. Cyr, with whom I dined yesterday, told me he was at
Neuilly during its destruction ; he saw them take their swords and
cut down the middle every picture of Leopold Robert. The glass
and china formed a sort of gravel-walk all about, two feet high, all
* To the Guizots.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. .53
smashed to powder. The cellar was the object ; the wines were
celebrated. They broke off the neck of the bottle, drank a swig,
and threw down the rest that was the fashionable manner. These
St. Cyrians are a military school ; they are very popular, and, having
a good education, were very useful in quieting the mob. There are
six hundred in the Hotel de Ville, and the Place de Greve is full of
mob with cannons. They are a sort of friends together, but ready
to keep them in order, like a good keeper and a tame tiger. The
general feeling is adhesion to any government that will keep order
a perfect determination against any party for the king or even
regency. Madame de Lamartine told a friend of mine, Madame
Desroyes, that what she dreaded most was any party for the Duchess
of Orleans, because the people are so suspicious, that they would cry
out treachery instantly, and woe unto us if the tiger party gets upper-
most. I feel very much as if I were shut up in the Jardin des
Plantes, and the whole set in cages were let loose, my intense love
for animals would make me delight in the spectacle, my pleasure in
grace and beauty would almost make me forget their claws, and my
esteem for them is such that even if they put out their claws I could
not call them cruel : they must eat, and the retractile family live on
live prey. The people have behaved prettily, and their moral beauty
may stand in lieu of the physical beauty of the quadrupeds ; but, after
all, they must eat, and who is to feed them ? We their admirers ?
It is all very pretty to see them growl over their prey at first, but if
we must always furnish it it will fatigue our pockets. The account
of the Duchess of Orleans would fill three pages how she was going
to Neuilly ; how, when they came out at the Pont tournant, no
carriage was there, and she suddenly said she'd go to the Chamber
of Deputies. This I have from one who was with her the wife of
the Comte de Paris' preceptor. They walked thither and got in.
Then I heard the rest of her behaviour from the Due de Noailles,
who was near her. She was down in the lower part of the half-circle,
which got crammed with people. She was very pale, but dignified ;
she attempted twice to speak, but either could not or did not speak
loud enough to be heard. The crowd growing intense, they got her
out of it higher up, whence she went away. She did not know the
way along the passages, nor did the gentlemen with her, and she got
separated from her children. They ran along and a door was opened
which was thought to lead straight out ; but it was a window, not
54 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
very high ; and hearing people rushing after her, she jumped out,
and two men accidentally there received her and took her into the
house of the Speaker, in a room not finished, and told her to put a
beam against the door. The preceptor kept with the child, but
where they met I don't yet know. She was again pursued, and went
to the Hotel des Invalides ; they had been forbidden to open the
gates. She went to two other houses. The preceptor's wife, Madame
Rdgnier, had left her husband on entering the Chamber of Deputies,
because she had with her her little boy, who fainted with terror ; she
went to a friend's, and some hours after a gentleman came from her
husband, who told her to go and join him at the Invalides. She
went, they were just gone, she then went to the two other houses
indicated ; they were just gone from thence; and on Monday, when
her part of the story was told me, she knew not where he was, nor
the duchess, and nobody knows ; perhaps she may be in England.
I go every day to Madame Recamier's to hear the news. We are
very quiet now, but on Thursday people were fighting everywhere.
The Garde Municipale were many of them killed. They answer to
our policemen, and are picked men. On Thursday a little carpenter
whom I often employ came to ask me a great service what ? to lend
him a coat and trousers to save the life of his uncle, who was a Garde
Municipale, shut up in their house in the Rue de Tournon ! The
people wanted to massacre the Gardes, and he could not go out in his
uniform or in his shirt. The little carpenter was beside himself. He
had a vast pistol hid in his jacket which I'm sure he could not have
fired ; I gave him the clothes, and the man came afterwards to thank
me. It is agreed on all hands that, though all has been prepared by
secret societies, they would not have dared break out had not the
Municipal Guard fired on the mob from the Hotel des Affaires
Et.angeres, I think, on Wednesday and that was a mistake. Many
people were killed, picked up and carried about to show to the mob.
Instantly they ran to arms. Ferrari, who is one of the Socidte
Secrete of the ultra-republicans, told me last night that on part of
Thursday the party was in a state of vacillation, and thought they
must give up the whole ; then they took courage again. I wish I
could remember all I hear, but one's head gets quite addled. I can't
describe what I felt on Wednesday night, near twelve, as I was
sitting over the fire alone reading, I heard the tocsin down the
chimney. No English can understand the horror of that sound ;
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 55
every great massacre of the great Revolution was ushered in by it ;
and in my childhood, when tales of the Revolution were in every
one's mouth, the impression made was so black that the very word
makes me shudder. I went to Mr. Mohl ; he was asleep, he got
up ; but as we knew nothing he did not go out. Next morning we
were en pleinc revolution, and with my full advice and participation he
went to the Garde Nationale. I have talked over two or three
others to go, and think I am entitled to a couronne civique. Adieu.
Love to all.
MARY MOHL.
The story is continued in the following letter to Miss
Bonham Carter. It begins with an amusing diatribe against
English luxury a subject she was never tired of dilating
upon.
May 26, 1848.
DEAREST Coz,
I have not written so long that I fear you have re-
nounced the relationship, and I have quite lost the thread of my
discourse. I know not what to begin upon, but shall get into my
natural state when you write to tell me all about the wedding, and
how the bride looked, etc., as in the days of Sir C. Grandison of
marrying celebrity. Marriage seems gone out of fashion now ; you are
all too fine in England to afford it. The only good this vile revolution
will perhaps do is to stop a little the career of luxury, finery and show,
which was fast arriving to the English state. You are all so far gone,
that I don't think anything could bring you back to the state of the
beginning of the last century. Many private individuals are willing to
live simply when nobody looks at them, but the moment they have
company they must produce all their finery, and hire new servants
to wait, if they have none naturally. Now, it's all that, which was
not done a hundred years ago, which then made love-matches, and
kept people's brains from spinning to keep the house up without ruin.
My granny uSed to tell me how her husband (a captain in the navy)
used to nail up the lines in the garden for the two maids to hang up
the clothes on washing-days, and hundreds of other services. I have
seen nothing of that in my time, gentlemen of small fortunes go
to the club to see grand plate and furniture, and madam has a
56 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
governess, instead of teaching the children herself in the back
parlour.
We hope for a little fighting soon. The Garde Nationale give
dinners to the line. They are so loving that one told me yesterday
six hundred nalionale had regaled three hundred of the line, and it
was like i'enlevement des Sabines, They each took one between two,
and vowed eternal friendship. Each paid five francs ; the line paid
nothing. Our vile Government conspires against us ; but when they
go too far which I trust they will the National Assembly will grow
wrathful and turn them out. Then the nationale will fire in good
earnest, and we shall get rid of them I mean the present vile
directory. What do you think of Mignet being turned out of his
place because he wrote to some Italian, in a private letter, that he
thought the best thing the Milanese could do was to join the
Piedmontese ? Some fool published the letter ; but that is liberty
now.
I was at a closing lecture the other day upon the moral history of
women. It was beautiful, though delivered by a staunch republican ;
but he had a sense of justice, at least with regard to women. I wish
he would publish his lectures. His name is Legouve. He is a man of
independent fortune, and one of the few who take up that side of
politics from pure motives ; but they are too few to do good, and do
harm from the countenance they give to the rest. I can't help
hoping some little good may come of this man's lectures. He is very
clever, stands high, talks no nonsense (or very little), does it from the
best motives. He proposed various amendments. If he would
lecture again next winter, I should propose to whichever of you all
has the best memory to come and abide in my spare bedroom for
the purpose of writing down the whole for the good of the British
nation. He was rapturously applauded by the men-folk ; the ladies
were too modest, though I was not, for I clapped till my hands ached.
I don't believe in pillage so much as I did. I believe the
Assembly will do good in time ; but ruin goes on every day increasing.
The noble, the generous, the good Delesserts are giving up their
banking house not failing, but paying off. Every good enterprise in
the country for thirty years was invented or aided by them ; but
failure follows failure, like cards falling on each other. There is not a
commercial house or a manufactory in the whole country that will
stand in another few months. They say here that the English news-
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 57
papers exult over the universal ruin. Oh, Christian England, hide
thy face if it be true ! Thy hypocrisy is even worse than the universal
madness that has seized this miserable country. The Imprimerie
Royale, the noble establishment which gave to science the power of
spreading over Europe, and to which all looked up, is going; the
workmen have risen against all subordination, till at length the chief
would stay no longer. The minister of justice went to expostulate.
He told them that, of all the workmen in Paris, they alone were
certain of a maintenance in their old age ; they were always paid ;
the flagging of business never attained them. No, no, they would
elect their own chief; they would have more money; i.e. they are
mad. Louis Blanc's emissaries worked on them for three months,
and have disorganized the whole. He, the wretched imp, is bowed
down by contempt. Nobody will speak to him in the House, and he
hardly ever goes there ; but the mischief he has done is irreparable.
How thankful Louis Philippe and Guizot ought to be to the
present set who have found means to make them appear great
losses.
Ever thine, dearest Coz,
M. MOHL.
The disturbed condition of the town did not, however,
prevent the habitues of the Abbaye-au-Bois from meeting.
M. de Chateaubriand, like an old oak struck by lightning,
beautiful in its decay, sat, seemed to listen, and smiled when one of
his favourites entered. About March, a bad cough which he had
grew worse ; in May he could not leave his room. Madame Recamier
went to him every day at the hour he used to go to her. Her
friends joined her, and sometimes some old friend of his own.
During the terrible days of June, when he was asked what he
thought, he said he cared nothing about it. The cannons and the
thunder on the worst day seemed to vie with each other. He was a
little roused by the death of the archbishop. In spite of the con-
stant firing, the barricades which she could not see, and the garde mobile
stationed at the corner of every street, Madame Recamier, though
blind and nervous, never missed a day in coming to the Rue du Bac.
Since her blindness she had been unable to walk in the streets, and
as the coaches were in danger of being taken and piled up for barri-
cades, the drivers were unwilling to go out.
58 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Before these terrible days M. de Chateaubriand had taken to his
bed, to rise no more. Madame Re*camier would leave the room to
conceal her tears. His eyes followed her, but he scarcely ever spoke ;
not once after extreme unction had been administered. She could
not see him, and his silence seemed cruel. She dreaded his dying
in the night, when it might be impossible to send for her in time, and
it was a comfort to her that she had a friend living upstairs (Madame
Mohl) who could give her a room, where she spent three nights. On
the morning of July 3, at about seven, she was called down ; in about
an hour all was over.
The current of her life was dried up. She wished for nothing in
the world but to be good enough to die.*
From these sad and terrible scenes M. Mohl took his wife
to visit his friends and relations in Germany and Holland.
In all these visits to Germany it was very gratifying to
Madame Mohl to see the estimation in which her husband
was held.
From Julius Mohl.
Paris, December 23, 1848.
MY DEAR Miss HILLY,
You know we have been for about six months in Germany
and Holland, and have enjoyed our travels very much. We found in
Frankfort two of my brothers, and Hugo came a little later, so that
we were all together, which had not been the case for many years.
Then I have found many of my friends and schoolfellows as deputies
in Frankfort, engaged in this desperate business to bring about a
peaceful revolution, and to found an empire without fighting. It was
certainly the most curious sight possible, and the singular strength
and equally singular weakness of this new body was very worthy to
be seen and observed. Of courso we had the very best of oppor-
tunities, and were in the secret of everything if there can be a secret
in a place where you find the whole Cabinet dining in a public garden,
and discussing their measures while they eat a cutlet. I once found
them so, and sat down amongst them and ordered my own dinner,
not knowing that I was intruding. Robert, however, gave me a hint
that I had better occupy another table until they had done discussing
their business.
* From Madame Mohl's "Madame Recamier."
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 59
The rupture with Austria, produced by the brutal execution of
Blum and the inextricable confusion of matters in Berlin, must destroy
the assembly of Frankfort, if the extreme necessity of the union does
not produce an irresistible conviction that there is nothing behind
the assembly at Frankfort but anarchy and military despotism. I am
much more anxious about this than about things here, bad as they
are ; but I never hoped anything from this republic, and much from
Frankfort ; at least it was a beautiful dream and here always a hope-
less reality. We went from Frankfort to the Hague, where the Princess *
of Orange called me. She is an old friend of mine. I knew her well
before her marriage, and am very fond of her company. When I
saw her first she was like a thing of light and sunshine, and of an
excessive vivacity, since then the sad realities of life have sobered
her and made her very thoughtful, although the old spirit breaks out
from time to time. We went to Leyden, where I wanted to see the
learned people, and since then we are here looking on the strange
panorama which this country exhibits. When we went away Cavaignac
was all in all, and the most popular man ever seen ; when we came
back he was done for, and Bonaparte, whom every one laughed at a
few weeks before, had become the great man, and the inevitable presi-
dent of the republic without republicans. The fact is the republic
had never any existence in the provinces, except in a few towns, as
Lyons, Limoges, Tours, etc., where the workmen are communists ; the
rest of the country would not hear of it, and the stupidity of the
Government did all it could to make a republic impossible ; therefore
the peasants took hold of the name of Bonaparte because some took
him for his uncle, and the wavering ones hoped at least he would deliver
them from the republic, and when the politicians saw that there was an
army without chiefs, they went over to it ; and so it came that Thiers,
Mole, Bugeaud, and a heap of other ambitious and ambiguous men,
became Bonapartists. It is a great shame. The moderate party had,
in a long and dangerous struggle during nine months, effectually put
down the red republicans, the communists, and even the party of the
national. The moderate people would have elected Cavaignac, and
forced him to get rid of the rest of the coterie du national, and have
reasonable ministers. We were sure to get out of the slough of
despond by the mere force of public opinion ; but now this incon-
ceivable intrigue has disorganized the moderate party and given
* The late Queen of Holland.
60 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
power to a man who is known for nothing but his foolhardiness,
who has shown himself during these last months to be as wavering
as he is inefficient, and we are thrown back in a world of accidents
and most unforeseen enterprises. One thing is certain, that the red
republic is killed ; but it was not Bonaparte or Thiers who killed it, but
we moderate burghers, who fought the " Rouges " in June, and resisted
them in everything. If anything can revive them, it is the faults and
imperious designs of this fellow Bonaparte. The corruption of Louis
Philippe's government had given it over to the republicans, their
incapacity has delivered us into the hands of a pretender, and what
his folly will do we shall see, but nobody can divine. The great
majority which he has got is, at any rate, of great advantage to the
country, because it produces confidence in commercial transactions,
and will facilitate the opening of the workshops.
It has become impossible for me to take a serious interest in
politics, except when there is any danger of the red republic, which I
am ready to fight against any day it may show itself. All the rest is
to me like one of the fantastic pantomimes I have seen in London
theatres ; it turns round and round, and shows a succession of un-
equalled nonsense. Lamartine is quite done for, and I doubt if he
can ever get up again ; but this is not certain, because in this
country no man who does not give himself up quite entirely is ever
quite undone. They are so forgetful. Louis Bonaparte has been the
most ridiculous man in the world, and now he will get six or seven
million votes ; and if Lamartine keeps quiet for some time, and then
begins to speechify and flatter some ruling passion, he may be as
popular again, although people of sense will never trust him,
but they are so much in the minority that their opinion is of little
consequence in a moment of popular fury. People say he is mad.
I mean medically speaking ; I don't know if it is true. He has been
mad from vanity many years ; but this is rather an advantage in
public life. I am heartily sick of all this, and the eternal repetition
of the same thing by everybody makes one half crazy. We are lost
in a mist of unreal follies and senseless words, and everything else is
neglected.
But there is no danger ; and if your cousins will try to get some
amusement out of the dulness of this place, they are welcome and
perfectly safe. I hear that a military revolution is announced for the
purpose of carrying Bonaparte to the Tuileries and proclaiming him
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 61
emperor, but do not believe it ; we have had announcements of
similar movements every week for these last six months, but only one
has broken out. I do not believe that the army is ready to proclaim
him, nor that he dares to do it now. My kindest remembrances to all
the Carters, the Nightingales, and all the singing birds of the various
tribes and clans. Yours very truly,
J. MOHL.
Madame Mohl was, as I have often heard her say,
" absurdly fond of children," and at Heidelberg she fell in
love with Mr. Robert Mohl's daughter Ida, whom she at once
wished to adopt.
Madame von Schmidt writes
My aunt took to me at once. I soon overcame the awe with
which at first I had looked upon the strange lady, and loved her
dearly from the very beginning. In the following May, my uncle
went all the way from Paris to Strasburg, where I was at school, and
brought me to Paris. It was in the days of the revolution, and my
parents had been afraid of my travelling alone. My uncle took me
all over Paris himself to show me the sights, and was never tired of
explaining them to a poor schoolgirl like me. I spent eight winters
in the enchanting atmosphere of the Rue du Bac. My uncle was
by no means a stern or indifferent public man ; his sympathies were
strong, his humour keen, and his kindness unfailing. He took pity
on all sick and poor people, had for ever unfortunate Germans
applying to him for help, and he put himself always out of the way
to do service to others. He was sociable, and fond of women's talk
and company. He was never tired of repeating in the evening to
my aunt the events of the day, the anecdotes and mots collected at
the Institut, the good stories he had read, or of discussing some
interesting linguistic or historic problem with her. In short,
nothing could be more fascinating than their talk. Every other con-
versation appeared to me shallow twaddle compared to theirs."
It was shortly after Madame Recamier's death that
Mademoiselle Ida arrived, and one may fancy how her bright
presence cheered her aunt, whom she found, she says, "quite
melancholy."
62 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
In the following year (September, 1850) M. and Madame
Mohl, after leaving their niece with her parents at Heidelberg,
pushed on to the Italian Lakes. Next to the Manzonis, the
Arconatis (who became the connecting link between ourselves
and the Mohls) were their most valuable Italian friends.
The Marchese, an excellent, honourable man, was eclipsed
by his brilliant wife, the Marchesa Costanza, one of the most
distinguished women of her time. They were involved in the
early Italian troubles, and spent many years in exile in the
splendid old Castle of Gaesbeck, five miles from Brussels.
" Here," my father says, writing in 1852, "when I first knew
them, more than twenty years ago, the Arconatis, exiles them-
selves, presided over a little court of the most distinguished
of the Italian refugees, in which Arrivabene was the prime
minister, and Berchet, Scalvini, and Collegno the principal
courtiers." After the amnesty of 1838, the Arconatis returned
to Piedmont, leaving Gaesbeck to be occupied by Arrivabene.
They had a beautiful villa at Pallanza, on the Lago
Maggiore, and it was there that M. and Madame Mohl visited
them.
One evening an awful thunderstorm broke over the lake.
Soon after it cleared away, a young Englishman and his
sister came up to the villa, where they had heard that an
English lady was staying, to beg for some tea for their
mother, who was suffering from the effects of the storm which
had caught them while on the lake and forced them to put
into a little inn close by. (The present imposing structure
did not then exist.) These young people were Arthur and
Mary Stanley, and this was the beginning of the ardent
friendship between Madame Mohl and Arthur Stanley which
added so much pleasure and interest to both of their lives.
The next morning the inhabitants of the villa called at the
inn and invited the Stanleys to come to them, and all were
delighted with each other. But Madame Mohl never stayed
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 63
with any of the Stanleys until after the dean's marriage in
1863, nor was she ever " trotted out " by them an expression
which seems inconceivable to all who remember the dignity
and refinement of Mrs. Stanley.
Soon after her return to Paris, Madame Mohl was sum-
moned to Limoges to conduct her proces a lawsuit with the
Sireys. She wrote the following amusing account of it to
Miss Bonham Carter, who remained in the Rue du Bac in
order not to interrupt her course of study in drawing.
Limoges, November 15, 1850. Monday, 5 o'clock.
DEAR HII-LY,
As I wrote to Mr. Mohl Saturday, it is your turn to-day.
I spent four hours at the court, heard Le Fevre d'Aumale splutter all
manner of accusations of fraud. He is the adversary a lawyer who
pleads himself. The worst of it is my mother signed some paper long
ago, which gives some colour to the accusation ; and I signed too,
they say, which I had no right to do, for I was not of age. How-
ever, though this looks ugly if it's true (I have not the slightest
recollection of it), they say it don't bear on the main point; the
real point is a quip of the law which none but lawyers can under-
stand. There were ten creatures all assembled and seated like
inquisitors, besides odds and ends of folks on the benches, or rather
on very good armchairs behind things very like counters, only
perched up high. I wrote Saturday to one M, David, whom I knew
slightly, felicitating myself in my letter that he was not a judge.
(N.B. One must not perform even usual civilities to a judge, lest it
should look like corruption.) I asked him yesterday when he came
if I was to pay visits. He said, No (i.e. to judges, as some folks do).
I said I was greatly rejoiced thereat ; and when he rose to take leave,
he informed me he was to sit. I said, " Pray make me lose if you
like, but don't keep me long." I should have added that I had two
young ladies flourishing about in Paris, and was sadly wanted ; but
as I only just received yours to-day, I could not Every one is in a
state of ecstasy at my lawyer. I had no idea he was such a great
man ; however, I like him very much. Oh, if you had seen my
adversary to-day ! He stretched out his arm at me at the frauds
I had practised, looked daggers, ranted I at first was agitated, and
64 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
then inclined to laugh. Madame Sirey is here. We were quite an
army, with her two lawyers, my two, DesireVs two, and an amateur or
so, all in one clump.
Tuesday evening.
The whole day, from twelve to four, was again spent at the palace,
and my lawyer has not spoken yet ; but I am told that the judges
are all sick of Le Fevre d'Aumale. Be that as it may, he talked
three hours to-day, and then the lawyer for the other adversary,
Dusaillant, began. He has a little more to say to-morrow, and then
mine comes. I had no idea what a considerable man mine is, they
all pay court to him as if he were a young beauty. I dined down-
stairs to-day with him and Boudin (the avoue from Paris), and two of
the attorneys here for Madame Jeanron. They were all very enter-
taining, and I never had a pleasanter dinner. My lawyer is remark-
ably agreeable, and even if my case is lost (which I don't believe) I
shall like him. He is a very refined, quiet, intelligent man.
It was in this month that we first heard of Madame Mohl.
Until the spring of 1848 my father had been very little in
France, but he happened to be in Paris during the famous
attack on the Assembly on May 15, and he was so much
interested in all that he saw and heard that he recorded his
experiences in a journal which was destined to be the first of
a series, and he ever after spent a portion of every year in
Paris, where he soon was as much at home as in London.
The winter of 1850-51 was passed by our family in the
south, and on our way we spent some time in the delightful
society of Turin, then the Athens of Italy. One day Madame
Arconati said that she must make us acquainted with
Madame Mohl. We had heard of her, probably from some
very stupid person, as a sort of blue-stocking, I can still hear
the tone in which Madame Arconati answered, " Elle n'est
pas du tout pedante." And on our way back to England,
in the spring of 1851, the foundation was laid of the constant
friendship between her and my father a friendship which she
was so kind as to extend to the next generation.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 65
CHAPTER IV.
TO THE COUP D'ETAT (1851-52).
Early married life Opposition between France and Germany Attempts of
Russia Political and industrial stagnation Waiting for the president's
next move Fear of the Rouges Michelet Germany should unite under one
head Horror of music Expectation of a coup (fttat Haug and Kinkel
President at Dijon Madame Mohl in London Expedition to the Euphrates
Alarm in the Assembly The coup <Tttat succeeds from fear of socialism
Indignation at Lord Palmerston's approval Love for England Recollec-
tions of the Rue du Bac during the Empire.
M. and Madame Mohl's letters give a delightful picture of
their early married life. The contrast between their dis-
positions and pursuits seems to have been a source of amuse-
ment instead of irritation to them both. On politics they
were entirely of one mind.
From Julius Mohl to Miss Bonham Carter.
Rue du Bac, January, 1851.
MY DEAR Miss HILLY,
Next Monday is one of these monster balls at the Hotel
de Ville. I have got an invitation, but only for myself, of course.
I don't think of going to get a week's migraine ; but I keep it a deep
secret, as it would afflict Ida to hear of this fine occasion so nearly
missed.
I am becoming quite mad with these people. It was the interest
of the French in old times to keep Germany divided and weak, and
they speak even now with great profundity on this fundamental root
of French politics, just as if it were a law of nature, although
circumstances have changed to such a degree that their greatest
interest is to see Germany raised against Russia. Also Russia will
F
66 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
by degrees make of Germany an instrument against France ; at any
rate, they hope to get the left side of the Rhine in the scramble,
and, like all barbarians, are ready to sacrifice everything to a
present advantage.
Paris, March 20, 1851.
I wanted to write to you a long time ago, but what with my big
books, my lectures, and a great sleepy-headedness, I can hardly come
up to what must be done. We are all grippes here, the whole town,
and uncommonly stupid." The dancing season is over, to Ida's
great regret ; she only gets some occasional hops in the house or at
the Americans. In fact, people here have tried to amuse them-
selves as much as they could, and as if it had been their last winter ;
and now they are quiet, waiting with a sort of stupid horror for the
cataclysm of 1852, improving the time by quarrelling among them-
selves and strengthening the red people, who are waiting more
patiently than is in their nature. The worst is the entire stagnation
of industry; people draw out their capital from any undertaking
they have in hand, and in a few months we shall have on our hands
a starving multitude, as in March, 1848.
You have perhaps seen in some newspaper an account of the
affair of Michelet ; it is a queer story. He had some talent, but always
alloyed by an esprit faux, being on the look-out for strange com-
binations and picturesque expressions, this weed has of course over-
grown in him the good seed, and the applause of the anti-clerical
party and the acclamations of his auditory have driven the man
almost raving mad. He is become in his mind and in the eyes of
his dependents (the only people he sees) the apostle of the coming
time as frantic as any fanatic Mormonite latter-day man or such-like
cattle. He has been holding forth in the college in this strain for
many years ; has been suspended five years ago, and now the clerical
party, Beugnot and Co., have undertaken a crusade against him.
They could do nothing directly, but there had been great com-
plaints from the police about political cries in and after his lessons.
The minister sent stenographers to take down a few lessons, had them
printed, and distributed them amongst us to ask if we were satisfied
with this manner of teaching. These lessons were deplorable rhap-
sodies, mostly sheer nonsense, in ill-conditioned phrases, unconnected,
striving for originality and attaining a sort of fantastic madness.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 67
The college invited Michelet to defend himself in a sitting we were to
hold. He refused at first. To a second sitting he came ; declaimed
furiously against Barthe"lemy, the administrator of the college, 'as his
personal enemy, and read us a long written lesson on our incapacity
of judging him and his method and doctrine. Old Biot then under-
took to expose to him, in a sort of paternal tone, our objections to
his lectures, saying that they were no lessons, they gave no instruc-
tion, they had no method in short, they were nothing; that his
professorship was not intrusted to him for beating a great drum to
make himself popular by stirring up passions, etc. He was rather
taken aback. He is unable to discuss, and kept saying that we could
not understand his method. At last we voted that we were not
satisfied with his explanations (which is the official term for dis-
approving one of our members), but that there was no necessity for
appealing to the minister. However, the minister suspended his
lectures (but he goes on paying him). The fact is we should have
defended him, whatever might have been his opinions, if his lessons
had not been an outrage to common sense. They are utterly indefen-
sible in any literary court, whatever may be the judges' opinion on
politics or religion ; they are the ravings of a man who has lost his
reason in search of popularity. I, for my own part, being little
friendly to the Catholic party, was very little flattered to have to vote
for what they wished ; but there was no help.
I know you like to hear from Germany, but I can give you little
news. I have almost given up reading German newspapers, so deso-
late and hopeless is the state of things. The princes are quarrelling
at Dresden about their private matters how much each of them is
to have of votes or influence ; as to the nation, there is no more
question of its interests amongst them than if they were a family of
Jews dividing the property of their respected defunct parent. The
best they can arrive at is the re-establishment of the old stupid diet
of Frankfort a thing which has been dead for many years, and
tumbled to pieces three years ago. But under any form they may
adopt it will be the absolute government of Austria, as the Prussians,
by their vacillating politics, have lost the battle; and the time is
coming in which the smaller states will find their peddling domestic
tyrants too much to be borne, and rather be incorporated with
Austria than tolerate this double layer of despotism. All these
princes have shown themselves equally incapable and egoistic ; they
68 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
have proved that they are the great hindrance to the nation, and, as
the " poor old King of Wiirtemberg " (as you call him) told me five
years ago Do you think that Germany will for ever suffer thirty-
eight governments ?
I am little enough of a revolutionary, but this state of things is
enough to make one swear and do unreasonable things ; only I am
afraid Germany will perish in the attempt to right itself, and become
like Poland, or rather like Italy. But what is the use of reasoning
and speculating on things which look so hopeless, at least from afar ?
When I am in Germany I cannot believe that it will perish, but from
here it seems a hopeless case. I wish I had something less lugu-
brious to tell you than these eternal poHtics, but there happens very
little. M. Roulin has lost his only sister, Charles's mother; this
has thrown him very much back in his health ; he looks miserable.
The rest of our friends are going on swimmingly, the Americans
almost madly, so wild are they with the life here. I wonder they
have a leg to stand upon. To-morrow is Crincrinopolis here ; some
horrid piano lady from Germany is to perform, and my wife has
invited, I believe, half the town. I hope some thousands of them
are laid up with grippe, else the house will come down. Curse the
pianos most particularly ! I think the wretch who invented them
will have to render a fearful account in some warm place which shall
be nameless. People talk of murderers, but what are a few people
more or less compared to the venom which this fellow has engrafted
on a series of generations, to make miserable young ladies while
they learn to thump on his vile invention, and to drive crazy old
people when the learning is done, and must be shown and exhibited ?
I hope you are able to make out this scribble ; but if you cannot, and
wish to hear about us, you must just step over the Channel and
establish yourself in the old place, which I hope will soon come to
pass. God bless you, my dear Hilly.
Rue du Bac, May 2, 1851.
They are, of course, gone to some abominable screeching and
scratching, and so I want to console myself with a little talk with
you, although I hardly know what to tell you. We are in so absurd
a state, that no description can give an idea of it, the more so as all
is very quiet, and nothing passes outwardly. But they are all con-
spiring, mostly against themselves the president against the consti-
tution, the red people against the president, the Carlists against the
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 69
republic, the Orleanists against the rest and making innumerable
combinations which are very like the strange palaces I have seen my
little nephews in Heidelberg build with little pieces of wood. Guizot,
Duchatel, and Montalivet want to combine with M. de Noailles and
M. de Pastoret, and the oldest of all, M. de LeVis, to unite the
Legitimists and the Orleanists for the purpose of continuing Bona-
parte for four years, and then send him about his business, and
reinstate Henri V. and his successors the Orleanists. It is about as
queer a mess as well can be expected. Thiers' hobby is the regency,
and no Bourbon. Lamartine's is Bonaparte, with himself as minister
a hopeful scheme. There will be no revision of the constitution, as
there will not be a sufficient majority for it, and as the president has
no notion of going out like an ill-snuffed candle, there will be a coup
d'etat. Where, and how, he himself don't know, most likely; the
plans change every day. It is altogether a sweet prospect. I asked
yesterday Beugnot, one of the Burgraves, if he could form a con-
jecture about what was to happen, and he said not only he could not,
but nobody could, and le hasard decidera.
I have my hands full of work, but mostly of an unprofitable kind
fighting in committees and making reports, or books to be printed
or refused. I am fighting against all sorts of pretenders, speculators,
humbugs, etc. ; but it is a thankless business, and I am only getting
by it plenty of enemies, and the reputation of a sort of anthropo-
phagus and croquemitaine, and I should not wonder if I was one fine
morning found in the Seine. However, I will go on till they change
the manner in which they give encouragement to authors, or rather
editors, of scientific works ; it is all calculated to blow out the books
to monstrous sizes and prices. Old Cotta had a proverb which he
applied often to himself that what one wishes for in youth, one has
too much of in old age. I am getting gradually into the marrow of
this wise speech. When I came here as a greenhorn I wished I had
a part of the patronage of the Government in learned matters, but I
begin to have enough of it and to spare, particularly because it is all
done in committees, which are hotbeds of quarrels and infallible
means of imperfect execution. But I forget that you want news
from Germany. But alas and alas ! what can be said ? The old diet,
reaction, disunion; no rational want of the nation, even in non-
political matters, satisfied ; the pretensions of the nobility re-exhumed,
and the princes believing that this may go on by the help of Austria
70 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
and Russia. It is a lamentable state of things. Here the lower classes
exact more rights than they have knowledge to exercise reasonably,
but in Germany they are denied a part of the rights which are anterior
and above all legislation the right to marry as they please, and to
exercise their industry in the best manner they can. Unfortunately,
the difficulties are so great and the evil is so complicated, that it can be
overcome only by a revolution ; and, as things now are, this would
either be suppressed by Austria and Russia, or carried out by a
violent and absolute party. If there should be a new revolution here,
there will be a European war, complicated by popular movements in
Germany ; if Bonaparte is continued or re-elected, there will be an
intolerable despotism in Germany. It is a seemingly hopeless case,
because there is no provision made for a gradual development of the
wants of the nation. It is very like Italy, and Russia may become
the Austria of Germany, until it is seized itself by the revolution.
I hear from my wife that you are inundated with democraws, as
Haug, Kinkel, etc. Do not allow yourself to be devoured with these
people. Kinkel is a man of some talent. There has been published
a life of him, with a queer and very long story about his marriage.
It is by friends of his. I don't recollect it well, but it was very
strange. He used, long before 1848, when professor in Bonn, to go
to the villages around and preach socialism to the peasants, and tell
them that the forests of the state were theirs, and other good
doctrines, so that one day they made an attempt on Bonn, bringing
with them their wives and children, and provided with sacks to carry
the goods and chattels of the villainous bourgeoisie. He fled and
went to Baden during the insurrection, and was taken there and put
in prison, where he was, I believe, cruelly used till his wife got
means to deliver him. I don't know him myself, but have heard in
Bonn much about him. For years he passed there for a weak and
vain man. As to Haug, he is a very weak man, constantly changing
his plans. He wished first to go into the army, then he planned a
colony in Patagonia, then went to Rome to fight against the Neapo-
litans, then to Constantinople, from where he wrote to me that he
was going to Persia, but, instead, came back here, and to England.
I have no confidence whatever in the man. Don't allow your
good nature to take for gospel all the pretensions of the exiled
people. There is a great deal of chaff amongst them ; and even the
best have a wonderful lack of wisdom, or, rather, common sense.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 71
But I must bring this scribble to an end. Don't reproach your-
self when you do not answer. I know you are more beset with
letters than is reasonable. Only allow me to talk to you from time
to time as if you were sitting in one of the big red chairs.
Paris, June 6, 1851.
I intended to write to you almost every day ; but I don't know-
how it is, I cannot do my own work and hardly think my own
thoughts, so much crowds upon me. You know we are going to
Vichy at the beginning of July, and should think, I almost said hope,
your health must require a good draught from the Hopital, and a
dozen or two bottles from the grande Grille. There is nothing new
here amongst your acquaintances and admirers. The Burnoufs
always ask very kindly after you ; they say that you are quite like a
French woman, which sounds funny to my ears, but means nothing
but their high approbation. I have never been gratified with a
similar compliment. They always say that I am an Allemand double
d* Anglais. Miladi is very well, and deeply immersed in all sorts of
ghost-stories and mesmerism. She is a very good-natured creature.
I always laugh at her ghosts and crystal balls, etc., and what is
worse at Oxford. Happily, I have never been at Cambridge, so I
have a pretext for not speaking of it I can hardly write, because
puss is putting her paw on my paper ; she has already splashed the
ink over the beginning. As we are alone here, she is become very
sociable, and sits on my back while I am writing, or before me and
crows to be stroked.
You have, I suppose, read this fine story of the president's speech
at Dijon, which the ministers dared not to print in the Moniteur
without falsifying it. It is a Government as if it were a parcel of
schoolboys ; and the wonderful part of it is, that this nation, without
being forced and coerced to it, will re-elect the same man again, and
against the law, because these millions of electors know no other
name but that of a prince. If it was any other who should happen
to be there, they would continue him just as certainly. I am con-
vinced that the republic would have an infinitely better chance with
an electoral law admitting only a million of voters. It is not conceiv-
able how any good can come from giving political power into hands
that are unfit to use it, and as long as M. Laurent shall be elector I
am sure that the election will be absurd. The lower classes are
72 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
extremely quiet, and you don't feel at all that sort of political electri-
city which precedes here an outbreak. The reason is simple enough ;
the red people have a great interest that all should remain quiet till
the election, and take care not to irritate and provoke their natural
adherents. There is certainly more reason for discontent than under
Louis Philippe. But all this is only an episode in the great drama
of which none of us will see the end. I am afraid our difficulties
here will be drowned in a war, if the emperors and kings have the
courage to begin one. It would be a great crime de Ihe humanite,
but I don't think they will mind this much if they believe that it will
secure their power for another generation; not that they are indi-
vidually worse than their neighbours, but there is mixed with their
interests a certain fanaticism which had in older times an echo around
them, but is now quite gone, except perhaps in Russia.
Friday.
I have just got your very kind letter. My eyes are quite well
again, and have never been so bad as not to be able to read your
hand.
Ampere is become like the Wandering Jew ; he is living in a hotel
garni, and not to be tempted to make an establishment. He has
sold the greater part of his books, and did not even take the pains to
choose himself what was to be sold, but had it done by some friends.
I suppose he will go on wandering about until he settles at Rome, or
dies somewhere in an inn. However, he is quite happy and contented
for the moment, only he will repent of it when he becomes older. It
is the result of an ill-arranged life. He attached himself to Madame
Recamier for the twenty best years of his life, and now she is gone
he is like a bird on a branch, and does not know what to do with
himself. It passes my comprehension.
It was in this spring that, as I have said, we first had the
happiness of making M. and Madame Mohl's acquaintance in
Paris. After our return to London she wrote the following
note to my mother :
21, York Terrace, Regent's Park.
DEAR MRS. SENIOR,
Are you in London ? I should like much to go and see
you all, but not to have a dismal-looking person open the door and
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 73
say, " Master's in Scotland, missus is in Wales." These misfortunes
happen so often to me during the week or ten days I am in London,
that I have made up my mind to trouble my acquaintance with
a letter, which has another advantage, viz. if they don't want to be
plagued with visits they have nothing to do but not to answer. I
then conclude they are out of town, as that is more agreeable to my
vanity, and I don't trouble them with rat-tats. If you are here, will
you give my compliments to Mr. Senior and the young ladies, married
and single ? and believe me,
Yours most truly,
MARY MOHL.
Her first appearance at our house where she afterwards
spent a few days or more almost every year was at a dinner-
party, and every one was charmed with her. Phillips, the
artist, was especially struck by the variety and animation of
her countenance. There was nothing very remarkable in her
dress at that time (for many people wore their hair in curls),
except perhaps the fluffy cap, which dated from ten years
earlier, the bonnet a la folk, which is described as the height
of fashion in Balzac's and Bernard's novels. Out of doors
she always continued to wear a large bonnet with a loose lace
veil. She also always wore a shawl, then a universal fashion ;
in short, whoever will take the trouble of looking at a fashion-
book of the time of Louis Philippe may see what this famous
costume of Madame Mohl's was like. As time went on it
became more unusual, for in fashion to stand still is to become
eccentric. She was always handsomely dressed in the evening
in silk, or more often satin, black, grey, or mauve and I
remember one dress, a sort of bright chestnut colour, which
she called les cheveux de la Reine, and which was quite beauti-
ful. She could not bear heavy materials. In 1870 Mrs. Grote
gave her a violet velvet, but she had it made up only out
of gratitude to the donor, and as soon as she returned to
Paris converted it into chair-covers.
74 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
She was in London only for a few days, to see the Exhibi-
tion, in 1851, on her way to Cold Overton ; after which she
rejoined M. Mohl in Paris, where things were working up to a
crisis. He wrote in September to Miss Bonham Carter
September I, 1851.
MY DEAR HILLY,
We are here as listless as possible ; nobody knows what
is to come, and the life of the nation ebbing away, in this uncer-
tainty. The best workmen are emigrating because there is no work for
them, and the worst are conspiring. All this would be at an end in
a moment as soon as there was a government which promised some
stability ; but if it goes on so, the desperation of the nation will
drive it to some military despotism. But it is useless to talk about
it ; everybody's brain seems worn out by thinking on it. What can a
country expect which has a pretender for a president, and a govern-
ment which conspires against the law ? It is a thing to be wondered
at, and a warning to nations.
The expedition on the Lower Euphrates, which I have set on
foot, is ready to set out Sauley, whom I wanted at the head of it,
refuses now, I don't know by what fancy, and the minister has given
it to Longperier (I don't know if you have seen here this lengthy
specimen of learning). It is perhaps the best he could do ; but
Sauley was the real man, and I proposed the whole plan only after
having persuaded him. If Longperier has the courage to affront the
marshes and deserts of Chaldea, we shall exhume some enormous
towns of extreme antiquity. I am afraid he will linger about
Babylon.
September 10.
This scrap of writing has become interrupted, and is become old
and stale. I will try at last to finish it at once. The Euphrates
expedition has broken down again. Longperier refuses it because
madame will not allow it, which is very proper, as the poor lady
is afraid of becoming blind. Then Le6n Faucher (the minister of
interior) sent Vitet, in his desperation, to me, to get him out of the
slough. I advised him to take Fresnel, which will be done, at least
so it seems ; but we are not yet at the end.
The M. Jeanron to whom the following letter refers was
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 75
a painter, for whom the Mohls had a great respect. He
saved the Louvre from the rabble in 1849.
Madame Mohl to Miss Bonham Carter.
My principal reason for making haste to write is that M. Jeanron
declares he has made some wonderful discovery in painting, which
you alone are to hear and to profit of; and I do say that, if you have
any feeling, you should try and come, if only for a month, as soon as
you can. The poor man has so little to rejoice at in life, that it
would be like a drop of water to the poor " rich man " in hell. Pity
don't seem to have been a much indulged feeling upstairs in those
days ; it is a modern sentiment, I believe.
MARY MOHL.
From Julius Mohl.
November, 1851.
I intended many a time writing to you without doing it. It is
Friday evening, and the crocodiles are beginning to come ; but I, not
being very useful in that department, will take it easy and have some
talk with you. We are tolerably well here ; my wife is even astonish-
ingly well and strong, and bears walking better than I have ever
seen her.
We are in a most curious political state just what was to be
expected, from having taken a pretender as president of a republic.
All parties will rue that they have not tried to establish a moderate
republic, which was just a possible thing ; but, forsooth, the red must
have it socialist, the Orleans must have the Prince of Joinville, etc.
If they had taken Cavaignac, we might at least have seen if it were
possible, although the entire want of municipal institutions makes it
very doubtful ; but the state we have been in has no name in history.
The wonder is that it has gone on so long ; but now it is altogether
out of joint, and cracks everywhere, although there is no passion
anywhere but in the Elysee, in the Chamber, and in the lowest
rabble. I called about a week ago at Thiers' on an evening, and
found them there in great emotion, exasperated at what had just passed
in the Chamber, expecting that very night a coup d'etat so much
so that all the deputies who were there set off at ten o'clock to pass
the night at the Chamber, and to defend it against a military occupa-
tion. I was so astounded at the turmoil that I rubbed my eyes and
76 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
pinched myself to be sure that I was not asleep, and Mignet, who
came in, was like me perfectly astounded, and kept repeating, " Mais
tout cela est du mille et une nuits, vous revez mes amis, c'est la
phantasmagoric," and so it was, nobody attacked them ; but, on the
other side, nobody would have wondered greatly if they had been
. attacked, because we all know the plans which are pressed on the
president, and the speeches which his familiars make everywhere.
Everybody takes these things very coolly ; the most important laws
which the Chamber may make excite no interest, as everything is
looked upon as only provisional, to be overturned by an accident, or
usurpation, or civil war, or anything else which we wait for as
resignedly as a Trappist on his death. The president has at last
so split up the Chamber and broken up the parties that he has gained
considerably over his enemies there ; but in the same time he has
disgusted everybody, and, except a few needy generals over head
and ears in debt, and some candidates for prefectures, nobody cares
a straw for him. If he becomes an usurper, he is the strangest
one which has ever been seen ; but it may happen, and is very likely
to happen.
November 27.
I have been called off to do the civil to the congregation as far
as it lies in me, and the letter has been neglected. I have just got
yours, with some capital stories. I know no news, only I am afraid
to come to great shame with the Mesopotamian expedition, which
has been undertaken on my recommendation, and is likely to fail by
Fresnel's delays and old-womanish proceedings.
Nothing good from Germany. These princes behave infamously,
and will pay for it next time, which is a satisfaction, but a costly one,
and very dangerous. It seems to me to be the beginning of a strife
like the Reformation, and I am afraid that it will split and ruin the
country, so that it will become a prey to Russia, or something like
Italy. As to the princes, you ask what can be done to mend them.
You know Pope used to swear by the formula, " God mend me ! "
but a hackney coachman answered, " Mend you ? why, He'd sooner
make two new ones." That is my opinion of the German princes ;
they must all be cast out except one, only we don't know where to
find this one. How do you think England would fare if the
heptarchy came to life again ?
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 77
Moritz is fighting tooth and nail at Stuttgardt, but it can come to
nothing, and if he should persuade the Chamber and the country, it
would only bring a brutal occupation by Austria, as it happened in
Hesse. The diet is for the moment a sort of Star Chamber which
puts itself above the law. The consequence seems infallible either
the nation will perish if it submits, or the diet will perish at the first
opportunity of rising against it. It is a hideous prospect ; but as
human affairs do not progress logically, it will be a long struggle with
various success, and perhaps no decided result But I must finish.
)d bless you, my dear Hilly.
Yours very truly,
J. MOHL.
The expected coup d'etat occurred within a week. Here
is Madame Mohl's account of it :
December 10, 1851.
DEAR HILLY,
I am low-spirited; it's nothing. I am like a tree torn
up by the roots. I can't get accustomed to believe this possible ;
but it is absurd to talk for ever of one's feelings. I will answer
question one. There was not one stone out of its place in the Rue
du Bac, it was the cue of these people to give out that all Paris
was full of barricades. Now, I was out the best part of the three first
days Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I did not certainly go
to the places where barricades generally begin, viz. Rue St. Martin,
St. Denis, and their tributaries ; but I went not very far off, and saw
none. Francois, who was everywhere, saw a few a foot high. You
must put it into your head that the Elyse"e system is to frighten each
party by the other, and unfortunately they all lend themselves too
well to the system. For instance, Francois tells me of the monstrous
iniquity of many being said to have joined this fellow, who in
reality protested against him. But how can they make that known ?
When they go to the newspapers to request the publication, they are
told that they can't publish a word. Even under Bonaparte the
censure was less absolute. The president actually had printed on
the walls and in his papers, as his councillors, some who were in
prison. Nine of his ex-ministers dined together at the prison of Mazas.
But I can't remember half the stories I hear ; and I receive letters
78 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
from all quarters, which I have not time to answer. I am going out
this morning to take a ride to get up my spirits. But be assured that
the town is as safe as London, providing you keep your thoughts
entirely to yourself if they have anything honest in them, and if
you choose to go to the Elyse'e, you will make your fortune. This
is what cuts me to the quick ; it is the horrible demoralizing effect
this will have on a nation too apt to care for nothing but success.
The people one sees are divided into two classes : one, like myself,
ill with indignation and discouragement ; the other, people who say,
" What a good thing ! This will save us from the reds and the so-
cialists." Nobody cares or even pretends to be a partisan of L. N.
They only rejoice that a hundred thousand soldiers will keep them safe
from the democracy. I do not think this feeling can last ; but many
of those who live in the country declare their property was already-
divided in their own minds by the peasants. I believe this terror
very absurd ; but alas ! that the democratic government of '48 should
have given such a good ground for it ; for there is no disguising the
fact that all France would have risen like one man against this, were
it not for the recent terror of these socialists and democrats. They
say it was absurd ; but general terror is always founded on something
that first inspired it. In 1830, when the well-educated and the
middling and lower classes fought side by side against the silly usur-
pations of Charles X., they never dreamt of these fears of each
other. They had both the same wish for moderate freedom ; but
during eighteen years a large body of scribbling individuals have
done nothing but work at sowing false notions, which have absolutely
destroyed all reasonable public opinion. This makes me fear this
system will last some years, unless some lucky shot puts an end to
it ; but it is strange to see how seldom such rascals are well aimed
at, Henry IV. was killed so easily, and Bonaparte seemed to bear
a charmed life.
Francois told me nine hundred people were arrested Thursday
night. Mind, I give you each authority, because I know nothing for
certain, except what is in our own experience. M. Thiers is out of
prison on condition he will go to Italy for his health. Mr. Mohl
went to the (Mazas) prison on Monday night at half-past nine, and
was told they were all in bed. I sent to Mignet Tuesday morning to
ask how Thiers was. My maid saw heaps of packed trunks at Mig-
net's, he told her he had not time to answer, he was in such a
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 79
hurry. The servants said he was going to travel. It can't be for
long, as he is secretary to one of the five academies, and (I should
think) can't afford to lose his place. Government in ordinary times
cannot displace him ; but these people care nought for law or old
usages, therefore they may just as well send a regiment to the
Institut and disperse it altogether. The discourses Mr. Mohl brings
me from it are very disgusting, not half are indignant ; the larger
half say it saves them from the socialists. Everybody agrees there
never was such tyranny, but they don't care for politics. They
must be quiet in their houses and property. All this you know is
the effect of your friends the demagogues. They have done the same
in Germany, and, except Piedmont, in all Europe.
Madame Mohl was disgusted at the way in which the news
of the coup d'etat was received in England.
January I, 1852.
DEAREST Coz,
I enclose the seal of your letter. It strikes me that it
had been opened, and re-shut with red sealing-wax. Tell me if it is
as you put it. I have received two lately which had been opened.
I shall, therefore, be more cautious when I write by post ; this goes
by private hand, and, therefore, I am comfortable.
You know I never had a good opinion of Lord Palmerston,
therefore what you say don't make much difference. The thing that
vexes me most is that any English should not be indignant at this
horrible tyranny. Mr. Mohl knows a young German (a very nice
one) who is tutor to a great Russian lady, who came this morning
and told him that several great Russian ladies having spoken pretty
freely, they were desired by Government to take care what they said,
or they would be sent away. They complained to their ambassador,
who went to Morny and said it was very impertinent, and that in
Russia people might say what they pleased, provided they did not
conspire. The lady was rather puzzled how these discourses were
known at the Elysee, and at last found out she had spoken freely in
some great lady's house (a French lady). She sent word that she
should no longer go there, as one must watch one's words. Fact is,
/ am too free-spoken, and I must take a little more care. It is the
oddest thing to me that English people should believe all the lies in
8o LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
the papers, when they know everything is dictated by the Elyse*e. As
to the socialists, I suppose it is not L. N.'s mighty arm that protects
us, and the same who did in June might now ; but the nation is
paralyzed with the absurd want to be quiet as if this could last any
time ! I heard cannons firing all the morning for joy at the success
of this wretch. I feel like poor Hamlet the world is distasteful to
me when I see vice and impudence tower above all Mrs. C
told me Lord Palmerston had written to L. N. to felicitate him, and
that immediately after the council of ministers had agreed to be
entirely neutral Lord Palmerston is a very brouillon likes to put
himself forward, and thinks he has all England to back him ; he has
done so many times, and the other ministers have borne it. They,
I suppose, knocked against this more than usual. If we have ten
years war-shed in consequence of this fellow (which I should not
wonder at), I wonder what the English will say then, and whether
they will think it such a fine thing ! He must employ the soldiers,
and occupy the French ; he must administer to their passions, and
there is no way but war. C was here an hour ago. They have
put the eagle on the standard to-day, and a slight word was said in
some Government statement about the present frontier. This is a
preparation. Poor England's blood will be spilt in the cause of
freedom, I fear.
Her love for England never wavered. I remember once
quoting in reference to it the lines from " The Pinafore "
" In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman,"
and she laughed heartily, and said it was very appropriate.
She says in another letter to Miss Bonham Carter
Heaven grant old England may do well I would die to-morrow
thankfully for her a dear old thing. I often quote a verse of
Corneille's, " Albe, mon cher pays et mon premier amour." When I
land there I am always on the point of kissing the dear free earth,
only I'm afraid of being ridiculous. And yet I'd rather live here. Is
it not absurd to the highest degree ?
Like her favourite, Dr. Johnson, Madame Mohl was a
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 81
good hater, and the effect of the coup d'ttat was to add to the
brilliancy of her salon ; for the most distinguished and culti-
vated men in France shared her enmity against Louis
Napoleon, and enjoyed more than ever meeting each other.
We continued to visit Paris every spring. Mr. Senior was
a corresponding member of the Institut, and we had no
reason to complain of want of hospitality in the French.
Many of the remarkable men of that time had long been our
friends, such as Guizot, Tocqueville, Corcelle, Re"musat, Say,
Beaumont, etc. ; but Madame Mohl was our mainstay. When
we first arrived she would ask us whom we particularly desired
to see, and whether we knew them already or not she was
sure to get them to meet us. She was a very early riser, and
would often tap at the door of our apartment between nine
and ten o'clock, and sit down and talk to us while we were
at breakfast. Hers was real conversation, not preaching. It
was spontaneous, full of fun, information, and grace of expres-
sion. She spoke French and English with the fluency and
accent of a native, yet with the care and originality of a
foreigner. (My authority for saying this of her French was
Alexis de Tocqueville.) When there was no word in either
language exactly to fit her thoughts she would coin one for
the occasion. She had much of the phraseology of the last
century, but none of its coarseness, for she had an essentially
delicate and refined nature. Though a great reader she had,
as Madame Arconati said, not an atom of dogmatism or
pedantry. She had no airs of superiority of any kind.
Although her opinions on people and things were extraordi-
narily tolerant and unconventional, she yet had a fine sense
of moral rectitude and high principle which made her a per-
fectly safe friend for young people. I never heard her say a
word or utter a sentiment which I should shrink from recording
here could I only recollect it. Conversation is unfortunately
as ephemeral as acting or singing ; my father recorded a
82 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
great deal of hers in his journals, but, as she herself says of
Madame R^camier, "such recollections have much the same
effect on those who knew her that a hortus siccus of tropical
flowers would have on a traveller just returned from seeing
them in their native country." Still, such as they are they
are valuable, for although so light and full of fancy there was
solid matter in her conversation it was not mere froth ; she
had thought much and read much, besides having always
lived in the intimacy of the most brilliant and remarkable
men and women of her time.
On Friday evenings the lamps in the little salon of the
Rue du Bac were carefully shaded, for M. Mohl was intolerant
of a blaze of light, as indeed he was of glare and display of
any kind. He used to be very sarcastic if any lady arrived
smartly dressed, which was often the case, as Madame
Duchatel received on the same evening all the rank and
fashion of the Orleanist party.
One evening Sanson, the great actor, who had exchanged
the stage for the post of teacher at the Conservatoire, told us
all sorts of amusing stories about his pupils, especially of
Rachel, whom he discovered and trained. Guizot, Cousin,
and Mignet were present, and it was pleasant to see them
retire gracefully into the background and leave the arena to
the old actor, whom they encouraged by their attention and
sympathy.
M. Mohl was too busy to give much attention to general
society, but whenever he appeared he was highly appreciated.*
* This is Sainte Beuve's portrait of M. Mohl : " Un homme qui est 1'erudition
et la curiosite meme : M. Mohl, le savant Orientaliste, et plus qu'un savant, un
sage ! esprit clair, loyal, e"tendu, esprit allemand, passe au nitre anglais, sans un
trouble, sans un nuage, miroir ouvert et limpide, moralite Tranche et pure, de
bonne heure revenu de tout ; avec un grain d'ironie sans amertume, front chauve
et rire d'enfant, intelligence a la Goethe, sinon qu'elle est exempte de toute
couleur et qu'elle est soigneusement depouillee du sens esthetique, comme d'un
mensonge."
It is really impossible to translate this delicate and forcible description, but the
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 83
He was a most interesting converses No one told a story so
well ; all sorts of amusing adventures always seemed to be
happening to him ; he could not go in an omnibus without
something absurd and diverting taking place ; his acute sense
of fun made everything appear to him in a ludicrous light.
With all this he had a sort of childish simplicity and total
absence of pretension, in spite, or rather in consequence, of
his great ability and learning. He spoke perfect English, but
as it was a foreign language he did not use the current
expressions the counters which often stand in the place of
ideas. With him, as with his wife, the word exactly fitted the
idea. Her conversation was not so full of anecdote, but she
had more imagination and higher spirits. She never con-
cealed a thought out it all came in an instant ; while he was
not at all deficient in reticence. They married so late that
their union never became an old story to either of them.
When M. Mohl came into their salon, his first impulse was to
talk to his wife, to tell her all that had amused and interested
him since they last met ; she had often to direct his attention
to the guests that were present. The society in their own
house exactly suited them both, and, like the bees, they
wandered, often singly, far and wide to bring back honey to
the hive. When they were parted they wrote each other long
and amusing letters, half in French and half in English.
Their English friends did not quite understand their visit-
ing England separately ; but Paris becomes very hot towards
the end of June, and it was better for Madame Mohl's health
to leave it, while M. Mohl was tied there on account of his
following may give some idea of it : " M. Mohl, the learned Orientalist, is erudi-
tion and investigation itself; he is more than a philosopher, he is wisdom per-
sonified ! His intellect is clear, sincere, and liberal, thoroughly German, passed
through an English filter ; an untroubled cloudless spirit, a mirror without speck
or flaw ; a spotless character, having early cast aside the illusions of youth ;
a spice of irony without bitterness, the bald brow of a sage with the laugh of a
child. His mind in some respects resembles that of Goethe, except that it is free
of all bias, avoiding carefully, in his devotion to truth, the snare of aestheticism."
84 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
occupations ; nor would he have enjoyed the London season,
with its large parties and dissipation, whereas his wife enjoyed
everything intensely in its turn. She delighted in the theatre,
which he abhorred. " Isn't it convenient ? " she used to say.
" I put all the money we can spare for the play into this box,
and, as Mr. Mohl can't bear going, I spend it all on myself."
She used to say that she longed to be an actress, and to per-
form the part taken by Madame Alain in " La Joie fait Peur."
She would have acted well ; she had all the gesture and
vivacity of a southerner, and it was delightful to hear her
recite one of La Fontaine's fables. She was a very bad
walker by day, but she always felt stronger at night, and we
often trudged through the streets of Paris on our return from
the theatre, walking rapidly (for she never did anything
slowly) and in the highest spirits, her nose not assailed as
mine was by the abominable odours of the Rue du Bac. She
had no sense of smell, although all her other senses were
extraordinarily acute. She never lost her hearing, and her
sight was very little impaired to the last.
Although she was very fond of music, she neither played
nor sang. Above all others she loved Italian music, especially
singing. One evening I went with her to a private concert
where there was no other kind of music. " Oh, my dear," she
said, " I thought I was in heaven ! " She did not care for
difficult instrumental music. Once, when a lady had been
playing very noisily and brilliantly, and I thought Madame
Mohl had been having a great treat, as soon as we had left
the house she burst out with, " Oh, what an abominable noise
that woman did make ! "
Everything loud and big, coarse and unfinished, was dis-
agreeable to her ; her taste was for things small and delicate
like herself. She had even a prejudice against tall women.
She was very fond of beauty, and always said that she could
not bear ugly people, but I noticed that when she liked people
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 85
ie never thought them ugly ; she said there was a grace
about them one of her favourite expressions. She was as
capricious as a spoilt child, yet, until advanced age impaired
her self-control, she never allowed her whims to interfere with
the comfort of others. She was blessed with a good though
hasty temper, and an unusual amount of common sense which
made her see the absurdity of extravagant pretensions of any
kind. She liked intensely, as she did everything else. One
of her droll phrases (I remember her saying it of Mr. Erasmus
Darwin among others) was, " My dear, I am so fond of him
that it makes me quite uncomfortable."
There never was a cloud between her and me, but although
she was not touchy she was vehement, and she sometimes had
little misunderstandings with others whom she loved. This
she called being en delicatesse with so-and-so. But no one
regretted her little outbursts of petulance so much as she did
herself. She wrote on one occasion
Thank your father, my dear, for your happy temper, for it is
hereditary, and you don't know the trouble it has saved you. I am
naturally of an irritable temper. It was born with me, and though
I have worked much to govern it, it has been my bane all my life,
and all the self-government in the world, even when successful, can
only save outward appearances ; the inward man suffers, and loses
power by it
And again to Miss Bonham Carter at another time, when
she had a misunderstanding with Madame Arconati, after-
wards made up by Madame Collegno
A good temper is an admirable gift of God's, for no reasoning
will give it. One only learns to govern a moderate one, and that's
an absorption of energy that might do something else ; however, it's
no use philosophizing on the subject. If by my pettishness I have
lost a kind friend, I must even bear it, and not complain ; for she is
as pettish as I am, and much more touchy, and I know it, and should
have minded my manners.
86 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Until her marriage, in 1859, Mademoiselle Ida used to
make tea in the smaller room, and there was often dancing
for the young people in the dining-room. Madame Mohl's
salon did not resemble the salons of former days, where only
a chosen few were admitted. She was careful as to the resi-
dents in Paris, for, as she said, it was not like an evening by
special invitation. Once invited to her Fridays, you might
always go, and it was almost impossible to dislodge a bore ;
and she felt the duties of hospitality so acutely that she tried
to amuse even bores, but the effort fatigued her. She writes
of some lady in Paris whom she did not care to know
"I avoid increasing my lady acquaintances, unless they par-
ticularly take my fancy. I know more than I want to know. They
take up so much room in my small apartment ; and I have an old-
fashioned principle that, when a lady does come to my house, she
must and ought to be paid attention to ; therefore I try to have her
amused if I can, and sometimes talk to stupid people that she may
have the clever ones. It's all very well to do that for favourites, but
it's a hard case to do it for those I don't care about. I think it but
justice to my own dear self to tell you all this, that you may understand
why I am backward in making acquaintance with ladies. In London
no one comes unless invited ; here you are at their mercy on public
nights. I have known ladies change their nights with infinite trouble
to get rid of some of these, whom they had nothing to say against.
Society to me is a real pleasure, not a mere habit, and for that reason
those that give me none bore me."
But, unless she took up one of these aversions, she was
general in her tastes. She liked variety, and she constantly
told us to send our English friends to her (she wrote, " Pray,
if you have any niceies a new substantive send them to
me"), for she was anxious to show her gratitude for the kindness
she received in London. Her evening circle was large, usually
much too large for any one man to stand by the mantelpiece
and harangue the company. When this was possible it was
extremely delightful ; but general conversation seldom took
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 87
place, except after a small dinner or a breakfast. Conse-
quently these small meetings by invitation were far more
interesting than the ordinary Friday evenings ; and when she
wanted us to meet any one in particular, it was always by
invitation at breakfast or dinner. Nothing could be more
agreeable than these little parties. I never saw anything to
complain of in the food, although there was no pretence at
delicacies. Madame Mohl had an excellent old servant, Julie,
who was a very fair cook, and who tyrannized over her. I
remember she on one occasion wanted to have two dinner-
parties in a week, and she ran out of the room to ask Julie's
leave, and returned in triumph, saying, "Julie says I may
have them." The company was always carefully chosen
never too many for the table ; nor did she ever, as is said in
the Journal des Dttats, put husband and wife side by side.
Sometimes there was an empty place with Ivan Tourgue"nieff's
name upon it, for he had an Eastern habit of breaking engage-
ments (when he came, however, he was so delightful that one
forgave his eccentricities) ; but none of her other guests ever
failed her, as far as I can remember. Nor can I ever recollect
her appearing at her own house in the evening in the gown
she had worn all day. She always dressed herself to receive
her guests as she did when she went out to dine or to tea.
When she was on the borders of ninety she became more
negligent ; but she gave up her Friday evenings after M.
Mohl's death, and never had the heart to resume them, and
those who called on her in the evening were unexpected, and
received without ceremony, but with kindly welcome.
Before 1870 foreigners of all nations English, Italians,
Hungarians, Germans, Swedes, Dutch, Japanese, and other
Orientals brought by M. Mohl, who also contributed the
scientific element, met on the same easy terms ; and although
she hated so bitterly Louis Napoleon (" cet homme," or " le
monsieur," she called him ; never " celui-ci," as most people
88 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
did, and never "the emperor"), she admitted some who had
gone over partially to the enemy, such as Kergorlay and
Prosper Me'rime'e. The latter was, however, one of her oldest
friends, and a timoin at her marriage. He had a studio along-
side of hers in early days, and used to drop in and chat for
hours with her. At that time M. de Tocqueville told me
MeYimee was exceedingly handsome, with long fair hair curl-
ing over his shoulders. One day he appeared in the studio
with his arm in a sling, and he told Miss Clarke that he had
had a fall. The truth came out, however, that he had fought
a duel. A letter of his had been intercepted to some fair
lady, whose natural protector, as Me'rime'e said, " n'aimait pas
ma prose." In later years he affected a " phlegme Anglais,"
and was always delighted if one told him that he looked
English. He was a great admirer of Mademoiselle Ida's
cleverness and simplicity, and used often to invite the Mohls
and ourselves to drink yellow Russian tea in his apartment
in the Rue de Sevres. He was charming on these occasions :
he laid aside his cold, cynical manner, and amused us by
showing us his drawings and discoursing on the places and
people he had seen. There were never any other guests.
In 1871 his house was burnt down by the Commune on
account of his relations with the empress.
The most delightful of all the celebrated men who were
to be met at Madame Mohl's was Alexis de Tocqueville. As
Mrs. Grote said of him, he was made of porcelain throughout.
In spite of his great ability and distinction, and his incom-
parable talent for conversation, he never sought to usurp the
first place.
His inexhaustible mind (says Ampere) touched without undue
haste or too rapid transition, but with even flow and infinite variety,
one subject after another. They succeeded each other without effort,
from the most important and logical discussions down to the most
piquant anecdotes. Though always perfectly simple, he preserved, in
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
89
the most intimate and familiar conversations, the purity of expression
and admirable choice of words which was a part of his very nature.
His voice, sweet, low, and varied in its tones, added greatly
to the charm of his conversation. He was an equally sympa-
thetic listener, and there was no one to whom he listened
more willingly than to another habitue of Madame Mohl's, for
whom she had the highest respect M. Guizot. Tocqueville
said of him
Guizot is always charming. He has an aplomb, an ease, a verve,
arising from his security that whatever he says will interest and
amuse. He is a perfect specimen of an ex-statesman, homme de
lettres, and pere de famille, falling back on literature and the domestic
affections. As for me, I have intervals of sauvagerie ; or, rather, the
times when I am not sauvage are the intervals. I easily tire of Paris
and long to fly to the fields and woods of my native Normandy.
It is difficult to resist sketching some of the other cha-
racters in this remarkable circle Horace Say, with his charm-
ing countenance and delicate wit ; Cousin, always brilliant,
and enthusiastically in love with Madame de Longueville ;
Mignet, with his remarkable beauty he never seemed to listen
to a word, yet one felt one's vanity satisfied, for he took so
much pains to please the person he selected to listen to him ;
and many others, but space forbids, and it is necessary to
allow Madame Mohl to speak again for herself.
90 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER V.
FROM THE COUP D'ETAT TO THE CRIMEAN WAR
(1852-1854).^
Opinions Receptions at the Institut Pertz on Stein Restriction of the press
The Empire coming Visit to Austria and Hungary Schloss Hainfeld
Tyrolese travelling Dinner-party Madame Ranke's sonnet Death of Mrs.
Martin Life in London Life at Cold Overton Travelling acquaintance
Invalids Pleasures of convalescence Indignation at imperial luxury.
THE Due de Broglie has been quoted as saying that Madame
Mohl had no decided opinions. I think the reason of her
having produced this impression on him was her great respect
for the duke and his family (for his father * she had a perfect
veneration), and she probably passed lightly over every sub-
ject on which they disagreed. But to most people she was
not so reticent, and the vehemence with which her opinions
burst out was sometimes a source of great annoyance to
herself. She wrote to Miss Bonham Carter
One's opinions are the most troublesome, noisy, snarling dogs I
know. It is like having a pack of hounds in a handsome bedroom
when one is visiting, and striving to keep them down, shutting doors
and windows that they may not be heard, and now and then an
awful " bow-wow " bursts out !
She found it impossible to conceal her disgust at the pro-
gress of despotism under Louis Napoleon from those who were
favourable to him. She writes to the Miss Haughtons
* See chap. x.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 91
February 22, 1852.
DEAR CHILDREN,
Brummagem Boney keeps everything in a pretty state here ;
however, I have my reasons for saying little about it, only don't believe
the newspapers ; du reste, I live very agreeably in spite of it, have
some very agreeable acquaintance among the English, who are most
abundant this year. My soirees are very gay ; I wish you were here
to dance, poor children. I shall tell your message to Madame C .
I have not been there since the new state, for I am so hot in my
opinions that I am shy of seeing people lest I should quarrel with
them, which I do in general if they put forth notions contrary to
mine. I have a strong suspicion Monsieur G (an artist) is not
of my opinion, and I'm afraid it is because he has plenty of employ-
ment, which has kept me away from them also. I never in my life
was intolerant till now, but this would rouse the Seven Sages of
Greece. I always thought the absurdities of '48 would bring on a
contre-coup of absurdity, but this surpasses all my expectations. I was
at the reception of M. de Montalembert the other day, he was answered
by Guizot. As it is the only public speaking in France, and the only
place where there can be anything like freedom, you can't have
the slightest conception of the difficulty to get places for those who
had tickets, which were demanded seven weeks beforehand. A
few allusions intended by the speakers were applauded with frenzy,
and, contrary to all precedent, not a single word was said about the
powers that be, instead of the regular compliments addressed to
them. M. Mohl could not get to his place, and hung his arm over
the balustrade as there was no room for it ; it reposed on the head of
hair of a poor member who could not even get into any place, but
was down in a darkish hole of stair which is the passage to come in
by, between the centre and the amphitheatre. There was a whole
lot of members poked into this hole ; never within my remembrance
did I see such a seance. It is said some English offered three
hundred francs for centre tickets. I'm sure I should have been glad
to have sold mine for half were it not for decency.
Ever yours tenderly,
M. MOHL.
92 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
From Julius Mohl.
June, 1852.
MY DEAR HILLY,
Many thanks for your letter ; the sight of your hand-
writing is like a shower of rain in this fearfully hot weather.
You seem to lead a merry life in London, what with breakfasts
and suppers, etc., etc. To make up for this, and in compensation,
I am as quiet as a mouse, only sitting in committees daily and
eating up my liver in attempts at rooting out abuses. But they
are very hard-lived and thorny all over. Do you recollect the man
who gives his arm to ladies at the public sittings of the Institut?
I find he gets two hundred and forty francs a year to keep him in
manchettes. As he wears none now, they being out of fashion, I
shall cut off the pay. Then the architect gets two hundred and forty
francs a year for these same public sittings to see if the upholsterer
has spread the carpet on the little staircase secundum artem, for
which the said upholsterer gets four hundred francs a year, the
carpets being ours he only puts them down. At each sitting
there is a locksmith in attendance to see if he is wanted, and a
carpenter who gets one hundred and sixty francs a year for putting
up a certain piece of wood at the orchestra above the president's
head, which piece might be nailed on once for all, or omitted with-
out a soul being the worse for it. But this is only the small fry, and
bigger fish are nibbling at our poor substance ; e.g. we print our
works entirely at our own expense, and sell them to Didot for twelve
francs a volume, which he retails to the public for forty-two francs,
without any risk or advance of capital We had a fireman who put
our coals in the caloriftre, and got twelve hundred francs a year for
it ; but now we have made a contract by which a man undertakes to
furnish coals and a man for fifteen hundred francs a year, etc.
Little puss has been called for by Madame (what is her name ?
Miss Blanche's mother). I quite miss the little thing ; it used to come
in every morning scampering and begging for milk so passionately ; at
any rate, it is in good hands. Poor Sacripant has as yet found no
master, and old puss is this very moment lying on the carpet growl-
ing at him, but too lazy to get up and beat him. The house is
topsy-turvy in the highest degree, and for some days so much so that
Julie declared she could cook no dinner for me, and the maids
dined out
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 93
Miladi has found her match in hobby-horses in an old friend, a
Swedenborgian, who has been living with her this last month, and
has astonished her ladyship by her wild fancies. For instance, she
holds that after death the souls are kneaded up together, and a great
man formed out of them, in which every soul is placed in the part
which his passions in this world have favoured.
Nothing new here. Merime'e is just in prison to expiate Libia's
faults and shortcomings. Government is going on in its old style,
only the new legislative institutions do not work well, which is no
wonder, and their ingenious inventor sees himself that this won't do ;
but I defy him to invent something which could live. They are
building the Louvre, and have made an awful pit running from the
end of the rue Richelieu to the end of the Louvre to lay the founda-
tion of the new gallery. Their extravagance is fearful, and their want
of moral sense incredible. So they at last decided to make for
Canino a comfortable place as director of the garden of plants, and
to give him thirty thousand francs a year. It is an insult to science,
which will be deeply regretted when the time will come ; but nobody
can agree when this will be. A nation is a very stupid concern, and
it will require some time before they will feel their degradation suffi-
ciently and generally enough.
To the same.
Paris, August i, 1852.
I have got your letter and your present, and am grateful for both.
The penknives look capital, and will do great execution, I hope ; and
the pencil is a very nice little wonder, which, by your leave and
licence, I shall keep myself, and Laure Burnouf shall not be the
worse for it. I will give her something else in your name, as your
presents ain't to be given away in this fashion.
I have got to-day a letter from old David, who wishes to be
reminded to you. He is in the country at Madame de T 's, where
he passes every year three months amongst a set which is very un-
congenial to him, but habit makes that he always goes there. She is
une belle dame in all the strength of the word, originally very graceful
and good-natured, but spoiled as much as possible. He is now
printing a translation, in very queer French verse, of a Spanish drama.
It is very strange he has no ear whatever, and is fallen in his age
on verse-writing however, it amuses him and does nobody much
94 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
harm ; but you will have to listen to one of his lucubrations next
winter. I shall escape this time, but my wife and you are booked
for it. He has read it already to me, and to an old gentlewoman
who is as deaf as a post, and was in raptures, not having understood
a word of what he read.
Sacripant, the cat, is gone to M. de Beze, poor fellow ! and it
seems his good nature has already made him many friends.
Pertz' book on Stein is a very curious and very important book,
not for his part in it, but for the documents and letters he prints,
and which come hissing hot down on the political snow in Germany.
Pertz' sauce is cool enough and stiff enough, but the dish, or rather the
meat, is peppery enough for any taste ; and then Pertz is, in fact, a
liberal-minded man, so there is no suppression or perversion of facts
and opinions in it, and the book is such that it must produce a great
and very healthy effect in Germany. I have only read two volumes
of it
My wife is, of course, au spectacle with miladi.
They have done something almost incredible, even in this in-
credible state of things. You know that most of the professors for
French schools are formed in the Ecole Normale here. The young
men get into the Ecole by a preliminary examination ; but this year
Fortoul has struck out of the list of candidates for entrance every
Protestant and every Jew. This, however, would not hold, and the
Protestants and Jews have been readmitted. My only hope is that
this despotism, if it lasts, will teach the French to cling to the law
which they are always so ready to despise and resist. If the monstrous
illegality of the present system will produce this effect, it is the best
thing that could happen to the country. Meanwhile, things produce
their natural effects. The almost entire suppression of the press
produces either the reality, or at least the belief in an enormous
corruption. Certainly, from the absence of a free press, it will take
a much longer time until the country will be filled with these rumours ;
but it takes at the same time away all means of defending govern-
ment from calumny. We shall undoubtedly get the Empire, which
will be only a humbug the more, but may bring on a war, not
instantly, but by gradual irritation, resulting from the mistrust and
jealousies it will beget, and which will give this man a pretext for
avenging Waterloo, which is one of his fatal ideas, and on which he
will split, but God knows with what a train of misery for Europe.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 95
But I must put an end to this scribbling. God bless you, my dear
Hilly ; do remember me kindly to Mrs. Carter and all your people.
Madame Mohl was exceedingly fond of scenery and
travelling, and in the autumn of this year she and M. Mohl
and their niece had a delightful tour in Austria and the
Tyrol. She wrote from Germany to her American friend,
Miss Emma Weston, and, after her return, to the Miss
Haughtons and Miss Bonham Carter.
Hainfeld, Styria, September 17, 1852.
DEAR EMMA,
I think you must have read Captain Hall's * account of
this place, not that it is very accurate ; but still you will have some
notion where we are if not, learn we are about half an hour's
drive from Hungary, and something about half-way between Vienna
and Trieste. This place belongs to Baron Hammer, a great Orien-
talist, who has been in correspondence with M. Mohl these fifteen
years, but they never met. When he heard we were at Vienna, he
wrote to invite us here. We left Vienna on the i4th. We had a
beautiful journey from Vienna here, across a mountain called the
Simmering (?), especially the southern descent quite as beautiful as
the Salzkammergut. We got to Gratz in one day, and came here in
a second day. The old baron was out, and had not told the servants,
so we were rather posed, especially on entering the long galleries
inside, which looked by lamplight as if all the ghosts in Europe had
rendezvoused here, and Ida begged not to have a room to herself.
The outside you see by the picture ; the inside is much more curious,
built round a large square court. Behind these arcades are the doors
of all the rooms. The first floor has seventy-two rooms, all very
large ; the ground floor is nothing except the kitchen ; all the rest
seem like coach-houses or less, with grated windows ; but the terrific
aspect at night is looking along the gallery, which I may call a cloister,
for it's just like one, each side being at a round guess two hundred
and fifty feet long in the twilight they look endless, with only two .
lamps. At each of the four corners there is a staircase. The rooms
were all fitted up about a hundred and forty years ago. The walls
* Captain Basil Hall spent a winter at Schloss Hainfeld with Madame de
Purgstall. His amusing book was much read by the last generation.
