' *v>«lV"' ■*"H**' > --^•'iK^t'^^^^^^^ rt»««^=-xifl.-«X»]'c,j(*.i.^ arV17748 Vignettes Cornetr University Library 3 1924 031 228 632 olin,anx The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031228632 VIGNETTES ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER London ... ■ 148 Strand ■ New York . „ . xjZ Grand Streel VIGNETTES flrwelhe •ffiioBtapWtaK «>ftetcj)ejf By BESSIE RAYNER PARKES 3eiU'4. AUTHOR OF "ESSAYS ON WOMAN*S WORK," KTC. ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER LONDON AND NEW YORK 1866 J3 PREFACE. JHE twelve biographical sketches con- tained in this book were originally written for a periodical which I was engaged in editing ; and only a few words are required as to the sources from which they were drawn. Three of the number are strictly original — Ma- dame Luce, Madame Pape-Carpantier, and Mrs Jameson ; and in the case of Madame Luce and Madame Pape-Carpantier, were composed from notes given to me by those ladies themselves. The five sketches of Madame Swetchine, La Soeur Rosalie, Harriot K. Hunt, Madame de La- martine, and Madame Mojon, are translated and abridged from books almost entirely unknown to the English public. The life of Madame Mojon PREFACE. has indeed been only privately printed ; but having been struck with a translation of it in an American periodical, I afterwards made inquiries in Paris, and obtained supplementary material from her surviv- ing friends. The remaining four — Mrs Winthrop, Miss Cor- nelia Knight, Miss Bosanquet, and Mrs Delany — were biographical reviews cast into the shape of a short story ; the books are either well known or easily accessible. The twelve women thus depicted, without any attempt at a connecting link between them, are as various in nationality, creed, habits of mind, and daily pursuits as can well be imagined. There is a moral in their utter dissimilarity which I leave to the intelligent reader ; but of every one of them it may truly be said that they did worthy work in the world. CONTENTS. I. MADAME SWETCHINE, . II. LA SCEUR ROSALIE, III. MADAME PAPE-CARPANTIER, IV. MADAME DE LAMARTINE, . V. MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS, VI. GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE, VII. MISS CORNELIA KNIGHT, VIII. BIANCA MILESI MOJON, IX. MRS DELANY, X. HARRIOT K. HUNT, XI. MISS BOSANQUET, XII. MRS JAMESON, PAGE I SI 121 HS iSi 257 279 313 36s 389 417 439 I. MADAME SWETCHINE. MADAME SWETCHINE. HE biography of a Russian lady of high birth and great cultivation cannot but be deeply interesting to English readers, even when the story of her life is unmarked by great vicissitudes, because we know but little of the interior developments of Russian nationality, and next to nothing of the thoughts and feelings o:" the female subjects of the Czar. A large portion of the life of Madame Swetchine was spent in Paris ; to which circumstance it is owing that her memoirs, after a period of extraordinary popularity, have become a standard work in French literature. It had already entered its third edition in the spring' of i860, and occupied a prominent place in every book- MADAME SWETCHINE. seller's window ; insomuch that the unknown and some- what barbarous name of " Swetchine " met the eye at every turn, causing the loiterer to wonder to what nation it might appertain. Sophie Soymonof, by which name the subject of this biography was known in her early maiden days, was bom in Moscow, in the month of November 1782. Her father, the scion of an ancient Muscovite family, occupied a high post in the internal administration of the empire, and was one of the founders of the Aca- demy of Science at Moscow : her mother came from an equally distinguished race, and one in which a taste for letters was combined with military zeal. We are told that little Sophie's maternal grandfather, Major-General Jean Boltine, translated nineteen volumes of the French Encyclopridia into Russian, — an enjoyable task to a tough literary appetite ! His granddaughter inherited an astonishing power of plodding through the most voluminous studies. Moscow was then, even more than at the present .day, the national capital of Russia; and the first im- pressions which Mademoiselle Soymonof received were . blended with the most illustrious associations of her native land. But the great Empress Catherine II., a woman whose marked intellectual powers elevate her to a rank in the roll of Eiiropean monarchs which her ' MADAME SWETCHINE. moral character was far from commanding in a woman's domestic sphere, appreciated the services of distin- guished men, and confided to some few of her subjects the charge of her private correspondence and closest personal interests. Of this number was M. Soymonof: she gave him a high post in the administration, and made him a private secretary; in the fulfilment of which trust he quitted Moscow, and took up his abode in the imperial palace at St Petersburg. His mind was solid and cultivated ; his manners and his coun- tenance were full of nobleness ; his features, preserved in a cameo likeness, resemble those of an antique head. His father, Theodore Ivanowitch Soymonof, had likewise been a man of high distinction, educated in the Naval School instituted by Peter the Great ; and had sustained a brilliant examination in the presence of the Czar, whom he afterwards accompanied in many of his campaigns, notably in that of Persia. Ivano- witch wrote the first description we possess of the Caspian Sea ; and kept a journal with valuable remarks on what he saw and heard. The history of Sophie's paternal grandfather bears a lively witness of Russian high life : for this protkgi of Peter the Great was exiled by the Empress Anne in 1740, and then made Governor of Siberia (where he had been a prisoner) by the Em- press Elizabeth. He died in the reign of the Empress MADAME SWETCHINE. Catherine, in 1780, nearly a hundred years old, and surrounded by universal honour. Mademoiselle Sophie Soymonof was christened after the Empress, who had originally been the Princess Sophie d'Anhalt-Zerbst, and had only assumed the name of Catherine on b ecoming a member of the Greek Church. M. Soymonof, notwithstanding his occupa- tions as courtier and secretaire intime, found time to bestow assiduous care upon the daughter who remained for six years his only child. Struck with her rapid pro- gress, his fondness was soon blended with fatherly pride, for little Sophie showed talent alike for music and draw- ing, and in the acquisition of languages ; and, what was more remarkable in so young a child, she developed singular firmness of character. Exceeding steadfast- ness is perhaps the most noteworthy point in her future history and correspondence ; and it was early planted in the power of self-denial. She had set her heart on possessing a watch, and her father promised that she should have one ; the days which elapsed between the promise and its fulfilment were filled with expectation, and the little woman could not sleep at night from in- tense anticipation of the delights of this wonderful treasure. It was bought — it was given— it was proudly worn ! when suddenly another idea rushed into Sophie's head. "There is something grander than having a MADAME SWETCHINE. watch," said she, " and that is giving it up of my own free will." The English reader will smile at this infantine sublimity, so exactly like the children in Sandford and Merton. Those were days when virtue, self-sacrifice, and patriotism flourished all over Europe in the largest capital letters, and very young people were fed upon ethics and the dignity of man. Some Russian Dr John- son must have enlarged upon renunciation and the moderation of human wishes before Sophie, for she ran off to her father and gave up to him this passionately- desired watch, telling him her motive. He was a wise papa, for he looked fixedly at her, took the watch, locked it away in a drawer, and not a word more was said about it Again, M. Soymonof's apartments were enriched with pictures, bronzes, medals, and valuable marbles. Little Sophie lived familiarly with all the fabulous or historical personages represented in these materials ; but she could not abide a certain closet into which her father some- times called her, and which contained several mummies. The poor child blushed at her own weakness, and deter- mined to overcome it, so one day she opened the dreaded door, dashed at the nearest mummy, took it up and hugged it, and then fell on the floor wthout sense or motion. Her father heard the noise, ran in, and carried her off in his arms, persuading her with some difficulty MADAME SWETCHINE. to tell him what was the matter. But the little girl had gained her victory ; from that day she felt no more fear of the mummies than she felt of the busts and portraits. Something quaintly vigorous and imaginative mingled in all this child's education ; her dolls were very large, had proper names, and carried on the varied relations of adult society; she composed a little ballet, entitled the " Faithful and the Frivolous Shepherdesses," which she acted and danced to her father and his friends ; and in one of the autumn evenings of 1789, when she was seven year old, M. Soymonof, coming home, was amazed to find a large gallery, which formed an antechamber to his drawing-room, lighted from end to end with an im- mense number of little candles. Being asked the reason of this grand illumination, the child said, " But, papa, must we not celebrate the taking of the Bastille, and the setting free of those poor French prisoners?" This shows the habitual tendency of the conversation of her elders. In truth, it was the fashion then in all the north- ern courts of Europe, in Berlin, in Vienna, but more particularly at St Petersburg, to raise the voice against abuse of power, and to look forward to general emanci- pation of everybody from everything. In a moment of truly royal inspiration, Peter the Great had exclaimed, " Alas ! I work at the reformation of my subjects, and I MADAME SWETCHINE. do not know how to reform myself!" These noble words were, so to speak, suitable as a device for Cathe- rine and her court, as well as for most of the reformers of the eighteenth century ; more given to consider how they might mend the world, or reconstruct the basis of society, than to take the trouble of driving in solid piles in the way of individual well-doing. M. Soymonof, who possessed all the attributes of his generation, partook also in its illusions; he was generous, liberal, alive to every prospect of social amelioration, but forgetful of the lessons of experience, given to Utopian ideas, and sceptical in religion. Such were the influences which presided over the education of his daughter ; influences more or less common among the nobility of Europe at that day, and against which our own English " Farmer King" set himself with a dogged determination which had its good side in keeping England in the middle path of reform. The Russian empress was just what might have been expected from the training, or rather from the want of training, to which her powerful mind was subjected. The Prince of Anhalt, her father, had done little or nothing for her cultivation, An inferior governess had hardly even succeeded in teaching her to read when she was sent into Russia tg marry Peter III., a stupid, vuls|r,5 and half crazy boy, who-soen-left-^er-ar-widow. The first book which fell into her hands was " Bayle's Die- 10 MADAME SWETCHINE. tionary," which she read three times through with avidity, during the space of a few months. At twelve or fourteen years of age the little Sophie, nurtured under these conditions in the imperial palace of St Petersburg, was acquainted with her native Russian tongue, (an unusual accomplishment among Russian young ladies,) spoke English and Italian as perfectly as she spoke French, understood something of German, and was studying Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. But she knew nothing- of religion beyond the pompous spectacles of the imperial chapel, and had never said morning or evening prayers in her life. Her love for her father, and her motherly care for her little sister, ten years younger than herself, were the only elements of moral culture in her childhood. In 1796 the Empress Catherine died of apoplexy, leaving her throne to her son Paul I.; and Sophie Soy- monof was named maid-of-honour to his wife, the Empress Marie, a good and beautiful woman, mother of six children, and an angel of sweetness to her violent and capricious husband, who made her ride about with him in all weathers, hot and cold, and take part in military manoeuvres; sometimes forgetting to fetch her from a post where he had planted her, till she had waited many hours, or even a whole day! But the serenity of the empress never failed outwardly ; and the MADAME SWETCHINE. II young maid-of-honour, destined in future life to know, to prevent, or to console so many human griefs, began thenceforth to penetrate into the secret of vain pro- sperity and its silent tears. Under this maternal care she attained her seventeenth year. Her residence at court had' not dissipated her love of study; and her accomplishments had received a great stimulus. Draw- ings in pastil yet remain from her hand, which would do credit to a professional artist. Her full, sonorous, and flexible voice, of a rare compass, was as familiar with the learned and touching harmonies of the north as with the brilhant. melodies of Italy ; she read music at sight, and accompanied herself on the piano. In personal appearance she was not striking ; but her physiognomy, her gestures, and her voice, were all attractive and sympathetic. Her blue eyes were small and slightly irregular, but very animated and sweet in expression ; her nose had la pointe Kalmouk; and her complexion was dazzling. She was not tall, but walked easily and well, and every word and every movement were alike stamped with the- mark of delicacy and distinction. This aristocratic young maiden was naturally sought by many ardent suitors; and the despotic and capri- cious character of the Russian court was such as to cause a parent the greatest anxiety in regard to the future of a daughter. No man, however high in position MADAME SWETCHINE. and public repute, could tell that he might not" find himself suddenly exiled to Siberia or to the shores of the Black Sea : and M. Soymonof, seeing the frequent fate which struck men invested with office under the late Empress Catherine, feared that disgrace might also come to him in his turn. He looked about, therefore, after the fashion of anxious aristocratic fathers, for a son-in-law who should " insure a brilliant existence, and in all cir- cumstances prove a protector" to his child. He cast his eyes upon a man of great distinction, and one already his own personal friend, General Swetchine, who had served with honour in the military career. The pro- posed husband was a tall imposing-looking man, with a firm upright character combined with a calm gentle spirit ; his age was forty-two. Sophie received her father's choice with affectionate deference, as she re- ceived everything which came to her by his will. She had lost her mother several years before : and that which chiefly attracted her in this marriage, thus planned for her by her elders, was the assurance that her little sister should not be separated from her, but should remain with her under her maternal care. It is said that there was a young Russian nobleman of high birth, large fortune, and great talents, who would fain have had Mademoiselle Soymonof for a wife : Count Strogonof was his name j and his grief remains on record, — an MADAME SWETCHINE. I3 old-world tale of sixty years ago. But at last he " resigned himself to another marriage ; " and what Sophie thought or felt about him we are not told. It is certain, however, that she was for fifty years a fond and faithful wife to General Swetchine; and that her father judged not unwisely in the choice he made. But his own presentiments had been too true : he enjoyed a vivid but fleeting pleasure in witnessing his daughter's early married life, from which he had pro- mised himself a peaceful old age. The Emperor Paul suddenly, and without even allowing Sophie or the General time to intercede, exiled M. Soymonof from St Petersburg. Moscow offered a natural and honour- able retreat, and thither he repaired ; but the bitterness of his disgrace, the separation from his much beloved daughter, and a cold welcome from a friend on whom he had particularly relied, plunged him into unconquer- able sadness; and the poor old nobleman was carried off by a fit of apoplexy at the moment ' when those who loved him at home were anxiously seeking how to procure a recall. Bitter as was this blow to Madame Swetchine, she could not under that despotic rule in- dulge outward regrets. . Her husband's military position retained him at St Petersburg: he was about to be promoted to a post of activity and importance, and she was obliged to remain amidst the faslyonable world^ 14 MADAME SWETCHINE. and to take her place as mistress of a large establish- ment at the very moment when her soul was filled with grief. Constraint, subordination of all her own actions * to the proprieties imposed from without, and subjection to a thousand claims of secondary importance to religion and morality, but absolute and imperious in her social circumstances, were the lot of this young wife from the first day of her so-called independence. The life of a great lady in Russia, if she be also a woman of cultivated intellect and pious heart, must indeed present many painful problems : and the grave and steadfast nature of our heroine turned in upon itself, in anxious seeking for a sufficient guide. Then first it was that the philosophical belle-esprit asked her- self where she could repose from the weary excitements of such an existence ; and being no longer able to say " My father," she lifted up appealing accents, and said, "My God!" The society in which, from her first entrance, she occupied a high position, was then one of the most brilliant in aU Europe. The French Revolution infused into it an element which was rather new than foreign, and which appealed vividly to the mind of Madame Swetchine. The most distinguished residents of Paris and Versailles fled to the despotic court of Russia for protection, but they were generally those whom the MADAME SWETCHINE. 15 proscription had not entirely deprived of all their pro- perty, or whom the Emperor Paul had personally known at the time when, under the name of the " Comte du Nord," he visited France in the early and happy days of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. For instance, the Prince de Cond^ who had feted him at Chantilly, was established by the emperor in the Hotel Tcher- nitchef, with servants and suitable appointments, and during the reparation of the hotel, the palace of the Taurida was put at his disposition, where the grand dukes and the principal dignitaries of St Petersburg went to offer him their respects, even before he had paid his to the emperor. The empress named the Princess de Tarente her dame d, portrait, because the emperor had known her in Paris under the roof of her grandfather the Due de la Vallicre. The Due de Richelieu and the Comte de Langeron were installed in posts of political confidence, and young men were , placed in the army. The drawing-rooms of St Peters- burg, and particularly those of General Swetchine, re- sounded every day with names familiar to Versailles and Trianon. Such were the early associations which bound Madame Swetchine so strongly to the French people, and though the reverses of favour inevitable to an imperial rkgime soon overtook her husband, and he retired from his l6 MADAME SWETCHINE. public career, their way of life continued much theisame. Their estates were far away ; Moscow offered no ^attrac- tions since the death of M. Soymonof, and-Madtoie Swetchine had very delicate health. All the time spared from the education of her young sister she devoted to persevering study, and to the society of her large circle of friends. We now first find the traces of the hard intellectual work which she underwent for more than fifty years, and which explairis the influence she exercised over all who approached her, inasmuch as it shows the extraordinary force of character which lay concealed under the aristo- cratic mould in which it was cast. As a poorer woman she would probably have made her mark in ;lit«rature ; as a more ambitious woman she would have converted her social sway into a means of political power : M'adame Swetchine did neither, her simple humble nature con- tented itself with learning and loving, and only after the close of her long life comes the echo of her friend- ships with many of the most remarkable minds of her generation. Reading was never to her a simple recreation, no book left her hands without being annotated, commented upon, sometimes nearly copied from beginning to end. The date of the first extracts which she made is in 1801, when she was only nineteen, and had been married two MADAME SWETCHINE. I7 years. They are not made in albums, nor on fine paper, but on common quires, covered with fine close charac- ters; and only bound afterwards in order to preserve them, as may be seen by the partial disappearance of some of the words where tlie margins have been too closely cut. Thirty-five such volumes remain, others have been lost ; thirteen of the number are in quarto. The names attached to the first in date are very various. Among them are Barthelemy and (the Pre- cepts of) Pythagoras, Bernardin de St Pierre, and long melancholy pages from Young's "Night Thoughts!" F^nelon, Madame de Genlis, translations from Horace, and a mass of matter from Rousseau. In the third volume we find Bossuet, and a long analysis of the " Precepts of Legislation" of Lycurgus. The fourth, dated 1806, quotes the romances of Madame Cottin, Sermons, and French and Italian poetry. Volume five opens with long extracts from Madame de Stael; the whole showing a- considerable range of light and heavy Uterature devoured by a young married lady between the ages of nineteen and five and twenty. But however earnest was Madame Swetchine's in- creasing love of intellectual exertion, it did not suffice then, or ever for her happiness. To the care of her little sister she now joined the adoption of a child whom circumstances, faintly indicated in the biography, cast l8 MADAME SWETCHINE. upon her maternal sympathy. The name of the new member of the household was Nadine Staeline; who thenceforward knew no other home than that of her young adopted mother. At the same time she began to occupy herself in works of active charity. The wife of Alexander I., who had now succeeded to the throne, combined with the empress-mother in carrying out be- nevolent ideas ; and institutions for affording education, or material relief, were multiplied under their patronage. Madame Swetchine contributed to this movement, and was soon made to take a chief part in its direction 5 a dozen little notes have been preserved, addressed to Alexandre Tourguenief, a man high in office in the department of Public Instruction, which show her inter- esting herself about various objects of charity, men, women, and children. The last is dated on " Saturday morning," and says, " My dear Tourguenief, do render me a great service, and give me an idea how to place out safely a little girl of nine or ten years of age, who depends on me, and about whom I should be very glad to be at ease. Could I not get her into the House of Industry, by paying for her board 1 I know nobody but you to whom I can at this moment apply;" followed on Friday by a reminder, and the remark that she is only afraid that the little girl may not be so well off as she wishes, in any new place. "By well off, I only mean a safe MADAME SWETCHINE. ig refuge, and an education suitable to her condition in life, and one which will insure her being able to earn her own bread. The simpler, and the more devoted to handicrafts she can be kept, the more content I shall be. When you write to me, you will be so good as to tell me what you hope to find for her, and that will make my mind easy." While Madame Swetchine was thus occupying herself in new interests, another tie to St. Petersburg arose in the marriage of her young sister to Prince Gregory Ga- zarin, a youthful, brilliant, and much-distinguished mem- ber of the Russian aristocracy, and one in high court favour, and up to the year 1811 the closest family union prevailed between the two households. Five Uttle nephews came one by one to tease their Aunt Sophie away from her books and her charities, and all her hfe long she clung to them with a mother's affection. In 181 1 General Swetchine re-entered active service against the French, and his wife retired to their country estates. While there she missed Madame de Stael, who, pursued by the enmity of Napoleon, quitted Vienna as a fugitive, traversed Poland, and arrived at St Petersburg by way of Kiew and Moscow. But even here she did not feel safe, and Stockholm formed the farthest point in her '' Dia Annees d'Exil" When Madame Swetchine returned to St Petersburg she found only the brilliant memory of 20 MADAME SWETCHINE. this apparition. Their meeting was reserved for later years, in France. The sentiment of duty was always so strong in Ma- dame Swetchine's mind, that patriotism naturally dwelt there also. The epoch in which she dwelt, and her own mature conviction, disposed her to the doctrine that one's native country has a right to demand every sacrifice, and as a Russian this principle assumed a monarchical form. The Emperor Alexander fought at the head of his aimy, and was regarded by his subjects with the strongest per- sonal enthusiasm. He showed great tenderness of heart towards the wounded, and went himself among the dying on the field of battle, succouring alike the Russians and the French. More than once he was known to weep at hearing cries of pain and farewell words uttered in every European tongue. To the hospitals also he gave per- sonal attention, undeterred by the fear of infection, for they were decimated by epidemic maladies, and the Duke of Oldenbourg, his brother-in-law, caught the typhus fever and died of it. One day, when he was telling the Countess de Choiseul of a poor Spanish pri- soner whom he had visited, she asked him if it was true that the incognito which he always endeavoured to pre- serve had been discovered. "Yes," rephed he with simplicity, " I was recognised in a room full of officers ; but usually I am taken for the aide-de-camp of General MADAME SWETCHINE. Saint Priest." Such an example makes the heart of a nation burn. All Russia wished to share with its Em- peror in assisting the innumerable victims of the war. The destruction of Moscow by fire was the occasion of a national subscription ; a society of ladies gathered to- gether for the soliciting and distributing of alms was organised at St Petersburg, under the patronage of the Empress Elizabeth. The women of the highest rank contended for posts in this society, urged by the spon- taneous movement which animated the rich and the poor, lords and peasants, merchants and soldiers. Ma- dame Swetchine was elected president, being at that time thirty years old. In 1813, Alexander carried his operations into Ger- many, and the Empress, who followed his march at a distance, was accompanied by Mademoiselle Stourdza, a young lady of Greek extraction, and the intimate friend of Madame Swetchine. The letters written from the German capitals by Mademoiselle Stourdza have been destroyed; but those which she received were piously preserved, and form a curious and interesting picture of the firiendship between the two ladies. The Count de Falloux, who writes this biography, observes, "One is seized with respectful astonishment in following step by step the intimacy of these two women ; young, brilliant, mixed up with the most famous and romantic events, MADAME SWETCHINE. but only extracting from thence grave lessons in politics and morality, and only indulging, amidst all the tempta- tions of ambition, in dreams of passionate friendship, philanthropy, and solitude." Here is an extract from one of these letters, in which Madame Swetchine men- tions an English friend : — " Apropos of Lord Walpole, I find you have judged him very severely. If you had looked at him from a nearer point of view, you would have seen that he has another spirit within him besides that of contradiction, and on many subjects his conver- sation is interesting and rich. I often see him ; he in- undates me with English books, and I should find it difficult to say up to what point the books which he has lent me influence my opinion of him. People at St -Petersburg are all of one mind in devouring time without pleasure and without profit ; it is veritable robbery, and that which I save out of the pillage only makes me re- gret more keenly that which I lose, I need leisure so much ! The turmoil of the life I have led makes me almost a stranger to that inner self which cannot fully be said to exist, unless it can give itself up to gentle affec- tions, to nature, and to that world of intellect which sometimes makes us forget the one outside." Here is another sentiment admirably expressed: — "General benevolence has been the romance of the second part of my life. When one no longer hopes to MADAME SWETCHINE. 