96 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
are four feet thick, and at the towers a great deal more ; they are
capital hide-and-seek places. When the old baron came back he
made us extremely welcome. He is very polite, marshalled me about
with a servant, preceding us into the tea-cabinet, as he calls it the
only smallish, not small, room in the house, for it is as large as my
best sitting-room without the alcove. There were besides himself a
gentleman and his daughter from Heidelberg, whom Ida knew,
luckily. The old baron is seventy-nine, and much brisker than any
young man I know. He made me walk three hours yesterday, first
all over the house, then to a glen so Scotch-looking I thought
Madame de Purgstall (Miss Cranstoun) must have made the road
to it, but she had never even been in it . I can't make out as much
about her as I should like. After fagging me to death, though I
liked it much, he went and soused in the river, and sent to Mr. Mohl
to come and make conversation with him while he was in the cold
water. Then we dined at one, and at four he set off again with all
the party except me, and walked them three hours more, till even
Ida was very tired. They came back at seven and we drank tea.
While they were out I enjoyed a delicious lonely wander about the
house. It is so solitary, so large, so amusing, that I could talk with
it for a month. There is scarcely a bit of furniture, a bit of wall, that
does not say something they are all queer and old and strange.
Even the Herr Baron himself can't, nor very few people, I believe,
enjoy the company of an old house as I do. Madame de Purgstall
lived here so many years alone, because her son was buried here,
who died somewhere about 1820. I can't ask half the questions I
should like for fear of treading on gouty toes. The Herr always calls
her " my poor friend," and speaks with great attachment of her. He .
was a distant relation of the family ; no near ones remained, and
the property was divided among the collateral branches. I think I
saw the bell-rope the captain made for the old lady. M. de
Hammer was very indignant with Lockhart for implying that he
was a sort of dependent of the family, born on the estate, etc.,
which is a lie. As everybody in Vienna knows, he is the Baron
Hammer, and the son of a highly respected and positioned man.
This bit in Lockhart I had forgotten, but he showed it me quite
in a rage, which I don't wonder at ; and Mr. Cranstoun, her brother,
was so very angry at Captain Hall's book, which looked if all her
relations had abandoned her, whereas he came to see her every
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 97
year there. He, I should think, might have set Lockhart to rights
about it, but these scribbling people are all afraid of each other,
and if a Scotchman does ever such a dirty trick to an un-Scotchman,
no Scot will take the part of justice ; this I must own in spite of my
love for them. The house is full of romance. There is the portrait
of one lady who in the last century held the family castle, I know
not how long, against the Turks, who possessed Styria at one time,
and were often coming ravaging. This is not the family castle, large
as it is ; it was built for the widows, who must have had pretty hand-
some dowries to keep it up. The castle (fighting) is on a rock
looking like Arthur's Seat. We were to go and see it to-day, but the
rain prevented us ; it is very beautiful at this distance, and the heroine
built all sorts of fortifications. This castle had a moat round it I
suppose to defend the widows, for it was at least sixty feet broad ;
but the Cranstouns had it filled up forty years ago, and it is now about
six feet deep, filled with grass and drained. Madame de PurgstalPs
portait here represents her as a handsome woman. If you remember,
she was Walter Scott's confidant in his first love. Oh, what would I
have given to hear the old lady's own account of that matter instead of
Lockhart's puppyish hints ! Perhaps you think it great nonsense to
talk so much of this old place, but it has taken such complete hold
of my imagination, I can't think with vivacity of anything else. How-
ever, one must part with one's dearest, and we shall leave this Mon-
day, 2oth, go across mountains and beautiful (bad) roads to Tyrol
and a place called Meran. We shall see nothing but mountains for
eight or ten days, which will be a great delight. We shall be in Paris
between the ist and 5th. . . .
I enjoyed Vienna a good deal. We went six times to the theatre,
two of which were the opera, but in that I was disappointed. The
actors at the Burg-Theater, answering to the Theatre Frangais, are
some of them capital. We saw a proper comedy, really taken from
the manners of the country, and how I did laugh ! I managed to
understand it. Nowhere have I seen people enjoy the drama as
these, but, contrary to the French and English, they enjoy the good
old plays most. Schiller's " Maid of Orleans " and Lessing's " Nathan
the Wise " had overflowing audiences in such uncomfortable places I
was astonished, so hot and so attentive. It was beautiful to see, but
I enjoyed the modern comedy by a Viennese author much more;
indeed, I have never seen more genuine comedy better acted in
H
98 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Paris or London, and I had the great drawback of only understand-
ing half. I believe the taste for this delightful amusement is in a
better state in Vienna than in any town in Europe. Not so the
music ; they scream worse than in France, and I heard the Hugue-
nots with thorough disgust. If Meyerbeer was hung he would only
have his deserts. I have just learnt that Mrs. Trollope, when she
was here, said to some one who gave her information about the
Academy to put in her book, " I must show it to Prince Metternich,
and if he approves I'll put it in." Nothing could exceed the civility
of the Metternichs to her, all owing to the success of her book upon
America ; however, you richly deserved it, and I easily believe she
is the first writer of travels there who expressed a horror of the way
you all behaved to the slaves.
To the Miss Haughtons.
Paris, November I, 1852.
MY DEAR CHILDREN,
I have not written sooner because I have been wandering
ever since June 12. I then went to England. I remained six or
seven weeks among my friends in town and country, and then came
back about July 27 ; then I made preparations for a long journey,
having but one week to do them, and we set off the 4th for Germany,
picked up Ida on the road at Heidelberg, and hurried on to Stutt-
gart, where we spent two days only, our chief but being the Tyrol
and Vienna. The rain rather made us alter our plans. We went to
Munich, hoping the weather would clear. We saw all that was to be
seen there, and much more than was worth seeing, and then set off
to cross the passes into the Tyrol, which is the country of my soul.
The people are delightful so sociable, so tame, they hop on one's
fingers ; but they are willing to feed one, instead of chirping eternally
to be fed, as the Swiss do. They have more real sociability and
agrement than any nation I have seen, and that throughout all ranks
fact is, what are called the lower classes are quite as cultivated as
any ; they all read and write, and know the history of their country,
and delight in telling stories of it We travelled in a humble way
in Stell-wagens (something between a diligence and an omnibus),
which are set up by the innkeepers, and are always going up and down
the valleys picking up people. What with Ida and Mr. Mohl, I had
as much conversation as if I had spoken German, as they both talked
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 99
away for ever, and, as the Tyrolese are the gallantest people under
the sun, Ida's bright eyes and rosy cheeks made us friends every-
where. I kept rejoicing I was not a grand lady, obliged to travel in
a fine carriage with post-horses to keep up my consequence, and see
nothing but my maid stuck opposite to me and my man behind on
the coach box, which is the travelling solace of all great ladies.
Ischl is a beautiful, beautiful place in the Salzkammergut, which
is a beautiful country east of Tyrol, formed by the continuation of
the Alps as they lower down towards Styria. There are seven or
eight lakes. It is a little like Scotland, only covered with trees.
Salzbourg is the capital, and famous for its beauty ; but that I could
not see, as it rained all day. Ischl is a watering-place in some of
these mountains, where all the court of Vienna and the finest people
of Austria go ; and we found there the Queen of Holland, who wrote
to Mr. Mohl to go and see her. I dined with her two days running ;
she was delighted to have Mr. Mohl and M. de Meyendorff to talk
to. Now, this latter is certainly a clever man, and to me very
amusing, because he is a great diplomate. Nothing could be more
curious than to see the revers de la medaille through him of every-
thing in the politics of Europe one sees the other side of. He is
reckoned in Austria and Russia as the most influential person they
have. Nothing could be kinder than the queen, and we should
have dined oftener with her had we not left Ischl. We went away
in a modest Stell-wagen, and I almost cried at leaving the mountains.
We went then to Vienna ; stayed a fortnight. I went to the theatre
six times. I enjoyed Vienna much also, and all the curious things
I learnt there about Hungary and the other end of Europe. It
seemed as if new ideas were pouring into me so fast that the neck
of the bottle was too narrow and would not let them enter, which
means my bad memory, for I can't recollect a quarter of all I learnt
and saw. Mr. Mohl dined continually at M. de MeyendorfFs. A
great agrhnent in Vienna is the ease with which one makes ac-
quaintance. I have seen nowhere in Europe people so courteous
and so friendly; they are like what the French are described to
have been before the Revolution. Like them they are desperately
fond of amusing themselves, and on Sundays and fetes the whole
population turns out to all the gardens they can find to feast in. If
you sit by any one he is willing to talk, and don't think it odd.
It is the only country in Europe where I have seen such sociability
ioo LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
and such polish in each class ; even the lowest are gentle and soft
in manner never swear at their horses, never beat them. We
went from Vienna to Hainfeld, where Captain Hall stayed and
wrote a book called "A Winter in Styria;" and a very curious place
it is. M. de Hammer being an Orientalist is a great friend of
Mr. Mohl's ; he made a great fuss about us. He is a charming old
man of seventy-nine, all politeness, very droll, and has written the
" History of the Assassins," for which I named him the Old Man
of the Mountain. He has written in all 130 volumes, and has just
begun a " History of Oriental Poetry " in twelve volumes, in quarto,
which he sometimes fears he shall not have time to finish.
We came back all through Styria and ^Carinthia through places
that had never seen an Englishman, let alone a woman. We
enjoyed this more than all ; true, we had a charming young man of
a Tyrolese * who helped us along. In one place we could get no
Stell-wagen, because there was only one, and the man who had it
only gave places to the people he liked ; this was such a new way
of doing business that we were reconciled to the inconvenience by
the curiosity. The conductor of one of our wagens told us that
when we got into Carinthia the people in the inns (such inns!)
would all go and hide themselves ; and actually they did in one of
them. We took post-horses at the place where the man would only
let his wagen to those he took a fancy to, and we got on back to
Tyrol with great fun and enjoyment, but not very good victuals ;
but we none of us cared, and we were much more curious about
queer ways than fine cooking. It was pretty cold in most of these
high valleys, they being along the north side of the crest of the Alps
which separates Southern Austria from Venice and Northern Italy ;
but as it was September no one thought of a fire. There are no
chimneys, all pottes, eight feet square each way; take up half a
room. The kitchens have an enormous fourneau in the middle,
about a little higher than a table ; on this a wood fire is lighted
no charcoal and the smoke goes up in the roof all about to find a
hole which is sometimes on one side. The odd thing is that, though
the kitchen is in a manner one large chimney, the smoke never
makes one's eyes smart ; it all keeps to the top, and makes the whole
as black as if it were painted. Quantities of all sorts of things are
standing on this large fourneau, all round the crackling fagots.
* The charming Tyrolese was M. Schmidt von Zabierow.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 101
I can't say the kitchens were very clean ; however, they are much
dirtier in the Pyrenees. We came back all through Tyrol again, as
I never could get enough of it, and should like to go again next
year. We got to Paris in twelve hours from Strasbourg by the
railroad. . . .
Adieu, dear children.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
Paris, October 8, 1852.
DEAREST HILLY,
. . . Almost the whole of this journey we got up at four to be off
at five. To tell you all the curious people, the beautiful country, the
succession of new and delightful impressions, would be impossible in
a dozen letters, but you may imagine getting up early, sleeping
in taudis, huddling on one's clothes, putting on all the petticoats we
possessed, with a very short allowance of towels and no time for
sousing ; in Carinthia scarcely anything to eat. In some of the places
where horses were to be changed the folk all went and hid them-
selves ; in others more advanced in civilization, the mothers called the
children to the doors to look at us. One conductor turned round every
now and then when we were talking English (Ida and I) and grinned
amain at the drollery thereof; and had exactly the expression of a
body looking benevolently into a cage which contained animals from
New Holland. He was a good body, though, and when it was dark he
would put out his hand to feel the buttocks of his horses, and if they
were damp from going over-quick he would go a foot's pace for a time.
He played us the trick at one place of making us get up at half-past
two (morning). We huddled down like Hamlet's father, " unshriven,"
etc. (there was a large beer-glass to wash in), and his conductor-ship
was still in bed. After an hour wasted he was ready. We all got in
very cross, and after rattling on two or three hours he got something
good which opened his heart, and he told us, grinning much, that he
had deeply deeply impressed on the kellnerinn to wake us an hour
before him, that we might wait for /n'm, and not he for us. I vowed
vengeance and looked sour. I told Mr. Mohl to mind and not give a
"pour boire" and to tell him why; but this treatment of his horses, the
never using a whip, the never speaking above his breath to them
(swearing at them is unknown all through Austria), softened me, and
102 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
about an hour or two before we arrived we heard him talking to a
man on the box he had picked up (we were in the cabriolet) to this
effect that the occupation of a " kutscher " was a very sorry one ; that
he had worked hard for years and wanted to marry (he had a bouquet
in his hat), and the sum was very far from what it must be before the
commune (gemeinde) allowed him, and that it increased so slowly he
did not know if he should ever get it. This softened me so (and I
recollected he had probably been rubbing down the horses an hour
after we had got to bed) that I exhorted M. Mohl to give him a large
" pour boire." .Now, this may be a mystery to you which I will explain.
The commune (gemeinde) will not allow any person to marry unless
he can show forth that he has a certairr sum for his children, the
priest being strictly forbidden to perform the ceremony. This is, I am
told, the law all through Tyrol, Carinthia, and Styria. As these people
are very sentimental they sometimes go to Rome to get married.
" Well," exclaimed I, " that must cost more than the sum to be saved,"
thinking, innocent me, that they went in cabriolets behind kutschers
like such a grandee as I. " Oh no ! it costs them nothing, for they go
as pilgrims and beg their way on foot ; but when they come back the
gemeinde hands them over to the tribunal to be punished for such a
breach of the law ; then they are fined." Of course, therefore, many
dispense with the ceremony and the pilgrimage, and instead of marry-
ing do waur ; but the quantities of bouquets I saw in people's hats
proved to me that a great number conformed, for when a man is
engaged, the damsel has flower-pots in her window, and gives him a
bouquet, which he sticks in his hat. In Tyrol, when she is coquettish
and jilts the swain, all the other young men of the village assemble
under her window and throw down the flower-pots. I never saw such
gallantry to the fair sex in any country nor in my best days, as in
Tyrol, in all classes ; they speak in a different voice, and have a
manner so different towards a woman, that it must strike the most
unobservant. I saw not one exception, living among kutschers and
peasants in Stell-wagens, which pick up every one in the road for a
very slight sum. I must say the Tyrolese are more occupied with
flirting than any nation under the sun, but it struck me as a proof of
good morals ; for if the men despised the women they would not be so
civil to them, and if they lived in a disorderly way they would not
care so much for their mere company. However, I abstain from con-
clusions ; I tell what I saw and heard. It would be too long to tell all
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 103
I spied out in Vienna, but an anecdote just crossed my mind which I
will relate. We were introduced to a Polish lady whose name I can't
spell or pronounce, who had been in Galicia during all the terrible
massacres ; she was one of the noblesse, and gave a fearful description,
which I skip, of the state of things there. In the course of conversation
she said to Mr. Mohl, " Before 1 848 no lady ever danced, or talked, or
would give her arm in the street to an officer of Engineers. Why ?
Oh, of course, as they must have talent and education, there was no
noblesse amongst them ; they were nobodies." " Bless my soul ! " says
Mr. Mohl, " what a state of things ! Why, you are like people of the
thirteenth century. It's no wonder you were all massacred ; it was just
the Jacquerie of the Middle Ages." She did not seem to compre-
hend him much, though she was very clever in her way ; but these
ideas seemed quite new to her. She then told him that at a grand ball
a young lady had refused to dance with an officer in the Engineers,
saying she did not dance. A few minutes after he saw her flourish
away with a partner, and he said indignantly to a comrade, " Look at
those people ! they owe their lives to us ; we have saved them from
worse than death ; and now they want us no more this is the way they
treat us." The young emperor was behind and overheard. He ad-
dressed the officer and asked the name of the young lady. He
answered that he had no idea he was overheard, and begged he might
not be obliged to tell. The emperor insisted, and he gave her name.
He immediately called to the Prince Lichtenstein, who is grand
master of the palace, or some such thing, and showing him the young
lady he said, " I strictly forbid her ever being invited to any Court
Ball again." This young emperor is a great curiosity in his way, but
I have no time to say half.
Writing in 1873 to Miss Wyse, a valued friend of later
years, whose acquaintance she made on this occasion, she
says
I remember well the Riesenberg, which was not far from Schloss
Hainfeld. M. de Hammer took us there, and gave me a history of
it, and its seven fortifications and moats. I remember well, too,
your beautiful mamma, and that M. Mohl came up to me and said,
" Come down quickly to see the handsomest lady I ever saw." It
was a time of great enjoyment to me, and everything is delightful
that recalls it.
104 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
M. Mohl wrote from Vienna to Miss Bonham Carter
Vienna, September, 1852.
MY DEAR HILLY,
I don't know when my wife has written to you, and
cannot ask her, as she is, of course, in the theatre, so you will most
likely get a repetition of what you know already. She and Ida were
so delighted with Ischl, the fine air and beautiful scenery, and the
good company we found there, that they would have stayed a month
longer ; but I had a secret uneasiness about Vienna, so I brought
them here. When we left the mountains near Gmiinden, they were
so doleful that I proposed to go back ; buthappily they were ashamed
of coming back, like the bad shilling, after all the adieus and leave-
takings. If they had accepted the proposal I should have missed
the man I wanted most to see the director of the Imperial Printing
Office, who was just going off to the Tyrol for three weeks, and put
off his departure for three days to show me his establishment, and
explain to me the system of encouragement of Oriental printing they
have here. I know now what I wanted to know, and am an idle
man who is looking at collections of medals and antiquities, dining
out, and undertaking inroads on the public places of amusement of
the Viennese. My old friend Meyendorff is here a most potent
signer, who lends my wife his loge in the Burg-Theater, to her and
Ida's notable satisfaction, and gives me dinners and stories of the
Government here. However, I don't think it will last long, and as
I want to see old Hammer, the Oriental scholar, who is in his
chateau of Hainfeld in Styria, we meditate going there, and then
returning to Paris by Brixen and Bregenz, if the passes are not yet
snowed up.
I am very much satisfied with what I see here, particularly the
printing office and the collections, which are very beautiful. I find
the people very kind and good-natured, very much given to eating
and drinking, and for the moment very little to politics and such-
like speculations. The nobility goes into the army, despises the civil
service, is rather ignorant and uncultivated, but very polite, and
with good manners. In the Casino, the most aristocratic club, the
reviews, down to the Revue des Deux Mondes, are hardly ever cut
open. The great aristocracy is enormously rich, but spends its money
on horses, fine furniture, etc., cares not even for fine arts, although
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 105
they have picture-galleries which they have inherited, and which it
is the custom of rendering public. As to science, it is unknown to
them almost by name, and very little honoured by the state, or, in
fact, by anybody. There is little small nobility ; it has perished in
the wars of religion. No nobleman ever sends his son to the uni-
versity; it is reckoned bad taste. I suppose it is a state of things as
it was in France a hundred years ago. They are really very back-
ward. The army is the best part of the nation, and absorbs all the
force and the money of it. The emperor is young, very active, very
wilful, rather harsh, very sober, without vanity, but with all the pride
of his house. If he lives long he will become a very important
personage in the world, for good or for evil. There seems to be
much good here and many capabilities, but it is yet in a low state of
civilization, and all asleep, at least as far as I can see. What may be
under the surface I don't know, but my impression is that this popu-
lation has retrograded since the days of Charles V. certainly in
comparison with others, but perhaps even absolutely. However, I
am saying here more than I could prove. The country is most
beautiful and the climate delicious, although we have suffered a
great deal from rain.
The railroads will make travelling very troublesome, because they
throw such masses of travellers during the fine weather on the towns
and show-places, that no inns can contain them. At Salzburg we
nearly slept in an omnibus ; at Ischl whole companies arriving were
offered a clean-swept corridor for a bedroom and their carpet bags
for beds. Vienna is crammed full, and so it is everywhere.
This is a most inconvenient town ; between the town proper and
the suburb is a glads of a quarter of a mile broad, which makes the
distances intolerable. The town itself is small, and quite insufficient
for the public offices, the shops, and the houses of the aristocracy
which are crowded in it. These aristocrats' " hotels " are of enor-
mous size, and much more magnificent than any in Paris, but very
dark, because the facades are in very narrow streets, and the court-
yards insufficient for the height of the palaces; but these people
won't live in the suburbs, where they could have light, air, and
gardens. The lodgings are dearer than in Paris, at least in the inner
town ; in general life seems to be dear, only the habits of the people
are simple and not exacting, and they seem to enjoy life extremely*
I am scandalized at the neglect of literature, and the little, or rather
106 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
no influence of literary people here. It is possible that they have
too much in Paris, but this is downright barbarism. Books seem to
exercise no influence on the ruling class, and with the great material
power of this empire, and its geographical and historical position,
I am afraid that it will be again, as it has been in the sixteenth cen-
tury, the great obstacle of the thorough reformation of the world.
September 6.
Saturday we were at Laxenburg, a very beautiful garden of the
emperor, ornamented with a modern kickshaw feudal fortress ; but
the grounds are very fine, and the trees particularly so. Afterwards
we had a grand supper with actors an4 actresses (I hope you see I
am making considerable progress in the ways of the world), and one
sees strange things in such strange company. There was an actress,
a very handsome and modest-looking lady with her husband, who
have a good-sized estate in Moravia, in which they pass their summer
playing the squire, and in winter she plays in Berlin and here ; her
name is Koester. The supper was expressly given to our honour
and glory !
I wish you were here ; my wife is looking at the tombs of the
emperors, or some such lugubrious sight. God bless you !
Madame Mohl began the winter merrily, with a very
successful dinner-party.
October, 1852.
MY DEAR HILLY,
Ranke has been here these five days ; he goes, alas !
Saturday. He is delightful (according to my notion, and in his way).
I gave a dinner-party Tuesday, which all but crucified Mr. Mohl,
because we were twelve people (in all), and much vittles, and a
man to wait. He bore it and said nothing, but looked so dismal
that I shall not do it half as often as I should like. It's very pro-
voking to be governed by people's countenances. I had M. de
Buch, the great geologist (which perhaps you know not, poor
benighted creature !), and Ranke I sitting glorious between him and
M. de Collegno and M. Roulin, M. Ampere, Miss Anna Mohl,
Mr. Mohl, Madame de Collegno, M. Elie de Beaumont, Me'rime'e,
Miss S the beauty. I wrote the names down on bits of paper ;
I walked round the table calculating and cogitating (I have
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 107
written them down as they sat for your edification). It went off
pretty well, thanks to Ampere, but Collegno was dismal, as he had
just learnt the death of Gioberti; and then the chimney smoked
in the drawing-room. Still, it was rather a successful affair, but not
so much so as the dinner at Ghita's * a week previous. These things
are like all other chefs-d'oeuvre ; a little touch of chance, a something
beyond the reach of art, often makes them go off better than all the
calculations and precautions.
I went last night with Ranke to M. Thierry, and there came
Mignet, upon which the three historians had a long disquisition
which greatly interested me about the state of France in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Ranke has just written a book on and
about Henry IV., Sully, Francis I., the conquest of Naples, the politics
of Mazarin, etc. Mignet just as beautiful as ever. I had a wonderful
longing to invite him to dine with Ranke on Friday, but I thought of
Mr. Mohl's dismal face, and refrained. If you can remember to tell
this to him when I'm dead, I shall be obliged to you, as he thinks I
had my own way in everything. It will do him good to know that I
would have had a dinner-party once a week if I had followed my
fancy, and he will rejoice at what he escaped.
She adored Henri IV. as much as she detested the Bona-
partes, and read everything, however dull and archaic, that
was written about him. In the last year of her life, Mignet
(aged eighty-four) one afternoon obeyed a summons from his
old friend to meet Mrs. Wynne Finch at her house. Mignet was
astonished to find that Madame Mohl was studying some old
chronicle on the laws enacted by the Great King. He went
on to give them a most interesting lecture on the reign and
virtues of Henri IV. Madame Mohl got tired, and touching
Mignet's shoulder with all the petulance of a spoilt child, she
cried, " Assez, mon cher, vous prechez une convertie."
She was very fond of the historian Ranke, and among
Madame Mohl's papers is the following sonnet, copied in her
own handwriting :
* Madame de Collegno.
io8 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Madame Ranke's Sonnet.
THINKING OF AN ENGLISH LADY WHO LIVES IN THE RUE DU BAC.
As sportive as a fawn in the greenwood
Is her blithe spirit, blending sense and play,
So lightly bounding, graceful, coy, and gay,
Yet ever pitiful and kindly good.
By few her depths of heart are understood ;
For, working charity the livelong day,
She does her best to chase life's gloom away,
Too wise o'er its unfailing cares to brood.
But all must own her bright peculiar power
To waken happiness where she appears,
Or soothe to rest dull sorrow's sighs and fears.
Oh, more to be desired than Beauty's flower
Is such a sunlit, soul-reviving dower,
That smiles in later as in earlier years.
By Clara Ranke. Sent to the most flattered original in 1855.
A sad domestic event put an end to these gaieties :
Madame Mohl's niece, Mrs. Martin, died of blood-poisoning.
M. Mohl writes to Miss Bonham Carter
Rue du Bac, December, 1852.
MY DEAR HILLY,
I have got to-day your very kind letter. I suppose my
wife will answer you very soon, but as I don't know when I will try
to do it first. She was, as you may imagine, very much cast down
with these news, which were perfectly unexpected, as we knew nothing
of the short malady of poor Selina. My sister-in-law wrote to me to
prepare her sister ; but what can one do to prepare news the most
unlikely one could imagine ? It is about ten days ago ; my wife has
hardly seen anybody since, or gone out. She was uncertain if she
should go to England, as she was doubtful if her sister would like it
or not She has written to her, but the answer has not arrived. I
think she will decline. She wrote to me with great resignation. It
is a beautiful letter, but my wife is afraid of reading it* You know
* This is very characteristic of Madame Mohl's fear of painful excitement.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. ic 9
enough of the family to feel how great this misfortune is, and I am
afraid my sister-in-law, however stoical or devoutly resigned, will not
be able to bear this, to her, incomparable loss. I am very sorry for
her. I have the greatest esteem for her, and even a great fondness,
far as our habits of mind are asunder. It is altogether a most pitiful
case, and arising from so improbable a cause. I don't know anything
which gives a more vivid impression of the uncertainty of life to
wash a child's diseased ear, having a scratch on one's thumb, and to
die from the inoculation of this virus ! It is abominable.
I have little to say from here ; we are living in the midst of a
colossal lie, which is built on enormous tyranny which has become
possible by the follies of the republicans. But what can one say on
this without repeating the same thing over and over ? I hate to hear
of it and to talk of it.
I am troubling my head with a number of hobby-horses, but they
are an unruly set, and very seldom, when they come out, answer
one's expectations. I have just brought to life one I had worked
for these ten years a collection of Oriental classics. The first volume
is now at last printing, and I hope it will go on by its own strength.
We shall see.
I am now occupied with another, that is to remodel the adminis-
tration of the Institut, which is a very troublesome affair, but I
think will be accomplished next year, at least, tolerably ; but it is
easier to make than to mend, and so I am meditating something
quite new the creation of an Arabic university at Algiers, where
letters, medicine, theology, and jurisprudence shall be taught by the
remnant of learned Mahomedans except medicine, which must be
taught by Europeans. It would be a great element of peace between
the French and Arabs, and the medical school a great benefit to all
Mahomedans. I believe that it will be dene at last, when the idea
has had time to penetrate some official brain. But I hope it is the
last of my hobbies ; I am sick of this ungrateful family.
I don't doubt but what you have heard about my poor madman
Chapira. I was told he had become mad in England, which I did
not wonder at. He was before about as insane as any man who
is allowed to walk about, and I conclude from your letter that
he is dead; it is the best for himself. If one should find in a
novel this strange mixture of pride and humility, of helpless folly and
heroic determination and perversity, nobody would believe that such
no LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
a creature could have existed. It was an entirely hopeless case.
The story of his books, and of his determination of carrying five or
six thousand volumes with him in spite of everybody, is such that I
can hardly believe my own souvenirs. He drove his last landlord,
who is an old, very simple man, almost crazy ; and his son has told
me since that his father never recovered from the terror and the rage
in which Chapira's strange proceedings drove him. The son is a
judge somewhere in the provinces, and was obliged to come here to
try to restore some peace in the house. A Catholic missionary
society had offered me to take charge of him, and to send him to a
country house they have near Amiens, if I would pay his pension for
two years. But after having accepted, Chapira broke off when he
saw that the society would not transport his books to Amiens. His
pride was intolerable, and inspired him with unlimited ideas of the
duties of others to him, while he never conceived that he had any
to others. It was the most ill-regulated mind I have ever observed,
and nothing could save him.
My wife has just got a letter from her sister, who wants her to go
to England not now, but in spring. She writes that she is bodily
well, and her deep religious feeling gives her a certain, calmness.
Twenty-seven years after Mrs. Martin's death, Madame
Mohl wrote to Lady Eastlake
My sister, to whom I was greatly attached, lost her only daughter,
who was still young, and who left seven children, the youngest only
six months old. From that time my sister never left them, and I
made a sort of vow that I would never spend a year without spending
some months with her ; for this lost daughter was more like a younger
sister to me my sister had married so young. This daughter's death
was dreadful to my sister, and no one but I knew what the loss was
to her.
On her way to Cold Overton she never failed to spend a
few weeks (rather less than more) with her friends in London.
She was intolerant of our habit of flying from London at the
feasts of the Church. She writes, " I don't want to arrive at
a time called Whitsuntide, when everybody is absent. Can
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. in
you tell me when it finished ? I was caught once in London
at that bad tide, and don't want to be so again."
We were all eager to have her ; as an inmate she gave
no trouble ; she never put out the household in any way.
She would take pains to be agreeable to the stupidest and
most insignificant person who happened to look in. She
never snubbed or neglected any one in our house, not even
very young ladies, although she would sometimes say,
if she chanced to sit near one, " My dear, I felt so
ashamed of not being a young man." The dullest dinner-
party was transformed by her presence. " My dear," she
would say, " I think it a shame to eat people's vittles and
give them nothing in return." In society she disliked tte-
a-tctes, and thought them very ill-bred. She liked a little
circle in which the ball of conversation is tossed from one to
the other, she thought it more exciting and less fatiguing
than if the company split up in the English fashion into duets.
She never could understand the pleasure which English people
find in standing and saying three words to each other at
evening parties ; she would try to get two or three to sit by
her and talk quietly, but she said they seemed in a sort of
feverish fidget as if expecting some wonderful sight, and
incapable of paying attention. She greatly enjoyed a real
tete-a-tete with a friend when there was no distracting company
present, and would readily unlock the stores of her memory,
and pour out the results of her long and varied experience.
Although she was so fond of society and talked so much
and so easily, a certain amount of solitude was absolutely
necessary to her. She would come home from a round of
visits looking fagged, with her hair all out of curl, and throw
herself into an armchair, exclaiming, " I am as tired as fifty
dogs," and then take up what she called a nourishing book
(an epithet of high praise which she also applied to persons),
and retire to her room for a couple of hours, whence she would
H2 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
emerge at dinner-time, fresh, brilliant, with her curls and her
mind quite crisp ; the life and soul of the company.
Nothing bored her more than a well-intentioned hostess
who would never allow her to be alone. She writes
I went six times to the play in a fortnight, and was fatigued, but
much more with the never being alone than with the going out It
is to me inconceivable that vie defamille you lead in England, sitting
four or five people together all day. I must be several hours alone
or I am knocked up, and seeing company at stated hours never
fatigues me like that dripping twaddle called par abus conversation.
You can't read an hour at any time without some insignificant talk
interspersed. I always lock myself up many hours in my room at
Cold Overton, and when I come out I am full of spirits ; but the
others are worn out.
She always conformed to the rules in other people's houses,
and her punctuality was unfailing. She used to quote from
Madame de Se'vigne', " Ma fille, on ne reste jamais au milieu
d'un quart d'heure."
She wrote to Miss Bonham Carter
I always fight against the tendency we all have to use up other
people under pretence that one is fond of them ; but, of course, one
may do the same, and if ever I do, be so good as not to give way to
me ; it does me harm, for it makes me more selfish and unreasonable.
I don't count among this my inordinate love of exactness to time,
because it is a cruel waste of everybody's life to keep one person
waiting. . . . We all have but limited means and strength, and if we
spend ourselves in sympathizing with nonsense, we can't have it for
what people really want. ... As if it were possible to do anything
in any way without giving all one's best juices to it. ... Families
want their daughters to follow their pursuits at odd times and in any
odd room, dining-room or other ; but if you can't give the best of
yourself to it, you will do nothing.
She thus describes a soir/e at the Royal Academy
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 113
DEAREST HILLY,
I was sorry not to see you at the valley of Jehoshaphat ;
but it was more from regret that you should lose so amusing a
spectacle than for the sake of meeting, for a " how d'ye do ? " and a
shake hands is really of no value. I got no more from the most
agreeable than from the most disagreeable of my acquaintance, and I
admire the parvenu-ship in social manners which gives a fever in the
feet to those who pretend to be at ease, and congeals their ideas in
their heads ; they are absolutely incapable of any good feeling or
thought, because they are inebriated with the effect of seeing so
many fine folk. They are like country peasants staring and stupefied
at their first sight of London, only they pretend to be joking and
above it : if they were not, why are they out of themselves incapable
of hearing what is said or answering, and in the agonies of trying to
bring forth a smart remark which won't come ? If they would sit
down and talk to their acquaintance as if they were at home at ease,
it would be worth while to go out, but the effect on their brain is
something to me unaccountable ; people who really are not remarkably
stupid seem transformed into wriggling idiots, and the young ladies
do nought but giggle I can't think what there is to laugh at ; I
should be very glad to laugh and the old ladies smile and smirk
with an air of assumed benevolence, which says, " I'm sure I've no
business here. I must be good-natured to make myself pardoned
for coming." The men too, forsooth, want to be light and airy, and
say exactly the contrary of everything they think, for that is supremely
clever. Nevertheless, I was amused pretty well. Lady Eastlake was
the only natural person there, for she did her honours like one born
to receive graciously and with ease.
But Madame Mohl did not allow the amusements of
London or the importunities of her friends to keep her long
away from her beloved sister and Cold Overton. Her arrival
there was the signal for great rejoicing among the little tribe
of grandchildren who surrounded Mrs. Frewen Turner. She
talked to them, read, walked, and rode with them. There
was scarcely any society, but Clarkey (as they all called her)
was completely happy. She had a very large bedroom,
which she also made her sitting-room, and carried thither her
114 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OP
books and her drawing. She was very anxious to encourage
a taste for drawing in her nieces, and soon their easels were
brought into Clarkey's room, which became the atelier of the
house.
There were so many little people, Frewens and Martins,
that they overflowed the dining-table, and had their dinner
at a side-table. At luncheon Madame Mohl used to call out,
"Young ladies at the cat's table" (a German expression),
" whose turn is it to ride with me ? " and those whose privilege
it was were greatly elated. They scampered along, through
brake, through brier, regardless of obstacles. Once they
were galloping in high glee when they saw a turnpike, and
they had none of them any money. The gate was open, and
they rode full tilt through it, to the consternation of the
keeper an achievement of which they boasted when they
got home ; but M. Mohl happened to be at Cold Overton,
and he and Mrs. Frewen Turner took a very different view of
the matter. The next day M. Mohl gave a double toll to the
turnpike-keeper, because, as he told him, " My wife is a queer
body, and she may very likely do the same again."
Her love of animals was as great as her fondness for
children. She wrote to me after I had lost and recovered
my dog
DEAR MINNIE,
I hope you don't think me such an abominable wretch
as to expect anything can be so interesting as the dog's return, or
that any biped short of an impassioned and graceful lover can be
compared to it. I don't joke at all. I love my cat better than most
of my friends, and a dog I don't choose to have because I know I
should love it better than all my family ; not that I should have the
slightest remorse for that, but the affliction it might give me if I lost
him I will not risk. Dog-stealing is a regular business in London,
and you must take care you have not to give several pounds every
three months. I know a lady who gave up living in England to
secure her dog.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 115
Miss Martin writes
There was a large setter at Cold Overton, named Sailor, that
every one feared to approach till she tamed him by taking his food
to his kennel. One Sunday she was walking with two Frewen nieces
through a long plantation, with a stream and ponds at intervals,
Sailor in attendance. He ran after a sheep from a neighbouring
field, which rushed into the pond in blind haste, and fainted from
fright. In a moment Clarkey had whipped off her dress-skirt and
was standing in water up to her waist, supporting the head of the
sheep above the water to save its life. My cousins rushed to a
neighbouring cottage for help, one of them holding Sailor, no easy
job. I can remember great mystery hanging round this story, and
how my aunt and cousins smuggled themselves by back-staircases to
their bedrooms that their wet garments might not be seen, lest Sailor
should get a beating !
Pity for all suffering was a passion with her. She could
not bear to see a horse beaten. It was almost painful to
drive with her, for she would keep looking out to see if the
coachman was flogging his horses, and insist on my calling
out to him every two minutes that we were not in a hurry.
In Paris it was worse. She said that nothing in England
struck her so much as our superior humanity to animals ; it
was quite a pleasure to her to look out of the window when a
great party was going on, and see the coachmen patting their
horses.
At Cold Overton they had a frisky young horse with
strong opinions, one of which was an objection to starting.
One day Mr. Martin was going out in his dog-cart ; the whole
family assembled in the paved courtyard to see him off. The
horse declined to start ; Mr. Martin began to beat him.
Madame Mohl cried out. It was represented to her that the
only way to get the animal off was to flog him ; whereupon
she flung herself down on the paving-stones and straightway
went into hysterics. Her nieces rushed to her assistance.
Presently she looked up and said to her niece Margey, " My
it6 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
dear, has he stopped beating. If he hasn't, I shall scream
again."
On Sundays she went regularly to church in the morning,
and listened attentively to the sermon, sitting on the edge of
her seat, her mouth pursed up and rocking herself to and fro.
In the afternoon she would lie on her bed, putting on her
nightgown over her dress so that she might not be disturbed,
and writing her innumerable letters.
In spite of her extraordinary vitality she suffered very
much from weak health. Over-fatigue, worry, distress, or
cold, would bring on an attack of internal catarrh, which was
very painful and laid her up for days. She had one of these
attacks in England in the autumn of 1853, and writes thus
after her return to Paris :
Paris, October, 1853.
DEAR HILLY,
I am certainly much better, though not well yet Oh
that I had followed your beneficent advice, and taken the second
blessed, little lovely black bottle ! I should not have got soaked in
the rain yesterday, nor wetted shoes and stockings, nor had a grey
border of mud to my gown, nor caught a stomach-ache and a tooth-
ache, and I should, moreover, have written three letters. Dabord, I
forgot my caoutchoucs, which was a great help to all these disasters ;
and for why ? 'Cause I lost my heart to a charming creature with a
very black beard, a short upper lip, an elegant figure, and such
manners ! We talked almost all the way from London to Paris (such
a lovely face !), and how do you suppose that I could look after
such low things as caoutchoucs ? So I didn't ; and not being able to
exist without Pale Ale, went in such weather as I almost never saw
in Paris to the Faubourg St. Honore", to three places, before I got
the right sort This charmer of mine was just opposite ; I'm afraid
you did not see him. When I got settled I pulled out Greg to cut
open ; he was curious to see the book, put his head this way and
that, and at last could not help asking about it I immediately
handed one volume which he offered to cut open. This soon
established conversation. He was along with two Americans, had
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 117
no twang whatever, and did not say " my country ; " but still I
thought him American why, I don't know.
Ten days ago did I begin this letter, and a sort of listlessness
came over me as if I had taken a narcotic. I was going to tell you
in my first page all the emotions of my soul about my beautiful
American, and what a marvel he was, and how I cogitated how I
should entrap him to come and see me, and how I succeeded, and
how he told me he had lived three years at Toulouse ; and the more
I talked the more I liked him, and one of the Englishmen and I
agreed we never had seen such a gentleman from the other side, he
being as much persuaded as I was that he was an American. To
tell you the truth, I had already invited him to dinner, and made a
romance. Nothing could exceed his elegant attention ; he would
lug part of my baggage, leaving his own valuables and cigars to the
mercy of the douaniers at Paris. Ass that I was, I might have
guessed no American could have done that. Just before we parted,
and I had given him my address, he said in rather a melancholy
tone he wished I had not such a distaste to his countrymen. I said,
" I have said nothing against Americans." " I am not American,
but Irish." I bore up pretty well, considering. I said, "I never
said distaste; disapproval -yes." However, we had not time to
enter into delicate disquisitions; the commissioner was running
away with some of my luggage, and he with some other. Out we
came and found Mr. Mohl. We bade adieu, and home I came. I
wondered and hoped I should see him, and he came Thursday. I
was very poorly, but he sent word he was leaving Paris. This was a
death-blow, but I then had him in. After a little conversation he
told me he had followed my advice ; he had gone to Sichel for his
eyes, and he should come back very soon. (I revived.) I said
something. He answered, " I shall only take time to embrace my
children " (oh, for help ! he was married) ; and something made
him say, " My wife " (confound her, etc.). I did not cry " D ! "
but said in a sweet tone, " I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing
her." What were those Spartans compared to me, I should like to
know ? All my plans squashed. However, he's a delightful man,
and I hope I shall see him again. One comfort is our fancy wa*
mutual, therefore I hope I shall.
She even derived some enjoyment from this illness.
n8 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
December 31, 1853.
Many a happy new year to all you at Embley, for I hope you
are still there. I am quite cocky ; have put on my stays for the first
time ; am always hungry ; enjoy everything as if I was just born
grown up like Adam but eating is a pleasure which is beyond all
comparison the greatest, and I understand the apple story. Receiving
visits, gossiping, and all the things which pass for bores; are delightful.
I could not have supposed it possible that a fit of illness could make
life so enjoyable. Many years ago I was intimate with a charming
young American ; she was about eighteen or nineteen. She had
many troubles here. Her father gambled away all they had. A very
interesting young Englishman got hen partly out of her troubles.
They could not marry (no money), and she went back to America
with a heart like a deer stricken with a poisoned arrow. She fell
into a consumption, was ill, and dying for months. A year later, I
believe, after being given up over and over, she actually came to
life again. She wrote to me that as she was getting better life seemed
delicious to her ; every trifle was a pleasure. She had wished to die
over and over before ; is not that curious ? I fear I have burnt her
letters long ago ; I am sorry for it. I wish I could find her out.
She must be between forty and fifty now. She was of the E
species. Oh dear ! what shall I do if I never see E again ? I
shall go into my parlour to-morrow night and have the family to tea,
and make toast myself, and that's a great pleasure. Tell the N s
to get "Villemain's Souvenirs Contemporains d'Histoire et de
Litterature ; " it is all the fashion. It is amusing; but what adds
greatly to our pleasure is its slapping old Boney at every page, and no
one being able to cry out "oh !" He has plucked the fowl without
making her scream.
She was very angry when people did not take care of
their health.
Pray tell me (she wrote to Miss Bonham Carter) how your sprain
is. I am afraid you have neglected it, and that has made it so
difficult to cure. Oh, the wickedness of neglecting one's self ! Suicide
is nothing to it ; one is buried and done with, people are very sorry,
and get consoled ; but sick folk are the plague of one's life. They
absorb more capital than a war. Their relations are generally anni-
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
119
hilated ; and then the money ! the doctors ! the rubbers ! the water-
packers, the travels, the lodgings at watering-places, the bottles, the
gallipots, the plaisters, the blisters, the powders, the pill-boxes,
the night-lamps, the saucepans, the messes, gruels, semolinas,
tapiocas ! I could commit suicide myself to get out of their way ;
wicked, cruel, extravagant, selfish, absorbing wretches. Adieu, dear
Coz; take care of yourself; don't take care of other folk. Care
killed a cat ; I dare say it was 'cause the cat took care of her kittens
instead of herself.
Yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
The state of politics continued to exasperate M. Mohl.
He writes to Miss Bonham Carter
October 23, 1853.
Nothing new here. The old story of luxury, despotism, and
hypocrisy the last becoming stronger. A few days ago Rouland
gave Oppert a very pushing, conceited, insufferable little Orien-
talist the Legion of Honour. Somebody told him O. was a Jew.
"Is he?" says the minister, "so much the better. Je suis oblige"
d'opprimer les Protestants je me rattrape sur les Juifs." It puts one
in mind of Pontius Pilate. But I must close this scrap, having much
to do and little time. I wish you were here, and we could talk
peaceably round the chimney, madame dreaming on the canape, and
the kettle singing.
120 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER VI.
1854-1857.
Character of Louis Napoleon Analysis of vanity Truth British Gallery Mis-
management of Crimean War Visit to Austria and Hungary Mrs. Jameson
Madame de Goethe Mrs. Gaskell Madame de Circourt and her salon
Mrs. Hollond and her salon Garden and dinner parties in London Madame
Ristori Scene in the Rue du Bac Madame Castiglione Acquaintance with
the Wilsons Letter to Mrs. Bagehot on her marriage.
EARLY in 1854 my father took an apartment in Paris for
four months, and many were the breakfasts and dinners and
evenings we enjoyed in the Rue du Bac.
Preparations were going on actively for the Crimean War,
and Madame Mohl was indignant at the alliance between
England and Louis Napoleon. Her hatred of him increased
daily ; she would not admit that he was worthy of being a
Frenchman, and I find in my father's journal for this year the
following note, written in pencil, by her :
CHARACTER OF Louis NAPOLEON.
He is as unlike the ideal Frenchman as possible; he has a
particular tact for finding out the rotten spot of the human heart,
and in that he casts his anchor. Thus he took C , by his vanity
and plebeian delight at being a personage. War was a horror to
him, and L. N. made him believe it was his own opinion as a great
secret.
The ideal Frenchman is, before all, social ; this man is lonely.
The Frenchman is expansive ; this man is close and traitorous.
The Frenchman is gay ; this man is grave, laughs but little. The
Frenchman is brilliantly valorous ; this man gets frightened. He ran
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
121
away at Boulogne; and even his partisans cannot quote a single
anecdote " ou il ait paye de sa personne " with the temerity natural
to the French. The French are open and frank ; though not very
truthful, you may get the truth out of them very easily. The only
point of resemblance is vanity. But his is a close vanity, like private
drinking ; theirs is an open expansive vanity, like conviviality."
She thus analyzes vanity :
Half our vanity is sociability, which is the natural state of vanity.
It is the most social passion of our nature, for all the others separate
us ; that unites us to our fellows, we must please them to get our
way. Love is only for one ; avarice is against all ; ambition is
social only so far as to make footstools of our neighbours ; pride, our
pet passion in England, is anti-social. " I won't bend to obtain
anything from you," is the perpetual thought of a proud man.
No amount of casuistry could cure Madame Mohl's in-
veterate truthfulness. As Lady Verney says of her, " she
was, above all, true ; " yet, in her fondness for metaphysical
analysis, she writes
Is suicide a sin ? People are agreed that it is ; let us accept it.
If a murderer comes upon you in a wood and kills you because you
refuse to do whatever he requires, you have killed yourself, when a
word of your mouth would save you, just as much as if you had
swallowed arsenic. If he cocks his pistol and says, if you ain't a
Catholic, " I'll kill you," ought not you to lie ? Is not lying less
than suicide ? (I'll ask my sister, who has an inveterate prejudice
against both.) And, supposing them equal, by lying you save him
from a crime, and give yourself an opportunity of repenting. Thus
lying becomes a duty ; the balance is in its favour. If a man asks
you a dangerous question, silence is sometimes equal to answering ;
the answer involves danger to others. Lying again becomes a duty ;
it is often a duty. I'm not fond of the duty it's troublesome to
me ; but I have no notion of ridiculous babyish scruples. If people
ask indiscreet things, they must be treated like indiscreet children.
I hope I am not selfish or unjust, but everybody must have arms to
defend themselves, or they'll have no wool left on their backs. Mrs.
can't say no to her rascally relations, and in spite of ^5000 a year
122 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
is in debt ; and poor is called a cruel husband and bad man
because he puts a stop to it, or he might go to prison for her debts.
It is an absurd thing, and I may say a contemptible thing, to do for
people's importunities and indiscretions anything one would not
volunteer. It is giving to the impudent beggar what one would not
give to the modest sick workman who don't ask. I'm naturally but
too much disposed to tell truths, and very useless and mischievous
ones, too; and it's a proper exercise of self-control to keep them
quiet
During Madame Mohl's short visit to London this spring,
she went to the Exhibition of Old Masters, at that time held
in the British Gallery.
Tuesday, three in the morning.
DEAR HILLY,
I was at the British Gallery yesterday. There are some
Vandykes and Reynolds of great value, especially one or two. There
is a Gainsborough most beautiful ; a round dozen of abominable wry-
mouthed virgins which, before this pre-a.r\. system, would have been
curious and interesting, showing the efforts made and the stages
attained before one arrives at a result, and the merits of the first
workers ; but to stick up as models these bunglings is like putting up
the instruments of the savages as better worth imitating than the best
efforts of our manufactories. People's minds must be diseased to
have such notions. There are portraits of a Countess of Derby, and
especially a child by Vandyke, an ugly little brat all in the light ;
it is the most wonderful piece of colour the transparency, the model-
ling of the cheeks and eyes. If any one would copy that face three
or four times quickly and carefully, I am convinced he would have
made a jump of fifty cubits for the next portrait he did. He might
not do a good copy of it it's impossible ; but that's not the object,
or ought not to be ; but his eyes would be sharpened and his colour
refined. If you could do a study of that sort and then something from
nature, it might get you out of the vile keepsake habit of pretty-
fying. The child is absolutely ugly; but if people paint portraits
they must do Nature as she is, or all character is lost, all life. Life is
the real charm of art Every wig-block in a barber's shop may have
great staring eyes and pouting mouth. Don't fail to look at that
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
123
Vandyke. Gainsborough is much less true, but there's a wonderful
fancy in the dash with which the face is done. It is an Italian
sonnet, very artificial, but the art is full of grace and originality. It
would be a bad study, and should never be imitated. There's a
Burke by Reynolds ; there are some very witty thoughts of my dear
old Mr. Smirke written in painting, but he has not dug out the
faculty of catching nature. I am disappointed in Leslie ; he is not
a painter, no more than Scheffer.
Politics had not materially altered in the spring of 1855.
Mr. Senior says
Sunday, March 4, I called on the Mohls. We talked of Louis
Napoleon's present position.
Mohl. It has not altered materially since you left us in May. So
far as it has changed it is for the worse. The war is admitted to
have been grievously mismanaged. The expenditure becomes every
day more and more profuse. It is supposed in the last year to have
amounted to ninety millions sterling, and he has forced the principal
cities into equal extravagance. The revenues of Paris are mortgaged
for years. The prefect who had long and well administered them
was turned out to take in Haussmann, a tool of the court, who calls
himself, indeed, the emperor's sous-prefet. But even he remonstrates,
and some still more flexible instrument is to be substituted. Louis
Napoleon cannot submit even to the slight restraints which the exist-
ing laws impose upon him. He is constantly attempting little coups
d'etat about trifles, often unsuccessfully. The forms or the delays
of office are interposed, and the thing gets forgotten.
In the summer of 1855 M. and Madame Mohl, with their
niece, again visited Austria, and went over much the same
ground as in 1852.
M. Mohl writes to Miss Bonham Carter
Vienna, September 4, 1855.
MY DEAR HILLY,
I owe you a letter, and I ought to have paid my welcome
debt long ago, but was hurried and flurried beyond endurance in the
last weeks of my Paris life. It was as if my friends and my enemies
124 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
had conspired to drive me crazy ; but you see I am now in this very
quiet town of Vienna, and seize the opportunity of an unoccupied
evening to talk to you. My wife and Mioche are gone to the Burg-
Theater with Mrs. Jameson, and as I had no desire for being blinded
by the lights, stupefied by the howlings of the actors, and drummed
into morals and aesthetics, I have remained in this inn of mine,
called the Stadt Frankfurt, which is a more showy but less com-
fortable place than the old Golden Lamb. We have found nobody
of our acquaintances ; the Kenyons are in England, to my great
dolor. Madame V - is at Granada, to my great discomfort.
Madame Ottilie Goethe, the old man's too-celebrated daughter-in-law,
is in bed, to my small discomfort.
I have nothing to interest me here, except the printing office and
the Museum of Antiquities particularly the first, as Auer is a very
active man and given to experiments, while we in Paris are a
sluggish set and sleep on our laurels ; and so there is much to learn
for me, the difficulty of learning the real truth is as great here
as anywhere in the world, although they are anxious to tell it
and have no secret for me. I wish I had Auer in Paris ; we should
do wonders. We have there all the materials, the scholars, the
artists, and the money required ; but all this runs more or less to
waste in incapable hands, and but why do I fall back on my Paris
ennuis, which to escape from I am spending my precious time and
good florins on the highways of Germany ? So far I have done well,
and very seldom think of anything French. I see no paper, as I am
incapable of reading the Austrian ones ; and as to French, none fall
into my hands, but from time to time a stray number of the Debats
or Independance Beige, so old that I am morally sure that not a word
in it is true to-day, and so it troubles me little. I read no books,
have not written above three letters ; am most profoundly ignorant
of what people say and think, and am living a sort of animal life,
which agrees very well, and which is only interrupted by two incon-
gruous speculations which persecute me, and I can neither solve the
mystery nor leave it to its fate the one is how this great country
can do without gold and silver, things never seen by any accident
except in the shape of a twopenny piece; and secondly, by what
means they make such miserable snuff in the imperial tobacco manu-
factories. I am haunted by these queries, and must find them out if I
am to profit by my travelling, else I might as well have remained in
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 125
Paris puzzling over some other question. I am getting some lights
on the currency question it is a curious but disastrous affair ; but
the other is a dark and incomprehensible matter which I despair of.
My wife will abridge our journeyings a little, because she wants
to see her sister before she leaves, or is frozen out of, Cold Overton.
My dear Hilly,
Yours very sincerely,
J. M.
Madame Mohl to Miss Bonham Carter.
Vienna, September 7, 1855,
We have been here four days and found Mrs. Jameson, who is
always the same. She is with Madame de Goethe, but don't sleep
there. They are very great friends ; she introduced us to her. She
is very agreeable and very plain ; old, perfectly natural, and flowing ;
speaks English fairly not so well as I expected, considering all I
had heard. I can tell you some little tit-bits of drolleries, but they
can't be written ; they require too much explanation.
We were eight days at Ischl ; I was sorry to leave it Oh, such
a beautiful place ! I should like to go every year.
It seems as if the cold in the country proved too much for
Madame Mohl.
Cold Overton, Leicestershire, September, 1855.
If it were not for my dear sister, how I would whip home to my
own better climate ! Whatever people may say about Paris being
colder, it's no such thing, and the atmosphere is so different oh,
Lack ! Paris is bad enough, but then the " Italiens " opens the 2nd
October. Beast that I am to care for such things compared to the
country fireside ! Well, now I'll confess to a dirty feeling. I said to
myself at L (where I delight in the people and the place), " How
upon earth can anybody that is not crazy live in the country all
the winter when they could live in a town? no society, but with
oceans of trouble ; nothing but dreary snow to look at. I'd as lieve
be in Sweden (don't tell anybody) I'd as lieve die." It's a sign
I'm growing old.
Adieu, my dear. From always living in it, Good Lord preserve
you ! I would not marry an angel on such a condition.
Yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
126 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
P.S. I receive this instant a letter from my dear Ghita, all con-
ciliation, to patch me up with her sister, with whom I was very angry
for not troubling herself about my illness, because, forsooth, Gian-
Martino was going to school as if people were to give up all friend-
ship because they have a Son ; but I shall be affronted for a good
while in fact, I can't help it. I don't like impassioned people, who
are so wrapt up in one creature they care for no one else ; they must
at least accept the consequences, which are, that in time no one else
will care much for them. But they ought to be warned as to that; as
Madame Re"camier said, " II n'y a que la raison qui ne fatigue pas a
la longue."
It was about this time that Madame Mohl made the
acquaintance of Mrs. Gaskell, for whom she had the greatest
love, respect, and admiration, and whose premature death she
never ceased to lament Mrs. Gaskell stayed frequently in the
Rue du Bac, and Madame Mohl told me that she wrote the
greater part of " Wives and Daughters " in the larger salon,
standing up before the mantelpiece,* which she used as a
desk, while her hostess went on with her reading and drawing
in the adjoining room. Madame Mohl arranged for the
translation of Mrs. Gaskell's novels.
November, 1855.
DEAR MRS. GASKELL,
I saw Madame Belloc two days ago. She has finished
" Cranford," and is correcting the proofs ; she has taken great pains
with it. I wonder whether you will be able to judge which of your
works will suit the French ? I should think not They are a queer
people, and as unlike the English as if they lived at the Antipodes.
Did I tell you the cat died last July ? It was a real affliction to
us, and I can't find another to suit me. The rats are emancipating
themselves, and Julie wants to poison them, poor things ; but that's
contrary to my principles, and they may eat her apron-strings a long
* The mantelpiece was much too high for Madame Mohl ever to have sat upon
it, as has been erroneously stated. Her nieces declare that she never did such a
thing in her life. In her own house and in the houses of her friends she always
chose a little low chair by the fire.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 127
time before I come to such wickedness. I saw M. Thierry last night.
I have found out that when I speak ill of any one (which I often do,
you know), he makes haste to tell them. Now that, after an intimacy
of thirty years, is very dirty, especially as I go and amuse him when-
ever I can. But I'll try an experiment on him ; I'll tell him some
great praise of some of my enemies, and see if he repeats it. If he
does it will be less dirty, though not right. It will show it's merely
the weakness of not being able to keep anything, instead of mischief-
making.
Poor Madame de Circourt has burnt her neck so dreadfully by
her cap catching fire, that though it is three months ago, she can
scarcely see anybody, and has suffered cruelly. Madame Belloc says
she bears it with great fortitude.
The salon of the Comtesse de Circourt (to whom this
letter refers, and whose name occurs continually in her later
letters) was one of the most agreeable in Paris. The hostess
was a Muscovite, and a brilliant talker. Her husband (who
was French) was a perfect encyclopaedia of learning, and a
most kind-hearted, excellent man. He was a liberal Orleanist
in politics. Tocqueville said of him *
Circourt is my dictionary. When I wish to know what has been
done or what has been said on any occasion, I go to Circourt. He
draws out one of the drawers in his capacious head and finds there
all I want arranged and ticketed. One of the merits of his talk, as
it is of his character, is its conscientiousness. He has the truthful-
ness of a thorough gentleman, and his affections are as strong as
his hatreds. I do not think he would sacrifice a friend, even to a good
story ; and where is there another man of whom that can be said ?
Madame de Circourt received much oftener than Madame
Mohl ; in fact, six times a week at different hours.f Her
Tuesday evening receptions were crowded the rooms full of
celebrities, and half the men wore stars. Until her accident,
* Mr. Senior's journals contain pages of his interesting and instructive conver-
sation.
f Monday, from four to six ; Tuesday, nine to twelve ; Wednesday, four to
six ; Thursday, two to six ; Friday, four to six ; Saturday, four to six.
128 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
when the muscles of her neck were so burnt that she was
forced to keep her head always in one position, she sat
constantly at her tea-table, and the guests had to make their
way up to her through a narrow path. No one was announced,
so there was no stiffness, and it was extremely amusing.
After she recovered a little from her accident she resumed
her receptions almost every evening, and the tea was made by
Madame Mohl, who enjoyed society there more even than in
her own house. After Madame de Circourt's death, in 1863,
she wrote to me
\
I have no place to run into. Madame de Circourt's was the
greatest loss to me since Madame Rcamier's death. I don't care for
regular invitations ; I delight in a house where there are various people
at certain times, who come in by chance ; these diminish every year.
Perhaps it is I who don't know how to get new ones ; but it takes
a long time to fit one's self into a new set I had some thought of
trying to set up a salon every night, and in time it would be
furnished ; but it's a great restraint to stay at home always, yet I am
quite sure it is the only way. I have not patience, however, to bear
with the tiresome people that I see come to all the ladies that have
one. Many years ago I had people every evening, but they were
few in number, and I remained at home because my mother's health
would not let her go out It was then I first knew all the people
who have since grown celebrated. They were young and unknown
Thiers, Cousin, the Thierrys, Ampere, Mrime, and many more who
are dead They are now grown old, and lazy, and rich, and fashion-
able ; and in those days, when tiresome people came, I did not mind
as I do now. I now always prefer seeing people anywhere but at
my own house; I am so much freer, and can go away when I am
tired of them. I also like to see people I don't care about or don't
agree with ; but I don't want to see too much of them. All these
whims of mine makes Madame de Circourt's house a great loss, and
there is also some mysterious reason why one likes society so much
better in one house than in another. I can't tell why, but hers was
particularly agreeable to me.
I like Mrs. Hollond's, but never feel the same comfort in her
salon; it is always politics, and I like variety.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 129
As both Mr. and Mrs. Hollond were entirely English, and
had at this time four other domiciles, besides the one in the
Rue d'Astorg, so that they were only for a short period of
the year in Paris, it is no wonder that they had not such
a large and varied circle as the Circourts. Taking these
things into consideration, the position held by Mrs. Hollond
in French society was an extraordinary one, and it was due
chiefly to her personal distinction. She died after a very
short illness, in 1884. M. de Pressense wrote of her in the
Journal des Debats
Mrs. Robert Hollond will be as much regretted in Paris as in
England. For many years before 1870 all the elite of the liberal
party met in her salon. Odilloii Barrot filled the first place in this
hospitable house, where he was the oldest friend. Every one
admired his kindly, vigorous old age. Precisely because she was
a foreigner, meetings which would have been difficult elsewhere, in
the ordinary course of social life, became possible in Mrs. Hollond's
drawing-room. The love for liberty and hatred of the empire were
common ground to all parties, and in all Europe no more dis-
tinguished circle could have been found than hers, which included
(to speak " only of the dead) Montalembert, Remusat, Mignet,
Martin, Laboulaye, Lanfrey, D'Haussonville, Prevost-Paradol.
Scheffer was another great friend of hers ; her face recurs
again and again in his works, and those who remember his
picture of St. Augustine and Santa Monica may form an
excellent idea of her refined intellectual beauty. Her be-
nevolence was as remarkable as her intelligence ; she set
on foot many charitable schemes which her large fortune
enabled her to carry into effect, and in several of them
Madame Mohl sympathized and assisted. She was, indeed,
very much attached to Mrs. Hollond and appreciated by her.
I am sorry that the letters which passed between them have
not been preserved.
HO LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
In her annual visit to London, in 1856, Madame Mohl
went with us to a garden-party, which she thus describes :
DEAR HILLY,
Yesterday, Sunday, I breakfasted out, and went to a
garden tea-party at Kensington a very pretty invention. The
people are made to amuse themselves here, and pretend it ennuies
them, and that they are tired to death, and so forth ; as if they could
not stay at home, as if anybody would cry after them, or even think
one bit of them ! A young lady (Welsh) sang with such a voice oh
such a voice ! She is extremely pretty, very coquettish, and I fancied
myself at the Gymnase, she was so like the actress there.
The Castiglione is at Holland House, where she has taken posses-
sion of eight rooms, and is very troublesome. She has been at court
and at Lansdowne House. Every one surrounded her, and she said,
" Quel pays ! on ne m'a pas seulement regardee." She was walking
with, I forget who, who showed her some one as a beauty, and she
said, "Savez-vous qui vous avez sous le bras pour vous permettre de
trouver d'autres belles?" In short, her "impudence protects her
sairly." The " croulin ferlie " carries all before her. In this town
impudence seems to be the grand secret of success, much more than
in Paris. I dined at Mr. Senior's, where I negotiated for Ristori to
dine, who pleased everybody. She has ten times better manners,
more modest, more dignified, more of the grande dame than anybody.
The dinner-party she alludes to included Mr. and Mrs.
Gladstone, Lord Lansdowne, Madame Lind Goldschmidt,
and Thackeray, who laughingly said he had never seen so
strong a cast. Madame Mohl, as her niece writes, "had
always quite a passion for Madame Ristori," to whose re-
hearsals and performances we constantly accompanied her,
both in London and Paris, besides meeting Ristori and her
husband continually in the Rue du Bac. One evening we had
been dining there with Cousin, Villemain, and Mignet, and a
curious scene took place after dinner, which I cannot help
thinking must have been the foundation of a story which has
been circulated, and which all her friends and relations indig-
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 131
ntlydeny,of Madame Mohl's rudely exclaiming to Madame
Ristori, " Tous les Italiens sont de la canaille." We all feel
it to have been impossible, for Madame Mohl's friendly
relations with Madame Ristori were never interrupted. What
took place was this. After dinner Cousin was seated in the
large drawing-room, with Madame Ristori on his left hand.
Villemain came next. I was sitting between him and
Mignet, and a most interesting conversation was going on
about acting, when another very distinguished man came in
without being announced, whose name I will not mention,
who took up his position standing with his back to the fire-
place and listened to the conversation. The room was dark.
He did not recognize Madame Ristori, and he suddenly broke
in with, " C'est cette actrice, cette Italienne qui degrade 1'art."
A solemn pause ensued, broken at last by Ristori's contralto
tones, " Ce n'est pas moi, monsieur, qui degrade 1'art ; " and
she proceeded to give him an indignant rejoinder, after which
she rose up and walked away with her stately step into the
small room, where Madame Mohl was making tea and talking
to my father and others, in happy ignorance of what was
going on. Ristori bade a majestic "good night" to her
hostess and marched out, leaving the rest of the party in
consternation. Madame Mohl often referred to this scene
with mingled amusement and regret. Madame Ristori did
not quarrel with her. On another occasion, when Madame
de Montalembert spoke against ultra-liberal opinions, the
great actress was much more seriously annoyed.
Madame de Castiglione was at this time the reigning
beauty in Paris. Mr. Senior thus describes her :
She is a Louis XV. beauty, tall, round, well formed, with large
dark eyes, long eyelashes, straight eyebrows, a clear white complexion,
and a mouth which, as I saw it, always smiling, was charming. She
sat in the evening, filling with her crinoline a whole sofa, to receive,
and certainly to enjoy, the homage of all around her.
132 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Madame Mohl was highly pleased when, some time after
her visit to London, she had a private view of this beauty.
She wrote to me from Paris
I saw Artemisia on Tuesday ; she has had the gout, and it makes
her more consequential than ever. She talked of nothing but all the
honours she receives ; so I stayed a quarter of an hour, for / had my
honours, which she did not attend to. I had just seen the Castiglione,
and was full of her. It was by a lucky accident. I called on
Madame Gabriel Delessert (who is delightful) when her Beautyship
was announced, and Madame D. said, " Stay to see her." She was
dressed like an old Venetian picture, and I think came to pose. She
had been ill, and looked so, but is so beautiful ! She was turned
round for me to look at, and I was asked before her face if I had
ever seen such a complete ensemble of face and figure. Her talk
was affected. To my astonishment a bebe was mentioned as her
article. She lives at Passy, and so does the Delessert. I would say
at Artemisia's what I had seen, and a lady who was there said that
her brother had dined in company with the Beauty two days before,
and after dinner she took off her shoe and stocking and put her foot
on a black velvet cushion, and every one examined it a la loupe that
was her expression all for the love of art It brings to my mind
Phryne of Greece. When the Areopagus was judging her for corrupt-
ing young men, she took off her garments, at which they judged her
innocent So we are beginning par en bas.
M. Mohl wrote during his wife's absence in England to
Miss Bonham Carter
I hardly know what to tell you of here. It is the same story of
despotism, corruption, and profligacy; if it lasts, this nation will
perish morally ; if it revolts against it, and the struggle lasts a good
while, it may be regenerated by it My old enemy Fortoul is dead ;
we do not know by whom he is to be replaced. I hear to-day that
his ministry is to be dismembered and distributed to three ministers,
the Institute to be given over to Fould as Ministre d'etat ! But I
should like to talk of something else, and don't know of what It
seems the mess they are in in Spain has been cooked by that old
devil the Queen Christina, to be revenged on the report made by the
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 133
Cortes on her thefts ; but it seems the fellow here will not interfere,
except the events would turn to the raising of the Duchesse of
Montpensier to the throne. But you see I am again slipping into
this disgusting neighbourhood. I have seen Jeanron a few days
ago. He seems well enough. He was very much rejoiced that we
had given a prize of ten thousand francs to his friend Haureau, a
republican who had been conservator at the library, and resigned in
1852. Most likely he will keep this prize for a number of years, to
enable him to prosecute a great work begun by the Bdnedictins, and
interrupted in the revolution ; it is called " Gallia Christiana," and is a
history of all the ecclesiastic establishments in France bishoprics,
abbeys, etc. The curious part of the affair is that the fanatic
Catholics resisted this violently ; but they were beaten, and may this
happen to them in secula seculorum I They are so rampant that it is
quite a curiosity to observe their gambols. They think they have
got the world in their pocket, but I doubt it. Ampere is come
back from Rome old and ragged-looking, but in good health and
spirits ; he wears a shocking bad hat, and looks altogether very
disreputable ; but I have long ceased to give him advice in such
things, he takes it so very ill. Lady Elgin is at St, Germains ; she
has kept all her sincerity, but her mind is more and more rusted,
and the hinges move with greater difficulty. Her good angel
Augusta is gone back to England. I must go this evening there
to play two games at dominoes with her, for which purpose I
must leave my house at half-past five, and be back at eleven o'clock,
which is a monstrous deal of sack to very little bread ; but it cannot
be helped. The town is as empty as it well can be; but as they
go on knocking it down it is yet too populous, and they are putting
up movable wooden houses to lodge the population. This fellow
is perfectly crazy. There you have my whole budget of news, except
I should launch in the affairs of the Academy ; but this is an abyss
very much to be avoided, and I will rather close the letter than to
begin of them.
I am, my dear Hilly,
Yours very sincerely,
J. MOHL.
Paris, July 20, 1856.
Great triumph I have found your address.
134 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
I have suppressed most of the description of the country
in the following letter :
Le Puys, September 8, 1856.
MY DEAR HILLY,
I cannot help bestowing a little of my tediousness upon
you. We have been now erring a fortnight in all manner of strange
places, and it seems as if we had been absent a century or so. Our
satisfaction would have been complete if you had been with us,
sharing our good and evil fortune. We went to Clermont, then to
Mont d'Or ; from there to Arvant, where we had singular and most
lamentable adventures ; then up the Alaghon to Murat ; from there to
Les Chaves, where we inspected knowingly that celebrated craftre de
souftvement, called Le Puy de Grion an infernal mountain which we
crawled up. It ends in a basaltic cone very steep. My wife had
given up a hundred feet below. I went up to the ridge between this
and another crater and was disgusted. But Ida, with the guide,
climbed up on the highest point, to my great horror and repentance
to have permitted it, when I saw them wind about, and heard the
stones rolling down from under their feet. She was nearly blown
over, but reappeared at last, to my great joy, fatigued and rather
frightened at her exploit. We were living at the foot of this odious
mountain in an isolated inn, the property of M. le Maire of the
neighbouring village, and kept by Madame the Mairesse, a most
excellent woman of the most primitive style. The rooms, beds, etc.,
were incredibly bad ; but her cooking was so transcendently exe-
crable, that we should have been starved out of the country if it had
not been for her wine and cheese, although she did all she could to
please, and sacrificed impermeable hens, whom no boiling or roasting
could render eatable or chewable ; but we all conceived the greatest
friendship for her, and had it not been for her impossible dinners
we could never have got away from the place. We find the people
all about in Auvergne very dirty, very polite, very hard workers, very
eager for money, and some of them cunning and overreaching, others
of the greatest simplicity and moderation. A hostess on the crest of
one of the mountains where our horse was fed gave us a capital
supper, and would never name a price. She said she did not know
what people paid for a meal like this, and would be obliged if we
paid her according to what we were accustomed to do. Whenever
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 135
Ida is drawing it attracts all the population; and they are very
polite bring chairs, stand behind and discuss the point de vue, and
keep away the boys. She is always surrounded by a large auditory,
gaping and admiring. It is the same in towns and villages; and
she remains half a day all alone in wild spots drawing, without the
slightest inconvenience.
It is astonishing how poorly the people live here. In the villages
they seem to eat nothing but heaps of cabbages, lard, and black
bread; even rich people, like our hostess in Les Chaves. She
possesses a mountain for her cattle, a forest of which the husband
makes planks with which he trades, and two large farms which they
have hired out I dare say they are worth twenty thousand francs,
and they live exactly like their servants in everything, and have not
the slightest idea of any comfort whatever. All the peasants make
elder sons to keep the estate together. The estate is valued, a
fourth taken off, then the elder son and each other child gets one
part, which the elder son pays to the others out of the estate ; the
younger brothers emigrate, or remain as his servants. Where there
are many children, it is only by his great frugality that the elder
brother can pay off this heavy debt.
The roads in all this volcanic country are the finest I have ever
seen ; they are perfect smooth, no dirt nor dust, as the basaltic
never grinds into powder, but in a sort of sand which never becomes
mud. As soon as you get out of the basalt the roads show it in-
stantly. But I see it is time to conclude this twaddle, else I should
fall into some disputation about political economy, and the queer
state of public opinion here as far as I can find it out, and such-like
things, which would little interest you. I hope Madame Painting
has got a good lift by your abstinence from travel, and that she will
bring you to Paris soon and for long.
God bless you, my dear Hilly,
Yours very sincerely,
J. MOHL.
Although Madame Mohl pretended not to like young
ladies, she was very kind to them, and of those whom she
considered as exceptions she was exceedingly fond. These
exceptions were very numerous. Among her prime favourites
136 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
were the daughters of the late James Wilson, Minister of
Finance in India. The eldest, Mrs. Bagehot, writes
We spent the winter of 1854-55 in Paris, and Mr. Greg, who had
known Madame Mohl for some time, gave us a letter of introduction
to her. I remember that, after seeing her two or three times, Julia
and I called on her one day and found her alone. She advanced
towards us beaming, and said, " My dears, I have just been writing
to Parthy,* and told her that at last I have found two young ladies
whom I like as I do her and Flo." M. and Madame Mohl showed
us about Paris, the studios, etc., and sometimes kept us to dinner
en famille. Ida stayed with us in London the next season, and the
following winter I stayed in the Rue du Bac. When I had known
my husband \ a short time, I found that he had been an habitue of
Madame Mohl's salon a few winters before we knew her, having
been introduced by Mrs. Reid and Miss Sturch.
Madame Mohl wrote the following interesting letter to
Mrs. Bagehot on her marriage :
November 29, 1857.
MY DEAR ELIZA,
You can't think how much I feel your kindness, and how
agreeable it is to me to find your friendly sentiments towards me ;
for, as you say yourself, you are not given to show them, and I have
lived so long and seen such a variety of people, that I am not given
to imagine such friendship. I am not only rejoiced at the kindness,
but also at the communication. Marriages of affection and suita-
bility are so rare that, even if I take no interest in the parties, I am
delighted with them, and how much more when I have so warm a
feeling to one party, and which, I doubt not, time will give me for
both 1 Mr. Mohl, who is not given to over-esteem, said, " Well !
it shows Mr. Bagehot to be a man of sense." As this was not meant
for your ear, I think its plainness is of some value. I think as he does,
and that you will make an excellent wife. From the article on Lord
Brougham, it is evident that Mr. Bagehot is very clever, and that is
a great element of happiness en menage at least, / think so. When
one finds one's mental amusement at home, every day is a day of
festivity, and if one is poor one don't mind it, for what could one
* Lady Verney. t The late Walter Bagehot.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
137
get better for any money ? if one is rich, fa ne gate rien, but it is not
necessary to be rich, as I know. In short, the whole is completely
satisfactory to my mind, and I rejoice greatly at it, and hope to see
you in your new position when I go to England. I only wish it
took place in 1857 instead of 1858, as I hate useless delays.
Believe me, dear Eliza,
Yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
138 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER VII.
1858-1861.
The attentat Free speaking in salons Madame Mohl visits her grandfather's
tomb Music-meeting at Hereford Julius Mohl's delight in London Violent
fancies Carlyle Wordsworth Browning Madame Roland and the French
Revolution Marriage of Ida Mohl Cats Julius Mohl president of the
Academy Peace of Villafranca Commercial treaty Madame Mohl's article
Mrs. Gaskell Madame Mohl at Oxford Visit to Hungary The Ober
Ammergau.
THE celebrated attentat (Orsini's attempt to assassinate the
emperor) took place in January, 1858. The emperor showed
courage at the time, but his nerves were considerably shaken,
and a series of arbitrary decrees was the result.
These were freely spoken of in Madame Mohl's salon.
Mr. Senior wrote
Monday, March 8, 1858.
I spent the evening at Madame Mohl's. I spoke of the un-
popularity, or worse than unpopularity, into which Louis Napoleon
seemed to have fallen, as far as I could judge from the conversation
of the few people whom I had seen.
Mohl. It is much greater in the class of society which you do not
see. The ouvritrs have been principally struck at They were
already angry at the high price of apartments and of food. Like all
uneducated persons, they exaggerate the power of a government, and
think that the emperor could give them cheap lodgings, and bread
and wine, if he liked. Instead of doing so, he inflicts imprisonment
and banishment on persons who, perhaps, were hneutiers in 1848,
but have been for years well-conducted pkres defamille. The number
so treated is, of course, enormously exaggerated. These arrests, and
the law which has sanctioned them, have produced, as it was intended
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 139
they should, much fear ; but they have excited more irritation. I do
not think that he was ever so unpopular among the working classes
in Paris. The natural effects of that unpopularity will not be pre-
vented by compression. He is compressing an elastic gas. Some
day the resisting force will be greater than the compressing force, and
then woe to those who are near to the explosion.
Julius Mohl to Miss Bonham Carter.
Paris, March 12, 1858.
MY DEAR HILLY,
There is not a shadow of truth in the story of our having
been warned by the police. We wag our tongues as freely as ever.
Their actual line of policy is to appear indifferent about tongues, and
only to care for revolvers, of which we are not suspected. I hear
stories of people being warned, but do not believe it. It is a most
curious state of things, and not unlike what one hears of Naples, only
that the official people here are not so barbarous ; but I mean the
state of lawlessness and the entire separation between government
and the public. I will give you some examples. There is a small
monthly paper defending the Gallican Church theories, particularly
contesting the pope's right to make single-handed dogmas. The
editor was called to that devout man Espinasse, Minister of the
Interior, and the following dialogue ensued :
Minister. You are always attacking the immaculate conception,
but we will not allow you to go on attacking dogmas.
Abbe. But it is no dogma in France. This is precisely our strong-
hold. The liberties of the Gallican Church allow of no dogmas to be
declared by the pope without an (Ecumenical Council.
Minister. I am not going to dispute about theology. You are
not to speak against the immaculate conception.
Abbe. But the Protestants laugh at it in all their journals ; why
should not we too attack it ?
Minister. The Protestants ? That is quite another affair. The
emperor has ordered me to suppress your paper if you talk any more
of this business.
Exit Abbe in despair, and meditating to let his paper drop.
Here is another dialogue, dramatis persona an ex-councillor of
state and an actual deputy.
Ex-Councillor. I have been at Mazas to examine the state of the
140 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
heating of the prison, and have found that the prisoners must be
better warmed.
Deputy (languishingly). Really ?
Ex-Councillor. You don't seem to take an interest in it; but I
took this trouble in your interest, and you will be the better for it
when this government tumbles down, and you are sent to Mazas.
Deputy. Alas ! it is not to Mazas they will send me in that
case, as I have voted for the law on the suspects.
Another -persona Old Biot and I.
Biot. So you were not at the College of France yesterday during
the emperor's visit ?
7. I did not know that he had gone there.
Biot. I was just going out, but remained until he was gone in
great anxiety, and waiting impatiently.
/. Why, what could you be anxious for ?
Biot. I was afraid some student or so might cross his path and
do him a mischief. Fortunately nothing happened.
These little things are nothing to people who do not know this
country ; but to you they will show what a happy family we are here,
and how liberty, confidence, and security flourish.
After her annual visit to London, Madame Mohl went to
stay with her relations in Sussex. She gives the following
description to Miss Bonham Carter, who was staying in the
Rue du Bac, of her pilgrimage to the tombs of her ancestors.
Her reflections on the character of the English upper classes
must be taken as an outbreak of petulance. Indeed, both
M. and Madame Mohl saw very clearly, and spoke and wrote
their minds with a certain amount of exaggeration and great
impartiality of the shortcomings of the various nations with
whom they came in contact. English, Germans, French,
Americans, Italians, Hungarians, all suffer in their turn.
St. Leonard's, June 4, 1858.
DEAR HILLY,
We left Thursday morning. We went by Brighton to
Chichester to see the tomb of my grandfather, Captain Hay, of my
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL,
uncle, of my brother. All died long before I was born. My grand-
father was buried in 1788, but we found the grave; and, as I had
been brought up by his widow on stories of his youth and his ship,
and all his great qualities, and a letter of compliments from the
Admiralty is treasured up, and I have the Scotch feeling for relations,
it was a great gratification. We found out an old lady who had been
servant when my mother was visiting in 1807 such a nice woman;
and a churchwarden, a glazier, who would take no money. When-
ever I have to do with the people of that class here, I fall so in love
with my countryfolk that I'm ready to cry with tenderness; but
the moment I mount into the gentlefolks, my tears are dried up.
Their vulgarity, their stupid admiration of riches, rank, and success,
make me quite sick. All nobility of heart, all naturalness, all uncon-
sciousness and good sense, remain among the people ; but I should
be very sorry to take away their simplicity by putting into their heads
that they are to govern, for then they would get like the others.
I was reading a book called "John Halifax." The author wants
to show her blame of the love of money and finery, and shows all
the time the importance she attaches to it. It's like " Tom Brown."
The author shows, unknown to himself, the intense empty-patedness
of boys, and fancies he is showing them to advantage.
It was delightful to stay with Madame Mohl in a country
house, and in August, 1858, I met her at the Archer dives'
at Whitfield, where there was a large gathering for the Here-
ford Musical Festival. She had the foreign love for sitting
in the open air, and a chosen few used to collect round her
as she sat under the trees, listening to her discourse. The
weather was beautiful. She was not overtired, as she often
was in London, and I never remember her more brilliant.
She went back with me over the hills to Malvern. There was
no railroad at that time, and we climbed to the top of the
stage-coach to enjoy the scenery, her admiration for it sur-
passing even her terror at her unusual altitude.
Meanwhile M. Mohl was in London. Even if his business
had allowed them to come together, it would have been
against Madame Mohl's principles. She wrote
142 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Married folk should always separate when they visit, because they
each are then making friends and amusement for each other, and
when they remeet they are the more entertaining. In this country
it is supposed they adore each other (it's all a hum) so much that
they never need do anything to amuse each other ; but that I totally
deny, and why people should cease to play the agreeable because
they live together, I know not
She wrote to her niece Ida
Translation.
I left your uncle in London, perfectly enchanted, in the first place,
at being there, and then at finding the Athenaeum open, and all the
boys, or most of them, there. Of these "boys," the youngest is
fifty-five. The age of the oldest is unknown, but Crawfurd, one of
the most delightful, is eighty-four. Now, your uncle goes gossiping
with all this folk, who dote upon him, for he speaks English with
the je ne sat's quoi which is wanting in his French.
M. Mohl wrote to Miss Bonham Carter
41, Beaumont Street, London.
I am perfectly delighted with my liberty, and with London as
always, but I am fallen at the Athenaeum into a set whose spirits
beat mine all to nothing. They are a set of savans Thomas,
Falconer, Fergusson, and their chums a champagne-drinking, rollick-
ing crew, which make me appear like a gander among sailors, the
more so as I never drink wine or even coffee in this exciting place.
But I must set off for the Museum, so good morning to you. I will
try to get among sober people Sir E. Tennant, Wilson, Fox, Senior,
if he is here, or Stanley, who I hope has not become very wild at
Oxford.
41, Beaumont Street, Friday.
I have just got your kind letter of Thursday. I will wait for the
one you announce me, to see how I can manage to see Flo and
all of you ; perhaps not from here, as I depend on the missionaries
a good deal, and they are all over the country. To-day is a great
gathering of them here, and a dinner given to me, when I shall see
all the Chinese missionaries who can be collected. It is possible
that my business may be finished this evening, but I don't believe it,
although it is much advanced.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 143
Else I have little more to do here a little business with the
Royal Society, which I hope to terminate to-morrow, and a more
complicated one with the East India Company, which I am afraid
will be impossible, if Wilson does not come back on Monday, which
is doubtful. You know I always delight in London, even when it is
as empty as now. There is really nobody, except a few who con-
gregate at the clubs, as their household is broken up, and they go
and come to town like strangers. I stumbled on Monckton Milnes,
who came from Normandy ; he only traversed the town. General
Briggs is gone ; so are Cureton, Morley, Wilson, and tutti quanti.
General Fox is just gone, to my vexation. I was to pass a few days
with him at Kensington, but Lady Mary became ill, and they are at
Tunbridge Wells now. This solitude has interfered with my seeing
and studying some establishments I wished to see ; but all London
is to me a standing and growing wonder, and I walk about as if I
was at Pekin, staring at things and trying to comprehend them. I was
down at Oxford for twenty-four hours to see newly bought manuscripts.
There is nothing for me. Saw old Bandinell and Cox, and got an
apartment in All Souls, as Max Miiller is the only resident fellow
there, and has at his disposal a porter, a cook, a butler, and twelve
idle servants. There has never been such an establishment of
monstrous abuses. I dined at Stanley's, where I found Madame and
her daughter-in-law, who had held me for a myth, because my wife
is always gallivanting about alone.
I had to come back on Holy Sabbath no small matter. The
only available train was at seven o'clock in the morning, and so the
college door was to be opened at half-past six, a thing never seen in
All Souls, but achieved after all with some difficulty. The substitu-
tion of the sabbath for all religion in this country is one of the most
curious phenomena I have seen anywhere. You may imagine that
I have been in booksellers' back rooms, but have found very little.
They get no books from the East, and all my preaching at the com-
panies and the missionaries seems to produce no effect. I will go
to-day to the China Evangelization Society to see if they have a store
of the books their missionaries have produced, but shall most likely
be disappointed.
It is the incredible number of great interests concentrated here
and known all over the world in their own sphere, and entirely un-
known here, except amongst their distinct circle, which makes London
144 .LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
what it is. I believe that not even Rome, in the time of its greatest
power, was to compare to London in riches, in power, and in multi-
farious influence on the world ; and happily, on the whole, this
influence is humane and healthy. Whatever this grumbling nation
may say about humbug, etc. (there is, no doubt, a great deal of it),
it must take the form of something useful and humane, and if it
does not come up to its pretensions, it is obliged to do at least some-
thing, or it will soon be swallowed up. I was the other day present
at a consultation about the arrangement of new missionary stations
amongst the Makololo and the Matabele tribes, to co-operate with
Livingstone along the Zambesi and in the interior of South Central
Africa. These people knew little or nothing of the cotton-growing
association in the Bay of Biapa, which pursues quite a similar line in
East Central Africa. When I talked of this at dinner I was received
with sneers about the canting sleek missionaries, etc., and this by
people who had themselves done good service in India and else-
where, and who are themselves looked upon by the missionaries as
tyrants and bloodsuckers. However, I suppose all this is well
enough, and that they do keep one another to their work.
I am going to Atherstone as soon as my wife is saturated with
music at Hereford, but I don't know exactly when this will be.
I have done nothing worth speaking of; made a few acquaintances
for instance, Admiral Fitzroy, whom I know from his books. Got
a few books, but not those I wanted most. This town excites me
strangely. I drink no wine, nor anything but water and tea or
coffee ; am walking for ever, and as tired as any number of dogs.
But it is all the same, I am in a perpetual fever.
Thursday.
I am utterly confounded with the riches of London, and the power
which is concentrated in this town, but its extent makes it difficult
to live in ; it takes me an hour, in a fast driving-omnibus, to go to
the mission-house in Bloomsbury Street, and if one misses the person
half one's day is done for.
I am studying the Post Office here. I tried to become acquainted
with Rowland Hill, but could not. It is incredible what they have
done, particularly in the internal arrangement, to insure the rapidity
and security of the deliveries. There are many other subjects I
wished to be able to see, ragged schools amongst them, but cannot.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
I am rather scandalized at the luxury of the people, which goes, it
seems to me, far beyond want and comfort ; but, with all its faults,
this is a very great nation as nations go, and approaches a state of
civilization nearer than all the others, even the Chinese, as far as I
can judge.
M. and Madame Mohl met at Cold Overton, whence
he proceeded to Germany, while she settled herself in Paris
for the winter. She wrote to Miss Bonham Carter
Mr. Mohl is at Stuttgart ; he will be back, I suppose, about the
5th, and bring Ida. I am enjoying myself mightily. I had a
dinner party yesterday ; I hope for another on Friday. I shall go to
" Norma " to-night, and to something on Saturday. I dine out every
day, and set up such cantrips it's quite scandalous. You should hear
Julie ! I have not been to look at your atelier; it makes me dismal
to think you are not working there. I can't think where I'm to put
my old furniture which you lodged ; I wish you had burnt it. I'm
like the man who travelled with Collegno. After they had been
robbed of everything, when he got into the carriage he stretched
himself out, saying, " Law ! how comfortable we are ; we have so
much room," quite forgetting how he had been used.
She had time for drawing and reading in spite of the
"cantrips," and for several letters to her friend Hilly.
Rue du Bac, 1858.
I shall be very happy to see your American friend. You know,
my dear, that you need not be so mighty particular, for I have given
up taking violently to people, and they are never dangerous, except
when one fancies one likes them very much, or will like them very
much, and one admits them into one's privacy, and then it's an
awful thing. But I have been cured of that completely ; it has been
a salutary warning to me, and now I'm civil to new folk. I invite
them as it may suit, and know them in a simmering way, instead
of saisir-'mg, as the cooks say roast meat should be done ; by which
means the ordinary run don't annoy me, as the Fridays were made
for them.
I have been drawing in pastel from busts, and find it very im-
proving ; I do them so quick to what I did. I find the best way
L
U6 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
is to do over the same, or nearly the same thing, as quick as I can
(not carelessly), and after a few I have wonderfully improved in
quickness. The fact is we all try to do the finesses first, whereas
the masses ought alone to occupy us, and the finesses come after-
wards. It seems ridiculous, at my years and discretion, to be finding
out how to improve ; my only comfort is that Michael Angelo wrote
at eighty about some discoveries he had just made, and painted
himself as a child in a go-cart, as an emblem of his learning-state.
Oh, if we could but live two hundred years and be young at a
hundred, how much better it would be !
She never succeeded, however, \\\ getting over her fancies.
She wrote a little later
I liked B a great deal better two years ago ; she has become
vulgarized. It is all over ; the tide has not been taken. I saw in
her then aptitudes that I do not see now. I am a person of imagi-
nation. I cannot excite myself at will ; it must come of itself. Two
years ago I had a fancy for her, but she gave me great pain, and the
odd thing is that I cannot now understand how I ever came to care
so much for her. Affection once stopped never resumes its course ;
the person one loved has another face, another mind. One preserves
the bones, the skeleton, of one's affection, but all the grace, the
charm, are gone. Poor B has not the slightest suspicion of
what she has lost.
I forget if I told you that Mr. Browning read me Carlyle's letters,
and that every word bites into the very flesh. They are better than his
books. I know but one creature who writes something in that way ;
it is Mirabeau's father. His letters are the finest in the French
language for style. His son was a rhetorician compared to him. I'm
sure Browning is an original writer, he is so very genuine.
I know Wordsworth has introduced the fashion of making fatigue
and study necessary to understand a page. Be it so ; but when I
have conned it over some time, I expect not to find useless pronouns
and faults of logic. These verses you mention appear to me absolute
stringing of words with none of the spirit the je ne sais ^0* that
makes verse poetry. The worst of it is. that one can no more say
what that is than one can catch aroma out of coffee, or the honey in
one's ear which makes some music delightful, and most modern
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 147
music nothing but a combination of sounds. I say sometimes to
myself, Is it in me or in the thing ? Yet, as poor Galileo said, " but
still it moves." I am tortured by the gaping admiration of the
young generation for such verses, and try to persuade myself I am
wrong ; but still I have no pleasure in the rattle of words. How-
ever, I will not give up the battle, but read every syllable with as
much goodwill as if my comfort was at stake ; and to a certain
extent it is, for though I danced Sir Roger de Coverley last night
that the set might be made up, I really am afraid, when I read these
rhymes, that I am waxing very old, and wish for a little glass of the
fontaine de Jouvence. A taste for beauty, any beauty, certainly is the
liquid therein.
I wish - would read every day Madame Roland's memoirs, to
show her how much mischief people may do with the best intentions.
Madame Roland wrote circulars and all sorts of things (very clever)
to stir up the French people, and much of the horrible state of the
French nation at that time may be traced to these circulars, followed
up by rascals. The end was the guillotine to all that was honest
in the nation. Those memoirs, well read and studied, form the
grandest lesson to those scribbling, busy, meddling, conceited people
who will cram their notions into everybody and think they have
found out the philosopher's stone. But no ; it's no lesson. Perfect
conceit is unteachable, unimprovable. I do admire people supposing
the world has gone on six thousand years badly, but that their lucu-
brations and managements will set everything right ; whereas it is as
much as any one person can do to look after any one other and do
no mischief.
I read quantities about the French Revolution. I am charmed
with Carlyle's " Cromwell," who is a great man. Nothing can be
more curious than to compare the two revolutions, only, unfortu-
nately, one sees the English one through a long distant glass, which
dims all the details but, if I were not afraid of writing a John Bull
work more Bullish than all the quarterlies, I could compare the two,
and draw fearful conclusions for the French, only I should get lapi-
dated. The best French history of revolution that I have read is
Barante's ; it is the fifth.
Oh ! a new man, Guillaume, has written a history of the Revo-
lution, and has taken Marat for his hero ! and, woful to say, some
one (I forget who) said to me, " There's a history by Guillaume
148 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
very clever." It's dreadful to see how weak minds are perverted by
these books. Francois told me this history is very stupid. Another
by Bucher et Roux contains garbled extracts of speeches. They
have adopted Robespierre. Bucher is a very strenuous Catholic,
and says there are but two great spirits, Jesus Christ and Robes-
pierre ! " Oh, Jerusalem ! " etc. How can a nation go on with
such writers who would not write thus if they were not read.
Madame Roland's memoirs, though very objectionable as to her want
of delicacy, are the best medicine I know to all this, because she saw
these men, and makes no after-time theories, but just tells facts,
being in the midst of them.
\
Rue du Bac, Paris, 1858.
The people who live here have a notion that to live anywhere
else is worse than death. Madame G is obliged to leave Paris
for want of money. They have a farm in Normandy, and they can
live there on their own land very comfortably. She actually wants to
have boarders here rather than go, and Josephine can't pity her
sufficiently for this great misfortune. If she saw any very delightful
people, or had a passion for music or painting ! Not a bit ; she
sees the stupidest people imaginable, and cares for nothing of the sort.
I remember, in 1848, M. de Barante, who was ambassador at St.
Petersburg, came back to Paris in consequence of the Revolution,
They had an estate in Auvergne, and went to live there all the year
round, because they could not afford an apartment in Paris. You
never heard so much pity bestowed on any human being. It is true
M. de Barante had spent all his life in the most cultivated society
here. He was clever, and made to enjoy it ; but, then, he was past
seventy, had a good chateau, and a wife who had been a beauty and
whom we may suppose he had married for love. It used to amuse
me to hear him pitied for what in England is thought the last
happiness to become a landed proprietor and live on one's own
estate appears to me the ambition of all those who have their
fortunes to make. The Barantes were always talked of as being
alone, and I said, "Well, but are not they a good menage?" "Oh
dear, yes ; but how dreadfully triste to be all alone ! " This is
modern to a certain degree, for in Madame de Sevigne's letters she
does not pity people for living in their chateaux, and when they are
banished from court she visits in their chateaux quantities of people,
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 149
d from her one may gather that many lived there all the year
round, and seemed merry enough.
I enjoyed the wedding mightily. The Abbe Duquerry, another
celebrity, performed it, and made really a beautiful speech, so refined,
so full of the essence of what marriage ought to be, that I was per-
fectly astounded at a priest comprehending so well. It put me in
mind of a sermon of Massillon's against love, which he paints so
beautifully that I would not have a young lady read it, not for impro-
priety no, no; it would be dangerous merely from giving all the
glow, the charm that a refined imagination can give, to the subject,
without a touch of earth which dull reality is apt to mingle.
It is no wonder that Madame Mohl's thoughts were
occupied with love and marriage at this time, for the " charm-
ing young Tyrolese," whom they met for the first time in
1852, proposed in 1855 to Mademoiselle Ida, to her uncle's
dismay ; her family could not bear to think of her living in
Hungary, and the offer was refused, but it was renewed again
in 1858, when, as the young man was succeeding in public
life (" My dear," Madame Mohl wrote, " Franz is so clever, he
is sure to get on "), and the young lady was favourably in-
clined, the consent of the elders was obtained. Madame
Mohl, although the principal sufferer by the loss of her
adopted daughter, did all she could to smooth away diffi-
culties ; her sympathy was always warmly excited by a
marriage of suitability and affection, while she equally
strongly disapproved of cold-hearted and interested alliances.
Mademoiselle Ida was married in May, 1859, from her father's
house at Heidelberg, M. and Madame Mohl being present on
the occasion.
Meanwhile the Italian war had broken out. In the panic
caused by the attentat, the colonels of the French army
addressed a congratulatory letter to the emperor, reflecting
at the same time on England for harbouring assassins,
because some of the conspirators had resided in this country.
ijo LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
The tone of this letter was so threatening that it awoke a
burst of indignation throughout England. In a moment war
appeared probable, and its anticipation gave rise to the
formation of our volunteer force. Surprised at the warlike
spirit thus displayed, Louis Napoleon endeavoured to calm
the English nation, while he lent a favourable ear to Cavour,
promised him the assistance of France, and on the first day
of 1859 addressed a menacing speech to the Austrian Am-
bassador, Baron Hiibner. The war broke out on May i,
and on the I3th the French army joined the Sardinians.
The battle of Magenta was fought on June 4, and was
followed by the victory of Solferino on the 24th. After these
two victories, Louis Napoleon patched up a hasty peace at
Villafranca on July n. Austria surrendered. Lombardy
and Savoy and Nice were subsequently given to France as
her share of the spoil.* It is to these events that the follow-
ing letters allude.
From Julius Mohl.
March 6, 1859.
MY DEAR HILLY,
I suppose you have read in the Times the stupendous
declaration of this fellow here, that he is a calumniated man, who
never thought of war, and has made no preparations ! It struck us
here dumb with astonishment, and I am delighted with it, firstly,
because I do not like war ; secondly, because the fellow shows him-
self in his true colours, as the great liar, whose whole life is a lie. It
is something altogether incredible.
I have been ailing, which makes me always melancholic, as all
that comes from that inconvenient and unruly member of the body-
politic, the liver ; but I am getting better, as I see from being less
easily offended by small matters.
June, 1859.
I have got to-day a letter from Ida; she is quite happy in
their barbarous country, and laughs at her domestic difficulties.
* Lombardy was afterwards handed over by France to Piedmont.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 151
What a country ! And why do the Austrians care for influence at
Naples, when they have so much to do at home ? But what is the
use of talking politics ? I was the other day at Vertbois, at Madame
Tourgue"nieff's ; they are, for a wonder, all well. M. de Tourgudnieff is
in Russia to arrange and liberate the villages he has inherited ; but
finds the greatest difficulties, which was to be expected.
Last night there was an illumination, but nothing was illumined
except the public buildings, and those shops which depend on the
police, as tobacco, wine, and such like hardly any other ; and no
window whatever. It was a most shabby affair. If the war lasts it
will grow less and less popular ; the expenses are fearful, and the loss
of life much greater than they acknowledge.
They never print the telegrams as they arrive, and have been now
cooking for three days the one on that doubtful battle of Magenta
without bringing it out. But the battles are nothing to the maladies
and the exhaustion from fatigue. They say here that the French lost
fifteen thousand men at Magenta; that MacMahon saved the army
by coming against his orders, while the fellow himself was on the
tower of Novara, looking with a spy-glass at the battle two leagues off.
They now print here that he was in the thick of the fight, which we
know is not true from the letters of his entourage ; but the lying of
this boutique passes all conception.
But I want to talk of something else, and don't know what. Ida
has written from Hungary curious accounts. When she wanted wood
for the kitchen, she was advised to buy it in the forest; send a
cart to fetch it (if anybody would lend it), and get her husband to
send for a prisoner in jail to split it. When she wanted to buy milk,
the answer was she might send to the archbishop's farm they would
willingly give it ; and when she demurred, they said she might send to
the burgomaster, who would take it as an honour. The Jew of the
place being just then at Pesth, nothing was to be bought, but when
she landed from the steamboat she found a caleche with four horses
to bring her home (a quarter of a mile's distance).
The young element was seldom long absent from the Rue
du Bac, while the place of the baby was occupied by the cats,
of which M. and Madame Mohl were equally food. " This
was in the reign of Pussy the Great," he would sometimes
i$2 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
say, alluding to a very superior Angora which flourished in
the Abbaye-au-Bois. There was a frequent interchange of
kittens going on between the Mohls and the Nightingale
family.
From Madame Mohl.
DEAR HILLY,
We have all been kitten-hunting. I have found one not
more than five or six weeks old ; it is not as pretty as I could wish,
because it's white with a few spots ; it will have a bushy tail. Don't
be mistrustful of that when you see it ; it is the very short tails when
they are very young that turn out the best. Madame Jeanron brought
one, a very pretty one ; but it is six months old, and Julie declares it
won't get accustomed to a new place. I don't believe it; but of
course its play will not go on so long as a younger one. It is not the
right time of the year, and they are mostly disposed of; that is why
we have had such hunts and not quite succeeded neither. But it will
be a pretty kit ; it has a very high forehead, the hair is soft and good,
though it's not so fluffy as I have seen them ; but I think it is the best
we have seen. Julie, Madame Jeanron, the Laugels, and myself have
all looked about, and bothered every one else to look. The pretty
ones had t all just been given away, or were six months old. I will
put it in a basket with a bottle of milk, poor love !
All bemoan the horrible slaughter in Italy ; you have no idea of
it. That is the reason why the peace was botched up. Such thousands
died of thirst when they were wounded ; no one gave them any help.
In large towns where there were gentlefolks they were taken care of,
but the inhumanity of the people was terrible the same to all ; in fact,
the peasants in Lombardy prefer the Austrians. It is what you " demo-
craws " will not believe, but I have heard it from so many that I'm
convinced it is true, and one or two Italians have told me the same ;
not so the higher classes nor the townsfolk, but it accounts for this
fellow's making peace, for he found it was not so easy as he fancied.
Oh dear, to think of human beings tormenting each other during
this short life, when six feet of earth will contain us all ; and the
total separation of all moral feeling from religion !
L. N. will not go to war with England now, and as we begin to
show our long teeth, perhaps he never will. If we can make an
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 153
alliance with all Germany, offensive and defensive, we shall save
oceans of blood all over Europe. We are not aware enough of our
importance, or of the impossibility of their resisting him without
us ; but if they had the moral certainty we should uphold them, all
Germany would be reconciled to us, and now they hate us. I would
devote my life to travelling from England to Germany to carry
messages, if I could make my stupid country understand their interest,
which is all on the side of morality ; if they would be just they would
be the better for it, which is not always the case.
Your kitten was born at an artist's perfectly mad about cats. I
asked what were its antecedents. " II a une figure qui n'est pas d'un
chat moderne," was the description given by the owner ; the other,
poor thing, was bought nobody knows where. It's wonderful the
difference both in their civilization and natural talent ; yours is of a
higher order, evidently. It's a curious thing that several powers have
been developed in my cat since she has become a mother ; but
having kittens too young" injures their growth very much.
Early in 1860 M. Mohl was appointed president of the
Academy. He wrote to Miss Bonham Carter
Do you know what the peasants call a rabouteurl It is a man
who has the knack of setting dislocated members, and all the country
people flock to them in preference to the surgeon. Now I am a
rabouteur litteraire, and all the hideously distorted and dislocated
literary beggars seem to congregate here to get their miserable
members put to rights again.
Now, to my utmost horror, they want to make me president of
the Academy for two years. I have fought shy of this, and declined
it very often; but Naudet, the secretaire-general, is half-crazy, and
the doctor sends him to Italy to get away from all sources of irrita-
tion here ; and he would not go except I accepted this presidency,
because he is afraid that during his absence something horrible
might be concocted I don't know what ; he only gave me myste-
rious and unintelligible hints. My only hope is that soon other
members may wish for it, and oust me, as the whole concern is hate-
ful to me, and not even in the interest of the Academy, for reasons
with which I will not try your patience.
154 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
January 1 8.
This scribbling has been lying here for I don't know how long.
I have since this been driven about like a humming-top, with miser-
able business and plagues of all sorts dinners and breakfasts and
have become very bilious. I sit here with a bilious headache, which
makes my eyes swim, so excuse any incoherence in my thoughts or
style. We have got to-day letters from Ida ; she is always delighted
with her lot, and the only thing she regrets in Kaloska is the absence
of an Italian opera. I should not have thought of this one want in
a barbarous place, without society, and drowned in eternal mud, so
as to make going out a matter of the greatest difficulty.
While I am writing arrives a very kind, letter from you, with plenty
of news of the cats. I don't wonder you give away the one with
that astounding hoarse voice, and am glad it gets into kind hands by
virtue of its tail ; but I wonder that the little black devil should be
so ragged-looking !
Lady Palmerston is a donkey to believe that Walewski, who is a
flunkey, could hinder his nephew in anything. He was allowed to
go on talking as a cloak to the scamp's indecision, and was thrown
away when the fellow had ascertained that he could break his word
at Villafranca without the Austrians beginning war again, because
they are ruined. But how Palmerston, Lord Johnny, and Lord
Cowley can be such a set of oafs and owls as to put any trust in this
fellow, is more than conceivable. Have they already forgotten the
affair of the colonels, and the crusade he preached in all his papers
against England only six weeks ago ? And now they ally themselves
to him because he repudiated his own conditions of the peace of
Villafranca.
But they are besotted about Italy. One should think the first
and only duty of man was to liberate Italy, and how it is to be
liberated from the French is a problem they will not easily solve.
How any man can ally himself, after his whole career, to this arch-
liar and traitor, is more than one can conceive. But there is Cobden,
who is quite taken up with this fellow, and negotiates a . treaty of
commerce. This fellow, I am convinced, makes all these conces-
sions to bind the English to peace when he attacks Prussia,
which will most likely be his first move. His only art is to isolate
the other powers, and to beat one after the other, until the turn of
England comes, which will certainly destroy him ; but it will suffer
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 155
for having helped him to become very powerful. It is impossible
that he should ever be quiet. I believe he intended so at first,
because he thought it easier to govern France than he finds it, and
this becomes every day more difficult ; and so he turns to the drum
to keep them occupied and interested in something other than their
misery at home.
Our master, the scamp, has turned over a new leaf in his wonder-
ful book of charlataneries, and now all France is to take again to
making railroads, canals, harbours; build parsonages, and reward
science and art ; and the English are to be caught with a new tarif,
which will give Cobden great glory in Manchester and elsewhere.
Villemain has written a pamphlet in favour of the pope, which
shows that his hatred of our beast is such that he adopts all his
enemies ; so is my wife become quite papal, and many other people,
who else are little given to the approval of the red woman of Babylon.
This will give you a slight idea how high passion runs here. Other
liberals like Renan, who hates the pope more than this fellow,
approve of the Roman business. There have appeared one hundred
pamphlets about it, as I understand, and many more are printing ;
but the affair of the custom-house tarif will set people on another
track.
February 1st, 1 860.
. . . Bunsen is here, and is made a great fuss about, which he
takes kindly. He is to dine at this house to-morrow with Villemain,
Cousin, Mignet, and other great guns. The other day I dined with
him at Mrs. Schwabe's ; but as I saw after dinner clear intentions of
having music, I ran away. I had a long discussion with Cobden
about this treaty. He ought to see that no treaty ought to be made
with a fellow who has just broken his word to Austria, and wants to
get out of that scrape by flattering the Italian and the free-trade
passions of the English, whom he bullies and flatters by turns ; and
then he is arming all the while more than ever, while he beats the
drum to his great show of peaceful undertakings building of ports,
draining the country, cultivating the waste places, lending the money
of the state to manufacturers and agriculturists, and the rest of this
programme, which looks really like the prospectus of a new joint-
stock company, or an advertisement of Holloway's pills, or Morri-
son's universal medicine. Cobden said that he had never threatened
156 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
England, and he found that this man was always in the right. " Well,"
I said, " if you have never heard of the addresses of the colonels, nor
seen any of the articles the fellow filled his papers with only two
months ago, you had better look at them." He said it would take
twenty years to bring a French chamber to take off a prohibition.
"Well," I answered, "perhaps it would; it took you ten years to
persuade England, but it is done for ever. But what can you expect
from the change of a tarif brought on without discussion and without
the conviction of the country ? And then, if there had been a
chamber, it would take twenty years too to persuade it to begin a
war, while this fellow is always ready and able ; and if you feel com-
fortable in his neighbourhood, you are x more valiant than wise."
" Oh," he said, " I do not think he will be so imprudent as to attack
England. I said, " Perhaps not, as long as you keep ships and troops
enough ready, and let your volunteers not get rusty, and go on cast-
ing thirty Armstrong guns a week." But it would only tire you to go
on with this. To-day the Government has suppressed the Univers,
Veuillot's ultramontain journal. He has richly merited it, because
he was a principal instrument in bringing over the clergy to this
fellow ; but now they cannot bear his polemics about the pope. It
will teach the bishops that liberty of speech may have some merit.
The state of things is such that it cannot remain as it is, and the
fellow will get out of it by a new war, which also he will gain again ;
and so he will go on until a new coalition spits him out of Europe as
it did his uncle. The race is essentially barbarous and incompatible
with civilization. The uncle was a brute, and this one is a con-
spirator; but until there is a universal coalition nothing will do,
because this nation is always ready to go to war, and is stronger than
any one isolated, and Europe will be covered with blood and ruin
before we get rid of him.
February 4.
I don't know how long this scribble has begun. Lacordaire,
the General of the Dominicans, has been elected to the Academic
Francaise ; they had no decent candidates, and he is a man of far
more talent than the others. They have been very much disgusted
with the literary gipsies whom they have taken to please the public,
because they sell instantly their votes to Government. This is not
to be feared from this monk, who is interdicted from preaching in
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 157
Paris. I am delighted with the destruction of the Univers ; it was
a vile paper, and had done very much for this Government. Now
the ultramontanes will begin to see that liberty and publicity are
good for something. I have held up yesterday to Bonetty the mirror
of their misdoings, and how this servility has weakened them so that
this fellow can now slap them in the face. He sighs and agrees to
it. But there is an end to my paper.
So good night, my dear Hilly.
MY DEAR HILLY,
There is much news here, but the difficulty is to know
what is true and how far it is true. The lies begin in the Tuileries,
and grow monstrous as they penetrate in the public. It seems that this
fellow has reminded the Bishop of Poitiers, a rank ultramontane, that
there is such a place as Vincennes. I hope it is true, as it would
show that he is becoming rabid and desperate. It seems Cavour,
who wants to get out of his promise to give up Savoy, and to prove
that Walewski has lied to Lord Cowley, has sent a copy of this treaty,
concluded in March, 1859, to Lord John. They are a precious set
of rascals, and Lord Cowley, Lord Johnny, and the rest of them, the
greatest owls ever seen.
The papal exasperation goes on ; the Bishop of Orleans has just
written an article, for which he will be brought before the police
correctionnelle by the Sihle, which he treats as a journal sans honneur.
The clergy are learning a great lesson that liberty may be good for
something ; but they will learn it only as long as they are oppressed
and forget it instantly after. The red woman of Babylon is unim-
provable, and all harm she comes to is well merited. If the pope
could eat up the emperor I would applaud, and if the emperor eats
up the pope I can't be sorry, only I hope he will not agree with
him. What a mess this fellow has made of the world ! He is such a
scoundrel that even when he is right, as in the trade business, he
does it in a way which makes it unpalatable and dangerous. I hope
yet to see him and the senate flourishing at Noukahiva, and founding
there a prosperous colony of sharpers. Ainsi soit-il.
God bless you, my dear Hilly.
Paris, February II, 1860.
i $8 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
MY DEAR HILLY,
I write in a great hurry, and before going to one of these
confounded committees, where people lose their time and temper ;
but the world seems to me as full of them as of flies, and most
likely both have their appropriated uses, although I cannot see them.
Nothing particularly new here, but that this rascal is conspiring
with everybody in Europe who is willing to listen the Hungarians,
the Danes, the Bulgarians, amongst whom he has in hand a hopeful
outbreak which he manages by emissaries. I got yesterday two
numbers of a new German journal, Strasburger Correspondent, which
he has founded in Strasburg to preach imperialism in the Rhine pro-
vinces; he is likened there to Jesus Christ. He wanted to found
four journals in Germany itself, but until now could not manage it.
He has one in Geneva, the Nord in Brussels, has wanted to buy the
Gazette d'Augsbourg, as Cotta told me, and promised to pay hand-
somely in money and ribands. He has encouraged the Neapolitans
to go to Ancona, which would have brought on a new Italian war
and a Muratist dynasty. It seems the Austrians have dissuaded the
fool in Naples to put his foot into this trap.
April IO, 1860.
Paris, May 6, 1860.
MY DEAR HILLY,
I ought to have answered your last letter a long time
ago, but what with committees, with lecturing, with proof-sheets,
with candidates and beggars of all degree, what with Ranke and
the series of dinners he brought in his train, my time has been
frittered away I don't know how. There is an uncommonly fine
kitten educating for Florence. I suppose my wife has written about
it ; it is a very gentle and confiding little thing, and looks so good-
natured
There is nothing particularly new here, only we get gradually the
scandalous details of the indecent farce of universal suffrage in Savoy
and Nice. I hope these things will be instructive to England about
democratic votes and 6 voters, if anything can enlighten the im-
perturbable security of Johnny Bright, Cobden, and Co. ; but the
misfortune is that the English will never believe that the experience
of other people is applicable to their superior sense and estate,
although there is no reason why similar laws should not produce
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 159
similar effects. Look at the Yankees, where honest men shrink from
public service before universal suffrage !
Here all is glorious for the moment. Thiers, Cousin, and the
like are almost becoming Bonapartists, which is, in fact, their real
nature, and they have only accidentally been diverted from it by
falling into constitutional times. Their morals consist in admiring
a successful scoundrel, and they think it the highest stretch of
patriotism to sell the liberty and happiness of France and the world
for a new province. However, in general, I believe the people do
not admire the manner of the annexation, and do not care much for
the gain of it; but the scamps who call themselves les politiques
think it a great stroke of cleverness. The last ball the empress gave
in her mother's house here cost ^4000 in building over the court-
yard and garden, etc. I suppose in Sardanapalus's time things went
on very like this. Do you recollect a little good-natured, Jesuitical,
sweet-spoken body, M. B , our neighbour? He is in great
trouble. He published the Annales de Philosophic Religieuse a
monthly paper destined to initiate the country clergy into as much
of new doings in science, history, and theology as may be good for
their orthodox health.
In his number for March he took from the Moniteur the pope's
encyclic and the scamp's answer, and for this he is threatened with
lawsuits, warnings, and suppression. He declares in vain that he
took them from the Moniteur ; nothing will satisfy M. Billaul but
absolute silence on the pope's affairs. I delight in this, because all
these clerical rabble were enchanted when the persecution fell on
the others ; they thought themselves favoured and secure. It will
teach them the advantages of a common legal state. Montalembert,
Veuillot, and others have gone through the same school, and been
taught with the rod. But it is altogether a gloomy look out for
Europe, and I have got a sort of horror of newspapers ; my conso-
lation is that it may be my liver which jaundices everything. So let
us talk of something else, if I can think of a bit of news that will
amuse you ; but I really know very little. I called the other day
on poor Lady Augusta,* who is a theme as far from amusement as
well can be. She is drowned in the deepest melancholy, and Lady
Charlotte lies in a garret, from which she cannot be brought down.
The house takes gradually the dismantled air of a place to be aban-
* Her mother, Lady Elgin, died in 1860.
160 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
doned, and it is altogether more melancholy than can be told. She
is to remain six weeks to wind up her affairs.
I am very glad that Hugh has gone to the Cape, and with so
good and intelligent a man as Sir George Grey. I was very much
struck ten years ago with Sir George's first book on the savages of
George's Sound, West Australia. It was the first book, and I believe
is even now the only one, in which the savages got fair play and a
just appreciation.
We visited Paris again in the spring. Madame Mohl was
impatient for our arrival. She wrote
What is become of you all ? Madame de Circourt told me you
were expected in the beginning of April, but seeing no one I begin
to be uneasy. The Ristori is here. I have not asked her to dine
yet with the beaux esprtts, hoping you would come, and unwilling to
spend her before, for you know she is a piece of game I can't always
get Therefore tell me if I should put it off till you come, or eat it
before it vanishes. Write me a scrap of news ; I am as parched as
an Arabian pilgrim.
We found M. and Madame Mohl open-mouthed about the
treaty which my father, as a free-trader, tried to defend. He
wrote in his journal
We breakfasted with the Mohls.
Mohl. The prestige of England has been sadly shaken by the
commercial treaty.* With our general ignorance of political economy,
we believe that you are to gain enormously by it, and that we are
to lose. It has made all the fabricants and proprietors of forests
and mines your bitter enemies, and even your best friends are angry
with you for having become parties to a trick which has enabled
Celui-ci to change our whole commercial system without consulting us.
Senior. I doubt whether the treaty can have much increased
your dislike of us.
Mohl. Still there was a party, the most intelligent and liberal
in France, by whom you were respected, who admired your institu-
* Commercial treaty with England, negotiated by Michel Chevalier and
Cobden. Signed January 23, 1860.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 161
tions, and thought your foreign policy proud, perhaps, and over-
bearing, but honest. Now, these are the persons who accuse you
of having sold Savoy for commerce of having been bribed by the
treaty into submission to the annexation.
Senior. The accusation is utterly false; the treaty is no bribe.
The alteration of our tariff is in your favour ; that is, our receiving
your produce at a less duty is the only real advantage that it is to
give us, and of course we could have made, and probably should
have made, that alteration without a treaty. We consented to do it
by treaty for your sake, not for ours. As for the annexation, you
cannot accuse us of acquiescing in it, though we do not choose to go
to war about it.
Mohl. Still you must admit that the transaction is open to
suspicion. I wish that, if you were to have a treaty, you had taken
another opportunity for it. Nor do we like to be treated as children,
and told by you and by our master that we do not know what is good
for us or bad for us.
The portraits of our dearest friends seldom satisfy us,
and Madame Mohl was by no means pleased with Madame
Le Normant's memoir of Madame Recamier. The result was
fortunate, for her dissatisfaction induced her to write an
article, which appeared in the National Review and had great
success, and which she afterwards expanded into the charm-
ing little book from which I have often quoted. She added
to the article a sketch of society in France from the age of
chivalry, especially showing how the improved position of
women in the present day is owing to that movement. She
used always to extol the treatment of women in France as
compared with their position in England. Her letters at
this time are full of the subject.
To Miss Bonham Carter.
DEAR HILLY,
I received a beautiful letter from Mrs. Reid the very
day after my last to you, full of praises of my article. She says
her sister is very weak, and the truth is a visitor is a fatigue to her,
M
162 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
poor soul ! Oh, my dear Miss Sturch, she was always so glad to put
me in her attic, and I felt so at home there ; but they were old-
fashioned the present finery has killed all that. Neither you nor
your contemporaries nor your juniors will ever comprehend what
those dear old-fashioned people were ; they are completely extinct
Barthelemy St. Hilaire has just been breakfasting here; he
says he was sorry he did not see Sidney Herbert, that he might
have given him some information about the army here ; but the fact
is our ministers are far more interested about keeping their places
than about the ultimate results of their foolish measures, and they
have no time to inquire into the chances of peace and war, because
they are so anxious to make a successful stand against the opposite
party. What hope is there from such people ? None. The nation
will be impoverished by ill-made, bungling measures, and L. N., who
has but himself to consult, will make his negotiations and prepara-
tions while we dispute about reforms, just as in 1804.
I hope Eleanor will like her visit to Heidelberg ; in my opinion
nothing is so good for a girl as going away from her family to learn
how to live. The great fault I find with women is their stupidity.
There's a sluggishness in their brains that the male has not ; yet in
animals it is not so. The female, having to maintain her young, is the
sharpest. Now, the human female ought to be at least as sharp, for
the species depends on it ; but she is not Is it circumstances which
fools call education ? I never ask my way of a woman ; she is sure
not to know, or to give it inaccurately. In business they are clever
here, but generally more grasping than the men. In short, my
observations give me a higher opinion of men, morally and mentally
of course with many exceptions.
Mr. Senior wants me to publish my article with the suppressions ;
perhaps I have already told you so. I have an exceeding mind to
put it into a book, with some more- history of the female sex here.
I have had such whacking compliments from several Miss Darwin
among the rest (a most discriminating woman) that it puts me en
verve ; but it don't last
Mrs. Reid is an excellent person ; she will push on womankind
when womankind is unpushable. These old people that are fond of
one leave a scar in one's heart after they are gone, when one has
thought little of their kindness while they were here. I can't express
the pain I have at recollecting many a sin of omission in my youthful
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
163
days. Alas ! I used to drive on like a fiery ship amid the furious
waves which, perhaps, my own tempestuous nature created round me.
Oh, if we could live again with a more subdued temperament !
I am reading " Travels in Hungary," very entertaining, by one
John Paget. Franz says it is the best account he has seen. I
intend to go and see Ida if Mr. Mohl will go. He don't seem to
have an idea of my intention yet. He's like the French nation, and
I'm like that wretch L. N., only I always think of his good.
The kittens are so droll, but I fear will not be as handsome as the
mother. I spent an evening with Lady Augusta. I dined there, and
we sat alone in the dark in the drawing-room, talking of the past; we
both cried. Poor thing ! she is so tender, her mind is so sweet.
Ida has no need of all the organization required in England,
when people have children. Mr. Senior says nobody marries, it is
such an affair to dress out and educate the unreasonably large families
they have, that all but rich people are obliged to give up the practice.
It's a pity they can't adopt a medium. If those who marry had fewer
children, those who don't might marry, and have one, or two, or three.
It's very hard, but all statistics will tell the same. So that every time
a man has twelve children, he may be certain four or five ether
couples have none. There ought to be moral laws on such things.
Abbey Lodge, Hanover Gate, Regent's Park, June 7, 1860.
DEAR MRS. GASKELL,
Here I am arrived last night, and delightfully lodged at
Mrs. Schwabe's, the prettiest house I ever was in, with a large garden
just like the country.
I never answered your last for want of time. The advice I
intended to ask was this. My article, which you are so kind as to
praise, was twice as long, and I had cut off a great deal then ; in
short, I could make a book with the greatest ease to show that the
position of the women in France was different from elsewhere. I
have not the slightest pretention to make it out better than here or
worse, but to show a curious historical fact which explains from far
back what often appears anomalous in the manners of the country.
I don't declare this pedantically, because, after all, I may see the fact
bigger than it is. But all history of manners is curious more curious,
it strikes me, than histories of battles, whose varieties consist chiefly
in cold steel or hot gunpowder, or hotter cannon-balls ; yet people
164 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
never seem tired of them. But human feelings, and the varieties in
life and manners that the human imagination has occasioned, have
many more windings and turnings ; but I have no notion of acting
to empty benches, and if I thought my book would not be read
except by my intimates, I would not write it That is what I wanted
your opinion on. The rough copy of my article is here, and if I have
time I will copy it out clean and get you to read it. It is not half
what I have to say (the historical part), but you may have some idea
of what I mean when you have read it
Some one writes to Mrs. Schwabe to ask for letters of recommen-
dation for some French manufacturers to learn all the secrets of the
English ones at Manchester about cotton-spinning, dyeing, etc. Now,
it's an infamous shame that the English should sharpen the knife that
is to cut their own throat. The very men who come to wheedle their
secrets out of them would not tell them the slightest I said so to
.Mrs. Schwabe, who said, "Pooh, pooh! I'm a free-trader." Ay,
trade as much as you like ; but a free manufacturer is very different
The British Association met at Oxford in June, 1860, and
our kind friends, Dr. and Mrs. Jeune, asked us to stay with
them at Pembroke College on the occasion. They extended
their invitation to Madame Mohl, and we had a most delight-
ful and interesting visit. The town was full of remarkable
people, and they all assembled at Dr. Jeune's, for he was
Vice-Chancellor at the time. We were lodged in Fellows'
rooms, and Madame Mohl was enchanted at the sight of the
books with which her room was crowded. She seized upon
Niebuhr's " History of Rome," and plunged into its contents
whenever she had a minute to spare ; she found it so very
" nourishing," she said.
After her return to London she wrote to Mrs. Gaskell
London, July 8, 1860.
DEAR MRS. GASKELL,
I received yours long ago with my MSS., and never had
time to answer it. I dare say you are right as to my repeating too often
the same thing, and I am quite sure you are right as to the mistake it
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 165
is to do so. When I have finished I shall ask unscrupulously for
your advice, and you will give a good scratch with a pencil when you
see any ungraceful testimony of opinion ; for I agree with you that a
thing should be always let seen, and not shown. I wish the animal
who writes to be as invisible as the mechanism of our bodies..
Nature has shown us the finest example of grace, hiding the hideous
muscles under a beautiful skin ; but one is weak and awkward, you
know. I always think of my dear Dr. Johnson's answer when a
lady found fault with one of his explanations in the dictionary :
" Ignorance pure ignorance, madam ! " You know I am a John-
sonian like Miss Matty's sister. I greatly enjoyed Oxford, and
London too. I never was made so much of, which is due to this
same article. The best compliment I received was from Mrs.
Monckton Milnes, who on reading it thought it her husband's, and
told him so. I never should have had the perseverance to write for
two whole months had it not been for my indignation at seeing
Madame Recamier so ill understood, thanks to Madame Le Nor-
mant's book.
I leave London about the i6th, go to my sister's till the middle of
August, then Mr. Mohl and I go to see Ida in Hungary, and the most
beautiful of babies. I detest travelling now, but I must undertake
this ; it will, I think, be my last journey. I said so three years ago.
To travel for pleasure one should be young. You know, of course,
that Madame Schwabe left us \rifrclta e furia to go to M. Bunsen. I
am now told he is better. She is a great loss to me, first, I am very
fond of her ; secondly, her house is the very thing for me all en Fair,
I may be as disorderly as I please, and she is always easy, so we suit
as if we were made for each other. But I don't disguise my political
notions, which are the very opposite to hers ; for the Whigs have
changed me into a most determined Tory. Perhaps, when I get
home into Leicestershire, I may turn round again. I dined yesterday
with three bishops ! I shall grow into a pillar of the Church ; they are
not High, however, it was at Bishop Hampden's. I wish I had come
across Mr. Stirling (author of Charles V.). I should like to know if he
is still a partisan of Louis Napoleon. He is a friend of yours. Could
you give Anna your new book to translate ? I would ask Robert to
look over it. He is a most disheartening person, and would, like all
the Mohls, cut off every one's arms arid legs for fear he should walk a
little awry. But I have surmounted them all, and don't care a snap
166 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
for their dampings. The worst is that these Germans all know
English. When I spoke of it to Mr. Mohl before Anna, " Oh," says
he, " they have all regular translators at Leipsic ; it's impossible to get
anything " as if these had been, like eternity, without a beginning. I
could have given him a good scratch, like a pussy. I gave myself
no end of trouble with my article, and talked so much about it in the
house that Mr. Mohl did nothing but laugh at me I might as well
have played the flute so I never showed it to him ; he is so dis-
couraging.
I saw Miss Carpenter at Oxford, and greatly liked her. I made
quite a friendship with Mrs. Jeune, and Dr. Jeune said I must go
next year to Oxford, which I had not seen in its natural state ; and I
should see Arthur Stanley, and Mr. Jowett, and Mr. Thompson. Do
you know this latter, and the fair Zoe ? They were mighty kind to
me; and he has a most agreeable countenance and worthy Dr.
Daubeny. I like all these people. I must say I saw no bigotry in
Oxford. Yours ever. Pray, pray write.
Madame Mohl wrote to Miss Bonham Carter from
Hungary
Kaloska, September, 1860.
This is a silly, frivolous set of people, but very elegant, with an
intense vanity and love of finery ; they may succeed in re-establishing
some of their old abuses, and call liberty what is exactly the reverse.
If the Whites of the United States should call in the Spaniards to
help them to get back their black slaves, it would be very near to the
Hungarian nobility trying twelve years ago to persuade the English
to help them. Luckily we did not meddle ; but they are very taking,
and I don't wonder we believed them.
There is only one shop and that is kept by a Jew. Oh, what a
funny country ! Nothing but seeing could make one believe it On
the steamboat was a family of Magyars. The baby, four months
or so, had earrings ; the boy of five years, spurs to his boots. They
have, withal, more grace than most people.
Paris, September 28, 1860.
DEAR HILLY,
I am just returned home, to my intense delight I shall
hear no more schlijf, schlafftts the ugliest language under the sun ;
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 167
but when anything is the fashion in England, it's no use saying a
word. I have found your letter, August 19 ; for we have no letters
sent after us, because, generally, those who want to write know
where to direct. You tell me to write a few facts to contradict our
gentleman's quackeries about the poor; I have been telling facts
these nine years, and until the rascal lied about Savoy, which was a
trifle compared to all his other doings, no mortal would believe me.
The English have a whim to admire this man let them ; they never
will learn but at their cost, and hardly then, that they are spending
millions at this moment for fear he should invade them and Louis
Philippe resisted making war on them. The clamour at one time
in 1840 was tremendous ; and in 1846 they made a fuss about the
Spanish marriages. This man has kept Europe on fire these nine
years. They abuse the former and admire the latter. They are a set
of people who admire quacks, and never look to deeds, only words ;
never judge from an impression of their own, and all the reasoning
and arguing of plain sense is useless. It's just like their admiration
for Hungarians. There's not a road to go over ; the richest land
has been kept in abject poverty. These nobles have had a constitu-
tion these five hundred years what did they ever do ? They keep
the peasants in serfage, but when they go about Europe talking about
their liberty, the English swallow it all ; they won't even look at a
plain fact.
To Mrs, Gaskell.
The greatest amusement at Kaloska was to see the pigs come
home in the evening ; they were so clever. I think it a very un-
healthy place. I never could do anything but look at the pigs and a
little at the cows all this in the street ; no pavement in the middle,
but pools and puddles. Lord, what a place ! and what a deliverance
to get out of it ! Not that Ida dislikes it ; her husband and baby are
so delightful.
My father and I were in Paris again in September, and
found Madame Mohl full of her tour. On her way she had
seen the Ober-Ammergau play, at that time little known,
and she was deeply impressed and touched by it.
168 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
From Mr. Senior s journal.
September 29, 1860. We breakfasted with Madame Mohl. She
returned yesterday from a tour in Germany and Hungary. Her first
stage was Ober-Ammergau, in Bavaria. She spent some days there
to see the Mystery of the Passion, which has been performed there
every ten years, ever since the eleventh century.
Madame Mohl. The acting was exceedingly fine, the poses
magnificent, and the words simple and affecting. I was there for
eight hours and never felt tired, and, what surprised me on reflection,
never felt that there was the least profanation. It was a realization
of the greatest event in history. The people about me were deeply
affected, weeping, sobbing, almost fainting with emotion. The
actors and actresses probably followed a tradition of gestures and
tones which had been elaborated during eight hundred years. The
inhabitants of this part of Bavaria, near the mountains of the Tyrol,
inherit art, they live chiefly by miniature sculpture in wood, which
is the best in the world far better than that of Switzerland.
I asked what were her impressions as to Hungary.
Madame Mohl. That the people are good, but that they are
oppressed by a contemptible aristocracy. From the time that the
Hungarians committed the folly of electing as their constitutional
king the sovereign of countries more powerful in the aggregate than
Hungary is, they felt their constitution to be in danger, and tried to
retain it by refusing to allow any change whatever. They thought
that, if they permitted any part to be touched, all would come down,
so that 1848 found the present generation in the feudal state of the
Middle Ages a subservient peasantry, tyrannized over by a high-
spirited, gentlemanlike, ignorant, oppressive, and dissolute nobility.
We lived with my nephew-in-law, who is a judge and sous-prefet
in the district of Koloska, which contains the estates of the Arch-
bishop of Koloska. Though the see has possessed them for years,
it has done nothing for them ; there are no roads, no schools, no
drainage, no embankment against the floods. None of the duties of
property have been performed, while all its rights have been fully
exercised. A fine soil, a -fine climate, and a fine people, all misused
and neglected.
We went from time to time to balls given by the nobles. The
company consisted of nobles, that is by birth, but in fact men
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 169
working for their bread lawyers, notaries, medical men, and govern-
ment employes. It was the society of a country town, but I never
saw such grace of manner, not even in Paris. As they talked only
Hungarian I could not follow them, but I fancy that I lost nothing,
that their conversation was as empty, silly, and low-minded as their
manners were good.
Sometimes people visited us who talked French. Once the
Rhine was mentioned; somebody asked, "What is the Rhine?"
'Oh," said the most intelligent man present, "it is a river some-
where in Germany."
One young lady after her first visit told us all her history. How
she was in love with a young man, how he was very handsome, how
he was a Protestant, how the archbishop's doctor out of jealousy told
it at the palace, and how the archbishop told her father and her
uncle that if she married a Protestant they would be turned out of
office. " So," she said, " I was forced to give him up, which was a
great shame ; but the doctor shall get nothing by it. I won't marry
him ; he does not come up to my chin."
Another lady, also on her first visit, told us that her husband had
a mistress, and that she was advised to divorce him, but that there
would be great trouble in dividing all the furniture and sheets and
towels.
A German employe said to me, " I like the Hungarians ; they are
so good-natured and agreeable." " Are they honest ? " " Oh no,"
he answered ; " they do not know what honesty means." " Are they
just ? " " Oh no ; they do not know what justice means. But they
are so patriotic. We Germans have nothing like their patriotism."
" It shows itself," I said, " I suppose, in caring for the welfare of
their people." " Not in the least," he answered. " It shows itself in
wearing the Hungarian dress, in talking the Hungarian language, and
in lamenting the loss of their privileges ; above all, that of immunity
from taxation/' He showed me an order he had just received from
Vienna. It was to inquire whether it were true that boys were
flying kites painted black and gold, in which case the kites were to
be confiscated and the boys punished.
In short, to visit Hungary is to walk into the fourteenth century.
It is more like Spain than any other European country. In grace,
and in utter absence of education, the ladies put me in mind of the
Spanish women.
170 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Senior. What is the character of the priests ?
Madame Mohl. In the Koloska district, which is Catholic, very
bad ; they almost all have children by their housekeepers. The
peasants, as far as I could hear, are loyal to Austria. The emperor
and the imperial bureaucracy are their shield against the feudal
tyranny of the landlords.
Senior. What did you find the feeling in Vienna respecting the
emperor ?
Madame Mohl. I had no good means of information. We had
letters for many of the best people ; but we found Mr. Mohl had
been denounced as an emissary of Louis Napoleon with a revolu-
tionary mission ; we were afraid of compromising our acquaintances,
and did not deliver them.
I had heard that she was writing a book, and asked about it.
Madame Mohl. Its peg will be Madame Recamier, its substance
will be a comparison of French and English manners. I shall be
forced, however, to suppress much for fear of offending relations.
Senior. What is the story of Madame de StaeTs liaison with
Augustus Schlegel ?
Madame Mohl. It was not a liaison ; for a liaison there must be
two parties. He was in love with her, but she was not in love with
him. Schlegel lived with her as her son's tutor. He rather afficheed
his admiration for the mother as an excuse for performing such an
office for the son. Barante was also very much in love with her. Once
when he was leaving the house she wished for a parting interview ;
but Schlegel was always in the way, so she begged Madame Recamier
to take possession of Schlegel for a couple of hours. When the
parting was over, Madame Re*camier asked Madame de Stael how it
had gone off. " A ravir," said Madame de Stael, " nous e"tions tous
les deux au de"sespoir."
.
- -
.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL, 171
CHAPTER VIII.
1 860-6 1.
Refinement introduced by the prccieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet Madame de
Maintenon Sympathy necessary to a writer A new generation of habitues in
the Rue du Bac Lomenie Montalembert New review Hungarians and
Poles Decrees of Louis Napoleon Abolition of passports Causes of so
many rascals flocking to London Reception of Lacordaire at the Academy
Over-activity in England Austro- Prussian War China Education of nieces
Young ladies in England Ristori Lamartine a tirelire Papal affairs
Madame Tastu Heroism of the Americans Slavery The trireme
Demolition of old Paris Madame Mohl correcting her proofs Frystone
Grandmother's picture The Abbe Chateauvieux and "Memoires de St.
Helene " Mexican affair.
DURING the winter Madame Mohl was absorbed in com-
posing her book. She writes to Miss Bonham Carter
October 14, 1860.
DEAREST Coz,
I wish I could consult Flo about my book. This is
the query. It enters into my plan to show the two centuries in
French history when the women had the most influence ; viz. the
twelfth, when chivalry began, and all at once they were sung and
obeyed ; and the seventeenth, when the prccieuses remoralized France
to a certain degree at least, they were the first to bring decency into
books and conversation. The influence lasted the whole of the
century ; it ended, one may say, with Madame de Maintenon. Now,
I have my own views on this lady very different from the ordinary
ones though now people have begun to do her some justice and
I am much tempted to enter into many particulars of her life and
letters to show her character, and how much better she was than
others, and that her influence was precisely a proof of what I say as
to the love of the society and the conversation of women being a taste
172 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
peculiar to the French, which nothing can better prove than an all-
powerful monarch marrying a woman of forty-eight, three years older
than himself, when all the young beauties were at his beck and call.
I must not have a critic that is too severe, as they discourage me,
and I throw it aside and can't work ; it is a thing not sufficiently
considered, that animal spirits are the first ingredient for doing any-
thing. Criticism entirely stops the current, at least with me. I'm
convinced that is the reason why art is so brilliant at its birth. There
are no critics. The artist goes on helter-skelter, enjoying his
creations. The more sympathy he obtains, the quicker his ideas
flow ; but if he stops one minute to think of all the faults and all the
indifference, he is iced, and he really can't help it. But it is twelve
o'clock, and I must go to bed.
Some younger men than the old Jiabitucs, such as Renan,
PreVost-Paradol, Lanfrey, and Lomenie, now frequented
Madame Mohl's salon. Foremost of all at this time was
Lomenie, professor of literature in the College de France,
/
and afterwards at the Ecole Polytechnique. He was a
staunch Orleanist, and would accept no appointment under
the emperor. His conversation was as full of grace and
vivacity as his writings. The affection between him and
Madame Mohl was mutual, and I cannot believe that he
expressed himself as being ashamed of appearing with her in
public, as has been stated. He cannot defend himself from
this charge of disloyalty to his old friend, for he died in 1878.
Paris, November 12, 1860.
DEAR MINNIE,
My thoughts are just like jelly-fish ; they come out in a
messy, disgusting, pulpy state, and when I want to lick them into
shape and put bone into them by words, I turn sick at the sight of
them, and waste paper enough, if spread out, to reach to China.
M. de Lomenie was here yesterday. He has just accouche of the
new review. It is called Revue Nationale et Etrangere ; it is to rival
Buloz, of the Deux Mondes. He sent me the review in the morn-
ing ; luckily, it was already cut. He took it up and read me all the
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 173
best morsels, giving proper emphasis, and saying, " N'est-ce pas c.a n'est
pas mal ? " " Voilh. qui est bien tape ! " " Qu'en dites vous ? " These
were interlarded ; and then he would say, " Now. if anybody says to
you I have gone over to the Government, I think this bit" (then he
read a piece). " Mind you tell them so. I wonder what Buloz
will say to this?" Then he read another bit. Nobody ever en-
joyed their own writing so much before ; his amour-propre is so
bon enfant. He used to write for the Deux Mondes, and they made
him correct his articles. He did it once ; he did it twice. At last
he grew outrageous, and told me to say to Buloz he must call upon
him if he wanted anything more; but I never saw Buloz, and I'm
sorry I did not write and tell him to come to me, for Lome"nie got out
of humour, and a bookseller, called Charpentier, just seized on him
in the moment fit for temptation, as old Nick does, and persuaded
him to be the leading manager of a new review, and now he has
entered Pandemonium I feel remorse. He'll never stay in it. His
temper is very peppery, not to say bad. He is very honest and
kind-hearted ; both his good and bad qualities will make it a metier
de galere. You English can have no idea of the difficulty of writing
against a Government without giving a word that can be a handle.
It was this adresse that he was so delighted with in his article it's
very clever " Les Principes de 1789." There's a German proverb,
" Wash your muff, but don't wet it," which must be put into practice
by all the Opposition. Montalembert has written a letter to Cavour,
which perhaps you have seen; it is salted and peppered to the
highest. He wrote to me, and said he longed for Lord John Russell
to give him an opportunity to do the same for him.
I wish I had been with you at Bowood ; it must have been very
entertaining. If your papa can't give me another copy of the
Report,* I shall get back the one I left with my sister. It's invalu-
able, and my niece in Hungary writes to me that she has read it with
the greatest interest and admiration. Mr. Mohl is most particularly
interested in all he writes on education. I will tell Lomenie your
good opinion. It's like watering a thirsty plant to give him a com-
pliment. What a charming passion vanity is ! I don't mean sour,
saturnine vanity.
Our Barthelemy is staunch as ever. He says that L. N. divides the
money with Haussmann that he makes by pulling down Paris, and
* Report of the Education Commission.
174 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
that it is enormous. Some say Madame Eugenie is quite cured
since she has been in England. She was so tired of all the etiquette
he imposed upon her, and she feels now as free as when she was a
girl, and goes about London shopping, on which a wise gentleman
who has been one week in London said the etiquette in England was
a pretty deal worse than here. The Hungarians are all in strong
reaction. They are going to name along with Count Karoly one
who has been ten years in prison. I am convinced they will go to
loggerheads, because the Kossuth party will divide from the nobles,
who will try to get all the power they can ; and as honesty and truth
are unknown articles in their country, it will scarcely end well.
They are like the Poles, and will be taken by some one. Ivan
Tourguenieff is here ; he is very delightful. I suppose you are very
busy. Pray squeeze in a little time for me. This is a dull letter,
and a poor return for yours, which made me laugh so.
DEAREST MINNIE,
So far from thinking you behaved brutally (what a word !
I didn't invent it), I think you very kind to write to the likes of me
when you are translating such grand books. I knew Gustave de Beau-
mont years ago, and thought him not very profound. Mr. Mohl said
he and Tocqueville were body and shadow, but Tocqueville was the
body. Is it true, and is it seen in the writing? I have seen no
Wyses ; write me by return of post only one word with their address,
that I may call on them and make a party for them. I'm in love
with them both.
I much envy your Christmas party Monckton Milnes, etc. I have
spent a week in the country with him. Nothing can be so droll as
he is when quite easy and en verve. I have finished one morsel of
my book on " Chivalry." I am afraid it will give a very bad opinion
of me. It is very immoral, because I say that love was then incom-
patible with marriage. Don't tell anybody. I wrote to my friend
Hutton, who spoke to Chapman and Hall ; but the despicable
wretches will see it first, Sometimes I think it abominable, fanciful
stuff, and then I think it's very good. I have lent it to a friend, and
am quite quaking to hear what she says, and yet I'm such a goose that
I put off sending for it because I know if she thinks it stuff I shall
not have the power to write another line. It takes away one's
animal spirits did you never find that ? I do nothing without my
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 175
animal spirits. I can't get off my chair when I am bereaved of
them, and I can't understand how some people live on in a sort of
routine without seeming to like or dislike living. Lomenie was
here last night, like a bottle of champagne whizzing all over the
room. He is really a jewel, though insufferable sometimes ; he is
so violent when opposed. He has given up the review in a huff,
because the editors and writers were anti-papal and vulgar-minded,
and had many other qualities. I'm extremely glad, as he was unfit
for it. I shall write to Mrs. Clive about her book. I shall like to see
"why Paul Ferroll killed his wife," though I must say I know so
many who have capital reasons for so doing that it will be easy
enough to explain. We are intensely dull here. All my intimates
have some one ill or dying, and I don't know where to go for a
little amusement. Poor Madame de Circourt's is the most cheerful
and pleasant house I know, and though she's so suffering no one
would know it.
Some people here are silly enough to take these new decrees of
Louis Napoleon in earnest. There's a certain law by which any one
who has ever been condemned to the least political penalty, or fined
by the police, is liable to be sent to Cayenne at any time by the
minister without judge or jury. It was made after the Orsini terror,
and if any mal-avise was to say anything now, or get the least in dis-
grace with the police, all political rights of defence are lost for ever.
This keeps them very cautious. Some say these decrees are to
make Europe believe he is such friends with the nation that he can
conduct an army on the Rhine whenever he likes. No one doubts
war in the spring. An officer who is quartered near Nancy tells me
that they all feel convinced of it ; nay, the army would be sorry if
they didn't. He is putting everything in preparation ; horses by thou-
sands are out at grass all ready ; more troops are adding ; certain
immense clothing establishments are overdone with work. The
Emperor of Austria said that many faults had been committed; that
he himself had committed many ; Rechberg's brother told this ; and,
as Schmerling has become minister, the system will change. But is
it too late? If the Germans won't join all heart in hand, as in 1814,
they will have a repetition of 1805-10. The Sardinians send quan-
tities of arms to Hungary and Wallachia. This man has emissaries
in both to work up and influence, Meantime L. N. puts an end to
passports between England and France, to become popular there,
1 76 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OP
and though nothing could be a greater farce than these have been
for years, and the French Government only gets rid of a plague, the
English are silly enough to be quite charmed with this dust thrown
in their eyes. As L. N., when a conspirator, travelled about where
he pleased in spite of passports, no one knows better what nonsense
they are ; but in getting rid of them he gives himself a friendly air,
while he is planning mischief and making us spend our vitals after
we have helped him to attain this position by our alliance. Oh, we
are a nice set ! and I sometimes think we richly deserve to have a
trial of French pillaging on our land. We had no business in China ;
but our taking the French brigands was monstrous rattlesnakes are
nothing to it But good night ; I shan't sleep if I think of it. Love
to all.
A few days later she wrote
As to the passport affair, it is to humbug you foolish English
a sugar-plum. He is increasing his navy enormously, making rail-
roads from this to Brest. Pray put it into your head that this
gentleman delights in nothing but underhand conspiracies. If the
English persist in being blind, they will rue it I wrote to Lady
William and saturated her, I fear, with politics. If you see her, tell
her I pine for a letter. Nothing can be more secluded than we all
live here ; the streets are impassable both to horse and foot. If I
go out at night I must walk, and I did on Christmas night to the
Tourguenieffs' and back ; no coach would or could go. I never
saw Paris so before.
Barthelemy keeps me au courant of the tricks of the Tuileries.
People are mad for tickets at the Institut ; it's nine months since I
was asked for mine. It will not be till after January 31, Guizot
being for ever pruning his discourse. Lacordaire's is ready.
Love to all your people.
Paris, January 13, 1 86 1.
DEAR HILLY,
Rendu has published a second edition of his book about
the education of the lower classes in England. He wants to send
it to the Westminster to get it mentioned, I dare say with praise ; but
that I care nothing about. I wish you could tell whoever writes on
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 177
the subject to say that nothing can be more impudent and unjust
than the mania foreigners have of comparing the misery of London
to the misery of other capitals. It is like comparing the dirt of a
cesspool in one house to the cistern of clear water in the next, and
concluding that the inhabitants of the first are very dirty and of the
next very clean. One knows that all the canaille of all the world
may go to London, and that for our own subjects we have no pass-
ports, no gates, no books at the Police, to inscribe every one who
takes a bed in every house. Here passports have been refused all
over the provinces, even to workmen, for the last four years, unless
they had great recommendations, etc. ; and as nobody can circulate
in the whole country without leave, nor ever could, and all vagabonds
are immediately sent back to their depots de mendicite in their
departments, it's easy enough to keep it clean. In Vienna it is even
more difficult to make a sink of the metropolis, as a sort of imaginary
cordon is drawn at a good number of leagues round the town, and
unless the passport permits it no one can pass this ; and they must
generally give an account of their means of existence to obtain per-
mission, on the passport, to pass the said frontier into the capital.
These facts I know, and I dare say the other large towns have some-
thing of the sort. I told Rendu, who smiled as usual, and paid
little attention. His book has good in it, and after all, those who
point out our failings are much more useful than our flatterers.
To Miss E. Haitghton.
January, 1861.
MY DEAR ELIZA,
I was at the reception of Lacordaire yesterday. Of all
the crowds and absurd anxiety to get in I ever saw, it was the worst.
I was almost killed and my clothes all spoilt, though I had a billet
de centre. Railroads brought people from Toulouse and Belgium,
as if there was room enough. They say two hundred false tickets
were forged and sold at Brussels ; but they stamped the genuine
ones at the Institut, so the others could not pass. This is what I'm
told. The ladies, as usual, fought like tigers. Villemain, they say,
had six hundred letters a day for the last week. At least one-
half of those who had centre tickets could find no place. It was no
great thing after all. I applauded at all the political allusions, I
always go on purpose, and I assure you they were not spared. Every
N
1 78 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
time the word liberty was used clap ! clap ! Eugenie was up
at one tribune, Mathilde at another, Plon-Plon at another. One-
third of the numbers could not sit down. Two women coolly kept
their seat amongst them. There's a new play called the " Effrontes,"
and I vote for sending them tickets to it de la part of the unseated
members.
With kindest love, I remain affectionately yours,
MARY MOHL.
To Miss Bonham Carter.
February, 1861.
England is one vast volcano of over-exertion and worrit ; they
can't be quiet Their brains are worn out ; then they must have an
artificial energy to make them believe they are strong. But it eats
into the life ; it spends the capital. We all have a little income of
strength, and won't be content with it. It may be so far good that
some people are so unreasonable they worit be quiet and do nothing,
but they must fidget and bother after other people's business ; they
have lost all taste for intellectual quiet enjoyment from this dreadful
habit of fidget
I went to the reception of Lacordaire. Lacordaire's speech was
good as a composition crammed with nonsense about the Americans.
Every time the word " liberty " was mentioned the rounds of applause
were absolutely comical, for up in one window was Eugenie, in
another Mathilde, in another Plon-Plon; so they saw a public
little seen in their circles. L. N. told M. de Sarcey (of the D'ebats}
that he was entirely against the unity of Italy and the invasion of
Naples. The young King of Naples is a great favourite here. How
the English can warrant to themselves their enthusiasm about liberty
and go tyrannizing over the Chinese, I can't conceive ; but I think
they are more nonsensical than anybody and no wonder, when
Cobden, Gladstone, and Bright rule the roast. Oh, the things that
go on in Hungary the rascalities ! it would fill a book ; and if
my book succeeds, and I get a name, I will go there and write such
a one as will show what we English admire with a vengeance.
March, 1861.
I am in awful spirits at our base conduct ; we shall stand by and
see Austria beat, and a year or two hence he will attack Prussia,
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 179
and then we shall begin to understand. If we and Prussia had
behaved properly, this injustice would not have taken place. The
absurdity, the baseness, of Lord John Russell's intrigue to undo
a ministry at such a time has given me the measure of the Whigs.
I had an idea of it, but I could not have supposed it possible,
I was fool enough to suppose there was some honesty in England ;
but they are such fools so blind I cannot understand them. This
fellow "joue'd" them at the Russian peace; they spent their best
blood and money in the Crimean War. He then always put himself
forward ; now he " joues" them by pretending this is all for the love
of liberty in Italy. He will say anything ; they will believe anything
in words, they never look at deeds. I don't know how I shall bear
being in England after such conduct. I saw Lord Elgin last night ;
he was delightful. He talked of China and Japan for two hours.
He's so natural, so just, so humane, so sensible, it's a comfort that
such a man should be in power ; but will he, in the absurd way in
which everything goes on? Perhaps they'll make some fool
Governor-General or Minister. He was in perpetual fight with the
English at Canton, to protect the natives against them.. We can
have no idea how they are put upon by the scampy English who go
there.
April 10, 1 86 1.
DEAREST LADY WILLIAM,
I have been so absorbed these last five months with
writing a sort of a sketch of past French society to add to Madame
Recamier's life, that I seem to have been in a dream all the winter.
As soon as a bookseller deigns to publish I shall send you a copy,
hoping for your indulgence. There is no suffrage I should be so
ambitious of gaining, and I hope your kindness to the author will
soften and even warp your judgment of the book. We have, of
course, been all absorbed in politics as usual, and the last seven
weeks I had two English nieces to preach and morigener " Hold up
your head ; answer in a soft voice ; don't look crusty ; don't see-saw
when you walk." Then I stick myself before the glass, walk up and
down as stiff as a poker, make one of them do the same after me,
looking in the glass. All morality I eschew; like Lord Chesterfield,
I think of nothing but deportment. Can you, who are a philosopher,
explain why the tournure and manners of so many English of good
180 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
connections, liberal education, etc., etc., are so bad compared to
those of the same rank on the Continent ? Is it shyness, or pride,
or the mania for cooping up the girls in schoolrooms, like wild
beasts in a cage, till they are pulled out to be looked at by the
public ? I think that explains it enough for the women ; the gne
they feel never seems to leave them, unless they turn pert and flirty
and that is worse and what I hear called fast. Oh ! that I detest
worse than all r and it is just as far from ease and simplicity as the
former.
I saw the Ristori last night in a French play ; it's extraordinary
how little accent she has, and how fine her ear must be, for when
I first knew her, six years ago, she spoke very middling French, with
a very strong Italian accent. The play made on purpose for her is
extremely bad, her acting is overdone. They say here it is Italian ;
I say. " No." When she first came over here she was far less exag-
gerated, in fact in " Myrrha " she was perfect. It is the French that
have spoiled her by applauding when she makes her face express
every slight detail of the words she speaks. She was led to this by
acting in a language not half understood, and she ekes out her
meaning by so much pantomime that it is fatiguing to look at her.
Grammar is not to be attained by human muscles. It is like Wagner,
who wants to make music what it would lose its nature if he suc-
ceeded a sort of thinking and reasoning art
I wonder if you retain enough of French localities to know what
a tirelire is ? It is a common earthen pot entirely closed, with
a slit at the top ; the poor people all have one, in which they slip in
an odd penny especially the children, who go about begging of their
friends to put something through the slit. At the end of a year or
two they break it, and have generally a large quantity of sous. It
was for years the custom to hand about a tirelire in the omnibus on
New Year's Day to collect etrennes for the conductor. A tirelire, in
fact, is a very old institution, quite in the manners and habits of the
country ; you give money without any one knowing how much, and
there is no humiliation for the small contributor or the receiver.
Some one said the other day, " Ce pauvre Lamartine, ce n'est plus
une Lyre c'est une tirelire." To me it is delightful.
The papal affair has done no end of good ; many people who
were cowardly are become courageous, and were you not astonished
at sixty senators voting against the Government, who named them
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 181
purposely to be their creatures? But I know of one who said to
another, " I did not much care about the papal affair, but I should
have had no peace at home if I had voted against the pope." Is it
not odd that the English, who pretend to be so religious, abuse the
French for voting for their own religious creed against this despotic
Government ? Suppose the French abused the seven bishops who
voted against James II. and preferred the risk, what would they say?
Can't they suppose the French Catholics must stick to the pope or
they are no Catholics? and if they are not the English call them
infidels. Oh, justice ! As to liberty, it's a vain hypocritical word like
"doxy." Liberty is for me to do as I please, and for you to submit
The word will be ridiculous in another thirty years, unless those who
cry it will define what it means.
Pray, dearest madame, do tell me how you are. My spouse se
met d vos pieds ; and pray don't forget him there, but raise him up
with good news, and believe me
Ever yours,
M. MOHL.
The following letter is the first to her great-niece, Miss
Eleanor Martin :
May 23, 1861.
I go almost every day to read aloud to Madame Tastu, who has
been couched, and recovered only one eye, if recovered it may be
called. She can see to go about, and recognizes her friends close
to her, but as yet she can't read; however, they promise that she will.
Her son came from Belgrade, where he is consul, with a three months'
leave of absence. It is beautiful to see him, he is so fond of her; he
never went out once of an evening for two months, though he is
passionately fond of music.
Mrs. Green is going to America. Her husband went last week to
go and fight the South, and on Thursday night he said, " Anna, I
can't stay away ; I must go." " Very well, William ; I'll go to Caen
to-morrow morning " (they have a country house there) " and sell the
furniture, get rid of the lease, and follow you in a fortnight." On
Friday she was at Caen ; the furniture was placarded ; on Saturday
she came back. She came to see me on Sunday ; he was to leave
on Wednesday. Her sister has sent her two sons, her brother his
only son. It's the grandest thing I ever saw. I would go to America
:82 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
if I were twenty years younger. I never wished to go before I
hated it ; I now have the highest respect for it. The slaves will be
all free before twenty years are over. Oh ! if your dear mamma had
seen it, how glad she would have been ! . . .