23 live without interruption in a single soul, all other souls are none too many to replace that only one. Nothing is so common as to make quantity a substitute for quality. " In order to do something effectually, I need to be absorbed in my work; if I can only devote myself to it by fits and starts, I feel fatigued without pleasure. It is one of the great inconveniences of the life which I lead for a character like mine, that I have to cut up my day, leaving intervals of idleness. Sadness nestles in these empty holes, and will not be dislodged. {La tristesse se loge dans ces hrlches, et puis iliiy a plus moyen de la /aire d'eloger^ " I do not prefer others to myself, but it is others whom alone I love ; in them is placed all my personality, and everything seems good to me, provided I do not live concentrated in myself; I have never thought that anybody owed me anything, (you have no idea of the latitude I give to this principle,) and , I have always felt that, in order not to be thoroughly unhappy, I ought to believe that I owed all my life to others. This idea may make an odd and extravagant character, but it is safe and sure, and would not disgust even ungrateful people. " I expect my husband from day to day. I long for him to cojne back, and that his wandering life may be at MADAME SWETCHINE. an end. For a long time we have resembled M. le Soldi et Madame la Lune, who are hardly ever seen together. My husband sends me word that the news of the vic- tories reached Moscow on St Alexander's day ; on that same day the cathedral had been consecrated. At night there were illuminations and transparencies, and a prodigious crowd of people in the streets. Think of the contrasts of this fUe in the midst of those ruins!" The war being ended, and the news of the first re- storation of the Bourbons to the throne of France having reached St Petersburg, all la socittk precipi- tated itself in congratulations on the mansion of Count Golowine, where dwelt, amidst love and honour, an elderly French exile, the Princesse de Tarente. " This lady owed her sway to the authority of her virtues rather than to the ascendancy of her intellect. Her political principles were neither profound in wisdom nor based on acute penetration, but intimately blended with such majestic traditions, with such pathetic misfortunes, that all the world forgave her immobile contemplation of the past, and never approached her without feeling their hearts elevated by veneration and sympathy." The princess prepared to return to France, and the Emperor Alexander made arrangements for her conveyance on board a ship of war, but she was never destiped to see MADAME SWETCHINE. 25 France again ; every joyful emotion fell with a shock on a heart so long accustomed to grief and exile, and she sank away at fifty years of age within full vision of the promised land. Mademoiselle Golowine, who kept a journal of the last days of their guest, records, that one day when she was reading prayers to the princess, the latter seemed particularly impressed with a prayer for patience, but taking notice that it extended to every point where patience was likely to be required, she said on the morrow, "My child, only read the part about illness; I do not need that about the forgiveness of injuries." "Nevertheless," replied Mademoiselle Golo- wine, " a great deal of harm has been done you which you must now forget and forgive." " No," replied the worthy friend of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette ; " nobody has done me any harm ; or if I have forgotten it, this is not the moment to call it to mind." When the last prayers for the dying were being read over her, she exclaimed, " My God ! Thou knowest how long ago I offered up to Thee the renouncement of the dearest wish of my heart— the happiness of seeing my king in his native land !" These were almost the last words she pronounced distinctly ; she died on the 2d of June 1814, and her corpse was embalmed and taken to France, and buried in the Chapelle de Videville, under the care of the last of .the race of Chatillon, her sister the Duchesse 26 MADAME SWETCHINE. d'Uzbs. More than forty years after, Madame Swet- chine was affectionately received at the feudal Chateau de Fleury, which had passed into the hands of the nephew of the Prince de Tarente, and from thence she wrote to Mademoiselle Golowine, long since become the Comtesse Fredro, and the mother of grown-up sons : — " Fleury. "My dear Prascovie, — You must be very lonely without your son. I have no doubt that you control your sense of loss ; but the word control implies some- thing which does not go well of its own accord, and is not as easy as running water. In a little room here, once occupied by the Princesse de Tarente, and which happened to be open the other day, I was affected at seeing among the pictures which ornamented the walls, one of the interior of the library in the Rue de Perspec- tive, with this inscription : Madame la Priticesse de Tarente, dans k cabinet de Madame la Comtesse de Golo- wine, 1801. Relics of the past always stir the heart with a thousand tendernesses. — Adieu, dear Fache." One of those moments was now fast approaching for Madame Swetchine in which the arbitrary will of a de- spotic sovereign can turn the whole current of an indi- vidual career, and cause it to flow on far apart from its MADAME SWETCHINE. 2? original destination. General Swetchine was not, strictly speaking, exiled ; but a party was formed against him at court, and a fault committed by one of his subalterns was dexterously attributed to him; he found that his enemies were gaining ground against him, and taking alarm at his false position, and unwilling to risk his pride by running the chances of enforced exile, he took the resolution of quitting Russia on his own accord. His wife, who had recently quitted the Greek communion, under which, as the national religion of Russia, she had been educated, and become a member of the Roman Catholic Church, was likewise an object of dislike and suspicion to the followers of the Greek patriarch about the court, and her departure caused much satisfaction. The Czar, undecided, and deceived by those about him, showed his personal regrets at losing her, by asking her to correspond with him during her travels. Alexander's mind, always ardent and unsettled, had been long under the influence of the mystical Madame de Kriidener, a woman who believed she had special revelations from heaven j his intimate friends adhered to the equally mystical sects which found footing in those days in Germany; some among them placed all their trust in societies for the diffusion of the Scriptures, without wishing for any ecclesiastical organisation ; others rushed into a contrary extreme, and thought tliat the 28 MADAME SWETCHINE. regeneration of Russia was to be developed out of the action of the masonic lodges ! But this confusion of influences did not hinder Alexander from relying in intimate personal friendship on Madame Swetchine, whose moderate and well-balanced intellectual powers, naturally coloured by her early affinities among the French refugees, pursued both in religion and politics the middle course suggested by the circumstances in which she was bom and bred. Her correspondence with Alexander lasted until his death ; she kept with precious care the emperor's letters, and he bestowed the same respect on hers. On his death, either in accord- ance with his expressed will, or by the delicate kindness of the Emperor Nicholas, Madame Swetchine's letters were sent to her at Paris, and in 1845 she showed the entire double correspondence to a friend ; but, as no sign of it appeared among her papers after her death, it is feared they were burnt by precaution in 1848. In quitting Russia, the general and his wife appeared scarcely to have contemplated perpetual exile ; that Madame Swetchine should delight in the idea of Euro- pean travel, now first rendered possible by the peace, was natural to a woman of her intellectual cast; but that her imagination still clung to the hope of returning home eventually, is shown by the following note written to M. Tourguenief on the brink of her departure. " My MADAME SWETCHINE. 29 dear friend," it runs, " here I am again with my ever- lasting supplications ; but I leave so many unfortunates behind me, that any assistance is sure to be available to one or other among them. Do me the kindness to give some attention to them, and support your courage, if it is ready to sink, by reflecting that in spite of myself I shall very soon leave you quiet. Ah ! my dear friend, if I had no other link to my native country than the poor and the little children whom I leave behind me, that link would still be stronger than anything which could give me pleasure in foreign lands. The feeling which I constantly experience on this point is the best guarantee of the tendency which will perhaps bring me home again even sooner than I expect." It was at the commencement of the winter of 1816-17 that Madame Swetchine arrived in Paris, having travelled with Uttle dktour from St Petersburg. She was at that time thirty-four years of age, in the prime of her intel- lectual force, and at the epoch which she was particu- larly fitted to comprehend and sympathise with — that of the Restoration. It is not very easy to give the English reader a fair comprehension of the moral and social problems which henceforth occupied this remarkable mind, because Madame Swetchine's stand-point was so very different from anything we can well conceive. She certainly was not illiberal in any sense of the word ; she 30 MADAME SWETCHINE. took the deepest interest in the condition of the people, and was accustomed to spend time and trouble and her own uncertain personal strength in efforts to help and to instruct others. We have seen that she could be wise and thoughtful about her httle protegk, and that she wrote letter after letter to men high in office whenever they could assist her in her plans. She took a profound interest in the serfs who came to her by inheritance, and did her best by them, and she appears to have been singularly wide-minded and free from prejudices. But she had never in her life seen even the shadow of a liberal institution. Born and bred in the Russian court, the early sympathies with freedom which she had imbibed from her father and his friends, had been stained, as it were, with the blood of the French Revolu- tion. It was next to impossible for good people in that generation to imagine popular liberty as anything but the distorted phantom of the Place de Greve, Neither the years of anarchy and bloodshed, nor the supreme despotism of Napoleon, appeared to have left fruit in which the true lovers of their race could rejoice : the wrecks of the tempest yet strewed the devastated fields, the forest trees which had grown for ages were all up- rooted and thrown out to wither, and twenty-five years of convulsion or of battle in all parts of Europe had left to the partisans of despotism and liberalism but little MADAME SWETCHINE. 3I distinction in their cause for mourning. It is not, there- fore, to be wondered at that Madame Swetchine should entertain sincere hopes of the results of the restored Bourbon rule. That at least had root in the noblest traditions of France ; that, if it could be guided by the freer spirit of the age and by the lessons learnt in exile, possessed an organic raison d'etre. It is all very well for the English, than whom no people are more firmly linked in practical ways to their own historical past, to fling themselves theoretically on the opposite side, and ima- gine it possible to reconstitute the moral life of a people by the creating and carrying out of a new constitution ; the new constitution may be excellent, but it has one capital defect, it will not work,' or at least it will not work with the particular human material for which it was arbitrarily designed. It is exactly parallel to im- posing an external rule of good conduct on an ill-edu- cated, ill-disciplined adult; the man will not, or cannot obey. If in England at the present moment all our traditions were uprooted ; if the throne were vacant," or filled by a military general like Marlborough or Welling- ton ; if the irregular boundaries of our dear old English counties were all straightened, and the land cut up into square or oblong departments, so that the names of Northumberland and Kent ceased to be familiar in the mouths of men; if the local centres of national life, 32 MADAME SWETCHINE. Gloucester and Birmingham, Manchester and York, the relics of antiquity and the resorts of modern trade, were aUke held down by armed force or checked by the in- cessant action of a centralised pohce ; if a population which had escaped from provincial massacres or metro- poUtan civil murder, were decimated by military levies in the flower of their age, and no man knew who would reign or what would happen next, — then we can conceive that even Earl Russell might welcome the advent ot a Stuart or a Tudor as one fixed point amidst the chaos, and that a fixed inheritance from a tomb in Westminster Abbey would seem a point from which the wholesome liberty of a distracted country might in the course of long years be evolved. And so it was that many wise and noble hearts, by no means indifferent to the truest welfare of their fellows, rejoiced in the fresh re-blossoming of the fleur-de-lys, — in the unfurling of the oriflamme of St Louis of France once more ; and is it for us, for us who in 1865 see a far more rigid and root- less despotism established in the Tuileries, and Paris degraded by a court which possesses neither the poetry of tradition nor the ardent and pious charity of many of Madame Swetchine's personal friends among the old regime, to say that those who hoped much from the restoration of the ancient monarchy were blindly and wholly wrong 1 MADAME SWETCHINE. 33 Her residence in Paris was not immediately per- manent; the machinations of enemies at the court of St Petersburg caused her husband to go back for about a year; but in 1818 he returned once more to Paris, and never to the end of his life visited Russia again. During this year a close correspondence was kept up between Madame Swetchine and the Duchesse de Duras, full of the tender epistolary gossip of those days ; they give the reader a very pleasant idea of these great ladies and their circle, though too full of passing allusion to bear extraction. The names of dukes and princesses, of churchmen and soldiers, statesmen and authors, are scattered thick as blackberries over every correspond- ence undertaken by Madame Swetchine ; Humboldt and Chateaubriand, Lafayette and the De Noailles, enter the stage and pass off it, in the daily intercourse de- scribed in these letters by Madame de Duras. Hum- boldt is mentioned as having crossed the channel for a fortnight to see his brother, where he becomes a witness to " the frightful grief in which the death of the poor young Princess Charlotte has plunged England. Those are fine public institutions in which such a loss is felt as a misfortune, without materially aifecting the political condition of the country. Such a state of things is of itself a sufiScient eulogium on constitutional government." The years 1823 and 1824 found Madame Swetchine 34 MADAME SWETCHINE. in Italy, and numerous letters describe her impressions of Rome, Florence, and Turin; they are, however, too much like those of all other travellers to warrant trans- lation : and we proceed to her permanent establishment in Paris in the spring of 1825. It was at 71 Rue Saint- Dominique, a long street running parallel with the Seine in the Faubourg St Germain, that General Swetchine fixed his residence ; and here for thirty years his wife assembled some of the best society in Paris. She sent to Russia for a selection of the pictures, bronzes, and articles in porcelain which had formed the collection of her father, and fitted up a drawing-room and library overlooking the gardens of that and contiguous hotels ; and therein created a circle which had many distinct peculiarities compared to the salons of the day. It was neither a school of thought nor a Kterary coterie ; its charm and central link consisted in the sweet even nature of the hostess, in her fine sense and tact, and power of harmonising the most diverse natures. Mascu- line in her power of intellect, she was nevertheless always womanly in nature, and her abnegation of self was peither feigned nor studied. She lived first of all in the lives of others, then in public events, and only remem- bered herself after having been occupied by all the world j she made people look at selfishness with disgust, merely by showing them the beauty of the opposite MADAME SWETCHINE. 3S virtue. She was eminently religious, without losing social breadth ; and a dear lover of science and know- ledge for their intrinsic sakes, without any pretension for her own. As a politician she was firmly and profoundly mon- archical, but ever on her guard against all tendencies to absolute power. She recognised two essential con- ditions of good government: one, that the governing authority should possess a national and popular root, and should represent the people without in any way arrogating the right to absorb or confiscate it j secondly, that the consecration of ages should have given the dignity of real chiefdom to the monarch, investing him with that blended power of affection and of sway which no mere arguments as to the wisdom of creating such a potentate could procure. But beyond these limits, to which her Russian education naturally bound her, Ma- dame Swetchine had an aversion for everything arbitrary, violent, or hypocritical j she held it an offence against the conscience of humanity and the moral life and dur- able prosperity of nations. Mixing with people of all parties during thirty years of the most changeful political complexion, the peculiar tolerance of her intellect was often in itself a cause of collision with more vehement, and one-sided minds. Accustomed to weigh the most important social ques- 36 MADAME SWETCHINE. tions on all sides, and even seeking to penetrate to the very heart of every problem, she had sometimes to suffer lively reproach and temporary alienation from those whose views were less clear, and whose sentiments were less charitable, and who could not comprehend how equity may in certain cases be superior to what seems superficially just. " Justice follows the letter, applies the law, and may become pharisaic if pushed too far ; equity, more liberal and magnanimous in quality, and more Christian in essence, was, in the eyes of Madame Swet- chine, the highest policy of great souls." Petty resentments exhausted themselves before the calmness of her being ; her salon became a sort of neutral ground where passion was hushed, and senti- ments and ideas met fairly face to face. One only re- proach had power to touch and wound her, when it was occasionally said to her, " You are a foreigner, and you cannot feel this or that as we do." Her guests did not go to her for klan, though she herself possessed plenty of spirit. God alone bestows mental and spiritual energy, and she did not try to excite it in others ; she rarely ever gave a counsel relative to particular cases, nor did she seek confidences. She was accustomed to say, " God only blesses our replies," and this expressive sentence reminds one oi La Sceur Rosalie, who sought no one, yet to whom all flocked. Those MADAME SWETCHINE. 37 who look for the means by which Madame Swetchine exercised and carried into the most diverse spheres an influence which, for thirty years, was ever on the in- crease, at an epoch also pecuharly unfavourable to all sustained influence, are amazed to discover that she neither sought nor combined any means whatever. Even her conversation could hardly be said to be effec- tive. Her natural timidity was never overcome ; when first she began to speak it was in uncertain and almost obscure phrases ; it was necessary for her feelings to be excited, or her mind keenly interested, before she spoke well, and even then it was neither novelty of diction, nor the utterance of striking remarks, which constituted her originality, but perfect truth manifesting itself equally in the style a-s in the thought. Madame Swetchine's house was kept with great care, though without luxury of any sort. She never gave soirees nor dinners, but gathered a few. people about a small round table, -to the plenishing of which she attended with strict personal care. Her drawing-room was open to her friends morning and evening, and usually contained some plant in flower, or some object of art lent her by friends, or by artists glad so to exhibit their works. She brought from her Russian home a love of brilliant illumination, and until the last few years of her life her room sparkled with lamps and tapers. The first 38 MADAME SWETCHIME. impression was that of a place of worldly fashion, but her guests soon perceived that a higher spirit reigned within, and that she who possessed all these advantages was not herself possessed by them. Her extraordinary patience, invariably shown to the various disputants who fought out their political or religious battles by her hearth, came out in a touching manner to individuals. A certain lady of high rank was a sort of social scourge to Madame Swetchine's drawing-room during fifteen years. Her unfortunate temper made her burst like a storm on every subject under discussion ; she poured out questions without listening to any answer, and her appearance was a signal for putting the company to rout ; but Madame Swetchine never gave her a cold reception. She imper- turbably discouraged all the attempts made by the rest of her society against the admission of Madame de X., replying gently, " What would you have me do ? all the world avoids her ; she is not happy, and she has none but me." Madame de X. died of old age ; and during her' last hours it was Madame Swetchine who sought her out, and faithfully stayed for long hours beside the bed of death. And among younger ladies she was equally a favourite ; she possessed the secret of captivating women of the world, usually but little accessible to the influence of one of their own sex. Her individual toilette was simple and invariable, consisting of a costume of brown MADAME SWETCHINE. 39 Stuff, from which she never departed ; but her taste in dress, as in all other things, was fine and sure, and she liked to see young ladies .who moved in general society elegantly attired. They used to come to her at night, when ready for their balls, and pass in review before her indulgent and sympathising eyeS) and then, in the morning, the very same 3'oung people would be found at her side, telling her their secrets, and obeying her advice. The enthusiasm with which her biographer, the Count de Falloux, dwells on her singular faculty of sympathy, the confidence with which he describes her widely extended social influence, are very singular. Who in England ever heard of Madame Swetchine, a woman who neither wrote nor spoke for the public ? Yet no sooner is she dead, than two thick volumes, published on the other ■ side of the channel, run at once through three editions ; and attest, by a wail of lamentation, that a soul espe- cially dear to and reverenced by her fellow-beings has been summoned from their midst. The way in which she arranged her day was as follows : it was divided into three parts. She reserved the morn- ing exclusively to herself, but the morning began for her before daylight. At eight o'clock she had aheady been to church and had visited the poor ; and the hours were her own until three in the afternoon. From three to six her salon was open to her friends j from six to nine it 4° MADAME SWETCHINE. was again closed j but at nine she again received com- pany, who usually remained until midnight. The habitu'es of the afternoon and those of the evening were generally distinct ; some of those who came every night had never even seen others who had adopted the earlier hour. So fixed can the habits of French people become in these trifling things, that one lady, La Marquise de .Pastoret, who visited Madame Swetchine every day from four till six, on returning from her visits to the hospitals and the poor, was told by her coachman that he could not answer for her safety if she would go and see a sick friend one evening, " as his horses had never seen lighted lanterns." Madame de Pastoret'was accustomed to "receive" every night at -her own house, .and her custom appeared to have become a sort of law. There are many biographies of which the fine flower and perfume cannot be gathered and presented in a small compass, and the correspondence between Madame Swetchine and her friends, though full of delicate and subtle touches, must be read at length t0.t)e appreciated. How, her adopted child, Nadine, having become the Comtesse de Sdgur d'Aguesseau, she undertook the charge of the daughter of a dear Russian friend. Made- moiselle de Nesselrode, is told at length in letters to the absent mother. " He'lfene," who afterwards became the wife of Count Michel Chreptowitch, was at that time MADAME SWETCHINE. 4I fourteen years old, and Madame Swetchine's ideas of education were well calculated to secure love from young people. When Hdfene brings her correspondence to show to Madame Swetchine, the latter takes care to read to her young guest some of her letters in return ; the elder lady places a little girl as an apprentice, and the younger insists on paying half the monthly expenses out of her " allowance," and so they go on together in a way that is not withotit interest for all who care to learn that Russian women of rank can be full of tender, pious charity and cultivated thought. The Revolution of 1830 threw Madame Swetchine's personal friends on one side, but does not appear to have changed in any way her mode of life in the Fau- bourg St Germain. We find her still discussing social and political affairs with her numerous friends, and in 1833 writing a series of letters to " Mon cher Charles," the Comte de Montalembert, the man for whom English sympathy was so warmly aroused at the time of his conflict with Louis Napoleon a few years ago. But in T834 the quiet household of the Rue St Dominique was suddenly convulsed by a blow which came neither from the fury of political passions, nor from the direct hand of Providence, but from the will of an arbitrary monarch, whose " delicate kindness" in the matter of the cor- respondence with his predecessor Alexander hardly 42 MADAME SWETCHINE. compensated for the sentence he was now about to inflict; for an order actually came from the Emperor Nicholas, not merely for the return of the Swetchines to Russia, but for the exile of the General to any obscure part of the Russian provinces which he might fancy, so that it was far enough from Moscow or St Petersburg ! This order took the form of a sentence, and purported to be based on misconduct of which he had been guilty thirty years previously, under the. reign of the Emperor Paul ! This decree reached Paris in the heart of winter. Madame Swetchine made up her mind not to resist by flight or any measure of overt opposition. She had always refused to listen to her friends when they had advised her to reahse her fortune and transport it into France, saying : " I wish to leave my inheritance intact to my sister and her children ; but even if none of them remained alive, I would not any the sooner break the last link which would then bind me to my native country, casting aside utterly the serfs whom Providence committed to my care, and strengthening in the Em- peror's mind the fatal notion that in leaving the Russian Church one cannot remain a good Russian subject." She was now put to cruel proof, as witness a painful letter written by her at this time to a friend ; and she suffered more for the General than for herself He was twenty- five years older, being then seventy-seven ; and for this MADAME SWETCHINE. 43 poor old man to leave his pleasant sunny Parisian home, in that gay delightful street of St Dominique, with its stately hotels, backed by green leafy gardens, stretching away almost to the Bairifere, and- wander off to some dreary provincial town in the heart of Russia, there to end his days eating the bread of bitterness, was indeed a frightful doom. It was his wife who had to tell him of the sentence, and she had some difficulty in making him comprehend. " He would believe I had made a mistake." Then for a moment he would not hear of her going away with him, but she would not hear of being left behind ; and so only writing to beg that they might wait until milder weather, they made tip their minds to obey; and what is sufficiently remarkable is, that Madame Swetchine tried to prevent the story getting abroad for as long a time as possible, and in her pride as a Russian subject would permit .herself no complaint. " In my misfortune I will not forget that I am a Russian in the midst of the French." Then she alludes sadly to the " household gods " — " Our furniture, my pictures, my books, none of these things can be transported by people who are about to travel to a distance of eight hundred leagues, and who wander, so to speak, at the mercy of accidents, feeling themselves too old; too afflicted, too discouraged, to think of forming an establishment. When we have really obeyed 44 MADAME SWETCHINE. this decree, we shall only be living on from day to day, pitching a tent, as it were, and awaiting the hour when they will take down the canvas to make us a shroud. I am very sure, however, that however scantily we may be provided for, we shall not feel wanting in luxuries, for when one is very wretched one has but few needs. Adieu ! ma Men chlre ainie, if you do not weary of ask- ing grace for us at St Petersburg, my prayers for you shall be equally unwearying as long as I live. Every- body must pay their debts in their own coin." Such was the state of misery into which the Emperor whom we fought and conquered at Sebastopol could throw two elderly people whom, at all events in his capacity of sovereign, he had never seen in his life; and who had certainly never injured or even disobeyed him or his father. As a matter of fact they did not go into exile; but the nervous shock was great, and the anxiety which they suffered during many months was in itself a horrible torture. On the first day Madame Swetchine implies that she feared her husband would go mad and commit suicide. Finally, what actually oc- curred was this : their -friends at St Petersburg obtained a respite, which Madame Swetchine employed in tra- versing Europe to plead, in person, her husband's cause. She left Paris on the evening of the i6th August 1834, and arrived at St Petersburg on the 19th of September. MADAME SWETCHINE. 45 It was the i6th of November before the aim of her courageous efforts was attained. She was then fifty years of age ; and always in bad health, she was now so far shaken that she could not quit Russia until the month of February! Her homeward journey must hsCve been full of cruel suffering at that cold season ; but she reached Paris at six o'clock of the morning of the 4th of March, being the first day of Lent 1835. Stopping her carriage at the chapel of St Vincent de Paul in the Rue Montholon, she entered and rendered up thanks for her safe return ; and arriving at last at the threshold of her beloved home in the Rue St Dominique, she sank exhausted on to a bed of sickness, where she lay for three months hovering between life and death. In 1836-7 Madame Swetchine lost her adopted daughter Nadine, and also her brother-in-law the Prince Gagarin, who had exchanged the embassy of Rome for that of Munich ; and the Princess Gagarin, thenceforth residing in Moscow with her five sons, was separated widely from the tender elder sister who had been to her as a mother. These losses made her more and more detached from the world, and more devoted to her reli- gious duties and to charity. A letter is given from one of her servants, detailing how all those morning hours which she nominally reserved to herself were taken up by consecutive applicants requiring help and advice ot 46 MADAME SWETCHINE. various kinds. " She knew so well how to comfort the poor in their needs, and the rich in their domestic troubles ; how to call up the moral energies of the unfortunate, and sustain mothers of families who came to consult her about their children. Of those who came to her to seek consolation, I saw each quit her room with an expression of peace." She liked to mark any- day of special rejoicing by an especial act of charity. Once, when she received a letter from her sister which put an end to a long period of anxiety, she sent Cloppet out on a benevolent mission, and when he came back successful, his mistress said joyfully, " My dear Cloppet, we will call the household you have visited to-day after ma sceur." On the day when peace was proclaimed at Sebastopol she sent him out on a similar errand, and this time the scene of his exertions was christened /« I'aix. She took part in many of the works of charity founded in France after the Restoration, but her parti- cular interest attached itself to the deaf and dumb. In 1827 the administrative council, to which was confided the general direction of the Deaf and Dumb Institution, created two comites de patronage — one of men, for the boys ; the other of women, for the girls. These two com- mittees were especially designed to bestow protectors on the deaf and dumb children when the time came for their leaving the asylums. Madame Swetchine was the MADAME SWETCHINE. 47 first president of the committee of ladies. In 1837 she adopted into her own household a young deaf and dumb girl, who had great beauty, many excellent qualities, and a very bad temper. This girl she used to take out with her in her morning walks, leaning upon her arm, and making as far as possible a companion of her. It took all Madame Swetchine's habitual tact and gentleness to soften the violent disputes into which Parisse entered with the other servants ; men and women alike came in for her inarticulate anger. But the battle was won at last, Parisse became gentle and good, and utterly devoted to her mistress, whom she served to the end, living with her for nearly thirty years, and watching over her on the bed of death. In 1838 Madame Swetchine became similarly interested in a family at Chantilly, who had seen better days, but then fallen into the extreme of poverty. Madame Louvos, the aged mother, was barely supported by the labours of her daughter, a girl of seventeen. During- the autumn which she spent at Chantilly, Madame Swetchine lavished kindness on these two ladies, and in January she placed the younger one as assistant in an ouvroir. " When there," says Made- moiselle Louvos, " how much good she did me by her loving counsels ! When I had doubts about my calling, and thoughts of changing my situation, I found how full she was of charity, what hold it had upon her mind. 48 M\DAME SWETCHINE. How kindly she showed me of what use I might be to the young women who were confided to my care, and exhorted me to patience." Mademoiselle Elisa Louvos is at the present time directress of one of the first ouvroirs in Paris. Her care for her own Russian serfs, whom she would never allow to be alienated into other hands, was very touching. Unable to live among them, she made them the object of an incessant vigilance and indefatigable correspondence. Her friends in the interior of Russia kept her informed of everything that occurred on her .estates, and it is easy to see by their replies, found among her letters, that she questioned them much more about the moral well-being of the families on those estates than about the state of her revenues. She is found promoting enfranchisement with unceasing care, forbidding or repairing the disastrous transport of serfs from one estate to another, and communicating to others in the pursuit of amelioration the same perseverance and energy which she displayed in her own person. A private letter, apparently from a female friend, evidently shows Madame Swetchine as endeavouring to fathom the relations between the serfs and their overseers, and listening to the complaints of runaways j but a certain reserve prevails on this head in the biography of the Count de Falloux; who fears lest some indiscreet revela- MADAME SWETCHINE. 49 tion should injure the " noble measures " now being undertaken by Alexander II., in conjunction with the nobles of his empire, for freeing the serfs. Space fails for any more detail regarding the life of Madame Swetchine. The book from which we have extracted this sketch touches on all the political events which have affected Paris for the last twenty years, giving numerous private letters from men and women engaged in the heart of the various struggles. In 1850 she lost her husband, who had attained the extreme age of ninety-two, and from that time she retired more and more from the world, though a circle of intimate friends still met in the Rue St Dominique. M. de Lamartine, the Prince Albert de- Broglie, and M. de Toqueville, appear on the scene j from the latter are many pro- foundly interesting letters on the state of France, and the differences between ancient and modern society. So this gentle and pious life wore away, in the exercise of every Christian duty, and in the cultivation of every in- tellectual faculty, until the autumn of 1857, when she died, full of years and honours. The closing scenes are described in a long letter written at the time by the Count de Falloux to the Count de Montalembert, show- ing the tender reverence in which Madame Swetchine was held by men of much worldly mark. It is just because she excelled in no special gift that the lesson ot 5° MADAME SWETCHINE. her life is so touching and so instructive. Faithful to the duties imposed by a high worldly calling, yet so simple and humble that she deemed nothing beneath her sympathy, the quiet story of this Russian lady's earthly existence has charmed thousands of readers in the country of her adoption. May it find a few sym- pathising hearts in our own 1 n, LA SGEUR ROSALIE. 11. LA SCEUR ROSALIE* j N the month of October 1855, an aged wo- man, who had spent all the years of a long life in works of charity, was called away to her rest, amidst the lamentations of Paris. To attend her cofSn came the clergy of her parish church, with numerous other ecclesiastics, and a stream of young girls who had been educated and trained by her. Around it walked the sisters of her order, and behind it followed the public officials of the quarter of Paris in which she had lived. After the procession walked an immense * This memoir is abridged from a book entitled " Vie de la Soeur Rosalie." Libraire de Mde. Ve. Foussielgue-Rusaud, Rue St Sulpice, 23, Paris. 54 I.A SCEUR ROSALIE. multitude, such as could be neither counted nor de- scribed : every rank, age, and profession was there ; great and small, rich and poor, learned men and labour- ers, the most famous and the most obscure. Political parties, in the most unruly city in the world, hushed their dissensions as they walked towards that grave. In- stead of going straight towards the church, the body was borne through the streets where she had been accus- tomed to visit, and the women and children who could not walk in the great procession fell on their knees and prayed. Shops were shut, and the work of this working- day world was put aside, while they took this woman to her last earthly dwelling. The Archbishop of Paris sent his Vicar-General to assist in the ceremony ; and a band of soldiers surrounded the bier, and rendered military honours to the one who lay upon it, for she had been decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Finally, amidst tears and prayers and the lamentations of a great multitude, they buried her; and one who goes to the Cimetibre du Mont Parnasse will see, placed where it may most conveniently be visited by those who come to pay a tribute of respect to one they loved^ a tomb, bearing this inscription : — A ScEUR Rosalie, SES AMIS RECONNAISSANTS, LES RICHES ET LES PAUVRES. LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 55 Jeanne Marie Rendu, afterwards known as Sister Rosalie, was born on the 8th September 1787, just be- fore the terrible years of the French Revolution. It was a tranquil, though a sorely discontented France, upon which her infant eyes opened, but she was destined to see that mediseval framework of society shivered to atoms, and to know intimately many of the successive actors on the political stage. Her family belonged to the class of respectable burghers, and she was brought up by her widowed mother. Among the deep valleys of the Jura, and sur- rounded by the simple and pious people who knew no- thing as yet of the flood of new ideas which were des- tined to arouse, and for a time to desolate Francfe, little Jeanne grew up to the age of five years, a pretty, clever, and very mischievous child, endeavouring, according to her own whimsical assertion, to commit as many naughti- nesses as possible, in order to exhaust the list of faults and be quite good when she grew up. Then came the Reign of Terror, and even the Pays de Gex could not escape from the effects of those dread decrees of the Convention of 1793, which proscribed the priests and denounced the aristocrats, and forbade man or woman to succour the outlaws under pain of death. Atheism ruled in the capital, and to perform divine service in the manner appointed by the Church was a capital S6 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. ofifence, both for priest and congregation. Madame Rendu, her family, her servants, and her neighbours, undaunted by these threats, continued to receive the proscribed ministers of religion, and to afford them facihties for celebrating divine worship ; and little Jeanne, who had been trained by her mother in habits of the strictest truth, was exceedingly discomposed by the amount of necessary concealment. The arrival of a new man-servant, whom everybody appeared to treat with unaccountable respect, gave the honest child a sense of some doubtful mystery; and in uiie petite discussion with Madame Rendu, she exclaimed, "Take care; I will tell that Peter isn't Peter." It was the Bishop of Annecy 1 Such a revelation from the innocent lips of this enfant terrible would have cost the lives of the bishop and of his protectors, and they were obliged to tell her all that hung upon her silence ; a fatal lesson which Jeanne was not slow to comprehend, when some few days afterwards her own cousin, the Mayor of Annecy, was shot in the public square, for having tried to save the church from spoliation. When La Sceur Rosalie, in later years, recalled these frightful events, she trembled and thanked God, who had preserved her from the terrible grief of having caused such a crime, even by a childish and involuntary indiscretion. When at length the Reign of Terror ended, and LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 57 France drew breath once more, Jeanne's mother sent her to complete her education in , a school kept at Gex, by Ufsuline nuns. This order was founded in 1537 by Angela da Brescia, and named after the British St Ursula. The vivacious child had sobered down into a sensitive and deeply pious young girl, and so strong appeared to be her bias towards a religious life, that the Ursulines thought of her rather in the light of a novice than of a scholar. But Jeanne was not in- clined to the life of the cloister; it was foreign' to her nature. She wanted to be busy in active charity ; she loved and admired her teachers, but when she left the church she felt an impulse to go straight to an hospital ; and when she prayed she wanted to supplement her prayer by some work of mercy. She did not feel it enough to wait for Lazarus at the door of a convent ; she wanted to go forth and seek him, to give him shelter, to warm his cold limbs, and to comfort his sad heart. The wish, in short, to be a Sister of Charity grew up in her soul, and a visit which she paid with her mother to the Superior who had charge of the hospital of Gex gave it additional strength. She got leave from her mother to pass some time among the patients, helping the Superior, and serving an appren- ticeship in devotedness. It came to pass that one of her friends, fifteen years S8 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. older than herself, had come to the resolution of enter- ing the Sisterhood of St Vincent de Paul, — an order wholly devoted to works of benevolence, and which Napoleon, then First Consul, had recently re-established in France. When Jeanne heard this she poured out her heart to her friend, told her her desires, hopes, and prayers, and how she had prayed God to accept her for the service of the sick, and implored Mademoiselle Jacquinot to take her with her. The woman of thirty objected to the youth and inexperience of the girl of fifteen ; told her to wait, to give herself more time for reflection, and assured her that her mother would not consent. Then Jeanne went to Madame Rendu, and knelt at her feet imploring her leave. Madame Rendu was afraid of a hasty project; she dreaded her child mistaking her vocation ; but she had two other daugh- ters, and, herself a devout Catholic, she saw nothing unnatural in Jeanne's determination, provided it was well grounded and likely to be followed by no repent- ance. Finally, she gave her a letter to an ecclesiastic in Paris, sure that he would test Jeanne and send her back if it were best, and allowed her daughter to leave with Mademoiselle Jacquinot. The young girl cried bitterly at leaving her mother, for it was characteristic of her whole life that her religious devotion never weakened her^ human affections; when, amidst the I.A SCEUR ROSALIE. 59 thousand distractions of a busy and useful life, she lost any dear friend by death or separation, she seemed to suffer as much as those who waste their lives in passive loving. One part of this remarkable woman's character did not overbalance the other, and she found space in her large heart for the tender fondness of individual ties, beside the sublime charity by which the world learned to know her, both ruled and vivified by the supreme love of a Christian towards her God. It remains on record that the journey — a serious undertaking nearly sixty years ago — was rapid, without incident, and that the two friends reached Paris on the 25th of May 1802; when, thinking little or nothing of the wonders of the capital, they went straight to the Rue du Vieux-Columbier, and knocked at the door of the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul. In order clearly to understand the sort of life to which Jeanne Rendu had devoted herself, we must consider the peculiar circumstances of the foundation and development of this order of nuns in the Catholic Church. Among the great men, authors, statesmen, and divines, who in the seventeenth century made the name of France peculiarly glorious among the nations, foremost in popular affection stands St Vincent de Paul. His whole life was a series of beneficent acts : the orphan, the sick, the agedj provinces decimated by 6o LA SCEUR ROSALIE. war, famine, and pest j the far shores of Algiers, where he was carried as a slave, and where he ministered unceasingly to slaves more wretched than he j the galleys where criminals worked, and the scaffold on which they died; — all shared his presence, and the healing power of his charity. The mark of his powerful hand is seen on every pious work inaugurated during his life-time; and his influence breathes in each ema- nation of Christian love. But his great legacy to the poor and suffering was the order of sisters who bear his name ; whom we indifferently call " Sisters of Charity," or " Sisters of St Vincent de Paul." In these he united, in one person, the piety of the servant of God, the experience of a physician, the watchfulness of a nurse, the enlightened patience of a teacher, and the devoted aid of a servant. Hitherto the miseries of the poor had been allotted for alleviation to the different mem- bers of Christian congregations ; he created a societ/ to whom he confided human griefs as a special portion and a peculiar field. To find fit instruments for offices which would in many cases seem beyond the endurance of human nerves, the founder did not go about to seek those rare natures whose spiritual life transfuses every emotion; nor did he impose any of those spiritual exercises by which the Catholic Church endeavours to train some of her flock to lives of entire abnegation, and LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 6l assist them in withdrawing wholly from human influences into the Divine life. But St Vincent de Paul called into his community simple souls, who, loving good and fearing evil, felt a yearning to devote themselves to the welfare of their fellow-creatures. Had they remained in their families they would have been good honest Christians, only distinguished above other women by rather more bene- volence, self-abnegation, and piety. In the life of the community they still remain in daily contact with the world, from which they are only separated by an engagement, very short and very light, since it is only binding from year to year. But while thus mingling intimately with the world, they yet live in the continual presence of that God whom they serve in the person of the poor. The other orders of the Roman Catholic Church, even when devoted to charitable works, had deemed it impossible to preserve their pristine fervour without attempting to secure it amidst the seclusion of the cloister and by the aid of perpetual vows. Even St Francois de Sales was afraid, and changed the plan of life which he had at first laid down for his " Filks' de la Visitation:' But St Vincent gave to his sisters, as he himself said, for a monastery the house of the sick, for a cell a humble room, for a cloister the streets of the town; instead of a grating he placed before 62 LA SCEUK ROSALIE. them the fear of God, and clothed them with the veil of a holy modesty. And the God whom he trusted proved that he judged rightly. After the lapse of two hundred years, the community which he founded is more flourishing than ever, and its action extends to the farthest part of the world. Wherever Sisters of Charity show themselves, orphans find a mother, the poor a sister, soldiers a consoler upon the field of battle, the sick and the aged a succourer upon the bed of death. France confides to their care her schools, her hospitals, and her asylums ; other Catholic nations have gratefully borrowed the institution, and Lutheran Prussia has organised an order of Protestant Deaconesses to supply their place. Even the Mussulman learns to tolerate their presence ; in the steep and narrow streets of Algiers the writer has often seen the blue gown and white cap of the sisters disappearing under the tunnelled passages of that intricate and extraordinary town. They have charge of the Civil Hospital, where the poor colonists, sttuck down by the malaria of those fatal plains, so long gone out of cultivation, are brought to die. Within sight of the hospital is an immense Or- phanage, where destitute orphans and foundlings, chiefly of Arab parentage, (but comprising numerous other races,) are reared by the same order. The sight of Christian women living in an open community, and LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 63 devoted to works of practical charity, is one calculated to impress Mohammedans with profound amazement; and its daily repetition, year after year, should surely affect their prejudices in regard to the position of the female sex more than a thousand written or spoken arguments. It is the drop of water perpetually falling on a stone. We do not say that there are not two sides to this question, even in Algiers. Between the medical men and the sisters there appears to be a smouldering division, — feud is