The trireme won't budge, and our rascal had catapults made
to imitate the ancient ones; but nothing can persuade the trireme
to swim, or the catapults to throw a stone ; so all this show-off is
for nothing (what ducks they are not to mind him !). I went to the
exhibition, but was so tired I saw nothing, and went to bed when
I got home.
The emperor was at this time full of his " Life of Caesar,"
on which he relied for admission into the Academy. The
trireme referred to was made by his order, in imitation of
the Roman galleys ; it proved a failure.
May 31, 1861.
MY DEAR MINNIE,
The wretch of a publisher, having kept my MS. I don't
know how long, says it can't be published before October. Now, I
had just as soon put it in the fire ; I may be dead by that time.
He talks some stuff about the season, forsooth as if books were fish
and could only be ate at one time ! Now, if there was anything
I cared about it was promptitude ; if any one promised me anything
Paradise itself next year, I wouldn't thank them. I hate next
year.
June 2, 1861.
DEAR MRS. GASKELL,
I'm sure I forget if I have behaved like a pig in not
answering the kindest of invitations. I am so accustomed to such
behaviour in myself, that whoever likes may make me believe I have,
even when I'm as innocent as a lamb, for I have grown not to know
right from wrong from sheer incapacity to recollect. If I have, pray
forgive me, and if I say I'll never do so again, don't trust to it ; it is
my intention, that's all. I will just say a few words about facts,
having made my act of confession and contrition. I'm going to
England about the loth, always at the last moment doubting
whether I had not better stay at home. I believe there have been
several kingdoms overthrown since I wrote last I want to hear of
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 183
your book. Some one told me you had been ill ; do let me hear
about you. Paris is all coming down ; there won't be an old hotel
six years hence. The Isle Notre Dame is to have nothing but barracks
on it; it breaks my heart. This fellow is jealous of all the long
history. Six thousand people are turned out of house and home.
You English make me sick ; you say why do you bear it ? You
helped him at first, and he has six hundred thousand soldiers, but
you are paying for it ; yet, such is your folly, you like him better than
L. Philippe, though L. P. kept the peace. It will appear so strange
in history that it will not be believed ; but folly always has that effect
at a distance. One says it is impossible that people could be such
fools.
20, York Terrace, June 13, 1861. ., |
DEAR MINNIE,
I am quite easy about my book, for I see it would not
be read now my chcf-d'ceuvre. Ah ! so it's to come out in October.
Messrs. Hutton and Bagehot have managed very well for me, and
I'm much obliged to them. And, my dear Minnie, I shall be living
near you in a fortnight, perhaps before ; for my beloved Hilary
Carter has a dwelling there, and what is hers is mine and mine is
hers, except her time, which she grudges me, she says. I dine
to-day at Mrs. Hollond's with Messrs. Remusat and Buckle. The
latter I'm very curious about.
Love to the senior Seniors, not forgetting the pretty junior.
This was a delightful season, for Madame Mohl's lodging
was in the Gloucester Road, within a stone's throw of Hyde
Park Gate. It was our habit to breakfast at 10.30 or 11. My
father often invited two or three interesting people. The
party was small, and general conversation was achieved. I
never heard such interesting conversations as at those break-
fasts ; and Madame Mohl used to drop in continually, as well
as to tea and dinner.
Frystone, August 27, 1861.
DEAR MRS. GASKELL,
I thought it better not to bother Miss Toilet with a
letter, but to write when I had a little time, to say how glad I should
have been to have seen you somehow or other ; but I am too
1 84 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
poorly to visit just now. I had a beginning of my old complaint in
London, and was in a fright ; then I got a little better, and when I
got here felt remarkably well the first two days, but have been very
poorly the last three.
Pray tell me if you are getting on with your story. I corrected
my proofs in London with the utmost trouble, as I liked my bad
English better than Mr. Greg's good. Now mind, he has been very
kind and useful, but one's ideas never can be expressed exactly by
another. Oh, the trouble I have taken ! I remained exactly a
month longer in London to correct these proofs. I know you won't
like it, but I had great pleasure in writing a part of it, I must say.
I remained exactly two months in London. The first I enjoyed and
went out a good deal; the second, I had the toothache and the
proofs. I was sick and tired of the whole business. Mr. Mohl came
on the 1 6th, very tired of Paris, and so pleased at being in London
that he sniffed at the smoke as if it had been a smelling-bottle.
I stay here till Thursday to see Arthur Russell.
Cold Overton, September 29, 1861.
DEAR MINNIE,
I have been so ill that I did not write, because I was
disheartened and did not think it worth while to give tongue to such
a contemptible state of mind. Howling is disagreeable, and I really
had no other note. I have been better these last three days, enough
to make me hope I have turned the corner. I was very sorry to find
your papa had fallen into the same disgrazia. Mr. Mohl saw him in
London, and says he was better. I am sadly afraid all my pleasant
visits must be given up ; I am certainly a little better than a fortnight
ago ; but even supposing I should improve much quicker, I should
certainly not be fit for company. I am in bed half the day, lolling
about the other half, I go on my pony two hours, and have about
two or three hours a day of spirits and talk on condition I have
the utmost indulgence. Is that a fit state for being in other people's
houses? I can't express how disappointed I am, for I enjoyed my
visit so entirely at Monckton Milnes' that it gave me an inordinate
appetite for more. I met there a lady who knows you Miss Ellen
Toilet. I happened to tell a story you told me of an old woman
who had a carbunion in her back, etc. ; and when she saw I took an
interest in the discourses heard in these byways of society, she read
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 185
me bits of a certain journal kept by her sister, who has a "Senior "
memory, but not about the converse of great stars, but of country
people. I never heard anything more racy, more full of life and
reality. She is a very intellectual and uncommon person ; I intend
to go and see her. We had many agreeable men, Holman Hunt
among others, whom I like so well that I comprehend people should
put up with his unpunctualities. I stayed there ten days, and spent
my last pennyworth of strength. I came here to fall down, I may
say, like the exhausted warrior who has only breath to announce the
victory and drops down dead. Is there such a one, or do I dream
it ? My memory is so bad that I often invent quotations, and am
ready to die for their exactness. But I must not go falling down at
Mrs. Clive's. I hate sick people, and myself more than any. I
respect cats, when they are ill they hide themselves and die
unseen ; indeed, all animals have that modesty. Mr. Milnes was
delightful. He was the model of a master of a house thinking of
everybody ; and then his incomparable drollery would come out in
spite of himself. A lady asked "who was the bishop's wife?" so
like a country cousin's question. He replied with the utmost gravity,
" She is the daughter of the King of the Cannibal Islands." He was
for ever breaking out in such rich explosions.
Paris, November 12, 1861.
I have only been able to read the last week, and writing was
almost impossible. Mr. Senior saw what a poor creature I was,
and when I got here I was within an ace of my life. When I was at
Cold Overton I thought I was going to die, so I promised a picture
to my nephew which I do nothing but fret after now. Catch me
disposing of my goods before I'm dead another time ! But these two
nieces are great darlings, and I bribed their father with my grand-
mother's picture to let them come with me. Now they say he would
any day sell any of his children for a picture of any great-grand-
mother ; but he would not let me take them to the opera (where I
could not go, by-the-by), so I'll never give him another (I have
plenty more), and if he had consented he would have had them all.
But unless I wrote a book I could never make you understand the
absurd family I belong to. When I'm in a rage I think of showing
them all up, and I would not give a pin for their chance if I get into
high spirits (I was ready to caper a day or two ago), and then woe
i86 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
betide them ; but I am now very quiet, and mistress of some judg-
ment. I do assure you your book * is wonderfully done. I rejoice
that I never read it in French ; it came, therefore, quite fresh. I
never miss the French when I read it, and that I reckon wonderful ;
and if you mistrust my friendship, Mr. Mohl says it is very well done
indeed, and we both told Ampere so, who fancies you are too fine a
lady to translate. He dines with us to-night I invited the Reeves,
and I have Mignet, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Lome'nie, General Fox,
and perhaps Ivan Tourgue'nierT the most uncertain of men. Your
book contains so much more than the French ; that alone would make
it very valuable. Oh, by-the-by, there's a slight mistake from your
papa's journal ; he makes Tocqueville say that the memorial of St.
Helena was by an Abbe de Chateauvieux. He was not an abbe,
but a fine gentleman who had a wife ; he was an old friend of
Madame de Stae'l, and belonged to her society. It is true that he
did not live in Paris, but, I believe, near Geneva. The memorial
appeared towards 1817-18, or 1819; it made a great noise, being
very witty, and was attributed to all the cleverest people. My
mother, who doted on politics, wanted me to read all the brochures
that appeared, and offered me five francs to read that. I hated
politics in those days, but I had very little money, and five francs
was a serious gain. In 1831 or 1832, when we were at the Abbaye-
au-Bois, Madame Recamier often came into our salon in the evening ;
she was there when her servant came to tell her M. de Chateau-
vieux was inquiring for her, and he was requested to come to find
her in our salon, ffe was a very complete converser and homme de
societe, and after he was gone it was related how delighted he had
been to take in every one with the famous memorial.
I can't find out why my book does not come out ; I am quite
tired of waiting for it I have a great mind to think no more about
it, but to write a book to show up the evangelicals ; then I shall get
hooted at properly.
December 3, 1861.
DEAR MRS. GROTE,
You are a better woman than you think, for you sent me
your book, and I am a worse ; for though I was very grateful, I
never found a moment to write, and now I ought to be doing some-
* A translation of the "Memoirs and Remains of Tocqueville" (Macmillan,
1861).
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 187
thing else instead. I had not all the articles in the book, though I had
several.* A thousand thanks now, as also for your amusing letter.
I had a visit of eighteen days from Lady Augusta Bruce ; she is very
agreeable and very good; I enjoyed her visit. I have now two
musical nieces who play on the piano. My spouse hates music, and
is heroic enough to say so, which, I think, puts him on a par with
Hannibal or any of the great ancients ; but as I have a particular
fancy for that Carthaginian, I show it by comparing him to my
spouse. I love his unquellable hatred of the Romans ; I always
hated them too. Our scamp has done a nice thing. I enjoy the
Mexican affair ; it is L. N.'s Moscow. I hope he'll send more and
more men serve them right. Perish armies if their death shows a
principle, and the glorious principle of not falling like brigands on
people at the other side of the globe ! I hope some day the Chinese
will cut all our throats over there ; I should wish it if my own brother
was one of them. The only history I read with gluttony is Boney's
return from Russia ; it is almost the only one where Justice, a
tedious old dawdle, seems ground young and brisk. But I have no
notion of two weights and two scales, of thinking right or wrong
according to my partialities ; only one must see all the .bearings of
the case, and that is difficult. Even Scamp's partisans are embar-
rassed with the Mexican affair.
I envy you the acquaintance of John Stuart Mill. I wish you
would use all your powers to persuade him to come and see me
when he comes through Paris ; he is a man who thinks for himself;
" he is a man for a' that." They are scarce enough, and whether
one always agrees with them or not, they are of the real stuff one
loves to see, and have a charm for me which the madcaps you
talk of, who are only trying to glare and flare one's eyes out, have
not ; for they pretend to what the first have in reality. I have kept
the secret of our expedition to Holland House most sacredly.
General Fox was here and talked of it not a word. I have so
often been the confidant of political affairs, that I have the habit of
never mentioning to one conspirator what another has said to me,
though they both know that I know it ; because, if we were in a
court of justice and privately questioned, nothing could come of
what I had said. I learnt this at sixteen years old. Yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
* Mrs. Crete's collected papers.
iS8 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER IX.
1862-63.
Position of women in England In Greece Country squires despise women
Mothers sneered at Selfishness of fathers Improvement due to French
chivalry Decline of the empire Letter to Princess Batthyany with her book
Exhibition of 1862 Archbishop Whately's story Visit to the Circourts
Friendship in France Women in France and England Young Italians
Arconati Sanson's lesson at the Conservatoire Montalembert's daughter
takes the veil His distress Sale of stamps in the Tuileries Dean Stanley's
marriage Norma for young ladies Progress in France just before the Revo-
lution.
THE following letter is in answer to one from me protesting
against her unfavourable view of the position of women in
England :
January 2, 1862 (alas ! one's always getting older).
DEAREST MINNIE,
I was contemplating a letter to you when yours came.
I ought to have put in my preface that the manners of the present
day and in the rising generation are perfectly left out by me, both in
France and England. I deal only with the past. In fact, there's no
manners at all now ; one can't talk of the non-existent but that
you will deny too ; but I don't think you are a judge ; you see a
fraction of the most cultivated literary society, and you are young
and good-looking. It puts me in mind of the fermier-gene'ral in
1778, when all Paris was talking of bettering the state of the
peasants, of a liberal government, of the rights of man, etc. The
fermier-ge'ne'ral, who was enormously rich, said, " Mais pourquoi
done changer? nous sommes si bien." I don't deny that women
are well off in tolerably civilized places when they are young and
pretty and clever, but I want to know how that was brought about.
Do you suppose the Greek ladies had the best places, or could say
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 189
their soul was their own ? When Orestes killed his mother the others
said that, women being far inferior, he was not to be judged as if it
were a man ; the idea was an ordinary one, or they would not have
proclaimed it. It is to the eleventh century that you owe your
position ; but I, who lived in the country in my youth among very
well-bred, old-fashioned, and broad-landed country squires, have seen
over and over what I say. The men talk together ; the lady of the
house may be addressed once in a way as a duty, but they had all
rather talk together, and she is pretty mute if there is no other lady.
I see it is the same now ; they have no notion that a lady's conver-
sation is better than a man's. The widower of a friend of mine, a
clergyman, was quite astonished when Mr. Mohl said English women
had more cultivation than the men y and you could talk to them on
more subjects ; he was so bothered that when he got alone with
Mr. Mohl he returned to the subject, and could not believe he was
serious. His wife gave out more sense in a quarter of an hour than
he in a year. He did not invent this ; it's the common opinion. My
friend will have ^1 2,000 a year, his sisters will have ^200,
and they won't have a sou of this, unless they marry, till he dies.
Another friend of mine married at twenty a woman ten years older
than himself. He was a widower at three and thirty, and he took
special care to hunt after a wife as fast as he could. He won't let
his daughters go out because he hates going out ; his son may do
anything he pleases, yet he is younger than the eldest. These poor
girls are handsome. I don't say it's essential for girls to marry, but
they ought to have the choice. No, they are women why should
they be independent ? And haven't I seen boys behave impertinently
to their mothers, who submit ; and hasn't Lady William told me
what court a mamma will pay to her eldest son to get him to
doter his sister? Ah, Minnie, you are like the fermier-ge"neral.
And what don't I see in all the novels about mammas trying to fish
up husbands for their daughters, and the contempt thrown on all
these women ? Poor souls ! if I had a daughter whose brother was
to have ;i 0,000 a year and she ^200, I should fish too. Poor
thing ! she is brought up in a fine house to be turned out, or depen-
dent upon a pert sister-in-law, and her father spends more every year
on his dog-kennels than he will give to her; and if the poor anxious
mother had brought her daughters up to make their own clothes and
to dress shabbily, the papa would have been mortified. They are his
1 90 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
playthings ; but as to thinking of their future well-being, he never
does. You always see the mamma sneered at because she wants to
marry them well ; the papa is never troubled about anything but
himself, therefore he is not ridiculous. He thinks they are to make
his tea and to nurse him when he is old and gouty, and that is what
they were born for. As I have no daughters, and have married my
adopted one to my entire satisfaction, I am in a good position to
speak out ; it will absolutely please me to be a little abused, because
I shall be delighted to answer. I had a lawsuit in England and one
in France. I lost the former because I was never allowed to speak
to my lawyer ; it bored him, forsooth. I gained ^2500 in the latter.
I went to Limoges, took a lawyer with me and followed it up. He
talked it over with me. He was one of the first lawyers here. I
have done justice to the good feelings of the men in England when
they like a lady ; but as a sex they think women inferior they have
no money, they are to obey their husbands. Of course there are
exceptions ; but public opinion puts them in a very different position
here, and especially it never comes into any one's head that women
are born to nurse and look after the men-folk. What little women
possess of independence all over Europe is due to the French of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries.
I have letters from Hilly telling me she is so occupied with
Flo she can scarcely write. She was to come and see me in
December, but it has passed away. She is a slave to her family and
her kind heart. It's all very well when it's for Flo, whom she
dotes upon, but for a parcel of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins, etc., it is very provoking. She is like some one that has
been boned as meat is. She is like a molluscous animal, she has
lost the power of enjoyment ; all the sharp and crisp edges of her
impressions are so blunted by constantly giving up all for other
people, that she cares for nothing. It is very amiable, but intensely
vexatious, because this perpetual self-sacrificing makes her sacrifice
her best friend to any relation. I would not mind if it was for her
good, but I am the only person she knows who don't make use
of her, and who wants her to do anything for her own sake. What
a blessing it would be to be a foundling ! Really, as a French lady
said one day, " Je voudrais que tout le monde fut batard ; " and all
because she is single she is to be at their becks and calls. " What
can she have to do? she has neither husband nor child." So her
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 191
soul is not her own ; it's only married folk who have a right to such
a possession.
Now you have read my fine-drawn book you can understand the
terror that came over me at the idea of dear Mrs. helping me.
Do tell me what she says of the platonics ? No great sympathy that
way, I suspect. If I had said the whole truth I should have said
that these ancient manners were dying out ; but they have left women
in a better position anybody may see that for himself; I have
implied all this. Nothing is more ungraceful than saying everything
as if Friend Reader was a goose. Thank you much for writing that
people of taste and refinement will understand me, which I modestly
believe to be very true.
Madame B is looking very handsome en veuve decolletee, which,
I suppose, may answer to the "moderate affliction" department.
Mrs. Hollond is a great favourite, and less incomprise here than in
your ungallant country.
Are you likely to come, and when ? Your papa ought to be here.
Many say this regime is driving downward at redoubled pace. They
certainly do things they used not ex. : last Saturday (15 th), at a
grand ball at Pereires, M. de Langle, Gardes des Sceaux, went up to a
lawyer named Berton, who writes in the Droit, and asked him how he
dared criticize a new law which had been discussed. " Sir," he said,
" it was I who proposed that law." The article was extremely mild and
cautious. The law was to declare that any man who had among
his own private papers a caricature of any high functionary might
be prosecuted. The whole ball-room was in a state of emotion.
When Lavergne went in this had just happened ; he did not hear
it, but it was repeated to him, and he related it on Tuesday at Mrs.
Hollond's. A gentleman on the i3th, two days before the scene,
had just heard the law, and related it (at a dinner I gave to
Arthur Stanley on his passage through Paris) to Laprade and
PreVost-Paradol, who were beside him. At the Senate, Monday, the
seance was quite violent. I wish your father was here for the sake
of posterity. You know Laprade was dcstitue for answering St.
Beuve's attack in the paper.
192 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
To Princess Batthyany.
DEAR FRIEND AND NEIGHBOUR,
I send you a little book to explain to you why I am fond
of the French, in spite of all their faults, and to present you with an
aspect of them that you never looked at before, I'm sure. France
the South, which is real France, was the first country which recog-
nized in women the rights which were the first steps to being re-
sponsible beings morally. Before chivalry they were property as
much as an ox or a horse. Their only virtue was to be faithful to
their masters, not to themselves. As Milton says, " He for God only,
she for God in him." The Provengal poetry first gave to women the
right to dispose of their affections, and identified love with enthusiasm
and admiration. It spread all over Europe, more or less ; but there
it was indigenous, and it continued. It is there that the history of
women's civilization began. Christianity had said it, but who took
it up? No one before the twelfth century. Perhaps Ida has given
you the little book to read; but I like to send it too, from me
myself.
Yours ever, M. MOHL.
To Miss Bonham Carter.
I am quite ashamed of myself; I was so rude to H. He
asked me, "Is L. N. still as popular here?" I said, "Can't you
have understanding enough to see that, when there is a barrack in
every three streets, when all the town is macadamized * from being
paved, the man is hated ? " His countenance showed he was per-
fectly astounded and affronted; but he bore it like a gentleman,
which, as he was full of affectation, I did not think him till this self-
command proved it. The stupidity of those who come here is
incomprehensible, because they understand fast enough Russia,
Austria, Naples, etc. They don't despise the Neapolitans or Italians ;
they make a fuss about them ; but they either abuse the French for
being in this state, or admire the despot, so won't believe it. Why
don't they admire other despots, then ?
I am waiting patiently here till a bookseller makes proposals to
me to publish my book in French. They have bought it at the
Institut ; for, as Landresse said to Mr. Mohl, " I suppose madame
* For fear the paving-stones should be made into barricades.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 193
won't give it us." "No, that she won't," says the other. Landresse
won't buy any book by a member, because they ought to give it, he
says. M. Guizot called on me the other day to thank me. I think
I told you I met him somewhere, and he asked me to give it him.
I am getting very much in fashion here, and am curious to see if they
will know it in England, and if it will make the book sell there ; for,
after all, my success here can never be but among the fine people (as
they alone read English) until it is translated. Robert Mohl has
written a very fine report about " Hesse and its Duke," to the Diet ;
it will make him popular all over Germany, and detested by the
Diet ; but he is as bold as brass, and those are the only people worth
anything. Maurice is elected, but it was a fight. We are a pug-
nacious set, and I am worthy of the name of Mohl, if courage is their
forte, which it is.
We visited Paris again in the spring. The following note
shows how much trouble Madame Mohl took to amuse us :
March, 1862.
DEAR MINNIE,
Our dinner is unfortunate. Three of the folk besides
Lomenie are engaged. I believe everybody has vowed to give
dinners on my days. I have been conning over and cannot find
a better expedient than the following :
To put off the dinner till the 3ist or ist, and then I shall ask
Buloz. Can you come? I prefer Monday 3151, and I think Buloz
can come, because his review must be printed ; besides, if he can't,
we shall do without. Monday is the day in the week that people
are least engaged ; besides which, I can't have people on Friday or
Saturday, because I must have a meagre dinner and a fat dinner, a
meagre soup and a fat soup, and that's a plague.
Secondly, I have planned a small breakfast for you to meet Renan.
His father-in-law is just dead, and you know propriety would forbid his
going out to dinner ; but breakfast with you two and young Trevelyan
would go down. I'll say you're going very soon too soon, alas !
Does this suit you ? I can go to the par tie fine on the 24th with ease ;
but if there was nothing good, I could go also Wednesday or Thurs-
day. Answer if you approve of the Renan breakfast, and I will
compose my letter to him. Ever yours,
M. MOHL.
194 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
The season of 1862 was an especially brilliant one in
London. The Exhibition, held for the first time at South
Kensington, attracted some of the most distinguished men
in Europe. My father was one of the jurors, and we kept
almost open house. Every day there were guests at our
breakfast-table, and we received every Friday evening.
Among those who stayed in our house were the Archbishop
of Dublin and his daughter ; Madame and Mademoiselle de
Peyronnet; and Madame Mohl.
She was delighted with the powerful original mind of
Archbishop Whately, and quite content to listen to him. One
day at breakfast he told us a remarkable story of a woman
who married, when very young, a soldier, and was wrecked
with him on the coast of India. All the crew and passengers
were supposed to have been lost except this one woman, and
an officer, who saved her. She was very beautiful, and he
educated and married her. In time she became a widow
and returned to England ; he had left her all his money, and
she was well received by his relations, being still very charm-
ing. One day her maid told her that she was going to be
married to a discharged soldier. The mistress approved, and
asked to see him. When he was introduced, after looking
steadily at him for some minutes, she went up and fetched a
shawl. " Do you know that shawl ? " she asked. " Yes," he
replied ; " I gave it to my wife when we married." " I am your
wife," she exclaimed. She took him back, and he drank
away all his senses and her fortune, and finally died, after
making her life miserable. The discussion which followed
was very lively. The archbishop maintained that she was
right that she had no business to consider her happiness ; that
the only worthy object for us all is to do our duty, and that
when we have reached the end of this journey of life, it will
matter little whether we have travelled in a first class carriage,
or plodded our way wearily on foot. Madame Mohl was
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 195
open-mouthed on the opposite side declared that no woman
ought to degrade herself ; that she ruined not only her own life,
but the lives of her husband and her maid, who would have done
very well if she had held her tongue, and let them marry
each other. She and the archbishop went into all sorts of
moral questions, and we were all very much excited and
interested, but as I was so much younger I took no part.
She often recurred to this conversation, and years after, when
I could not resist introducing the incident into a little story,
she wrote to me
I have just finished your book. The old archbishop's story
came most d propos. I think it was a grand one, and the poor
woman living with the old soldier-scamp till he killed himself with
drink was of deeper dye than you have put it, letting alone the
trimming I got for my immorality in declaring she was a goose, and
should have kept it to herself, and your leaving me in the lurch,
instead of saying what you thought, viz. that she had no right to keep
her second husband's inheritance to feed the first with. It was a fine
story. I think you ought to put it in a note, even if my opinion
should be brought in to my detriment with his sharp reproof. It was
a very memorable conversation.
After she left us she went again to stay close by with
Miss Bonham Carter, so that we saw almost as much of her
as when she was in our house.
In answer to a letter from Ireland.
Paris, October 13, 1862.
DEAREST MINNIE,
You have no notion how much I enjoyed your letter when
I at last made it out, for I will not disguise to you that your hand is
getting papa-ish (though like it in nothing but its difficulty). I'm
extremely obliged to you for making friends for me, and I exhort
you to go on, for I intend to make a tour in Ireland, and your letter
has greatly increased my longing ; and if my spouse won't go I shall
take a niece. I have plenty to choose from, and I keep the purse,
196 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
so I go where I like ; so direct all your Irish friends to me in Paris.
How I do wish to see the wild place you describe !
I left Cold Overton on September 5, because my sister tor-
mented herself at seeing me getting worse and having no advice. If
I had, then indeed I should have got worse. I remained four days in
London with Miss Carter, and went every day to see Lady William,
who was very ill, but as charming and entertaining as ever. Lord
Palmerston wanted her to go to Walmer Castle to breathe sea air,
telling her she could be wheeled out on the terrace and see all the
ships sailing by, and, as a great inducement, told her there were, I
forget how many, thirty-six pounders she could amuse herself by
firing. If she goes I promise to go with her, for she would be rather
lonely, and I had rather be alone with her than with dozens of people.
I got here the Qth. I have spent five days at Madame de
Circourt's,* which I much enjoyed. First, it's a very pretty place,
and a very pleasant way of having tea in one's own room at one's
own hour. A substantial breakfast at eleven with monsieur, whose
conversation I like, though it is more of the monologue than the
dialogue. He is ready to walk with one or let one alone. At three
madame gets up, comes into the drawing-room ; but then comes a
parcel of visitors from all quarters some good. Dine at six en
tte-cl-tete with monsieur and sometimes a straggler. Causeries in the
evening ; madame there till half-past nine. M. de Selves came, but
so ill that he could only stay two hours with us. I'm afraid he's
dying at least is incurable. He's a most agreeable person. Do you
know him ? He's one of those patterns of friendship peculiar to this
country, he is perfectly devoted to madame, and monsieur likes
him better than any one else, and is ready to go to the world's end
with him. Madame de Circourt has been in the state you see for
six or seven years ; he has been as devoted to her as a dog. Now,
whatever it may be, I do say that it is very interesting, and better
than a parcel of humdrum matrimonial folk who merely go on tole-
rably because they have a community of interests ; neither will I ever
believe that such perfect friendship can belong to any but very
refined people. It began something like twenty years ago. M. de
Belves is rich, of a noble family of Languedoc, highly considered,
and might have found all sorts of distractions ; he has beaucoup <T esprit
and charming manners. It is too delightful to have such a friend.
I have another belief which I have tried to insinuate in that chef-
* Les Bruyeres, in the environs of Paris.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 197
(Fauvre you wot of, viz. that it is only platonics that have this lasting
principle in them. I don't speak against marriage, because that has
another element of duration than intense liking ; it is a useful partner-
ship of interests, and therefore it does without the exquisite sympathy.
Of course, if it combines both, it is all the better; but it seldom
does, because people marry without ever thinking of it. The ordinary
instincts blind them, and it is only when these are to a certain
degree blase, or crushed, or surmounted that the taste and mind are
free. M. de Belves can't help speaking of Madame de Circourt
whenever he can find an ear that will sympathize. He can't help
being angry with her for what ? For letting herself be bored
and fatigued by tiresome people. He can't help talking of her
heroism, analyzing her character. He is always occupied about her,
and she, poor thing, is always in pain and almost flayed alive ; so it
is all mental. She has added to her troubles the dread of his not
being able to leave Les Bruyeres, for he can travel almost less than
she can, and if he can't come to Paris they must stay in the country
all the winter. M. de Circourt is just as anxious as she is, and
ready to sacrifice everything to M. de Belves. I shall give her your
message ; she has a great fancy for you.
M. de Lomenie is very busy about Mirabeau, and going to
Provence to see his family house. There's no one here hardly, but
we are in intense anxiety about an election at the Academy. One
candidate is a friend of Mr. Mohl. These elections have always a
great interest ; they're like a game of chess. R has written a
long rigmarole to prove he was right in that unfortunate opening
speech. He had better have let it alone ; but if you observe when
folks have a sore place and a lump they are always touching it, and
it makes it worse. I hope you'll come this winter. I have just
claimed my two places at the Pas de Loup concerts, and shall be
delighted if you'll come to go with me. Miss Carter is still in
London. She says you were most kind, and took her as she was
did not stand on ceremony with her. I'm so glad you like her; she
can do so little for society, though she enjoys it, so it is doubly
valuable when she finds people who will be indulgent to her
uncertain ways. She is the best of creatures, and never does any-
thing for her own good. Kindest love, etc.
P.S. Pray make a friendship for me with Lord Monteagle ; he is
such a nice old man.
198 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
January 5, 1863.
I have a letter from Ampere, who has at last made up his mind
that, though you are a fine lady, you can translate his book. I
believe, if you had been old and snuffy and ugly, he would have
thought it more likely, for be it known to you that the French
women of 1862 are not the same as those of 1762 ; they are much
less clever than the English ones now, and that I attribute to the
neglect of the Englishmen, who have thrown Englishwomen on their
own resources. Perhaps you will say, how is it that their admiration
made the women so clever two centuries ago, and that neglect makes
them clever in England ? D'abord, they were charming as well as
clever, because they were admired ; in England they are not charming
when they are clever; barring the exceptions, they are very disagreeable,
because neglect makes people disagreeable, but it don't always make
them stupid ; they study, and grow to a certain degree independent, but
in a cross crusty way, and those that don't, the ordinary misses, have
a particular way of saying, " Gentlemen so and so," " We can't go
without a gentleman," " Gentlemen don't like it," that always makes
me long to box their base, grovelling ears (this entre nous). The few
French folk who have read my mite of a book like it ; and well they
may, when I have been so civil to them. I wonder whether they'll
be angry in England. However, I have a great fancy to make a
homage to the Queen Marie Amelie ; so will you be so kind as to ask
that charming man, M. de Mussy, if it will be thought an imperti-
nence or a respect ? and if the latter, will you ask Miss Bonham
Carter for a copy, and write down, as from me, the speech most
proper from his dictation, either on the fly-leaf or the envelope, and
ask him to present it. Tell him I have the highest respect for the
queen ; that my husband, being a naturalized French subject, has
never considered L. N. but as an accident, and the Orleans family as
the real and desirable sovereigns. As for me, I never have dirtied
my tongue by calling him emperor, therefore we consider ourselves
still as the subjects of the Orleans family ; but if she was on the
throne I should keep my homage to myself. Small and poor as it
is, it's all I have, and I'm sure now it is an effusion of respect. I
would write down, " As a testimony of veneration, the author humbly
begs to present it to her Majesty ; " but ask him if that is right, and
if he thinks I should not do it, just let the matter rest
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 199
January 20, 1863.
I cannot think without shame and even disgust at myself for being
so long without answering your most charming letter. It's no use
wasting time in telling all my excuses, which amount to being in-
capable of writing if I don't write immediately on the spur of the
letter just received. I am either a very bad or a very good corre-
spondent I answered our Grota instantly ; if I had put it off I was
done for. As far as I can make out we may hope to see you in a
month or two ; and won't we go to the play ! I'm extremely well,
and up to anything. My chief going place has been Madame de
Circourt's, who talks of you with ravissement that's a dangerous word
in English, a man said one day ; it was not Hayward.
The " Fils de Giboyer " goes on night after night, filling the house,
and, moreover, the reviews, for it has been much talked of and
abused. Up to this I have kept it to go with you. They say it's
incomparably acted. When will you come ? Tell me for I'm like a
child keeping a cake and passing my tongue on my lips at the
thought of it.
Little Arconati * is here a sort of bijou to put on an etaglre or
in a jewel-box. It's a complete little article, not artificial nor
seemingly natural, but so pretty. When anything of the sort is pro-
duced in England it is all affectation ; this is not. He has a cousin,
a Trotti, grandson to Manzoni, extremely taking, about twenty-two,
an artist, quite different, and I like him the best : but they are both
things to have and like. Pray forgive me, and heap coals of fire on
my head by writing magnanimously. I won't hate you because I
ought to be grateful. What do they say of Mexico in England?
We are indignant. Adieu ; love, etc.
In the following letter Madame Mohl alludes to a most
amusing lesson we heard together, given by Sanson to the
pupils of the Conservatoire. He was kind enough to invite
us. The only other guest was Legouve. We and some of
the chaperons of the young ladies were in the boxes. The
pupils were arranged, the girls on one side and the young
men on the other. Sanson sat alone in the pit, with a table
before him. He rang a bell, and ordered Mademoiselle
* Madame Arconati's son. He died early, not long before his mother.
200 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
and Mademoiselle to repeat a scene from " Iphige'nie."
The heroine was not sufficiently tender, and he interrupted
her to act the scene himself. " Achille ! " he exclaimed in
melting accent, and went on to say that she must speak her
lover's name in quite a different tone from that in which she
uttered anything else. Then two men acted a scene in the
"Misanthrope," and so on, with Sanson's comments and
examples. Madame Mohl was delighted. She liked Sanson
very much ; and I remember a dinner at her house, at which
Mignet, Cousin, Guizot, PreVost-Paradol, and other great
men were present, and how gracefully they gave way to the
veteran actor, who amused us all with his experiences, espe-
cially by his account of the early days and extraordinary
genius of Rachel.
February 23, 1863.
DEAREST MINNIE,
This is to introduce to you Mr. Helmholtz, the spouse of
my niece Anna ; he lives at Heidelberg, where he is in great repute
as a learned physiologist (I believe) and mathematician too. How
the two things go together I can't conceive ; but, then, I'm an ass.
He has a great reputation, so I bow my long-ear'd head and bray.
... I go scraping about to get news of you, and, like the chiffonniers,
get nothing but old shreds. If I had written I should have had a
good real piece, and a letter into the bargain ; but I am always
interrupted. Once having written the introductory, I go on.
I was at M. Guizot's ten days ago. Pauline and her spouse were
there. He looks blooming. We have nought but politics, except
Sanson's lectures (on the Quai Malaquais) ; not so croustillant * as
what we heard together, as it is for the promiscuous public, not for
the delicate damsels we saw studying. They are capital, chiefly
showing how to read, but interspersed with much literature of the
good time a sort of thing I delight in. To hear him read an exorde
of Bossuet's is a perfect treat He reads a fable of Lafontaine each
time, and each is as good as a comedy. Montalembert is so cut up
at his daughter's taking the veil, he has grown ten years older in six
months ; he looked as if he could scarcely help shedding tears when
* Racy.
I saw
. _ J
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 201
I saw him. Few pity him ; they say, "Well, he ought to have ex-
pected it." But he did not expect it. She was his companion, his
playfellow, his secretary, his friend, his darling ; always cheerful,
always helpful. I believe he is hurt at her having the heart to leave
him. He can't say so, for his Catholicism would stand up like a
flaming sword ; but I'm sure it is so. You know these people say,
"Take up your cross and follow Christ;" but they don't consider
that the follower who leaves father and mother does not, after all,
follow Christ for the sake of Christ, who does not want his help, but
for his own salvation. Now, it is a question whether this overwhelm-
ing love of salvation is really as Christian as doing one's duty and
thinking of other people. Of course I did not say this to Monta-
lembert ; but the father was stronger in him than the fanatic, and I
could almost have cried with him, I was so touched by his deep and
smarting pain.
Barthelemy expects Mrs. Austin. Miss Carter is with us, having
her statue of Florence Nightingale reduced in size. There has been
much noise about the minister taking into his hands the School of
Art, appointing Neukerke as head of all. He got hissed by -the
students, who ran after him from the Institut across the Pont des
Arts, and sang, " O Mathilde, idole de mon ame." . . . (Excuse all
this scratching ; I think it safest.)
March 3, 1863.
I am reading your pa's, and it strikes me that I behaved like a pig
in not writing long ago to tell him I had his parcel safe from Gustave
de Beaumont. Perhaps, after all, I did write, but I could not read
it immediately from various hurries and bothers, and hoping they
would go away I deferred till I could ; but the hurries and bothers
have gone on as much as ever. The chief cause is that I have been
hardly five days without a visitor since the beginning of December,
and of course I have done my best to make them enjoy themselves.
I like them, I like to be useful to them ; but it takes a great deal
out of me, as I am but a poor creature at best. I have now Mrs.
Gaskell and her youngest daughter, and if you come soon which
I hope you will you will see them. Pray let me know when you are
coming, that I may hoard up any little play-going or partyfying that
may be pending. Tell Mr. Senior I am amazingly interested in his
"Ireland in 1862.' Tell me if you have read Mrs. Gaskell's
202 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
"Sylvia's Lovers." She came here to avoid hearing about it; for
she is not like me, a parvenu in literature, who likes to talk and
hear talk of her newly acquired notoriety, whether good or bad. It
bothers her, and she gets enormous compliments here which she
don't know how to pocket and thank for.
There are cartloads of stories about the masked balls at the
Tuileries and other guinguettes here. ... I suppose you know that
tutoyering is usual under a mask, all respect being abolished.
I have not time for more.
M. M.
We reached Paris on March 29. These visits of my
father's, of which this was destined to be the last, had every
year increased in interest. Although he never ceased to
regret the gaps which death had already made (such as those
left by Tocqueville and others), still acquaintances became
friends as time went on, and new ones were added. The
kindness and hospitality shown to us in Paris can never be
forgotten by the only surviving member of our party, and we
saw so much of no one as of Madame Mohl. She came to
stay with us in London in July, also for the last time in our
old home, which was soon afterwards broken up.
The Dean of Westminster's marriage with Lady Augusta
Bruce was a very important event for Madame Mohl. They
had met for the first time at a dinner in the Rue du Bac, after
which the dean said to his mother that he had seen the only
woman he ever could marry. Madame Mohl was very proud
of having had a hand in forming such a prosperous union.
She was not pleased when her men-friends married women
whom she did not know or did not like ; in such cases the
unhappy wife seldom gained any favour in her eyes. She
wrote from Paris
Rue du Bac, December 12, 1863.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I shall ask for some Russian stamps for my nephews too by
the same opportunity. My nephews and nieces fill every table-drawer
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 203
of my apartment with rubbish, or rather I do for them ; one has
a collection of stamps, one a collection of cyphers, another of seals,
another of all of them, another of autographs, another begs for the
cast off of each. The ladies made a commerce of stamps last
summer in the Tuileries Gardens, when a policeman came up to
Madame de Lavergne and turned her out, with many others, saying it
was dishonouring the garden to make an exchange of it. She
went to her spouse in great dudgeon, complaining and whining till
she made him go to the governor of the palace to get justice ; but
they got no redress, and the ladies are strictly forbidden all approach
to every negotiation of the sort. She is so vexed ! She showed me
the matter of at least twelve different Russian stamps in her book,
but they never put these on foreign letters ; they are very different
and like tesselated pavements.
I was very low at your pa not being so well in your last letter,
and you asked me for an entertaining letter, as if they could be kept
up in bottles in the cellar and poured out at will ; and this brings
to my mind that Lady Augusta wrote to me three weeks ago, to
think of her on the 22nd of this month, as it was to be -the
day, and toast her ; so I invited a few of our mutual friends for
the purpose. Two days ago I heard it was to be on the i6th, and
I altered the day to it; now I am told Lord Elgin is dead, but
I can't help it, and shall make no more alterations ; so the people
will come, and we shall drink some champagne to her, married or
not. It seems Arthur is as much in love as if he were twenty or
rather, perhaps, as if he were a good deal older than he is ; old
passions are stronger than young ones. I should think the banns
must have been published before the bad news came, and that they
would not put it off. I wrote to Mary Stanley yesterday to know.
All my old haunts are stopped up ; like a rat, I have no place to
run into. To comfort myself I have been often to the Italian Opera ;
there's a Madame Lagrange who really sings well, and a good tenor,
though not comparable to Mario. There's a new play, " Montjoie "
by Octave Feuillet, much talked of. I must find out whether there
are any scenes seandaleuses before I can take my niece of sixteen, just
out of her village ; or if I can explain things by a secret marriage, as
I did about Norma, whom I married to Pollione, without banns, long
before the opera began. I was more bothered about Lucrezia
Borgia ] but she was a very wicked woman, and her son passed off
204 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
in the crowd of her crimes. If I had not the ridiculous stories of
the Institut, and the candidatures, which Mr. Mohl picks up for me
every day, I should grow mouldy over my books. Tell me something
about Grota; she is my delight. Lavergne is very gentil ; his book
is very good. You ought to give an abstract of it in a review ; it
shows a wonderful spirit of progress in France ten or twelve years
before the Revolution, when she made all the real reforms which have
been attributed to those who pushed out the reformers. Adieu.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 205
CHAPTER X.
1864-1866.
Dissipation of puffy ignorance Renan " Causeries Parisiennes " Thinking pre-
vents readiness State of Germany Schleswig Holstein No society without
eating Terror of a revolution Bah costttmh Morality of Madame Mohl's
friends Reception of emperor at the play Prevost-Paradol's lectures inter-
dicted Respect for age in Paris Bishop Jeune Montalembert and Renan
Guizot and Metternich Death of young German Death of Ampere Sanson's
lectures Difficulty of composing 'parties Ampere and Lomenie Visit of
Queen Victoria to the deanery Frystone The fine arts Julius Mohl on
Petersthal The Queen of Holland Milan The Manzonis Tired of travel-
ling Mrs. Gaskell's ' ' Cranford " Importance of occupation to women
Letters of sympathy Love for Mr. Senior Illness of Miss Carter Duchess
Colonna Death of Miss Carter Death of Lincoln Lanfrey's " History of
Bonaparte "Causeries Parisiennes" Emancipation of the serfs Of slaves
Effect of war Scotland Quiet life Old books Ida's visit Petulance
Vanity Exhibition " Shah Nameh " German visitors Liebreich A
troublesome funeral.
MADAME MOHL wrote to me very frequently and at great
length in this year for the sake of amusing my father, who
was very ill.
Paris, January 22, 1864.
DEAR MINNIE,
I have long been going to write, and I might have gone
on so, but I want to know how your papa is ; that is sufficient to over-
come all dilatoriness. Mrs. Grant Duff told me kind messages from
you, and added that you would write but that you were out of spirits.
I am sure I don't wonder if he is ill, and after seeing those poor
Thackeray girls.* I was so sorry for them; will you tell them so?
Really, it is too great a trial !
H has been to Russia, stopped at Warsaw, and there he
* W. M. Thackeray died on December 24, 1863.
206 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
cooled his Polish passions, being somewhat disinflated by seeing some
facts. Nothing takes away from a certain puffy state of ignorant
admiration, which the public delight in, so much as seeing facts.
You are no longer full of blubber, but have got some bone and sinew
into you.
Lady Salisbury is here, and wants beyond measure to see Renan.
As she showed me Queen Elizabeth's oak, I must give her a tit-for-tat,
and ask him here. I dare not have him with most of my acquaint-
ances ; they look so sour at him, not for his heterodoxy but his
politics. I have invited him to breakfast, but I'm like the lad who
had a goat and a wolf and a cabbage to carry across the river ; for
I have a niece of sixteen, who, if she breakfasts with the arch-heretic,
will talk of it in the family, and if they think I keep such company
they won't let her come again. Now, I'm very fond of her, so I shall
send her out. Miss Carter will help me ; she is with me. Her
statue of Miss Nightingale came unbroken, and is going to be made
small and sold about, I hope, even in English farmhouses. I miss
Madame de Circourt more and more, and Mrs. Hollond too. She is
at Nice, and some say will never be able to winter anywhere else ;
however, I should say, by her letter to me, she is much better.
Madame de Peyronnet is going on in great triumph in a sort of well-
known secrecy, no one ever talking to her of her articles.*
Adieu, dear Minnie. Pray tell me how Mr. Senior is. My
kindest love to both, and believe in mine with all your might.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
To Lady William Russell.
February 23, 1864.
DEAREST MILADI,
If I had written every time I thought of you, I might
have done little else even every time I quoted a bon-mot of yours
to Mr. Mohl; but these bring no answers, so I must even turn
thoughts into words, and do the contrary of the alchemist ; for
thoughts are gold, and few can turn them into words that are not
dross. " Thinking makes a deep man, not a ready one." How often
what Bacon says comes to my mind ! I believe much thinking even
* The "Causeries Parisiennes." Madame Mohl was a great admirer of all
that Madame de Peyronnet wrote.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 207
prevents readiness. It is a habit of concentration that grows into a
solitary pleasure which I have got into.
You want to hear about Germany. My brother-in-law Robert
writes the most desponding letters from Frankfort. He sees no issue.
I am told that our queen holds to Germany against Denmark, that
the prince holds to Denmark, that the ministers are for Denmark
because they think it wise to go with the next heir ; but as Lord
Palmerston is going on for eighty, and the queen is about forty-three,
he need not, I should think, trouble himself about the heir. The
Germans are enraged at England, and Lord John's letters have made
the whole country hate us. I know nothing about the right or the
wrong. When I was at Frankfort fourteen years ago to see the
National Versammlung, the Holstein affair was just as burning a
question as now, and from the account I had they were shamefully
treated by those stupid Danes, who would not allow them the constitu-
tion they had bargained for when they joined them, and who are not
powerful enough to keep them against their will without foreign help.
It puts me in mind of a story. " Mon capitaine, j'ai fait un prison-
nier." " Eh bien, amene-le." " Mon capitaine, il ne veut pas me
laisser-aller." When one ain't strong enough to be tyrannical, one
should be conciliatory.
March 8, 1864.
DEAREST MILADI,
No letter from you, so I must write again, to extract a
line at least. I called the other day on Lady Holland, who was
very gracious, thanks to you. Oh, I have lived long enough in this
world to know that our real friends are the only ones who will take
the trouble to bear us up on the waters of success like corks and
I always know the sincerity of my friends by the behaviour of those
they see often. If I had known that a good many years ago, I
should not have been the dupe that I often have been.
Will you tell Arthur I saw his Indian yesterday? Mr. Mohl
called on him the day after he brought his letter, but of course did
not find him. Sir Charles MacCarthy is here, and quite as delightful
as ever ; he says Arthur's Hindoo is very clever. My first question
was Does he eat? for a Brahmin who was here four years ago did
not. Now, one can do nothing for people who don't eat, and yet this
is not such a gluttonous place as London ; but to collect at your
208 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
very own choice a certain number of people together is impossible
without it. The Hindoo wants to see philosophers ; I will introduce
him to Barthe"lemy and Jules Simon.
The Batthyany is plunged in fine people, so I see little of her ;
she is always charming. She has been to all the scandalous balls,
and will amuse you much; I heard of nothing else a month ago
but the repartees of the bals costumes. Congreve is witty, at least ;
but these had all his coarseness without the wit.
I hear from Stuttgart that the king is so weak he can scarcely
be expected to last long. His poor, poor daughter ! * We are all in
the dark here about the intentions of the Government. The Morning
Post announces that the French will go to war, and as it is bought
by the French many think it ominous. Discontent increases, but a
curious thing is that some of those who were fondest of Louis
Philippe are the strongest upholders of this Government, not from
liking it, but from terror of Revolution.
March 13, 1864.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I called the other day on Lady Holland, who was ex-
tremely agreeable and courteous. Duvergier de Hauranne and his
son were there, and overflowing with court, or rather ministerial, ball
scandal (where they won't go). Certainly the bals costumes are some-
thing out of all proportion with the state of morals and manners of
the mass of the nation. My agreeable friend, the Batthyany, went
to them all from curiosity in a quiet domino, except to the Tuileries,
which are much less worth it ; the Metternich's, Bassano's, and others
being more racy and less proper than the Tuileries, who have a
leetle more appearance of propriety to keep up. Young unmarried
ladies are scarcely seen there. The thing most talked of au dehors
by ladies in whispers, and not mentioned by gentlemen before
them, was the Marquis disguised as a cock, with wings flapping
and outstretched, and to act this character au naturel, he hopped
after some ladies after the fashion of a cock in a basse-cour, paying
more court to the hens than would be considered proper in a biped
without feathers. I don't think the court of Charles II., or the
Regency, or Louis XV., or the Directoire, ever attempted such
imitations of nature in public. They might be as vicious, but they
* The Queen of Holland.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL, 209
were far more decent, and had more taste. Some of the plays of
the days of Charles II. approach the nearest ; but the conversation
is worse than in them. This is what I am told, yet, en dehors de
tout cela, I see nothing but loving young menages, living economically
and laying up for the children ; the mammas all occupied either in
nursing, or teaching, or walking, or taking them to fours. Now, as I
don't pick out my acquaintance for their morality, but for the quality
of their minds in general, I conclude that society is split up in two,
and thus the mass which is underneath is like the bouillon under the
scum of the pot-au-feu. There are new plays which make a noise,
particularly the " Marquis de Villemer," by Georges Sand. Louis
Napoleon went there with his wife the first night ; some say
they were hissed, at any rate the " Sire de Framboisy " was sung,
"Eh, madame, que faites vous ici?" and the " Marseillaise." A
detachment of troops was sent for to take them home, so frightened
were they. They will be in no hurry to come to the Odeon again,
for it is in the Quartier Latin, the younkers' own theatre, and they
will say their say. Jules Simon is so busy I don't see him. Public
lectures are going on under favour of the Polish wounded, and
M. Lebrun, a senator and renegado, is much afflicted at this
outburst of discours which tends to influence the public mind. How-
ever, they have refused to let Prevost-Paradol lecture on Montaigne !
S'tf vous plait !
Madame Mollien has company three nights a week, because she
is blind and seventy-nine and good company, too. MM. Guizot,
Daru, Cuvillier, Fleury, Viel-Castel, Duchatel, etc., etc. You ought
to have the same. Some come two or three times a week. Guizot
always does. It is still the custom to go to one's old friends ; but,
alas ! it will be all gone twenty years hence ; the town is growing too
large. There is an imitation of London large parties, luxury, and
expense encouraged by this fellow, who would be very sorry if
the good was imitated ; but it is so much easier to ape vices than
virtues, that the moment people begin aping at all they always stick
to the bad.
March, 29, 1864.
I saw the Bishop * to-day, who brought me your father's book ; f
pray thank him kindly. I never had read the article on Walter
* Dr. Jeune, of Peterborough. t " Essays on Fiction."
P
2ro LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Scott, who is, of all the writers in the world, the one I like the best ;
and I asked him if he could dine with Montalembert. He said he could,
I shall read it with great curiosity. The Bishop is mighty agreeable,
and I wrote to M. immediately. I am not quite so great a favourite
with Montalembert as I was, because he came here last Friday, and,
after being like turtle-doves for half an hour, in come Renan and his
wife. Montalembert got into the furthest corner in which he could
ensconce himself, talked a little with Madame Autran, then walked
off. I ran after him to talk about the election at the Acade'mie. He
said he must go ; he could not stay in the room with Renan. I can't
give up Renan he's of Mr. Mohl's academy ; they are always having
business together. I don't think you have these antipathies in
England.
Sir Charles MacCarthy dined here yesterday with Guizot,
Madame de Witt and her handsome spouse, and others. Guizot
entertained us with the bons-mots of Prince Metternich. They met
continually in England during their exile, and Metternich read him
some of his memoirs very amusing to Guizot, who knew the people,
but rather too long for the public. They both talked over their
respective revolutions and flights ; I would have given something
to hear them compare notes. Metternich's great pretension was to
write very well in short, like an artist, both in German and French.
Mr. Mohl is in terrible spirits, having lost a German friend, very
learned, whom he has been helping and shoving on these fifteen
years, and when he was in hopes, in two years longer, he would have
a great name, as a savant, he was worn out with overwork and dis-
appointment, and died last Friday, at the age of thirty-seven. I
never saw any one so cut up as Mr. Mohl ; and yesterday he learnt
that our dear friend Ampere died at Pau suddenly. This was a
great shock to me, but to him the German's death was much more
painful. He had had such a melancholy life and no success, and
now he had at last some chance, and was such an honest and con-
scientious creature. There is something terrible in a man of superior
mind dying without ever having had any sunshine in his life ; it
seems so hard. Ampere had had much success, much delight, had
enjoyed many things to a high degree. There is no end of lamen-
tations here ; he was the most entertaining, the most vivacious con-
verser I have ever known, and all the ladies used to try to get him
to their parties. All society regrets him, though his long absences
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 211
made him a great rarity. Lome'nie was very much attached to him,
and I hope will succeed him in his professorship at the College de
France. *
Sanson, the actor, has given the most delightful lectures I ever
heard. The last, on political eloquence, was more curious than any
of them ; he read a speech of Mirabeau'f to support Keeker's pro-
posal for a loan to prevent a bankruptcy. It was something unique,
from his manner of bringing out the beauties and the art. The
whole lecture was on Mirabeau. I do so wish you had heard all
these lectures. I am very anxious to know how your papa is.
Kindest love to both him and Mrs. Senior. This is but a melan-
choly letter, but these deaths have extinguished me.
April 7, 1864.
I did my best for the Milord Bishop. I could get no one to
meet him at dinner on the only day he could give me, which was
at three days' notice, and it is impossible at this time of year
and just after to get a 'tolerable party under a week, or even ten
days, as after fasting, or pretending to fast, all Lent, dinner-parties
grow fast and furious. He offered to come to breakfast on Monday,
and as the marriage ceremony of Mademoiselle Dufaure was to take
place at twelve, and all la societe was there, that too had its diffi-
culties. However, Simon came, and Barthelemy and Corcelle and
M. Gigot. The monsignore is wonderfully agreeable, I must say ;
there is a grace and sociability about him. I don't know if he knew
that Jules Simon is a person of great reputation here.
I go to the reception of Dufaure to-day ; there will be a terrible
crowd. They say there will be no political allusions, nor any compli-
ments. I can't think what the discourse will be made up of. You
know, of course, our loss of M. Ampere ; he died of heart com-
plaint ; was particularly well on the Saturday, talked incessantly
said he had thirty volumes in his head. He was at Pau with the
Chevreux, and was in such spirits that Madame Chevreux was almost
afraid he had a fever. One of the servants being ill, the doctor, on
coming downstairs, was requested to feel his pulse, and said it was
very fluttering, and ordered digitalis. At five a violent ringing of
the bell made her and the cook rush into his room. He was half
out of bed, and said, " Oh, how I suffer ! " and died. He has left a
will, written nine years ago about thirty thousand francs, which is
212 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
all he leaves, is to print all his books and his father's, to be done
by Lome'nie, and a little by one D'Aremberg. He don't say that
Lomenie is to have the copyright, so poor Lomenie is to give up his
time, and distant relations will claim the profits. In his will he also
says that Lome'nie is to print all his political verses as soon as there
is no danger. Now all wills are deposed au greffe, and the pro-
cureur-gne"ral (I think that is the functionary whose business it is
to look after the wills and what is in them), Benoit Champy, is a
violent Bonapartist, so he read the verses ; they are kept at the
greffe, and if Ampere doubted of their being printable, you may
imagine the disgust of a doting functionary ; and poor Lome'nie
can't even see them. He might perhaps claim the right of seeing
them, and go to law for it ; but he would lose, and get himself turned
out of everything. Poor Ampere did not know that all wills are
public, and are the last places where people should deposit secrets.
He is more universally lamented than any one I have ever known.
He hopes in his will that Lomenie will succeed him at the College
de France and at the Institut. Lome'nie is going to try to finish his
Mirabeau next winter to present himself.
Deanery, Westminster, June, 1864.
I heard the sad news * from Lady Augusta about a week ago.
I came here last night, and I don't like to go to you without first
writing. Will you tell me when I can go and see you. And how
is poor Mrs. Senior? Oh dear ! there is no misfortune in this world
but the death of those we love. I have come to that by dint of
living.
The visit of Queen Victoria, which has been so strangely
misrepresented, occurred while Madame Mohl was at the
deanery this year. I have heard from one of the dean's
family that the Queen never, on any occasion, dropped in at
the deanery by chance. The visit was always announced
beforehand, and the dean and Lady Augusta received her
Majesty at the foot of the staircase.
Madame Mohl was in her bedroom one afternoon when
Lady Augusta came in "and said, "Put on your cap and
* N. W. Senior died on June 4.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 213
come and see your queen." When she was presented to her
Majesty Madame Mohl went down on one knee, "very
prettily," as I am told, and kissed the Queen's hand. " My
dear," she said afterwards to one of her nieces, " I felt quite
emotioned." She describes the conversation which followed
in a letter to Madame von Schmidt :
M,
( Translation, )
Malvern, July 22, 1864.
DEAR CHILD,
. . . You are very much mistaken if you fancy that the
English do not trouble themselves about peace or war. I never saw
London in such a state as it was from the time of Lord Palmerston's
first long speech, which finished by owning that the Danes were in
the wrong, till the evening, when the majority of eighteen decided
that there was no sufficient cause for censure. We were all in a
fever, although most people thought that there were excellent reasons
for blaming the ministry. All who wished for peace wished them to
stay in. Palmerston is bad, but the Tories are much worse, and if
he had gone the alliance with L. N. would have been still closer ;
but I believe that the real reason why we have not had war is that
the Queen would not. But her influence is so occult that no one ever
alludes to it without saying, " So people say on the Continent." 1
asked Lady Augusta, who knows more than any one, straight out.
She answered, "Oh, certainly; her wishes have had some influence."
But Lady Augusta says what she pleases, and not what she knows.
I think I told you that I was presented to the Queen on Tuesday, I
think the 28th, at Augusta's, on the day following that on which
Palmerston delivered the memorable speech which changed every-
thing. Arthur Russell came from the House on the 2yth to his
mother's, and repeated to us Palmerston's speech word for word, and
ended by saying, "There will not be war." I was so pleased that,
forgetting all etiquette, I repeated it to the Queen, and she replied,
looking equally well pleased, " No ; we shall have no war." If I
have told you this before, it is worth telling again; but the most
curious thing is the sort of revulsion of public opinion during the five
weeks I spent in London.
214 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Cold Overton, August 10, 1864.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I got to Malvern the i8th, and saw all our haunts at
Whitfield between the 2nd and 6th, which time I spent with Mrs.
Clive, and enjoyed greatly being with her alone. I am going to Fry-
stone, and it is probable I shall leave England about September 12,
because Mr. Mohl thinks he can go with me to see Madame Arconati
and the Belgiojoso ; at least, so it was settled four months ago,
u Mais 1'homme propose, et Dieu dispose ; " and these ladies may have
changed their mind. I have a peculiarly doubting mind about all
fine ladies which they are, though they don't know it. I shall join
my spouse at Basle, and hope to find him dressed spick and span
with a new liver ; for he is gone to an unknown region called Peters-
thai, where people find the article in a spring. Mr. Milnes is going
to Vichy, which my spouse hates, but which he will sigh after, I
suspect, in his present abode. He has no books, not one, nor no
way of getting any. He was constantly with Mr. and Mrs. Grote
before he left Paris. He greatly likes the historian, and I shall write
to ask her how she liked her rustication, which Paris is in summer.
To Miss Eleanor Martin.
. . . D is what is called anemique. The complaint is so
common in Germany, that in a place called Petersthal, in the Black
Forest, where Mr. Mohl goes for his liver, there are above eight
hundred ladies, most of them young, and all looking like ghosts.
Fancy eight hundred ghosts walking about in the forest ; for there
are both liver waters and ghosty ones. It's a wonderful place.
To Lady William Russell.
Frystone, August 21, 1864.
DEAREST MILADI,
I got here last night, and am told that you were here
exactly at this time last year, just to make my mouth water. Mr.
Milnes is charming in his own house. It's very cold here, but no
one knows it but myself. I wonder every one don't live in London
all the year round, the trees are of a better green, all trees a
hundred or even fifty miles north of London are of a blue-green.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 215
We had a reading of Shakespeare last night, just as two of us
were primed and cocked for a conversation. However, it's better
than bad singing, which one is perpetually having one's mouth stopped
with, and one's ears called upon forcibly to listen to ; and, by-the-by,
to think of my never having heard your son Odo ! As much as
I hate bad singing, I delight in it when to my taste. Mr. Milnes
related to me that when he was fourteen, being very fond of music,
he had practised pretty hard for three years on the piano, teaching
himself, and could accompany himself, and play greatly to his own
amusement. One day his father begged of him to listen to a solemn
request, and adjured him, by all his filial piety, never to touch a piano.
He promised and obeyed, and when some years afterwards he tried
again, the power was gone. What a curious prejudice ! And now
one is assassinated with a fine-art jargon from every Jackanapes and
Jackanapess, till one takes all the arts en grippe. It's a judgment on
the Chesterfieldian generation that their descendants should all dote
I
upon fiddling, fiddlers, etc.
Julius Mohl to Lady William Russell.
Petersthal, Grand Duchy of Baden, August 25, 1864.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
I am sure you wonder who may be your correspondent
rom the Black Forest. But those abominable Sabbatarians oblige
me to use your house as a supplementary post-office, and to beg you
to keep the enclosed scrap for my wife, who will certainly call on you.
I have been about three weeks in this obscure valley to drink
certain bitter waters, because they contain a new-fangled metal called
lithium, without which our fathers contrived to keep their livers in
tolerable case, but which, according to the modern Hakims, is indis-
pensable for mine. The most curious part is that the Bad-arzt here
had not the slightest suspicion of this new power of his waters, which
he thinks fit for innumerable evils, but particularly for pale ladies,
who crowd this place and a number of neighbouring watering-places
by hundreds. The air, the brooks, the woods, the green, are beautiful,
but the patients mostly very insipid, and as the place has not yet
been discovered by the English, it is yet in a very primitive state.
Pray don't mention that all the brooks contain trout. But I am not
only steeped here in these vile waters, but in the bitter waters of
2i6 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
theology too. There is a number of dyspeptic and very peppery
theologians here, and I am becoming deep in German theology of
the most modern forms, orthodox as well as heretic, and food for the
eternal bonfire below ; but they are very far from such sweeping con-
clusions, and fight it out tooth and nail. I read their books and get
up again my long-forgotten theology.
Before I came here I went to the Hague to see your- friend the
queen. I spent three days at her country house in the Bush old
King William's queer house, which she has arranged to her taste,
and where she lives quite alone, teaching her little boy. Poor thing !
I found her deeply afflicted by the loss of her father ; and well she
may be, as she has nobody else to confide in. She talked much of
you, and I am sure it would be a good work if you would write to
her. She feels so lonely and abandoned that she is grateful for any
attention one may show to her. " Ce n'etait pas la peine d'etre reine
pour mener une pareille vie."
I am glad to have had this excuse for reminding you of me. I
only hope this scratch will find you in tolerable health and spirits.
I am, dear Lady William,
Very respectfully yours,
J. MOHL.
The proposed visit to Italy was carried into effect.
Madame Mohl to Miss Eleanor Martin.
Milan, September 22, 1864.
We went yesterday to Brusuglio. M. Manzoni received me with
his wonted grace, was very cheerful. We stayed an hour and a half.
The house is kept by his son (ill in bed) and his wife. We saw
neither, but saw the husband of his only remaining daughter. She,
too, was ill ; she has a dreadful complaint in the bones of her face,
which disfigures her extremely, and she won't show herself. We saw
two very pretty children. I don't think he remembered distinctly
the visit we paid him, when his daughter was dying in the house
and his mother received us ; but it might be that the recollection
would call back too many painful losses, and that he would not
allude to it. He certainly did not, but only to the many pleasant
conversations we had had long ago. The little grandchild of three
years was so taking I would have carried her off, in spite of all
prudence, if she had been given to me. . . .
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 217
Mr. Mohl was so poorly all day that he could not eat, with palpi-
tations. We met on the steamboat with an acquaintance, a Professor
Allman, and his wife, whom I knew slightly before. He is the
director of the Museum of Natural History at Edinburgh, and
lecturer on it. They are nice people, and we stay here till to-morrow
because they stay ; and Mr. Allman is a doctor, though he don't
practise. Mr. Mohl is better to-day, and been taken by the Marchese
Lita (she is Madame Arconatis' sister) to the Ambrosian Library,
where he will meet with a learned man and dusty manuscripts, which
I rejoice at ; but to-morrow we go, and I shall never see Milan again.
I hope to be in Paris 3oth at night ; and oh ! how I do long to be
there ! I have no longer the delight in travelling that I had when
I was young ; it was then incomparable ; and though with very little
money, great fatigue and anxiety on account of my poor mother's
health, and the economy we practised, my spirits never flagged.
Now, with none of these drawbacks, with Mr. Mohl who takes all the
trouble, I am ever wishing to be at home. It is only when I travel
that I feel the loss of youth, I have as much zest in everything
else as ever, therefore of course I wish it over. I felt it in my
journey to Hungary in 1860, but I attributed it to the country ;
now I see it is in myself. Inns are especially odious to me.
To Mrs. Gaskell.
Paris, December 28, 1864.
DEAR FRIEND,
Delighted was I to get your letter just now. I got the
numbers long ago and read the story in two days (such a treat !), and
sent it to poor Anna, who is most thankful.
I have been ill and am still ill. I knew you were very busy or
poorly, or both, and was sorry ; but it never came into my head that
you were in fault ; all I feared for was your promised visit. How-
ever, half February is better than no February I mean on account
of the people who are here ; they generally stay till end of March,
but by no means always. It is extraordinary how many people come
and ask me for M. or Madame So-and-so, and seem greatly astonished
and disappointed at not seeing them, because they never seem to
think that any one lives anywhere but in Paris ; whereas so many
come but for two months. It was not so some years ago ; six and
218 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
eight months at Paris were ordinary, but living is so much dearer
now. They never will understand that this man has destroyed
Parisian life, and that the very things they admire are what has de-
stroyed it, viz. the great show-offishness of everything.
What a gossiping we'll have, shan't we?
I have this very evening read the last number of the Cornhill,
and am as pleased as ever. The Hamleys are delightful, and Mrs.
Gibson ! oh, the tricks are delicious ; but I am not up to Cynthia
yet. Molly is the best heroine you have had yet Every one says
it's the best thing you ever did. Don't hurry it up at the last ; that's
a rock you must not split on.
The Queen of Holland goes to London, and writes to Mr. Mohl
to send her letters to Florence, to Lady Augusta, to Mrs. Grote. I
think I must persuade Lady Augusta to ask the two Majesties to
come and take a dish of tea. Would not that be high fun ? and
should not I be a cubit taller in my family if I was one of the
party ?
Paris, March 7, 1865.
DEAR MINNIE,*
Don't be disgusted at this shabby note, written in grati-
tude for yours from Roehampton. I am cured, they say, but so
weak, so thin, so languid, and often incapable, that you would not be
indignant if you saw me at my not answering your kind letter sooner.
I am at times so merry that you'd think I was capable of anything,
but that's mind. I'm glad I'm not dead ; but then sometimes the
body gets the uppermost, and I can do nothing but lie on the sofa
and read old books. . . .
I hope you won't give up your translations to keep house ; though
housekeeping is very laudable, the other's your best friend. One's
pursuit always is ; it sticks so close to one. No disparagement to
the connubial tie, which I greatly esteem, but I have observed
that is improved by not being the only occupation in life ; it is
then all agrement when one don't make it the sole stick to lean
upon. I'm glad to hear you're so quiet in the day; you'll work
naturally.
Mrs. X came when I was very ill and very cross, so I said
I had no Fridays, which was not quite exact, because, though I
* Written after my marriage.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
219
remained in bed, Mr. Mohl received. But I was rampageous with
desperation because my family would not send me the niece I
wanted, but sent me one I did not want. So it all fell on Mrs.
X 's devoted head !
Paris, May 18, 1865.
It is so long since I have heard from you that I forget if I
answered your last, but I do know that you had a great calamity in
the sudden loss of your uncle,* which I intended to write about,
but did not, for the simple reason that such letters, just to say one
sympathizes, are only painful ; they keep alive the excitement of
affliction, and if the pain is a little quieted, they stir it up again at
least, I have found it so. The expressions of regret of those who
have not known those one loses are mere reflections ; they are kind
but not deep, and they have always worried me.
With your father it was different ; he was the kindest male friend
I had in London. He never made a talking, but was always doing
some underhand, sly kindness ; so I had no need to reflect your
feelings I had plenty of my own.
I have been very ill four months ; keeping my bed part of the
time, seeing no one. I have been cured these last two months, but
have small strength. Mrs. Gaskell stayed with us from March 12
to April 20. I enjoyed her much ; but the heat was so great the last
ten days she was ill and glad to go.
I am now under the expected stroke of a great misfortune. My
dear Miss Carter I may never see again. For twenty-five years our
friendship never paused. I can't bear to think of it. The doctors
say there is no hope ; but I go on thinking they may be mistaken.
I wrote to ask if I should be a plague to the family if I went over
and took a lodging next door, that I might see her when she liked.
Florence's answer is, " Don't come ; you could not see her. She could
not even be told you are there, as it might agitate her. She may
not read any letters, she is so weak." As I know what a torment
over-zealous friends are, I have kept quiet; but it's a hard thing
never to see her again. Oh, she was such a sweet creature ! I
don't enjoy the idea of going to London as I do in general. When
I do go, I shall go and see you, of course, in your menage. It will
scarcely be before a month, unless Hilly should wish to see me.
* My uncle, Edward Senior, was run over by a railway train in March, 1865.
220 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Pray give my kindest regards to Mrs. Senior, and tell me whether you
fit nicely into your mammaship ; * I should like it, being absurdly
fond of children. Read in the Edinburgh "Madame Roland." It
is by Madame de Peyronnet, and very good the best in the number.
I did not tell Reeve so when he was here, because I had not
read it.
If your love of repose permits you to go to the Exhibition, will you
tell me if the " Babes in the Wood"f cuts any figure there? I fear
not My advice would have been, " Don't send anything unless you
can send something which shows your peculiar individual talent."
She, the Colonna, has sent to the Exhibition here a bust of a Gorgon,
which I think beautiful, and the public thinks so too. That is the
sort of thing I should have wished her to do for London, because no
one could do the same ; it has such success here that she has sold
three other duplicates. She is all the fashion, and enjoys it very
naturally ; but being the fashion don't improve any one it injures
some for life ; it has not done that as yet. Did you see M. de
Circourt ?
Do pray tell me if Story has sent his " Saul " to England, and if
there is any good thing of Watts or Millais ? Have you seen the
" Flute Enchante'e " ? The Miolan sings it enchantingly, better
than she ever did anything. How is Grota ? If you see her, tell me
if I am in disgrace, that I may get out of it.
Ever, dearest Minnie, yours,
M. M.
The Duchess Colonna was a widow. Before her marriage
her name was Mademoiselle d'Affre, a Swiss. After his wife's
death M. de Circourt attached himself to her and her mother,
and spent the greater part of his time with them in Switzer-
land. She was very handsome and attractive, full of ability
and intelligence. Madame Mohl was very fond of her, and
much distressed at her early death.
We had a little house at Roehampton this summer, and
Madame Mohl spent a few days with us. She enjoyed
greatly driving about the country, and delighted in our little
* She alludes to my stepchildren. t By the Duchess Colonna.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 221
children. It is needless to say how charming she made her-
self to us all. She had a great sorrow this year in the death
of her friend Hilary. No one who reads the following letter
can help being struck by its deep and gentle feeling.
Madame Mohl to Miss Emma Weston.
Cold Overton Hall, near Oakham, October i, 1865.
DEAREST EMMA,
The death of my dear Hilly weighs so heavily on me that
I write to you, who knew and valued her, to bring old times to my
mind, and to give way to some of the melancholy with which my
whole soul is filled by the thoughts of my loss. . . .
In June I came to London and saw her. She was much better,
and I indulged in hope, but no one else did. They would let me see
her but three times, because everything like emotion hurt her. She
never spoke of herself to me as in danger. Her voice and face were
so pretty, so sweet, that I bear them in mind as if I had seen an
angel. The last time I saw her she kissed me so tenderly. " Clarky
dear, you know you are my good mother." Her eyes filled, and I
felt I was going to give way, so, arming myself, I said, " Come,
come, let us talk of art," a subject always near to us both. I did it
because I was told any emotion, however slight, was forbidden. I
stayed not long. It was the last I saw of her, though I remained
another week in London. I went four times, but I could not see
her. She died on September 6, and, strange to say, I did not feel it
then as I do now. Her sufferings made me forget everything else ;
but every day makes me feel it more for my own sake. She was like
a guardian angel to me when I arrived in London. I could say
everything, the deepest thoughts in my heart, to her, and to her
alone. . . .
Two French ladies came some time ago to ask for my name and
some money, as the ladies are going to send a testimonial to America
of their satisfaction about the deliverance of the slaves, and to send
clothes or some such thing which I suspect they don't want ; but I
was very willing to give my twenty francs to pay the compliment, as I
call it, and I greatly rejoice that the issue of all the fighting will be
their freedom. Neither do I believe it would ever have come to pass
if other angry and dirty passions had not worked the whole nation,
222 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
like barm raising up the bread and making at last a good loaf out of
the fermentation. Will you tell Mrs. Chapman that in spite of the
terrible catastrophe of Lincoln's death, which seemed like the pro-
pitiatory sacrifice to Hecate or the infernal powers, I think the war
a great success as a large whole ? Adieu, dear Emma. I am always
the same, even when I don't write.
Yours,
MARY MOHL.
(Translation.}
April i, 1866.
MY DEAR CHILD,
I am going to regale myself with beginning a letter to
you, though I know I shall not be able to finish it at once. . . .
I have a new friend, an Austrian ; his name is Plener. He is
twenty-two years old, and he will put into the Ambassador's bag (he is
secretary to the Embassy) six numbers of the Revue Nationale, and
the history of that confounded Bonaparte (God forgive me for swear-
ing !). It delights me, as well as the " Causeries " of Madame de
Peyronnet. . . .
Poor M. de Tourgudnieff ! I am going to regale him with your
information about the serfs. These things must be ; but serfdom is
worse for the master than for the serfs, and this is why the abolition
is good. It was the same with slavery.
April 8.
At last our house in the Rue Plumet is let for twenty years. It
is an unspeakable relief. ... I gave a grand dinner on Friday in
honour of Lady Georgina Russell, the minister's daughter. She has
been staying for the last fortnight with the Tourguenieffs, and at the
same time I pleased them, for Madame de Tourgue'nieff has been
working night and day, taking her to balls and plays ; and she had a
rest, as I invited only Fanny and Mrs. Arthur Russell, for I thought
four of a family very handsome. The T.'s invite quietly seven from
the same house, with five crinolines among them. I would not do this
for any one, it is really too much of a good thing. I had those three
for ladies, and Montalembert, Lavergne, Jules Simon, PreVost-Paradol,
Scherer, the little Austrian Plener (who looked like a baby with all
these people), Dupont White, Arthur Russell. It went off beautifully.
The little Lady G. is very nice, without any pretension, frank and
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 223
pleasant, and charmed with everything. She said she would tell
" papa " all about it. She was finely astonished when she heard
Simon and Montalembert talking across the table of the Government ;
she could not get over it. She is very intelligent. All the world
and his wife came in the evening, among others Max Miiller. I hope
that M. Helmholtz will not be disappointed when he comes. That
happens so often. People have such exaggerated ideas of the charms
of Paris, which are much greater when one understands the easy ways
of society than they appear at first sight. I have invited an Oxford
professor to meet him at breakfast. I would ask Max Miiller, but he
is going away to-morrow morning. I shall ask Laugel, because he
makes a great talk about Helmholtz.
Every one says that Patti's lame sister has a more beautiful voice
than she has. I don't think much of Patti's voice. It is fresh, but
the quality (timbre) has no charm. However, nothing is so rare as a
fine timbre, and no one ever thinks about it ; nevertheless, it is the
most important of all. It is the quality of the instrument ; but there
is so little real taste for music that people care only for the work
bestowed on the instrument. Goethe says exactly what I think about
it in his conversations with Eckerman. I read them this summer
in French ; they pleased me much. Goethe cared little for this
learned German music.
Madame H still regrets her first husband as much as ever.
The second is melancholy and hypochondriacal. What a contrast !
She is very good to him, but there is no longer a god in the temple.
Adieu, dear child. May God preserve your health, and that of all
whom you love. Every other grief is a mere trifle compared with
those that touch our affections. However, it is a great blessing to
be rid of our Rue Plumet.
I saw yesterday young B ; he thanked me for the letters I
gave him eight years ago for London. I had forgotten my letters
and his face, but I was as polite as possible. Do you remember that,
because in old times I was kind to him, the gossips of Heidelberg
thought that I was making up a match between him and Anna ? It
seems they don't know that in Paris a hostess does the agreeable from
habit, and without any sort of design. B has brought a friend.
They have been here three days, and the other one has changed his
hotel three times. This gentleman is difficult to please. The two
had only one room, containing a bed and a sofa. They drew lots for
224 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
the bed, and B won. The other one was much longer than the
sofa, and he says he was obliged to lie like a dog, so he got up at
daylight and found another hotel. The story is fit for Punch; but
they take it all very seriously. Adieu, dear child. Read Beugnot's
" Memoirs;" they are very amusing.
Yours,
M. M.
May 15, 1866.
DEAR MINNIE,
I wish you joy of this great happiness ! * Thank you for
asking your aunt to write. I took it very kindly that you should
think of anybody after such an acquisition.
I come from a messe de manage of the daughter of O . Now
it turns out that I had fully intended to make a match between the
bridegroom and a particular friend of mine, so I am as vexed as
possible. He is a perfect jewel. If I had known him before I was
married I should have done some basenesses ; but he has gone and
married a half-Pole. Now, Poles are my aversion, founded on long
practice. She is not disagreeable ; it's a love-match on his part. I
wish I was not subject to these aversions. I have done what I could
to get rid of them.