too strong a word,— 'the rights of which it is exceedingly difficult for a looker-on to decide. Nevertheless, a great work is actually being accom- plished before the eyes of an immense mixed popula- tion, such as the African shores have never witnessed since the tide of barbarism swept away the foundations of the early Church, and made Carthage and Hippo a desolate region, when the Koran drove out the Bible, and the Christian name was known no more. To colonise and to Christianise the waste places of the Algerine dependencies is the great work of the French nation, its only moral excuse for the cruel scenes of the African war. Tunis and Morocco must inevitably follow sooner or later in the same track, and submit to French power; wherever the arms of France conquer, there follow the Sisters of Charity. But we must leave the general history of the order, 64 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. and return to our little Jeanne Rendu, and the times in which she commenced her noble and beautiful career. During the worst years of the French Revolution, the communities had been of course disbanded ; but the members kept up their individual ministrations one by one, wearing the ordinary dress of women, and shielded in numerous instances against the law by the gratitude of those whom they nursed and assisted. Sometimes they even succeeded by their concealed influence in saving victims' from the guillotine ; and when the storm abated, and they could once more reassemble in their own houses, many were the stories of peril passed, and of heroic deeds accomplished, which they brought to the common hearth. The Maison Mere re-established its discipline and its labours ; received its novices to train them in lives of active religious exertion, and wel- comed with open arms the two friends come as " appren- tices to charity" from the extremity of France. Jeanne did not, however, remain long at the Maison Mire. Of a very delicate and sensitive constitution, she was affected by every interior emotion and by every external influence, and had much to suffer in the early days of her novitiate. She felt the slightest atmospheric changes, was frightened at spiders, and could not sleep in the vicinity of a graveyard. Each of the duties of a Sister of Charity, into which she threw herself with LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 65 ardour, cost her a severe struggle against her instinctive repugnances; and after several months the delicate and nervous young girl fell dangerously ill, and was sent away for change of air to La Sceur Tardy, Rue des Francs- Bourgeois, Faubourg Saint Marceau ; to a house whose inmates even the Reign of Terror had not- been able to disperse, for they remained together wearing the secular dress, and whenever any family fell into trouble they were sent for, so that if the police had been despatched after them, they would probably have been taken by some sick-bed. Since nobody could be found to de- nounce them, the authorities shut their eyes to their remaining in commuflity : and if we are surprised at this, it must be remembered that these sisters lived and worked in the very lowest parts of Paris, just among the very population which was worst and wickedest, and whose influence was uppermost during the Reign of Terror ; but who, nevertheless, were too well acquainted with sick- ness and poverty, and had hearts to be touched by the devotion of those who knew how to cherish and forgive. When Jeanne Rendu thus Came under the care of La Sceur Tardy she was sixteen years and a half old ; her face beamed with intelligence and feeling : firm and sensible, energetic and delicate, such is the picture drawn of the young girl who shortly became the delight of the household, throwing herself into all its labours, 66 LA S(EUR ROSALIE. and drawing the older nuns into the sphere of her joyous activity. At the end of her novitiate they had become so fond of her that they could not bear the idea of losing her; and La Sceur Tardy said to the Superior, "_/^ suis tres contente de cette petite Rendu, donnez lui r habit, et laissez la moi." So Jeanne Rendu took the veil at the Maison Mere, received the name of Sceur Rosalie, to distinguish her from another sister, and then returned to the Faubourg Saint Marceau to quit it no more. The Faubourg Saint Marceau was, and is, one of the worst quarters of Paris : there the poor are poorer than elsewhere; unhealthiness is more general, illness more fatal ; even the industry of this quarter is chiefly carried on by night, being of the lowest description. In 1802, immediately after the Revolution, and its many years of trouble, famine, and sanguinary idleness, the Faubourg Saint Marceau was a great deal worse than it is now. In the revolutionary orgies it had acquired a fearful celebrity, and when the ordinary social basis was re- stored, it had. fallen into that state of exhaustion which succeeds every kind of intoxication, and could with diffi- ciilty be brought back even to its former organisation. The ephemeral sovereignty of its population had-ebbed, leaving behind it a deeper misery than ever. In those narrow streets and broken-down houses, in rooms too low and damp to be used as stables for brute beasts, LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 67 whole families vegetated rather than lived ; huddled Xag^fhsx pMe-mile on the ground, or upon straw, without air, light, warmth, or food. The moral and intellectual life of these miserable people had suffered in proportion. After so many stormy years it was difficult to find a child that knew how to read, or a woman that could remember her prayers. The church and the school were equally needed with the workshop. Everything had to be re- built, from its material and moral foundations. Such was the task which this Sister of Charity set herself to accomplish, and for which her pious fervour and clear practical intellect alike fitted her. Londoners may learn a most instructive lesson from the methods she employed, remembering that we also have a St Giles and a Westminster to redeem. She began her career as a simple sister in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, and ended it as Superior of the Maison de la Rue de I'Epde-de-Bois. But in each post she was the soul of her associates : she undertook and carried on for more than half a century an energetic contest against the miseries and vices of her quarter, never making a back- ward step, never even standing still ; never disheartened, never beaten : resting from one fatigue by changing it for another; replacing work accomplished by some new endeavour ; and only laying down her weapons in the hour when God called His servant to eternal rest. 68 LA SCEUR ROSALIE,- How did she do all this? The reader who pursues this memoir wonders at the peculiar force of character she displayed in her stationary life. She made no elo- quent or striking appeals ; no crusade for or against ; she remained where she was in her own quarter, going to seek no one, but receiving all who came to her; in fact,' she took hold one by one of every nature which ap- proached her sphere, and never missed an opportunity. It is therefore incumbent on those who would understand her career, to also understand something of the insti- tutions with which a Sister of Charity was naturally con- nected. First in order of which, comes the Bureau de Charity, then just organised by Napoleon as First Consul, and equivalent to the Poor Law of our own country. Wien the Convention of 1793, some years before the date of which we are writing, had taken possession of the property of the charitable foundations of former ages, a book was opened in the chief town of each department, called " le grand livre de la bienfaisance puhlique." Its pages were intended to contain accounts of the pensions allotted to all sick people, widows, orphans, and found- lings — pensions which were never paid to anybody! Napoleon soon gave these Eutopian follies their due. He shut the great book, all the pages of which were white ; gave back to the hospitals and asylums all of their property which had not been alienated by sale, and, 1.A SCEUR ROSALIE. 69 true to his system of blending old institutions with mo- dern principles and customs, he returned to the theory of public charity directed by the State and carried out by religion. It was therefore to the Sisters of Charity that he confided the details of his poor law, as well as the inmates of his hospitals j and the House in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, of which our Soeur Rosalie was a member, was fixed upon as one of four centres of relief allotted to the douzilme arrondissement. A dispensary, a store of clothes and linen, and a free school for poor children, what we should call a " Ragged School," were established there. A list of poverty-stricken house- holders was drawn up by the sisters, and the Bureau de Charitd allowed to each two pounds of bread per month, a little meat in cases of illness or convalescence, some firing during winter, and a garment or coverlid once in every two years. The sisters had the charge of this suc- cour; they allotted the food and medicine, kept the school, and visited the sick, assisted by the public officials, and by ladies who gave their spare time to help in the good work. La Soeur Rosalie entered into these functions with zeal, and her house of succour soon became a model for others. In after years she was sometimes heard to la- ment the comparative freedom of action allowed by the authorities in those days, when, under the influence of 7° LA SffiUR ROSALIE. profound pity, they entered into works undertaken for the relief of the poor with little regard to the strict economy deemed necessary in more normal times. Those authorities soon saw her superiority in all that concerned the wise management of the poor, and as she always gave them all possible credit in whatever was effected, she became their friend and counsellor. When, at the early age of twenty-eight, she was named a " Supd- rieufe," the quarter celebrated her nomination as a festi- val, and the public officials connected with the bureau presented her with a complete wardrobe of clothes. She kept these with the greatest care and economy, and wore some of the garments until the day of her death. When the revolut'ion of 1830 took the administration of public relief out of the hands of the Church, the word charitt was changed for that of bienfaisance, and a great number of the officials were also changed. Many of the new comers were deeply prejudiced against the Sisters of Charity, and wished to lessen their influence over the poor. La Sceur Rosalie took no notice of this ; she acted towards the new administrators as she had done towards the old" ones, fulfilled their wishes, and helped their inexperience; till by her gentleness and activity she quite disarmed them, and regained her old influence over men and measures. Under every system of admin- istration she remained, in the eyes of the poor, the true LA SCEUR ROSALIE. Jl representative of all the good done in the Faubourg St Marceau until the day of her death. From her minute and active sympathy sprung one eminently good result — she prevented the poor from he- coming pauperised, from feeling degraded by the perpetual- acceptance of public relief. She threw into her charity just that element of love which made it an individual gift and not a corrupting alms. Accompanying all dona- tions of food, clothes, or money, with the instruction which elevates and the advice which persuades and re- deems, she strove to diminish the sources of poverty while she relieved its wants. To persuade a man to relinquish his vices, is to remove pregnant causes of mis- fortune to his family. To educate the woman in house- wifely virtues, is to introduce economy and forethought, and increase the weekly savings. Would that all who bestow money on the poor would remember the power which resides in such individual ministration — ^would re- member that it is the only method by which relief can be bestowed without degrading the recipient, and encour- aging him to depend on others for the support of himself and his family, by trusting to charity, or to the mercies of the law. When advancing age, illness, and the numerous duties she was obliged to fulfil prevented her from visiting so much in person, she made it a rule never to close her 72 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. door against the poor; she always found time for them, and they had precedence of the rest of the world : even when weakened by fever, and forbidden to speak or move by her physician, the sisters had great difficulty to prevent her going down to speak to her people, and did not always succeed. During one of her illnesses, the sister who had charge of the house refused a man be- longing to the quarter admission to La Soeur Rosalie. The man lost his temper, and grumbled loudly at not being attended to. La Soeur Rosalie overheard him, came down shivering with fever, listened to him, sooth- ed him, and promised to attend to his wishes. When he was gone she gently scolded the sister for not hav- ing told her he was there; the sister appealed to the strict orders of the medical man, and observed that the applicant had rudely lost his temper. "Ah, my child," said La Soeur Rosalie, " the poor fellow has something else to do than studying good manners." Thus the miserable inhabitants of the Faubourg St Marceau took a habit of going many times in the week to pour all their troubles, large and small, into the ears of this forgiving friend. Not only for bodily wants, but for all manner of sorrows and difficulties, they came to her. When the world rebuifed them, when a work- shop refused them work, or a baker would not give them bread on credit j if a landlord expelled them and LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 73 sold up their furniture to pay a deficient rent; if a policeman would not let them sell their petty wares in the street, but told them, as we should say in Eng- land, to " move on ;" if the son had been saucy to his father, or the daughter had abandoned her mother's fire- side ; — these grievances one and all found their way to her. Her welcome comforted them for the scorn of Others; she gave them food for the day, pleaded for their admission to the workshop, softened the hearts of the landlord and the policeman, persuaded the un- dutiful son to ask his parent's pardon, and brought back to the sheepfold the wandering lamb. The sinners came with the well-behaved, those who deserved her kindness and those who had abused it, for the good Sceur sent no one away. She told every- body the truth, and made them ashamed of themselves, and then found some excuse for not punishing them. Nevertheless there was one tipsy fellow, who had so often sold for drink the clothes and bedding she had given him, that she formed the resolution not to give him any more. One winter, in the first days, of frost, he made an audacious demand for a counterpane, which was refused. But when night came, La Soeur Rosalie was no sooner warmly covered up than her kind heart began fretting about him. "That man must be very cold," was an idea that kept her awake all the night, 74 LA StEUR ROSALIE. and the next day she sent the counterpane, "in order," she said, "that we may both sleep soundly." When sickness fell upon a poor family, all the re- sources of her heart and intellect came out. She pre- vented the gradual sale of furniture, so bitter in these households, when one by one each article is pawned or sold for daily bread; she coaxed the busy doctors to give especial care to her invalids ; she kept up their courage ; she mingled religious consolation with tem- poral help ; she strengthened the terrified woman and kept the children good ; and when the sick man re- covered, she had acquired a hold over his better nature which she never again relinquished. Among that low and miserable population, crimes of the worst dye came under her knowledge ; and she brought round those to repentance who thought they had surpassed the possible limits of Divine mercy. She brought into the Christian fold one man whose hands had been deeply dyed in blood during the first years of the Revolution, and who always said that he owed the final peace of his cruelly afflicted conscience to her, and to the religious influence of one little habit to which in his worst times he had clung. When, he was a youth, at Nantes, he had helped in the horrible murders of 1793 : the numerous victims, as they marched to death, chanted a hymn, which, strangely enough, lingered in the ears of this humaft LA SCEUR KOSAI.IE. 75 fiend. He took to repeating it every day, no matter how ill spent ; a sort of nervous habit which kept the words in his memory: and when, long years after, La Soeur Rosalie at length persuaded him that he might repent and be saved at the eleventh hour, he died repeating the same hymn, and praying for her who had brought him to the feet of Christ. In this bad quarter of the town no sick person re- jected the priest sent by La Sceur Rosalie ; and we find an anecdote of the way in which the memory of her good deeds lingered with the worst characters. In one of her most miserable streets lived an old rag-seller, who had saved up money, deserted his wife, and led a scan- dalous life, seeming to retain no trace of good feeling except towards his daughter, whom he sent to the Sisters' School. On his death-bed he sent for La Sceur Rosalie, whom he had known in his days of wretched- ness, who had nursed Him in some illness, but had lost sight of him altogether. She went at his call, groped up a winding staircase, by the help of a cord, into a dark room, where she found the old man lying in squalor. When he saw her, he explained that he wanted to leave his money to his daughter, and having no faith in the honesty of any of his friends, thought he had better give it into the hands of his old nurse. "But," said she, "pray send for a lawyer, and make your will properly." 76 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. " No, I don't want a lawyer ; I know you and believe in you. Take the money, that I may die easy about my daughter." The Soeur then talked to him about his soul, and begged him to receive the offices of the Church. "No, I don't want a priest," said the miser; "nobody is nearer God than you are, and we can talk very well together about everything which concerns heaven." It took some time before La Sceur Rosalie could per suade the old ragman that she was neither priest nor lawyer: however, she comforted him by taking charge of fifteen thousand francs for his daughter; and in exchange for this good office, he consented to see a priest, and be reconciled to his wife before he died. La Soeur Rosalie attach'ed the utmost importance to all institutions destined for the care and instruction of the young, and a very large part of her benevolent energy flowed into these channels. God has made the feeble- ness and innocence of the new generation a perpetual well-spring of hope for the world. That which we have learned through faults and through repentance, through the bitter experience of long lives of struggle, we can to a certain extent secure as a capital for the young. If we cannot impart to them the force of conviction which we ourselves have bought so dearly, still we can imbue them with opinions, surround them with safeguards, and LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 77 implant principles in their minds of which the seeds will develop in future years. If a perverse and brutal popu- lation repel the efforts of the Christian minister and the practical philanthropist — if they be depressed by its hard obstinacy, and hopeless of its ignorant dulness, let them remember that there are little children who repel no tenderness, who are not prejudiced against any one, who believe all that is told them, trust every promise which they hear, and offer their hearts to whoever opens loving arms for them. In the worst families these little ones are dropped as from heaven, and each child is one chance the more. The opinions entertained by La Scaur Rosalie were of course those inevitable to a Catholic — she cared less for intellectual advance than for the moral training of the children in her schools, and she tried to apportion the kind and amount of instruction given, to the require- ments of the future career of her pupils. Her plan of education aimed at producing certain definite results, and in so far it differed very considerably from the ideal of education now most accepted among us in England, which aims at drawing out the wholepowers of the mind, irrespective of their probable or possible direct appli- cation. We will, however, remind our readers how great a recoil has of late prevailed, even in England, towards ' the industrial education of the girls of the working 78 LA. SCEUK. ROSALIE, classes. The advocates of education are beginning to feel that common sense requires them to limit their in- struction to what may be called a professional end, and as working women must do house-work, as the health, comfort, and morality of the labourer s and mechanic's home must chiefly depend on the woman who is at the head of it, it is folly to call that efficient education which sends a female child out into the world untrained for her peculiar and inevitable duties. Hence the constant cur- rent of press articles about industrial schools, cooking schools, sewing schools ; hence the publication of such tracts as those issued by publishers and associations, from " How to Manage a Baby,'' upwards. La Soeur Rosalie, therefore, being, as appears on every page of her memoir, eminently unspeculative and pre-emi- nently practical, and living, moreover, day by day amidst a population whose gross ignorance was only matched by its urgent practical needs, set herself to train up as many girls as possible in the way they should go, and she dis- couraged, or threw aside as useless, whatever did not recommend itself on the ground of practical utility. So we must not be surprised that she disapproved of draw, ing, history, and belles-lettres, as subjects of study in primary schools. In particular, she objected to the time given to singing in girls' schools. This was the view she took, which we leave to be disputed, as it probably will LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 79 be by the majority of our readers. " Music,'' she said, " is perhaps suitable for boys destined to rough contact with their fellow-men, to work carried on amidst num- bers, amidst the tumults of the external world ; it may serve to soften- the rough manners of the workman, and to substitute honest and peaceful amusement for the noisy orgies of the tavern. But for young girls it is dangerous ; it invites their attendance in mixed places of amusement ; it calls them away from the modest ful- filment of household duties to expose them to public curiosity and theatrical applause. Why should we seek to awake in our young girls of the working classes needs and tastes which are in contradiction to the conditions imposed on them by their birth, their purse, and their surroundings? Drawing and music, and all similar surplus of instruction, only serve to disgust them with their needle, and to propagate that desire to rise in life (ces idks lie dedassemeni) which must one day be repressed, and which is the torment of our labouring class, for the trouble among our working people is, that now-a-days nobody is contented to remain in their own station in life.'' A great deal in this passage fiom the pen of La Sceur Rosalie is open to contrary argument, and American readers would probably think it very absurd and wrong to wish to limit the upward aspirations of girls and boys, since to rise in life means, up to a certain point, better So LA SCEUR ROSALIE. food, better clothes, more leisure, aiid purer moral sur- roundings of an external kind. And undoubtedly where there is ample virgin land to receive and sustain a sur- plus population, or where commerce is so rapidly ex- panding, or emigration becoming so cheap and easy, that room can be made for all who choose to " rise in life " without prejudice to their neighbours, there is no reason why being content with the station whereunto God called us in the first instance by birth, should be insisted upon as part of the character of a true Christian. But in our old countries, in many parts of England, and still more in very differently organised France, the rapid interchange carried on in New York and in Manchester between the social status of the master and that of the man, is practically impossible. It can only be by a- sort of miracle that the agricultural labourer in Dorset and Essex can " rise in life," and the working people of Paris and London find themselves hemmed in by con- ditions most difficult of change. Now we freely admit that it is the business of the lawgiver and the politician to widen these conditions if possible j to free the energies of the people, and to bring social ease and intellectual culture within the reach of the greatest possible number. But we firmly submit that it is the immediate duty of practical philanthropists to make the best of existing conditions. The minister of Christ and the visitor LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 8l among the poor has for immediate concern the making John and Jane, Thomas and Mary, lead good and use- ful lives on a sum ranging from ten to twenty shillings a week : a hard problem, but not utterly impossible of solution, as has been proved, by thousands of instances among the virtuous and industrious poor. La Soeur Eosalie disliked applying the spur of rivalry to her schools, according to the plan by which the municipality of Paris paid every year a considerable sum for the apprenticing of young girls who carried off the suffrages in a competition open to all the kcole^ com- munales. She thus wrote to a friend interested in pri- mary instruction : — " My experience has shown me that grave evils result from the system of bestowed appren- ticeship as a reward in competitive examinations. The struggle lies more between the mistresses of the different schools, who devote themselves to the pupils from whom they expect credit, to the detriment of the numbers who have a right to their care and instruction." The results obtained by the Sister in the schools under her imme- diate superintendence were remarkable for their practical good sense. She brought up her little girls in habits of modesty and politeness which would have done honour to the highest ranks. If the Superior excluded the more intellectual class of studies, just as she would have excluded topknots and flounces, it was evident that 82 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. piety and order reigned in the little assembly. In no school did the children read and write more correctly, nowhere did they know their prayers better, or possess neater habits and more intelligent, open faces. Every day she visited them; the good children crowded round her, and if she saw a little one in the corner, she always went up to it, dried its tears, helped it through its lesson, and asked forgiveness for the penitent. In her old age she used often to say to her last pupils, " I taught your dear mother to read ; how good and plea- sant she was ! She always knew her lessons, and you'll be like her, will you not?" The little girl would pro- mise, and would go home, and tell them what La Sceur Rosalie had said of her mother, which naturally proved a strong stimulus to the child and delighted the house- hold. If La Sceur met a child in the street, she used to ask where it went to school. If it went to none, she sent for the mother;, reproved her for negligence, showed her that Christian education was the best safeguard a parent could possess for a child's obedience and respect, and the best incentive to filial care in declining years. Sometimes the mother was not to blame ; the child had not been received at school for want of room, for, in spite of the munificence of the municipality of Paris •towards the system of primary instruction, the schools were far from affording adequate provision for the wants LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 83 of the population. Then she would take the little girl by the hand, and presenting her herself to the Sister who had charge of that particular school, she would say, " Find me, I beg of you, a little room for this child." " But we are quite full, ma mire'' " Look well, she is so slight ; she will not take much room, and you will give me so much pleasure." At the voice of La Sceur Rosalie all the pupils pressed closer together, and made room for the new comer, for they dearly loved to please her. On her part, when she left the schoolroom she went to look- at their luncheon baskets, and at the end of lesson time the lightest were found to have become the best filled ! She also busied herself in the founding of new institu- tions. She got together classes in the Rue Banquier, begging from people whom she knew to be devoted to the cause of Christian education, the sum necessary to secure their permanent foundation : exerting all the influences at her command, she persuaded the munici- pality to adopt the new school; a religious establish- ment was created there, and a workshop opened in con- nexion with the classes, thus introducing the industrial element of instruction. Before long a system of visita- tion was begun, and the miserable population of the suburb outside the Barrilre d'lvry was brought in a measure under benevolent superintendence. 84 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. In 1844 La Soeur Rosalie organised a crlcfie, or place of reception for babies whose mothers went out to work. Objections were raised, to which, however, she did not pay attention, as it seemed to her unjust to reproach charity with tempting mothers to neglect their duties; since they were required to come several times a day to nurse the little ones, and were only allowed to leave them when obliged to do so by the imperative summons of necessary labour. La Sceur Rosalie asked the ob- jectors why they reproached poor mothers with doing from necessity what rich mothers constantly do from choice. The rich mother in France often sends her nursling away to a foster-parent; the poor mother of the Faubourg Saint Marceau keeps hers at home, and watches by it in the nights which succeed laborious days ; she does not part with it except during forced absences, and then she hands it over to an enlightened and womanly care. As to the danger of bringing together a number of children, and thus exposing them to catch infant maladies from each other. La Sceur Ro- salie found by experience that her little guests had better health than those babies which remained at home, even taking this undeniable danger into account ; she had them washed, and dressed in clean linen, and put . into comfortable cradles ; she made a pleasure and a pride of her nursery, and showed it to friends and LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 85 Strangers with delight in her leisure moments. When she entered, the little folks all began to stir ; those who were old enough to walk, trotted up to be kissed, others rolled and crawled up to her feet and pulled her gown as babies will ; she bent over the cradles of the younget infants, talking, laughing, coaxing, caressing, comforting all their little troubles, and cheering all their little hearts. One day she saw in her crlche a foundling just beginning to talk, whom the attendants were about to take to the Foundling Hospital. She kissed him as she kissed all the others ; the wee fellow threw his arms round her neck, crying, "Mamma, mamma," and would not let go bis hold. "He calls me Mamma, and I cannot forsake him," said La Soeur Rosalie, and he was not sent to the Foundling Hospital, and so long as she lived he never wanted a mother's care. To the crlche, this indefatigable woman presently added an asile; very much what we call an infant school. In a short time the municipality employed Sisters to manage it, and all the children of the quarter were taken from under the wheels and from out of the gutter, and kept good with little songs and exercises and games, instead of wandering in the streets at the risk of their lives and their morals. We would fain say a few words about crlches in 86 LA SCEHR KOSALIE. general, since they have been much discussed in Eng- land, and attempts have been made to establish them, which, so far as we know, have failed. Undoubtedly a young child ought to be with its mother, and the delicate brain of a baby is best suffered to develop in the quiet of family life. The whole question is, whether, having certain inevitable evils to contend with, such as the labour of the poorer class of married women, it is not advisable to try and prevent the children being left with ignorant nurses, or with other children but little older than themselves, so that they fall into the water-butt, or over the fire, or down the stairs. The success of any particular crlche will depend al- most wholly on the person who manages it ; and also on the disposition of the mothers. We know one instance where a crlche started in connexion with a large factory failed, because the parents could not be permanently persuaded of its advantages. They asked at first what was the ohject of the nursery, as if some profit were about to result to the employers ! Even when this was got over, they disliked the " extra trouble the mothers had in bringing their children to us, instead of having them fetched, as the other nurses would do;" and those who adopted the plan of hiring other children to look after their babies, had the convenience of little maids at home to light their fire, boil the kettle, or look after the other LA SCEUR ROSALIE. ■ 87 children; at any rate the attendance at the nursery diminished. But that some impression had been made was shown by the fact that, in after years, mothers who had formerly brought their infants to be taken care of, expressed a wish that they could still have the same advantages for their younger children, but there has been no combination among them to request or to obtain them once more. With this not very encourag- ing result of one experiment, we will leave the subject of crlches, and return to the story of La Sceur Rosalie's exertions for the benefit of her older charges. It may easily be supposed that after having taught and trained her Uttle girls from infancy upwards, it cost this earnest heart great sorrow to let them go from under her care as soon as they were apprenticed in the shop or the workroom ; yet without some regular system it was impossible to maintain any efficient influence over girls approaching womanhood when once they had quitted her schools. It is true, that if any of her young pupils went wrong in after years, when the fever of youth had cooled down, and they were weaiy of false pleasure, they would return to La Sceur Rosalie to be received and comforted like the prodigal child. But it was then too late ; with broken health and ruined honour, and with their habits of work broken up by years of excitement, how could she counsel and restore 88 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. except in relation to another life'? She had often been advised to found one of those schools which receive female children at the age of seven or eight, keep them during the years of school and of apprenticeship, and only restore them to ordinary life as grown-up and instructed workwomen. But she never would carry out any such plan in connexion with her own establishment. The expense it would have entailed was in her eyes the least objection ; she feared to accustom the children of her poverty-stricken faubourg to the softening influences, the easy habits, the almost maternal cares, with which an orphan asylum would surround them. She often said, " It is unwise to transplant them from so rough a, neighbourhood." The open school,. on the other hand, by developing the general intelligence of the scholars, elevates them as a whole, without separating them from their fellows. Neither did Sceur Rosalie like her young female pupils to begin their working career under more favourable conditions than their after-life would insure. Bare rooms and hard beds, coarse food and household duties, these are the inevitable lot of the young work- woman at home ; as an apprentice, she has to learn by inevitable friction with the characters of others, by the exactions of those in authority, and by the faults of her equals and companions. It is in such experience that a truly noble character is providentially developed, and. LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 89 she therefore wished to accept this natural discipline for all her young charges, while she devised some means by which their connexion with the Sisters should not be violently snapped when they quitted the school. The plan which she rapidly conceived and carried into effect with her accustomed energy and decision was admirably adapted to meet her ends. "It is a good work,'' said she, the first time the project was discussed with others ; " God will cause it to succeed, and we will begin next Sunday." During the whole of that week she worked for the success of her scheme. She persuaded the mistresses of the workshops that "La Patronage" would make their apprentices industrious and obedient ; she made the mothers understand that it would be a great help to their daughters' career in life, and her win- ning voice, which never made itself heard in vain, in- duced several ladies to enter into her wishes and to promise their attendance. On the Sunday, a great number of young girls were by these means brought together at the Maison de la Rue de I'Epde-de-Bois ; papers were given to them on which their mistresses were to note down their general conduct, and whether they were industrious. The ladies who had come to meet them made the acquaintance of each indi- vidually, by the special introduction of La Sceur Rosalie; took down their addresses, promised to visit their work- 90 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. shops, and to give them rewards at the end of the half- year if the]' were deserved ; and then they all mingled together in kindly intercourse, and sang hymns with the Sisters ; and the Patronage was fairly started. This example of the system, begun in the poorest of quarters, and under the least favourable of conditions, triumphed over all objections and hesitations. It was capable of being generally followed : the impulsion once given by La Soeur Rosalie spread on all sides, and was carried out in numerous parishes, to the benefit of many companies of young girls. Nor was this all ; the appren- tices made an active union among themselves, to search for, and bring back to the fold, any companions of their school-days who had been led astray; and brought in every Sunday stray lambs of the flock. As they grew older, and themselves became thoroughly instructed workwomen, and sometimes mistresses, La Soeur gathered the best of them into an association, which she christ- ened "Du Bon-Conseil," and which she made auxiliary to the body of ladies before mentioned. She taught them how to visit and to succour the poor, and to render back to those beneath them the care and tenderness which the Sisters had bestowed upon themselves. Thus she carried the female child of the Faubourg Saint Marceau, formerly neglected in its infancy, and exposed to moral dangers in its youth, from the crlche into the LA SCEUR ROSALIE. gi asile and the school; while from the school it was re- ceived successively into the association of the Patronage and the Bot^Conseil, and thus preserved in the paths of religion and purity. The last institution founded by La Soeur Rosalie of which we shall give account, was one for the benefit of the aged poor. She took deeply to heart the miserable condition of those who felt their strength failing day by day, until at length, no longer able to work, they knew not in the morning how to gain their daily bread, nor from week's end to week's end where they should find lodging, clothes, and food. Life which depends on the caprice of a passer-by, or the good will of a neighbour, or the success of a petition addressed to a stranger, is an existence at the mercy of chance. She managed to collect a number of such old people in a house in the Rue Pascal, and there kept them warm and sheltered, surrounded by their own little articles of furniture, and their tools, by which they could still gain a little money for food and clothes ; and here in her old age she would delight to go, seeing that they wanted for nothing. The expenses of this humble manage did not mount up to any great yearly sum, but it possessed no fixed revenue, and the rent was wholly made up by voluntary contri- butions which never failed. At the end of each half- year, hidden hands regularly brought the money required LA SCEUR ROSALIE. for the following one. But no engagement or promise had ever been made, and the uncertainty for the future made La Soeur Rosalie anxious. " I cannot die easy," she often said, "unless I can give a solid and durable character to this work, and insure that these poor old folks shall never be turned out of their house." Dur- ing her last illness, though she did not foresee its fatal issue, she spoke more than once of this asylum — of her fears for its future, and her extreme desire to leave it to her old friends. This was the last thought, the last wish which she expressed. So far as she was permitted to know, this wish was not accomplished ; she died without having been able to create a permanent foundation. But after her death, a house was bought to receive the aged poor of the twelfth arrondissement ; the prot'egks of La Sceur Rosalie were installed therein on the ist of October 1856, and it was called after her patron saint. Thus the permanency of this charitable work is secured, and a living monument erected to the benevolent piety of the dead. We will now take a cursory glance over the immense field of general charitable exertion covered by this in- defatigable Sister of Charity. If anybody seemed to have a right to be exclusive in the bestowal of her good offices, it was she to whom so much poverty and misery had been confided as a special charge. The Faubourg LA SCEUK ROSALIE. 93 Saint Marceau, with its depressed population and its individual institutions for relief, might seem enough to occupy a busy woman's life. But she found time for more. One sometimes hears it said that the people who have the most to do make the most leisure j they are more methodical, rise earlier, and do not fritter away minutes and hours in that inconceivable succes- sion of nothings which devour the lives of the social butterflies. So, when people came to ask help from La Sceur Rosalie, she never said, " I have no time ; " and they did ask it all round, — ^individuals, societies, institu- tions, the Church; the state, the world at large, all became accustomed to apply to her in emergencies ; and she received them all. Hardly was she installed in her cwn definite sphere, than all sorts of links sprang up between her and the town; letters and messengers passed to and froj the first whom she helped told others, and these again in their turn spread the fame of her ready and efficacious sympathy; and if any person wanted to succour another and did not know how, they were despatched to La Soeur Rosalie. At whatever time of day a knock came at her door, she received the visitor with politeness or with affection, seemed at leisure to attend to him or her, as if there were nobody else in the world. She bent all her mind to unravel their diffi- 94 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. culty, and the thickest complications untied themselves under her skilful hand. Her extensive connexions gave her wonderful facilities in this way, and her clear head enabled her to avail herself of them. Whatever was the matter, she found a remedy ; she sent one child to a creche, another to school, apprenticed a girl, and hit upon an employment for a youtli ; she got the old man into an asylum, and procured a pension for the wounded soldier. She made the very people who were waiting for an audience of her, each' come out with their par- ticular powers of help : if they were rich, she made them give money or influence ; if they were poor, she set them to write her letters and take her messages. She used them up one by one, and played off their needs and their resources into each other ; and she made it a rule never to turn a deaf ear to any application, because she said, " God will send the money and the means.'' She also looked after the moral welfare of those whom she assisted with material help, and did not relax her hold. A skilful workman was sent from Nantes to Paris, to whom the capital offered great temptations. . She got him at once a lucrative employ ; but affixed to it a con- dition that he should regularly bring to her the portion of his salary necessary for the maintenance of the family he had left behind ; and while she lived he never broke his promise. LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 95 For indigent respectability she maintained the tender- est delicacy. When sometimes she saw some one who had written a tale of misery, too shy to speak about it when he came to her house, she would send him on an errand for her to a distant street, with a packet addressed — ^to himself ! She had a mysterious faculty for divining wants of which those who suffered never told ; and some- times families living in a distant part of the town, and hiding their misery as they thought from every human eye, would find assistance drop upon them as from Heaven, from the hand of La Sceur Rosalie. She was particularly kind to young men who came up from the provinces to seek employment in Paris. When these lads called on her, with a letter of recommendation and a mother's blessing . as their sole worldly goods, she fairly adopted them if she saw worth in their characters; she found them lodgings, made cheap arrangements for their board, pushed them on in their studies and paid their fees, and when they had an offer of any official clerkship, she made herself their guarantee. Her moral vigilance and her motherly kindness never seemed to sleep for these youths. One young man was studying for the priest- hood, and, being very delicate and given to deny him- self every luxury, she made a friend promise to go and see every morning if he had a fire. Another, who had left home to work for his family, under the assurance 9^ LA SCEUR ROSALIE. that he would not be liable to military conscription, found himself suddenly arrested in Paris, owing to his substitute having played false. La Soeur Rosalie heard of it, went off to the Minister of War, obtained the young man's release and a delay of two months, during which he might accommodate himself to the new cir- cumstances, saying, " I would have given my life rather than he should go." Another, who was a merchant engaged in large commercial operations, had been de- tained on a long voyage. A heavy bill was presented at his counter, and his poor wife had received no money to meet it. After applying to many friends in vain, she came to La Soeur Rosalie, who paid the necessary sum out of her own purse. But her kindness did not lapse into weakness ; she knew how to make herself obeyed if necessary. A young man to whom she had rendered inuch service had not turned out well. She told him that on his next misdemeanour he must leave Paris. Hearing that he had again trespassed, she sent for him, and said, " Monsieur, an occupation is waiting for you at Constantinople, your fare is settled, here is your pass- port, go and pack up your portmanteau, you must leave to-night." In vain did he promise, entreat ; he begged at least for a few days in which to settle his affairs, and write to his relations. She had forecast everything, she was inflexible, and that very evening the young man. LA SOEUR ROSALIE. 97 over whom she had no authority but that of the as- cendancy of her character, left for Constantinople with- out ever dreaming of disobedience. She knew also how to bring young men into her works of charity. Some of them, busily engaged all the week, had only Sunday on which they could assist her. She would say to these, " You heard mass this morning ; very well, do_ not go to vespers, but sit down there, take your pen, and serve God now in another manner." Then she would dictate to them her numerous letters, explaining to them how to help the poor. Sometimes a troop of lads gathered from the different schools might be found in her room ; young students of law and medicine, of the military career, and of education. She pressed them all into her service. Nay, she made the poorest help one another, and there were very many of the rich who came to La Soeur Rosalie for help which none else could bestow so wisely. " My sisters !" she would sometimes say to her nuns, after long conversations with members of the upper classes, " if people knew how very unhappy rich men and women are, they, would feel the greatest pity for them." Her plan of remedy for this kind of wretch- edness was to bring it in contact with the most grievous destitution and calamity, and thus draw it out of it- self. Owing to the great extent of her relations, she ac- gS LA SCEUR ROSALIE. quired the power of a moral police. One day a young girl fled from her home in a distant town, and was sup- posed to be hiding in Paris with the guilty companion of her flight ; letters, advertisements, all failed to reach or to move her ; the pohce found their labour in vain ; they could not find any traces of her whereabouts. At last a priest, whom the family had consulted in despair, said to them, " Nobody but La Soeur RosaUe has any chance of finding your daughter for you." And by applying to her the fugitive was actually found after some days. The Sister sent for her, and spoke with that authority which conquers the worst dispositions. The girl was completely subdued, and sent back to her mother, penitent and reclaimed. Nay, more than this ; furious at seeing himself balked, the author of all the mischief rushed to the Rue de rEp&-de-Bois,his lips fuU of menace and violence ; La Sceur Rosalie met him with such a dignified rebuke, and showed him the evil of his conduct with so much force, that he hung his head wholly abashed by her words, and ofiered to do all in his power to repair his wickedness. What was even perhaps more remarkable, was her in- fluence over philosophical men of the world, whose in- tellects refused to bow down before her faith, but who were yet swayed by her character. The chief physician of the Bicetre, an unbeliever, on his death-bed could not LA SGBUR ROSALIB, 99 be induced to see his family, from whom he wished to hide the spectacle of his sufferings. He Only yielded the point at last to La Soeur Rosalie, whom he had known during the cholera of 1832, and who had conceived a great esteem for him, owing to his exertions at that period. On his side, his feeling for her was a sort of worship ; in the feebleness and bitterness of his illness he found no real comfort except with her, and her name was one of the last words pronounced with veneration by lips that seldom gave voice to praise. She once saved the life of a man, by a daring stroke of courage. It was in 18 14, while the Allies were in Paris, that a Russian company was quartered in the Horse Market. A rumour spread that a private was about to suffer death •for a grave fault against discipline. It came to the ears of La Soeur Rosalie, then quite a young nun, under thirty. She set off, taking with her an old wo- man, traversed the Russian camp, and asked audience of the general. Being at once introduced, she threw herself at his feet, and implored him to spare the sol- dier's life. " You know him, then, and are attached to him!" cried the officer, seeing how ardent was her prayer. " Yes," said she, " I love him as one of my brothers bought with the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I am ready to give my life to save his." She gained the pardon of the condemned «ian, and re- tA SCEUR ROSALIE. turned home, astonished at her own success, and scared at her own audacity. We find a chapter of the memoir devoted to "La Soeur Rosalie's Parlour," which apartment, small, shabby, and ill-lighted, was the very centre of her activity ; an old paper on the wall, stained by damp and gnawed by the mice ; a matting on the floor ; a few pictures, much more impressive from their subjects than their execu- tion; a little clock which was generally stopped; a book- case with very few books in it; a writing-table piled with accounts and receipts; and round the room two stools and four straw chairs — such was for thirty years the appearance and the furnishing of this room. Add to this that every corner on which anything could be laid — the top of the chimney-piece, the shelves of the book- case, and the desk — were covered with opened letters, bearing post-marks of all the countries of the world; petitions addressed to all the powers that be; reports, prospectuses, and papers of every imaginable nature, and we have a notion of La Soeur Rosalie's parlour ; and this small room never emptied. A young man who was acting as her secretary wished to reckon how many people came into it in a single day. He counted as far as five hundred, and the day was not done. Among the crowd were workmen, and priests high in the Church — the humblest traders, and peers of France. She would LA SCEDS. HOSALIE. usually begin with the poorest — ^giving to an old man his admission to an asylum, to a widow a school presen- tation for her child. She provided a good mistress for an apprentice, and put the unemployed workwoman into a shop, gave her name to one who sought its sanction, and told another where to find instruction or an occupa- tion. She would then parcel out their work to the cha- ritable ladies who helped her, and listen to those who had to tell her of the visits they had made. These audiences were wound up by the despatch of letters and messages, always very many in number, and executed by a crowd of