I saw " Don Juan " at the Great Opera Saturday. The ballet is
the only one I have ever liked ; it is beautiful. Faure, the actor
who does " Don Juan," is the only one I ever saw who made all his
feats probable. People think of nothing but this probable war, which
has paralyzed everything ; the very pastrycooks declare they sell no
cakes. I don't believe it has such an effect in England, though the
failures are enormous. It is wonderful to me that mankind are such
intense fools they can't or won't declare they will not have a war that
ruins everybody. Even of those asses the Italians, when I was in
Italy all the most sensible said, " What we want is to be at peace ;
not to increase our territory, but to organize that which we have ; and
the greatest misfortune is the acquisition of Naples, because no one
knows how to frame laws for all Italy. And we are, madame, head-
over-ears in debt"
* The birth of my daughter.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 225
To Miss Emma Weston.
Cold Overton Hall, near Oakham, July 29, 1866.
DEAREST EMMA,
I came here the 26th, overdone with hurry, and the quiet
here seems like being buried not that I find fault with it ; when once
I have fallen into the habit of close application I shall delight in it,
the more that I was in a state of awful irritation at the nonsense I
heard about politics. . . . Read two articles in the ist and i5th
Fortnightly Reineiv on Bismarck. They are written by a German, who
knows better than most people all about him. Pray, dearest Emma,
write me a line if you get this, to tell me where you are, and how
you like Scotland. It is nothing without your imagination. The bare
hills would be only bare hills but for Scott and Burns, and all they
have put into it ; and that is why I love it. It is the country of
mind like a face full of expression, whose mere material part would
be nothing were it not for the mind and soul that come out at every
look.
To Lady William Russell.
Cold Overton, August 3, 1866.
A thousand thanks, dearest miladi, for yours. I had written to
Arthur, being out of all patience at not hearing. I'm sure I don't
know why I write to you now, for I have nothing amusing to say.
This is a place where all one's inward resources must be called out
from their deepest recesses, or mental life stops short. I read and
write all day, ride on horseback with the children, and grow fat
on it. You need not wonder that I read Plato quickly. I have
brought with me two volumes of a very amusing journey across
Arabia, by one William Gifford Palgrave ; he is not merely a traveller.
Some parts of it are as amusing as " Robinson Crusoe ; " besides
which, his account of the Wahabees is so curious : they have their
prototypes here, and I have no doubt it was the English Wahabees
made him a Catholic. Now he has taken a walk back, not into Pro-
testantism (no, no, thank you for nothing), but into Christianity.
Don't be shocked, but I think neither Catholics nor Protestants are
exactly Christians. I said so one day to a young man, and to my
surprise it created a friendship between us. His name is Brandis.
Do you know him ? He is secretary to the Queen of Prussia ; an
odd position pour faire de telles etudes.
Q
226 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Ida writes to me from Vienna that the newspapers there con-
tain constant ill-natured things sneerings, etc., about the Queen of
Holland. Can you understand that ? Is it because of her Bona-
partism ? But that Vienna Government is something that out-Herods
Herod in its love of stupidity; and yet one is reduced to hoping
it will not be outwitted by Prussia and L, N.
Pray write per carita.
Yours devotedly,
M. MOHL.
P.S. I get some old books. I am reading Shakespeare and
Zeluco. Did you ever read this latter? I am very fond of it.
Madame Mohl was looking forward to the great pleasure
of receiving her niece Ida with her husband and children.
The visit was deferred to the spring of 1867, and Madame
Mohl seems to have resented the postponement, and then, as
usual, repented of her petulance.
(Translation!)
December i, 1866.
MA CHRE PETITE,
I send you a letter which I began yesterday, to show you
how little I was aware that I gave you pain (I have this instant received
your last). I never had such an intention. I never meant to scold
you ; but you know my temper. I am not gentle, I never was,
the vivacity which I cannot help, and which keeps all round me
alive, is, perhaps, too dearly paid for by this want of padding, which
causes me to rub against others without intending it ; but we have
the temper which nature gives us, just as we have the children that
nature gives us. You will see that I have quite given up the plan
I fixed of your coming in December. I was so afraid of the cold
in January for the baby ; and then to come for less than three
months seems to me absurd. In December the climate is often
very mild. This was my reason; but I assure you that, as far as
I am concerned, it is all the same. I am not sure when the
Exhibition will open. L. N, is so mad that one can never be sure of
anything. . . .
But, my dear child, never think that when I preach to you not to
sacrifice yourself to your husband and child I am angry with you.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 227
You are like Hilly; you are always forgetting yourself, and this
annoys me. Such people are eaten up by others, who turn into
cannibals in spite of themselves. But pray banish from your mind
that I was angry with you ; it's my way that's all. I send you three
hundred francs for your journey.
(Translation.)
Paris, December 21, 1866.
MY DEAR CHILD,
Your uncle is working unceasingly in the hope of finishing
enough of the " Shah Nameh " to figure in the Exhibition, so as to
gratify the national vanity. It is wonderful what a powerful lever
this vanity is ; and it is one great argument against huge empires like
Russia. To extinguish an Englishman by doing better than he, a
Frenchman would submit to tortures ; but an inhabitant of the centre
of Russia has not this stimulus against another in St. Petersburg, and
I have no doubt that one of the causes of the gradual decline in
civilization of the Roman empire was their contempt for what they
called "barbarians," whereas the small Italian states were devoured
with envy of each other in the Middle Ages, so that when one town
built a church the neighbouring city hastened to do the same, and
this rivalry was the source of the great works in painting, sculpture,
and architecture which to this day make Italy the museum of Europe.
The great Austrian empire has inherited the self-satisfaction of the
Roman empire, and in consequence has done little in this respect.
There is general uneasiness in France, and the people at the
Bourse say that this state of things cannot last. The Pereires pay
no dividend this year for the credit mobilier. Louis Napoleon is
beginning to be no longer considered a profound genius. The
vulgar in every country have a false idea that when a single man
calculates on the evil passions of others, cultivates and turns them
to his own advantage, he must be a profound genius, whilst, on the
contrary, he shows himself to be superficial, common, and wanting
in penetration.
E is not much to my taste, but I can endure him. He has
a mania for coming between half-past ten and eleven, and when Mr.
Mohl tells him it is too late, and takes him into his den, the next
time he comes at 8 30, just as I am dressing to go out, and this
seems to offend him. I have noticed that the Germans are genera
228 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
annoyed with the women here because we do not put ourselves out
for them. The article man is no rarity. I have my days for recep-
tion let him come then. I said to him very coolly, " No, I cannot
have you to dine, because I sleep after dinner, and you would put
me out," for he offered to come without ceremony and ask for some
dinner. Only from Barthelemy (and he would not do it) could I
bear that. I am making great arrangements. I do not let your
uncle know all about them ; but he suspects something. When it is
all settled I will tell him how I intend to place everybody, and at the
same time clear his room, which is in a frightful mess.
Margy has gone away twice as well as when she came, thanks to
M. Liebreich. Ah, what a man is Liebreich ! I never met any one
to be compared with him. How I should like to marry him ! but
this is impossible. He might be my son, and he has a wife and I
have a husband. Too many events would be necessary. In the
mean while you shall make his acquaintance. He lived with Helm-
holtz for ten years. He is incomparable ! Adieu, dear child. I
am in high spirits, but I can't tell why. The little L. is so naughty
that his father's friends conspire against him just as they do against
Louis Napoleon. Adieu.
M. MOHL.
(Translation.)
Paris, January 3, 1867.
MY DEAR CHILD,
I was becoming uneasy about you when I received your
letter just this instant, and I read it to your uncle. It is the first
revelation he has had of our plan in its full maturity. He said
nothing, so I inquired, "Are you not pleased?" "I must go and
bury that creature," was all he said, and off he went. Here is the
explanation. Madame X is dead, and is to be buried at twelve
o'clock. He must go to the church. There are four inches of
snow in the garden. He anathematizes X now she is dead, as
he did while she was alive.
I make some little arrangement for you every day, and I think
you will be comfortable. The chicks may have the dining-room for
their nursery. Their prattle in German will not disturb me as it
would if I could understand them.
Mr. and Mrs. Lewes have been to dine and breakfast here. She
is the George Eliot who wrote "Adam Bede." We are excellent
friends. Adieu.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 229
CHAPTER XI.
1867-1869
Cousin's death His mission His will Mignet Barthelemy Visitors during the
Exhibition Nandor French marriages Emperor of Russia's popularity
Love for living English girls Cats and lambs German handwriting
Flirtations Ardent friendships French bourgeoises Mrs. Frewen Turner's
accident Queen of Holland's visit Stors Madame de Boufflers
Dull evening Thiers Spurious letters of Pascal and Newton Emperor of
Austria Power of attention Schools Selfishness in youth Education in
America Energy of Madame Mollien Berryer and Guizot M. Doudan
English Sunday Importance of speaking French Evils of awkwardness
Love for sister Absurdity and selfishness of English fathers A "dot"
necessary Old and new fashioned love-making in England Mistake to
cultivate bores Senior's " Ireland" Prevost-Paradol Visit to Rome.
To Lady Augusta Stanley,
January 25, 1867 (alas!).
DEAR LADY AUGUSTA,
How long it is since I have written ! but I am well
punished by getting no letter, though your last gave me such plea-
sure. I was delighted the little clock had such success, but I am
quite certain the infinite grace with which you gave it, and which
you are not aware of, luckily, doubled the agrement. Ask Arthur if
what I say is not true.
We have got through the winter wonderfully well ; /, especially,
have no more traces of my bitter enemy's former acharnement. I
have found out at last how to keep him off. My spouse is busy
getting the " Shah Nameh " ready for the great plaything which so
fills the head of our august fool and baby that he will get himself
knocked off, I believe, before he sees the hurricane come on. How-
ever, the toyshop will have its fling, and although I have been
intending to write for a long time, it is that which now puts pen in
230 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
hand. I want you to tell me at what time Miss Mary Grant * can
come to me, because I exercise as much modest hospitality as I can
on this occasion, and I shall have a succession of young ladies in
your room it's your room and Barthelemy's. He has had it for
ten months, whenever he came to town, once a week, sometimes for
two or three nights. It was a great pleasure to us and a great con-
venience to him. He came back this day week with the body of
Cousin in his coffin. He travelled in that awful frost and snow, and
suffered much, being fifty hours on the road, which was stopped
up by snow. Cousin was buried Thursday. Mr. Mohl was struck
with the great sensation the loss has created at a time of such uni-
versal apathy. They have vividly remembered that he was the intro-
ducer into France of a higher and nobler philosophy ; that by raising
the mind from the materialist view to the spiritualist in 1818, when
no mortal had a suspicion of such a change, he has been the prime
cause of a whole new system of ideas. His will is worthy of the
great mission he fulfilled. He has left nearly ;8oo a year, to the
astonishment of every one, and a magnificent library to the Sor-
bonne, for the use of philosophy only, which must have cost at least
800,000 francs. About ^i 0,000 goes to the foundation of a libra-
rian and an under librarian (garcon de salle), to the entretien and
buying new books (on philosophy). Barthelemy is head librarian with
^140 a year, and Cousin has left him, Mignet, and a notary friend
the residuary legatees of all the rest, barring some legacies. Mignet
and Barthelemy never had the slightest hint that he intended to
make them independent in their old age. Barthelemy was in terror
lest he should be blind and poor. Mignet, too, might have been
dependent on Thiers. Mignet made me cry the other day when we
were alone, with the few and solemn deep words which expressed
his dear feelings. I need say nothing of Barthe'lemy ; you know
what a creature he is. I thank God more often than I can say for
having blessed me with the intimacy of such fine minds as I have
enjoyed and housed in my mind. You and Arthur are in good
company, I assure you.
My reason for wanting to know soon d peuprh when Miss Grant
will come, is that she may have the choice of the time. One
person must have it, and I shall then propose to another and get
her answer, and to another, and so on. In the year '55 I asked at
* Lady Augusta's niece, a very remarkable sculptor.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 231
least six or seven persons. Every one would come at the same time.
I had less room than now, and my room was empty almost always,
as they would not make up their minds to tell me when I asked them,
or to come at my time. This time I begin early to avoid the same.
With best remembrances to Arthur, I remain, dearest love, yours
ever,
MARY MOHL.
Madame von Schmidt's visit was all too short to please
her aunt, who persuaded her to leave her elder child, Nandor,
in Paris. He was sent to a famous school, Ste. Barbe, but
Madame Mohl had him over continually to the Rue du Bac.
She wrote constant letters to his mother, full of her tender
care for the child and her plans for his improvement.
(Translation.')
May 24, 1867.
)EAR CHILD,
Your uncle tells me that I have not written to you for a
long time. The truth is I have been so busy with Madame Belloc's
affairs. . . .
Barthelemy is afraid of his eyes ; he is obliged to go to live in
the country at Meaux. He is terribly grieved at going away, and
I have offered him your room whenever he comes to town. This
will be a little alleviation for him, and for me it is a great pleasure
to be able to offer it.
Everything is going down here, and the money we have invested
in Italy and Spain gives no interest, and the Austrians are such fools
that I am afraid they will let themselves be beaten again. It is this
wretch of ours who has hatched all this. One of his reasons is that
he does not want to bring back his troops from Rome, in order to
please the clerical party. In England they begin to see this, and
even the Italians to suspect he is cheating them. At last the party
of order understands this. As for the demagogues and Garibaldi, I
believe they are well pleased. ...
Good heavens ! what things I have heard to-day about the mar-
riage of Madame C 's daughter the one who is dead. You
must have heard me speak of her. There are some facts about the
232 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
lives of women here which ought to be known and published and
cried on the housetops. Only Balzac could have told them so as to
be of use, and he was not moral enough to gain attention ; but if
one does not amuse the public one is not listened to either. In
short, I cannot explain myself. The law ought to interfere, as
parents are so stupid about marrying their children. If ever I see
you again I will tell you all about it ; it is impossible to write.
By the French law any one may translate an English book with-
out paying anything to the author a year after the original is pub-
lished. Is it the same in Germany, and did your translation of
" Sylvia's Lovers " sell well ?
June 6, 1867.
Paris has gone quite mad. The Emperor of Russia has turned
everything topsy-turvy ; the toyshop has produced the desired effect
kings come to see it. The emperor went to the Grande Duchesse
the very evening of his arrival to see Mademoiselle Schneider dance
the cancan. Now it seems that I saw her dance it a week ago, and
it did not strike me as at all improper. Merime'e told me it was the
cancan. I went to see him yesterday evening ; he was much better
than when you were here, and very charming.
June 3 (cold and rainy, sitting over the fire).
DEAREST MINNIE,
Your letter quite cheered me. I shall go to London,
please the pigs, but I can't say when, because it is so cold that I have
put off my journey till the latter end of June. Lady Augusta made
a sort of engagement with me when she was here, but I can't make
up my mind to move. I'm grown old, my dear, though I fight the
good fight against it, and hold high my banner, and run up and
downstairs like a lamplighter. I am only weak, and that is a great
bore. I am no more fit to die than to command a fleet, just because
I don't like it ; I'm ridiculously and basely fond of living.
Your letter is a masterpiece about the girls' lives in England, and
ought to be printed. I was always an arrant coquette, whether in
France or England, and am sorry to say the only wise thing is to be
a coquette in youth, because it is the only means of self-defence.
I think those who are not are much gooder ; but if I was born an
animal and consulted beforehand, I should choose not to be a lamb
but a cat, with good claws to defend myself. But the men have less
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 233
heart in England than elsewhere, and are great fools in judging
women. Now, I have had some pretty sharp practice all my life in
English, French, German, and Italian, and know more of the men
folk than most women. I had five admirers at a time once, and
could compare, besides seeing more men than women all my youth.
I have a strong sense of justice on the subject, and much tenderness
for my own poor sex. Ah ! I knew a sweet creature, so much better
than I was, who almost died of a broken heart for some vile man
who paid great attention to her, and married some one else, as in-
ferior ! They have no more discernment than conscience ; but I'm
happy to see they are often well punished by being lowered to the
dimensions of commonplace women.
Adieu. I have a hundred things more to say, but no time at
present.
Yours ever,
M. M.
( Translation. )
Wednesday, June 12, 1867.
MY DEAR CHILD,
I have just received your letter. The little boy had left
me an hour before ; his uncle took him to school on his way to the
College de France. I am so pleased with him. As for being well-
behaved, he is charming. I will go and see him before he comes
here again. The poor child cannot read your letters, nor can I when
they are written in the German character ; if they were written in the
Roman handwriting I could read them to him, for I pronounce well
enough for him to understand. But, my dear child, how is it that
you do not reflect that this character which the Germans have
adopted is like Sanskrit for the rest of Europe, even when one knows
German ? Have you not heard your uncle say a hundred times that
at the Institut he is often forced to waste hours in deciphering letters
from German savants, and prize compositions ? Remember that all
Europe uses the Roman character. The consequence is that as your
uncle has not always time to spare, these letters and compositions are
often never read at all.
That lover of mine who gave me the tunes you used to play, taught
me to write your character, and as I could draw I learnt in four days,
but I could not read my own writing ; and when I complained and
said, " What nonsense not to write like other Europeans ! " he replied,
234 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
" So much the worse for the other Europeans." It was so much the
worse for him, for I refused to marry such an obstinate fellow, and
he nearly died of grief.
Paris, July 16, 1867.
DEAREST MILADI,
I was as delighted with your last as in days of yore I
have been after a raccommodement with a lover. Don't be shocked ;
I married late, and was rather given to sentimental flirtations for a
good many years " mais tous pour le bon motif; " only somehow or
other such affairs go off, sometimes for one reason, sometimes for
another, and I had a great many experiences in that line. But my
friends gain by it ; for, having a proper esteem for the sacrament
(of marriage), besides having by degrees grown old, I have trans-
ferred all my old habit of sentiment into friendships, and by long
habit I suppose they have kept a resemblance to their troublesome
brothers in being very ardent.
The Emperor of Russia is gone. While he was here there was
no peace, nor no coach to be had, the whole town cared for nothing
else. M. Brandis, a very taking person, asked Mr. Mohl what the
French said of the King of Prussia and Bismarck. He was obliged
to say that he had never heard any one speak of them, they were so
entirely absorbed by the Emperor of Russia. I think his chief charm
was that he telegraphed from Cologne to get a box to see the Grande
Duchesse de Gerolstein (aux Varie"tes) dance the cancan with her
prime minister and ge"ne"ral en chef a burlesque on the German
court, very much tasted, I dare say, by the Russians, but it ought
not to be tasted by the Emperor of Russia, as his grandmother or
great-grandmother, the Empress Catherine, made love to the soldiers ;
and so does the Grande Duchesse, to one in particular. It's very
amusing, and Mrs. Bruce and I saw the cancan danced without the
slightest suspicion that it was improper. The emperor also went
to Mabille in spite of all that could be said about the proprieties, and
though the Parisians pretended to be shocked, I believe it was these
inconvenances that made him so popular. None of the crowned
heads made the slightest inquiries about any of the good things here
except our English Princess of Prussia. She went to the schools,
inquired about the scientifics. M. Brandis asked Mr. Mohl to go
and see the princess by her order. She was extremely curious about
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 235
Oriental matters, and he thought her very intelligent. Then she
asked much about how they managed to employ women so much
more here than they do in England. The fact is that there is a most
striking difference between the two countries. The women keep
almost all the accounts in the shops ; they kept them all till these
monster shops were set up. It was always the wife and daughter,
and still is in the general way. It makes them very practical and
sensible, and as different as possible from an English tradesman's
wife, who generally sets up for a half-lady.
After her annual visit to London she wrote from Cold
Overton
Cold Overton, August 7, 1867.
DEAREST MILADI,
I should have written long ago had I not been in trouble.
I found my dear sister, whom I love better than any one in the
world, had fallen down a week before my arrival, and though the
bone is not broken (at least so the country surgeon says) the muscles
of the thigh were so stretched and lacerated that the pain for days
was dreadful. One of her sons was with her, but she forbade his
writing to any one. Her nerves were so agaces she could not bear any
human face, and my coming down was discouraged under pretence
of change of servants. I only learnt it when I came. However, she
was rather quieter than she had been, and was glad to see me. It is
now a full fortnight, and we now hope that she may get through it.
My dear sister is considerably older than I am, I never spend a
year, happen what may, without coming to her, always in a fright
lest it may be the last. You may suppose, therefore, the trouble I
have been in ; for though my husband has a much greater place in
my life, though he is my best friend and an incomparable companion,
I have an indescribable tenderness for her that I have for no one else,
nor ever had except for my mother. Yet she is much fonder of her
sons than of me, and in fact I am but a very secondary person in her
life. It's odd, but it's true, nevertheless.
Yours,
M. MOHL.
Mrs. Frewen Turner, although she lived to a very great
age, never walked again. Miss Martin writes
236 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
If you mention my dear granny, I wish you would put in a few
words to testify to her beautiful character. She lived to do good to
others. In 1852, when our mother died, she gave up her own
comfortable home to take care of us and my father's house, which
she did for eight years, till he married again. She had done the same
before for her eldest son, but he was a widower only three years.
Both the Frewen and Martin children were constantly with her, and
made Cold Overton their second home. Naturally very energetic
and independent, her accident and enforced inactivity were most
trying to her, and the necessity of asking help from others every time
she required anything was more irksome to her than to most people,
but she bore it most beautifully. She always had some one sleeping
in her room, and I used to take my turn with the others, getting her
a cup of tea, keeping up her fire, etc. She lived like this till March
19, 1879, her ninety-fourth year, outliving all her children, but to the
end retaining her faculties perfectly, and often forgetting to put on
her spectacles when reading.
The following letters describe the Queen of Holland's
visit to the Rue du Bac, which has been confounded with that
of Queen Victoria to the deanery.
To Miss E. Martin.
Rue du Bac, October 7 or 8, 1867.
The next day, Saturday, I set to to dust all my best books in the
little bookcase in the little room. I had on my old blue silk gown,
now on its last legs, with a few rents in it, a large apron and a duster,
luckily no papillotes, and a not very scandalous cap, no carpet, and the
house abominable, when Julie banged open the door and announced
the Queen of Holland. I would not have minded her a pin, but a
perfect dandy of a chamberlain and her maid of honour were really
plagues, especially the gentleman. However, they all sat down, and
her Majesty graciously said that as I would not come and see her she
came to see me. I'm afraid I behaved very ungraciously, for I said
I did not know she was in Paris, as I had only just arrived. They
stayed half an hour, and she was all politeness, and told Mr. Mohl in
the ante-room that the Queen (our Queen) had told her she went on
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 237
purpose to Mrs. Clark's * with the idea of seeing me. Now, that
is very civil and gracious of our Queen, though very odd, because
if she had sent me word I should have been greatly honoured to be
wherever she pleased to order me to be. But I believe she liked
the fun of going a-larking, and thinking that if I were there I
should amuse her ; but she would not make a prim affair of it. They
all like accidents, because they get so few. So if Margy had stayed
another day she would have seen the Queen of Holland. Whatever
folk were in the house were on the stairs to see her. Margy will
tell you the state of the house and court-yard ; such a mess ! But
she is incog, here, and goes every day to the Exhibition. She is not
at the Tuileries, so I shall go with Mr. Mohl, Tuesday, to pay my
respects.
I have been reading the " Memoirs " of Count Beugnot, and I'm
sure it is translated. I think if your papa could get it from Leicester
it might amuse your grandmamma. Josephine, my old friend, knew
him when she was a girl. He lived at Bar-sur-Aube, and was intimate
with her father. His daughter was her playfellow two or three
years older and a great lady under Bonaparte. Her husband, a
general, was governor of the Invalides. It is very entertaining his
youth, about the Revolution ; then he was employed by Bonaparte ;
and after that by the Bourbons. All the state of France, when Boney
was beat out of Germany, and the anecdotes of Boney, will, I think,
amuse your grandmamma.
The letter to her German niece is almost a repetition,
except the last paragraph.
To Madame von Schmidt.
(Translation.}
When the Queen of Holland heard that Mr. Mohl had a nephew
here she asked to see him. He had two slices of bread and jam on
a plate, and had to put it down before he came. She spoke German
to him, and he replied in the same language. She had hoped to hear
him speak Swabian. The Swabian patois to her is like Scotch to me
quite irresistible, and I can understand the magic which lies in it.
* The Queen was in the habit of going to see Lady Clark at Bagshot, and one
day Madame Mohl happened to come at the same time, and the Queen desired to
see her. This was after her Majesty's visit to the deanery in 1864.
238 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
To Lady William Russell.
Rue du Bac, October, 1867.
DEAREST MILADI,
It is so long since noire commerce has been suspended
that I have lost the thread. I shall therefore make a great knot, and
take it up as I can, without pretending to be graceful. I have only
returned to my penates very lately, having been twice to a very
agreeable country house near L'Isle Adam, where tronait " VIdole"
Madame de Boufflers, whom Madame du Deffand talks so much
about. The house is called Stors, but I learnt there that Madame
de Boufflers was not the real idol of the Prince de Conti, but a
beauty whose name I forget, but whose picture, done at the time,
dressed as a knight in full armour, figures in the salon of my friends ;
and very beautiful she is. Stors belonged to the prince, but she
inhabited it ; and the tradition is that she used to give him des coups
de cravache, and that he was all the more in love with her.
Visiting in a French country house is more convenient to me than
in an English one, because every one has their tea or coffee brought
into their own room at their own hour, and they need not appear till
1 1.30, at the dejeuner, which is really luncheon, and one dines at 6.30.
These hours suit me better, and dress is much kept under. No
one is decolletee in the evening as in England.
The day before we went the Queen of Holland deigned to come
up my stairs. I was dusting my books in an apron, and they were
all on the ground. I did not mind her, for she don't care ; but there
was a French dandy, aide-de-camp to L. N., who looked much
astonished, and whom I could have dispensed with. She asked
to come some evening to meet M. Thiers. Lady Augusta and
her spouse were to come ten days after, and I waited for them,
and asked Mignet, Barthe'lemy, Pre'vost-Paradol, and Leon Say;
but it did not go off well, and a luncheon is better to make
people talk. M. Thiers was, I thought, very tiresome, he gave a
long lecture on the quarrel now going on at the Institut between
a great geomtire and algebriste, Schale, who has bought a whole
cargo of letters, which every one believes to be forgeries except
himself and Thiers. Brewster has taken it up, and has all the
Institut on his side against Schale. They are chiefly letters of
Newton's (Sir Isaac) to Pascal, and answers of Pascal ; and though
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
239
seems that they are not in Newton's hand, and are in French,
which he did not write, still Thiers maintains they are his ; and
all to prove that Newton did not find out attraction, but that it
was Pascal. I am happy to say all the savants say Schale has been
hoaxed, and Thiers, who began to study astronomy, etc., at seventy,
maintains it's all true. Also Pascal's letters are not in his style.
There's a letter of Louis XIV., which sets everybody laughing, it's so
unlike him ; and one of Charles V. of Austria to Rabelais, which is
more absurd still. And this Schale, who is a most respectable man
and mathematician, who always was as meek as a lamb, gets quite
furious about it. I thought Thiers quite silly ; but her Majesty told
Mr. Mohl she had been greatly amused, although she did not agree
with him. He talked the greatest nonsense you ever heard ; and
such a thing is reputation that all listened and said nothing. I
could have thumped my spouse with great pleasure for not taking it
up. I went to see her Majesty yesterday (of course by invitation).
She was to leave this morning. There was only Madame Cornu.
(Translation.}
Paris, October 30, 1867.
MY DEAR IDA,
I went to the Chevreux, at Stors, on the pth with your
uncle. We returned on the i4th. On the idth Lady Augusta and
her husband came, and you may think how busy I was during the
week they spent here, all the more that the Queen of Holland, who
came to see me in September, before my visit to Stors, asked me to
arrange an evening for her. I was obliged to look up the few people
now here whom I thought she would find agreeable M. Thiers at
the head of them. The party came off on the i8th, and was very
dull ; breakfasts are much better. Lady Augusta wished to stay
upstairs on account of her brother's death ; but the queen declared
she would go up to see her, so Augusta came down and remained
with us. Arthur said he was very glad to bring her here to distract
her thoughts from the extreme sadness of this death. I dare say she
was better here than in London ; but, after all, it is a terrible thing,
when one's heart is breaking, to be in company. They went away
on the 23rd, and I am beginning to collect my thoughts and arrange
my house, for we have had people almost always for the last thirteen
months. . . .
240 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Thank Heaven the Exhibition will soon be closed ; the town is
intolerable ; there are no cabs to be had ; one cannot get about, and
with all this the poor are suffering terribly from want; the manu-
facturers are ruined ; bread has risen to a fancy price ; the town is so
deeply in debt that the madness of the Government is inexplicable,
and every one says that it cannot last Those who formerly held
their tongues talk of a revolution as inevitable. God grant it ! for
this man is out. of his senses and the sooner the better, before
he has squandered and ruined everything. . . .
Your emperor produced a very fine impression here ; he was
well received. Maximilian's death was in every one's thoughts.
There were some fellows at the Review paid for crying, " Long live
the Emperor Napoleon ! " and I dare say he was taken in by them.
Your emperor looked so elegant, so handsome, by the side of this
Bonapartasserie, that every one was struck by the contrast ; and the
mob likes good looks.
December i, 1867.
I fetched the little one yesterday, and took him to Madame
Boissier, thence to the Val de Grace, and on the way thence to
Madame Tastu ; the fact is that when he is here I can do nothing,
so I go out visiting and take him with me. He screamed with joy
on seeing your letter ; he laughed, and was delighted to hear it read ;
then he burst into tears. He is a child full of heart of this I am
convinced, and I have always said so. I have found a way of fixing
his attention. I give him a card for each word that he reads well
and without hesitating. I tell him to look at it well first, for if he
does not read it properly he will not gain the cards ; but if he gains
them all I will buy him a plaything. I am sure that if I had him for
three months he would read easily ; but I should die of it. Do not
suppose that I think any the worse of him for this. He would work
well and willingly if some woman were to put all her energy, clever-
ness, and tact into the effort of teaching him. M G says that
Ste. Barbe is excellent for teaching habits of obedience, etc., but not
for teaching to read ; only a woman can do this. The fact is that if
there were no schools the whole of the grown-up population would be
either killed or extinguished, and if schools have only a moderate
number of faults we ought to be very glad of their existence.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 241
The brain has a sort of muscular force. I say a sort I do not
mean to say that it is physical. I abhor everything which in any
way leads to materialism, and unfortunately religious bigotry leads to
it, because it unspiritualizes religion by adhering to the letter instead
of the spirit
Ottmar has sent me a very attractive young Swiss \ but he admires
the Prussians ! I can understand old people, who have grown selfish
and have no enthusiasm, admiring success and despising failure ; but
youth is the season for generosity and imprudence, for taking the side
of the oppressed at all hazards, for abhorring injustice, and risking
all to protect the weak. Nowadays it is we old folks who would
venture everything to destroy the oppressor. Indulgence for suc-
cessful cunning and selfish egoism is ten times more disgusting in the
young than in the old, and when young people talk in this way I
take their measure at once.
I shall send for Nandor on Christmas Day, because it would be
too sad for him to be at school, and again on New Year's Day. Next
Monday I intend to invite some children to play at Blind-man's Buff,
and lunch in the dining-room before I put down the new carpet ;
therefore think of us on the 22nd, between two and five. I shall
invite as many little girls as I can, for he likes nothing so much. I
shall have the little Says and the little De Courteils, the little
Lomenies, and a few others.
I went last night to Mrs. Hollond's ; M. de la Boulaye was
there, full of talk and very amusing: He told us that during the last
few years experiments have been made in America, in certain
colleges, to bring up girls and boys in exactly the same way, and
their faculties were exactly equal, varying according to the individual,
apart from the sex.
To Miss E. Martin.
February 17, 1868.
Mr. Mohl is very well, as he now works in moderation. He goes
out about four or five evenings in the week, which I call dissipation,
chiefly to the Tourgue"nieffs' and Madame Mollien's, who is eighty-one.
She was couched, as you know, and delighted to see the sun, the sky,
everything ; but she can't read a great deal, especially as the other
eye is not completely gone. She could have but one couched, and
so she has set about learning Latin. Now, I call that grand ; but
she only tells Mr. Mohl, whom she dotes upon, and he is to keep it
R
242 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
a secret, and so am I here ; but from England and in our family I
don't think it will come back, and I tell you as an instance of
energy in old age which ought to be blazoned about. She told Mr.
Mohl that, as she could not read long and her memory is excellent,
she found it very entertaining to learn a language so orderly and, I
may say, so well arranged as the Latin ; and when she has learnt a
bit of grammar she thinks about it, to retain it, which exercises her
thoughts ; and she can sit and do nothing without fatiguing her only
eye, and without poring over the same subject, which one is apt to
do when alone, and especially painful ones. She has also great
pleasure in finding that already she can understand quotations. She
told me one day before she recovered her eye, and when she sat
pondering on the past, that her husband, whom she was extremely
fond of, had often exhorted her when she was young to learn Latin,
and that she regretted extremely not having done it. When she said
this to me she had no idea that she would recover her sight. The old
folk bring the young ones to shame here just now. Berryer, who has
been the finest speaker here, is eighty, and was considered as a little
lessened in mind, and was so, but two days ago he flared up again
grander than ever. This pretty Government has made a law to put
away the judges at seventy on a small pension. Now, judges (what
they call here la magistrature) are and have been a much-esteemed
class these four hundred years, and neither the Revolution (during
which many were guillotined) nor even Bonaparte ever lowered their
character, though the latter tried hard for it ; but L. N. has by various
cunning means done more harm than either. The French, even the
best, are temptable through their children ; so whenever a judge sided
with a man whose politics were obnoxious, if he had sons, they were
always kept back. For instance, supposing a young lawyer (I know
the case) is son of a judge who is obnoxious, if he pleads a cause,
whatever it may be, the judges will judge against him, and it soon
gets known that this young lawyer never gains a cause; he soon,
of course, loses all chance of employment. No one will take a
lawyer whom the judges have a prejudice against ; he's obliged to
give up his profession ; and as the sons of judges are apt to be
lawyers, the fathers are so vexed at their sons being objects of
aversion to the Government, that they do what they can to please
the Government. I don't mean to say that they would condemn an
innocent man to death; but in cases of the press, for instance, they will
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 243
lean to the side of power. Then this horrid law of putting them away at
seventy was made to get rid of the old ones, who are the most firm
and honest, like M. Reynouard, who will be put on the shelf this year
in full possession of the best of his faculties. And Berryer made as beau-
tiful a speech as any in his best days, and apropos of treating thus the
aged, spoke of M. Guizot, whose newest books are read with greater
zeal than his old ones, and took an opportunity of saying that the man
who had been minister for years had made so little money that now
at eighty he had to write to maintain his family. This is somewhat
exaggerated, because the family has enough to live upon ; but though
the two husbands of the two daughters had a competency, it was
not more. The eldest farms M. Guizot's small estate, and makes
money by it to live. They have two daughters. The youngest has
six children, so that is eight to be provided for ; and you know it
never comes into the head of a French family not to scrape together
a " dot " for the girls. So they live very economically, which M.
Berryer, being extravagant, calls absolute poverty. And when the
youngest daughter was ordered to winter in Cannes, M. Guizot
published the book I gave you, called " A Royal Marriage," to pay
for her journey and stay there. Berryer then glanced at the ministers'
bench (who have all made large fortunes by all sorts of means not
honourable) and said, " How different is this honourable poverty from
what we have since seen ! " upon which, Guizot being named thus,
the whole opposition stood up, and whether they cheered or not I
don't know, but they expressed their respect audibly ; and his grand-
daughter, who was there, a girl of sixteen, was so delighted that she
wanted to cry out at the top of her voice, " He's my grandpapa ! "
This was on Friday, and several people came to me who had been
there and related it ; it was most interesting to hear each in their
way. But there were many more incidents which would take me a
day to write, because one must explain heaps of things which every
one here knows.
Paris, Mardi gras, February 24, 1868.
DEAREST MILADI,
I wish I could show you M. Doudan ; the contrast with
your ideal red-headed Figaro writer would make you laugh. When
I saw him thirty years ago he was about twenty-five, or looked so
dark hair, slender figure, rather tall, fine eyes, and the most refined
244 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
conversation I have ever known ; perfectly natural, and what might
have been un pen precieux in another was only a grace the more
because it was so unconscious ; a mind so stored that you never felt
you were come to the wall, you felt yourself always en pleine cam-
pagne, yet with all the soft beauties of a. jar din anglais. I lost sight
of him, and met him again lately. He is not so slender, and his face
is different; the mind and talk better than ever; his company is
what I call a great luxury. How he came to live with the Broglies
I know not. He was with them then, and lives with the old duke
now, who is eighty ; they seem perfectly wedded to each other. He
was the dearest friend of Madame de Broglie. I never knew how it
began, but it is an accepted thing by all who know them that he is
one of the family, and the old duke would be quite bereaved without
him. Albert de Broglie, the eldest son, lives with his father and his
four children, all boys not a woman left. Madame de Stael, the
widow of Auguste de Stael, goes every evening to see them when she
is able, and I believe the duke goes every afternoon to see her ; but
she has a nevralgie d'estomac, and of late has not been able to go.
She came one day to me and told me that if I would go of an evening
and take Mr. Mohl it would be an acquisition to all these coats (ees
habits noirs] to have a lady amongst them ; for the duke is gouty and
cannot go upstairs, M. Doudan (the perfect) fancies himself very ill
and unable to stir, and Albert has never got over the loss of his wife,
and Madame de Stael can't go anywhere but to her bed, which she
came out of, I believe, to make to me this proposal, for she said I
should just suit them. And that is the way I have re-found M.
Doudan. I expected the house to be very dull, but I find it very
cheerful ; only, of course, they have not always people in the even-
ing and the duke goes off to sleep now and then, but his mind is
just as clear and as good as ever when he wakes. And I find it
a great acquisition, being a quarter of an hour's walk. It is the sort
of going into company I like no dress, no invitation. Yours, I
believe, is the only house in London where such a thing exists, and
it grows very scarce here now.
February 29.
It is five days since I began this, but I shall not put it in
the fire as I generally do when I have not sent a letter off. I
fear Arthur has gone. Pray, is Odo'sfature fond of music? If she
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 245
is, what a delight to have that wonderful voice within reach ; and
what a waste if she is not ! But it is even a gift to have the pleasure
I have in hearing such a voice, and I have often wondered you did
not make him sing to you every day, which his good nature would
have made him consent to if it were to you what it is to me.
There's a scandalous play now acting which, in my opinion, no
woman ought to go to, and which, I am convinced, makes half of
those who go uncomfortable ; yet they all go because it's the fashion.
It is called " Paul Forestier." Well may the English cry out against
the French if they get wind of it. I won't even read it All I wonder
at is the callousness of people's imaginations ; but it all goes down,
because it is very clever, they say, and Emile Augier is the cleverest
writer they have ; but he would not have done it if for twenty years
the theatre had not come to this by degrees.
Adieu, dearest Miladi. Pray, pray keep your kind feelings
towards me. If appreciating them most highly will help to keep
them alive, they will increase instead of diminishing.
(Translation.)
Rue du Bac, September 15, 1868.
MY DEAR IDA,
Heaven only knows when I wrote to you, and whether I
answered your last, or even your letter before last, for my memory is
so bad that it has kept no account. All I know is that I arrived
here yesterday almost dead with fatigue, that I left my sister on the
gth, and that I sent this morning for the little fellow, who is here
and quite well. As it is Sunday, I don't choose to tease him with
reading, for I have observed that everywhere except in England
people love Sunday. It is a festival, a day of rejoicing ; its gaiety is
remembered even in old age; to the religious it is even more
delightful. In England every one dislikes the thought of it. I
don't mean that people like my sister have this impression ; but first,
such people are rare ; secondly, they think of it with respect, not with
pleasure ; and I am sure that religion in England would gain 100
per cent, if they could have the French feeling for the day. But all
except such sublime characters associate it with recollections of
ennui, of boredom, of gloom. I have noticed that they scarcely
allow themselves to think this, but there is the gloom notwithstanding.
246 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Now, as I wish the child to have none but agreeable ideas con-
nected with God, I shall take care not to give him an unpleasant
impression of Sunday. I therefore do not know whether his reading
is improved, but he speaks French much more easily ; he pronounces
so well that one would hardly know he was German. Your uncle
says that I attach an absurd importance to this, and it so happens
that he himself is the cause, for I think that in the present condition
of Germany it is a great advantage for him to be settled, and so
honourably, in France ; and it would be an inestimable advantage
for him if he spoke French like a Frenchman. It is an axiom for
me that when it is useful to do a thing at all, even to sweep a room,
it is better to do it well. One cannot give children great abilities.
Nature is more capricious in this respect than in any other it is
quite revolting ; but one can enable them to do with ease the things
which can be acquired.
When I consider B , who at heart is an excellent man, but
who is awkwardness personified everybody laughing at him, for he
is as tiresome as the rain ; he never moves or speaks without making
me shudder with horror (alas ! this is the right word), making himself
disagreeable to the whole world, except his mother and his wife (the
latter is dead, and Heaven only knows what a fool she was !) I say
to myself, " This is the effect of education." Certainly, he could never
have been turned into a genius or a Chevalier de Grammont, but he
was wanting neither in good sense nor in sympathy ; he is naturally
affectionate. What a misfortune when one has a heart to inspire
nothing but repugnance ! For my part, to be with him is a perpetual
occasion of remorse and a constant effort to endure his presence.
Here, then, is an extreme case of bad bringing up without there being
a single radical defect of heart or head ; for although not clever he
had good sense and morality much good do they do him ! but it
would take ten pages to tell all the consequences. I only wish to
prove that education may spoil the normal work of nature, and I
jump to my conclusion, which is that I came back from England on
purpose to have Nandor (as in spite of all my efforts he is called by
that frightful name) with me during the second month of his holi-
days, so that he may not be too much left to chance. He repeated
to me to-day a fable of Lafontaine which his master had taught him.
That master does not know how much of my good will he has earned
by that action. . . .
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 247
I quitted my poor sister with my heart torn in pieces, but I would
not let her see it ; all agitation is bad for her. It is impossible to
express my extreme tenderness for her; words are so inadequate
that I have recourse to tears when I speak of her. I regretted
leaving all the more that I managed to keep from her many things
which would have worried her, and I fear that no one will be as
watchful as I was. Nevertheless C (poor fellow), thank God
agrees with me that one must keep all worries from her; but he was
away when I left, and this idea distresses me. If I see that I can
be useful to her, I will go back to her in November.
If K were my daughter, I should not hesitate to accept the
proposal you told me of. In the first place I should strain every
nerve to put together the dot, for the dot is right and necessary. You
have no idea no, not the remotest of the absurdity of the English
on this point. There are not three among three millions who would
set about marrying their daughters in a sensible way. They would
say, " What ! she must have money ? This man, then, does not love
her ; he only wants her money. Good Heavens ! he may go to the
devil ! " Mr. L , who is very fond of his daughters and always gives
them the nicest bits at dinner, would faint at the idea of disgorging
even twenty thousand francs ; besides, he thinks every man ought to
be too happy to possess one of his daughters. In the mean time
girls do not marry at all ; and if they are bored and do wild things
like P , the world is indignant; and while it has the greatest
contempt for the weaker sex, it exacts from it a supernatural strength.
If I could write and make human creatures talk like Mrs. Gaskell, I
would put L and his whole family full length in a book, and I
should think I was doing a good action ; for England will never
correct herself till she sees herself painted honestly as she is in her
domestic relations.
Adieu, dear child ; it is midnight, and I must go to bed.
M. M.
September 17, 1868.
DEAREST MILADI,
Delighted to see your green paper. I was so dreadfully
done up on Friday I could not go to bid you good-bye. I had my
things to pack, for I travel without a maid. I, of course, have more
trouble, but on balancing the account I find it is best. First, I
248 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
am very well satisfied with my French maid, but she is not a Malie,*
and would learn ways in English houses that I don't approve; she
would say, "That or this is not my place, ma'am." Now, that I can't
put up with. . . .
I saw Donnington Castle when a girl of fourteen, as one sees
a house by paying the housekeeper, and if ever I go that way I
will do so again, to see the place of your youth. My imagination
(my favourite part of myself) is always fed by localities ; I delight in
them. Was there not a Lord Wharton famous for seducing all the
ladies in Walpole's time ? There's no such thing now, I think ; they
have a new way. A handsome, agreeable fellow tries all his arts, not
to make her his mistress, but to make her in love with him, and
leaves her with a scarred heart and blighted hopes. She marries
some one she don't care a fig for and grows worldly and cold-hearted,
is never happy, but jogs througn the world like a stage-coach pas-
senger, with neither happiness, pleasure, nor pain (sometimes she
dotes on her children) ; or she keeps her sore heart and lives single
for his sake, takes to study, book-writing, or charities. Now, these
are in general the most distinguished women in England. I honour
and admire them. They are too good for the men by half, and, as
a Frenchman once said, " the English women are angels from heaven
whom a set of demons have carried off into a certain foggy island.
These angels wait upon and adore these demons, who are so little
able to appreciate them, that when one of them has lost her fine
celestial nature, she then becomes the queen and favourite of the
infernal society." There are innumerable exceptions, no doubt; but
the habitual selfishness of Englishmen, even good ones, is astounding
to my foreign-educated eyes. If I am wrong pray tell me so. I have
so much entrainement in talking with you, for you are the only
Englishwoman to whom I can give vent to my opinions, and I like
to have yours beyond any others on a thousand subjects, for they
have been aired, not falsified, by passing through many atmospheres.
I have seen no one but my nephew, aged seven and a half,
for whose sake I came back. His holidays began in the beginning
of August. I hear him read three times a day ; that is my intellectual
amusement. Pray did you teach your three boys to read, and did
they give you much trouble ? Mr. Mohl is delighted with London :
he will take you this letter.
* Lady William's German maid.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
249
To Madame von Schmidt.
(Translation^
Paris, January, 1869.
I go out very little at night, and have no inclination to do so. I
have not been out for the last five days, except on Saturday, when
I saw the Gazza Ladra, which gave me great pleasure, and, although
the weather was abominable, did me no harm. Do not tire yourself
with society, except that of people who are worth the trouble ; it is
much better to read a good book. There are many evenings which
I regret having passed with people who gave me no satisfaction at
the time, and have left no trace in my memory ; and I think of poor
Hilly, who did nothing else during the last ten years of her life.
Beware of your sociability, my dear child. I am not speaking against
holidays, such as going to Munich on the contrary, that is excel-
lent ; but I mean people like E . There must be a great many
such at Vienna. Do not encourage them ; you will be sorry for it
later.
The Gazza Ladra gave me so much pleasure that I shall try it
again. Madame L is an admirable woman for having a box.
Have you read the article I liked so much? Did you try to see
Madame Tautphoeus ? * If not, you were very wrong. If I went to
Munich, I would see her, whether it suited her or not. Adieu, dear
child.
Madame Mohl paid a short visit to London this year.
She wrote from Cold Overton
July 26, 1869.
DEAR MINNIE,
I had intended to go and see you before I left London,
but I found it impossible, being engaged day and night the last five
or six days. I left on the Qth, and have been here ever since. I
was so sorry to go, but I wanted to be with my dear sister, and I
have found her infinitely better than last year. . . .
I have been reading, and am reading, Mr. Senior's book and
yours about Ireland, and find it quite different from the journals I
read, as it is a complete account of the state of the country for the
last thirty or forty years. It is very curious, and tells me many
* Authoress of "The Initials."
250 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
things that I ha'd no idea of, and the shameful conduct, in my
opinion, of Sir R. Peel. You can't say more than I know and think
of the bigotry, ignorance, and absurdity of most people on that ques-
tion and many others.
In the way of nonsense in public men, nothing ever astonishes
me ; but what does astonish me is the superstition in them indulged
in by a large number of people, who accept things which these men
have said and done in opposition to all common sense and justice.
Mr. Mphl writes me curious accounts of the present state of
France, which your dear father would have gone to see with such
interest. I often think of the pleasant breakfasts he used to give me
both in London and Paris, and of the pleasure it gave me when I
could find any one who had something to tell him.
Cold Overton, September 18, 1869.
DEAREST MILADI,
I cannot give you a biography of Pre"vost-Paradol * at all
complete. I know his mother was an actress of considerable talent ;
I have seen her act at the Odeon in tragedy. He has been known
about eight or ten years for his articles in the Debuts, and has a
knack greatly valued at this time of saying sharp truths to the
Government with adroitness enough to avoid their stringent laws.
However, the Debats has been averti on his account, and he may
now only write on literature. A book of his was published last year,
I think, called " Les Moralistes de France," or some such title ; it
was chiefly made up of his articles. He married very young (twenty-
three, I think), a woman older than himself, from love. He has
three children, and has enough to do to maintain them. She went
out of her mind four or five years ago. He is very young-looking
and most agreeable, so much so that if he were not married he
would, no doubt, Avith his reputation, make a very good match. He
was elected of the Academic Franchise after eight days' candidateship,
distancing a knot of men who had tried for months, even years. I
tell you what is the general opinion. I like his company, but am
not in the least intimate with him, and can give only the outside and
general outline.
I have been back only a week from the prettiest place I ever saw
* PreVost-Paradol was appointed by Ollivier French Minister at Washington,
where he died by his own hand in 1870.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 251
at the Nightingales, and I am going to-day to Peterborough, to the
bishop's; I shall remain there but three days, as I am not sure
whether an episcopal palace will agree with me. He (Dr. Jeune) is
a clever man ; I stayed with him at Oxford. He speaks French like
a Frenchman, being born in Jersey.
Adieu, dearest Miladi. I shall see you in October. The Stanleys
remained three days at the Hague with the queen, and saw every-
thing and everybody. Mr. Mohl is going to meet the queen at
Baden.
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
Paris, September, 1869.
DEAREST DEAR,
As you told me you would not be at home till the latter
end of the month, and as I was swimming in uncertainty a thing
I detest I did not write ; and now, though I am not out of it, I
do write.
I had a letter yesterday from Mrs. Story, saying they could
scarcely be at Rome before the first days in November ; that means, I
suppose, 3. 4, 5, 6, or 7. Now, my spouse thinks it right to be here
by December i ; and when he thinks a thing right, I don't like to
run counter, though I might not be so particular for my own use ;
therefore I wish to conform.
If Mr. Mohl makes up his mind to go this journey, and go to a
hotel at Rome to wait for the Storys, we should leave something like
October 3 or 4 ; but let me know your dates. At any rate, whether
we are here or not, you will be more at home here than at a hotel ;
and Julie and I have settled you are to come to your room, and
she'll put up the new curtains, at which you are to fall into a syncope
of admiration ; ,and we must know when you come, but if you could
hurry a bit we. could set off together.
The proposed Italian trip was a great success, although
Madame Mohl, who was now in her seventy-sixth year,
suffered from the fatigue and inconveniences of travelling.
She met the Duchess Colonna at Rome, which was a great
pleasure to them both.
252 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XII.
SIEGE AND COMMUNE (1870-71).
Ollivier's ministry Death of the Due de Broglie Friendship in France Govern-
ment melting like snow Ignorance of foreign diplomats L. N. fears the
democracy Workmen flock to Paris Guizot's grief Respect for age in
France Madame Mohl as housemaid Death of Montalembert Breakfast
for Lord Russell Highwayman's horse Departure of Nandor Children's
minds should not be stretched Inferiority of women owing to their trying
exclusively to please men Painted statues Regnault's colouring The
Hohenzollern affair Horror of the war Exile Life in London Siege of
Paris Disorganization of railways and means of transport Heroism of Julie
The Commune Demonstration of " Friends of Order" Trochu Cheap
edition of the Terror Imprisonment of archbishop and clergy Cannon-
ades Loss of memory Success of Jew Emigration Commune refuses
indemnity Village in flames Dufaure's house ransacked and Princess
Mathilde's Orgies of the mob State of Paris The nation will right itself
Committee of Public Safety Theodore Parker An egoutier director of the
National Library Proposed destruction of monuments Arbitrary arrests
Imprisonment of Monseigneur Perny Carte de ^^//Appropriation of
public money by Communists Thiers' house ransacked Colonne Vendome
An organ-grinder minister Reasons for staying in Paris To protect one's
property Marriage laws altered Desertion of the streets Thiers Scarcity
of provisions Paris in flames Petroleuses Victory of the Versaillois
Frightful reprisals Thiers Intense thirst Madame Mohl returns to Paris
State of the town Every one in mourning Senior's journals Thiers
Empress of Russia at Petersthal Priests in Germany Paris in October.
LOUIS NAPOLEON was, as a clever Frenchman said, "con-
damne' a etre brillant." The empire was growing more and
more unpopular, and he astonished the world in the be-
ginning of 1870 by the appointment of a Liberal ministry
under Ollivier. Madame Mohl describes the impression he
produced in her first letter. Before finishing it she was much
distressed by the death of the Due de Broglie, which was
followed not long after by that of Montalembert.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 253
To Lady William Russell.
January 9, 1870.
We are all full of our new government, which began awkwardly.
Ollivier went himself at eleven at night to propose the Prefecture de
Marseille to a lawyer called Salveta, whom he knew and no one else
knew. Salveta, tired and in bed, told the maid to give five francs
to the man, thinking he was a servant wanting an etrenne. The town
is full of stories of people to whom ministries were offered, because
no one would act with Ollivier.
February I, 1870.
DEAREST MILADI,
I received yours, brought by Arthur to-day, whom I did
not see. I found, to my consternation, that the letter I began on
January 9 had never been finished, as I found -it on rummaging in a
drawer to see the date of your last. I send it, stale and insignificant
as it is, to show you that my head, not my heart, is in fault. It is
true that I have been much afflicted by the death of the Due de
Broglie. He was an ideal before I knew him, and I have to add to
the regret of losing him that of not knowing him twelve years ago
instead of three ; for he called upon me then, and though I was
much flattered by the attention, I did not request to see him again,
nor do the ordinary civilities which I should have done to an ordi-
nary person, but I had so great a reverence for him that I did not
dare to express my wish to see him again. It has been one of my
great drawbacks in life that I never could make advances to those
I most admired, unless they were more demonstrative than shy and
reserved people are capable of being. He was remarkably shy, and
since I have known him I have been even more astonished at his
stepping out of his habits than at my own stupidity. He is a great
public loss; his moral standard was so much above that of other
public men, that the very sense of it will disappear, and his extreme
unconsciousness of his own worth had a grace which is indescribable.
I am grateful to Madame de Stae'l for the three winters I have seen
him habitually; but I never should have had that happiness if she
had not climbed up my stairs, when she was so ill with asthma she
could hardly breathe, to ask me to go there with Mr. Mohl, as there
were no ladies but herself, and she was often too ill to go, and it
made them all melancholy to see nothing but black coats. Now,
254 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
this is so entirely a French feeling, that I think you would not believe
it if you had not lived all over Europe and received your first
education here.
We are all still in astonishment at this new state of things, and
can hardly believe in it ; but, in spite of pessimists, I think it will not
go back. You remember the letters I sent you last summer, in
which Mr. Mohl gave me such a curious picture of the state of things,
of the Government " melting away like a statue of snow." You will
not wonder at the change ; you will only be astonished that it
changed peaceably, which ought, I think, to prove to the English
nation how perfectly absurd was the whole course of the conduct of
the Government. The absolute ignorance of the foreign diplomats
here is one of my wonders. That they should never have known that
every old institution was sapped, and ruined when they had nothing
to do but to open their eyes, is what I cannot understand that they
should not know, for example, that the destruction of Paris was as
arbitrary a measure as Charles I.'s taxes. The law was always that
the prefet should have a council chosen by the chief inhabitants for
all great alterations. Louis Napoleon turned out all who opposed his
measures, and named the successors himself. I astonished the wife
of the Secretary to the American Embassy by telling her this. They
never think of inquiring into the state of the country. I remember
Lord Cowley scarcely knew who the Due de Broglie was, after being
here eight or ten years.
M. Masson is named Prefet of Lille. Lady Holland knows him
well; he proposed sending troops in 1852 to deliver Changarnier
from the fortress of Ham. Masson was then PreTet of Amiens.
When he went to Louis Napoleon the other day, as preTets do on
being appointed, L. N. was very civil, and told him he named him
at Thiers' request, as he was grateful to Thiers for his support.
Now, the fact is, I believe, L. N. has been terrified by the democracy,
whom he had encouraged against the middle classes, and finds these
quondam friends more difficult to manage than the bourgeoisie, whom
he hated. There are- still two hundred thousand, some say four
hundred thousand, workmen made artificially within the last ten
years to build houses not wanted. They were drawn from the plough
from all parts of France by enormous wages, and have learned
luxurious habits. The landed proprietors cannot find labourers. How
such an overflowing will re-enter into its bed again I know not, and
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 255
two hundred thousand workmen would not be convenient to deal
with, neither is it certain that soldiers would fire on them. These
are some of the difficulties L. N. has had to bring him down, and
people will not pay more taxes. What is to be done ? He must
make friends with the taxpayers instead of those who will be paid.
To Miss E. Martin.
The Due de Broglie is gone, and one may truly say the highest
standard of what a public man should be, and a private one too,
has disappeared. Poor Guizot had been his friend for fifty years,
and his daughter told Madame de Lomenie, who told me, that the
day after he wept like a child. The tears of a man of eighty-two
have something awful in them. . . . These old folks are wonder-
fully interesting, and I am happy to say are made so much of in
their old age that they feel it much less. It is the only country
where age is more courted than youth. I feel it so myself.
To the same.
February 23, 1870.
I have been getting up these four days at twenty minutes before
seven hardly light. What for ? Guess you never will, so I'll tell
to light the fire. Josephine could not live with the new cook, and
gave me warning, a week's here is sufficient. She is a great loss, for
she is a capital servant, though no great things as a human being.
As to the cook, she is the stupidest creature, and always complain-
ing ; of course I shall not keep her. I have one in view. The new
maid came yesterday afternoon ; but, nevertheless, I got up at half-
past six this morning to show her how to light a coal fire, which
nobody knows how to do here, and I dare say you don't know. If I
were but stronger I should be a capital housemaid. I took my new
maid from her face and countenance, without troubling myself about
references. I had nine applications. She was the only one I immediately
took to ; we shall see if I was right. The cook had every recommen-
dation, and is the plague of my life ; her only quality is being kind to
the cat, and that is a considerable one. I fetched the coals down-
stairs ; I did a hundred odd jobs. You would have been edified to
see it, for my cook is always complaining that she has so much to do,
and used to make Josephine. work so hard she could not stay; how-
ever, it did me no harm, and I went to a party last night to forget
256 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
my household troubles ; it was at an old acquaintance's whom I have
never been to see at night. I found all sorts of fine people, and one
lady I ha\l not seen since I was at the Abbaye-au-Bois. She came
up to me and was very civil, and said, " You have all the sovereigns
coming to your parties, and the cleverest men." I said, " One
sovereign had honoured me so much and no more." I could not
help laughing in my sleeve, thinking if she had seen me raking out
the coals that morning that the sovereigns would have appeared
rather inappropriate guests. I went the other night to the Liebreichs' ;
they were alone ; he sang the whole evening so beautifully, I never
heard any one sing like him anywhere. He sang Handel in per-
fection, and Don Giovanni's serenade far better than the actor at
the opera I had heard four nights before. Tell Margy this; she
will like to hear of him. He is very delightful ; he made so much
of Kate Helmholtz, because he considers her father as the making
of him ; and so he is, for the instrument he invented was first used
here by Liebreich.
There was a very successful meeting in Parliament yesterday.
The English know no more about France and its institutions than
about Japan ; and what is more curious is, they don't even know how
ill Louis Napoleon behaved to us English when he thought he could
do it with impunity ; however, it was useful, by making us give up all
alliances with him after the Crimean War, and establish the volun-
teers, after he had had put in the French papers that England was
a nest of brigands, harbouring Orsinis and the like, and that the
French ought to go and punish them. He expected our police to
be even more watchful than his own about his precious self. I keep
a Punch of those days.
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
Paris, May 3, 1870.
DEAREST LOVE,
I miss both the duke and Montalembert more than I
might even miss more intimate friends, because I had for twelve
years scarcely ever been a week without seeing Montalembert when
he was in Paris ; he seldom failed to come on Fridays when he was
able to go out, and after his illness I went every Friday at five
o'clock to see him. These habits are so unusual, except in Paris,
that no one has an idea how much they conduce to the agrbnent of
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 257
society. I had a profounder veneration for the Due de Broglie than
for any one else, and though the habit was acquired only for three
winters, it had taken great hold. I never could venture to "go there
since his death till last Sunday night, and then Albert seemed so
cordial that I shall certainly go again, and perhaps keep it up. I
went to thank him for coming with alacrity to a breakfast at ten !
with Lord John Russell and his spouse. The hour was his (Lord R.'s)
choice, and M. Mignet vowed he could not come out so early ; but I
had Guizot, Barthe'lemy, the Broglies, and M. de Parieu, a minister you
don't know, but who often comes to see some of our exotics, which
vegetable he has a great taste for, and, though a minister under this
rascal-ocracy, I even invited him, because he has been known to
speak very roughly to its chief. Though overwhelmed with business,
he came, and Lanfrey, whom I sat by Lord John at breakfast. My
breakfast, though woefully managed in the creature comforts, had
much success; but the best was this. At Lord Lyons', that dear
man Lord John said to the Princess Julie (nee Buonaparte), " I was
introduced yesterday to M. Lanfrey, a very clever young writer."
Julie. " What, the fellow who has written that abominable book ? "
Lord Lyons came to the rescue to pacify her ; but Lord J. Russell,
nothing abashed, said, " Oh, I liked him very much ; he is very
clever and very modest." Was not that a tit-bit for you and me ?
I introduced him to my lady, and was impudent enough to ask her
to invite him to come and call on her in England. I can't think
where I got such a front " on a des moments heureux." After asking
this of Lady Russell, I recollected my grandmother's illustration of
my character,* and thought it just, and as Arthur is an antiquarian
that story is for him.
I have had as a visitor these four months a daughter of M.
Helmholtz by a first wife, who nevertheless calls me aunt. I'm
very fond of her. She has a great turn for landscape-painting, and I
take her to England to see our famous water-colours. I made a bold
push, and asked Madame Schwabe to house her in London in my
room, trusting to Providence for myself. You are my providence ;
but if you should have to be the providence of some one else, Mrs.
Simpson has asked me to go to her. Now, I had rather be with you
than at the royal board, and it is but honest to confess it, though
savouring of the above-mentioned horse and conduct ; at the same
* See p. 4, story of the highwayman's horse.
S
258 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
time, your kindness should not be trespassed upon, and I just tell you
how I feel about the abbey ; but it's no wonder, when queens throng
to it to meet the learned.
She had many wise views on education. She wrote in
1870 to Miss E. Martin
Never say to a child, " Look at your brother, so much younger and
so much wiser ; " you will plant eternal jealousy into the child's heart
which nothing will ever eradicate ; let sympathy act slowly ; besides,
he had better keep his faults than have a gnawing at his little heart
that will destroy his family feelings, and make him look upon himself
as an outcast. It is such a mistake in education, and so frequent, that
a good book ought to be written about it.
M. Mohl took his nephew back to Germany, fortunately,
just before the war broke out.
To Madame von Schmidt.
(Translation.}
Paris, May 7, 1870.
Mr. Mohl has made up his mind to take Nandor to Heidelberg
on July i. I love him very dearly, and you need not fear lest his
stay here should have in any degree diminished my affection for him.
. . . You should not talk to him of things above his comprehension ;
the minds of children ought not to be stretched any more than their
limbs, and it is better to teach them words than ideas ; this was the
old fashion, but it is also the fashion of nature, who gives us memory
before reflection. I cannot give an opinion as to your new notions
on the education of girls at Vienna. I am sure, however, that they
are foolishly brought up everywhere for fear of knowledge doing them
harm, whereas the emptiness of their heads is the real evil and the
absence of rational ideas. If I ask my way in the street of a well-
dressed woman, "I don't know" is the invariable reply. It is the
same thing in London. If a woman wants to stop an omnibus, she
always chooses a sharp incline on which the poor horses can hardly
stand. Women never put themselves in the places of others ; they
have no feeling of justice. Englishwomen have occasionally, but not
while they are young. In short, men have contrived to make women
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 259
as incapable as possible, except where their little paltry interests or
ridiculous sentimentalities (which disgust me) are concerned. I am
struck by the inferiority of their minds (but I don't tell this to men).
What they ought to learn is, not Latin, but to live ; but how are they
to learn this ? Always watched, always kept in leading-strings, they
are, compared with men, what the women of Europe are compared
with those of the East children at thirty. Their beauty and their
dress, and those of their neighbours, are their only subjects of con-
versation among themselves. The English are certainly better, because
they are more independent; but very little. It is not the fault of
nature, but that of men, who require of them only one virtue, and the
proof of this is that that one quality only goes by the name of virtue
for women. They are not tolerable before they are forty. The
women of the lower classes in this country are superior to the
English, because they work for their living. As for women's politics,
they inspire me with inexpressible disgust ; they are always afraid of
losing this or that. But I might go on for ever. I am convinced that
as long as women's sole object is to please men they must be like
this. Just fancy a man who dressed himself up and directed all his
efforts to pleasing women ; what a fool he would be !
The Duchess Colonna has come back. Her statue, cast in
bronze, is at the Exhibition. I fought hard to prevent the whites of
the eyes from being painted ; it was hideous. She gave way to me
and three or four others, against her own and Gounod's opinion.
There is a picture of Regnault's of which people talk as a master-
piece of colouring (poor praise, I think ; but the public is so foolish).
The subject, rather a yellow Spanish gipsy, with a yellow curtain
behind her, a gold vase in her hand, and a copper one on the
ground ; all these yellows are different. It is- very luminous, and
the world is in ecstasies ; certainly a very intellectual employment
of art.
Madame Mohl paid a long visit to London this year, little
knowing that more than a twelvemonth would elapse before
she would see her home again. She and Mademoiselle
Helmholtz stayed with us for a fortnight, during which we
had many pleasant entertainments. She was, however, very
anxious about the war. She wrote to Lady William
26o LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Cold Overton, July 31, 1870.
DEAREST MILADI,
I sent a letter of Mr. Mohl's from Stuttgart, but I am sadly
afraid it has lost its way. You can have no idea of the affliction
and irritation he is in ; / can, because I feel the same. L. N. will
begin again the intrigues of his uncle, and prove by the caricature
that the great man was more a great intriguer than a great general.
One wonders at the folly of the world, which always takes every one
on his own estimation. If this one succeeds in ruining Germany as
did his uncle, by dividing her by cunning, it will show it.
I forget if I wrote you the real story of the Hohenzollern affair.
I will risk repeating it. The Duchess Stephanie of Baden's daughter
married a Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the Stephanie being first
cousin to Queen Hortense, and the same sort of person one niece,
the other daughter, to Josephine. They were like sisters. The
daughter of Stephanie was much brought up with Louis Napoleon,
so much so that Madame Cornu's * husband (at that time unknown,
and patronized by L. N.) did the princess's picture for the Exhibi-
tion, and Madame Cornu gave me an engraving of it twenty-five
years ago. She was much invited and petted by the young princess
a playfellow, like herself, of L. N.
L. N. proposed a little while ago to his old playfellow's second
son to marry the daughter of the Duchess of Alba, niece to the
Empress Eugenie, and promised to help him to the crown of Spain.
This was probably to rival Montpensier. The young man refused, but
the idea had taken root in L. N's. head. He proposed then the eldest
son, leaving out the condition of the marriage. This fact I have from
Germany ; but the intimacy has been known to me for the last
twenty-five years, when I first became intimate with Madame Cornu,
and the story fits in perfectly with what I hear. L. N., as you have
seen, had the story circulated of its being an idea emanating from
the King of Prussia, and found that it took. All this is so like the
first Bonaparte, and the use he made of gossip ; his calumnies of the
Queen of Prussia circulated all over Europe, and others I have not
time to name. Meanwhile the industrious peasants of the south of
Germany and the Rhine will all be ruined, the cattle taken, the
corn trod down. Oh, I could cry !
* Louis Napoleon's foster-sister.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 261
35, South Street, Tuesday, October, 1870.
DEAR MINNIE,
I think you wrote you would be in London about this
time. I have been here since September 21, so ill and dolorous
that I had not spirits to write ; if you can, pray come and see me.
I came to town to consult Mussy. Mr. Mohl was obliged to come
and fetch me from Cold Overton ; luckily, my dear Florence lent us
her house, which has a window in Park Lane, and very cheerful. I
should have died if I had been in a lodging looking on the street.
My illness was brought on in great part by my tormenting myself
about the war, which entirely took away the capacity of eating, and
brought on a catarrh of the stomach.* I was so weak I could not
stand. Then, to finish me, my nephew died on Saturday ; and I want
to go to my poor sister who was not with him. And Paris goes on
worse than ever. Sometimes I think I shall never go home, and to
be without a home and ill is no joke. Pray come and see me, if you
are in London.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
I went at once, and carried her back with me in a couple
of days. She was very joyful at returning to family life. She
stayed with us till Christmas ; from us she went to Mrs.
Milman's, and then to Sir John Clark's, both in Cornwall
Gardens. She always spoke of this as of the time when she
was " on the parish," and of South Kensington as " the
village."
M. Mohl was staying with Madame Schwabe, but he came
to see her every day. " Oh, Mr. Mohl," she used to say, " shall
we ever see our home again ? " " Yes, Madamchen," was the
invariable reply. It was a delightful time for her hosts, for
besides the charming society of M. and Madame Mohl, all
her friends clustered round her ; everybody did their best to
amuse her. She went out a great deal, and had the power of
throwing off her anxieties, both in society and in reading.
* This was the complaint from which she suffered at intervals all her life.
262 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
She used to read Lord Palmerston's life, and other books
of the kind, with avidity. She dearly liked what she called
being made a fuss of ; she was a very grateful person, and
every act of kindness was appreciated and remembered by her.
Dean Stanley and Lady Augusta, Sir Bartle and Lady Frere,
Sir Rutherford and Lady Alcock, Mr. Newton, Mr. Fergusson,
in short, it would be impossible to enumerate those who
came constantly to see her. There were other French exiles
who contributed to the interest of society in that year. The
Viardots, who received every Saturday evening, and had
beautiful music ; the De Mussys, whose agreeable house was
open to all their compatriots ; Ivan Tourguenieff, Taine, Lan-
frey, and many others.
One of her French habits, which was rather inconvenient to
her host, was that she insisted upon keeping large sums of
money in her bedroom ; nothing would persuade her to have
a banker. She never remembered where she put her money
away, and constantly thought she had lost it ; and then there
was a grand hunt and disturbance, and every one was upset
till it was found again, which it always was, in some bag
or drawer. She was scrupulously punctual, and appeared
with the utmost regularity at our early breakfast. There
never was a guest who gave less trouble. Her great luxury
was a good fire, and she disliked the English love for open
windows. " My dear, it's quite a malady," she would say
an expression she used of any taste she did not share.
Both M. and Madame Mohl were somewhat confused by
the multiplicity of their engagments. He used to bring his
memorandum-book to me to have them entered ; and as long
as she remained with us I had to keep her up to the mark.
It was more difficult after she left our roof. Many people
attributed her forgetfulness to rudeness ; but this was a great
mistake, as the following note will show.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 263
From Sir John Clark's, 38, Cornwall Gardens, 1871.
DEAR MINNIE,
I'm in a pretty fix ! It seems Lady Clark invited Miss
Smith to lunch with me to-morrow ; she told me over and over again.
Alackaday ! how can people who are ruined, undone, dying, and in
exile, remember? Pray say I am half-crazy to Madame de Bunsen,
who will sympathize, as her spouse connait des paroles sur cet air Id.
Ever yours, madam my conscience-keeper,
M. M.
To Madame von Schmidt.
(Translation?)
38, Cornwall Gardens, February 18, 1871.
MY DEAR CHILD,
I am really ashamed of having been so long in answering
your kind letter. I will tell you the reasons, but they are not
excuses, for the sort of languor to which I have yielded is a great
fault. First, I was ill ; second, I have changed my habitation ten
times since I came to London,* each time obliged to pack up and
turn out my poor little belongings, always tired, and hating the occu-
pation ; third, I have been obliged to think more of my dress than
usual being on visits I must be at least respectable (a thing I hate),
and wear a cap all the morning, have it washed and made up again
when the horrible coal-smoke blackens it; fourth, my economy,
which has obliged me to spend time in needlework ; fifth, my love
of reading, which has saved me from the sadness which has fallen
upon all my companions in misfortune ; and, besides these reasons,
the necessity to make myself agreeable to the hosts who have been
so very kind to me ; I have now four pressing invitations to stay
with friends who are very agreeable and whom I like very much. I
must own that never was a refugee so spoiled or made so much of,
and, wonderful to relate, even my caps (not over and above clean)
have not repelled them. Your uncle has been all this time at
Madame Schwabe's. First, he cannot bear changing it necessitates
a mental adaptability which he does not possess ; and he is also in
the centre of the town and of his occupations ; and finally, she and
all the family are very fond of him. He will return to Paris as soon
as he possibly can without wasting too much time on the road.
* She means since she left Paris in the previous year.
264 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Albert Tourgue'nieff set off a week ago, and last Friday had only
reached Amiens, although he had a passport from the lord mayor as
bearer of provisions a present from the city of London to the city
of Paris. Why are there these obstacles? All the railroads are
broken, the rails carried off, the bridges destroyed. There are three
times more provisions at Boulogne and Havre than of men to unload
the vessels. You can form no idea of the general disorganization,
which has destroyed all the habits and facilities introduced by one
hundred years of civilization ; and as the old diligences and means
of conveyance no longer exist, one cannot fall back on them. But
the evil passions, always ready to spring up in men brutalized by war,
flourish. Thus the partisans of Germany enact that the convicts in
all the harbours shall stand with their arms folded before vessels
charged with provisions, declaring that without a large fee they will
not help to unload them; and, on the other hand, the partisans of
France declare that Paris is dying of hunger because, in spite of all
that has been said about the free passage of provisions, none were
allowed to come in that were not brought by Germans, who want to
monopolize the large profits obtained from the starving population.
I believe that abuses may take place on each side, but the real
reason for the delay and misery lies in the general disorganization ;
for instance, the delay in receiving letters, which can be a source of
profit to nobody. Neither I nor any one else received any until ten
or twelve days after communications were officially open. I got
one on the isth from the Haughtons, written on the roth, and one
two days before written on the 3rd. They have suffered greatly, as
they could not eat horse. During the last month the bread was so
abominable, that if they had not had a little provision of sea-biscuits
they must literally have died of hunger. The shells were whizzing
round their house in the Rue Gay-Lussac, near the Pantheon, and
poor Eliza, who cannot get up or down stairs, expected every moment
to be struck. Her sister would not leave her, but stayed with her by
the fireside the whole time. All the rest of the household took
refuge in the cellar. They went to the Rue du Bac. The garden
was full of shells, but none had struck the house. My two maids slept
in the cellar or the kitchen next to it ; but Julie the heroic Julie
would not leave our apartment, because if a shell had burst in she
might put out the fire and save our possessions. How, then, can
deople say the French are all demoralized ? With regard to common
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 265
sense, that is another affair ; they would have shown it if, after
Louis Napoleon was taken prisoner, they had declared that the
nation had never desired the war which is the truth and that they
would give up the frontier fortresses and pay the war indemnity to
Prussia to prove that they were in earnest. All Europe would have
been on their side ; and I am convinced that in ten or twelve years,
perhaps earlier, they will see that they have only fed the vanity and
increased the power of the Prussians by their folly; but just now
they are like spoiled children who spite their appetite in order to
worry mamma.
I am cured, but very thin and weak. I have too many dainties
set before me, and I eat too much, although I govern myself very
strictly. Mussy, the dear doctor, has cured me with factitious Carls-
bad waters ; and what touched me extremely, he sent back his fee,
saying that he hoped I would consider myself a Parisian exile, from
all of whom he would accept nothing. His letter is so charming
that I preserve it as a relic.
Adieu, dear child. I have a thousand things more to say, but I
must write to E . I shall stay here till your uncle writes to me
from Paris that I can go there straight, and that coal is easily
obtained. I cannot do without a fire, and wood cannot be had, but
as coal goes by water it may get there earlier ; however, we are very
ignorant as to what is going on. I have had only two letters, and
those from Sophie ; * Julie is more heroic than epistolary. My poor
cat is dead, probably from want of food ; she could not eat what
they gave her, and there was no milk. My only comfort is in reflect-
ing that she was ten or eleven years old, and that her life had been
very happy. But I cannot bear to think of it.
I do not often see the Tourguenieffs, because they live so far off;
it tires me, and I am very economical, not knowing what income we
shall have. We must make up our minds to railroads paying nothing
for years, and that the war indemnities will be enormous. No
matter ; if I lose half my income it will be worth while to have got
rid of Bonaparte. I have always said, and I now repeat to whoever
will listen, that it is the fault of that rascal, who by disorganizing
France, and then trying to keep up his despotism by making war, has
brought us to this pass. Just at present the French cannot judge
calmly, and the ridiculous republicans are so mad that they absorb
* Madame Quirins.
266 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
public attention. I believe firmly in the restoration of the Orleans
family, and I hope that it will not try to rouse and profit by the old
sentiment of French glory. I have more confidence in the character
of the Comte de Paris than in that of his uncles. Happily, he is the
youngest, and the heir. Perhaps I shall not live to see it, but
I am convinced that he will be King of France. A thousand things
to Franz.
As soon as the siege was raised, M. Mohl returned to Paris,
promising to send for his wife as soon as it was possible for
her to travel. Her anxiety then became very great ; for the
first time it struck her that she might survive her husband.
" Oh, my dear," she would exclaim, " what would my life be
worth if I lost Mr. Mohl ? "
Then came the Commune. She obstinately refused to
read the newspapers, nor could she bear to talk of the horrors
that were going on. Her husband's letters arrived very
irregularly, sometimes two or three together, sometimes none
at all for several days. His letters to Lady William Russell
complete the history of that terrible period.
M. Mohl to Lady William Russell.
8, Clarges Street, Tuesday.
DEAR LADY HOSPITALITY,
Got a letter from Aristotle.* My house all right. Bombs
fallen along my windows in the garden. Julie, our old cook, behaved
with great gallantry.
Yours very sincerely,
J. MOHL,
He believes peace will be made before the end of February.
Ainsi soit-il.
February 14, 1871.
* Barthelemy St. Hilaire.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 267
Charenton,* March 23, 1871.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
I got yesterday your letter, and set off instantly to
go to the Rue Pigalle.j As long as I was in the Faubourg St.