people, anxious to busy themselves on her errands. During these long hours, every minute was consecrated to a good deed, and every word bore some reference to a charitable end; and during fifty years these audiences took place with no other interruption than that caused by illness, without the repulse of any one who sought for aid, and without any of the busi- ness being neglected or ill done. Hither came also the greatest men in politics and literature, drawn by curiosity and interest, and sometimes seizing the slightest pretexts for putting themselves in connexion with La Sceur Rosalie. The Abbd Emery, to whose care her mother had confided her when, first she went to Paris, kept up an intimacy with her until his death. M. de Lammenais, before his secession from the LA SCEUR ROSALIE. Catholic Church, was much attached to her, and used to associate with her in almsgiving. A Spanish nobleman, the Marquis de Valdegamus, who had turned from intel- lectual infidelity to Christianity, was another of her friends. Sent as ambassador to Paris, he was courted and beloved, even by those who had no sympathy with his rigid opinions, but his social position gave him small satisfaction, and he used to say that he felt afraid of having at the judgment-day to answer, when the dread interrogation came of how he had employed his time, " Lord, I have paid morning calls." Having heard of La Soeur Rosalie, he wished to make her acquaintance, and having been introduced by one of his friends, he formed a life tie of association in good works. He no longer lamented over his morning calls, every week he left his fashionable quarter of Paris, and went to see her whom he called his " Director." He received a list of poor, and went from one to another on foot over all the faubourg, carrying solid help, and the cheering warmth of his southern heart and imagination. While he was in health, he never failed, in spite of all his poUtical and official duties, to keep these appointments. At the allotted day and hour he invariably made his appear- ance, and never abridged his stay. When he fell ill,, he sent exactly the same sum he had been used to bring, and he talked incessantly to the Soeur de Bon-Secours LA SOEUR ROSALIE. I03 who was nursing him of the poor of the faubourg. As he grew worse, La Sceur Rosalie went in her turn to visit him at his hotel, and she was with him at his dying hour. His last words were, " Que les pauvres frient pour moil qtiils ne niouhlient pas." Political parties laid aside their arms in her presence, and helped successively in her undertakings; and the sovereigns of different dynasties alike employed her to distribute their alms. Charles X. put immense sums into, her hands, and though the revolution of July greatly diminished her re- sources, the consort of Louis. Philippe constantl)r asked her advice, and was swayed by her prayers and recomt- mendations. General Cavaignac, in the midst of all the- difficulties of his. ephemeral power, often came to see her, and thanked her for her influence over the people, in whom the revolution of February 1848 had excited so many hopes which it had given no means of realising. Many favours did she beg of him, and more than one life did she save, of fathers of families led away by the popular excitement, and in her judgment more unhappy than guilty of crime. On the i8th of March 1854, she was visited by the present emperor and empress, and the latter promised that the asile about to be founded in connexion with the Maison de Secours should be given into the care of the Sisters of her order. The munici- pality would otherwise have placed it under a lay super- 104 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. intendent ; and as it seemed about to be so placed at the moment of its installation, La Sceur Rosalie wrote to the empress to remind her of her promise, and the asikwas opened under the direction of the Sisters of Charity. Shortly before this imperial visit, she had been decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honour, to the great delight of all the neighbourhood, which con- sidered that it had been individually decorated in her person. It will be easily conceived from this account of her various visitors, that her powers were multiphed by every fresh connexion. The men of her quarter ilsed to say, "She has a long arm." Everybody helped. Public offices, manufactories, the very railways were opened to her ^rofSgh. The bishops made room for them in their provincial charities; and congregations everywhere re- ceived her friends. In " travelling by land and sea," in the army, nay, even before the law, these found welcome, kind officers, and friendly advocates. " One might tra- verse the length and breadth of France with her friend- ship for a safeguard." As she grew old, she leant too much to the side of indulgence ; but foi; the few who misused her confidence and betrayed her guarantee, a multitude were saved, and placed in honourable careers by her indefatigable kindness and energy. The oddity of some of the applications made to her may well be LA SCEUR ROSALIE. lOJ imagined, since people think nothing too large or too small to ask of those whom they conceive to possess power. She was supposed to hold the keys of the Coun- cil of State as well as of an hospital, and was applied to to procure a prefecture, or a license to sell tobacco! It was in vain that she told the suitors she was not a cabinet minister, and did' not go to court They were obstinately persuaded of her irresistible influence. It sometimes happened that great foreign ladies came to see her, and if anything prevented her from showing them the state of the faubourg, she would yet so charm them by her pleasant welcome, that how could they re- fuse her, when next day came a note with request for help in some quarter where they were known to have influence ! Little by little her faubourg cast aside its air of ex- treme wretchedness. It is still one of the. worst in Paris, and nobody can cure its poverty ; but as years went on it became Christianised, the children were better clothed and fed, and were gathered into schools, furniture was collected in its households, and it was no longer un- known to the visits of the better classes. La Sceur Rosalie reconciled it to society, and it repaid her with a grateful love, which was in itself no slight agent in moral improvement. On her side, she defended it with warmth, just as she served it with zeal. "It is calum- I06 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. niated," she would often repeat, "it is a great deal better than people will believe ; its poverty reveals less wicked- ness than lurks hidden under the riches and luxury of many other quarters of the town." There is something very touching in this picture of a- wretched population, gathered like a naughty child to a mother's heart ! Having reviewed our heroine''s life in its more general aspects amidst the daily duties of her order, let us see how she dealt with . the two supreme calamities of modem Paris —the cholera, and the spirit of revolution. It was in 1832^ that the cholera was signalled as at the threshold of France. Superstitious terror marked its progress and awaited its advent ; and La Soeur Rosalie, greatly alarmed at the havoc it would inevitably make among her depressed flock of neighbours, trembled for them, for her nuns, and for all the world. But the day on which the first victim was struck down saw the end of her fears ; she roused up at once, gave point and energy to the efforts of individuals, and the most active and intelligent aid to the measures taken by public authorities, impressing every movement with her own tokens of order, promptness, and duration. In the beginning she had great diificulty in disabusing the people of that frightful suspicion of poisoning and foul play which so constantly accompanies pestilence. Doc- tors were menaced with personal injury, and had to LA SOEUR ROSALIE. IO7 work under the safeguard of her whom no one dared to suspect One day Dr Royer Collard was walking by the side of a cholera patient borne along on a shutter towards the Hospital de la Pitid ; he was recognised in the street, and insulted with cries of " Murderer, poi- soner!" A crowd gathered round himj in vain he pointed to the dying man, and tried to make them believe he was endeavouring to save him. When he lifted up the cloth which covered the sick face, the general exasperation grew more violent, and a workman sprang upon him flourishing a tool, when at the last critical moment M. Royer Collard shouted out, " I am a friend of La Sceur Rosahe's !" "That's a different matter," said a dozen voices, and the mob separated and let him pass on. In the midst of all the public agony, she, who was generally so sensitive and easily affected, remained calm and self-possessed, ordering and sustaining every mea- sure of rehef j and when the scourge had passed over, the widows, the orphans, and the old people, from whom all props had been swept away, found her indefatigable in supplying their wants and arranging for their welfare, In 1849, when cholera once more appeared, it cre- ated less terror, but caused more mortality in the Fau- bourg Saint Marceau than at the time of its first inva- sion. In a single day one hundred and fifty deaths 108 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. were reported in the parish of St Mddard, and children were not counted in. For a whole week the Sisters never sat down to eat together, nor had a night's rest; the bell rang every moment, announcing new names added to the sick list, and an urgent call for fresh suc- cour. This time, suspicion fell on political motives as the origin of the pestilence. As it struck down the poorest, the most thinly clad, the worst fed, and ap- peared to spare the rich, and at first even, in spite of their courageous devotion, the doctors and nuns employed about the sick, a notion spread that it was in some mysterious way inflicted by the rulers as a punishment for revolution — an idea only to be dissi- pated by the sacrifice of a marshal of France, several deputies, landed proprietors, and Sisters, who at length fell victims also. As to the inhabitants of the house in the Rue de I'Ep^e-de-Bois, it was remarkable that though they were constantly relieving each other by the beds of the sick, not one of them perished by the dread disease. One only was attacked ; and she, singularly enough, was the only one who had not actually come in contact with cholera, having been confined to the house with an • injury to her leg, which made it impos- sible for her to move ! During this time of public distress, her auxiliaries from other parts of the town did not fail La Soeur Rosalie. The young men of the LA SCEUR ROSALIE. 109 society of St Vincent de Paul came to the rescue ; and several of these were sent by her to factories out of Paris, especially to those at Montataire, in the diocese of Beauvais, whose bishop some time afterwards came to thank her for the timely assistance to his decimated and terrified flock. It was at this time that the asylum for children who had lost both father and mother was founded in the Rue Pascal. A charitable Protestant lady, named Madame Mallet, enabled the Sister to carry out this plan, which is still flourishing, and bears marks of the intellect which presided at its birth. In the other scenes of public panic so fatally known to the inhabitants of Paris — revolutionary riots — La Sceur Rosalie exercised a no less remarkable ascend- ancy. She had no sympathy with promises of liberty which dawned in bloodshed j and it will easily be con- ceived that the turmoils which stopped trade, cut off profits, and diminished the incomes of the better classes, invariably caused deadly distress in the Faubourg Saint Marceau, where the population lived from hand to mouth, and any check to their fragile industry touched at once upon their vital resources. If a revolution mis- carries, it is the people who are shot and imprisoned ; and even if it succeeds, it is long before the workman can recover from the shock given to the commonest functions of society: capital is frightened away, and LA SCEUR ROSALIE. wages are not forthcoming ; and it is a chance if, when the day of victory comes, the man of the people does not find himself reduced to the pauper's estate. La Soeur Rosalie, therefore, very naturally threw all her influence on to the side of order ; and so great had it become during the long years of her benevolent life, that government itself recognised her power, and Icioked to her intervention as the best guarantee against riots. In 1830 and 1848 this singular woman traversed the narrow streets where even the soldiery and police dared not enter, calling the people to order, stopping the erection of barricades, and making them replace the paving-stones which were in the course of being up- rooted. She saved more than one proscrit from popular fury; and when the churches were menaced, and the archbishop's palace taken by assault and demolished, and the priests insulted in the streets, she opened her house to the latter, and kept them safe under her pro- tection. One of those she thus hid was Monseigneur de Quellen, who was obliged to fly from his episcopal chair at Notre Dame, and only reappeared when the cholera summoned him to adopt the orphan children of the very men who had persecuted him. La Sceur Ro- salie first heard of the sack from a pauper to whom she had offered bread the previous evening. He refused it, saying, " Ma Sxur, we don't want alms ] to-morrow we LA SCEUR ROSALIE. IH are going to pillage the archbishop's palace." But she, as usual, defended the reputation of the men of her beloved faubourg with characteristic energy and warmth, saying, " They did . not know we had those holy priests in our house, but if they had, they would certainly have helped us to protect them ; " and it was a fact that, during the bloodiest days of June, some nuns, devoted to the teaching of little girls, be- came aware of threats to destroy their house by fire, and in mortal alarm sent to tell La Soeur Rosalie. She sent back word foir them not to fear, and that very even- ing she despatched a party of armed men to protect the house, and the one in command told the rest to make no noise, lest the nuns and their little charges should have a bad night 1 As she always acted on a simple rule of Christian love, and did not mix up with politics, she interfered to save the victims of defeat just as heartily as if she had never tried to prevent them from rising; and in the troubles succeed- ing the accession of Louis Philippe, men of all parties became compromised, and so flew to La Sceur Rosalie. She never refused her aid, but hid them, disguised them, and got some of them off to places of safety. She was at last denounced as having helped rebels to escape j and the head of the common police, who was very grateful to her for some past services, sent to warn LA SCEUR ROSALIE. her of her danger. But she would not cease in endea- vouring to save lives ; and at last the ^rS/ei de pike, M. Gisquet, provoked by the escape of a man of some importance, signed.an order for her arrest, and gave it to his first functionary to put into execution there and then. " Policeman X " implored the fr'efet to spare this insult to the " Mother of the Poor." Said he, " Her arrest would arouse the whole Faubourg Saint Marceau, and would prove the signal for a riot we should never be able to quell ; the whole population would rise in her defence." " This Soeur Rosalie is then a very powerful person,'' exclaimed the prefet; "I'll go and see her." Off he went to the Rue de I'Epee-de-Bois, where he found the usual crowd assembled. La Soeur, who had never seen him before, received him with her usual politeness, asked him to wait until she had finished her business; and then, apologising for having kept him waiting, asked in what way she could render him assist- ance ! " Madame," replied M. Gisquet, " I am not come to ask, but rather to give help ; I am the prkfet de plice." La Soeur increased in her civility. "Do you know, ma Soeur" said M. Gisquet, " that you are heavily compromised ? " &c., &c., &c. " Monsieur leprifet" repHed La Soeur Rosalie, " I am a Sister of Charity, and cany no political flag. I help the unfortunate whenever I find them, and I promise LA SCETJR ROSALIE. II3 that if ever you are pursued yourself and come to me to help you, you shall not be turned away." M. Gisquet could not resist smiling, and perhaps in his heart trem- bling also ; for in those days of revolution no man knew who might be next amenable to the temporary law. Finding he could make no impression on her, he took his leave, saying he should let her off for once, but en- treating her "not to begin again." "I will not pro- mise," said La Sceur Rosalie. The very next week one of the chiefs of La Vendee came to return thanks for food and shelter bestowed on several of his com- panions in misfortune, and actually met at her threshold one of the emissaries of the police. He was not recog- nised ; and La Sceur made him a sign to fly, while she held the official enchanted by her conversation for a full hour. Some days after the latter found out how near he had been to his intended victim, and came to complain of her mauvais tour. " What would you have, Mon- sieur," said she ; " I would have done just as much for you I" And in effect, it was not long afterwards that an imprudent measure roused a riot round the house of a man in public authority ; the people howled and threat- ened, and he did not dare show his face. By a lucky thought he sent to tell La Sceur Rosalie, who came straightway, addressed the mob individually by name, H 114 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. scolded them for having left their work to get up a riot, and finally put down the rising storm, and released the functionary from his durance vile. During the famine of 1847, which preceded the re- volution of 1848, La Soeur exerted extraordinary powers to get bread for the people, and she so far prevailed over the excitement incident to popular distress that at first the Faubourg Saint Marceau did not stir. During a whole month, while Paris was unsafe, the neighbours mounted guard over her door, and early one morning they very nearly shot a priest who was coming to per- form mass, in lay costume, taking it into their heads that such an early visitor must come with evil intent against the nuns. But in the days of June, the Faubourg Saint Marceau gave way to the general terror, and La Sceur was so horrified at the scenes which took place in the .streets, that she said afterwards she " could hardly be- lieve a single devil was left in hell," so awful were the faces which met her gaze. It was difficult to avoid being pressed into the ranks of the slayers, if not of the slain, and the Maison de Secours was turned into an hos- pital, where the wounded of either party were equally received and tended. Wives in tears brought in their husbands, to hide them lest they should be forced to fight, and every comer of the house was filled with fugi- tives; while in the dispensary and court of reception LA SOSUR KOSALIE. IIJ were wounded and dying men, yet breathing vengeance against the opposite party. In the very thick of the struggle, an officer, who had been fighting against the insurgents, found himself cut off from his men, and, flying down the Rue de I'Ep^e- de-Bois, rushed through the open door of the Maison de Secours, and took refuge in the midst of the Sisters. The insurgents had recognised him, and following close at his heels they crowded round the house, but all the Sisters, with the superior at their head, threw themselves between the angry men and their victim. The insur- gents were checked by the living rampart ; all knew the Soeur Rosalie, and for an hour she kept them at bay, while they tried to negotiate for his blood. They mingled expressions of respect for her whom they called their " Mother," with the most atrocious threats against the officer. " He has massacred our comrades ; we must have his death j we want our prisoner." La Sceur expressed her horror at the thought of the blood of an unarmed man staining the soil of her court. " We won't kill him here, we will kill him in the street." In spite of prayers and promises, the insurgents pressed upon their victim; their guns actually rested on the shoulders of the nuns, who still maintained their ground between him and them. It seemed as though an instant fire was imminent, when La Sceur Rosalie flung herself on her Il6 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. knees before the crowd, crying out, " For fifty years I have devoted my hfe to you, and as a return for the good I have ever done to you, to your wives, to your children, I demand the hfe of this man at your hands." She prevailed, and the prisoner was saved ! Two days later she was begging for the freedom of several of the insurgents themselves. Of the dreadful poverty which followed these days of June, of the misery en- dured by the families of the men who were arrested, and of the exertions made by the Mayor of Paris in conjunction with La Sceur Rosalie to relieve it, we have not space to speak in detail. The great efforts made by the authorities were painfully and absurdly abused; in the excitement and desperate fear lest numerous deaths should occur from hunger, the public charity was flung about recklessly. People came in omnibuses to fetch away the provisions which were given out with an unstinted hand, and others assumed various disguises in the course of a day, and so received rations ad libitum. La Sceur organised a system of visiting from house to house by charitable men, and redeemed the work from disorganisation and ill success. But our scanty space gives warning that we must bring this beautiful and inspiring history to its close ; and indeed the end was drawing nigh within the decade which will be finished when you, O reader, read these LA SCEUR ROSALIE. I17 lines from a pen which has aimed to reproduce for you, however faintly, the record of a noble hfe. In her last years a gradual blindness fell upon La Soeur Rosalie, and she who had been the soul of her household was led about blindfold by the tender hands of her nuns ; they took her into that low parlour, the scene of her manifold labours, and seated her in her chair, where those whom she had ever been wont to seek and call one by one from the attendant crowd, now came up to her, and told their wants and their griefs to the heart which had lost none of its tenderness, to the intellect which had failed in none of its penetrating vivacity; " one forgot that one was talking to a blind woman." In October 1855, a skilful surgeon operated on her for cataract ; but the faint gleams of vision restored to her were soon obscured, and she was blind once more. In the first days of 1856 she seemed so well, that her friends, who ,had long trembled for her health, (never strong, and of late years very failing,) thought she had taken a new lease of life. They contemplated a second operation, to take place in the early spring. But in the month of February the blow so long dreaded fell with the suddenness of a thunderbolt upon Paris and upon the poor. ' A sharp attack of pleurisy proved too much for the frame which had withstood fifty years of in- cessant labour; and at the age of sixty-nine La Sceur Il8 LA SCEUR ROSALIE. Rosalie sank quietly, and, at the last, painlessly away. As the curk of Saint M^dard, called suddenly by her terri- fied household, uttered by her bedside the last prayers for the dying, she made the sign of the cross and mur- mured a few inarticulate words which "sounded like the echo of an inward prayer," fell into a lethargy from which she never woke, and the next morning, within twenty-four hours from the time when from her bed she had been giving active orders about the poor, she lay dead within her cell. When the news spread through Paris a general cry of grief arose in households of every class; people cried in the streets, and the scene around her corpse, when friends who had come to inquire after her indisposition found she would never greet them more, was painful beyond description. The day follow- ing her death they laid her in the chapel, in the simple state which befitted her modest and honourable life. They dressed her in her costume of Sister of Charity, her rosary on her arm, the crucifix between her hands which were crossed upon her breast. Her features wore their usual expression, heightened and sweetened by the lovely spiritual calm which death sets as a last seal upon a holy life. For two long days, from dawn to evening, came the people who had loved her to behold her once more. The whole Faubourg Saint Marceau streamed in one solemn file towards the house in the XA SCEUR ROSALIE. II9 Rue de I'Epee-de-Bois. The workmen, their wives, and their little children, (the aged and ■ the sick were carried thither,) all walked past the bier, kissing her feet and hands, and begging for little souvenirs, a trifle of her dress, anything which she had touched or which had belonged to her. In that noisy quarter reigned a pro- found silence, and for those two days, though the poorest people, used to daily help, all crowded to the Maison de Secours, no one begged. The wonderful scene presented by her funeral, we described in the opening page of this short memoir j and the traveller to Paris may find the grave at the extremity of the Cimitifere du Mont Parnasse, where every day, but particularly on Sundays, may be seen poor people kneeling and praying by the last resting-place of their friend. Her old mother, with whom she had kept up a constant and loving cor- respondence, died on the 2d of February in the Pays de Gex at the extreme age of eighty-eight, and the news reached Paris on the very morning of her daughter's funeral, increasing the universal emotion of the day. Madame Rendu, who dwelt amidst her family, clear and vigorous to the last, placed her greatest joy and pride in the virtues and almost saintly reputation of her eldest child, and died pronouncing the name of La Sceur Rosalie. Does the reader ask in what consisted the fascinating LA SCEUK KOSStLIE. power of this life, the question is answered from Paris that it consisted in her doing the commonest duties better than anybody else. She was only a poor Sister, hidden in one of the least important positions of her order; Supdrieure of a very little community in the most miserable quarter of Paris. During fifty years she hardly ever left her house and its immediate neighbour- hood. She went once to Versailles, and once to Orleans, and that was the extent of her journeys ; of the beautiful city in which she lived she knew nothing but its wretchedness j she did not found any very remarkable institutions, and she busied herself over nothing which is not done daily by Sisters of Charity in all parts of the world. Every day she began exactly as she had begun the last, nor was it possible to pick out one more emphatic than another. But the heart and soul and intellect which she threw into her very ordinary work, raised it to the proportions of saintly accomplishment ; though so little could she herself comprehend the secret of her own power, that when all the world flocked to her parlour with their separate needs, she has been known to observe with tender, half amused wonder, " Quelle singuliere idke tons ces gens-la ont de me consulierl ne faut-il pas avoir perdu V esprit i" III. MADAME PAPE-CARPANTIER. III. MADAME MARIE PAPE-CARPANTIER. fARIE CARPANTIER was bom at La Fl^che, (a little town in the department of Sarthe, in the west of France,) on the i8th of September 1815. Four months before her birth, her father, a markhal des logis de gendarmerie, faith- fully devoted to the first Napoleon, was assassinated by the Chouans during the Cent fours. The Chouans were the irregular bands of peasant troops who fought for the Bourbons in Bretagne, and who dealt death from their hiding-places with little regard to the customs of regular warfare. M. Carpantier fell at the head of his detach- ment under the following touching circumstances: — ' Napoleon was at Paris after his return from Elba, and 124 MADAME MARIE PAPE-CARPANTIER. the military authority in France was for the moment in his hands. News came to La Fl^che that a band of Chouans were devastating the neighbouring district of Courcelles, and M. Carpantier led out his detachment against them. He had to traverse a forest, in the midst of which was a chateau and parL The Chouans took refuge in the chateau and fired from the top of the walls upon the gendarmerie, of whom three were killed. One of these men had a bunch of violets in his mouth ; the ball cut the flowers in two, and he fell stark and dead. The second was hit in the thigh, and died of the ampu- tation of the limb. The third was M. Garpantier him- self, who was severely wounded in a vital part, but lin- gered several hours. The Chouans had a cruel custom of biting their balls before loading their guns, in order that the gunshot wounds they inflicted might be more dangerous, and it was in a great measure owing to the fact of this ball having an irregular shape that M. Car- pantier perished. He had concealed about his person at the moment he was struck a packet of letters for Marshal Moncey, with whom he regularly communicated at Paris. He never trusted any one to post these letters but himself J and, fearful lest, after his death, they might be suffered to fall into the hands of the Chouans, he raised himself with difficulty on his elbow, and ordered them to be burned before his face. This done, he asked MADAME MARIE PAPE-CARPANTIER. 