Germain all went on well, although I saw many shops closed ;
but on the other side I heard the rappel beaten everywhere, and
every open place was occupied by National Guards. I went through
the Palais Royal, which I found entirely deserted; all the shops
closed, and not a soul about The iron railings of the garden were
shut, but at last I found an outlet to the Rue Vivienne, where people
were shutting up even the coffee-houses ; and as I arrived on the
boulevard, which I tried to cross at different places, but was warned
off, I heard firing lower down, and a crowd running by, crying,
" On nous assassine ! " So I gave it up, and came home through
the Rue Richelieu. The firing had been in the Rue de la Paix, on
an unarmed demonstration des amis de Fordre.
Things have turned considerably to the worse since my last letter,
and one can hardly conceive how we can get out of the abyss of
madness in which we have fallen. Les amis de Vordre are now very
sorry to have remained at home Saturday last, but it is very late,
they are disorganized, disheartened, without a centre and any com-
mander; and as the Comite" of the Hotel de Ville pays its raga-
muffins and the transfuge soldiers \ magnificently, it can rely on them.
The whole looks like an enormous pantomime, if it was not diversi-
fied by murder, and if it was not so entirely ruinous to Paris. The
folly of all this is such that one could not believe it if one did not
see it before one's eyes. The Prussians now declare they will bom-
bard Paris, and we may possibly hear to-morrow the batteries of St.
Denys opening on the town.
I shall not leave Paris, but I wish ardently that my wife should
not come. This is no time to throw oneself in such a fournaise de
folie, when one happens to be out of it. The few people I see are
most unhappy, uneasy, and humiliated ; they had borne up against
the siege very well ; they had accepted this hard peace with some
hope of better times for France ; but this madness of Paris breaks
* He likens Paris to a well-known madhouse.
t To see M. and Madame de Peyronnet, the parents of Lady Arthur Russell.
M. de Peyronnet was very ill.
\ Deserters.
268 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
their heart When will this town become again what it has been, or
like itself in any degree ?
Poor Trochu is very ill looked upon even by his old friends, and
I always maintain that they do not do him justice. Amongst the
mob he is simply regarded as a traitor, and if he came here would be
murdered instantly. The whole of the government of September 4
are looked upon as presumptuous fools, and it is certain they have
ruined France by fighting on after Sedan. But my opinion is that
the country would not have allowed them to make peace as long as
it was not beaten beyond any hope of possible success. But I am
getting into a disputation, which is not my intention, and so I must
say good-bye.
Yours very gratefully,
ABOUL KASIM.
Pray send the enclosed scrap to my wife ; it is, perhaps, an exces-
sive precaution I take in sending it in this manner.
Paris, April 5, 1871.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
I take up my pen, while my windows shake from the
cannon firing at Meudon or Montrouge, I cannot distinguish which,
and while they are beating the rappel in all the quiet streets behind
my house. This is the fourth day of fighting outside. The bar-
barians have been beaten every day ; but, having nearly seven hun-
dred battalions, they can send out new troops every day. We know
very little of what is going on, even in the town, except as far as one
sees with one's own eyes, which is not much, the eternal marching of
rapscallion-looking, half-uniformed National Guards, interspersed with
a sprinkling of Garibaldians, francs-tireurs, deserters from the line, or
the Zouaves. But of what is going on in the Commune at the Hotel
de Ville, and the rival government of the Comite Central at the
Place Vendome, we hear very little. They quarrel every day. One
or the other member of them resigns, or is put in prison. Es ist
eine wahre Hexenkuche ; but I suppose in London you know more
about it than we do here, only what you can hardly imagine is the
state of this naturally gay place, many shops shut up entirely, all
without any customers whatever, except the butchers, bakers, and
grocers ; and even the baker's wife told me yesterday she would
leave the country if she could sell her shop. The Jesuits and the
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 269
Dominicans have been invaded and sent to prison ; only sixty francs
were found in the caisse of the Jesuits. M. de Guerry, the priest
of the Madeleine's house, has been pillaged, and (I am told, but
am not sure of it) the archbishop is to be arrested, and has hid
himself.
This whole state of things is a cheaper and nasty edition of the
Terror, without the slightest enthusiasm, except perhaps among a few
hundred mad republicans, who preach the republic of divine right.
The formula is, "La republique au-dessus du suffrage universel.' 1
The harm they are doing to this country is beyond all calculation ;
it is worse than all the war has done. When I came here one saw
every day things coming into their old state. The commands for
wares came in so abundantly that the makers did not know how to
execute them, because the workmen had been spoiled during the
siege, being fed, paid, and dispensed of paying rent, getting drunk,
and rejoicing in picnics on the ramparts. But with the cessation of
the pay this would forcibly have changed, and the leaders of the
revolt seized the moment when the military organization was not
yet complete, and bribed the multitude by the promise of even better
pay, and by the insane cry of a social republic. Now there is no
work, and a prospect of misery for high and low.
April 6, morning.
I was again awoken by the cannon which comes from the side of
Issy, or thereabouts. The defeat of the Commune seems now cer-
tain, as the troops fight, which was doubtful until yesterday except
for a few regiments. The Commune shows signs of weakness and
increased ferocity. The archbishop is in prison, and so is M. de
Guerry. Six members of the Commune are said to be in prison.
The National Guards, who do not appear when the rappel is beaten,
are now searched for in their houses, and forced to march ; the con-
sequence is that they leave town by hundreds by the few doors which
are yet open, and the rare trains of the northern and eastern railways
which the Prussians force them to let pass. The Prussians have a
short and persuasive way of telling them that such and such a thing
is against the preliminaries of peace, and the Commune is very
attentive to these little insinuations. I hope the Germans won't be
obliged to come in, and in this I am more French than most French ;
and I find, too, I am more hopeful for the future of the country than
270 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
most of them. It is a pity to see them their pride is broken so
much ; but all this, I suppose, will grow again very quickly. But I
must close this horrible scrawl, which I am doubtfu'i if you can make
out. I am going to Rothschild to get paid for those Lombard bonds
you know of from your own experience.
Holy Easter, 1871.
I can tell you nothing which the Times and even your favourite
Echo will not have told you many days before this reaches you, and
much better than I could, although I have listened now during
eight days to the booming of the cannon of the Versailles people,
and during the last two days their battering the Porte Maillot,
which it seems is a hard nut to crack. Now I hear them firing too
from the Muette, it seems to me, and I wish them gobd-speed,
because it is not comfortable to live with a hundred thousand
madmen, or fools, or scoundrels with guns in their hands, and a
Commune whose great preoccupation seems to be now to throw
peaceful people in its prisons, which it had taken care to get
emptied of all the rascals which were in them. They have found
eleven hundred military prisoners, to whom they have given arms,
two shillings a day and rations, and who must feel a halter round
their necks and fight all the better for it.
I have had indirect news of M. de Peyronnet. It seems the
principal illness of M. de Peyronnet is his loss of memory and much
excitability. As to the loss of memory, we all suffer more or less from
it, from being kept on the stretch with this miserable state of things.
M. de P. likes to see Dr. Clavel, and has been out with him ; but it
is thought better not to let visitors come up, as he requires quiet. I
find that many people, after the long tension of nerves during the
siege, require much care to recover their natural state, and do not
wonder at it.
I lead here a miserably solitary life. I look in every day at the
Tourgue'nieffs', who are very miserable, as their eldest son, Albert,
has a brain fever with delirium ; it has lasted ten days, but is now
getting better. But enough of our miseries. I will imagine myself
sitting at eight o'clock at your round table, you writing a letter on
green paper, and I eating tongue to open my appetite, and telling
you that I sent a year ago a Jew from Adrianople to Saba to get
rubbings of inscriptions of the defunct Queen of Sheba, of Solomonian
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
271
memory, and her ancestors and descendants. It is the third timel
have got the French Government to send out somebody there. When
I left, in August, we had no other news of the man than a little
mention of him in a letter of the Governor of Aden. In February, I
found in the Augsburg Gazette another mention of him and his
doings, but a rather discouraging one, as it said that he copied the
inscriptions in Hebrew characters, to be afterwards retranscribed in
Sabeaa, which is a proceeding calculated to make the whole affair
worthless. A few days ago the man walked into my room and brought
me above five hundred inscriptions, copied, not in Hebrew, but in
orthodox Sabeaa. He could not make rubbings with paper, as the
Arabs would have murdered him instantly ; and, notwithstanding all
his precautions, he would have been ten times murdered if he had
not been a Jew, and as such protected, hid, and fed by the Jews he
found everywhere, who are sadly oppressed by the Arabs, but able
and willing to shelter him to a certain degree. I am delighted at his
success, and hope to publish this budget of news from the time of
Solomon in the Asiatic Journal, as soon as the printing office is
delivered from its savage occupants. And now my tale is told, your
green letter is sealed, Malie has taken away your little moon-shaped
table, Mrs. Arthur has eaten her prawns, Arthur has replaced the
four little plates symmetrically, your man has brought mulligatawny ;
so let us enjoy ourselves.
Easter Monday.
Drumming ; a few cannon-shot from Neuilly ; no other news at
any rate you would have them sooner by telegraph ; and this scribble
is only to tell you that I am not yet in the Conciergerie, and hope
not to go there.
April 17.
I hope you have received from time to time my melancholy
epistles, which are written only for the purpose of proving that no-
thing has happened to me, and that one can go about in this
Bedlam unharmed and unmolested until now. The town becomes
every day more empty, five hundred thousand having emigrated; the
consumption of flour has fallen from eight thousand tons a day to
five thousand, which will give you an idea of the place. Yesterday,
going through the Rue de Beaune, I found to my wonder a quantity
of fowls and two big cocks wandering about and crowing as if they
272 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
were on a dunghill. The French Academy has given up its sittings
faute de combattants ; ours (the Inscriptions) is going on valiantly
with sixteen members ; and I held on Friday a sitting of the
Socie'te' Asiatique with eight members, of which I was very proud.
My French friends are disheartened to an inconceivable degree ;
they see nothing before them but a state as in Spain or in Mexico.
I can hardly believe it ; but have given up the ungrateful metier of
prophet in French affairs, as one may well do when one sees Paris
commanded by a Polish conspirator and a Fenian.
Charenton, April 26.
Nothing new. Firing all day quite uselessly, it seems to us in-
siders, and no progress visible ; National Guards very much fatigued,
as far as we see. The official reports evidently lie, but yet the Com-
mune finds thousands of men ready to fight, and Paris looks
as impregnable as ever. The Commune is uncommonly civil to
strangers it don't want to be embroiled with foreign governments ;
but if the army cannot get in the Prussians must, because the
Commune declares not publicly, but privately that not a penny
of the indemnity shall be paid. En attendant nous faisons assez
maigre chere id The Octroi has fallen from 80 thousand francs
to 25 thousand, which shows that little meat and fish is coming.
They say the Prussians will buy the Colonne Vendome and rebuild
it at Berlin ; but this must be a joke, and a very grim one it is. I
have got to-day, to my wonder, a new book about " Les Inscriptions
Libyques en Alge'rie." It looked like a thing from another world,
and I began instantly to read it ; but it is hard reading, and would
be so at any time. The author rejoices in the incredible name of
Judas, and is a retired medical man, who is bitten with the rage of
reading these Libyan things, which are most unreadable, and in a
lost language. You may imagine the muddle of desperate conjec-
tures one swims in.
But this scribble is only to assure you that I am alive, tolerably
well, and at liberty to prove which I am to dine to-day, of all places,
near the Arc de Triomphe, which is not a desirable locality, as the
advertisements have it ; but as I shall send this off only to-morrow
morning, it will prove that no bomb has cut in two
Your very devoted servant,
J. MOHL.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 273
Paris, April 30, 1871.
Nothing new. Yesterday evening there was furious fighting, and
I saw high flames rising from some unfortunate village I suppose
Clichy which they together must have burned. This morning
is deep silence, as if all the batteries had gone to church ; but it
will certainly not last long. I hope it is a sign that the fort of Issy
is taken, which would bring us a little nearer to our deliverance
from these hogs in armour who domineer over Paris. They are
bitterly in want of money, and try to extort some from the railroads ;
the consequence will be that the railroads will stop ; and already the
Prussians send back the trains bringing victuals from Rouen for us,
because the trains of the northern railroad do not come out of Paris
and so we are ground down between the upper and the nether
millstone. They have broken into Dufaure's apartment, stolen his
money and his railway bonds, strewed about his papers, and then
put a seal on the door. They have found out where La Princesse
Mathilde had put up her mobilier, and have stolen and broken what
they liked. One hears of these things by accident; there is no
journal which dares to speak, nor a tribunal to complain to. All
this brings very little money, and dishonours la Commune. They
have thoroughly frightened that poule mouillee, the archbishop,
whom they threaten to shoot, which they won't do, I am sure, as
it would be their own death. He is a trimmer and an intriguer,
and has always been. I only wonder that they have not left him
alone.
The moral aspect of Paris is lamentable beyond anything I should
have thought possible. People look so hopeless and discouraged ;
they despair of France. It is not in the habit of the country to
emigrate, else thousands would leave as soon as they could realize
some part of their fortune. They will recover their spirits quickly
enough when things get better, as I believe they will ; but there is no
doubt that this country is profoundly rotten. The ruin which will
fall on it, and on every one of us, when this servile war will be
finished and things looked upon in their true state, will be appalling.
But it is not this which is the worst ; a new generation may become
rich again, but will this be soon enough in the nation to allow the
sentiment of security to come back ? But it is no use to speculate
on the future ; enough for the day is the evil thereof. And quite
T
274 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
enough we find it, because the weariness of spirit in living amongst
this half-asinine, half-ferocious madness exceeds human patience.
They had a post in the Legion d'Honneur. These fellows dis-
covered lately M. de Flahault's cellar, and had an orgie for three
days and nights lighted the whole place splendidly, and drank and
danced in a beastly way. They were all strangers Poles, Irish,
Belgians ; not a Frenchman amongst them.
But you must be sick of all my talk of this madhouse, only I
know of nothing else. My intention is only to let you know that I
had not been flayed or roasted until now, and that I hope not to be
pillaged.
I am, dear Lady Hospitality,
Yours very gratefully,
J. MOHL,
Julius Mohl to Miss Emma Weston.
Paris, May i, 1871.
... I won't try to give you any news from here, as the English
papers tell you more and much sooner than we could, as we learn
little and learn it late and imperfectly. This goes on to an almost
incredible extent. Yesterday night there was such an infernal firing
on the side of Neuilly and Les Ternes, that it kept me long from sleep
by the mere noise and the shaking of my windows. I saw as I lay
in bed the bombs flying and houses in Neuilly burning, but now at
six in the evening I have no idea of what has happened ; I suppose
the evening paper will tell me something, but hardly as much as the
Times will have given you at your breakfast this morning. But
what you can hardly imagine is the moral and physical aspect of the
town. More than a third of the population has left, and thousands
are leaving every day ; rich people are all gone, the well-to-do send
away their families. Poor people go the men because they do not
want to serve in the National Guard, the women because they starve
when the men do no military service. You see no woman in the
street but in black. The men who are not in uniform, or in the non-
descript things which are called so, go about in seedy clothes ; it is
not worth while to dress, and the tailors must have a sad time of it.
But so have all merchants, bankers, manufacturers, shopkeepers,
whoever makes or sells anything ; even the bakers complain bitterly.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
However, they have half of their customers, but other people have
none whatever. Half the shops are shut up entirely, all at eight in
the evening ; the big emporiums like the Petit St. Thomas, le Bon
Marche, Old England, etc., are perfect deserts, and they all take
stock to employ the few commis they have kept so as to give an air
of activity to these miserable and enormous wildernesses. The
drumming and trumpeting is eternal, and so is the firing ; the army
makes progress but slowly, et en attendant, we are devoured by this
vermin. The composition of the Commune is wonderful ; some are
old conspirators, journalists or hommes de lettres, some journeymen
bookbinders or such like, some street musicians, some doctors, some
lawyers. One who was delegue a la bibliotheque imperiale was an
egoutier ; * he was destitue yesterday under the suspicion of having
made away with money. How they made their way we do not
know ; most likely they were deep in the obscure socialist conspira-
cies which are constantly going on. Many were members of the
Comite International de V Union Ouvriere. It is about the strangest
crew of governors ever seen, and they administer just as a band of
swine would the gardens of Kew, or a drove of bulls the Crystal
Palace. They have got hold of a good and bad idea the necessity
of great municipal rights but they ride this hobby-horse to death
in their folly. Their conception of a commune is insane; they
want to make a state of it; for instance, they appropriate to the
town of Paris all the great establishments of the state, and declare
that they will indemnify France for them, and buy from it the Louvre
and its galleries, the Jardin des Plantes, les Bibliotheques, les
Faculte's. They have got a minister of foreign affairs ; they pretend
to be at the head of the federation of the republican Communes de
1' Europe ; they claim all the legislative powers of a sovereign state,
and want to change the distribution and property of capital, and this
is what gives them their most sincere adherents workmen who have
been addled by insane discussions about the rights of capital and
work. Then there are thousands of deserted soldiers, of Fenians,
Poles, Garibaldians, and all the riffraff of cosmopolitan demagogy ;
many thousands of condemned criminals, who were not allowed to
reside here, and have now flowed into Paris ; and then a great mass
of indifferent or unwilling Parisians, who have been accustomed
during the siege to obey military orders. These are, I believe, very
* A man who looks after the sewers.
276 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
much disheartened by their losses ; and as many as are not entirely
demoralized by illness and drinking, regret their honest and better-
paid work, but are driven on by their chiefs and the fanatical or
ferocious part of their comrades. Fifty or sixty battalions have
never recognized the Commune, and do either nothing or guard
their own streets. Altogether we are not a "happy family." The
great difficulty of our masters now is the money ; nobody will take
" les bons de la Commune ; " and after having robbed les Caisses
Publiques, extorted money from the railways and the Bank of France,
melted down the plate of the Ministries, the Invalides, the Legion
d'Honneur, they are in great distress. They have broken into a
certain number of private houses, taken the carriages, and sixty
thousand francs worth of wine at the Pereires, stolen Dufaure's money
and railway shares under pretext of looking for state papers, wasted
Flahauel's and Madame Mathilde's goods and chattels, etc. ; but this
brings no money. The requisitions from butchers and bakers are
answered by shutting up the shops or the market-places. Les Dames
de la Halle have kicked out the dtlegues, the Octroi has fallen
two-thirds, the Parisian refuses to pay his house-tax to the Commune ;
but they are in distress for money, and their way of setting about to
enrich the world does not appear to be the right one. When this
folly shall be exploded we shall find an inconceivable ruin in Paris ;
and what their impatient madness has cost France in money, in
reputation, and in political prospects, is perfectly incalculable. I find
that the friends who are yet here are disheartened to the last degree ;
they believe that France has fallen into the state of Spain or Austria
a helpless log on a sea of revolution ; and I find myself, to my own
wonder, more French than all of them. I do believe in this nation
and its faculty of recovering itself. We all of us are grievously
ruined, but the next generation may be more prosperous than we
have ever been.
You know the savages have shut up the archbishop and plenty of
priests. They don't see that the real crime of this Church is to have
brought up such a generation, and to have so entirely failed in their
duty of civilizing it ; but they are not so stupid as not to see that
shooting an archbishop does no harm to the Church they hate.
Au reste, poor Darboy comes out very poorly in this trial ; his
fears are absurd, as they will never shoot him, and even if he
believes that they will, he shows a shameful want of pluck. But he
has been a trimmer all his life, and that is all
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 277
But I must put an end to this long talk. The matter is, helas,
superabundant, but it makes me quite melancholy to see these things
and to talk of them.
Be so good as to remember me kindly to M. and Madame
Laugel and to Anna Dicey, and believe me to be
Yours very sincerely,
J. MOHL.
To Lady William Russell.
( Translation. )
Paris, May 4, 1871.
You see we are getting quite frisky in our folly, and have estab-
lished a " Committee of Public Safety," to remind us of the good old
times. Felix Pyat for the moment is our master. I would rather
have had some other, but I was not consulted. However, the
creation of a Committee of Public Safety seems to me like the dose
of musk which is given to patients in their dying moments, or the
prayers ordered for kings in their last agony. Amen, so be it ! for it
is time that this monstrous folly should cease ; and yet the army does
not appear to be making much progress, or that the National Guard
is sufficiently disgusted with the trade forced upon it. There are at
least in every battalion a hundred or a hundred and fifty madmen,
who fight furiously ; the others contrive to linger on the road, and
as the Commune, through the folly of Jules Favre, possesses nine-
teen hundred guns of all sorts of calibre, this condition may last
some time longer, because the army acts according to rule, slowly
and methodically, and meantime we are " cooking in the devil's
oven."
But it is tiresome to be always talking of these things, and yet
nothing else happens. We have no new books, no foreign books, or
reviews, or newspapers ; I read old books, therefore, and am none
the worse off. I have fallen upon the " Life and Correspondence
of Theodore Parker/' an American theologian, whom I remember to
have seen at your house years ago. It interests me deeply, but it is
too heterodox for you, and you would not care for it. As for me, the
old theological leaven is constantly rising, and I like to see how an
arch-heretic of this sort behaves in America, and especially how
America behaves to him. Speaking of books, the director of the
Bibliotheque Nationale, appointed by the Commune, was one Vincent,
278 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
by profession an egontier. When he arrived he was shown a great room
full of books, and was quite stupefied with astonishment at seeing so
many. He wanted to send a battalion of National Guards to guard
them. The librarians got rid of him with a great deal of trouble. The
Commune has since dismissed him, not for incapacity, but because
he was suspected of having made away with money. His successor
is a sort of literary man who will be much more inconvenient if he
has time to establish himself.
Paris, May 7, 1871.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
Nothing new. Firing, burning of houses at Neuilly,
Colombes, Issy, etc., marching of very dirty battalions of ragamuffins,
insane decrees of the Comite' de Salut Public, lying telegrams, sup-
pression of all half-truthful papers, and inconceivable dawdling of
the Versailles people, that is summa summarum our daily fare in this
pestilential place. It is hardly worth while to tell the details, the
more so as Oliphant and others undoubtedly tell you much more
than I can know. The only decent thing these fellows do is to
arrest one another plentifully, as their prototypes of 1792 did'; only
they do not guillotine one another. However, I am thankful for
this, as it keeps them from cutting our throats too, which is a great
mercy, as one likes to see the end of this monstrous folly, for which
purpose it is useful to keep one's head on one's shoulders. To give
the devil his due, the rabble are not so bloodthirsty as their grand-
fathers were, but also they are as ignorant, as stupid, and as de-
structive as ever. They want to destroy the Colonne of the Place
Vendome and La Chapelle de Bre"a. During this time the Govern-
ment of Versailles plays at soldiering ; they fire at the fortresses and
reduce them to powder, but don't take them just as if the whole was
a trial of artillery, and an exercise-ground for the men. It looks as
if it were as incapable as the former one. They seem not to feel that
this long resistance of the rabble will make any future government
insecure, and expose it to perpetual conspiracies and trials of strength.
* It seems as if these animals were playing a game of chess, and
pondered for two days before moving a pawn. They say it is to
save the lives of their soldiers ; but they lose more in these eternal
cannonades than they would in a sharp attack on the forts and
villages in the suburbs. There is a weakness in all this singularly
* Translated from this paragraph.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 279
unlike the old " Furia francese." So much the worse for us, for these
slow and, I suppose, regular movements leave us in the hands of mad-
men a social position by no means safe, and at best by no means
flattering. These pigs have decreed the destruction of the Chapelle
Expiatoire, which is one of the most beautiful buildings in Paris. I
don't believe that this will be done ; but really can it be possible that
there are people so idiotic as to believe that the destruction of a
certain number of stones would have the effect of rendering every-
body happy, rich, contented, and free? for this is their platform.
But I am disgusted with them and all their works, and I will hold
my tongue, hoping to have later on a more worthy theme for my
discourse.
(Translation.}
May 10, 1871.
The days pass, and are like each other. Here is a picture of
the situation, with, however, the slight change produced by the
pressure of Bismarck, who has sent a more peremptory message to
the Government at Versailles to re-enter Paris. They are, therefore,
fighting more seriously, the forts are in ruins, and we see that these
gentlemen of the Commune lose a great many men. I say the
Commune, but it appears to be only a screen, behind which our real
governors conceal themselves ; for the little Parliament at the Hotel
de Ville seems to have no longer any power. Its decrees are not
executed, the organization it introduces is overthrown as soon as
created, one cannot tell by whom, perhaps by the Committee of the
Federation an anonymous and mysterious authority or of some
other still more occult power. We understand nothing of what goes
on, but we see that we are more and more under the power of
Dombrowski, Crapulowski, and Co. ; and these heroic defenders of
our liberties look more and more like bandits as one sees them
marching by in battalions. I hope that the end is near, for it really
is too tiresome to use a strictly parliamentary expression.
I came in contact with the Commune yesterday, quite unex-
pectedly and against my will. A certain French-Chinese bishop,
Monseigneur Perny, a sort of savant, has published the first volume
of a French and Chinese dictionary. He was his own printer, and
has worked for the last two years in an apron and paper cap, like
an ordinary journeyman at this immortal work. Unluckily for him,
2<?o LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
when he went out he donned a wide-brimmed hat with a gold cord ;
and he wears a gold chain and cross round his neck, with other
ecclesiastical frivolities, which prove that he is not a man of sense; for
he did not see that if one has the luck to possess an apron and a paper
cap, it is not the moment to leave them off, and to put on the Order
of the Holy Ghost or such like. In short, he went out in this costume
of the age of barbarism and despotism, and was caught in the street
by the National Guard, who adore religious liberty, and clapped into
the Conciergerie, where he has been kept in secret for the last five
or six weeks with other bishops, ready to hand whenever they want
to shoot a few to avenge any casualties among the Federates at
Versailles. But he has a friend in M. Panthier, an excellent man,
enthusiastic for any good action, and, what is more, devoted to
Perny ; for they have a common enemy, which is the best cement for
literary friendship. So this poor Panthier has taken infinite pains to
set Perny free. At last a member of the Commune, who says he has
no power himself to liberate Perny, advised Panthier to get the
Asiatic Society to lay claim to him. The requisition was rather
awkwardly drawn up ; however, such as it is, he got all the members
of the council to sign it, and then it was brought to me to give it my
supreme sanction as president. I have added a long postscript, in
which I remind the Commune (a fact of which I am sure it is com-
pletely ignorant) that the first republic exempted missionaries from
all the confiscations and other penalties inflicted on the Church,
because the influence of France in the East is kept up chiefly by
the missionaries. It is just possible that this may be of use to the
poor man in his undeserved misfortune, but I fear not ; for arrests are
arbitrary, and no one knows by whose orders. Victims are shut up
without any reason being alleged, and as the authorities are constantly
changing, no one will release a prisoner, precisely because there
exists no record of the cause or the suspicion for which he was
confined, and in this avalanche of liberty which we are now enjoying
it is guilt, and not innocence, which is presupposed.
P.S. The Versailles people hope to come in on Saturday or
Sunday. They have organized a company of a thousand National
Guards who have taken refuge at Versailles, and who will enter at the
head of the troops at least so it is said.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 281
Paris, May 14, 1871.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
Many thanks for your letters and stamps (of those you
and Odo have sent me forty-two single and six double ones, so I owe
you fifty-four stamps, which shall be honestly paid ; I was sadly in
need of them, but feel now like a miniature Croesus in stamps). Le
Pere Houbigant shall be ferreted out of some dark hole, which he and
his comperes are in the habit of living in. About the " Science de la
Nature par Magia " (?) I know nothing, having never heard of the
man or the book.
Lord Houghton may come here without the slightest difficulty.
These barbarians are uncommonly civil to strangers ; but he will find
the place very dull and dreary. A siege seems to be the most tire-
some affair for both parties certainly to the besieged, as I can testify.
We all become so stupid, lose our memories, repeat always the same
thing; many become quite idiotic, and some rave outright. If it
should last, they would at the end find a lot of imbeciles instead of
madmen. But Lord H. has a morbid taste, and wants to indulge it.
I don't know if the besiegers at Versailles are much wiser ; they will
certainly drive Thiers crazy, and we cannot spare him now, as the
empire has left us stranded without any political men of any note,
and the lawyers we have got in their place do not shine by adminis-
trative qualities.
The beasts have now emitted an ukase, that every one of us is to
take a carte de sfirete> which every armed ragamuffin in the street is
empowered to ask to see, and if you have not got it, to arrest you.
I won't take any, as I do not recognize their right to command me,
and I will rather remain at home until the devil has got them, which
I hope will be shortly. When one hears the furious cannonade, one
should think the walls must be pulverized ; but it seems not yet to be
so. I fell in yesterday, in a boat on the Seine, with a National Guard,
who came just home from one of the forts ; he told me he had been
there for eighteen days, that his company had marched out one
hundred and thirty-four strong, but that he had left only eight in the
fort, the rest killed, wounded, prisoners, or run away. The wonder
is they find people to fight under these conditions. But there is a
lot of fanatic socialists who keep up the game, and, what is strange, a
lot of furious women, who are in an exaltation of insane communism,
282 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
which passes all belief; they fill every evening the churches, which
are converted from six o'clock into club-rooms, mount on the pulpit-
chair, and hold forth enormous nonsense and make ferocious pro-
positions.
May 17.
Le Pere Houbigant has hid his diminished head very much, and
is not to be found when he is wanted. However, I have com-
missioned a little bookseller's boy, the veriest ferret of books, who
will hunt him up.
Nothing new here as far as I know ; but I have not been out, and
do not even know if the hogs have yesterday destroyed the Colonne
Vendome, and if anything of poor Thiers' house is standing. His
collections of art have been packed up very rudely ; much must have
been broken, much will be stolen and dispersed. The rest he will
find again, as they will not be able or dare to sell it. But Thiers
feels it most bitterly, and it is an unexpected consequence of his
having fortified Paris.
Yesterday the beasts have forced la Societe" Ge"ne"rale to pay over
to them all the private deposits ; this ruins the Asiatic Society.
During thirty years I had accumulated these ^4000 of savings for
her, and now it seems to be gone. These are the friends of liberty
who are to inaugurate a new civilization !
Paris, May 18, 1871.
We get madder every day as the end approaches. These
fellows arrest one another all round, publish newspapers against one
another. The wonderful thing is that they can keep up the fighting ;
it is true this is not under the direction of the Commune, but seems to
be governed by a certain mysterious Comite" Central. One does not
see now, as formerly, an inconceivable number of disorderly-looking
National Guards loafing about. There must be now many thousands
on or near the ramparts to resist the army, which is evidently breaching
the walls, to judge from the noise all along the horizon. But the diffi-
culties seem to be very great ; the army advances only slowly. Thiers'
house was half destroyed yesterday. The savages deliberate if they
are to sell his collections or incorporate them in the collection of the
state. I hope they will do the last, as then he will find them again.
The Colonne Vendome is to be blown up to-day ; but I do not
believe it. What a strange thing, that this monument of battles and
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 283
victories should be destroyed as a monument of barbarism by the
veriest dregs of the population, who has sung for fifty years, " Qu'on
est fier d'etre Francois, quand on regarde la Colonne ! " I approve
the new sentiment, but they might show it in a more sensible way
than they do. But this nation is unaccountable when its Celtic
element gets the uppermost.
Yesterday they have named a new member du Comite de Salut
Public, le citoyen Billioray. This citizen was formerly a wandering
musician, playing in court-yards, public gardens, and in cabarets,
accompanied by his children. He is now one of the five absolute
masters.
Auber, the musician, is dead ; he died making a new opera. But
I know nothing worth telling, and this is only to prove that the
Comite" de Salut Public has not yet taken notice of me ; but if the
illustrious Billioray should know my sentiments on his favourite art
and bread-winner, it will go hard with me. En attendant^
I am, dear Lady William,
Yours most gratefully,
J. MOHL.
Paris, May 20, 1871.
You are very kind to try to charm me back to London,
and if I had known that this madness would last two months, as it
has done, I should most likely have had the weakness of leaving
this Bedlam for more reasonable countries ; but as I hear the army
knocking so hard at the doors all day and night, and as I expect
them every day to come in, it is not worth while; and just now it is
not very easy to get out of this fournaise of folly, brutality, and
savageness. When it is all over, without my having been shot in
revenge for some true or factitious murder committed by the Ver-
saillois, I shall be glad to have remained, because it is a state of
things which one is, happily, not likely to witness twice. I have seen
1848, which was mad enough, but only a type of this. But there is
a more sensible reason than mere curiosity for remaining here. The
scoundrels are much given to break into abandoned apartments
under pretext of looking for arms or papers, and rifling the place.
They do not so in inhabited houses. To give you an example.
Before yesterday they came to No. 31, Rue Grenoble, quite in my
28 j. LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
neighbourhood, a big corner house, whose proprietor, le Marquis de
Creu I forget his name is absent ; they brought thirty wounded,
opened the apartment, established an ambulance. The porter, after
an hour, came up to see what was doing, found them breaking the locks
of the drawers and rifling them. He protested, was arrested, and sent
with his wife to the Conciergerie. They put a National Guard in his
lodge, and made themselves comfortable in the house, the cellar, and
everything pertaining to the man.
Now they have taken to reform the marriage laws ; to declare
legitimate all the unlegitimately born young citizens ; to abolish most
of the rules about contracting marriages ; to give pensions to the
unlawful spouses of the National Guards, etc. They again threaten
the archbishop, who is very much frightened ; but I don't believe
that they will have the stupidity of shooting him. As to my poor
Chinese bishop, I have not heard of him, so that I suppose our
intercession has been of no avail, as I thought from the beginning.
The streets are more deserted than ever. More people get out
of town by Saint Denis. One sees nothing but women in black, old
men, begging children, and armed ragamuffins ; at night even the
best streets are very dimly lighted, Thiers not allowing coal to come
in ; wood is, of course, very rare. I have just bought some for more
than double its usual price. Milk has become an almost incredible
tradition of former times, and Thiers don't allow concentrated milk
to come in. The doctors asked him for it, but he said in a very few
days there would be plenty; only these days lengthen to weeks
insensibly, and babies and sick folk want milk. They begin to
starve us in the matter of meat. Yesterday a drove of oxen came
to Saint Denis, which the Prussians occupy ; but the police is in the
hands of unarmed French gens d'armes. These opposed the entrance
of the cattle -until the drovers fell upon them, gave them a good
beating, and brought in their cattle in triumph.
But all this is nothing ; our trouble is to live in the midst of this
unutterable folly of our masters, which is humiliating to the last
degree. I listen with delight to the incessant noise of the mitrailleuse
which rises up from the Bois de Boulogne, and to the bass of the
cannon at Montretout ; only I find that the result of this onslaught
is very long coming. Perhaps you may hear of it before you get
this scrawl.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 285
Paris, May 24, 1871, eight o'clock, night.
I will try to send you this sign of life, if I can go as far as the
embassy to-morrow ; it would be impossible to-day, and may be so
to-morrow. You know more about Paris at this moment than I,
as I have been kept at home during this three days' righting,
which was long and bitter in the Rue du Bac, quite against my
expectation. In general I did not believe that these scoundrels
would fight in the town ; but the number of foreign republicans, of
formats liberes, of riffraff indigenous, was so great, and these gentry
were so convinced that they would be shot anyhow, that they fought
like devils. Many dead were found with large sums in their pockets.
An officer told me that he had himself to count the contents of the
pockets of a Pole, and found a hundred and fifty thousand francs in
billets of the bank, to his great astonishment. The Pole was shot ;
so are all foreigners and all deserters from the army who are caught
with arms in their hands. There is yet much fighting. I hear the
cannon from the Place St. Sulpice and from the Hotel de Ville.
The battle is won ; this infernal racaille is put down. But they are
during this time burning all the public establishments, ministries,
barracks, post-office, the Tuileries, and people say the Louvre ! La
Caisse des Comptes, la Legion d'Honneur, seem to be burned, and I
see on the east side of my horizon this moment five enormous con-
flagrations. Oh, the beasts ! This moment somebody comes in to
tell me that the drapeau tricolore has just been hoisted on St. Sulpice ;
but a part of the beasts is yet on the roof of the building firing
down on the square. They put powder-casks in every establishment
they occupied, aspersed it all over with petroleum, and fired it in
leaving.
During two days we have been shelled by these brutes. The
shells came first from Montmartre, and afterwards most likely
from Vincennes ; the whizzing was very frequent, and they fell on
the houses, but mostly in the gardens, bursting there with a great
crash. One broke a window in my staircase, and strewed about its
fragments in the court-yard. But shells are not very formidable,
except in wooden houses, or where they are directed on one place.
Nine o'clock.
St. Sulpice is burning, but they are extinguishing the fire ; the
Hotel de Ville is said to be in flames, but the rascals fire yet out of
286 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
it. The women are the most mad of all. They had formed three
battalions, and many have been taken and some shot. A woman on
the place St. Sulpice gave thirty soldiers wine to drink which was
poisoned. She was arrested, to see what the consequences might be
on the soldiers. There is a heavy canopy of smoke over Paris, and
the sun shone all day feebly through it. I have tried just now to go
out and look about me, but all circulation is interdicted by sentries.
There is a fearful cannonade somewhere in the town; I hear the
reverberation of it twice in a minute ; I don't know where it may be.
However, we are rid of this beastly herd of hogs, and that is so far
good ; whatever may come afterwards, it cannot be so bad and so
shameful as what we have seen and suffered. I have now been
unable to get a messenger during three days ; have not talked to a
human being but soldiers and portiers in the street We are living
on what is accidentally in the house, as nothing can be bought.
We feed on the monstrous things we see, and on the more monstrous
tales we hear ; and, instead of conversing, we listen to the incessant
roar of cannon and guns. However, I must say I do hear it with
great pleasure, as we can be in no otherwise delivered.
The firing from the Pantheon and from la Place de la Concorde
is perfectly fearful, and has now lasted uninterruptedly for nearly two
hours. I suppose these are the last posts held by the savages, and
that they will be taken to-night at any cost, not to allow the scoun-
drels to set fire again to the town.
Thursday, 25th, six o'clock in the morning.
All right, as it seems. No cannon-shot to be heard, except from
Bicetre, where the scoundrels may yet hold the fort. The town
seems entirely free. A la fin I I will try to make my way to the
embassy to bring this there, that you may see that nothing has hap-
pened to
Your very grateful serviteur,
J. MOHL.
From Julius to Mary Mohl.
Paris, May 26.
MY DEAR M ,
I am just come from the embassy. They promise to
send a letter to you and one to Flo to-day, and even one to Moritz,
to be posted at Versailles. The gates of Paris are almost hermeti-
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 287
cally closed, because they want to arrest that vermin the Commune
and the Comite Central. I hope they may. Haman's gallows are
too low for them ; but I would send them to Cayenne to open
trenches for draining the colony, and with them about twelve thou-
sand of their rascally followers ; but my impression is that they will
be shot by the soldiers as soon as they can be identified.
I found at the embassy a letter of yours, dated the ipth, with one
from Florence.
The state of the town is indescribable. At every carrefour there
had been barricades, of which the remnants fill the streets ; the
pavement is frequently covered with dried or drying blood, the
houses battered and half-ruinous ; at every corner a sentry, who
orders you to walk in the middle of the street that you may not be
able to throw petroleum in the houses. I did not understand what
the first sentry told me, and crossed over to the opposite pavement ;
but he reiterated his orders and threatened to shoot me, which
quickened my dull understanding. It would really be ignominious
to have been shot as a suspected incendiary. I found the state of
the Rue Royale incredible. At the corner of the Rue St. Honore'
all the houses are burned. The one in which was the bureau des
omnibus has entirely disappeared and the ruins are yet smoking.
Opposite is one so burned out that the fagade has fallen ; another is
in so dangerous a state that nobody is allowed to go near it. The
entrance of the Faubourg St. Honore" is entirely inaccessible ; the
fallen houses have covered it with a wall of perhaps thirty feet high.
I made a detour by the Madeleine, and, coming back in the Fau-
bourg St. Honore, found the hotel of Pe"reire very much damaged by
cannon ; cart-loads of hewn stone had fallen in the street from its
fagade.
At the English embassy there was, of course, nothing injured.
Coming back, I wanted to go along the Quai d'Orsay, and could
not, because the fagade of the Cour des Comptes was too unsafe. I
have since been at the Institut, which has been saved by the merest
accident ; and this very night the scoundrels, who yet bombard Paris
from the Buttes-Chaumont and the Faubourg St. Antoine, set fire by
a petroleum shell to the Bibliotheque Mazarine. Happily there was
an employe, who, hearing the crash, went up in the roof and was
able to stamp out the fire. We were seven members ; our sitting
was not long. M. de Wailly told me a story which had happened
288 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
at Passy, where he is living, and, thinking the incident impossible,
he had gone to the witness, a man he knows as trustworthy. They
had taken a woman in a barricade, her hands black with smoke, and
they were carrying her away with the others. She had a child with
her. All at once she drew out a revolver, shot the child, and said
to the soldiers, " Canailles, j'ai tu trois de vous, c'est mon tour main-
tenant, faites votre me" tier." She was sent with the rest to Versailles,
which is done only in cases where great numbers are taken, else they
are shot instantly. M. de Wailly told another story, which I repeat,
because he is a pedantically exact man. The Cure d'Auteuil told
him that a woman had called on him and put in his hand a necklace
of fine pearls and some other baubles, coming from Thiers' hotel, and
told him that Dombrowski had taken her son as secretary, and, in
taking leave of him the day before yesterday, told him that he had
no money to give him, but he might take these things.
I came back by the quai ; but when I came to the entrance of
the Rue du Bac, I found an enormous barricade, over which Me'rime'e's
house had tumbled, closing up the street with a ruin of thirty feet
high. The whole offered a dismal spectacle. All that part of the
Rue de Lille, between the Rue du Bac and the Rue Solfe'rino, on
both sides is one mass of ruins. The Hotel St. Aignan has entirely
disappeared, the others are wrecks burned out, half the walls fallen,
the rest black and tottering. They had all been absolutely covered
by petroleum pumped upon them. The Croix Rouge is in the same
state. Four houses had been entirely burned by being covered with
petroleum, some others are shattered to pieces from cannon-balls.
The ruins are yet smoking, and the firemen stand upon them, direct-
ing streams of water on this boiling mass. The facades stand yet in
part without any back, and may at any moment crush the firemen,
who stand behind and beside them. It is fearful. The inhabitants
had five minutes to save their valuables. The national printing-
office is untouched, because the director had a friend in the Com-
mune, and got through him an order to the Commune to take all
necessary precautions to save the establishment. The archives have
been saved by similar means. The Communaux went to the Luxem-
burg and covered all the staircases with petroleum ; and, as it had
been turned into an hospital there, they told the doctor to have his
patients removed. He said he could remove two hundred, but there
were three hundred more who could not be transported. Oh, they
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 289
said, then they must perish ; and as they are to die anyhow, it is of
no consequence. However, they decided to send for orders to the
Hotel de Ville ; and before they got them, the troops arrived and
shot the Communaux.
While I am writing, the whole of the horizon is again red with
fire ; it is an enormous conflagration in the interior of the town.
According to the direction, it may be Le Mont de Piete or the print-
ing-office, but it is impossible from this spot to distinguish. They
wanted to blow up Notre Dame and the Pantheon, but had not time.
The Pantheon was saved by the great courage of an officer, who went
down in the crypt and stamped out the burning slow match. They
had made great preparations to blow up the egouts (sewers), and
accumulated three enormous quantities of powder and explosive
materials nitrate de potasse, etc. This had been bruited about
already a fortnight ago, and people went down in the egouts and cut
the metal wires which were to be fixed by electricity from the Hotel
de Ville. They found there fifteen incendiaries stifled by their own
preparations and devilish materials. It passes all human belief. The
state of despair in which all this puts the French is inconceivable.
Renan called yesterday, striking his forehead, tearing his hair, de-
claring that Paris was incurably idiotic. They all fear a civil war all
over France. He believes in the re-establishment of the Bonapartes.
About a dozen of the members of the Commune have been taken
and shot ; the officers do not like to send them to Versailles, to be
carried before the tribunals in which they have no confidence. An
aide-de-camp told me this to-day, with whom I was talking in the
street, because now everybody talks with every one, while during
the last two months people were silent and mistrusting. This aide-
de-camp said, " What can you do ? Since our soldiers see the
burning houses they are become furious; and then many of them
have been poisoned. We give no orders; but the officer who
commands a detachment does as he thinks right, and we ask no
questions. We are not bloodthirsty, and are heartily sick of all this ;
but, when I came along the Rue du Bac, a fellow was brought by a
bourgeois to the poste, who accused him of being an incendiary; he
had a big can in his hand. I was appealed to. I assured myself
that it was full of petroleum, and told them they might shoot him
or carry him to the barracks. They put him against the wall and
shot him, he clutching till after his death the can in his hand. If
u
290 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
the fellow had been sent to Versailles, who would have proved to
a tribunal that all this was really so, and no mistake ? Most likely
he would have got off." In this way Paris is become a charnel-
house, and these house-burners will cost the Fe'de'res many thousands
of lives. I believe every officer of theirs who is taken is shot (there
are above ten thousand in their army) ; so is every foreigner and
every deserter. The Prussians arrest every suspicious body who
is caught in their lines; formerly they disarmed them, and made
prisoners of them, now they give them up as incendiaries. I suppose
the military tribunals will condemn to death a great number, and
Government will send them to colonize Cayenne and New Caledonia.
Saturday, May 27.
I hear no firing, but I know that the Buttes de Chaumont are
not taken. It rains, which must deaden the sound of cannon ; and
I suppose the remains of the communists will be assembled there
in the Faubourg St. Antoine as in a net; they may yet be twenty
thousand, future colonists for Cayenne. Twelve thousand are at
Versailles ; as many may have perished here in these six days of
battle. Most likely many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poor
fellows have perished, who were forced by the brutes to fight against
their wish. I have no time to tell the monstrous stories of this kind
which everybody tells. Whenever one touches this subject one
finds the most monstrous things. I saw yesterday, in the court-yard
of the Institut, a big cannon standing in a corner ; it was brought
in from a barricade near the court-yard. The court-yard was strewn
over with empty tin cans, which had contained petroleum. The
marines (of the army) had hoisted a mortar up on the roof (on a
gallery running about the clock) to fire from there on the H6tel
de Ville. The filth and the stench in the whole place is indescrib-
able. In the crypts of St. Thomas d'Acquin eight thousand
incendiary bombs have been found. Every moment the horrors
one hears increase in number and atrocity. Whenever they had
ecclesiastic hostages they told them they might go and shoot them
as they came out in the court-yards. The Dominicans, the frtres
ignorantins, the Jesuits, were shot. Nobody knows where the arch-
bishop, the other bishops, and 1'Abbe Guerry may be, or if they are
shot. In the Rue Royale they have burnt one maison <? accouchement,
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 291
and thirty-eight women in it ; it passes all human belief. Will the
nations of Europe comprehend that, instead of making war one with
another, they have not too much means, time, and intelligence to
resist the savage classes which have been forming under their feet,
and to civilize them? We send missionaries to the Hindoos and
Chinese instead of taking care of the street Arabs ; but you will see
that in a year or two they will have forgotten the fearful lesson, just
as they have forgotten the war now, although the Prussians occupy
half the Contour de la Ville. They will then quarrel as ardently
about some miserable interest of the moment as if there was no
volcano under their feet.
Three o'clock.
Cannonade from the Buttes de Chaumont. These fellows fight
with a cord round their necks. It will have taken exactly a week
to retake the town. We are yet in a very poor condition ; no omni-
bus, hardly a fiacre, as the streets are seldom repaved. Until now
no markets, because the market people have difficulties in coming
in, and very much greater ones in getting out, because Government
wants to hinder the leaders from escaping in disguise. The post
don't go yet. They say one may carry a letter to the Chemin de Fer
de la Rue St. Lazare, and that it will go off from there ; but even if
this should be true, it is a poor remedy, in the state of the street and
the distance of the gare. I believe it will require a week before the
town is inhabitable, but then nothing will oppose your return. Your
carpets are put down, and you will find everything in its place, except
poor puss. When I saw that the danger of pillage was over, I
collected together the money, papers, and plate I had hid, to have
all under my hand in case of fire ; but this danger, too, is rapidly
passing away, as the whole population is watchful about it to a
degree which it is difficult to imagine. I believe nobody, but
certainly no woman, could carry a bottle or any such vessel in a
street where she is unknown without danger. All the openings of
cellars or sous-sols all over the town are built up with sacks full of
earth, or plastered over, or fortified with a wall of paving-stones.
The fury of a frightened population is quite ferocious, and, really,
the shooting off-hand of people who carry no arms is a real public
danger, and of very bad example.
292 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Five o'clock.
The firing goes on. I wonder that these last quarters can hold
out so long, although their barricades are very formidable. In the
Palais Royal the palace is entirely burnt ; the great fire I saw
yesterday down in the city is the Entrepot de la Villette ; it has been
burning two days, full of millions of merchandise. Decaisne has
just sent a man to inquire if I was alive. I have invited him to
dinner for Monday. The museum has not been burnt. If Paris
was not built as it is, it would have been burnt down entirely ; but
it is incombustible, or nearly so. The firing from Montmartre on
les Buttes de Chaumont and Belleville increases very fast ; they (that
is, the army) have mounted on Montmartre a battery of heavy ship
cannon. What a misery well-meaning people in those quarters must
suffer between the two ! Most people I see are become so restless
they gad about without any purpose, only from being unable to keep
in any place. On me it has another effect ; it makes me thirsty to
an incredible degree. I never drink between meals ; but now it is
as if I was devoured by an interior fire, and I drink water all dgy
long. I certainly expected a violent coup de queue, but for this
pillage and this horrible incendiarism I was not prepared.
May 29.
It is all over. I have no time to write about it to-day.
Julius Mo hi to Lady William Russell.
Paris, La Sainte Pentecote, May 28, 1871.
The firing in the interior of the town goes on we do not know
exactly what progress is making ; but, in fact, the beasts are yet re-
trenched in north-east quarters of the town, and bombard us with
incendiary shells. It is most likely the most desperate set which
has from everywhere concentrated there; however, they are sur-
rounded and must be taken ; the people in the streets say that they
are twenty thousand strong, and it is not unlikely, since they have now
held out for three days. There are twenty-eight to thirty thousand
prisoners at Versailles, most likely ten thousand have perished in the
battle, or been shot afterwards, and so the town is certainly delivered
of a good number of canailles ; but there will never be security in a
city where these beasts have found hundreds of men, women, and
boys who undertook to set fire to the town for a payment of ten
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 293
francs, and did all they could to execute their commission. Many,
very many of them, have been shot, mats la graine riest pas perdue et
repoussera vite. The army has come in slowly, else it would have
saved most of the public buildings. The intention of the generals was
to attack the wall only four days later, but a civil engineer, whose
name I could not learn, inside the town perceived that by some
error, or negligence, or disobedience, the bastion of the door of
Auteuil was not occupied by the communists ; he made signs to the
sentries of the army, who fired at him, but he with heroic courage
persisted, until an officer sent two men on the bord du fosse to hear
what he had to say. They returned to the officer, who went to his
colonel, who sent to his general, who wrote to MacMahon, who com-
bined there an attack, and although three mortal hours had been lost,
the relief troops of the Fe'dere's had not yet come. If these old
pedants of generals, who went on firing and making approaches
according to the manuel du siege des places fortes, had not been
forced in this way to come in, we should all have been first robbed
and then roasted, and certainly no public building would have
escaped. These old pedants went on battering every barricade and
every house occupied by the beasts with cannon, and in this way
took a week to get the town in their hands, which they ought to
have got in a day or two, having a hundred thousand men at their
disposal.
The communists are now hunted down all over the town ; nobody
is allowed to leave it, and of course the denunciations are going at a
great rate. Very often one sees a crowd in the street, and when one
asks what the matter is, the answer is constantly, " So-and-so is to be
arrested, and we want to see him brought out." Any member of
the Commune or any of their delegues, any member of the Comite
Central, any superior officer of their army, is shot off-hand as soon as
he is identified ; the officers have no confidence in the tribunals, and
take justice in their own hands since the burnings. And this is
natural enough ; but it is a most dangerous precedent for new revolu-
tions, which we certainly shall not escape. What a country this is !
Thiers' influence in the Assembly seems on the wane, which I am
sorry for. I am not a great admirer of his, but he is the best man
we have, perhaps the only one who can pull through the incredible
difficulties of this land, ruined, occupied by five hundred thousand
enemies, disorganized and demoralized, profoundly divided in
294 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
opinions, with incapable parties, who hardly know what they want,
but always combining against the one who wants to take the lead.
I believe this revolt of Paris has cost more than the whole contribu-
tion for the war, and has been politically and morally much more
destructive.
{
May 29.
It has been all over at eight o'clock.
The remnant of the beasts surrendered unconditionally; four
cows-mar tiales will judge them.
Paris, June I, 1871.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
We are very quiet here, and no wonder, after the indis-
criminate shooting all over the town during last week. People
calculate that fourteen thousand persons have been killed in that
week, and at Versailles they pretend that during the two months'
siege the rebels have lost thirty-five thousand men, killed or
wounded. I do not know how they get at the numbers ; if it is true,
most of these must be dead, as their wounded died in great quantities,
their doctors being few and bad. They have fought like wild beasts,
but unskilfully, as the generals say ; the losses of the army are very
moderate. It was altogether a hideous sight. I am not sorry to
have witnessed such a thing once, but have no wish to see it again.
The town is, of course, now full of the most monstrous stories of
wonderful escapes and of heroic resistances ; the last are seldom
authentic. The rail to Versailles is now perfectly open ; people say
that is a trap for the communist compromise, who will rush out of
town and be recognized and arrested at the gares. I do not know
if this ruse de sauvages is true, but one may expect everything from
the rage and reaction into which we have fallen, after our prostration
under the feet of the beasts. Really, the Parisians in general have
not shown to their advantage in defeat or in victory.
Outside people must have thought that we had all perished. I
have got this morning a telegram from St. Petersburg, and one from
Constantinople, to inquire if I am alive. And here, too, people who
see one another for the first time greet one another as if they had
been shipwrecked, or risen from their graves. I was walking yester-
day in the street ; a man stopped me, seized my hand, and shook my
arm almost out of the socket. I did not recognize him, but he told
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 295
me he was one of the gargons des bureaux de PImprimerie Nationale.
He would no more have thought at any other time to shake me by
the hand than to seize the moon with his teeth, but he was so
delighted to see one of his old masters as to be almost crazy.
June 3.
Everything is now quiet, and shakes itself slowly in its place
under the government of a dozen of generals. I fell in with one of
them yesterday, an old acquaintance, who says that they cannot
administer the town ; that they are assailed by denunciations, but
refuse to act upon them ; they want the maires and the police to act,
and those do very little ; that they make very terrible proclamations
about the giving up of arms, but with moderate success. He told
me that in his district the Commune had distributed at least twenty-
two thousand guns, and yesterday only six thousand had been
brought in ; a few thousand have been taken in the fight, but more
than half are concealed. So they are driven to house-to-house
examinations, which furnish a good number with great trouble, but
by far not all that is required. He told me that it was not ordered,
but understood, that during the battle every man taken with arms
should be shot ; but he would not allow it, and sent every prisoner to
the Chatelet, where a court-martial disposed of them ; but that now
there had set in an unreasonable reaction of pity, and that they had
not the patience to go into every man's case ; they were sick of the
indiscriminate shooting that had gone on, and would now let loose
many of the most criminal ones. " In fact, we want patience, con-
sequently we want justice." I dare say it is true; but even if all the
ringleaders should be shot or colonized, there will be no want of
new ones, as all this working population is deeply imbued with the
unhealthy doctrines of the international union, and there will easily
be found broken-down newspaper-writers, artists, and ambitious work-
men to head new conspiracies, and, above anything else, direct the
elections which our insane universal suffrage has thrown into in-
capable hands.
We shall, I hope, have some years of quiet ; but this is not certain,
because the Assembly at Versailles is a most unmanageable body.
It is very important that there should be no new elections now, and
that the provisional state should last until the Germans have been
paid and have left the country ; but nobody knows if the irrecon-
296 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
cilable members of the Assembly may not bring on new general
elections.
These rascals have done much to ruin us all, and have very well
gone on with what the empire and Master Gambetta had so well
begun ; but directly they have stolen from me only one thing, and
the one which I might have least expected, viz. a copy of the
Evangiles! I had a copy of a very fine edition in folio, which I
wanted to send to the Athenasum, and sent it to the national
printing-office to be bound there, as they bind there uncommonly
well. When they left the establishment, on the troops coming in,
the volume was missing ; one of these pious people had annexed it.
I will look out for another copy, and not be baulked by these beasts.
But is it not queer ?
I have no more to say ; my head is addled. I ought to go to
Petersthal to quiet my liver, but I learn just now that the Empress
of Russia has discovered this very obscure spot of the world, and
goes there at the end of this month. Now, there has never been
room enough for the guests in that place ; how are they to live when
such a big animal comes, with a hundred attendants of all sizes and
pretensions? It is out of the question, and I must wait until it has
pleased H. I. M. to decamp. It is disheartening to see these
people come like a thunderclap or a Commune fall on honest and
bilious people and oust them. Why cannot they be contented with
Carlsbad, Toeplitz, or Ems, which are places arranged for such big
whales and mammoths ? I shall certainly turn communist if the
princes go on in this way.
I am, dear madame,
Yours very gratefully,
J. MOHL.
Madame Mohl's delight was intense when the Dean and
Lady Augusta, at the earliest possible moment, offered to
take her to Paris. The Dean told me that her joy on arriving
was almost childish. She skipped about, and was quite happy
at being obliged to walk nearly all the way to the Rue
du Bac. A few days afterwards she wrote to me
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 297
Monday, June 13, 1871.
DEAR MINNIE,
I should have written last week if my poverty (of strength),
but not my will, had not governed me like the poor apothecary in
" Romeo and Juliet," for whom I have often felt as much compassion,
by-the-by, as for the lovers. I was all the week overdone with fatigue.
We arrived here at one in the morning, and got to bed at three.
My poor spouse looks wretchedly ; he had waited from half-past
eight to near twelve at the railroad, then he went back. We got
there at past twelve, tried in vain to get a coach, and at length,
leaving the luggage, set out on foot along the dark muddy streets ;
yet we were all three as merry as crickets, and felt no fatigue. As
we trudged along we called to every wheeled thing we could discern,
but they were obdurate ; at last a little omnibus, which was plying to
some station, was persuaded to bring us here. W T e were all curiosity
to see the ruins ; but, after all, they were not half so numerous as we
expected ; but on crossing the Carrousel the Tuileries were invisible.
True, it was very dark, and the town is as yet lighted like the small
country towns. We did spy every now and then a monstrous heap
of stones. Our porter opened the ponderous door much sooner than
I expected, and we got upstairs and ate our dinner very merrily at
two in the morning. Mr. Mohl, however, seemed impervious to all
fun, and looked like a man who had been hung and cut down before
his last gasp. He was better next morning, and a story of an absurd
old cracked, conceited French crittur, who, being very ill, proposed
to Lady Augusta to have her photograph on the same card with his,
made the house ring with his old laugh, and did his liver more good
than twenty doctors. He knew the man well, and she tells a
humorous story incomparably ; this crittur had also the impudence
to ask her to marry him. This is twenty years ago. He was the
laughing-stock of all Paris, and the people encouraged him because
he was so ridiculous. The Stanleys came just at the right time to see
things before they began to be mended. They went all over the
town to see the ruins, Tuesday ; to the ceremony of the archbishop at
Notre Dame, Wednesday ; and on Thursday to the famous sitting at
Versailles, where Thiers made a speech of two hours, which I think has
settled people's minds for a time as to his political faith and conduct.
There seemed to me a bonne foi (frankness) in it, and it is thought very
298 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
new in a French chief. I was too weak to go to any of these. On
Friday they made a tour outside of the town in a coach to see the most
fighting places, Neuilly, Bellevue. On Saturday they left at seven,
so I think they made a good use of their time. On Friday I went
out for the first time to see an -old friend, who talked such nonsense
about the Prussians that I made up my mind I would go no more to
see her. They had begun the petroleum system, according to her,
and paid the insurgents, while, in fact, the Prussians wanted to disarm
them. I have now made up my mind, when people are so nonsensical,
not to answer, but to march off and see them no more. My old
friend Josephine dined here yesterday, and was not unreasonable at
all. Mignet came to see me yesterday. I was delighted and
touched, and had tears in my eyes; he is beautiful now in his
age as in his youth. Of course one talks of nothing but politics.
My poor old friend M. Roulin looks ten years older than Mignet,
and is eight years younger. Nothing strikes me more than the
alteration in the people's faces and deportments. One of my maids,
about twenty, is grown so thin and hollow-faced it is fearful ; the other
is exactly the same. The porter hid himself in the cellar and would
never open the door, the consequence is he looks extremely well ;
I may say better. Cowardice is a healthy regimen. People are
coming back to town ; but we shall not be the Paris till the govern-
ment leaves Versailles and returns here at least that is my opinion ;
but I don't know what the Chamber thinks. There is certainly a
strong looking up in the older party.
Adieu, dear ; kind remembrances to your spouse.
M. MOHL.
Julius Mohl to Lady William Russell.
Paris, 1 20, Rue du Bac, June 15, 1871.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
I have not written for some time, because my right hand
had become so stiff and rebellious as to make it almost impossible
for me to make anything but straight and unreadable scratches. I
believe it is my liver complaint which exasperates my nerves. And
then I had nothing to say ; the picturesque part of our history is,
happily, for the moment over; we had enough of it and to spare.
The town fills up gradually with returning inhabitants, who come in
about twenty thousand a day ; and it fills up with horses, drays, and
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 299
waggons, but hardly a private carriage is seen, and the shops com-
plain bitterly that their best customers have not returned. It now
appears that there were between fifty and sixty thousand workmen
sworn in to the International Union, and about as many were repub-
licans, not socialists ; about twenty thousand were killed during the
siege and the taking of the town ; about fifty thousand fought in the
streets, of whom thirty thousand were made prisoners. They will be
treated leniently, as even court-martials get sick of shooting people.
However, the leaders will not escape, and the fry will be sent with
their families to colonize New Caledonia, and perhaps Guyana.
But all our political life is now at Versailles, and even there is
suspended to wait for the new elections, which will mostly be republi-
can. How anybody can pretend to govern a country with universal
suffrage I cannot see, and nobody with any sense, even the republi-
cans, does see ; but nobody knows of a remedy without civil war.
There is no coalitioii between the Orleans and Henri V. What-
ever the Legitimists may say, you may be assured that there is none,
nor will be. There are five distinct parties, all irreconcilable, and at
most two would coalesce in a given case. And then the financial
difficulties are enormous twenty millions of pounds of new taxes,
and seven millions of economies. All this is added to the very great
difficulties of remodelling the army, the administration, and every-
thing.
But I wish to have to talk of something else.
Literary work is beginning again here, and I am very busy after
my long idleness, only we have all lost our memories, and I have
become slightly idiotic. It was seldom the uneasiness of one's personal
security which was the cause of this mental depression, as the danger
of an unobtrusive individual in a large town is never very great ; but
the cessation of all civil life, and the feeling of living in an enormous
madhouse where the patients had overpowered the keepers, and
where the most dangerous of the insane were the masters, and kept
plastering the walls with their wild decrees and lying despatches, was
intolerable. This plastering of affiches was incessant, and I learnt
at the printing-office that there alone they had consumed five thousand
reams of papier cT affiches. The walls of thousands of houses were
covered by successive pastings with a sort of pasteboard, which was
never torn down by chiffonniers, because they were all in the National
Guard, and their families were paid and rationed by the Com-
300 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
mune. Since the troops have come in they have taken off their
uniforms and taken to their crochet and hotte, and are going about
their old vocation. I have been interrupted by Lanfrey, a member
of the Assembly, who is very well, and getting fat during his legis-
lative labours (this is not for your, but for Mrs. Arthur's, edifica-
tion). He says that the Assembly is incapable of doing much, as the
numerous parties in it paralyze all decisive action, which I think is
the best that can happen in the state of the country. Anything
decisive would produce a civil war between the town and the country
people, such is the distracted state of this unfortunate nation ; first a
foreign war, then a servile war, and in prospect a war between town
and country, all having been either directly brought on or secretly
fostered by that beastly Bonaparte. Anathema sit, as the pope says.
Is it not strange that Trochu, who is an honest and clever man, and
who has suffered more than anybody from calumnies, should now
accuse Bismarck of being at the bottom of this affair of the Com-
mune, which was so evidently against the interest of the Germans,
and which Bismarck wished to prevent by disarming the National
Guard ; which was resisted by Jules Favre ? It is surpassingly strange.
But I am at the end of my paper, and must say good-bye.
I am, dear Lady William,
Yours very gratefully,
J. MOHL.
From Madame Mold.
Paris, June 28, 1871.
DEAREST MINNIE,
Mr. Mohl has marched off with your book* into his
den, and says, " Rien n'est curieux comme ce livre, il ne pouvait
paraitre plus a propos on dirait que plusieurs de ces conversations
ont eu lieu hier." Now, he is by no means an exaggerator, only,
his taste being far before that of the public, I always mistrust that
stupid animal when he likes anything very much. Up to this time
he has met with nothing that can be taken amiss by Thiers ; fact
is, Thiers was nobody just then, as he did not come forward much
in 1848, except just at the moment before poor Louis Philippe gave
up the game like a goose.
Rain seems to have undisputed empire here ; but as to the fever
* Seniors Conversations with Thiers, Guizot, etc.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 301
and dead bodies and dangers I was threatened with, it is perfect
nonsense. The streets are crammed with people; everybody is in
black, but that is the chief difference. I have not seen any one
in colours. The shops have nothing but black bonnets, except a
flower or so to show it's not private mourning. It's really curious.
Paris, July I, 1871 (alas, how time flies !).
I purpose going on the 5th, so you see I shall be in London
a week before your party; but I write immediately, knowing well
the sacredness of dinners. I can add a little more to Mr. Mohl's
opinion of the book. He says, " II vient a point et est extremement
interressant, et montrera aux gens qu'ils ont tout oublie." It shows
how this last revolution was cooking then. For my part, I think this
last has been useful, showing what these socialists are. They had not
time to show all their agrement in 1848 ; they have shown now what
they can do towards the destruction of civilization, and their way of
furthering the interests of humanity. I am shocked to see how easy
the English take it, because it shows how the venom there has taken
hold of a large portion. We talked about sending the book to
Thiers (who is incapable of reading it), but Mr. Mohl is not quite
sure that he will not be told by some one that Mr. Senior says he,
Thiers, is a socialist. I don't remember seeing it, and will look out
for the passage. I should not wonder at all, but he has learnt better
since ; however, he is a very important element of tranquillity just
now, and I should be very sorry if he came to any harm, for I do
assure you he goes on very sensibly, considering the various parties
he has to deal with, each pulling different ways; but there is a
feeling of insecurity, and I believe the Orleanists will come in at
last if civil war don't come. I believe also in the bonne foi of Thiers,
which some don't that is, that he loves France better than anything
else, and that if he thought the Orleans heir had a really good
chance, he would not oppose him. But though the republicans are
in much smaller numbers, they are much more energetic and quite
fanatical, and he wants to avoid civil war at any price. I really
believe Thiers is afraid of the republicans, that is, of the mischief
they can and will do. I believe that I am perfectly impartial in this
view.
Le"on Say is Prefet of Paris, but it bores him and his wife. They
have come to the Luxembourg, as the Hotel de Ville is in ruins ;
302 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
I wish they may stay. Mr. Mohl, seeing I am writing to you, says
he much approves of your not giving all the names, as you cannot
tell the mischief you might do ; but if I were you I would keep a
written key of them, in case of death or other contingencies.
Cold Overton, August 5.
I arrived here half-dead with fatigue; not so much with
the journey as with a sort of battle at Peterborough, where the
platform must have had at least eight hundred people, with three
or four porters, and I had to run from my Great Northern to get
into my Cross Midland, hauling hold of one porter, who, as he was
stronger than I, managed to get away. I had three packages in my
hand, two in the van, and three minutes allowed for changing. I
never ran quicker in my best days ; if it had been a matter of life
and death I could not have done more. But the resuscitation has
been paid for; I can scarcely walk upright, even after-a week.
I found my poor sister better than I expected. Only one niece
here. I am able to return to my writing, and am so glad ; it is the
first .time for eleven months, and I begin to hope I have not grown
stupid, and that the brain has escaped the general wreck. I am not
the least ennuyee ; on the contrary, I enjoy the garden more than
I can tell when it is fine. My poor husband was half-dead when
he got to Petersthal. He gives a most amusing account of all the
Russian court had done there; they are just gone. Among other
absurdities, they had always six carriages with four horses standing
ready all day, in case they should have a whim to take a drive.
They gave brooches, rings, diamond pins, etc., to almost every one
they spoke to ; new furnished the whole establishment ; and the
waiter, after telling all this, said, " It has made us all turn republi-
cans." This is in the Pays de Bade. I should like to print the
letter, it is so curious.
Julius Mohl to Lady William Russell.
Petersthal, Grand Duchy of Baden, August 6, 1871.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
I do not know if you care to hear from this out of-the-
way place in a high valley of the Black Forest, but I wish to report
myself as living and reasonably well, notwithstanding a miserable,
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 303
rainy, cold, and uncomfortable season. This place and its surround-
ings are most beautiful, but we are mostly kept in by incessant rain,
which is the greater pity, because one cannot swallow a reasonable
quantity of these intensely cold mineral waters except in warm
weather and by perpetual motion. We are not a gay population :
a few hundred ladies of weak constitution, mostly miserably pale
from want of blood, and a sprinkling of dyspeptic men, do not form
a very lively parish. We get all up at six o'clock, begin to pour
cold and saline water into our poor stomachs ; wander about where
the weather or shelter permits it ; take our baths ; breakfast with
coffee ; dine at one ; walk for ever till supper at eight o'clock, and
then go to bed, or the foolish ones to some concert, as there is
everlasting music by artists or amateurs. I keep away from this
noise.
The donkey W , who translates " Bildung " by Sagesse, is not
corresponding member of the Institut, I am happy to say ; no such
name is in the lists, and the fellow is a usurper, too, if he takes this title ;
however, I won't answer for any correspondent or member either in
general ; we are a very fallible generation, to begin with his Holiness.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with the parish priest here,
a fat, comfortable, Capuchin-like looking priest, who has a beautiful
tenor voice, and sings, to the admiration of the ladies, all sort of
lieder from Schubert, Mendelssohn, and other ecclesiastical
composers. I talked to him about the noise in the Catholic Church
in Germany. He said it was indifferent to him if the pope declared
himself infallible or not, but it was certainly not a necessary step,
as the Church had gone on well enough without it ; at any rate, it
gave him great trouble to steer clear of his masters, the chapter,
and his paymaster, the Government, who were quarrelling about it ;
he only wished they would settle it anyhow between themselves, and
let him alone. You see, there is hereabouts little chance of a
schisma, and little enthusiasm for the Jesuits, but in other places
the fight is very passionate, and if the Government had in some
degree encouraged the schisma it would have taken great propor-
tions ; as it is, only the higher classes of laymen (as far as they are
not entirely indifferent, which is the case with most of them) care
for it. If there is any real schisma it will be about like the schisma
of the Jansenists, more literary than popular, and then die out
gradually. This is not what I wish, but what I expect. It was
304 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
a great opportunity of ridding the Catholic world of Jesuit govern-
ment, subtilty, and falsification, but it has been missed.
There is much discontent among the troops of Baden, who have
been amalgamated with the Prussian army. The officers have all
lost by their new patents some years of seniority; they are not
delighted at the prospect of being sent into garrison at Posen or
such-like places, and afraid of being neglected at Berlin in the matter
of advancement ; and the civilians complain of the great increase
of taxes which the new arrangement requires.
We have profited here by the enormous expense of the Empress
of Russia, who had the establishment newly furnished for herself
and her court of one hundred and twenty people. They have spent
insane sums at a place where it seems impossible to spend much ;
but empresses seem to find no difficulty in this, and after having
paid everybody and for everything exorbitantly, they must have felt
a great deal of superfluous cash in their pockets, and began to
distribute diamonds and snuff-boxes, rings and lockets, at a great
rate. Of course they are very popular here, but not so in Russia,
where people complain sorely of this waste of money in foreign
countries.
The following letter shows how staunch M. Mohl was to
his adopted country :
Cold Overton, August n, 1871.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I would no more have gone to Brighton, if I had been you
and could have enjoyed myself in Cornwall Gardens, than I would have
flown, unless the sea was necessary for the children. It is one of the
most disagreeable places I know, -and you had more trees, shade, and
all country satisfactions in London, and more solitude too. It's a
nasty, shallow place. My spouse is at Petersthal, and I hope getting
better ; I will be sure and let you know when he returns to Paris,
because I shall go about the same time in September. I had rather
get there a few days before you to get things in order, especially as
September is the deadest month in the year, this being vacation
month for the public librarian, etc. When you come we will go to
the play every night ; but I don't think the theatres are in a good
state in September, because all the university people are away, and
return in October. However, you must decide that yourself ; I can
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 305
only keep you au courant of what is going on. I am better than I
have been for fifteen months, for I was but middling in the spring
last year before the war began, and that finished me. As Mr. Mohl
is in a German watering-place, he has seen many Prussians. The
Prussian government want to make Mr. Mohl the head of the new
university they establish at Strasburg, because his position in Paris,
they think, would make him of more consequence at Strasburg ;
but he answered nothing would induce him. He did not, I suppose,
say what I know to be the truth, that nothing would induce him to
be anything under the Prussian government. If you should see the
Due de Broglie mind you tell him this, as my spouse may as well
have the credit in the eyes of the French of keeping aloof from the
Prussians.
Ever yours,
MARY MOHL.
Julius Mohl to Lady William Russell. ,
Cold Overton, near Oakham, September I, 1871.
DEAR LADY WILLIAM,
I have found my lady and mistress very ailing and very
desponding. But I have seen her very much weaker and in a worse
state formerly, so I hope she will get over this too ; but it is always a
long and painful malady.
We are in this pastoral country very much behindhand in news,
and reduced to the Standard ; while I know that at the Athenaeum
await me papers from all countries.
I see Jules Favre has made proposals to Prussia, but they are
ridiculous ; and I see, from letters I have just received from Stutt-
gart, the ideas of peace conditions which float in the minds in
Germany are exorbitant, so we may look for a continuation of these
horrors until both parties are exhausted.
I spent a fortnight in the Rue du Bac in the beginning of
October. Madame Mohl was kind enough to take in also my
son, who was returning from a school in Switzerland. It was
sad to see the ruin of the beautiful city, but our hosts were
delightful. I never knew M. Mohl so amusing. In the gloam-
ing before dinner he used to tell us stories of the strange
306 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
people he had met and the odd adventures that had befallen
him. We went continually to the play, and a great many of
our old friends came up from the environs to see us, for
Paris was very empty. Society, indeed, never got over the
effects of the war, and Madame Mohl's salon never regained
all its former brilliancy.
JULIUS MOHL.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 307
CHAPTER XIII.
FROM THE WAR TO M. MOHL'S DEATH (1871-1876).
Death of Nicholas Tourguenieff His noble character Longing for a kitten
"Le Chat de Perse" Illness of the Prince of Wales State of Paris
Importance of sociability German women Due d'Aumale's receptions
Government should return from Versailles Thiers in advance of the nation
Smart handkerchiefs Hideous fashions Trouble to reconstruct her society
Projects must be hatched in secret Exactions of America Leon Say
Thiers England and Louis Napoleon New gown Feeling against Germans
Influence of human beings on each other Love the foundation of all good
Fortitude of the Says Death of M. Cochin " Violet, or the Danseuse "
Death of Lady C. Locker Death of Hugo Mohl Grief of Julius Money to
Viennese children Beauty of sister Pere Hyacinthe Helplessness of Eng-
lish people Periodicals in the Rue du Bac Horror of marriage without love
Insecurity of French investments The Droit pushes against Thiers Lytton
Bulwer Duchess Colonna Flatness of society Louis Napoleon did more
mischief than the war Wish to visit Berlin Delight in conversation
Katchimoffski Death of M. Doudan, of Madame Arconati, and Princess
Belgiojoso Treatment of M. Reynouard by Louis Napoleon Determines to
fight with life Ampere's love-letters The Duchesse de Bern TheBranche
ainte will never be restored Death of Madame Pauline de Witt Grief and
fortitude of Guizot Madame C Wonderful singing Bishop Temple
English weddings Death of Lady W. Russell Illness of Lady Augusta
Stanley Anxiety of Madame Mohl State of politics Destruction of forests
Scarcity of hay Failing health of Julius Mohl Visits to Knowsley
Lord Odo Russell's singing Judges and marshals Curious state of politics
Illness of Julius Mohl His wife's anxiety His death.
MADAME MOHL wrote of herself, " My head had such a
hard squeeze during the troubles that part of it, I believe,
oozed out, for I am full of blunders ever since." It is certain
that she never entirely recovered from the grief and anxiety
which preyed upon her all the more that she did not think it
right to complain or to inflict her miseries on her friends.
The brightest days of her life, however, were over. Many
3o8 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
of the old set were dead ; M. Mohl's health was seriously
impaired, and his position as a German was no longer quite
what it had been in Paris. In London, on the other hand,
she had become, by her long stay among us, better and more
widely known, and her arrival towards the end of the season
was the signal for all sorts of festivities. All who knew her
wanted to see her, and all who did not wanted to make her
acquaintance. She stayed at the deanery every year, and
often with us. It is interesting to turn to the record of the
friends we collected to meet her, and yet melancholy, for so
many have passed away ; for instance, her kind hosts the
dean and Lady Augusta, Mr. Greg, Mr. Brookfield (in whom
she particularly delighted), Mr. Russell Gurney, Mr. Merivale,
Sir Bartle Frere, Mr. Fergusson, Mr. J. R. Green, Sir Arthur
Helps, Mr. Bagehot, etc. We often begged her to come with
M. Mohl and live in England. " No, no, my dear," she would
say ; " it is only because I am a rarity that you make such a
fuss about me.'' Indeed, though her heart was English, her
habits were so essentially French, that she would not have
been happy here. She would have missed the intimate rela-
tions which made for her the charm of society in Paris.
The autumn of 1871 was saddened by the death of Nicholas
Tourguenieff, a distant relation of Ivan, the author. The two
TourgueniefFs went in 1870, during their exile in London, to
a lecture on Russia by Mr. Ralston. In the middle of it the
lecturer said that the man who had done most and had made
the greatest sacrifices for the emancipation of the serfs was
present pointing to Nicholas, who was obliged to stand up
and receive the long and hearty cheering of the audience.
To Miss E. Martin.
November 13, 1871.
We have lost M. de Tourguenieff; he died last Friday in the
night, without any suffering. He had been in bed some time, and his
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 309
wife was arranging her bed beside his, towards twelve o'clock, when
he cried out, "Oh !" and, on finding him senseless, she thought he
had fainted. She called Albert, but he was completely gone. Pierre
drove instantly to the town very near, but the doctor who came con-
firmed it. He had lost his appetite a day or two before, but had
argued the whole of the evening with a gentleman I know, on the
new law on public instruction just promulgated by Jules Simon,
with as much warmth and interest as he could have felt at thirty. He
was eighty-two. The gentleman, who is a doctor, said to Albert, " He
is astonishing, but I fear he has a little fever." He fell ill in England
with tormenting himself about the war, and had an inward bleeding
ever since ; but he was better. Still Mr. Mohl was anxious. It is
supposed something belonging to this caused his death ; but it was
an easy and a happy death. His whole life had been employed in
trying to do good, and it came as natural to him as his breathing. He
was the most humane man I ever knew. Adieu, my dear Eleanor ;
you will feel for Fanny.
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
Paris, Tuesday, November 14, 1871.
DEAREST DEAR,
I was much invigorated by your letter just now, for I
was in a low state, Mr. Mohl being gone about an hour to the
funeral service of that most excellent of men, M. de Tourgue'nieff
(not Ivan), the old one, whom you knew also a little, but not enough
to know all his fine character. He was eighty-two ; had been suffering
much from weakness and illness for the last ten months, mostly
brought on by his taking so much to heart all the distresses of the
past year. Before this war he enjoyed the most vigorous old age,
had scarcely a grey hair, rode out on horseback every day, and was
occupied at home in sorting papers, letters of his brother's, all the
recollections about Russia, which would bring additional light on the
great object of his life the freeing of the serfs. His life was devoted
to it from twenty to eighty-two. 1 could cry, I do cry, not from
grief but in admiration, while I think and write to you of it. En-
couraged in it by Alexander I., after Alexander's death, when he was
twenty, he was condemned to death by the old Russian party, the
supporters of Nicholas. This happened several years afterwards.
On the pretence that he had conspired against Nicholas when he
3io LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
ascended the throne, his property was taken from him and given to
his brother, who was a good brother, although he took care to keep
with the powers that were, and he brought all the money he got by
selling the lands to his brother here by degrees, with the utmost
difficulty and secrecy. When the Emperor Nicholas died and his son
Alexander succeeded, he reversed the attainder, recognized him as
a true and loyal subject, restored him to all his rights and privileges ;
this is about eight or ten years ago. He went to Russia for a few
months, taking his son and daughter. Some time after his return
here an aunt died, leaving him her property and many serfs. Off
he went again at seventy-four or seventy-five, and remained a long
time to give them their freedom, and try to make that gift useful. He
was past seventy-five, so he sealed in his old age all the aspirations
of his youth. I wish he had died in England, that my dear Arthur
might have rendered a homage in the Abbey to a life and character
so complete, so true, so modest. I could fill sheets with details, but
these are the heads, and not a spot in the details can be found to
sully the whole. His faults were only the lights and shades that
accompany the virtues which formed the whole tissue of his life ;
they were in the country when you came here, or I should have
proposed Arthur's calling on him. Of course I am solemnly grave,
but I do not regret his death ; he did not suffer, and it was better he
should die in possession of all his faculties than dwindle down. I
am so glad Mr. Mohl was so fond of him ; he went often, and was a
great comfort to him.
Adieu, dearest ; I can't talk of anything else just now.
Yours and Arthur's ever,
MARY MOHL.
Life was a dreary waste to Madame Mohl without a cat.
There were none of the right sort to be had in Paris (they
had almost all died, or been eaten during the siege), but there
was a kitten of the Embley breed waiting her acceptance, if
an escort could be found. At last M. Liebreich took it over,
and was announced in the Rue du Bac as " Le Shah de
Perse."
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 311
December 15, 1871.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I have been very bad, but for the last week am better ;
I fainted away one night three weeks ago, as dead as mutton. I was
all alone, and knocked my cheek-bone against something, and it was
black and blue for ten days ; yet the fainting was so complete I did
not know it. It was past twelve, and the light fell, and when I came
to I was in complete darkness. However, better I am, and I rejoice
that I can write. I believe I am quite cured, which I never believed
last winter and spring, because the pain in my back never left me.
If I had a kitten to kiss I should be still better. Florence has a
beauty for me ; if you can find any one that will bring me my kit in
a basket, I will do everything in my power for them get them tickets
for the Institut, invite them to my parties, introduce them to people,
and make myself generally useful ; so pray set your fertile brain to
work. I can do much more than when you were here. I was then
a very poor cranky creature.
December 22, 1871.
Thank you, dearest Minnie, for putting me in the way of getting
my kit. Oh, if you knew the feverish longing I have for it ! Nothing
but yours for Amy can give you an idea of it. Don't be angry ; it's
a fact, and can't be helped. I'm much better, and as a proof am
full of absurdities, another fact that can't be helped. I have a
dinner-party to-day, and instead of being lazy, dawdling, and putting
off to the last moment all the little arrangements necessary, I have
been at it all the morning without egging myself on a sign I have
not seen these eighteen months. I know I'm getting out of my
cocoon into the butterfly state. I'm as full of vagaries as a long
Invalide is apt to be.
December 29, 1871, Wednesday night, twelve o'clock.
I have only just time to say that Liebreich brought the lovely
creature last night at seven o'clock, and it began to play as soon
as it got out of the basket. I was in perfect raptures. He, poor
soul, brought it straight ' from the railroad, and he had so much
trouble, I felt remorse, and expressed it. He said there was nothing
he would not do for me. I am better, and, I hope, getting well, but
I have no strength. All England is in a state of jubilee, it seems, at
312 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
the prince's being spared, and he gets a preachment to be a good
man in the newspapers. I like that much. I must wish you good
night, and thank you for the tit, though poor Liebreich was vic-
timized. However, he has wonderful energy ; and what a man is in
the great affairs of life, he is in the small ones.
Yours ever,
M. M.
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
January 6, 1872.
You are now, thank God, out of your worst anxieties. Besides
the feeling for the poor mother and family, I was much troubled to
think that, if the prince died, the country would be so preoccupied
that it would not have time to look into its own misgovernment ; at
least, such it appears to me absolutely dreadful. Am I wrong ? I
wish I may be. Do tell me what Arthur thinks. I was still very ill
when I got your letter, and could not write. The cold in November
half killed me, but I am now so much better that I have hopes of
getting well, which I had not then. That good soul Liebreich brought
me a kitten from Florence Nightingale such a love ! and he was
coming round all the way by Bath, where his daughter was; but
when I thanked him, he said there was nothing that /could ask him
to do that he would not do. He has been doing such a power of
work in ten days' time, it seems like a miracle.
Do you know the American ambassador here, and are you en
mesure to give me a letter of introduction to him ? I need scarcely
say " don't do it," if it cannot be done with that grace and ease that
you put into all your efforts to oblige, because I know your tact and
wisdom, which make you so delightful to deal with.
We are in a queer state here, it strikes me ; but there is an
opinion afloat that the Comte de Paris promised Henri V. that he
would not reign till after him. I doubt it, though Duvergier de
Hauranne told me he knew it for certain. I shall ascertain from
Regnier if it is false. It is most mischievous, as it has alienated an
immense majority from the Orleans, who might have accepted him as
a constitutional king, but never will if he allies himself to the Ultras ;
their fundamental notions are perfectly antipathetic. When I said,
" What could have induced him ? " his answer was, " To get the
Ultra party." I have repeatedly been told this, but never so posi-
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 313
tively. -It would be the most impudent of lies. Meantime scarcely
any one will believe in the permanency of the present state of things,
and that very state of doubt will bring on the mischief it dreads. I
am far more angry at the French now I see them at work than when
I was worried to death in London with the newspaper nonsense.
We are pretty comfortable as far as mere living goes. Everything
is much dearer; but our losses have been far less than I expected,
and the wonder to me is, that after such a dreadful year, such a dread-
ful waste of life and means, such sums to be paid first to the enemy,
and next for the extravagancies of the imperial government that
things are as good as they are. Such a waste of the poor animals
the cattle so diminished in number that my London kitten won't lap
milk, forsooth, because it is so different from what she had at Florence
Nightingale's. She goes about mewing for better, which they call
cream. But each one abuses everything that is done from their own
party view, and the Orleanists more than any one I mean their
party ; I don't accuse them ; I believe they are more reasonable.
Adieu, dearest ; love to Arthur and to those who inquire after me.
M. M.
If you see Lady Hobart, tell her that I like her friend Madame
Rothan better and better.
To Miss E. Martin.
January 20, 1872.
Of course I shall make a great fuss with Dr. Smart, and invite
him to dinner. I have a dinner-party pretty regularly once a fort-
night, on Friday, of twelve or thirteen people ; the intervening
Friday people come in the evening without invitation, and very plea-
sant it is ; besides which I have often a few intimates, M. Roulin,
M. Decaisne, Josephine, every fortnight, Monday; the intervening
Monday we dine there (i.e. at M. Roulin's), besides occasional small
ones of the Burnoufs', etc. I have made a point, even when this
winter I was at the worst, of cultivating society, which, being my
especial talent, I will not bury, for in the present state it is far more
useful than giving away money. The quantity of people in good
circumstances who have kept away from various causes must, of
course, deaden everything, though less than I should have expected,
and every little does a little good, were it only to feed the poor
3U LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
horses and hackney coachmen ; it is far better to give them employ-
ment than help ; besides, I agree with my dear old Johnson, civiliza-
tion and society are greater moralizers than preaching at least, in
large towns ; I can't judge of villages, though, from various observa-
tions which I have made in England, I am convinced if sociability
between the various grades of society were more cultivated, it would
be by far the best way to prevent the ever-increasing hatred between
the democracy and aristocracy. When I was young your grand-
father * was the friend of all his tenants, yet he did not spoil and pet
the beggars as Tom did. He used to invite the farmers' wives to tea
now and then. These were remains of old-fashioned manners. It
never came into their heads to be wanting in respect and good feel-
ing and benevolent habits of thought are more cultivated by seeing
one another than by separation. However, the manners now in
England are so totally different from the old ones that I am not fit
to live there ; I found that out last winter.
To Madame von Schmidt.
(Translation?)
January 27, 1872.
My DEAR CHILD,
I have this instant received your letter from Berlin, and
as I have no recollection of the last I wrote to you, do not be sur-
prised if I repeat the same things. My best news is that I am really
better. I am so thin that I actually pity myself, but I am not out
of spirits as I have been. Sometimes I have a ray of hope that I
shall return to the state I was in two years ago ; but I must not flatter
myself that I shall escape the fate of all the world, i.e. grow old
and this fate is singularly distasteful to me. I am as gay as ever,
often in as high spirits as ever, but for a long time I was afraid I had
lost the power of working; I found so much difficulty in applying
myself seriously, even in the most ordinary matters. . . .
What a blessing that L is married ! Oh, what a blessing !
With such a head as hers, one never knew what whim would seize
hold of her. Oh, I never shall forget my surprise at the utter want of
reason which possessed her, like a sort of mania, during the war. I
never saw anything to be compared to it ; there is nothing like it
in France or England. May Heaven preserve me from German
* Mr. Frewen Turner.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 315
women ! Do you remember a girl from Dresden, a young artist
protegee of Madame Schwabe's ? I think she was even madder than
L . She almost killed herself, by starvation and other follies, to
study painting. She had a great deal of talent ; but, after seeing these
t\vo, I am not astonished at the horror German men have of women-
artists. I share it.
I am trying to re-enter society. I give dinners, I pay visits, and
I try to be as amiable as I can. I seldom say what I think, and I
really believe that this is the great secret of the art of living ; but it
is enough to make one want to die, for the greatest of satisfactions is
to exhale one's rage against folly.
I went to the Due d'Aumale's grand soiree, the first to which
ladies were invited ; he sent for his sister Clementina on purpose to
do the honours, and receive the ladies. I was presented to her. I
shall have some trouble to make your uncle go again, but / shall
certainly go at least once more. There was an enormous crowd, and
I was glad to see all the best company eager to welcome the Orleans
family, who have the best manners, the most distinguished air, that
you can possibly imagine ; they are all tall, handsome in short, they
look like princes. One cannot fancy how in this country, where they
make so much of grace and distinction, they can have accepted Louis
Napoleon instead of this family. One is reminded of Hamlet's
speech to his mother, comparing his dead father to the brother she
chose to succeed him, " to feed on garbage." It is a magnificent com-
parison. Certainly Louis Napoleon was garbage the pigs'-wash that
the ducks eat. But if I begin to quote Hamlet, I shall never finish.
I just opened the book to find the passage, and went on reading, and
saying to myself that I have never heard or seen Hamlet either read
or acted to my satisfaction. Does your little Arthur amuse himself
by read ing? I have seen in reading families this taste develop in
some individuals who would not have read otherwise. The effects
of sympathy are wonderful. One thing, however, is certain, that
people read only half as much as they did when I was young, in
France as well as in England ; and I think the execrable mania of
forcing every one to perform bad music is in part the cause, and has
spoilt the imagination of the whole of the present generation. The
best of it is that no one listens to it.
Write to me, dear child ; tell me everything that concerns you.
Railroads are beginning to pay again. After the extreme republicans,
316 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
the Carlists do the most harm. If Henri V. were dead we should
have a chance, for the provinces are all in favour of a king. Adieu.
M. M.
P.S. Try not to fatigue yourself too much, my dear child; it
will make you grow prematurely old. The use of money is to spare
one's strength.
February I, 1872.
DEAR MINNIE,
I'm resolved this month shall not grow old before I write.
I am certainly better, but have had much to do, because I want to
profit of it to put my house in order before I die, to sort and burn
my letters, make my will, etc. I have been ill long enough to think
about what a grievous state all these things are in ; but when I get
better, instead of profiting of it to do all this, I try to amuse myself,
which I contemn, and think very frivolous. I have seen the Due
de Broglie but once ; he is always at Versailles till late at night. I
have given a few dinners, and done my duty towards sociability. I
had Ivan Tourgue'nieff to dinner on Friday ; he was quite charming.
The Guizots are here, and I go there in the evening, and to Madame
Say's. I have been to one of the grand receptions of the Due
d'Aumale; am invited for all, and shall go again. I have been
twice to the play, once with Lady Augusta. These are my dissipa-
tions. Paris looks pretty much itself in the day, but at night one
goes along scarcely meeting a carriage. The folly and malice of the
deputies remaining at Versailles does no end of harm, shaking the
general faith in the Government, retarding commerce, and cramping
all the wheels of government. It is now seen how evidently the
majority in the country is behindhand in civilization to the minority
who are endeavouring to bring it round. I don't mean to say that
Thiers is a miracle of wisdom, and his financial knowledge about
taxes is as backward as anybody's, but in many respects the Govern-
ment is before the nation, and one instance is its wish to come back
to the capital, as all business now is cramped. Still the wonder is
that the country, after its brain fever, should go on living and paying
its way. Adieu.
P.S. I have not written since I thanked you for contriving the
cat's journey ; it's a great delight to me, and the prettiest, cleverest
tit I ever saw.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 317
To Madame von Schmidt.
(Translation.}
February 28, 1872.
MY DEAR CHILD,
This very evening I have received the superb handker-
chief that you embroidered for me. I have had none to be compared
with it. I have six very pretty ones that your mother sent me, but
of more moderate pretensions. I assure you that yours will last me
for the rest of my life ; however, as I have never bought any, except
to blow my nose in all simplicity, I owe all this luxury to the Mohl
family, and when I die you will find them all in good condition. I
assure you that I am delighted with it, and if you thought tenderly
of me while you were working at it, I shall think of you in the same
way when I put it in my pocket. I cannot imagine any smaller, but,
as you know, I am not much au courant with the fashion ; but it
seems that the time when attention was paid to magnificent handker-
chiefs passed away twenty years ago at least, I no longer see them
in ladies' hands flourishing about. Trimmings and falballas have
quite absorbed handkerchiefs ; they are no longer thought about. I
went yesterday to see " Rabagas," and I was quite astounded by the
dresses of the actresses ; in the first place it is hideous, and no
sleeves are worn not any at all ; only a scrap of lace. I must say
that at the Due d'Aumale's, who gives very fine parties of four
hundred people, the dresses are less exaggerated. There were some
ladies sensibly dressed ; some had beautiful lace. Invitations were
for once a week during January and February. These soirees are
over, but it is said that they will begin again after Easter; and I shall
be very glad, for it is a rallying-point worth preserving. There is no
other place where good society can meet. He receives, naturally, the
Orleanists and the moderate Legitimists, the members of the Institut
if they know how to dine in company, the deputies, and all that
visited the duke in England. It is there that your handkerchief will
flourish about. I am giving more dinners than I have given for
the last six or seven years, partly on principle, and partly because I
like it. First, the Germans are not popular, and I never tried so
hard to be amiable in order to reconstruct my society ; secondly, it
is actually my widow's mite which I contribute towards the cause of
civilization. When I began in November there were no dinners or
3i8 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
soirees ; everybody sulked at home. My first dinner was for the
Stanleys, who were staying with us. It succeeded, and I have gone
on, and been all the better for so doing ; it required a certain effort
to begin. I had two young servants to educate. Julie came, and
comes whenever there is company, i.e. twice, or even three times, a
month. I don't count the little dinners for the Burnoufs and
Roulins.
You may be sure that I have had no encouragement from your
uncle indeed, I forbear consulting him lest I should lose my
verve ; but when I have arranged everything I ask his advice.
Criticism is good, but if there were nothing else nothing would ever
be done " it clips the wings of genius and invention ; " and also, if
you notice, when one is hatching some project, the least objection is
enough to crush it ; it must be kept quiet. My health has much
improved during the last three weeks, since I have resumed my tepid
baths ; I don't yet dare to take them cold. I am fearfully thin. I
hope to be better next month, for you would be grieved to see my face.
I own, to my shame, that my looks distress me beyond measure. It
is very foolish, for old age must come.
I am grieved and annoyed by the exactions of America. I hope
that England will not yield ; but she has a horror of war. Have I ever
spoken to you about Lady Salisbury, now Lady Derby ? Her husband
is considered the most distinguished of the future Tory ministers.
They spent five days here, she asked to meet Leon Say and Renan.
I had them here with the three wives. Lord Derby is extremely shy
(the prevailing English malady ; it is the fault of their education),
however it all went off pretty well. Leon Say told a great many
interesting things. Say has become a great person Prefect of Paris ;
he acquits himself very well, he wished to retire, but Thiers yielded
some point (I don't know what) to him in order to keep him. Thiers
is an old bigot, who thinks that the only good traditions are derived
from Bonaparte's government between 1802 and 1808, the fife and
drum of 1805 are always sounding in his ears, just as the taste of
some dainty remains in the mouth of a schoolboy.
Good night at last, dear child ; it is nearly two o'clock. Another
sign of improvement I can sit up and employ myself at night
without fatigue ; if I went to bed earlier I should not sleep.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 319
Tuesday, March 4, 1872.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I am ashamed of myself for not answering about Madame
Cornu. I wrote in a hurry, and did not take one paragraph after
another as I ought I have thought about it since, and intended to
write ; but you know what hell is paved with. I should think you
might publish all Madame Cornu * said with the greatest propriety,
and it would only be too good for the fellow ; but the English make
me sick. If Old Nick was civil to them for his own ends, they would
call him an angel. Now, I know nothing sillier than that, as it puts
all such vain fools at the mercy of any sharper. Louis Napoleon
inspired his whole court with the most contemptuous abuse of
England after the Crimean War ; I absolutely shut my door upon the
two or three people I happened to have known for years who were
either at that court or in the bureaux. I could repeat what they said
if I had time. Therefore, if the account of Madame Cornu is rather
lowering, I shall be very glad ; but I can scarcely ask her, poor thing.
She is in a dreadful state with a heart-complaint, and sees no one,
and lives in the country I don't even know where and I have no
way of finding her out ; the war and the Commune have scattered
every one so.
After the colonels' attack on England in 1859, which was
inspired by Louis Napoleon entirely because he thought it was
our business to look after Orsini, the Volunteer movement inspired
by that panic made him alter his tone, and then he was very civil,
because he wisely thought first, that the English are very powerful ;
and secondly, very gullible. And he was quite right.
I am in all the anguish of having a new gown made to go to the
Due d'Aumale's. It's an awful thing to cut up a handsome satin to
make a gown that mayn't fit ; and no dressmaker fits me now my
last one is dead, and I'm awfully particular. Yours in haste. I
haven't said half my say about Louis Napoleon, but I've no time
because of my gown.
M. M.
* Madame Cornu's conversations, published in Senior's journals.
320 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
March 19, 1872.
DEAREST DEAR,
Good Lord, how glad I was to see your spider ! I at
last fancied I had done something wrong, and that you were cooled
to me, for as I have a terrible bad memory, when I get low-spirited
which I often do I see everything in black, and as I know in
general what nonsense I talk sometimes, how I give way to the
feeling of the moment, which in reality is temper, I am often suspect-
ing that the details of my behaviour may shadow over my good feel-
ings, which I assure you I have. Thus, if I am long without hearing
from my favourites, I begin recollecting all my misdemeanours. I
have three kings, or rather queens, in England who occupy an enor-
mous domain you, Florence, and Lady William, who has much
maltreated me, but I cling to her nevertheless, and I have no doubt
I have misbehaved by knocking against her feelings, for, of course,
my queens are not perfect ; I should be very sorry if they were so.
When I'm low I don't blame them, but myself; and I raked up in
my memory all I had said during my sejour in England to explain
your silence. When I was in a better mood I said, " Nonsense ;
she has been overdone with work." Voild a picture of my very dis-
orderly int'erieure !
We shall have the house smart with a new broom which I shall
buy for the purpose. There is not the slightest reason why you
should not come.
I am quite a new person from what I was when I saw you here.
In November and December I was very bad. I made a great effort
to force myself into life. I saw the tendency in Mr. Mohl to fall into
low spirits because of the foolish, the absurd, the unjust feelings
against the Germans. I determined at least to fight against it as
far as I could, and did all in my power to keep up society and good-
will ; never refused to go out, however great the effort. It has an-
swered, as far as we are concerned. Mr. Mohl don't know how much
his spirits depend upon the bienveillance of others. No one knows
it, and he would be hurt if he did. We all depend dreadfully on
each other. We live in a world of looking-glasses, and it is our mind,
not our face, that is given back to us by the reflection. If we see a
dingy look at us, we grow dingy. A bienveillant look is better than
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 321
a cordial. We need not wonder that Christianity has made charity
the foundation of all good. Our very being seems composed of how
we stand in the minds of our fellow-creatures. Some call it weakness,
and so it is ; but I question whether it is not a law of our nature.
Adieu, dearest. Tell me when I may expect you. This is the
1 9th, therefore April i will be twelve days hence. My garden will
be all green ; it is already beautiful for you to look out upon.
I can't think of Madame Cochin * without feeling as if I was cut
with a knife ; they were so fond of each other. Oh dear !
Yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
To Miss E. Martin.
March 26, 1872.
Leon Say is Prefect of Paris, and does more good than any one
in the Government and nation. There is but one opinion as to that,
and I am lucky and thankful to be the friend of such good people,
who have fought valiantly to conquer their affliction by doing their
duty, for they lost their only son in the beginning of 1870, and were
overwhelmed (he was a very promising boy) ; but when the national
calamities came on, they both did their duty, he being the man who
knew most about Paris, and who for the last ten years had written in
the papers to show up the absurdities of Haussmann. . . .
Madame Chevreux has sent me a beautiful little book of letters
written between 1796 and 1802, of M. Ampere's father and mother.
His mother died when he was three or four years old. The
father in 1802 had discovered the principle of the electric tele-
graph, and luckily for his fame made it public, which made them
elect him to the Institut, which principle, followed up in practice, by
degrees brought at last the electric telegraph ; but the great advan-
tage of the Institut is, that by making public the first steps of a
discovery, it is secured to the first inventor, and also the invention,
having a learned body to protect it, does not sink into oblivion,
as many have done from the obscurity of a single individual and
his want of power. Of course it required many helps to put it by
degrees into practice. The reputation of old Ampere as a great
natural philosopher has given great interest to these letters ; but
they are beautiful, as showing the interior of a good family in middle
* See next letter.
Y
322 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
life just after the Revolution their poverty, their modesty, their
thrifty ways, and their honesty. I'll send you the book. . . .
Another terrible loss has occurred among the honest political set
here M. Cochin. I don't know if you ever heard me speak of M.
and Madame Cochin a delightful couple, who did much good. He
was Prefect of Versailles under the new Government. He never
would be anything under the last, and could not be a deputy because
Louis Napoleon prevented the election of all the oppositionists he
could. M. Cochin overworked himself, got a typhus fever, and died
five days ago such a loss to the public !
Leon Say looks so worn that I .am quite uneasy about him.
There are so few men who really think of the public good that they
are worn out ; they have so much to do. It is very cold just now,
after a very perfect February ; and the first week in March, Mr. Mohl
and I went off to the Garden of Plants. Everything was budding
beautifully, but we have had frosts for the last ten days or more,
which have nipped many. However, the gardens from my window
are most cheering.
April 30, 1872.
DEAR MINNIE,
I can't let a batch of letters go without sending a few
lines to you by Lady Eastlake, who, having stayed ten days, goes
to-morrow morning. I saw D last Friday. I should say, though
I don't pretend to be sure, she has had some great love disappoint-
ment. By-the-by, I have just been reading "Violet the Danseuse"
for the third time ; it's a wonderful book, and the more so that one
don't know who wrote it.* I think it's founded on a true story.
Violet is beautiful, D'Arcy is as clever ; all the characters are first-
rate. Pity there are so many disquisitions on sentiment ; the story
don't require it. I was told it was Lord Brougham's, then Lady
Malet's. I believe neither. Have you ever heard who wrote it ?
I am going to a beautiful concert to-night at Madame Say's.
Their house is much to my taste, having a great variety. I saw
Thiers there the other day at a great party. He did not see me,
and I could not take the trouble to go to him. He was very pale.
* It is known now to have been written by Lady Malet.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 323
Paris, May 8, 1872.
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
DEAREST FRIEND,
How kind of you to think of me and my arrangements
in spite of the great affliction that has come over you,* which I most
especially understand when I think of my own dear sister, and the
horror that comes over me at the thought that such might be my
fate ! I had made up my mind before this great trial of yours not to
go to London till the very latter end of June, and to remain there
but a short time. This decision was taken from an effort of prudence.
I really enjoy London as much as possible, and your company and
my dear dean's is a perfect blessing in my life ; but as I am much
better, I must try and keep so. The backwardness of the spring has
come to fortify my resolution. I am always worse when it is cold
and rainy; I come to life again like the insects when it is warm.
Now Paris, though no great things as to climate, is a little better than
London ; therefore, if I wish to be as well as I can, I must keep to my
resolution. Your present quiet life, in giving me more of both your
companies, would be an additional inducement ; but if I get ill again
I am a plague to all my family and friends, and especially to my
poor spouse, whose liver has suffered much from trying to suppress
his grief, and bearing up that he might go on with his usual occupa-
tions and duties. We are both better, and I don't like to leave him
alone a whole month, to ponder over his loss t when he is at home.
The gift of my habitual animal spirits, which was the torment of the
lives of my mother and grandmother, leading me into perpetual mis-
chief, though worn down, has enough left now to be of value to him,
as when he comes home he has some one to cheer him and to make
him laugh, instead of going alone into his den like a poor sick lion ;
and this puts me in mind of Mr. Locker and the poor bereaved child,
the object of such continual thought and care. Will you tell Mr.
Locker I think of them both with great sympathy and sorrow ? I
will give your message to Madame d'Abbadie ; she is a delightful
creature, and worthy of your kind recollection. Pray, dear friend,
believe that this sacrifice to prudence is very considerable. But I
hope to see you a few days in July, if it is not inconvenient ; if it is
* Lady Charlotte Locker died on April 26, 1872.
t The death of Hugo Mohl.
324 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
tell me so frankly, and I will go to some other friend. Love to dear
Deany.
I am, yours most devotedly,
MARY MOHL.
(Translation.}
May 25, 1872.
MY DEAR IDA,
Your last letter is dated the 8th and loth, so I must
have received it about the i4th. I answered by return of post,
because I was touched by the fate of the poor little children at
Vienna that you and some other ladies are looking after. I put
a hundred-franc note into my letter for you to spend on those poor
little wretches; I have not heard whether you received it. I am
uneasy, as some years ago enormous frauds took place in the post-
office at Vienna. I saved the hundred francs out of my dress
money ; I have been very economical in that respect, and therefore
gave myself the pleasure of sending it to you. . . .
During the last month your uncle has not been at all well ; the
death of his brother affected him deeply, more even than the deaths
of his father or even of his mother, to whom he was so passionately
attached. I attribute this 'excessive grief to his mind having lost
something of its elasticity ; it distresses me extremely to observe this
change in him. I do all I can to make his life smooth and pleasant.
Perhaps my goodwill has less effect than the charms of youth, which
are mine no longer ; perhaps I have lost the talisman which made
every word I said, and even my follies, graceful in his eyes, and
consoled him for everything else. I am more sorry for him than
for myself, but there is nothing to be done. There is a certain
spring in the mind which I have preserved, but which is seriously
impaired in him, and the result is that nothing hardly gives him any
pleasure, while the same things amuse and please me as much as
ever.
I went the other day to the Francois, and I cannot tell you what
pleasure it gave me. I thank God for it, which would astonish
many a devout mind.
Adieu, dear child ; I count the days till I hear from you.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 325
Cold Overton, August 8, 1872.
I stayed seventeen days in London, at the Deanery; I went
out less than usual, and I think that I enjoyed the society of the
dean and his wife more than I ever have done. She has lost her
sister, Charlotte Locker, and she cannot get over it ; it was nearly
three months ago. She is just beginning to see a few people.
This quiet was good for me ; nevertheless, I tired myself very much
in London. Since I have been here I have improved. . . .
My sister is better than I could have hoped ; she keeps her lovely
countenance. It is wonderful. It is not that she looks young, but she
is wonderfully beautiful.
She wrote the following funny little letter, partly in French,
partly in English, to M. Mohl :
CHER PUPS,
Je viens de voir un chien ! ! ! Ah quel chien ! quels
yeux ! c'est le premier chien de Skye que je voudrais avoir ; mais une
expression merveilleuse ! II tait ici, les maitres dans la bibliotheque,
lui couche a la porte. Ses yeux disaient qu'il n'etait pas chez lui,
qu'il etait un peu inquiet. Nous 1'avons ramasse et fondled, aucune
resistance, mais la tete en mefiance, la queue plongee dans un pro-
fond silence. Ni voix, ni temoignage. He was on my lap, we
were admiring his face, cela ne le touchait pas. Les maitres de-
scendent, on le met k la porte il les rejoint, il vole mais n'aboie
pas, il n'etait pas chez lui. Quelle celeste bete ! !
Madame Mohl had a great sympathy with the Pere Hya-
cinthe, who was put to great pecuniary inconvenience by
his exclusion from the Church of Rome.
Paris, September 20, 1872.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I expect the Stanleys on the 25th. I want much to talk
about Pere Hyacinthe with them, for whom I have great sympathy.
Mr. Mohl gave it well, in a railroad, to a Catholic lady who was
abusing him well for his marriage, and told her it was her fault.
"My fault?" "Yes; after making such an idol of him four or five
years ago for his preaching, all you Catholics turned him out of the
Church because he would not recognize a pretension which the
326 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
pope set up; the pope, therefore, excommunicated him, so you
Catholics would not have him amongst you. It was not he who left
you."
There are few people in Paris. I saw Lady Stanley of Alderley
yesterday. She is a most amusing, lively person, very clever and
very droll.
October 31, 1872.
I received yours of the 29th, and ought to have answered im-
mediately, but the fact is I had not even time to read it, the Stanleys
being with me ; and what with making his toast which no French
maid could make peeling his eggs, writing notes to invite people
or to uninvite them, going to places with them^ having people to
dine and to breakfast with them, I entirely gave up all my own
interests and occupations, and having but a very small income of
strength, I should be bankrupt in five days if I did not give up all
my own means to them. I don't grudge it, because I am fond of
them, and I have likewise spent every summer for these nine years
or so, a most agreeable time, with them. It is my inadequate capaci-
ties that are the cause, and the difference of habits. English people
are so accustomed to have everything done for them, that they can't
even comprehend how many wants they have beyond other people.
These are, for English people, the most independent I know
Augusta having been brought up here, which makes a great differ-
ence; still my little strength is much tried. All this, I hope, will
excuse my not answering yours immediately.
I understood from Sir James Colvile Mrs. Brookfield was here.
I have not seen her. Lady Colvile is most agreeable.
Yours, in haste and turmoil,
M. M.
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
November, 1872.
DEAREST DEAR,
To think of Arthur purloining La Revue and my
hunting for it, and Mr. Mohl having to make excuses, because it is
the Institut's copy and has the stamp ; and it ought always to remain
on their table for the twaddling members, and I am ill looked upon
because Mr. Mohl, in defiance of all rule and regulations, brings me
all the reviews, French and English, as soon as he can pocket them
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 327
slyly. My name is up, and when any of them can't find one or
another, he says, " Oh, it's in the Rue du Bac ; " so, my dear, find
some one to bring it sooner or later, for if the stamp is seen in
England I shall get the credit of sending it there. If the umbrella
is found (and I am afraid C will think it right to turn it to
account, and not let so useful an implement eat the bread of idle-
ness, therefore I say if), keep it for me. Mr. Mohl has bought me
another, but I shall not be sorry to find it when I go to England.
I was in hopes you would have told me who was at Woburn, and
what was said, all as circumstantially as in Evelina's Letters to her
Guardian ; but I dare say you never read that good book of the last
century. Ask Arthur ; I dare say he has. I got a longer one from
Lady Derby, but she did not relate the conversations. Alas ! those
halcyon days are gone since the penny post.
Sarcey * told Mr. Mohl he had spent the most delightful evening
with us that he had had for years was not that nice ? And I feel
so much in love with him, that I shall do basenesses to get him again.
I am in great trouble about the Loysons.f
November, 1872.
DEAR MINNIE,
. . . Our politics are very unsatisfactory, and we are thinking
of placing our next savings in England. Do you know of any
good investment for small sums ? The Ultras are cocking up their
heads mast-high after forty-three years. They push violently against
Thiers, and though in the beginning he had no tendency to make
friends with any republicans, save very moderate ones, the behaviour
of the Cote Droit shoves him violently towards them more than he
ever intended, and though he is no hero, still he is worth much
more than they are.
I gave a dinner-party last Friday, when I had among others
Lytton Bulwer, the son of the Bulwer. I knew him fourteen years
ago. He has been long in Austria, and has a wife. His face has
grown like his father's. I like him very well indeed, and his wife
too. He comes here as first secretary to the embassy, and will be
an acquisition to my habitues, as he is very clever, and likes my sort
of house. The Duchess Colonna is going to London for a short
time ; she is very charming, very clever, very entertaining. She goes
* The well-known critic. t The Pere Hyacinthe.
328 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
to study Reynolds, Gainsborough, etc. I shall give her a letter to
you ; pray be useful to her. I have not room to tell you any more
about her, but as I am very fond of her you may take her upon trust.
To Madame von Schmidt.
(Translation?)
December 27, 1872.
This winter requires more toupet in English " animal spirits "-
than any other I have spent in Paris ; there is such a flatness, such
a total want of sociability, compared with anything I have seen here,
that it needs an iron will, and an elasticity which I no longer possess,
to save oneself from abandoning every endeavour to restore a little
animation. Last winter this was not the case we encouraged each
other ; but now I do not see much chance of improvement. I have
my ups and downs, and just now I have some worries which perhaps
will pass over. One thing above all annoys me. The imperial regime
demoralized France, and all the harm done by the war may in part be
traced to its effects. Yet many people think now that the war has
done all the evil, forgetting the great changes which have taken place
during the last twenty years. We were in a false position, and the
great endeavour of the wretched Government was to keep up this
appearance of prosperity for which the nation had acquired a taste.
In my letter to Anna I hinted at a wish I have to go to Berlin,
to see closer the men who have effected such great changes in
Europe. I will try to persuade Mr. Mohl to go with me. The time
is the difficulty. In the winter he is only free in October, November,
and part of December ; but perhaps there is no one in Berlin at that
time. Tell me this. I believe no one is there in July, August, or
September ; and as for the natural beauties, there are none fit to look
at. I own I should like to meet Bismarck and Moltke. Not a word
of this in your letters, unless on a separate slip ; the uncle must be
brought round to it a little at a time. I know how to administer
this sort of medicine. Adieu, dear child ; may God give you health
and courage.
She paid a very short visit to London this year, during
which she enlivened us all very much, and then went to her
sister in Leicestershire.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 329
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
Cold Overton, July, 1873.
It seems to me, dearest dear, that it is a month since I was at
the Deanery, and your kind letter does not shorten the time. I was
as vexed as a thirsty horse forced to pass by the fountain he hoped
to drink out of. But don't believe it was the gormandizing image of
a teapot that incensed me. No ; it was the merry converse the
account of the most historical of chateaux, the dean and his anti-
quarian love, which I sympathize with so entirely. Don't believe
either that it was my cautious spirit hurried me away at twenty
minutes after four, to arrive ten minutes before five, in order to set
off at half-past five, full forty minutes too soon. No ; it was the too
prudent and unsympathizing Shirley who packed me off, giving unto
himself the satisfactory self-approbation that I had better be too
soon than too late, and what signified half an hour's idle talk ? I
am convinced he thought that he had acted nobly by me, in not
attaching the slightest importance to such frivolities ; but I ought to
be comforted by your delightful letter, for of course I'm too glad to
believe you would have liked me to have had the idle talk (the only
thing in life worth having, by-the-by), which neither power nor
money can give it will grow of itself. I found my poor sister much
broken ; she was very glad to see me, which was a comfort, but it
has not lasted. She is much older than last year, and it makes me
mournful to think how little I can contribute to her satisfaction. A
nephew of mine, about twenty (old enough to know better, by-the-by),
was as much rejoiced at the Harrow victory as you were vexed with
the loss. One good thing is it don't last long on either side, and
both think they will win next year.
Madame Mohl took a great interest in a very distinguished
Russian professor, who died early.
(Translation.}
Cold Overton, September 9, 1873.
MY DEAR IDA,
I do not remember if I have answered your letter, dated
August 24. It gave me great pleasure. ... I write to you now
especially to ask you to forward the enclosed to poor Katchimoffski,
if he is still alive. Your uncle has sent me a letter, written by him to
330 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
me in July, and which was mis-sent to Mr. Mohl; it is possible that
you may know where to find him. Alas ! perhaps he is dead, and if
not, has he enough to live on ? for he can work no longer. I am in
despair at receiving so late a letter which was written so long ago.
Tell him so if he still lives.
Your uncle reached Paris a few days ago. I hope to be there
on the 2oth, for he cannot be very gay. Our dear M. Doudan that I
was so fond of is dead ; we used to spend the evening there every five
or six days ; it was a great pleasure. Alas ! I am losing all my friends.
My poor Milady * is still alive, but so suffering and complaining that
it is always a toss-up how one finds her. Madame Arconati died
sixteen or seventeen months ago, and the Princess Belgiojoso soon
after, and I was a wretch who refused to go to see them in my last
journey, although they begged me to do so. I shall never forgive
myself. It is true that I was not well, but I could have done it.
Alas ! I was out of temper with them both, or I should have gone.
This is why I suffer now from remorse. The weather is breaking
up ; it is cold in the morning, and I shall be glad to get back to
Paris, but it breaks my heart to leave. My sister is better in body
than I have seen her since her fall, but worse in mind. For the first
two years she lost nothing, and took an interest in everything. Alas !
this is no longer the case. She is still beautiful. I never before
saw a very old person who was agreeable, very agreeable, to look at
although she does not look at all young for her age. Even the
loss of her teeth does not disfigure her. It is an incomparable gift,
and worth every other.
Adieu, my dear child; write here till the ipth, then to Paris,
whence I shall write to you, whether you write to me or not. Kiss
the chicks for me, and give my kindest regards to F .
M. M.
Stors, Madame Chevreux's, October 2, 1873.
DEAR MINNIE,
We came here yesterday. I don't know if I explained
to you (I believe not) that when you gave me your " Correspondence
and Conversations" of Tocqueville last July (was it not?), I was too
poorly, I could read nothing that required attention, and did not take
them to Cold Overton ; in fact, I was so out of heart about myself
Lady William Russell.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 331
that I cared for nothing. I got better when at C. O., and wrote
to Lady Augusta to send the book to South Street when I was in
London. I packed it up and brought it here, and am now reading
it with the greatest pleasure. My faculties seem to have been washed
up, ironed out, and much fresher than they have been during all
my illness. I brought it here not only to read it myself, but to
read some passages to M. Reynouard, who is Madame Chevreux's
brother-in-law ; he can read English, but not speak it or understand
it when spoken. They bemoan the letters not being in French ;
however, the letters detached from the journal would not be half the
value ; still I should like an article on the book, with a few of them,
in the Revue des Deux Mondes. What do you say to the idea? Mr.
Mohl is most particularly pleased with the book, which he began
in Paris, and has much enjoyed, and he desired me to tell you so ;
indeed, I quite regret having left it in London this summer ; however,
I am not at all sure I should have enjoyed it then as I do now.
This is a very pretty place, where I come every autumn ; they go
away earlier than usual, October 10. I quite forget if you ever
knew them ; they were great friends of Ampere's, who lived the last
ten years of his life with them, and he made them acquainted with
me the last year of his life. They are very rich, and have a most
agreeable country house here; he (M. Chevreux) is Le"on Say's
uncle. M. Reynouard, his brother-in-law, a man of about seventy,
was councillor at the Cour de Cassation, when Louis Napoleon
made the coup d'etat in the end of '51, and he immediately put him
in accusation for high treason. This spirited conduct might have cost
him his life, but L. N. thought it as well to be content with putting
him into prison, and letting him out again quietly. As he got the
uppermost he could not prosecute him, nor have him turned out of
the Cours ; but he prevented his son, then about eighteen or twenty,
from getting on as a lawyer, which was the young man's passion, and
as he knew that he could never get on, he gave up the bar and got
employment on the railroad. He is now a man of thirty-eight or
forty, and never got over the blight, as he quite adored the profession
of a lawyer ; he has a melancholy look. I am particularly fond of
the father ; he is one of the most genuine persons I ever knew, and
his courage in those trying days has placed him very high in public
opinion, but he has always been considered very highly as a lawyer
apart from that.
332 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
To Madame von Schmidt.
( Translation.)
Paris, October 7, 1873.
MM. Roulin and Decaisne dined here to-day. We were de-
lighted to meet again. M. Roulin was very gay, but, alas ! his mind
is not what it was. He does not tell a story with the spirit he for-
merly had. Fortunately, he does not seem to be aware of it. It is
colder than usual in October, and I am very glad to find myself
again in my warm room. Your uncle is certainly much better than
he has been since the siege and the war. We expect the dean and
Lady Augusta this month. I have returned to Paris fully determined
not to let myself fall into discouragement or laziness, but to fight
with life, and to force it with kicks and thrusts to give me all the
enjoyment it possibly can. This resolution will prove to you that
my health has improved. . . .
Madame Chevreux continues to talk of you with great regard.
As for me, the more I see them the better I like being with them.
She read me some love-letters from Ampere to Madame Re'camier,
between 1820 and 1825 ; they are quite charming, and I am de-
lighted that she is going to publish them. She is surrounded by
people who discourage her, because it is not usual that a man of
twenty should be so much in love with a woman of forty, and they
call her a coquette. Certainly she was a coquette, but a charming
one ; and if every one was perfect there would be no more books,
and if there were no more books, the best thing would be to be
buried as fast as possible. Adieu, dear child. Write as soon as you
can, and kiss poor little Nandor for me.
M. MOHL.
Paris, October 24, 1873.
DEAR Miss WYSE,
I was very glad to have a letter from you, whatever might
be the occasion that procured me that pleasure. The Duchesse de
Berri, married to Comte Lucchesi Palli, died at Venice on April 17,
1870. She was in debt and a bad manager, and, what I had for-
gotten (which Mr. Mohl has just recalled to my memory), the Comte
de Chambord bought of her the said palace during her lifetime, pay-
ing her the money to enable her to pay some of her debts, which
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 333
did him credit, considering the grievous end she made to her political
and heroic pretensions, even supposing the baby was legitimate,
which I do not suppose at all. As I was very intimate with Madame
de Chateaubriand, I was well informed. I do not remember the red
chateau you mention, but I remember well the Riesenberg, which
was not far from Schloss Hainfeldt M. de Hammer took us there,
and gave me a history he had written of it, and its seven fortifications
and seven moats. I remember well, too, your beautiful mamma, and
that Mr. Mohl came up to me and said, " Come down quickly to see
the handsomest lady I ever saw." It was a time of great enjoyment
to me, and everything is delightful that recalls it.
Our politics here are by no means so near a solution as you seem
to think, and I don't believe the elder Branch's restoration will be
more successful than were the attempts of the Stuarts in England.
It amuses Lady William to fancy them back here. She spent her
early days with many interesting emigrants, who have left none like
them. I spent mine here, and part of them under Charles X., and
saw the Revolution his folly brought on, which he might so entirely
have avoided. Our points of observation are different ; we should
have been of the same opinion if they had been the same.
Adieu, dear Miss Wyse. Be assured that you will always receive
a prompt answer when you favour me with a letter.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
Paris, March, 1874.
DEAREST,
I have just finished reading, or rather boggling, over
your letter, and so rejoiced was I that I wrote yesterday such a
candid and beautiful picture of my own virtues and merits that there
is nothing more to be said, except that as I should have had much
delight in your descriptions, hot and hot like a beef-steak at Dolly's
(ancient days), so I promised myself never more to be good, virtuous,
or self-denying test un metier de dupe. We have been worse than
dull this last month, instead of these assumptions of yours. These
deaths cast such a gloom over me that I never invited a soul all
March, and scarcely went out. The poor Lyttons, whom I saw often
and intimately, lost their only boy, two years old one or two days'
334 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
illness. They were so cut up they ran away to England, to hide
themselves like wounded hares. I did so pity them. Then M.
Guizot lost his daughter. I saw him six days after that event. He
was calm and collected. Alluding to his age, he said a death was
but a short separation ; that he felt more for the husband than he
could express ; that their union had been a happiness for twenty-two
years, and that few who died could have had such a destiny. His
power of work goes on, and that is his salut. He wishes ardently to
finish his " History of France." It is very touching to see the old
man of eighty-six or eighty-seven working hard. When I saw him
he was at his desk as busy as possible.
Forgive this horrid scribble ; I have not time to copy it.
Yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
Paris, June 6, 1874.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I expect to go to London the i2th or i3th. It is dread-
fully hot here ; I never saw such a hot June. Lady Augusta tells
me she has accepted the dinner you are so kind as to have for us on
the 1 8th, so I shall be in plenty of time. I dread the journey; it
must be like an operation one bears it somehow or other.
I went to a musical party last night and heard Madame C
sing. Twelve or fifteen years ago she was very handsome, with a
splendid voice ; it is so still, but her arms were bare to the shoulder-
straps, and looked like smallish thighs. I was quite ashamed. Her
voice stronger than ever ; just like a man's in the low notes, extra-
ordinarily fine in the high ones. There was something monstrous
about her. I used to spend all my extra money upon her. Her
husband, a rich man, took her off the stage, and she leads him the
life of a dog.
She sang by herself the duet in the " Trovatore," low and high.
The gipsy part filled me with the horror one would have had at the
reality before the poor creature was to be burnt alive. It was very
fine, and I must say I never fully understood Verdi's talent before ;
it has something of the Dante in it.
She paid this year her last visit to the deanery during the
life of its beloved and distinguished mistress. M. Mohl had
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 335
also passed away before she again came to visit her dear old
friend, Arthur Stanley, as well as the keen power of enjoy-
ment which appears in the following note :
Deanery, Sunday, July, 1874.
DEAREST MINNIE,
... I began this yesterday morning ; was obliged to go
and lunch at Lady Pollock's, and after that to take tea somewhere
else, and had but time to rest a moment before I went to Lady
William's. Came back at twelve, just dead. Obliged to go this
morning to Florence to breakfast with her father, just come to town ;
came back at twelve. Went to church at three, because I dine at
Van de Weyer's to-night ; and I write now in haste to beg you to
make no engagements for me after the nth, as, if Mr. Mohl is not
well, I shall whip over to Paris at a moment's notice, otherwise I
shall go to Cold Overton. I'm going (if I can) to Mrs. Vaughan's
to-morrow from 4 to 6.30. I dine at the Pollocks', who take me to
the tragedy of " Medea." Humph ! I like comedy best.
To Lady Augusta Stanley.
Cold Overton, Thursday, July 23, 1874.
DEAREST FRIEND,
I regret missing Dr. Temple very much ; his conversation
would never grow cold, because it leaves a movement in one's head.
One of my nieces tells me he is Bishop of Exeter, for I had forgotten
it, and, as he wrote in "Essays and Reviews," I am astonished that
he is. I did not think there was so much sense in the appointments
to bishoprics.
Our wedding went off yesterday very well, but I am shocked to
see the absurd luxury of such useful and, in fact, indispensable opera-
tions as weddings. The breakfast sent from Leicester, with waiters,
etc., would have nourished a whole parish for a week with good
wholesome food, instead of kickshaws (taken from the French quel-
quechose) ; and in the primitive old-fashioned house it looked to me
like a respectable old lady dressed out en Venus with cupids and
doves. I was exceedingly glad when it was all over, and the gather-
ing dispersed this morning.
Tell Arthur I have finished " Lord Minto," and shall write my
336 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
satisfaction to the writer, who is wonderfully pretty to write such a
clever book, too. I was not ennuyed on my journey, for Lady
Galway was on the platform, and came into my carriage, leaving her
spouse alone, and we talked all the way. She was very entertaining.
When you have settled where you go and when, pray let me know,
and the probabilities of your continental flights and studies of old
France. Love to Arthur, and many thanks for the loan of the book.
Yours ever, dear kind friend,
MARY MOHL.
From Julius Mohl.
Paris, August 22, 1874.
MY DEAR MADAME SCHWABE,
I have been in Germany, and returned by Bonn and
Cologne to see some old friends. Of course I went to see your
daughter, and arrived there drenched and bespattered like a lost
poodle. Madame Bins gave me her husband's robe de chambre, in
which he found me, to his astonishment, when he came back ; she
kept me to dinner, and we had a good talk morning and evening. . .
I intend to go to London on September i. Can you give me a
bed ? You know I want nothing but a cup of tea in the morning,
and could get this easily at the Athenaeum.
I write in great haste, as I am just like you, bothered with the
world's and his mother's (and I believe a little with the devil's)
business.
Yours very truly,
J. MOHL.
From Madame Mohl.
Cold Overton, September, 1874.
DEAR MINNIE,
Are you in London? I shall be there next week, in
Clarges Street. Do let me know by writing beforehand. I have been
in terrible spirits all the summer first, Lady William's death ; second,
my poor sister is, I think, going, and especially her mind is so much
weakened, that it is painful to see her and recollect what she was.
That is the most painful of all that can happen ; death is a favour
compared to it. I have been so low ever since I came here (middle
of July), that I have written to no one. Mr. Mohl is in Clarges
Street ; I shall be there on Tuesday or Wednesday. Pray write to
tell me where you are. I want to get back to Paris. I am dreadfully
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 337
low, with Lady William's death and my sister's state, I wish to be
where these terrible images will not constantly pursue me. I am not
fit to bear really great afflictions. Pray, pray write.
Yours ever,
M. M.
In the autumn of this year Madame Mohl lent her apart-
ments to the Dean and Lady Augusta, while she was at Stors.
Lady Augusta had been much fatigued by travelling, and
one day, while she and the Dean were walking in the Champs
Elysees, her strength gave way suddenly. She was taken
home, and the terrible illness followed from which she never
recovered. Madame Mohl returned home to look after her.
January, 1875.
DEAR MINNIE,
Augusta's letters to me were far from reassuring, so that
I came back and found her very ill. She had a doctor twice a day ;
could not stir from one bed to another without being carried ; in
short, it was a fever of six weeks, and I often expected she would
never reach home alive. Poor Arthur was, of course, very anxious,
so I kept my fears entirely to myself, and always represented the best
side. I suppose the exertion was too much, for it brought on an
inflammation in my eyelids, which I totally neglected. What re-
mains of my hair is as white as this paper ; besides which, I grew
weaker and weaker, but I was so much occupied I took no care. It
was only after they left (which I did my best to prevent being dread-
fully uneasy) that I sent for Mussy, who gave me bark ; but in a
short time that brought on palpitations ; in short, I got worse and
worse, and never began mending till the beginning of January. I
have been very slowly getting back my eyesight, as one of my eyes
was under a bandage for weeks. If I have told you this history
before, attribute my want of memory to my malady. I have been
intending to write, but have been so listless I could not. Tell me
all about the children.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
z
338 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Later in the year I asked her to come to us ; she re-
plied
Thank you most kindly for offered hospitality. I am at present
such a poor creature first by Lady Augusta's illness, which kept me
ill till the end of the year and part of January ; then in February I
caught the grippe, which was a high fever lasting three weeks, and
being imprudent and going out one morning, I got a relapse, and am
but just recovering with much care and caution. I have not been to
the play once since last spring ! Think how bad I must have been !
I shall go and stay at Hastings or St. Leonard's for sea air in June.
That has set me up three different times in my life ; perhaps it may
do so once more. I shall just have a peep of you as I go through
London to Cold Overton, which I shall do when I have got the
spiriting up of the sea air.
With much love, yours,
M. MOHL.
From Julius Mohl.
Paris, June 25, 1875.
MY DEAR MADAME SCHWABE,
My wife is gone to St. Leonard's for the sea air, and to
get up some strength. She had been mostly ill, and always very-
weak since Lady Augusta's unfortunate malady. She says she can
walk at St. Leonard's infinitely better and longer than she could
here, and is confident to recover part of her strength, which is very
much to be wished for. Lady Augusta herself is miserably weak.
She can neither walk nor write ; all power of the muscles seems to be
gone. If she remains so, it will be a great misfortune for her ; and
then for the dean, who will hardly be able or willing to travel about
alone. He ought to have taken care of her not fatiguing herself ;
but as she never complained, they went on just as if nothing had
been the matter with her.
I intend to go to Carlsruhe and Stuttgart on July 17, for about
three weeks, and then go to England in the end of August or
beginning of September to bring over my madame. She wants then
to go to the Hague, which I hope will not come to pass, as I shall be
quite satisfied with gadding about, having no mercury in my veins
like you.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 339
I have little to say on public affairs. We are going on in our
ordinary foolish way, quarrelling and losing precious time, and
legislating in a queer way, laying on very heavy taxes, and squander-
ing the money on an enormous army, organizing a republic which
may or may not last. If the extreme left should get the uppermost
.in the elections, the new assembly will bring on a Bonapartist coup
a'etat ; if the moderate republicans get a majority, it may last a good
while. But what can one predict in a country given up to universal
suffrage ?
It is miserably cold and rainy. The inundations in the south are
fearful, which is a revenge of nature for the destruction of the forests
which has gone on for centuries. They try now to replant them, but
what can be done on the bare rocks ? And even what is done is
mostly destroyed by the goats, which have replaced the cows in the
south, because they can live where a cow finds no longer nourish-
ment.
I wish more than I hope that you have overcome the ecclesias-
tical difficulties of your school.* The Jesuits are here very power-
ful, and I suspect are so at Naples. It is inconceivable what they
can swallow of miracles, of mythology, and priestly enterprise ; but
this is a long chapter for a letter.
Yours very gratefully,
J. MOHL.
Paris, July 4, 1875.
DEAR MADAME SCHWABE,
You are very kind to invite me to your house, and I
shall certainly ask you as soon as I can fix the date of my going to
England. It is of course a very great pleasure to me to have a
friendly house in London to go to, but I can only accept it on con-
dition that you would always tell me when you have other friends to
invite. You know it is only in the dead season that I can travel
no difficulty in finding lodgings in London. Ainsi, je vous prie ne
vous genez jamais pour moi.
I don't know what sort of weather you have got. Here it rains
every day, and of course the heat is never oppressive. Notwith-
standing this, there has been very little hay, the straw is miserably
short, and the oats are starved, because the spring was very dry, so that
* Madame Schwabe's school at Naples for poor children.
340 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
we don't know how cattle is to be nourished ; the company of the
Omnibus, which keeps nine thousand big horses, is making contracts
in America for hay. If this weather goes on the inundations will
spread over the whole country, just as they have devastated the
south. I believe this comes from the insane destruction of the
forests which the southern provinces have carried on for centuries,
and now they pay dearly for their savage improvidence and greed.
The destruction of houses, roads, bridges, cattle, and produce seems
to exceed ten millions sterling in the valley of the Garonne. The
state will do a little, and I suppose the collection of money all over
the country will bring in a million pounds. France cannot bear this
new calamity without great difficulty. She has astonished the world
by the rapidity with which she has paid the ransom, but she has
suffered a great deal, and the taxes are very heavy indeed. The
consequence is that living has become very dear. The wonder is
that the country bears up against it ; and if there could be any
assurance of a government which would last, France would recover
in a short time. The Bonapartists are much less rampant now, but
they expect to get a great many seats in the new Chamber. They
hope that the extreme republicans will get a majority, govern insanely,
and so drive the middle classes towards a Bonapartist usurpation.
It shows the folly of universal suffrage, that after Sedan, and after
the Commune, the adherents of these two monstrosities should
have any chance of governing the country. Alas, alas !
I cannot wonder that the excess of your moral and physical
activity tells on you, and you must not give in, but make allowance
for fatigue. The Italians ought to see that the education of their
women is the first thing to do, and the state of things in Naples and
Sicily ought to open their eyes.
But I must close my scribble, which will have been too much
already for your poor eyes.
Yours very gratefully,
J. MOHL.
From Madame Mohl.
St. Leonard's, July 8, 1875.
DEAR MINNIE,
You are very kind. I shall come to the Charing Cross
station at 1.40. I get in at Robertsbridge, because I sleep at
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 341
Madame Bodichon's. I leave this on Friday. I am so much better
for the sea that I think I must come here next year.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
P.S. I am quite well, and shall faint in nobody's house.
Madame Mohl alludes here to a fright she gave us in
1874, when she fainted away after a dinner-party in our
house. She arrived on this occasion in restored health and
spirits, except that she was much disturbed by the loss of
a large sum of money, in coin and bonds, which she thought
she had left at Madame Bodichon's. After a great deal of
telegraphing and disturbance we found it in her hand-bag.
The next letters, the last she wrote to her husband, about
whom she was growing very anxious, are from the country.
He had intended to visit his brother in Germany at this
time.
Cold Overton, August 9, 1875.
*DEAR PUPS,
Since this morning, or rather ever since the day before
yesterday, I have been tormenting myself about you. I reproach
myself for leaving you alone ; in short, life is a burden to me. . . .
I am so upset by your letter, which I have just read over again, that
I have quite lost my head. I shall be better presently, but as the
post is just going I don't like to miss it
Adieu, dear Pups,
M. M.
Lea Hurst, August 15.
Your letter of the izth was a great comfort to me, for you
seem a little better. As to the workmen, servants, etc., I am very
philosophical on those matters ; all I care for is that you should get
well, and I think it would be very imprudent in you to run over to
Germany to see M . You know what railways are; you must
climb, run, jump, hurry. What is easier than to put out again your
* These letters to M. Mohl are translations. The words in italics were written
in English.
342 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
knee, which requires time to cure entirely? and if you hurt it at
Strasburg, and were obliged to spend a month at an inn, how
delightful that would be ! If you will listen to me you will stay
in Paris, or only go as far as Stors.
I stay here till the igth, when I go to Knowsley till the 25th;
then back here for three days, and then to Cold Overton. It
remains to be seen what you will do, supposing that your knee
goes on getting better and better. If it should get worse, it is clear
that you ought to stay at home, unless you are ordered to some
baths, in which case I should certainly go with you. I am delighted
to think that we shall be together in three weeks.
Mr. Jowett spent three days here. He is a man of mind ; I think
he would suit you. He is, perhaps, going to Paris ; pray be kind to
him. If I were at home I should ask him to dinner. He is very
fond of F , which would also suit you. She is here, and her con-
versation is most nourishing. I would give a great deal for you to
be here to enjoy it She is really eloquent. Yesterday she quite
surprised me.
Adieu, dear Pups. How glad I shall be to see you again !
M. M.
Knowsley, August 24.
I think I told you that I should stay here till Monday, when
I return to Lea Hurst, and should leave again on Wednesday for
Cold Overton ; glad enough to find myself there again. I always
remember Walter Scott, who wrote that he felt like a poodle who has
been standing on his hind-legs too long, I am dying to recover my fore
paws. Did you ever notice what sad eyes the TourgueniefFs' poodle
has ? There is a large silky-haired black dog here, into whose eyes
I looked, and he was determined to follow me, although his master
whistled for him ; but his beautiful eyes were not sad ! It gave me
the same thrill of delight to look into them as men pretend to feel
when they look into women's eyes.
M. M.
Cold Overton, September 5.
DEAR MINNIE,
I came back here three days ago from Lea Hurst and
Knowsley. Odo Russell was at Knowsley, and sang all one evening.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 343
You know the marvellous pleasure a beautiful voice gives me ; but
I wanted some Rossini and Bellini. He is as fond of them as I am ;
but, forsooth, his wife had only brought accompaniments for German
music and some French. Confound the German music ! Oh, that
I should have been born under the reign of Rossini, and should have
lived to see those vile Germans on the throne ! Encore^ if it was
Mozart, Weber, or even some of the respectable entrancing old
fellows ; but it puts me in a rage to hear people in ecstasies at the
music of Beethoven, a deaf man. The next thing will be raptures
over the painting of a blind man. I'll maintain that music is above
all a pleasure through the ears. I hope to be at home on Friday or
Saturday at the latest. Poor Mr. Mohl has been laid up by the leg
all the summer. I should not have left had he not declared he
could walk a week after I left No such thing ! I enjoyed my visit
at Knowsley very much ; it was so much warmer than in these mid-
lands, high upon the parting of the waters.
We had, moreover, at dinner the judges from Liverpool great
curiosities for an ignoramus like me. One a Sir James Willis, whom
I did not hear talk, as he was by Lady Derby ; the other Sir Baliol
Brett, who, staying two days, talked plentifully; he was amusing.
Also the high sheriff, a great curiosity, enormously rich. Both the
judges had a man each to fondle them, called a marshal. Your
spouse knows all that, but I don't, so I was much nourished.
Rue du Bac, October 28, 1875.
I never felt so utterly prostrate in my life as when I got here.
I was as bad for nearly a fortnight, and then life seemed to return ;
but I am not my former self, and I feel in mourning for that dear
former self the cause I can't tell. Sometimes I hope to revive;
sometimes I think I'm done for. My only hope is that by whining
to my former friends they will reanimate me by their kindness ; so I
am writing des lettres defaire part to that effect And this is one to
announce that I died last September, about the 3rd, and am coming
to life again about the 28th October, inviting them, not to my burial,
but to my christening, and hoping they will be as kind to the new-
born as they were to the moribund.
Up to this time Paris has been more fit for my last stage than for
this new one. Never was such an October, so cold, so rainy, so
dismal. Dabord^ nobody here. The Chevreux, where we used always
344 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
to go in the country, all down because M. Chevreux has a permanent
bronchite. I went to the Tourguenieffs', and the sharp air, though
only twelve miles off, brought me to life by absolute pinching.
Our politics are most curious. M , a sort of Conservative,
makes friends with the Bonapartists, because he fancies they are
more likely to keep the country from anarchy than the republicans ;
and M. de B , it is whispered, is growing republican for fear of
the Bonapartists. They are all going tooth and nail at it next week,
and nobody can guess the upshot. Adieu, dearest.
November 27, 1875.
DEAR MINNIE,
I have been so troubled all this month about Mr. Mohl
that I have not answered your letters, nor anybody's else. He had
been already very poorly as far back as when we were in London ;
he got gradually worse and worse in September and October, first
unable to eat, thus getting weaker and weaker; the first doctor
treating him for the liver. It is not the liver, says another doctor,
who came two days ago. I have much to reproach myself with
because I did not bestir myself to persuade him to consult a doctor
sooner, and now he is so ill he can do nothing. He has constant
pains in all his bones from weakness ; can hardly stir, yet will not
keep his bed. I tremble lest he should soon be obliged to do so.
I am very unhappy ; sometimes I think he will never be better. I
get in despair ; I fight against it. If they did but know what it is !
He can't take anything but some milk. We have made a sort of
essence of meat, and that seems to revive him a little, but nothing
as yet can explain the cause of this state.
A dear friend of mine, Duchess Colonna, has been obliged to
stay in Switzerland for a cough, instead of coming here. She would
have been a great comfort to me. She asks me to send her Carlyle's
" Hero- Worship ; " she has set her heart on having it. It is not
published in Tauchnitz. If you should be able to get it, I should
be most obliged if you will send it to me, and I will send it on.
Tell me what it costs and I'll pay you. Adieu, dear friend. May
Heaven preserve your husband and children.
Yours ever,
M. M.
P.S. My brother-in-law, Robert Mohl, died on the 5th of this
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 345
month, which greatly increased my husband's illness. It was a great
trouble to me ; but this is so much worse !
December, 1875.
Thank you most kindly, dearest Minnie, about the book. I
think it much safer to send it by Miss King. I am totally sequestered
from society, for my poor husband has been very ill this month. I
was half-crazy the last half of November, for the doctors could make
nothing of him, he was so bad ; he is a little better now. I had two
nights last month during which I thought he never would recover,
and I was so overturned those two days, that my arm and hand were
quite without feeling, and my speech embarrassed. I thought I should
have a stroke. The doctor said the blood would not go to my brain.
It passed away when he got better.
I shall do anything I can for Miss King, for I like her much.
I can invite no one, but am delighted to see waifs and strays. The
cold here is awful ; I never suffered so much in my life from cold.
I am miserable.
December, 1875.
I believe I have thanked you already for the book. I have
been so wretched all this month I don't know what I have written
or said. The doctor this morning has set my poor head right
again by telling me Mr. Mohl will get well with careful manage-
ment. I was down in the abyss of despair ; now I am ready to
jump over the table like the cow over the moon. This moment
I heard that Max Miiller had given his resignation. We are all
astounded such a pet lamb as he was ! It seems quite a European
event among the savants here. Did they affront him, and was he
like the unwise man Dr. Johnson talks of, who always slept out of
doors under London Bridge when any one affronted him in joke or
earnest ? Adieu ; I'm interrupted.
It will be seen from the preceding letters that Madame
Mohl was not blind to her husband's danger, though she
tried by every means to hope for the best. He never got
over the Franco-German War, or ceased to lament the enmity
between his own and his adopted country. After his brother
Robert's death he failed more and more rapidly. The doctors
346 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OP
could not bear utterly to destroy the hopes of his wife, and
she was actually taken by surprise when, in the early morning
of January 4, he breathed his last.
" He had been struggling for breath for four or five hours, worse
and worse. He stroked my face all the time, but could not speak.
That stroking has been an ineffable comfort to me ; it was an endear-
ment when he could not speak ; the only sign he could give me of
his affection, and that he knew it was I that was with him." *
* Letter to Mrs. Wynne Finch in 1877, on the anniversary of M. Mohl's death.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 347
CHAPTER XIV.
WIDOWHOOD.
1876-1883.
Madame Mohl's utter prostration and despair Sensation caused by the death of
Julius Mohl Speeches at his funeral Letters to Dean Stanley and Lady
Derby The "Shah Nameh" Development of mind in the East Visit to
Bournemouth Bulgarian atrocities Visit to Berlin Effect of want of air
Return to Paris Editorial troubles Thiers in 1870 Last meeting with
him Lady Eastlake's articles Titian and Correggio England should sup-
port Turkey Disappointment about article in the Edinburgh Opening of
the Exhibition of 1878 Abhorrence of Russia Remorse at having left her
husband Absence of mind Julius Mohl's letters Sudden visit to England
Max Muller's article Asia more venerated abroad than in England Lock-jaw
in the country Miss Weston's recollections Madame Mohl in 1879 Lady
Derby's letters Kinglake's book Visits Bournemouth again Reception at
home in former times Julius Mohl's reports Happiness in marriage Hard
winter Ice The Seine frozen Importance of the rivers Effect of thaw
Civilization in India France before the Revolution Madame de Remusat's
book Gladstone and D'Israeli Good sense better than eloquence Leon
Say ambassador Visit to Holland House Senior's "Conversations" Mrs.
Bagehot's visit Memory Death of Dean Stanley Visit to Cornwall
Gardens Sad last letter Madame Mohl's illness At rest.
MADAME VON SCHMIDT, who had been telegraphed for as
soon as her uncle's danger was imminent, writes
Klagenfurt, July 19, 1886.
When I arrived in Paris on the morning of the 4th, all was over.
He lay still and quiet in his bed. My aunt sat upstairs in the spare
room, rocking herself to and fro before the fire, not crying, but nearly
out of her mind. She would not see me, so I went back to the
Tourguenieffs' and waited in the Rue de Lille until my aunt sent for
me, which she did on the evening of the same day. Albert Tour-
gue"nieff helped me in all the arrangements of the funeral ; I do not
348
know what I should have done without these kind friends. At first
poor aunty did not show her grief; she was like one stunned by the
shock of a blow.
Madame Mohl wrote a few days afterwards to her friend
Madame Rothan
(Translation.}
January 19, 1876.
DEAR MADAME,
I felt the kindness of your letter much more than I
should have appreciated a visit from you a fortnight ago. It is a
great mistake for people to go in crowds to visit a poor creature who
has just lost all that made life worth having, who has been felled to
the earth by a heavy blow, and who is almost out of her senses.
Not to appear ungrateful (and I am not naturally so), the friends
who come with such kind intentions must be kindly received,
although one is not fit to see anybody, and is almost driven wild by
so great a calamity. Alas ! this has been my case. I am now re-
signed, and can bear, and even be grateful for, the sight of a kind
and pitying face. I tell all this to you, dear madame, who under
stand me ; but I do not wish that those who endeavoured to show
their sympathy with my grief should know how much I suffered from
their kindness. I have always had a particular liking and sympathy
for you, and my dear husband shared the feeling. You can well
understand, therefore, that I was pleased at your not forgetting me
as soon as I became reasonable and capable of reflection.
Je suis toute a vous,
M. MOHL.
The death of Julius Mohl caused a profound sensation
among all men of science and learning throughout Europe.
The speeches at his funeral show how deep the feeling was
in France.
M. Alfred Maury, president of the branch of the Academy
connected with inscriptions, and keeper of the Archives, said
The death of M. Mohl has filled us with consternation. We
never thought that the illness which has prevented his attending our
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 349
meetings for the last two months would have a fatal termination.
Neither did he suspect the seriousness of his state ; for when I called
on him, less than a fortnight ago, I found him full of confidence in
a speedy recovery.
After enumerating his services, M. Maury continued
In communication with all the Orientalists in Europe and even
beyond the ocean, surrounded by their esteem and enjoying a legiti-
mate authority over them, he had become a sort of prism in which
was reflected even the faintest ray of the brilliant light shed by the
East over the ancient history and geography of Asia.
M. Maury was followed by M. Laboulaye (member of the
Institut and director of the College de France).
M. Mohl was the model of savants and professors ; his zeal never
relaxed. This very year, while suffering cruelly, he insisted on open-
ing his course, and stopped only when overpowered by illness. But
it was not alone by books or lectures that our dear colleague served
and honoured the College de France ; he gave us powerful assistance
in the most delicate of our functions the choice of a professor for
a vacant chair. He had in the highest degree the sense of the re-
sponsibility which weighed on us. For him science was a religion,
and he would have liked to exclude all profane persons. And with
what warmth he supported those whom he considered faithful servants
of truth !
M. Re'gnier, vice-president of the Asiatic Society, and M.
Haure"au, director of the Imprimerie Nationale, added their
testimony to the great learning and virtues of their illustrious
confrere. In conclusion, M. Haureau said
He was chosen for our counsellor, we accepted him as our model.
We shall ever venerate the memory of this learned, devoted, and
modest man, whose almost sudden death has caused us such intense
pain.
Professor Max Miiller wrote a short notice of M. Mohl in
350 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
the Pall Mall Gazette (January 10, 1876). He concludes
with an extract from a speech of M. Kenan's, which I cannot
forbear quoting in the beautiful French of the original
" Le grand titre de M. Mohl k la reconnaissance des savants est
cependant, avant tout, 1'influence qu'il a exercee. II sut prdsider a
nos etudes avec une solidite de jugement et un esprit philosophique
qui seuls peuvent donner de la valeur a des travaux e"pars et sans
lien apparent Ce lien, il le creait par sa judicieuse et savante
critique ; son autorite aidait les amis de la verite a distinguer le
merite serieux des succes faciles qu'on trouve souvent aupres du
public en flattant ses gouts superficiels. Par Ik M. Mohl a occupe
dans nos etudes une place de premier ordre ; le vide qu'il a laisse ne
sera pas de shot rempli. Ami du vrai et du solide en toutes choses,
il ne faisait aucun part k la vanite, k 1'envie de briller. Sa direction
a et aussi efficace qu'eclairee. M. Mohl etait pour nous tous une
des raisons que nous avions de vivre et de bien faire." *
How true it is to say of such men as Mohl, " They make us live
and do well " ! They keep us from making concessions, from taking
what is called an easier view of life, from making to ourselves friends
of the mammon of unrighteous praise. That his friends at Paris
should have allowed him to maintain that independent position
through life, that they should have yielded to his silent influence,
that they should not have resented his occasional reproofs, reflects
the highest credit on the French character.
In sending the following extract from Dean Stanley's
papers, Mr. Walrond writes, " It seems to me delightfully
characteristic of the writer's simplicity and directness and
honesty."
Madame Mohl to Dean Stanley.
March 4, 1876.
I was and am still overwhelmed with grief. You are now as be-
reaved as I am"; we are both deprived of all that made life enjoyable.
* Translation of the concluding sentences : "A friend to truth and sincerity in
every form, he made no allowance for vanity or the desire to shine. His guidance
was as useful as it was enlightened. He was for us all a motive for good deeds
and a good life. "
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 35 r
I do what I can to bear it. I wish, however, to live long enough to
execute my dear husband's wishes, and then I wish to die ; for life is
fatiguing to me. I wish I had as firm a faith as you have, my dear
Arthur. I wish I could buy that sturdy belief, that we should surely
meet again, which I see in other people ; but I have not been brought
up in it, and faith is a habit of the mind. I am, therefore, more
to be pitied than you are, and I could look at you with envy, if it
were not that my friendship for you makes me glad that you have
such a trust. I wish you could impart it to me ; I am sure you would
be glad. I don't say it is not so ; I only don't feel as many do whom
I have seen without a doubt.
Madame von Schmidt stayed for three months with her
aunt, helping her to arrange her papers. In the following
summer Madame Mohl passed through London without
stopping. She wrote to Lady Derby
Cold Overton, July n, 1876.
DEAREST LADY AND KINDEST FRIEND,
How ungrateful I must have appeared to you, so sym-
pathizing as you have been ! I have no cause to plead but my great,
my unutterable grief, and your large heart understands it. ... I
could not write this winter, I was so dead. I am, I suppose, something
better, for I now can write ; but I have always the same blank before
me. I had much to do at Paris that I was obliged to attend to. I
had my dear husband's papers to look over, and they are so numerous ;
but I was obliged to do it, and I have made arrangements for
publishing several things. The translation in French of the great
epic poem, the " Shah Nameh," which he was charged to do by the
French Government in 1828, publishing the Persian text, was happily
finished, and he had still a volume of notes, klairdssements, index,
etc., to do ; but the real thing was finished, both text and translation.
I know not if it is known in England, but when Louis XVIII. came
back to the throne, he had a minister (Due de Richelieu) who had
been governor of the Crimea under Alexander; he was a most
enlightened man, and began a scientific movement, which lasted the
whole of Louis XVIII.'s reign, part of Charles X.'s, and was not ex-
tinguished under Louis Philippe. One of his projects was publishing
352 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
at the great national printing-office all the great monuments of
literature of the East in their own languages. He (Richelieu)
obtained the decree, and the vast expenses necessary for it, some-
where about 1822 or 1825. The movement continued under
Charles X., because what is decreed takes a long time to be exe-
cuted. The effects lasted not only during the following ten years,
but the great encouragement and impetus which was given then
to science and literature a reaction after the warlike regime of
Napoleon was the first cause of the literary movement, which
went on under Louis Philippe, going a little down by degrees, but
only dying out entirely under the wonderfully deadening influence
of the luxurious Louis Napoleon. From what I have seen during
my own lifetime of the history of mind, I think it follows a general
law, and I don't see why it should not. Nothing is more mys-
terious than the growth of civilization or its destruction. It's as
impossible to see its progress as that of an oak, working itself
on during three centuries ; but you may measure its growth every
twenty years, and have some suspicion of the mental measurements,
which are still more difficult to see. But to return to my reason for
telling you this. My husband, then very young, left about 1825 the
German University, and arrived in Paris when this movement had
acquired its full impetus. He saw, or thought he saw, a wonderful
development of mind (which I should call civilization) in the ancient
monuments of Asiatic literature, and that it had never been ex-
amined, or even suspected, to the extent it deserved. This threw
him into Orientalism head and heels, and all he did to forward it
has given him a European reputation. Though Asia was the subject,
this epic poem is like Homer for early Greece ; therefore you will
not wonder at the importance I attach to the publication of it, and
to the other objects which interested him ; and the only solace I can
have is doing the very little I can to rescue from oblivion what he
took such deep interest in, and I tell you this that you may still
esteem me enough to believe that I am not quite absorbed by selfish
grief, that you may be indulgent and excuse my apparent neglect; for
you have one of those high and noble minds I am too happy to have
known, and even in all my grief I know how to value the prize. I
have been absorbed in trying to pick up the spars and wrecks of
this monument he tried to erect of ancient civilization. He it was
who indicated Nineveh to Botta, and to the minister who obtained
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 353
money from Government to dig it out ; and three other travellers who
were in Arabia were equally assisted by him. It is these proofs of
his impassioned energy for bringing back the past that I should so
wish to show, and as I must have appeared ungrateful for your most
kind note, I must give you this blundered blotted account of my poor
self. Adieu, dear lady ; a little word would gratify me much.
Yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
P.S. I ought to write this abominable scrawl again, but I shall
put it in the fire if I attempt it, and you are so good you will excuse
me, and not read it if it is too much trouble.
We spent the summer of 1876 at Bournemouth, and
knowing Madame Mohl's liking for the sea, I invited her to
come to us ; and we met there in August, for the first time
since her bereavement. It was easy to see that she had
received a blow from which she would never recover ; still she
was incapable of dismal despondency, and her elastic spirits
rebounded at intervals. She loved the' sea and the woods,
and all the sights and sounds of the country. The house
(Upton, the dwelling of Admiral Henry Grey) contained an
excellent library of interesting old books, and into these she
plunged eagerly. I can see her now, perched upon a high
stool, examining a large map of Dorsetshire which hung in
the hall. We had a house full of children and young people
with whom she was always a great favourite, and, attached
to the establishment, a basket pony-chaise which carried her
about, and saved her much fatigue, although her love for
animals was so great that she insisted upon walking up all
the hills. She wrote of this visit to Lady Eastlake
The house belonged permanently to an admiral ; he lets it with
all his furniture and all his books. Is it not a touching trait of con-
fidence in the owner ? I laid it up in my head as a fine trait of my
countrymen, and it increased my esteem for the navy, as it was a
great addition to my satisfaction. My love for children greatly
added to the agrement. Unluckily they will grow up.
2 A
354 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Nowhere in England out of London are there more interest-
ing people than at that time there were in Bournemouth. Sir
Henry and Lady Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Reeve, Sir Henry and
Lady Drummond Wolff, Sir Percy and Lady Shelley, Mrs.
Newman Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Shaen, were all delighted to
welcome our dear old friend ; and, living at a little distance,
were some other friends of hers, Dr. and Mrs. Allman,
" whom," she wrote, " I have known for years a distinguished
naturalist ; I like him and his wife much." She stayed with
us till a day or two before we left, and was even able to
make excursions into the New Forest. It was the year
of the so-called " Bulgarian atrocities," the crusade against
which seemed to her exaggerated and absurd. She wrote to
Lady Derby
October n, 1876.
DEAREST LADY,
My habitual low spirits have not prevented me from
thinking constantly of you, and admiring the sense and temper, or
command of temper, of Lord Derby. I am absolutely sick of the
nonsense that is going on, and at the conceit of the nation supposing
that we can make all Europe do what we think right and what is
right; it is perfectly absurd. As to Gladstone, it is the madness
of disappointed ambition, and would not be worth minding if the
public was not so ignorant and conceited as to suppose that we
have the power to make all Europe humane by showing our fists at
them. I suppose that the Russians have been working underhand
a good while to excite those foolish and unfortunate Servians, etc.,
and other Christians to free themselves. I remember well the move-
ment towards 1825 or thereabouts, when the Greeks were much
worse treated than these have been; but it never came into any-
body's head that we alone were to go to war all across Europe to
make the Turks behave themselves well ; for that is, I suppose, what
these absurd people are aiming at. I can't imagine what they would
do if they were at the helm whether they would expect the nation to
raise an army to go and turn the Turks out of Europe ! Even the
Crusaders only attempted to take Jerusalem, and all Europe was of
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 355
one mind ; and individuals went, not governments did it. Could
not one advise these people to go off crusading, with Gladstone at
their head, instead of sitting at home trying to make the nation go ?
I assure you, dear lady, that though a letter from such a sympa-
thizer as you are is most valuable to me, I never feel anything but
affectionate regret when I receive no letter from you ; I know how
agitated your life must be. It seems to me that the nation is
growing a leetle, very leetle, wiser, and all, I think, owing to the
reasonable and self-commanding conduct of Lord Derby, which I
am sure you must be proud of; and in my solitary and melancholy
occupation of reading old letters and sorting papers, I think of your
agitated life with the greatest interest. I must own to the greatest
horror of war, and the terror of sacrificing our good, hardworking
countrymen to go across Europe and get killed for the Russians to
take Turkey for that would be the upshot.
Adieu, dearest lady; every letter is precious, but don't write
when it is an effort, and believe me yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
After her husband's death, Madame Mohl's great and
almost only interest was in publishing her husband's Asiatic
reports and translation of the " Shah Nameh " in a readable
form, and in sorting and arranging his letters. This occupa-
tion, sad and wearying to any one, was doubly trying at her
age, and with her failing memory. Her letters this winter
were very sad, relating almost entirely to her literary troubles.
In the spring of 1877 M. Mohl's niece, Anna, wife of the
celebrated Professor Helmholtz, came to stay with her, and
persuaded her aunt to return with her to Berlin.
Paris, March, 1877.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I'm a poor creature, and have not the slightest idea how
I shall bear the wear and tear of going to Berlin a very cold place.
But I think I could do something for my husband's nephew ; it's a
very vague notion, hid in the corner of my mind, therefore don't you
show it to the light, for light is the bitter enemy of all enterprise.
356 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
We shall go from here in ten days. I shall remain away five weeks
or so. My house is at your disposal. I hope dear little Gay * will
come here when she passes through. I shall write to you if I go
to Berlin ; it would be too early for Gay to leave the south.
I have not the slightest idea of going anywhere for my amuse-
ment, but I would go to Pekin if I had any probability of being
useful to my husband's family.
Berlin, March 16.
... I had entirely renounced coming here four days ago, but
my niece Anna was going away Wednesday morning when a sudden
change came over me, without any reason, and I consented to come
off next morning. I began a letter to you to say that the house was
at your service, and I repeat the same. I reproach myself bitterly for
not writing to you from Paris. . . . [Here follow all sort of minute
directions for my comfort.] I shall write by to-day's post, telling
Sophie Quirins, one of my friends, and certainly the most devoted,
to help you in all your little bothers, and I think all will go very
smooth.
All my friends say they are glad I came here, so I suppose it was
a wise thing. I have wished myself at home a hundred times; it
cost a great effort.
Don't hurry away, for I shall not be home till the latter part of
April at soonest.
Yours ever,
M. M.
I had accepted Madame Mohl's kind offer for the sake of
taking my young people and showing them all the sights
of Paris, but the serious illness of a near and dear relation
made me put off my visit, and I heard with astonishment,
from a friend in Paris, that Madame Mohl had suddenly
returned home. She wrote to me
Paris, April 3.
I was obliged to come home to be nursed, I was so ill. I
believe the living for a fortnight without oxygen was the real cause.
* My elder daughter, of whom Madame Mohl was exceedingly fond. She
always went to the Rue du Bac on her way to and from the south.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 357
The cold was very great, and no air ever enters the rooms. The
windows are all double and closed hermetically, so that to get a
mouthful of air seems impossible, and one pants for it. I absolutely
gasped at times, and when you get out the cold bites like an animal;
breathing the air has nothing of the renovating sensation it has here.
I arrived here yesterday morning, after twenty hours' rolling along.
I don't know that I should have had courage to come alone, but
a very nice young lady,* who is governess of our princess's eldest
daughter, told me she was coming to see her brother here on
Monday, and she would take care of me. This was too good an
opportunity to be neglected.
Paris, April 5, 1877.
In answer to your kind post-card, I hasten to say that I am
much better. Imagine a human being having been under a pneu-
matic machine for a fortnight, the walls all hot, just coming out
into the ambient air. That was my case all my own stupid fault.
The pneumatic machine was not agreeable. I had not the slightest
idea of what was the matter with me, and went on without oxygen,
wondering why I felt half-dead ; all owing to the wonderful skill of
the Prussian house-builders and carpenters the double windows, the
warm walls, all so beautifully fitting in, that not a particle of the dear
ambient atmosphere can enter by any chance into the house the
thing of all things we sigh for in Paris, to be weather-tight. A
French carpenter thinks nothing of a quarter-inch of wind coming
in at every window, and thinks one a fidgety quiddle if one finds
fault ; for which, as a remedy, they nail untidy, dust-nourishing
bourrelets, as they call them a substitute for what they call " list " in
England round doors and windows to cover the slit through which
the wind passes. Now, my bedroom at Berlin was a perfection
of snugness ; as to a slit, I believe a Prussian carpenter has not an
idea of such a possibility ; nothing can exceed their neatness. I am
the chilliest of mortals, and therefore never opened my window.
I did feel a little smothery at times, but warmth is my delight, and
I went on very well as long as I could get out every day ; but, having
to go to a grand soiree, I thought I must husband my little strength"
and stay at home all day. That was the first time I began to feel
the utter decadence of my vitality, and I tried to open the window,
* Mademoiselle de Perpigna.
358 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
a great difficulty, and no doubt the biting air gives one a broad hint.
It required several days for me to understand what I wanted. I
got weaker and weaker, and it was only the morning I left Berlin
that I fully understood that my half-dead state was entirely owing
to my own folly and coddling habits, which I might indulge in
without danger in Paris, where every door and window was correct-
ing me all day ; for not one ever shuts well here, to the great dis-
content of the English and the well-being of the natives. I am now
come to life again, and, though a poor creature, can do as much as
usual. My house is still in such an untidy state however, you will
see ; come and breakfast every morning if you like, and sit by the
garden window.
When you come, if you are too tired to call on me here, send me
word, and I'll go to you immediately. I'll do all I can to be well
while you are here, and make myself useful.
Yours in great haste,
MARY MOHL. ^
I did not like to disappoint my young people, but we were
too large a party to invade the Rue du Bac ; we therefore
took up our quarters at the Hotel St. Romain on April 7,
and I saw Madame Mohl every day for nearly a month.
Now that it was over, she looked back with great pleasure to
her visit to Berlin, where she had seen all the most interesting
people, and was surrounded with attentions for her own sake,
and, what she valued still more, for her husband's. The
Empress Augusta summoned her to a private audience. She
greatly admired the Crown Princess, and she told me that
the Crown Prince did her the honour of talking to her the
whole of one evening, principally in praise of his wife, who,
he said, was the cleverest and most remarkable woman in
Europe.
I had not been in Paris since 1871, when all was in
confusion ; but M. Mohl was alive at that time, and we were
merry enough in spite of the desolation around. But now
the salon in the Rue du Bac was painfully silent. She often
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 359
to the end of her life, talked of resuming her Friday evening
receptions, but she never had the courage to do so.
Life is a series of dissolving views. Almost all the friends
of her earlier years, even those who were much younger than
herself, were gone, and she had not now the heart to make
new acquaintances. Out of kindness to me she invited a few
people to dinner one day, but she was so ill that she was
obliged to put them off. In a day or two she recovered, and
at intervals regained all her former brilliancy. We used to
have the most delightful little tete-d-tete dinners, after which
she would doze on the sofa till tea-time, when she would
rouse up again and never be willing to let me go.
Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot) wrote of her at this time
The Priory, 1877.
But please tell our dear Madame Mohl that I retain a happy
memory of her pleasant visit here during her last stay in London,
and that I am glad to have some news of her through you. The
last I had was from M. Scherer, to whom his wife had sent word that
she had found the dear old lady sobbing bitterly in her solitude.
That left a sad impression on my mind, and I like to know now that
you are added to the other friends of many years who can give her
their cheering presence.
M. E. LEWES.
Madame Mohl spent six weeks in London this year at the
Deanery, with us and with other friends, chiefly occupied in
trying to do justice to the memory of her husband. She was
most anxious to have his Asiatic reports reviewed in the
Edinburgh by Professor Max Mu'ller ; but a severe domestic
affliction prevented his doing this, and it was a bitter dis-
appointment to Madame Mohl. She returned to Paris very
much out of heart, and thence went down to Stors.
360 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
To Miss Martin.
Chez Monsieur Chevreux, Chateau de Stors, August 5, 1877.
This country is in a great turmoily state, which you are not aware
of! The Due de Broglie and a very large party of the higher classes
have set their minds on having back as much of the old government
as they can, and some say they have made an alliance with the
Bonapartists to take back the boy who remains, rather than leave the
republic to get on in its own way.
Thiers it was who made the peace with the Germans in 1870,
when the whole country was in anarchy ; and he alone wandered
about from England and Germany to see what he could do that I
know, for he sent for Mr. Mohl, when he lived very near, to go and
see him, and my spouse was touched to see the anguish he felt for
his country. As he had been always a marked man for his political
capacities and an eloquent speaker, he made some effect. He went back
to France, called an assembly at Bordeaux, consented to be the man
who would come forward to make proposals to the allies (no one else
dared, because every one said they would be for ever hated if they
talked of asking for peace). He had that courage, and got the best
conditions he could. Immense sums were asked by the Prussians.
(I don't blame them; they had been ruined by Boney in 1806,
the wonder was that they were collected and paid), and the territory
remained free. People said and they were right that Thiers had
made the peace, and those who could reason said that few but him
could have done it ; and I say the same, but I can explain it. His
passion for France and his peculiar temperament carried him through ;
and that was a rare alliance, added to a position that was also a rarity.
If a mad bull came to toss a child, and the mother by strong emotion
snatched it away just before, no one could say that woman had strong
reason and courage, etc. ; supposing that the bull was surprised for a
moment No, no ; Thiers was like the mother. His passion for
France made him run over Europe ; his passion made him master of
the French just then ; his passion made him face the mad bull (the
nation) and snatch the child. It's a fine thing, but it is not to be
done by will, even by the strongest. He was not master of himself,
fear was obliterated by the involuntary ardour. These things happen
once in two or three hundred years. Such was Joan of Arc.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 361
However, Thiers ever since has excited in a large party a different
feeling from any other political celebrity. He is now past eighty,
and though of course many false-minded and absurd persons form
parties of all shades and sorts, there is a bit of truth and honesty
somewhere, and the present set at the head of the government have
more selfishness and less disinterested qualities than the others,
besides being absurd and stroking the nation the wrong way of its
hair. But Thiers has remained the same ; he loves the nation, and
he is at the head of the opposition. Those who are reasonable want
to try and make as honest a republic as they can, and keep to its
laws ; and they have great respect for Thiers. The whole country is
in a ferment to try and get rid of the present set, who have governed
for the last nine months only. They are making elections, and
Thiers was here the other day. I had not seen him close for at least
twelve years. His face is grown fixed, as it were; he is older of
his age a great deal than many I know; his behaviour quieter; but
it is the same man.
This department is electing new members, and Thiers was invited
by my friends the Chevreux to come on the election day to make a
speech in favour of the man they want to name a depute. So all the
electors came and cheered and made a row. A grand breakfast was
given to the grand electors, and a good deal of liquids to the smaller
ones in the garden. I think / had the best of it, for my old friend
came and talked to me of our early days, and seemed quite glad to
see me.
The account of this interview is contained in a letter to
Lady Derby, quoted on page 8. The following is the
concluding paragraph
Poor Thiers had gone to London and all over Europe in 1871, like
old Belisarius, and absolutely forgot his own old self in his ardour for
his country. My dear husband happened to be in London very near
him, and called on Thiers. He was out, but sent to him to ask him
to come next morning, at what o'clock, think you ? Half-past five in
the morning. They had been long intimate, and my husband wrote
to me (I was in the country), quite touched Thiers wanted his
advice. He went from thence to Holland, I think, and it is wonderful
362 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
the effect he produced on all who saw him ; but, as they all say, he
alone put ardour enough into it to obtain the peace both at home
and abroad. My husband had never been a great admirer before,
but this quite overcame him, for the whole man forgot himself in his
anxiety for his country. Since that he behaved as well as possible ;
he went out of the presidency when it was legal, he did wonders to
stroke down the nation (no easy matter) under the heavy payment,
and I believe he won the respect of all Europe. Since the 26th of
May they have, as much as possible, destroyed all he did. As the
Chamber is to be renewed, the whole country is in a fever, and, as
far as I can judge, the moderate republicans, who wish to conform
to what was agreed in '71, are the majority of the nation ; I do not
speak of the mob, for they showed what they were capable of after
the siege : I mean the large middle class.
I have several long letters from Madame Mohl written
during this winter ; they relate almost entirely to her literary
troubles, and would not interest the public. Moreover, they
are very painful, as they show how unequal she was to cope
with her difficulties. There was no one who afforded her so
much help as Lady Eastlake, with whose artistic tastes she
likewise sympathized.
To Lady Eastlake.
Rue du Bac, January 13, 1878.
DEAREST BEST FRIEND,
It is so long since I have bothered you with my letters
that I have lost the thread of my discourse ; it was not from any
other motive but discretion. You have a work on the stocks in
which I take a great interest. I was talking to an artist yesterday
about Correggio having sometimes, and I believe generally, painted
his pictures in grey to get in the drawing, and colouring them after-
wards. I have seen one (I forget where), all the greys done and only
a portion in colours. This artist declares that Titian often did the
same. As I have had much handling of the brush in my life, it was
always a subject of great interest to me. Old Mr. Smirke was very
fond of me, and used to take great interest in my efforts. He it was
who first told me that Correggio had done this, but I never heard
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 363
that any other colourist had, and this about Titian surprised me.
My artist declared that Rubens did also. Now, that seems to me
wonderful, because there appears such a furore in his way of painting
that one can hardly conceive he did it otherwise than slap-dash. Do
you enter into any of these mechanical details of Titian's work ? I
am very curious about it. ...
I shall be thankful for a letter, but don't write if it is inconvenient.
I have been rather better and more reasonable this last month than
I have been these two years.
January 23, 1878.
DEAREST FRIEND,
I gobbled up the review * as soon as caught. I am
too much of the brush to be a good judge. All these recherches
about colour, etc., are and have been part of my life and occupation,
so I don't judge like a reader, but like a painter, and find satisfaction
in a hundred details and little touches of light and shade slipping in
in some queer or novel way which no one else would ever observe.
It gives an intense satisfaction which others cannot even perceive.
It was a bold undertaking in you to give all alive an artist who was
so entirely absorbed by art. I wonder, by-the-by, if there were many
as completely so as Titian ? Not many, I should think. The man
disappears, and leaves nothing but the painter.
I should like to know about the time of the appearance of Max
Miiller's morsel, because I shall soon think of having the pamphlets
printed in a book, as they contain much thought and valuable know-
ledge nowhere else to be found. Of course, I should like Max
Miiller's to come out first. What do you think ? Oh, how I wish
that you could go upstairs easily ! But you have a brain which makes
up for all to you, though not to us. Adieu, dearest friend.
M. MOHL.
February 25, 1878.
DEAR MINNIE,
This is to introduce to you the new secretary to the
French embassy. She is granddaughter to Madame Chevreux, and
very clever; and they are both mightily pleasant, agreeable people.f
I am half mad with anger at the English government not having
* On Titian and his works. f M. and Madame de Montebello.
364 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
taken up the cudgels last year for the Turks, and being so blind as
not to see that the Russians, having the north of Asia, are our natural
enemies. Really, this blindness is something wonderful, and they
are hypocritical enough to put it on the score of religion. Adieu.
In great haste, yours ever,
M. M.
To Lady East lake.
April 1 8, 1878.
DEAREST FRIEND,
I hope you don't think I have not thought as much
about you as if I had written. Oh no, I am always thinking about
you ; but the truth is, my spirit is broken, and I have scarcely
written to England except to my nieces. I was quite crushed I
dare say you understand it and if you did not write you felt for me.
I never doubt your friendship never. I am worse than I was, and
this last blow * has taken away all the spring necessary to carry on
the business of life. That is why I have not written ; but I must
know something about you who have been my best friend. I feel as
if the limbs of my mind were broken ; but I may perhaps get a little
better, and a friend can do me good. I just now saw one who was
very fond of my dear husband, and also of the poor Queen of
Holland. I could not help crying bitterly ; but it did me good, and
brought those choice spirits back to my mind.
Miss Wyse has been a benefactress to me, for in my present low
state the interest I have taken in her has done me good, and occupied
me when nothing else could.
Madame Mohl was very hospitable during the Exhibition
of 1878, and her kindness to others enabled her to bear the
sadness of her great loss. In the following letters her old
sense of fun crops up.
May 31, 1878.
DEAR MINNIE,
I have been intending to write every day these six
weeks to know how you are getting on. As to myself, I have little
to say. ... I think you will have a poor opinion of me when I tell
* The disappointment about the article in the Edinburgh.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 36$
you that I have not yet been to this gigantic fair, dread of the fatigue
being the overruling impression. I went May i (having two tickets
for Miss Wyse and me) to the opening in the great sprawling, useless
building called Trocadero. Nothing to be seen but the Invalides
across the river and the esplanade before it, entirely spoilt by the
booths for the future fair. The object of our going to see Marshal
MacMahon coming over the bridge at the head of a great many
horse-soldiers, between rows of a great many foot-soldiers. They
walked along at the sound of music to the Trocadero, for which
sprawling building they have shaved down a hill opposite the Champ
de Mars, which was the prettiest height outside of Paris. It was very
steep ; it came down to the river-side in terraces, on which were
houses and gardens, which looked like gigantic steps. On the
highest of all was a school, whence we could see all Paris, and far
off on the right St. Cloud, and far on the left Notre Dame and all
the distant country, and in the foreground the Champ de Mars
all covered with trees. They shaved off the hill at the cost of
millions. It was the finest view about Paris. Louis Napoleon began
by shaving off little Chaillot such a nice place a sort of little
town out of Paris. In it was the convent to which Madame de la
Valliere ran to escape from Louis XIV. It was full of romantic
recollections.
I was so cross with sitting three hours to see nothing at all but
soldiers strutting after MacMahon. I suppose he came into the
Trocadero by a fine portico; but I could not see that, being on one side.
There were three showers, or rather torrents, during the operation
of marching to the Trocadero ; up, up went thousands of umbrellas ;
the too-tooing went on all the same ; the ladies out of doors crowded
under the umbrellas and seated themselves on the grass. I suppose
they kept the ground dry with the most solid part of their persons.
There were as many out as indoors. We thought ourselves lucky to
be kept dry at both ends. We were obliged to come home on foot,
it being impossible to find one's carriage.
You know Miss Wyse she is a very interesting person ; and I
have had Miss Grant also, who has a statue in the Exhibition. Very
good it is, but I fear she will not get all the success she deserves, for
nobody judges for himself; it's all those who get puffed and are
clever at that. I am as vexed as possible with the papers to see how
little people know good from bad.
366 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
I have had already a houseful, and shall go on as long as I am
here, as I have three batches of nephews and nieces, all from Eng-
land. I have not room to invite my German ones. I will lend you
my house in July or August, if you like to have it. I live as solitary
as ever, having no spirits ; but I was obliged to give one dinner for
Lord and Lady Derby. It was a great effort, but I got through it.
Why should they side with Russia ? For my own part I abhor the
Russians, and if I were a man I would spend my last breath and
penny to help the poor Turks. I think we have behaved like fools,
and base fools, forgetting how the Turks sided with us all through
Bonaparte's power. I did not say all this to Lord Derby, but I did
to the Duke of Bedford, who is much more reasonable ; he is
quite charming. They wanted to see Leon Say and Renan and
Taine. It's astonishing how greedy the English are of Taine ; they
have such whims, it's quite comical. Lord Houghton called two
days before with such a pretty, slight daughter. They came in the
evening ; I had not room for them at dinner. Adieu, dear. Pray
write to me.
June 13, 1878.
... If I had nothing to do but to read my dear husband's
letters, and judge if they would do as much honour to his memory as
it appears to me that they ought, I should think my life just en-
durable ; but with these odious impediments and an execrably bad
memory, I often think what a good thing it would be if a strong
large thing was just to press on my throat for a quarter of an hour
and put an end to my worries. I try to think that, having been so
happy with my dear husband, I ought not to complain ; and I don't.
I only want to be rid of this tiresome combat called life. . . .
The reading of my letters fills my soul with remorse. I did not
do half what I ought, and my long absences are so much stolen from
the happy past. But I will not enter into the dark corners of my
mind.
To Princess Bat thy any.
June 13, 1878.
DEAR FRIEND,
It is almost a month since I have been intending to
write to you a very reproachful letter for letting me know of your
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 367
departure only when it was too late to go and see you, for you were
gone. To my surprise a letter came to announce it, and also a
printed paper of what appears to me a particularly ingenious way of
doing good to some poor children. You may think it queer that I
should be all this time before I wrote to tell you all my regrets at
your unexpected departure and my sorrow for it, and I am quite
ready to agree it was very odd, and to beg your indulgence; but
since I have lost the prop and stay of my life, I really believe some
part of my reason has been annihilated, for I am constantly doing
the oddest things, which give me an appearance of either stupidity
or indifference. Now, the first is quite deserved, but not the second.
I really have lost part of my faculties in losing my dear, my incom-
parable husband ; but, my dear friend, you have too much real kind-
ness in your nature not to be indulgent to me when I tell you that
the quickness of perception which prevented me from appearing
negligent of my dear friends has quite left me. I am at times so
absent that I am like another person, and as you have known me,
I believe, for twenty-five years, I beg you to pardon and pity me.
The great grief I have suffered has brought on these fits of absence
which have made me lose two or three friends, but I think you have
indulgence enough in your large heart to forgive, and sense enough
to comprehend and make allowances for me.
Believe me, whatever I may do, to be your ever attached and
faithful friend,
MARY MOHL.
June 27, 1878.
DEAR MINNIE,
Up to this day I had a sort of determination to go to
Scotland to spend two or three months with my dear friend, Lady
Clark. Her house is on the hill which borders the valley of the Dee.
They had both been so kind in their persuasions, and I am so fond
of them that I had quite determined. But I have at last taken
courage and read letters of my dear husband for this last fortnight ;
I stumbled upon the packet of 1870-71, and was astounded to find
how different his vivid descriptions are from the present remembrances,
and how useful it would be to see the thing as it was then. You
know his letters ; * they are partly French, partly English, but all are
* Some of the letters referred to are published in Chapter XII.
368 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
alive. Now, I cannot help thinking it would be useful to truth to
make them public. You are the best judge that I know on such
matters. Do you think it would be advisable to print a certain
number in one of the numerous periodicals? Could they remain
as they are some French, some English ? Give me your opinion ;
you have, I believe, heard me read many of them in 1870, when I
lived with you and the Clarks. He was here during the Commune ;
also he crossed the Rhine to take my niece's boy home, not choosing
to trust him to chance, just when the French declared their hostility
to Berlin. He found Grammont, the French envoy, at Stuttgart,
who told him war was declared. Now the French declare that the
Germans began. As it all comes naturally, it is the best history I
know of the state of things just then.
A natural consequence of this resolution is a total change in all
" my plans. I renounce going to Scotland, and must stay here. I have
another advantage in not going ; I shall have time here to see you, if
you will come to this great fair. It is an exhibition monstre, and I
privately think it will be the last that will ever take place.
Send me an answer about the letters. You could refer to
Arthur Stanley and many others as to the qualities of my husband's
letters.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
The heat drove her out of Paris, and the following letter
is in answer to one from me, reproaching her for not letting
me know when she passed through London. It shows how
much she disliked the idea of being looked after.
Cold Overton, 1878.
... I don't wonder you are angry with me. The case was this.
I started with the idea of remaining at least a week in London, and,
of course, going to see you, and I started suddenly because I found
a lady and her husband, nice people, who were willing that I should
join them, and it was not convenient just then for either of my nieces
to come and travel back with me, so that my setting off was hurried
and unprepared. I arrived at 6 p.m. at the Victoria Station. It was
near to Flo. I had written only to her that I would come, telling
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 369
her to hire me a room. She had found none, and gave me her
own. This was a great vexation to me ; but I was so dead with
fatigue that I could not fret, and could only go to bed. Next morn-
ing I was prepared to hunt for quarters when some one arrived.
It was a niece from Sussex. "Good Lord, what shall I do with
you ? I am staying at an invalid's. Why did you come ? " " Oh,
to take care of you." " But I've nowhere to put you." " Well, I'll
go back." Half an hour after rat-tat another niece come from
Leicestershire, a hundred miles off. " Good Lord, what have you
come for?" " Why, to be with you and take care of you." "Good
Lord, I have no room for you ! " It was too late to go back a
hundred miles. Before this second calamity I had just had time
to call on a friend a few doors off, who said she would give me a
room ; but she had but one to spare. I was in perfect despair ;
I could not stow the two nieces, and the night I had spent filled
me with remorse for putting Flo out of her bed. I was ready to
wring my hands, and in a fit of despair I said, " I'll go down to
Cold Overton to-morrow, for this is unendurable," but it was too
late; so another room was found at the top of the house. I
am quite determined to keep my arrival a dead secret henceforth.
But can you imagine anything more provoking than to have every
project and arrangement overturned by people's kindness? for
I could not send these girls hunting about after an hotel. A
London hotel is my horror; besides, why should I go spending
money at a hotel when I have plenty of friends ready and glad to
receive me ? The next time I come I shall not tell the date, or give
one a fortnight later. I am still under the inconvenience of the
whole affair. I'm grown very stupid ; my spirits are quite gone. I
am not the same person I was ; it is all I can do to get on at all
to take a resolution, to exert myself in any way. I make a constant
effort not to sit down and cry, and say I care for nothing ; everything
is a torment to me. It was in this state of total prostration that I
have been obliged to decide on everything for months. My spirits,
so high all my life, have quite left me ; half the time I am only dis-
posed to say, "Let me sit down and die, for everything is indifferent
to me." When you think of that dear, kind friend lost for me, I'm
sure you will only pity me, and owe me no grudge. Alas ! I have
not strength to bear it. I came here like a wounded bird, and just
bear life as well as I can. Only one who knows what my husband
2 B
370 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
was and very few know it can understand how totally bereaved I
am. Adieu.
Yours most gratefully and affectionately,
MARY MOHL.
To Lady East lake.
Store, August 17, 1878.
DEAR, BEST OF FRIENDS,
I was talking of you yesterday, and M. Chevreux told me
to say how glad he should be to see you at Stors, if you should be
in France next summer. I may truly say they are now the best
friends I have in France ; their house is open to me and my nieces
at all times.
I am reading over my husband's letters, and I am glad that I
published his reports so immediately, for he mentions it often as a
favourite intention for years back, which I had then scarcely observed.
On reading over those letters, I am astonished that I was so unkind
as to leave him every year three or four months. He governs himself,
but I see how much he missed me. My sister, to whom I was
greatly attached, lost her only daughter ; I made a sort of inward
vow that I would never spend a year without some months passed
with her. My dear husband respected the feeling, and never com-
plained ; but now I see it And then another thought strikes me.
These letters, such a treasure to me, would never have been written
but for these annual separations ! Adieu, dear friend ; excuse and
forgive me for saying so much about myself.
October, 1878.
Since we have had any communication Max Miiller has published
his article, so long expected ; it has more facts in it than any one else
would have been able to put together, and the very similarity of their
positions, both making their way in foreign lands, enabled him to do
it better than others ; in fact, I was well pleased with it. I have had
one hundred copies printed, apart from the review, to send to
friends.
We have all been demented here with the Exposition ; I say we
out of sociability, for I have been four times, and each time so tired
that I vowed I would not go again. Now I will make a humble
confession, viz. : the produit de Findustrie that most pleased and
interested me, was a large glass sort of cage, full of Japanese fish ;
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 371
whether they were the produits de Vindustrie ou de la nature, I know
not, but they were certainly alive, and more like living jewels than
anything I could compare them to. I could not tear myself away
from them ; they are not to be described. Adieu, dearest, goodest
friend.
M. Renan writes to me that a friend of his wishes to write a
review of the " L Shah Nameh " in a French review. The French have
a much higher notion of the historical value of the great Eastern
epic than the English, because Asia appears to them the first, vast
nourisher of the first metaphysical race. The English look upon Asia
as a country to send their daughters to get husbands. I never heard
one of them talk of it with the sort of venerating superstition that fills
the minds of the cultivated Germans and French. Even the cultivated
English think more of it politically than as the birthplace of meta-
physical ideas, as they do in the rest of Europe. Then the French are
proud of having published, at their own expense, some of the earliest
efforts of the human mind. Pray, have you ever read Bernier's
Travels? He flourished in the days of Louis XIV., and lived long
at the court of the great Mogul. There is a letter of the great
Emperor Akbar, who had, I think, the finest mind that ever was
on a throne. It is a very curious book, and such a mind as Akbar's
could not have been the only one. Adieu, dear lady; I hope I
don't ennuyer you with my frequent letters, for you are a great
comfort to me.
December I, 1878.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I am sure you must think me a horrid pig to be so
long without writing, and so I am ; but there are no pigs so bad as
sick ones, nor no quadruped so bad as a sick biped. I have been
very ill all the month of November. It's no use entering into par-
ticulars ; besides, I forget half at least. I fell ill the week your dear
aunt was here ; nevertheless, we were the best friends imaginable, I
am very fond of her, but whether I behaved well I know not. For
the last three weeks I verily believe I have not behaved at all. I was
in bed, or sitting opposite to the fire, looking at it, and beginning a
letter to my sister eighteen times and never finishing it. I will try
to enter into life again now. We are all here in a state of folly ; the
372 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
country seems to me in a sort of lock-jaw, as far as a poor stupid, list-
less, half-dead animal like me can have any view at all. Barthe"lemy
stayed two hours with me to-day talking of it, but I could only see
the lock-jaw. To-morrow I will go out, for I'm a leetle better, and
the lock-jaw state rather amuses me. I'll go to my notary for some
money, and hear what he'll say. I'll go to Madame Say's. Mean-
time, I'm told you're publishing some journals of your father's ; of
course I'm most anxious to see them. I loved your father, and he
loved me, though we never said so. Yet we were not at all like
Viola, who never told her love (it's the prettiest thing in all Shake-
speare). Tell me some news. I'm in despair about the poor Turks ;
I hate the Russians like poison. These politics give me a sort of
feverish circulation. If I live another month, I intend to bite into
life again. I'm afraid this vile fellow D'Israeli has no bowels. If I
could shoot Gladstone to-morrow I would, if I was hung next day
for it I should not care a pin ; but I'm such a poor honey I don't
know how to fire a pistol Write to me, but whatever you do don't
be overwise in your answer, for that enrages me. My love to your
husband. It's impossible to describe how unlike we are to each
other, so we suit beautifully.
Midnight If I keep this till to-morrow I shall read it, and of
course shall not send it, so " va pour la poste." Amen.
Just as this book was going to press, I received the follow-
ing interesting letter from Miss Emma Weston, Madame
Mohl's American friend. In alluding to the mistaken notions
formed of Madame Mohl by those who did not know her,
she writes
Shallow, superficial people have naturally remembered, and
repeated whatever was " in harmony with their gift," as Emerson says.
You and I know she was not at all the light-minded, trifling, unreflecting
butterfly some people have represented. She had strong passions,
strong prejudices, and strong affections. She never had the weak-
ness of thinking every man in love with her. I first knew her inti-
mately in 1850. I sat to her for my portrait, and I passed every day,
and sometimes the evening also, alone with her for several months.
In her last years she was not a superficial, worldly woman, suffering
because the world had left her ; she was a woman of strong affections.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 373
suffering acutely because she had outlived almost all who were
dearest to her. She could do without society, much as she loved it,
and if Ida could have lived with her, she would have been as happy
as the loss of M. Mohl would allow. Nobody who experienced as
I did the warmth and fidelity of her affection will ever forget it.
I was either absent from Paris or greatly occupied as a garde-
malade during the last three or four years of her life, but I saw her
at intervals, and, with the exception of a loss of memory for recent
events, she was entirely unchanged. During the last six months I
was too ill to leave my room, which I shall ever regret.
Madame Mohl was constantly sending me the kindest
invitations, and I felt as if I ought not to refuse them ; but
her nieces confirmed my belief that she was not equal to
receiving visitors, for, from all I heard, she soon became so
fatigued that she ceased to enjoy their company. I there-
fore went again, in the spring of 1879, to the Hdtel St.
Remain, and spent with her, as before, some part of every
day. Her society was as delightful and as nourishing as
ever. We were not able to enjoy our favourite amusement
going together to the play, for she was not strong enough
at that time ; but soon after I left Paris, Mrs. Wynne
Finch took her one evening when she was particularly well
to the Fran^ais. As soon as they entered the box Madame
Mohl looked round with childlike glee and exclaimed, " My
dear, I could kiss the house ! " She took off her bonnet, as
she always did when she wanted to be thoroughly at her ease.
When the principal actress came on, dressed in the scanty
garments then in fashion, " Law," she exclaimed, " she's as
naked as a needle ! "
She had, fortunately, in her later years a friend under the
same roof. In 1871, M. and Madame d'Abbadie (he is the
celebrated Egyptian traveller, a member of the Institut,
and a most distinguished man) took the second floor of
1 20, Rue du Bac. They proved a most valuable acquisition.
374 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Madame d'Abbadie is full of kindness, intelligence, and
originality, Madame Mohl delighted in her company, and
when she was absent from Paris she used to write long
letters "full of grace," as Madame Mohl used to say, when
she read them aloud to me. After M. Mohl's death Madame
d'Abbadie used to pay Madame Mohl a visit every even-
ing at 9.30, when the dear old lady had had her nap, and
was disposed, as usual, to talk till midnight. She used to
send up to know if Madame Mohl was alone ; if any one else
was there she would not go in, consequently I did not often
meet her while I was in Paris. " Certainly, the most devoted
of my friends," as Madame Mohl wrote in 1877, "is Sophie
Quirins." She came to see her every day, and frequently
was sent for by her old friend at odd times. When she
arrived Madame Mohl had generally forgotten what she
wanted her for. " I suppose, my dear, I ennuyted myself,"
she would say. When she urged, as she frequently did,
Madame Quirins to come with her sister and live in the
Rue du Bac, Madame Quirins always refused, saying, " You
know, dear Madame Mohl, we should be too much for you ;
you would get tired of us." Her English nieces would have
been only too glad to have taken it in turns to look after her,
but as soon as she suspected that they were with her for her
comfort, not for their own pleasure, she wearied of them, and
they had to leave her to the care of her kind servants, who
did their best, but who could not watch over her in the way
that her age and increasing infirmities seemed to render
necessary. Another constant friend was Mademoiselle de
Tourguenieff, and of course there must have been many
others whose names I do not know.
Mignet still survived, and Barthelemy St. Hilaire ; Lome"-
nie died not long before my visit in 1879. But she took
an increasing delight in M. Kenan's conversation, and the
Due de Broglie never forgot her. Dr. de Mussy was a valued
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 375
friend as well as a kind physician, and she left him a picture
in her will : her best picture, a Greuze, she left to our
National Gallery.
Besides all these, her English friends never failed to visit
her when they passed through Paris. A kind welcome always
awaited those who went to see her, although she could not
always remember who they were. By never contradicting
her fancies, but by linking on the present to the past, she
would gradually become clearer and talk with her old
vivacity.
Another terrible blow fell on her this year in the death
of her sister, Mrs. Frewen Turner. She wrote to Lady
Derby
June 3, 1879.
DEAREST LADY,
I do so wish to hear from you ! But I am grown so
modest that I have scarcely courage to write, thinking how little I am
worth reading. Yet I hate modesty it is like a hump on one's back ;
the less it is attended to the better, and those who have it ought to
have the discretion not to give the slightest hint about it and here
is actually a whole page about it. But I want to know how you are,
and where, and how the world of England wags. I am very unhappy
about Sir Bartle Frere, who was a great friend of my husband's, and
very kind indeed to me. I have lost my sister, my only bister, since
you have had communication with me ; I have been almost crushed
to pieces by it. I am a little better, and I read all my dear husband's
letters ; they have so much rare and deep thought in them that I
cannot help thinking they ought not to disappear. When I do hear
from you tell me what you think of Sir Bartle Frere has he been
mistaken ? The best and wisest are sometimes ; and when one thinks
of all the numerous ways of being mistaken in public life, our greatest
wonder ought to be that it ever happens otherwise, with all the good-
will in the world.
Pray, dear lady, preserve in a corner of your heart some of the
kind feeling you have always had for me, and believe that I have
valued it with all my heart and might. If I go to England this
376 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
summer which is very doubtful shall I have a chance of seeing
you, and where ?
Adieu. Whether I write or not, believe that I have always the
deep feeling that I am understood and sympathized with by you,
and am ever grateful, and it does me good.
June 20, ten o'clock.
DEAREST LADY,
For the first time I have taken up this very night the
thick packet of letters written to me after my husband's death, of
which I had only read those from dear friends. The very restricted
intimate society I have kept up here is dispersed for the summer;
I am more lonely than ever, and I am trying to sort my papers.
I found a letter amongst others of yours, dear friend, which I read,
no doubt, with many tears, dated January 8, 1876 so kind, so tender.
I know I read it then, but just now it comes so fresh to me, like a
cool leaf upon a smarting wound. You have a very rich heart, dear
friend, and how you suffered at your brother's death ! How I felt for
you, though I did not venture to say much ! It seems as if speech
were too coarse at certain times, and like a brush upon a wound.
Perhaps I am cruel to speak of it now, but I did so feel for you
that I must tell you so once in my life. Perhaps I ought not to
touch upon past sufferings. Forgive me, for I felt so for you, and it
is so seldom one can kpancher one's sympathies ; a sort of trouble-
some thick veil seems thrust into the most sensitive part of one's
soul, packing up each particular grief.
Pray tell me something about yourself. Are the politics torment-
ing or soothing just now ? for I suspect they swing between those
two extremes. Tell me what is thought by the wisest people. I
near that things are in a very ticklish way in India, and I think
we are sidling into mischief, and if we are we shall not easily
get out of it. But, to turn to nonsense, I hear you are all abso-
lutely mad about a certain actress called Sarah Bernhardt, in whom
vanity is certainly more robust than it has ever been even in the
most sturdy personifications of that overpowering passion. I have
often tried to find out by analyzing why these personifications are
more abundant in France than elsewhere. Is vanity the most healthy
and powerful passion among the most civilized or the less civilized ?
I can't tell you how often I have examined that point of natural
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 377
history till I was stupefied, and I have not been able to find it out.
At the first glance it appears that the uncivilized must have less, but
I don't assert this as a certain truism. Adieu, dear lady.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
To Lady Eastlake.
Paris, July, 1879.
DEAREST FRIEND,
I am going to London, I think, on Tuesday. I shall be
at Mrs. Lushington's, but shall stay a very short time there. I go
because I'm ill and can't eat, and it's possible that staying in the
country may bring back the faculty. I have written to say I will go
to my niece in the country. Perhaps you are not in town. Don't
believe that I have not the same love, the same high esteem, the
same trust in you, because I have not written ; but I am like an
old dried-up leaf blown about by the wind. I fall into a corner like
a lost bit of rubbish ; a gust comes, and all at once I am in the whirl-
wind. I do so want to see you ; what I want is your compassion.
I'm not worthy of much else. I will not write more until I know
that you still take an interest in me.
Yours ever, ever, ever,
MARY MOHL.
To Lady Eastlake.
Wormstall, July, 1879.
Pray, dear friend, send me a line about your state of health and
foot. I do so feel for you, but if your head still governs despotically
your hand, I retract much of my pity. Consider the thousand legs
and feet you have to govern your fellow-creatures with, by that hand
covering a number of printed sheets, which we shall all read with
empressement which will lay eggs in many heads, and will turn out live
ideas instead of live chickens in other people's heads. For instance,
you wrote " Venice Defended " some years ago. I can't tell the
number of times I have made use of it, and served up the chickens
it produced in my head to people who by accident mentioned
Venice. Keep your goodwill for me ; it is a real charity, for fate
has trodden on me with a heavy and nailed shoe. I feel as crushed
as a poor mole under a ploughboy's foot ; yet no one is to blame it
378 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
is in the nature of things. I try to think of things in general, and
a little less of my own.
Wormstall, August, 1879.
DEAR MINNIE,
I left Paris July 23, came to London at nine at night,
slept at my dear little B 's sister's, came next morning here, and
have been ever since with my niece, Selina Vickers a very valuable,
kind niece, who bears all my forgetfulness with kindness and indul-
gence for the sake of what I have been ; for now, alas ! I am a very
poor creature, with no more reason than a cat that is choking (as the
French say). Write and tell me where you are and what you do.
The bother of the journey seems to have extinguished the little
memory I had ; it is as volatile as a fine perfume. Pray write
immediately. Yours ever,
M. M.
To Lady Eastlake.
Wormstall, August 13, 1879.
DEAR LADY,
I found here Kinglake's " Invasion of the Crimea," for the
first time I have seen it, so I set to valorously, and am at the third
volume. It seems to me a wonderful book ; but I am not a wonderful
person, and my poor head wants a guide-post sadly. I never shall
cease regretting that I never met with it during my dear husband's
life, as he could have led me through ; but he never saw it, and I
much regret it, for the man's feelings are all mine, and I understand
many of them from my knowledge of the rascally regime of Louis
Napoleon, which I fear the English will hardly believe. Do you
know him Kinglake, I mean ? I did some years ago, and never
shall cease regretting having lost sight of him ; but I shall write to
tell him that the reading his book is an event in my life. If he
don't care I don't mind, and if he does I shall be glad he should
know it
We asked her to come to us at Bournemouth.
Wormstall, August, 1879.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I have received yours to-day too late for the post. I
have been worrying myself to death because I can't go before Satur-
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 379
day. They will not let me go alone; and a gentleman in the
house is going Saturday to his parish to preach on Sunday, and takes
me as far as Lyndhurst, I cannot say they are wrong, for I am
become such a poor creature since I have lost all that made life
worth having ; my memory is so gone I am not the same creature.
Dear Minnie, don't expect it. When there was a question of my
going alone to you a hue-and-cry was set up. I vowed I would
go by myself in spite of cross-railroad, waiting, etc. ; but they all
agreed that the cross trains were too puzzling, and the clergyman in
question being obliged to go Saturday it would be nothing to retard
a day, so I agreed, hoping you also will think it wiser. Adieu till
Saturday. I reach Bournemouth East at 7.5, according to your
precious paper. Au revoir done.
She came to us on August 27, and stayed till September 18,
when we ourselves went away. She had the misfortune to
lose her box on the road, we sent in all directions for it and
pitied her extremely. " Ah, my dear ! " she cried, " I should
not care at all about it if only my hair would curl ! "
She was too fragile to walk far, but she was very light and
active. She used to trip out by herself on the terrace fronting
the sea before our house at Bournemouth, which was too far
east to be invaded by promenaders. One day a German
band came, and we could see her from our windows dancing
and curtsying and figuring away to the sound like a child of
six. She must at that time have been eighty-six.
All her friends at Bournemouth were delighted to see her ;
even Sir Henry Taylor would toil up the hill to call upon
her. She was still able to spend a day in the New Forest,
and, as usual, she was full of life in the evening. We had a
very large house, and it was full of people of all ages. The
older members of the party used to play at whist, but she
never touched a card. After she had had her nap she was
ready to talk or to listen to music, and as charming as ever,
for she never became in the least deaf.
380 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
To Lady Derby.
16, Great Queen Street, Westminster, S.W., 1879.
DEAREST LADY,
I have been in England these two months, but good
for little, and principally at Bournemouth for sea-air. I had not
courage to write, thinking you would be far off in the north country,
in which direction I have ceased to go since my sister's death. Pray,
dearest lady, let me hear from you ; you will ever remain a bright
light in my life. I knew you when all was happy and joyful around
me; but you, you are a rare gem, and I know how to distinguish
you from the uncountable multitude. It is a charitable act to
let me see the luminary, even at a distance, in views few and far
between.
Adieu, dear lady; you will ever have one human being who
loves and never loses sight of you if ever so far, ever so distant, ever
so silent that is me.
M. MOHL.
After her return home she wrote to Lady Eastlake
November I, 1879.
DEAR FRIEND,
We arrived safe last night at seven o'clock. I never
came over so free from sea-sickness or discomfort. It is the same
machine which brought me over to England ; it is two boats pasted
together. I may say that I have not seen or heard of anything half
so successful.
Of course, it is an effort to settle down into one's habits and read
and answer the innumerable letters, etc. I am sorry to say the
weather is not a bit better than in London. I was joyously received
by my two maids and one of the cats the other cares for nobody.
Alas ! what a treat it was to return when my dear husband was
here so joyous to receive me, so amusing, so full of new matter ! I
sometimes wonder at myself for being able to live, and then I say to
myself, "Ungrateful that I am; ought I not to be thankful for so
many good years ? How few have had so much happiness in their
life ! Have I a right to complain ? " This silences my murmurs ;
but how hard it is to be just and reasonable !
Yours ever,
M. MOHL,
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 381
She asked my son to come and stay with her, but he was
not able to do so, as he was at college.
Paris, December 2, 1879.
DEAREST MINNIE,
It is a pleasanter time for strangers to come here in
January than in December, because you know what a fuss they make
about the jour de Fan, and they put off their parties very willingly to
that jovial time to kill more birds with one stone. Some have even
the impudence to put off coming to Paris till after the jour de Fan^
that they mayn't have so many etrennes to give. When I say some, I
could say more than half the poople.
My dear husband's first volume is printed, but the second will
take about three weeks. It is all his annual reviews for twenty-seven
years of what the Oriental Society in France had done for Oriental
science and literature while he was secretary. He has made quite a
creation of what I had expected would be a dull nomenclature. The
second volume is in the press.
I am afraid poor A made a sad mistake ; people always do
when they marry a man much older than themselves.* He's always
selfish I have seen no exceptions. When a man has reached fifty
or thereabouts in bachelorhood, his habits of selfishness are' quite
fixed, and nothing can exceed the folly of supposing any love possible
in the world will counteract fifty years of bachelor selfishness unless,
indeed, he has been twenty years in love with the same person, and
been accustomed to sacrifice all his whims to that person. But these
are exceptional cases. Don't let your daughters marry men much
older than themselves, unless they are very old and going to die.
That's a different sort of calculation. I am very sorry for poor
A . If I were her, I would try and grow worldly and build my
life up in that way ; but it's only a makeshift, after all. Alas ! my
marriage was so wonderfully happy to me, and I cared so little for
the world and its vanities, that it appears a terrible come-down to
have to make one's self content in that way ; but it is wiser to make
the best of it, as one must live on with half-and-half companionship.
I fear in such a case I should have taken some ratsbane, but I don't
advise it to others ; and the fact is, I should never have tumbled
* The marriage alluded to turned out very well, in spite of Madame Mohl's
forebodings.
382 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
into such a case. Marriage was always to my imagination everything
or nothing (but that is not common), and when it is broken life is
broken too for ever.
January 8, 1880.
You must have been astonished not to have heard of me all
this time. The fact is, I have been so ill the last three weeks,
and so hoping every day to get better, that I put off writing with
that expectation. The frost last month nearly killed me, and I dare
say you have had enough of it. There has not been such a
winter since 1789, which I have heard my granny often talk of
during my childhood, because her spouse, Captain Hay (the first
and greatest sea captain that ever was), was living on dry land then
with his family, and was the only person capable of banging and un-
freezing certain legs of mutton, made so awfully hard by that great
frost. What long descriptions I have heard of that winter ; and this
winter, I hear heaps of people say, is the worst that has been heard
of since. On the lyth of last December I wrote to my wood-mer-
chant for wood, and it is my habit to have it sent in a quantity
sufficient for a month ; but his answer was that he could send me
none till December 29. I was nearly at my last log. Judge of my
horror ! for coals, which I dislike, but asked for, were just in the
same case, no more abundant, not get-at-able, for they all come to
Paris by water, and all the rivers were frozen. The fact is, there
are four great rivers that do half the manual labour in France, and
as they don't eat as horses and men do, it is one of the reasons
why France is the richest country in Europe if you take in that
they are all navigable, and that there are vast tracts of country
through which they go majestically along for nothing except paying
the few who man the barges. Besides which, they have smaller
rivers which communicate ; and if you consider that France has the
Mediterranean, the Western Ocean, and the Manche, which can all
thus communicate chiefly by water, you can see at a glance the
great use these powerful servants render to the nation almost with-
out wages. If labour is riches which is an axiom in political
economy how much more so when the labourers don't eat ! Now,
these worthy labourers could do nothing when frozen, and wood and
coals all come from a great distance. You may judge the discomfort
and misery to the poor in Paris, so that the thaw was hailed as the
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 383
greatest of mercies; but even that was almost a calamity, for the
enormous masses of ice brought down by the sudden thaw broke
down the Pont des Invalides, besides every bridge being injured in
a less degree. I shall never cease regretting I did not go down
the street to see it. Every one says it was awfully grand to see these
masses sailing rapidly down and knocking down every obstacle ; but
I was so poorly I could not go. Those who went say that on the
bridge you felt the strange delusion that the bridge was sailing down,
and the rivers and the barges were all standing still. I believe it is
coming back, for there is a hard white frost all over the garden. It
will be all snow and ice. Kindest remembrance to your spouse and
children, and pity me if I have a second bout of this horrible weather.
I believe I shall die of it.
To Lady East lake.
January 12, 1880.
DEAR FRIEND,
I have been intending to write I do not know how long,
but the intense cold has almost killed me, and the last twelve days
have not been too much to thaw me ; beside which, wood and coal
were so dear that one felt on the road to ruin when one had a
good fire, because, forsooth, all the fuel burnt in Paris comes on the
backs of the noble-minded industrious rivers, which cost France
nothing (at least one way), when they march majestically to the sea,
so that the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, the Manche, and the
Rhine are in connection, and bring one fuel. Water is our servant,
fire is yours ; but fire is a gormandizing servant, water is humble and
sober.
A fortnight ago, when the thaw began, all Paris went to see the
Seine caracoling like an overfed horse. The icebergs rushed along
like mad, broke the bridges ; the Pont des Invalides has lost the three
middle arches. The people would go down to see it close, and got
drowned no end to the mischief. I was so ill with cold I could
not go. I would have given anything to see the icebergs rushing
along. I trust you may have a milder time ; still it was worth seeing,
if fuel were not as dear as gold.
Pray, dear friend, tell me when you'll come. If I can get one or
two people to meet you, it will be worth while. A very agreeable
lady, named Mrs. Tennant, has been here ; do you know her ? I
384 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
wish particularly to re-find Mr. Kinglake, whom I knew well long
ago. Would you try to send the enclosed to him ?
Yours most affectionately,
M. MOHL.
March I, 1 880.
DEAR Miss WYSE,
Oh, oh, oh, what a handwriting ! I have been half an
hour making it out, though it's not worse than others. There's not
a nation in Europe writes so badly as the English; now, it is not
worthy of so sensible a nation, who values time.
The dean has just sent me a most charming book he has been
writing the portrait of his father. What a delightful man he must
have been ! I'm quite in love with him.
I'm very impatient for my niece Ida to come, as I want to write
all my dispositions, because I have a notion I shall not go on above
a year or two more, and I want to make all my arrangements about
my will ; she, of all the family, is the one I shall leave in charge of
what I call my under-arrangements. I have many precious things to
dispose of which I wish to leave to this or that friend.
I have been out of all patience about my husband's book. I
particularly wish both volumes to come out before the London season
is over, for this reason the second volume is mostly on India. Her
ancient civilization, her profound ideas, and the quantity of study
and learning the Anglo-Indians have spent upon India, almost fill
the volume. Now, no one before has been able to give an account
of what the English have done to fathom the ancient civilization of
India. It has been the most difficult and curious part of all my
husband's studies, and he has given all his attention to it, therefore
what has been done by the numerous deep-searching Englishmen who
have been employing their intellect in examining the past history
and civilization of the Sanscrit-speaking race has been searched into
by my husband, and shown to the public in this book. I should,
therefore, wish it to come out before the men he speaks of have left
London, for many of them would be glad to see their names pro-
claimed to Europe, for it is an European book ; and, as I have one
foot in the grave, I should like to hear my husband's profound
researches and sharp intellect appreciated by my countrymen.
The book's title is " Vingt-sept ans d'e'tudes Orientales." I don't
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 385
think there exists any book in Europe that can interest Anglo-
Indian students so much. As to its being a stock book by-and-by
I have no doubt, but I should just wish to have a taste of its success
before I die. Of course I do not expect it to be read like a Dickens
novel, but I hope for the sort of success such a book can have. I
shall go to England, I suppose, in the summer ; I have three places
in London where I am sure of a welcome. How glad I should be if
some good fortune threw me into company with your delightful
host ; * but he will not be in London, I fear. Will you ask him if he
ever read a book by the Princess Belgiojoso about Syria ? She speaks
of the Turkish peasants in Syria as the finest race of men. The book
is very clever ; I shall bring it to England. It is full of originality
and profound observation. Adieu.
MARY MOHL.
To Lady Eastlake.
I read your book f with great pleasure within twenty-four hours
of its arrival. I suppose it was a sort of filial respect that made you
dress it so well, but I do assure you it is quite worthy of being
printed on common paper, for it is full of life ; and I only wish some
avant-propos had been written, to give some idea of the efforts that
had been making for the last fifteen years at least to amend the in-
numerable bad institutions and abuses that preceded the Revolution.
No single, or even a good many books, will do justice to the general
up-heaving there was in all the high-minded and civilized people to
correct the absurd state of things that had been slowly brought on
by a hundred years of darkness. But I suspect it was not only in
France, but that all over Europe, a general overturn was wanted.
Poor France led the way, with her usual ardour after new things.
She had been just as impetuous and violent five hundred years
before about the Crusades.
I have just seen Madame Say, who is preparing to set off. I
rejoice much at Say's nomination, because he will do all he can to
make things smooth. His having the charge of the commerce treaty
is a wonderfully good thing, he being so fond of the union of the
* Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.
t Dr. Rigby's " Letters during the Revolution of 1789."
2 C
386 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
two nations. Their going will be an additional temptation to me to
go. Adieu, dear lady.
Yours ever,
M. MOHL.
Paris, May 7, 1880.
I have this moment received yours of the 6th, and hasten to
tell you of a new turn in my projects. I am going to England on
June i. My niece Ida is willing to go with me, and an old friend of
hers wishes to see her above all things. This friend wants me to go
to her too, and though I did not intend leaving till July, I have
altered all my plans, and shall be in London on June i.
I am so glad you like Madame de Remusat's book. I could not
lay it down. It is so much the more valuable, that she had been
fond of the man in the beginning, and was so very young when she
enterd the gouffre. It has confirmed all my ancient opinions and
judgments about Bonaparte, which might have been those of a
blind person feeling with his hands the features he can't know
with his eyes, who all at once sees all the individual parts he had
suspected. It is wonderful that it has preserved so much truth, being
written after she had destroyed the first in a fit of terror, and I think
her grandson has done one of the greatest services that could be
done in publishing it ; but he has been much abused for it, and the
reason given is " qu'il ne faut pas dire du mal de ses maitres." So a
reputation is to be bought, body and soul pretty morality !
I am, of course, very ignorant as to the politics in England. I
have a certain tendency towards disliking the Radicals, and all I can
do is to make up for it by not liking the Conservatives much ; and yet
I am extremely interested in all my country's politics, and in their
doing what is right. So you may guess how very doubtful I am, and
especially how few friends I can side with, always finding them both
wrong and right at times ; so I abstain from talking, for fear of
quarrelling with all I see.
Ever yours most affectionately,
M. MOHL.
To Miss Wyse.
May 7, 1880.
Ida is perfectly delighted at this unexpected treat of going to
England, and, in fact, I am not sorry, although going at an election
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 387
time is a horrid bore when one don't take an impassioned interest
in politics, which I do not, because, though I cannot abide Glad-
stone, I am not at all sure that I have an unlimited faith in D'Israeli
either ; and the worst of English politics is that you must believe in
the important head of the party, whatever you may think of the
individual, and of the plans and views and conduct of the said head.
The man the man is all, and I have very little worship for either
of them. Neither do I care a button for the odd whim they have in
England for the faculty of pouring out words as a waterfall pours
out water, whether the subject is worth it or not. I can't think that
a man, who published a whole book to prove that the " Iliad " is
another version of the Gospel, can be a sensible man ; and an owner
of good sense in managing the menage of a nation must be more
useful than all the eloquence that has drowned the common sense
of the English nation for a hundred years. However, I won't bother
you with my notions. I write to say that I go to London on June i
to Mrs. Walter Bagehot's. Pray write a note to tell me where you
are to be found.
Believe me yours ever,
M. MOHL.
To Lady Derby.
May 20, 1880.
DEAREST LADY,
I was delighted to get your last letter, May 19 ; so kind
after a long apparent silence. I found your former lost letter amongst
many others, unopened. I must have been absent when it came,
and they were all tied up together. I shall be in London ist or
2nd June, and shall be glad beyond measure to see you.
Madame Say will, I think, be much liked in England. She is
very, very sensible, perfectly unpretending, and has the sort of
mind which I should think ought to be the most appreciated in
England, only they like flash and show-off in foreigners, which she
disdains ; but her style of conversation is remarkably perfect, which
is perhaps scarcely appreciated in England. It stands very high
here. She was a daughter of Berlin, who, it was said, governed
all France under the first return of Louis XVIII. It was especially
the best time here after Bonaparte's fall. Bertin established the
Journal des Debats, and was looked upon as one of the causes or
388 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
helpers of the sudden prosperity that came on after the extinguishing
of the Bonapartes. In the first years after the return of the Bour-
bons, France produced a new crop of writers. Louis Napoleon's
reign put a large extinguisher on the whole. I don't think they
have any idea in England of these different phases which succes-
sively threw light and shade over the fifty years that succeeded
the empire, but they are well remembered here. I have read lately
an English book, a sort of history of England and all its curious
changes, by an Irishman, called Justin McCarthy, which is called
a " History of our Own Time." I don't say I agree with all, but
it has taught me a great deal. I wonder what is thought of it in
England ? I lent it here to several good thinkers, who were much
struck with it. I don't know whether I am right or wrong, but it
seems to me Gladstone's reviving again must be very bad for the
nation. I have read little of his politics, but his other books seem
to me so absurd that he can't have a just idea upon anything in his
head. As to the fuss they make about eloquence, or what they call
such, I think that humbug. You might as well marry a woman for
the flash of her petticoat. It's the thinking, not the talking, that
ought to make a minister. But my paper is at an end, to your great
luck, so I can preach no more heresies.
Yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
She came with Madame von Schmidt to Mrs. Bagehot's,
but her failing memory spoiled much of her pleasure in seeing
her friends. She would say sometimes, when even an old
friend had been talking to her, " My dear, who is that lady ?
I cannot recollect her name, although I know her face like
my pocket." Nevertheless, when we went with a party (Mrs.
Bagehot, Mrs. Barrington, and the Says) over Holland House,
she showed more historical knowledge and intelligent interest
than any of us, and charmed and astonished the guide, who
charmed her in turn with the story of the ghost who is said
to appear when any of the family is about to die.
Her memory for the past never failed her. I was told by
Madame d'Abbadie that she went with her quite at the end
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 389
of her life to a gallery of engravings, representing scenes of
the great Revolution and the Empire : she took a little stool
and sat on it in front of all the pictures in succession, and her
companion said that nothing could be more lucid and more
interesting than her comments and recollections.
From London she went to stay with her nieces in the
country.
We spent this summer at Canterbury, and invited Madame
Mohl to stay with us. She would have enjoyed it very much,
for Dean Stanley introduced us to the very agreeable society
in the precincts, where she would have been much appreciated.
Wormstall, October 21, 1880.
DEAREST MINNIE,
Many thanks for your kind letter and invitation, but I
must go to my business, or, rather, my dear husband's business. I
am glad not to return sooner, as I much dread the solitude of Paris,
but I suppose it will begin filling early in November. I have found
here Macaulay's " Life," by Trevelyan. Have you read it ? I want
to borrow it from you, or I must beg it from here.
It would be difficult to express the total prostration of animal
spirits I labour under, and what a poor creature I am become. Pray
write a line or two.
Paris, December 2, 1880.
I have been very poorly the last two months, which threw
cold water on my epistolary ardour ; but I hope to have more spirit
and be more industrious as I am getting better. If you had a
mind for a trip to Paris, I should be able to go to the play with you,
and give you what comfort the house affords, with a large view of
beanstalks from the window. You have no idea of the active
borrowing which goes on, thanks to your kindness in sending me the
conversations of the French people,* who, however they may pretend
to have so much modesty in printing their talk, are extremely glad to
read it when it is printed. I hope you are all going on well after
your sejour in a prim ecclesiastical town, which seems to have
* Senior's " Conversations with Thiers, Guizot," etc.
390 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
much of the sedate agrement of a cathedral. Thank you for your
entertaining account of it.
M. M.
In the spring of 1881 Mrs. Bagehot spent some time with
her old friend in the Rue du Bac. She wrote to Lady East-
lake on March 5
Dear Madame Mohl is better than when she came to England,
and her society is very enjoyable when she does not fatigue herself.
She is equal to very little going out, and cannot entertain except
in the way of calls. I wish more people would come, but she has
offended a great many by forgetting to return visits. Still people
should remember what being eighty-eight means.
She offended people also by not remembering who they
were when they called, and to no one was this failure such a
distress as to herself.
April, 1 88 1.
DEAREST MINNIE,
I feel the decadence in my mind as plainly as in my
body. I have as much judgment as ever I had in my life ; but half
our faculties are the children of memory. Every day I see clearer
the depth of the words of the wise Greeks, they make the Muses,
the daughters of Jupiter and of Mnemosyne, the memory. How true !
Our mind is almost like a bodily faculty ; it wants legs and arms.
Memory is the legs of our mind ; it unites us to the earth we live
upon my other faculties are all sharp still. To unite ideas as
they fly, to turn two or three facts into an idea, is so easily
done if the faithful servant is at hand who is to bring the ideas
together and put them into cages; but if he should be lame, and
not able to put them together so as to form a new whole, the creative
power is stopped. Every day I find letters and papers that would
furnish volumes, but the muscles of my mind are gone.
The management of the ample income left entirely to her
by M. Mohl was another source of perpetual worry. She had
never been accustomed to business of this kind, and she had
been obliged in early days to practise strict economy. One
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 391
of her maxims was, " An empty bag. cannot stand upright."
She could not believe that the bag now was so full that there
was no danger of its emptying, and she did not allow herself
all the comforts such as a carriage, a servant to accompany
her out of doors which she required.
It was a constant source of terror to her friends that she
might be run over; and how she escaped is a marvel, for more
than once she was found almost fainting, quite alone, in the
street. Yet she gave money freely to those who wanted it.
Madame Renan says she was surtout charitable; but she
never could bear to allude to her charities, or to let her left
hand know what her right hand gave.
She became very tired of the summer in Paris. It was
the year when we lost Dean Stanley, and I wrote to tell her
of his death. I feared the effect which the loss of so dear a
friend might have upon her ; but she had come to regard
death no longer as an enemy, but as a deliverer. She
replied
July 20, 1 88 1.
DEAR MINNIE,
What a happy death the dean's ! no illness, no infirmity,
life pleasant to the last, his death as good as his life. I have
known no man with so good a life as a whole, and such an easy
death.
I have been absolutely roasted alive here, but had not courage
to go because I did not know what to do. I have no home in
England now my sister is gone ; friends are kind, but one ain't sure
one is not in their way. It was very different to go to relations who
were so fond of one, though they trimmed one. Alas ! my poor sister
was a great pleasure and comfort to me. Adieu ; thank you with all
my heart for your letter ; it was a great pleasure to see your hand
once more ; thank you intensely for it. I assure you it was a great,
I don't say pleasure, because death don't allow the word, but satisfac-
tion to see your hand ; and I can't regret the dean's death, it is so
very kind of Providence to have taken him thus. Pray let me hear
from you soon ; I may go or I may not I am a poor creature, but
392 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
I run about, and am as alert as ever. Love to all, and especially
to your husband ; he is a great favourite.
Yours most lovingly,
MARY MOHL.
I begged her to come to us, and she accepted with great
pleasure.
Thanks, many thanks, for receiving me joyfully. I find I can
hardly get off by Tuesday, I'm such a poor honey for hurrying. I think
I must put it off till Wednesday, for if I get into what my granny used
to call a tantivy, I'm done for. ... I am doing a bold thing, going
without a maid. I quite forget what I did last year; in fact, since my
dear husband's death my memory seems melted away. Thank you
much for your several bits of letters, showing me your goodwill. I
humbly trust this change of my day will not put you to inconveni-
ence ; it is better than my arriving knocked up. Adieu. Yours ever
obliged.
When Madame von Schmidt heard of her aunt's proposed
journey, she wrote to me entreating me to prevent it, as she
did not think Madame Mohl equal to the effort. I answered
that I could not find it in my heart to do so, lest my dear old
friend should think I did not want her. So Madame von
Schmidt set everything aside, and travelled night and day to
Paris, where her aunt was anything but pleased at the idea of
giving up her trip. I invited Madame von Schmidt to come
likewise, but she could not spare the time, and ultimately
persuaded Madame Mohl to return with her to Klagenfurt.
Paris, Monday, 1881.
I was rejoicing at the idea of getting rid of my dreadful overdone
state of nerves by leaving this oven of a place, when lump comes Ida
from the mountains of Hungary to make me a surprise ! I was
rejoicing in the idea of going to you, and this last week I was looking
to the end as if I was going to Paradise in England. Judge of my
horror, which I was obliged to conceal. The poor thing had been
upwards of forty hours in a diligence, and was so delighted with what
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 393
she had done to make me a surprise ! I must either stay here of
which I am absolutely sick or take her to England. I am afraid,
dear Minnie, I must take her to you on Wednesday. She has plenty
of friends in England who would be glad to see her. Ida is a great
favourite in England, and if it had not been for the mania of sur-
prising it could have been arranged. I'm in a dreadful fuss.
M. MOHL.
In the following year she came to us with her niece
Eleanor. She had now entered her ninetieth year, and her
loss of memory and increased restlessness had become very
painful. She would start up several times a day saying she
must write to M. Mohl, forgetting that he was dead. She
was longing to die herself. She could not even understand
what she read. From the touching account in the little book
already so often referred to of Chateaubriand's last years, we
may judge how much she suffered from the consciousness of
her state. "There was no want of ordinary sense, but the
power of thinking was completely gone. He could not read
a line nor follow up an idea in conversation." For a long
time past the editor of the Nineteenth Century had sent his
magazine to her regularly, and she valued his kindness so
highly that she always took pleasure in reading it even when
she could not understand it. During this last visit she gene-
rally sat with it in her hand, and would read over and over
again the same page, and reiterate her gratitude for Mr.
Knowles's constant remembrance. From us she went into the
country, where she became still more unhappy and restless,
and returned to Paris for the last time in September, 1882.
She then forgot that she had ever been away, also that I wrote
to her frequently all the winter. It was distressing beyond
measure to me that she thought that I neglected her.
394 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
Paris, November, 1882.
DEAR MINNIE,
I have spent all my summer here, and sick enough I
have been of it ; but I kept fancying I was doing wisely in case there
should be any reason, or papers of my dear husband's or friends, that
might require my presence in Paris. I have seen none, and have
stayed here for no particular use. Remember, dear Minnie, if ever
you have a whim for coming, I shall be too happy to give you a room
and all the attentions I can. This letter will be taken by my niece,
Eleanor Martin, who has been staying a month with me. I don't
think she will have time to see you, but I tell her to leave this in
London, with her address in the country for you, in case you have
anything to say, though of course I shall answer you if you write
to me. I have spent a long summer here, fancying I might be
wanted. If anything was useful for my dear husband's memory of
course I shall be too glad. If you will write me a line of friendly
recollection ; it is so long since I have heard from you, and I am at
the same place.
I never spent an autumn in Paris before. Pray write me a letter,
if ever so short I have had none from you for so long ; and if you
have any fancy to come and see me I have plenty of room, and hope
you will write to me without the smallest ceremony. Adieu. Pray,
pray write to me, if ever so short ; it is so long since I heard from
you. I cannot express how much I wish it.
Most affectionately yours ever,
MARY MOHL.
I was so much touched by Madame Mohl's letter that I
resolved to go to my old quarters in Paris as early as possible,
but I was detained by the fatal illness of my mother, and
three weeks afterwards my dear old friend likewise passed
away.
Madame d'Abbadie was, unfortunately, absent during
part of this winter, but Mrs. Wynne Finch never allowed
many days to pass without spending with her some hours,
and these were the evening hours when Madame Mohl was
the brightest. She would keep this dear friend with her till
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 395
past midnight, calling out to the cook, Fillie, " Amusez bien
le domestique," so that his mistress might not be in a hurry
to go away. Mr. Guy Lestrange (Mrs. Wynne Finch's son)
was also a great favourite, both for his own sake and for that
of M. Mohl, who was extremely fond of him, and with whom
he had the link of an equal interest in Oriental studies.
Her faithful friend Madame Quirins writes
She read a great deal, lying on her sofa with her lamp on a small
table beside her; she would read thus until twelve o'clock without
her eyesight suffering in the least, indeed latterly without needing
spectacles. The winter before her death she took up Walter Scott,
reading over and over again " Ivanhoe " and " Old Mortality " with
renewed pleasure ; also a work by Mr. Walter Bagehot. I took her a
Quarterly Review with a notice of Fanny Kemble's "Reminiscences,"
which she enjoyed highly, and also read over and over again. Her
memory was as vivid as ever when she went back to the past, and
I spent many an hour listening to her stories of younger days. It
was a perfect panorama.
Dr. McKay, the clergyman of the English Church in the
Avenue Marbceuf, visited her very often by her desire. " Of
Dr. McKay's great kindness," Madame Quirins writes, "in
the midst of his numerous occupations, too much cannot
be said."
On Friday, May 11, she was as well as usual, and M.
Barthe'lemy St. Hilaire dined with her, as he had on every
Friday throughout the winter.
Early on the following day she had a fainting fit, to which
she had for years been subject, and Madame d'Abbadie sent
for Mademoiselle de Tourguenieff. She was very weak, and
breathing with difficulty. Mademoiselle de Tourguenieff and
Madame d'Abbadie were the only persons with her. They
remained during the whole day. Madame d'Abbadie, who is
an ardent Catholic, put a crucifix into the hands of her old
396 LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF
friend, who clasped it fervently. Then Madame d'Abbadie
offered up short prayers at intervals.
Mademoiselle de Tourguenieff sent for Dr. McKay, but
Madame Mohl, who did not realize her danger, objected to
seeing him while she was in bed. " But above all, my dear,"
she said to Mademoiselle de Tourguenieff, " I wish to be civil
to him."
Mrs. Wynne Finch had gone to London, and Madame
Quirins was in the country, but a telegram from Madame
d'Abbadie summoned the latter. When she arrived " it
seemed," she said, "as if her dear old friend could not live
through the night." On being asked if she recognized
cette dame, " Pardie, si je la connais ! " Madame Mohl replied.
On the Sunday she lay quiet, often asleep, but quite conscious,
and on the following day appeared to be so much better that
the doctor almost gave hope of her recovery. Her favourite
cat, a beautiful white Angora, jumped on her bed, and she
said, in her old funny way, to Mademoiselle de Tourguenieff,
" II est si distingue", sa femme ne Test pas du tout, mais il ne
s'en aperc.oit pas, il est comme beaucoup d'hommes en cela." *
Towards morning a change took place for the worse.
She knew her state, and asked pardon of her servants f and
those around her for any act of unkindness on her part
Dr. McKay was again summoned ; he came and knelt by the
bedside, and read the prayers for the dying. Madame von
Schmidt (who arrived after forty-eight hours' travelling),
Madame Quirins, Mademoiselle de Tourgue'nieff, Madame
* Madame Mohl doted on this cat, and he only really cared for his mistress,
though he was polite to others. After her death, Madame Quirins, who could
not take him home on account of her birds, found him a comfortable situation
where he seemed very happy ; but at the end of a- year he took himself off, and
every one was in great distress about him. It was found that he had fixed himself
in a Bonapartist family, having, very ungratefully, changed his politics.
t Her servants were all devoted to her. Julie, the heroine of the siege and
Commune, lived with her for twenty years, and was succeeded by Fillie, who
remained till her death.
JULIUS AND MARY MOHL. 397
Delaroche, the two servants, all whether Catholic or
Protestant, knelt round their old friend.
After Dr. McKay left she seemed to revive for a moment,
and spoke in English, but so low that the words could not be
heard. Madame Quirins leant over her and asked her what
she said, and "those who stood around," Madame von
Schmidt writes, "will never forget the plaintive, childlike
tone in which she whispered, ' I want to die, to go to heaven.
God bless you ! ' ' These were the last words she spoke.
Some of those present went away, but Madame von Schmidt
and Madame Quirins on one side of the bed, and Made-
moiselle Tourguenieff and Madame d'Abbadie on the other,
remained watching and praying, and the end came without
a pang. There was no more breathing ; that was all.
The funeral took place on the Friday. The arrangements
were similar to those for M. Mohl, with the exception that
the religious ceremony took place in the church, in accordance
with Madame Mohl's expressed desire, instead of at the
house. So tender were her friends of her wishes that they
would not mention her age in the " lettres de faire part," nor
have the date of her birth engraved on her coffin. Conse-
quently she has been thought older than she really was, for
she had not completed her ninetieth year at the time of her
death.
My brother and I (Mademoiselle de Tourgue"nieff writes) went to
the house, and the prayers there were most touching. The coffin
was loaded with flowers. A great many people were there. MM.
St. Hilaire, Mignet, Viel Castel, Duvergier de Hauranne, Boissier,
Delisle, Edward Dicey, the Due de Broglie, the Kenans, the Barthe-
lots, the D'Abbadies, the Laugels, the De Thurys, M. Regnier, M.
Lardy (the Swiss minister), Mrs. Lee Childe, etc. This last meeting
of dear familiar faces round the dear old friend who had so long
been a centre was very striking, the more so as it happened to be a
Friday.
39 LETTERS, ETC., OF JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.
The Le"on Says, my mother, Dr. McKay, and others, waited in
the Protestant church in the Rue de Crenelle, where, by Madame
Mohl's particular desire, expressed some time before her death, the
service was read. The pasteur, M. Paumier, pronounced a funeral
oration, which was very interesting.
Her nephew, Mr. Charles Martin, and her nieces, Madame
von Schmidt Zabierow and Madame Helmholtz, were the chief
mourners, and many of those assembled followed their old
friend to Pere La Chaise, where she was at last laid at rest
beside the husband the almost lifelong companion whom
she had never ceased to mourn and to long to rejoin. M.
Fauriel lies at a little distance. Madame Mohl chose the
resting-place for herself and her husband in the same tomb.
Her life had become labour and sorrow to her, we could
not wish it to be prolonged ; yet it was with a pang of deep
regret that we heard that she was gone for ever from this
world which she had helped to make so bright to all around
her, and that we should see her face no more.
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