125 for something to drink ; a glass of water was brought to him, but in the act of applroaching it to his lips he ex- pired. Thus perished a gallant soldier, whose name hngered long in his district, but whose deeds, imme- diately obliterated by the return of the Bourbons, received no official mention or official reward. To this sorrow rapidly succeeded another — the death of the eldest daughter, a charming child of eight years old, killed by a shot from one of her father's pistols, with which a young nurse was imprudently playing. One infant son remained to Madame Carpantier, to whom in due time came the little Marie. But with her father, worldly comfort had deserted the household ; — their means were very narrow, and it was amidst grief and poverty that this little girl was introduced to the world. Her childhood was veiy sad ; — neither games nor playthings, nor the petting incidental to family life, were her portion. She never experienced any of those childish gaieties which have neither cause nor meaning beyond the child itself; but, on the contrary, she often cried without knowing why, as if her mother's tears had overflowed upon her youthful head. It is true that nothing in the household was calculated to inspire joy. Madame Carpantier was far from her own pro- vince; in solitude she worked day and night in order to procure livehhood and education for her boy and 126 MADAME MARIE PAPE-CARPANTIEK. girl, for at that time there was no gratuitous instruction in France. Her life was wholly devoted to her work and her children, and the little girl was equally ab- sorbed by her school duties and those she owed to her mother. When Marie came home in the evening, she also worked as well as she was able ; only sometimes, when she heard the neighbours' children calling each other to play from house to house, or when she saw them out of her second-floor window gaily dressed ready for the sunny promenade, her poor little heart swelled, and she felt what she afterwards so sweetly expressed in verse : — " Mere ! la jour finit, ta main doit Stre lasse, Laisse enfin ton travail, laisse que je t'embrasse ! Je ne sais quo! me pese et m'attriste aujourd'hui. Vieus,'j'ai peur de la vie ! O mfere quel ennui ! — Pour s'en aller courir a travers les campagnes TantSt j'ai vu partir mes petites compagnes Leurs habits etaient beaux, et leur fronts triomphants, Leurs meres les suivaient, fibres de leurs enfants. ' Accours,' m'ont elles dit : — ' Viens colombe isolee : Triste que fais tu l?l quand le del est si doux ? Le plaisir est au champs, viens aux champs avec nous ! ' Et moi, les yeux en pleurs, le coeur tout gros d'envie, Je n'ai que leur rJporidre, et je me suis enfuie — Oh ! qu'eUes auront duce was repaid, and the school placed on a footing similar to that of the boys' schools, on which money had been freely spent from the first. From 1847 to 1862, it constantly pursued its path of usefulness, sending out hundreds of young girls trained to fulfil in some measure the duties of their simple lives. The letters and memoranda found among Madame Luce's papers tell the story from year to year. It will suffice to give a few extracts here and there. We have now brought our story to the point of the . successful establishment of the school, and its recognition by Government. In September of the same year, 1847, Count Guyot, who had proved himself, as we have seen, to be on the whole a good friend to Madame Luce, left Algiers, and a sort of round-robin of grateful regrets was sent to him by the children, signed by twenty-four among them who had 226 MADAME LtlCE, OF ALGIERS. learned writing sufficiently well to enable them to affix their names. It ran thus — "Monsieur le Comfe, — Permit that young girls, who are indebted to you for the benefits of civilisation, approach you with thanks for all that you have done for them. While testifying to the regret which they feel at losing you, allow them to hope that you will give them a place in your memory, and that you may perhaps one day be restored to them ; for such is the dearest wish of their hearts. " Receive, M. le Directeur, the overflowings of their grati- tude, and more especially of mine, " Eugenie Luce. " Nefissa Bent Alt. " Haouna Sliman. FiFi Bent Mohommed. Haouna Braham. Hanifa Bent Khulil. Ayesha Braham. Ayesha KtJDURY. Hanifa Braham. ZoRA Mohammed Rheia Braham. Ayesha Mohammed. Zohre Sahid. Fatma Bent Mohammed. Rhera Khulil. Khadoudja Mohommed. Fatma Mobarruk. Rosa Moustapha. Zor^ Abderrahman. Ayesha Moustapha. Haissina Mohommed. Khadoudja l'Arbl Ayiza Ayud. Alima Mohommed. Zohre Abd-el-Kader." Another memorandum on the year 1847 says that — " In the month of June, Madame Luce took two orphans, whose mother had just died. M. Lapaine allotted them fifteen francs a month out of funds ' at his disposal " In August she took three more orphans, Aiika, Seheia, and Zora Mahommed, natives of Constantine. Aiika is now MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 22/ sub-mistress of the needlework 4epa.rtinent of the school at Constantine, having niarried and beconie a widow ; Seheia has been adopted by the family of Achmed Oulid Srodaili, living at the Bouzareah ; and Zora wag taken away yester- day to Constantine, by her sister Aiika, who had come for a holiday with Madarne Parent, head of the Constantine School. *'0n the loth of July 1848, a newrborn child was laid at Madame Luce's door, and was also taken in by her. This child lived three years. She narned jt Felicity, after the saint 'given in the calendar for the 10th of July, and gave it the svirnaine of Gazelin, that when it grew up it might have an appellation like other children. The rags in which it was wrapped up when found were carefully kept. This child died at three years of age. 'Pauvrf petit ange quefai bien aimi! Dti haut des cieux, pries pour tnai? " At the close of the year 1830 interpreters were re- quired for the family of Ab4-el-Kader, then detained a prisoner of waj at Amboise in France, and application was made to Madaine Lnce to send three of her most intelligent pupils. The cprrespondence which we sub- join is not without interest, as marking the habits and feelings of Mussulman faniilies :— " LETTER ON THE STEPS TO BE TAKEN FOR SENDING TO AMBOISE THREE YOUNG PUPILS FROM MADAME LUCE'S SCHOOL. "Paris, November zo, 1850. "to monsieur LE GOUVERNEUR-GfiNERAL D'ALGERIE. ^^ Monsieur le Gouverneur-Gdndral^ — I have the honour to 228 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. inform you that, according to the proposition made by M. le Capitaine Boisonner, in official situation at Amboise, I have this day decreed that three young Mussuhnan girls, chosen from among the best pupils of the Institution direicted by Madame Luce at Alger, shall be attached to the service of the Arab women of Abd-el-Kader's family. This measure appears to me calculated to produce the best effects, on account of the daily intercourse which will be necessary be- tween the Arab women and these girls. I think that, having been for long gained over to the French cause, trained ac- cording to our customs, and speaking with equal facility the Arabic and French languages, these young Mussulmans will soon become intelligent interpreters, and by thfeir example and advice will gradually bring the wives and daughters of the ex-Emir to abandon their prejudices, and modify the ideas which they keep up in the minds of their husbands. Finally, the two sosurs hospitalilres whom Government has placed at Amboise will equally find in these girls capable and devoted assistants in the work confided to them. "I beg you, M. le Gouverneur, to communicate my de- cision to Madame Luce, and to ask her to point out three young Algerines, v/ho, by their education, their character, and their industry, may unite in themselves all the desirable qualifications for the functions which they will be called upon to fulfil at Amboise. " My department will undertake the maintenance of these young Mussulmans. I have also ordered that, in exchange for their liberty, which they will in some sort have given up, and in consideration of the services which they will be called upon to render, they shall receive a salary to be fixed for each of them at 300 francs a year. It is also a matter of course that the journey to Amboise shall be defrayed by the MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 229 State. , I therefore authorise you, M. le Gouverneur-Gdndral, to put aside for each of them the sum of 60 francs, for the purchase of clothes of a European fashion, which will only be worn during the journey, to prevent their suffering from the impertinence of public curiosity. I leave it to you to appoint a suitable person to accompany them ; you may be able to find, among the wives of some of our Algerine officials, a lady about to return to France who would be willing to accept such a mission, and to keep an account of the ex- penses of the journey, defraying them from the sum which you will previously have confided to her for this purpose. " As soon as all the necessary measures have been taken, you will kindly let me know, and at the same time inform me of the day on which they will embark for France, as well as that on which they will reach Amboise. — I remain, M. le Gouverneur-Gdndral, &c., &c., " Daumas. " Signed for and by the order of the Minister of War." "Alger, December 10, 1850. " M. le Prifet, — In reply to the letter which you have done me the honour to write me on the 20th instant d,-j^ropos of sending three young pupils from this Institution to Amboise, I must teU you that their relations, not finding the indemnity of 300 francs a year sufficient to compensate them for giving up the girls, have opposed themselves to the departure. One only of the three whom I pointed out will leave with the consent of her family ; the mother hoping that the ser- vices of her daughter — her intelligence, her work, and her devotion to the cause of France — will merit an increase of salary sufficient for the accumulation of a small dowry which may aid her in finding a good maniage. The young girl, 230 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. whose character is serious and' thoughtful, will doubtless fulfil, with honour to herself, the desires of M. le Ministre. Her name is Nefissa Bent Ali, and she is about fourteen years old. " The other young girl who will accompany her is called Aziya Bent Yahia ; she is twelve years" old, and is entirely at my disposition, as I took her into my care when she was only two years old, at the death of her mother. "At this moment I can therefore only send these two young girls to the family of Abd-el-Kader. Perhaps next spring I may be able to send a third, if two are not enough for the services required. "Their departure has been fixed for the 20th instant. They will reach Amboise on the 26th or 28th. As Madame Bally is not going in the same direction, she cannot accom- pany them, and on the other hand, these two young girls would with difficulty be brought to leave with a lady whom they do not know, even if one could be found willing to take charge of them. Therefore I see nobody but M. Luce, my husband, and whom they look upon as a father, who can go with them. " I enclose a note of the expenses of the journey, based on the strictest economy, and on the supposition that no quar- antine will be required at Marseilles, which would increase the expense, and in which case I think it would be better to delay the departure for some days. — I remain, &c., " Eugenie Luce." ■ " Alger, December 20, 1850. " ORDRE DE SERVICE. "The Minister of War having decreed that two pupils from the Institution for Young Mussulman Girls shall be MADAMK LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 231 sent to Amboise to act as interpreters for the family of Abd- el-Kader, M. Luce, member of the national order of the Legion of Honour, and husband of the mistress of that Institution, is charged with the office of conducting the two pupils according to that decree. " The Prefect of Alger. " Note. — This certifies that M. Luce arrived here, in pur- suance of the above order, on the 6th of January 1851. " Stamped at Amboise, January 8, 1851." Then follows an account of the expenses of clothing these two girls for their journeys amounting to iS4f. 30c., and apparently employed in giving them a very tidy outfit of frocks, stockings, gloves, shoes, and even the unheard-of luxury of bonnets ! These two young girls, solely conducted by M. Luce, reached Amboise, and remained eight months in the family of Abd-el-Kader. But attempts were made to convert them to Christianity, and the parents, hearing of it, were so indignant that it became necessary to recall the girls. In an Algerine paper (the Atlas) of October 1851, we find an article describing a distribution of prizes among Madame Luce's pupils. It was written by one of the most remarkable Frenchmen who ever undertook the difficult career of an Algerine colonist, and who, but for the political changes of France, would probably have been called to exercise wise and sagacious rule over the 232 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. destinies of the infant colony. M. Warnier was for a long time physician to Abd-el-Kader ; and acted as ambassador between the Arab chief and the French invaders. ' No man was more thoroughly acqainted with the life of the native population than he from whose article we extract the following: — "We have lately been present at a meeting which created a deep impression on our minds, the reason of which our readers will permit us to relate. Some fifteen years ago chance led us to the abode of Abd-el-Kader. In our new surroundings, our attention was excited by hearing the Arabs naming their chief much more fre- quently as Abd-el-Kader son of Zohra, than as Abd-el- Kader son of Mahi-ed-din. In all the numerous prophe- cies then current in the country, the great warrior always claimed by his maternal descent. ' Ould Zohra' ap- peared his simple designation. We sought in vain for the cause of this preference ; . when the illness of one of Abd-el-Kader's children led us into his domestic circle. There we found a woman, Leila Zohra, surrounded by a pecuhar reverence which could not be attributed to her quality of mother of the Sultan, for we found she had enjoyed it even before the , birth of her son. At last we discovered the reason : this woman was learned, this woman read the holy books, the Mohammedan Scrip- tures, and she was the only woman in all the country who MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 233 could do SO ! In this lay quite a revelation. The son of Zohra was in great part the work of his mother, and in the exercise of that sovereignty which had devolved upon him, Abd-el-Kader listened willingly to the counsels of the woman who had doubly made him a man. " The part played by this woman in the destinies of Algeria on account of her learning, led us to inquire con- cerning all the women who within the memory of man were known to the natives as having possessed ' know- ledge of the writings,' according to the phrase of the Arabs. Our search only discovered in a quarter of a century five learned women in a population of three million souls. One of these, and the most illustrious, being the aforesaid mother of Abd-el-Kader, now with her son at Amboise. The second is Fatma-bent-Bel- Kharoubi, daughter of Abd-el-Kader's ancient Khalifa. She was given up as a prize in war to the Arab Ben Farath, to replace the women of whom the enemy had deprived him I This profanation gave rise to energetic protestation and debates on the parts of some of the Arab prisoners. The third, daughter to a Turk, and former teacher of the children of the last Dey of Algiers, Zh^ra-bent-Braham, is now sub-mistress of the Arab language in Madame Luce's school. The fourth died at Constantine, in 1843 ; she was also the daughter of a Turk, once holding an ofiicial position in the Beylick. 234 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. The fifth died at Oran, in 1840; like the preceding, she was Khoulougha, that is, daughter of a Turkish father and an Arab mother ; her father being employed in the household of Hassan Dey. " Five learned women ! these were all which the Mus- sulman civilisation had given us since our conquest of Algiers. Of course, we don't reckon those women who in their childhood had learnt to spell out a few verses of the Koran which they forgot as soon they became wives and mothers. " Such were the investigations present to our memory when entering at two o'clock yesterday afternoon into the estabhshment which Madame Luce founded, and v/hich she conducts with such skill. We found ourselves in the midst of 115 young girls, from eight to fifteen years of age, and whose average acquirements are already much superior to those of the five learned women whose names are preserved with a sort of veneration by the generation now passing away. The effect of the com- parison will easily be imagined. " When we afterwards saw five children, of whom two were marvellously gifted, perform on a simple stage a little dramatic piece by Berquin, Za petite Glaneuse — when we had heard the two pupils lately return from Amboise, whither they had been sent to act as inter- preters in the family of Abd-el-Kader, recount in a MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 23S charming poetical dialogue the impressions of their journey, and the joy of their return — when, above all, we heard young Mussulman girls singing their gratitude to their benefactors, then we could no longer doubt that success at length crowned the work of regeneration undertaken eight years ago by Madame Luce. An immense progress had been achieved in our midst; a progress of which it is impossible now to calculate the consequences, which, however, will also be immense it nothing rises to hinder the impulsion communicated. "Shall we now formally describe the ceremony"! A useless task; one distribution of prizes resembles an- other." M. Warnier then gives some of the verses recited and sung by the pupils ; taking occasion to remark that the Pr^fet, amiably alluded to as — " Notre tendie et bon pfere Dont nous avons les soins si genereux," had not taken the trouble to preside at the distribution ; in fact, none of the officials of Algiers were there ! which neglect was very much of a piece with all that went before. M. Warnier then spoke at length of the much greater pains taken at Constantine, the capital of the eastern province of Algeria, where a similar school (cre- ated in imitation of Madame Luge's) was conducted by 236 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. Madame Cherbonneau; and where the authorities as- sisted it in every way, by their presence, their sympathy, and their practical encouragement of families whose children were receiving instruction. These local details are of little interest to readers unacquainted with the beautiful country to which they refer ; but we mention them as showing that at no time has Madame Luce en- joyed the assistance to which her character and her efforts appear to us to have entitled her from the Colo- nial powers. M. Warnier concludes by saying that he saw amidst the general joy two or three little girls crying " de bien bon coeur," because they had no prizes, and their com- panions were consoling them with suggestions that they would obtain some next year. "L'annde prochaine!" says this extremely tender-hearted gentleman — "cesfun Slide pour les enfards. Ne pourrait-on pas faire une dis- tribution supplementaire de Prix dits de consolation ? Nous soumettons cette idde k qui de droit. Pour que des enfants pleurent aprfes une distribution- de prix, parce qu'ils n'en ont pas eu, il faut que la conscience leur dise qu'ils avaient merite un recompense. La con- science des enfants n'est pas trompeuse \" We will now pass over several years, during which the school \^^as steadily pursuing its career of usefulness, and present to our readers the report of the Barnes In- MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 237 specfrkes in 1858, which requires but a few words of explanation. Madame Luce, whose vigorous intellect embraces every need of her pupils' lives, had established a work- shop, where the elder girls executed work for the ladies of Algiers, and earned in this way a considerable sum of money, learning at the same time that lesson most diffi- cult for a Moresque — to appreciate the value of labour. They had always a month's stock of work waiting for them in advance. But the authorities, to the deep regret of Madame Luce, put an end to the ouvroir, either for the sake of economising the salary for the sewing-mistress who superintended it, (which did not amount to more than ;^35 a year,) or else for the sake of favouring some similar ouvroir under religious direc- tion. Madame Luce considered it one of the most useful parts of her whole scheme. The gentlemen in- spectors who at that time reported on the school thought far more of a well-turned French phrase than of a neatly sewn frock. But though required and perfectly willing to pay great attention to the intellectual education of her pupils, she felt more anxious about their industrial training, thinking it of the utmost importance that Moor- ish women, so helpless by law and custom, should pos- sess some means of gaining a respectable livelihood, to say nothing of their eminent need of neatness and order 238 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. at home, and the necessity of making and mending their own and their husbands' clothes. However, a change of inspectors was made ; and in 1858 we find ladies very wisely appointed, who sent in the following report. Happily it was in some measure effectual, and the ouvroirs of the fine and beautiful em- broidery of the East were again opened, "copy of a report ADDRESSED TO M. LE PR£fET, THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1 85 8, BY THE C0MIT£ DES DAMES IN- SPECTRICES DES ECDI^ES ARABES t FRAN5AISES DES JEUNES FILLES. " To M. LE PrEFET of the DEPARTMENT OF ALGIERS. " Monsieur le Prifet, — The Comiti des Dames Inspectrices des Scales des Jeunes Filles Arabes fulfils one of the duties for which it was created, in transmitting to you a report upon the condition of these schools, and in drawing your benevo- lent attention towards institutions which are of the highest interest as regards the moralisation and the development of the family among the Mussulman population, which also is in much need of amelioration. " Perhaps it will not be uninteresting to recall to your me- mory in a few words the origin and the various phases of this Institution. Its creation is entirely due to a woman — to Madame Luce, who, in 184;, turning to account, with very limited resources, and at her own risk and peril, a thorough knowledge of Arabic, and a great practical facility in the art of teaching, yielding also to a desire of being useful to a class, until then too much neglected, opened an industrial school for young Mussulman girls, and kept it up at her own ex- MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 239 pense until 1847, when this school was taken under the charge of Government. In 1850, its existence was assured by a Presidential decree. In spite of this encouragement, it was only at the cost of unusual efforts, and thanks to a rare perseverance, that Madame Luce attained success — success which was in all respects complete. Towards this epoch, (1850,) the house contained about 200 young girls : the ele- mentary instruction was excellent, the art of needlework had arrived at remarkable perfection among them. Up to 1850, Madame Luce paid two sewing-mistresses, work came in abundantly, and the young girls took back each day to their own families the frequently considerable fruits of their labour. The native embroidery in silk and gold, so famous in the East, and of which the tradition was here almost lost, was again restored, and obtained a real and merited success. " In 1850, it was thought necessary to divide the school. There were more than 150 pupils, and the house could con- tain about 250 without increase of expense. A sub-mistress of Madame Luce, Mademoiselle Chevallier, became in her turn the mistress of a school, which went on very well ; and although, M, le Prdfet, we find it desirable to ask you to re- unite it with the original school in the Rue de Toulon, we wish to recommend Mademoiselle ChevaUier to the interest and care of the Administration. " This was not the only check received by the school under Madame Luce's charge. Permission to take orders for work was forbidden her, and that at the moment when two medals, ' one of the first class and the other of the second, bestowed by the Exposition Universelle of 1855, bore witness to the incontestable merit of the work. We call especial attention to this fact, of which the importance might otherwise escape your notice. 240 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. " This prohibition inflicted much damage on the schools. The intellectual objects of the Institution, strictly speaking, the reading, writing, and arithmetic, are, for the Moorish female population, so many gates into a totally hew range of ideas, and their application of those arts is foreign to their mode of life, their prejudices, and their domestic customs. These customs forbid them, with almost absolute force, to pass their own thresholds and mix themselves up with European life. It is in their own houses, and by the work of their fingers, that they must seek to gain an honest liveli- hood. If a just respect for their religious belief forbids us to do anything which may be offensive to it, it is nevertheless incumbent on us to try and improve them morally, and it is only by accustoming them to labour that this end can be attained. In principle everybody agrees on this head, but in practice opinions differ, and the means of carrying the prin- ciple into execution are wanting to the mistresses of these schools. Thus, on the one hand, they are enjoined to teach the art of needlework to the young girls, and, on the other, they are forbidden to allow any person whatever who may be in the house to work upon orders received from the outside ; and again, another almost invincible obstacle, the funds allotted for instruction in^sewing, for the purchase of linen, thread, &c., are so narrow, that they hardly amount to avail- able funds at all, (1000 francs only is allotted for all the costs of material, and also of offices, books, pens, paper ;) and, finally, at the age of thirteen the young girls are obliged to quit the school to enter the workskop which has recently been erected. "The year 1858 has witnessed the carrying out of two other rules, equally annoying to the schools in question. " 1st, The suppression o thefcmale officials who morning MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 24! and evening conducted the young girls to and from their own homes. These officials wefe instituted in conformity with Article 19 of the rules given to the schools by the Prefectures in 1854, and they received a payment of five francs a month. They were old and poor, and this small payment stood in lieu of alms, which it was inevitable that they should other- wise receive ; but they have been suppressed. Their utility is too evident in a town like Algiers, considering the ideas and customs of native families, for us not to insist very earnestly on their again resuming their functions. We are not ignorant of the criticism to which these schools have been subjected: it has been affirmed, without any other proofs having been adduced, that they were far from ulti- mately conducing to morality, and that many of the young girls who had there received instruction had afterwards sig- nalised themselves by want of regularity in conduct. This reproach is truly unfounded. If a few out of the whole num- ber, after having again entered their own family hfe, have yielded to temptations which the Mussulman law appears to regard with indulgence, they are yet rare exceptions, to which parallel cases may be adduced among pupils turned out by the best French schools, both lay and religious; and once and again we would urge that it would be unjust to attribute such misconduct to an education, only fitted to develop the most healthy ideas of morality and self-respect. It is incon- testable that in these schools they receive none but good counsels and good examples. On the threshold of their own families our responsibility ceases ; but if they are not duly accompanied on the road between their own homes and the school, who can teU to what influence they may be exposed ? It is for this reason that we again demand the reinstating of the conductrices. ^42 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 2dly, The second measure of which we would take notice, and which has contributed to diminish the number of the pupils, is the suppression of the two francs a month hitherto allotted to each pupil as a treat. It has been allowed to the infant schools, but taken away from those for children of an older age. It is difficult to understand the unequal division of this favour, and it must not be forgotten that almost all these children belong to the very poorest class. " At this point, M. le Prdfet, it is impossible for our inten est in these schools not to cause us to wander a little away from the legitimate bounds of our subject, and that we should not bitterly deplore the creation of the workshop and the infant school ; a creation made in detriment of these schools, from which they have carried away nearly all the inoniteurs for the' sake of the workshops, and numbers of young children for the sake of the infant schools. " In the first place, it is patent that this is a pecuniary misfortune for the directrices, who receive a fixed sum as soon as the number of their pupils increases to above lOO, and who see their salary diminished by a franc a month for every unit below that number. Last year they still counted the one 125, the other no pupils. To-day, the first one, under Madame Luce, has only 76, and that under Made- moiselle Chevallier but 63. "About twenty young girls frequent the workshop, who cause considerable expense in their lodging and surveillailce. These young girls are generally moniteurs who have quitted the other schools. " What ! is it just that those among them who, under Madame Luce, occupied themselves in native embroidery, for example, should go and carry into another establishment the fruit of so much labour and personal investigation MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 243 {recherches) ? Is it consistent with utility ? We think not. According to our opinion, .it would have been more reason- able to allow Madame Luce's school to resume its primary destination, and to make of it an industrial school. " One glance at the figures renders this question still clearer. At this moment there are with Madame Luce, " 76 young girls. 63 with Mademoiselle Chevallier. 20 at the workshop. " Making 159 young girls, for whom three houses, three directrices, and a certain number of sub-mistresses are paid ; while for all of them united, one directrice, one house, and a certain number of mistresses would suffice ; to say nothing of one governing spirit, one system, of which the value is well known, and of which the past success guarantees most completely that of the future. " There was at first some question of admitting married or separated women into the workshop. But it is easy to under- stand how unsuitable was their companionship for the young girls, and it appears that this project has been given up. We must not lose sight of the customs of the Mussulman population, and the almost impossibility of respectable women going out to work away from their own homes. (By which the report appears to imply that such grown-up women as would come to work in an ouvroir would hardly be fit for the girls to associate with.) " Again, the Asile Musulmane is in reality but a school under another name, and it is as a school that we must allude to it. Open for children under seven years of age, they receive here their first notions of elementary knowledge, and the greater part of these children have been taken from 244 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. among the boys and girls of the regular schools. What is the use of this new expense, since they were as well looked after in the original institutions, and why should they be attracted to the Asile by a monthly gift of money, which is so much loss to the school .' " The Asile, or Infant School, is established in France (in like manner with the crhhe) to receive you;ig children whose mothers are at work ; and so true is this, that a small payment is exacted from the mothers as a guarantee that they really are at work ; a payment which, however small and insufficient to supply the wants of the child, is neverthe- less of importance, as testifying to the link between mother and infant, and as a proof that the former is industrious, and does not merely seek to get rid of her little one in order that she may indulge a too common love of idleness and vaga- bondage. But the Asile Musulmane is on a very different footing. It pays to attract to itself children whose mothers are not at all accustomed to work, never going out by the. day, and doing next to nothing at home, except what little their houses may require, as they do not generally use the needle. What interest have these women in separating themselves from their young children ? What service is rendered to them by strangers undertaking the charge ? Must not one rather ask, with some touch of sadness, what in the world are these poor women to do with leisure so acquired ? When one reflects on the degraded position held by women under the Mohammedan creed, on the re- strictions to which they are subjected in the moral and reli- gious life, on the facility for divorce, and the tolerance afforded to their misconduct, it is not too much to state that maternal love is, in default of all other sentiments, the best gnd deepest spring of action left to them. Let us not then MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 24$ seek to weaken it ; let us leave them the care of their own infants, and let us not attract children to our schools until they are old enough to profit by intellectual and moral teach- ing, offered to their minds and their hearts. " We hope, M. le Prdfet, that you will attentively examine these different questions. We lay before you with confidence and conviction the results of our observations. We could sustain these observations by more ample details, but we think we have said enough to induce you to give attentive care to the subject. For us, the experience of real life, and of the sufferings of the lower classes, have given us a pro- found belief in the regenerating virtue of labour, and its superiority over intellectual teaching, strictly so called, for most women, and above all, for Moresques ; and in summing up here our desires, and our critique, we would again re- peat :— " istly, That the Asile is but a school under another name, and that the original schools have suffered from its being opened, without any gain to the public. We ask therefore that it shall either be suppressed or completely re-organised. ■zdly, The workshop once formed part of the school, and has no separate claim to existence when the school is de- prived of the industry formerly exercised within its bounds. 2,dly, The second girls' school might be without inconve- nience re-united to the first, (always taking care that Made- moiselle Chevallier be not thrown on one side,) since figures prove that since the division there has been no increase in the number of pupils, only an increase in the expenses. i^hly, We demand the re-establishment of the conductrices to take the young girls to and fro ; and, ^thly, and above ajl, that the needlework should be encouraged and developed as much as possible. 246 MADAME LUCE,- OF ALGIERS. " Such, M. le Pr^fet, are the thoughts which we lay before you : and remain with much respect, " Signed for the Committee, " Baronne de Cery. "Algek, Dec. 7, 1858." For the' latter state of the school we must refer to the report sent in to the Prdfet in December i860. The first part of it is occupied with proving, in answer to cer- tain questions, that the yearly expense of the school was rather less than during the two first years of its estab- lishment, when Madame Luce had borne it at her own risk. She then goes on to say — " The second point, on which it is much easier for me to reply, is thus worded, ' Exact information on the import- ance of the results obtained in all that concerns the studies and the progress of the pupils.' " The spirit which presided over the creation of the school for young Mussulman girls is shown in these official words of M. le Comte Guyot, then Director of the Interior. A Mussulman school ought to mean, for those who are ac- quainted with the customs and manners of Arab women, above all, a centre of benevolence, {maison de bienfaisance^ and of education in the moral sense of that word, and of labour. These points being attended to, would sooner or later bring about the regeneration of Mussulman women. There remains the question of elementary instruction, and I wiE now examine if a triple result has been obtained accord- ing to the statistics of the school. " The number of young girls who have attended the school MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 247 since its commencement is 1035, although the school was divided during four years, and though the workshop was detached ; and on this subject I think I ought to add, that not only did the young girls of twelve and thirteen gain wages to the amount of 50 and 75 centimes a day, (from five- pence to sevenpence-halfpenny,) which increased according as there was work, but moreover, when they left the school, the workshop furnished them employment at their own homes. " About 600 could speak, read, and write French ; nearly all understood our language, and could reckon aloud with sufficient facility ; six have been sent out as sub-mistresses to the different schools created in Algeria ; one has success- fully obtained a diploma as teacher ; two have been sent as interpreters to the family of the Emir Abd-el-Kader, at Am- boise. I .will add no remark to these figures, the results which they indicate differ in no respect from those daily obtained in our primary French schools. " You are aware, M. le Prdfet, that intellectual teaching occupies only half of the time allotted to the classes, the other half being exclusively assigned to professional instruc- tion. My efforts are chiefly directed to the latter end ; which is the only true method of morally civilising the 'Arab women. The success obtained in works of the needle has surpassed all my hopes; it has been proved by an exhibition of work. A great number of Arab girls and women have found a sufficient subsistence from their earnings in the execution of that native embroidery of which the tradition seemed lost. " Two prizes awarded by the jury of the Exposition Uni- verselle of 1855 corroborate what I have had the honour to affirm above, and even quite recently, Her Majesty the 248 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. Empress, while expressing to me the interest which she took in the estabUshment, and her regret at not being able to visit it, deigned to accept some specimens of these embroid- eries, and was so good as to give me an order for more. " Je suis avec respect, Monsieur le Prdfet, " Votre tths humble et tres obSissante servante, " Eugenie Luce. " Alger, 27 Decembre i860." On the back of the report Madame Luce has written, " The school has at this moment 150 scholars. Twenty work at the embroidery, and while gaining their own livelihood honourably, cost nothing to the Administra- tion. I hope that the new Administration will compre- hend all the importance of this estabhshment, and will sustain it as it deserves to be sustained. "En ma Allah! {S'ilpliitiDieu!)" In 1860-1, Madame Luce's school was visited by the many English who passed that winter at Algiers, of whom the writer was one. The old Moorish house. No. 5 Rue de Toulon, is in the heart of the compact labyrinth forming the Corsair City. The little narrow steep streets, which often break abruptly into regular steps, are wholly inaccessible to any vehicle j only a laden donkey can pass up and down and under the dark tunnels where the thoroughfare lies between dwellings which meet over- head. In one of the steepest, darkest, and dirtiest of MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 249 these streets, a very handsome arched doorway leads into the oblong vestibule where servants — and, in the olden day, slaves — were supposed to wait. From this •we emerged into the square court of two stories, open to the sky. The class-rooms were both above and be- low, and the quaint little figures which lingered about the doors were the scholars for whom Madame Luce fought so severe a battle. They wore full trousers and jackets ; their hair was twisted into long pigtails behind and tightly bound with green ribbon ; on the crown of their heads were little velvet caps embroidered with gold thread ; their nails were tinged with henna j their legs, from the knees to the ankles, were bare, and were then finished off with anklets and slippers. They talked rapidly in an unknown tongue, and sat writing French exercises, and doing sums on black boards, or else under the trees of a sunny yard at the back, sewing frocks and towels and dusters like any other school-girls all the world over. But one of the number is no longer to be found in any group. The gentle and clever Nefissa Bent Ali,^he same who was at Amboise, and who was since sub-mistress under Madame Luce, died in the early spring of prolonged consumption. The writer saw her not long before her death, and doubly sad it was to see a carefully-educated Moorish woman, capable of doing so much to help her sisters, fading away with half her 2SO MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. mission unfulfilled. The pale patient girl lay in a small room in one of the smallest houses in Algiers, but with miniature court and pillars all complete. A much larger window than usual in these dwellings had been cut in the outer wall near her bed; and above it was the arched recess which serves Moresques as a cupboard to put away clothes and ornaments and coffee-cups, but which in this instance was filled with French books — grammars, histories, poems, and tales. Nefissa's little dark-eyed sister Rosalie hovered in and out of the room, and her withered old mother also. It is a curious trait of Moorish life that this old woman, who possessed a little independence, insisted on marrying quite a young man : the intrusion of which stranger into the house was one cause of Nefissa's illness. When, some weeks after this, the poor girl passed away, she was buried with honour by the authorities, and a small paragraph an- nouncing her death appeared in the Ackbar. We now come to a great alteration, for which it is dif- ficult to assign any satisfactory reasons, inasmuch as a friend, writing from Algiers, affirmed that, "with every change of Governor in Algeria, the policy towards her school seems changed. Once this poUcy said, give the 'jeunes Musulmanes' a good deal of instruction, and a very little needlework ; then it said, give them no- thing but instruction, and do not let them do needle- MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 2$! work at all ; and now it says, give them no instruction at all, and let them do nothing but needlework !" Yes, the well-known school, which had successfully- surmounted so many difficulties, was actually closed on the ist of November 1861, by a decree of the then Go- vernor, the Due de Malakoff j and in its place two work- schools were estabhshed, one of them being placed under Madame Luce, and domiciled in her old Moorish school-house. This is the substance of the legal document sent to Madame Luce on the 19th of October 1861, accom- panied by a letter from the Prefecture, telling her ta pay her two mistresses off, and close the school on the ist of November following. The institution is now called the Ouvroir (TAppren- tissage, and is put under the control of the Bureau de Bienfaisame Musulman. The Government pays for 200 apprentices, 100 to be sent to each ouvroir, and chosen by the Bureau de Bienfaisance Musulman. The Govern- ment gives five francs (4s. 2d.) a month for eich appren- tice ; three francs go to the girl herself, and two to the directress of the ouvroir. The girls are admitted from ten to sixteen years of age, chosen because they are sup- posed to be in want. The apprentissage lasts two years j at the end of that time the girl can stay in ^e.. ouvroir as a workwoman, and is paid according to her work. 252 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS; Each directress is obliged to see that religious instruc- tion is given, and the Mussulman prayers recited. In each ouvroir, also, condudrices are appointed to bring and take the girls to and from the ouvroir. Each directress is authorised to annex a paying primary school for children, from seven to ten, if the parents desire it, in which school reading, writing, and arithmetic may be taught. The Government gives the directresses their houses, and keeps them in repair ; every other expense must be supported by the directresses, who have no salary but the two francs a head aforesaid. Madame Luce, by exception and reason of her former services, {du droit acquis^ will still be paid her former salary. There is formed for the overlooking of these ouvroirs a permanent committee of ten lady patronesses, under the presidency of Madame de Mar'echale, wife of the Governor-General. Two of the lady patronesses are Arab ladies. This is all that is important of this long airU'e. The clause permitting the formation of paying schools is absolutely useless, after the system of paying the children to come to school has been carried on for so long. If the Government wishes to make an attempt to gain over the Arab population to the French way of life, and to mix the race, why, Madame Luce's plan was MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 253 absolutely the only way; a slow way, but it was the be- ginning of a great breach in the solid wall of Moham- medan prejudice. But the French Government never seems to have had any steady faith in this possibility; and it must be remembered that the expenses of the colony are great, and often one should remind one's self, in the midst of indignation against this obnoxious dif- ference made between boys and girls, that the poor people of France are heavily taxed for all this charity, and if they had a voice in the matter, would, no doubt, send our little trousered damsels au diable. In truth, the history of Madame Luce's school is just a fair history of Algeria. The Government trying to do everything, and, of course, in the end breaking down. The people in England would set up a private subscrip- tion, and try all manner of eccentric .experiments ; but here no one has either money or individual energy enough to do it. Madame Luce has been the only one to try, and has not succeeded; at least, for this present administration she is in eclipse. Early in 1862 a friend visited the ouvroir under her direction, on purpose to examine the Arab embroidery which Madame Luce was preparing for the Great Ex- hibition in London. She found seventy- four women and girls sitting about on the floors of the long, narrow rooms, and in the arched corridors of the court, with the 254 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. blue sky above them, in eveiy imaginable picturesque attitude, the little ones learning to knit and net, the elder ones making lovely embroidery in coloured silks. Four young girls were working on one large curtain of white cloth with coloured silks, dark red and blue, prin- cipally with dots of bright colours, all outlined with black. " I hope you do not arrange the colours," said she, to Madame Luce ; " you had much better leave it to them to do as they like ; they know much, better what is right that any barbarian Frenchwoman." Madame Luce laughed in her genial way, and said in fact she did leave it to them to do as they liked, except, of course, the necessary adaptations which she was obliged to make for French ladies' collars, handkerchiefs, jackets, &c., which could not always be treated exactly like Arab ladies' costume.. There were curtains worked on Arab thread muslin, which are certainly the most lovely specim.ens of em- broidery in the world, and, from the quantity of gold thread, cannot be worth less than ;£iso the pair. All this work is expensive, but cannot be called dear, when the time it takes, and the materials, are considered. The cloth Zouave jackets, embroidered with real gold, which she sells for ^bout ;£6, are perhaps the cheapest tilings she has to send, considering the time they will MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. 255 certainly wear — probably as long as most wearers ! Girls came at eight o'clock, and worked until eleven, and in the afternoon from one till four o'clock. In summer the hours were longer, being from seven till eleven, and from one to five o'clock. The average wages were about is. a day. Some girls can earn as much as is. gd. a day. There were five conductresses always running back- wards and forwards with the girls, and paid 4s. 2d. a month each; and then Madame Luce had to pay the mistresses, the woman to clean the house, and the wo- man who prays aloud while the girls work, and the woman who keeps order and prevents bad conversation, .' and many other expenses. She assured her visitor she was out of pocket j and how she was to pocket any- thing, unless her embroideries sold well, is difficult to see, for the expenses of the girls must be more than 2f. each. The girls looked brighter and happier than as usually seen in Moorish bowers, and there is no doubt it is healthier for them to be there and working, than in their houses doing nothing. In the future, the knowledge of a trade may save them from much misery. In another point of view this ouvroir was most inter- esting — namely, that of art ; for these wonderful Arab embroideries were going out of the world, the very 2S6 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS. Stitches forgotten, until the taste of the English visitors made a great demand for them. The late Mr Benjamin Woodward, architect of the Oxford Museum, was one of the first who drew attention to the singular beauty of colour and arrangement in the old Arab work; and within the last few years so great has been the demand, that it is difficult now to pick up good specimens in any of the bazaars. If Madame Luce respects this beautiful instinct in the Arab women, and allows them to develop it untainted by false French taste, she will do good service to art. In conclusion, we think this sketch of a long struggle in the cause of education and industry will not be read without interest even in our far distant England ; while it may meet the eye of some who intend next winter to visit the bright, beautiful shores where the scene of our narrative lies, and cause them to feel that they have already made something like a friendly acquaintance with the life of Madame Luce of Algiers. VI. GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. VI. GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. N the histories, the romances, and the legends of Massachusetts, there appears one name peculiarly representative of the old colonial times — 'that of Governor Winthrop. If we mistake not, he is alluded to in Nathaniel Hawthorne's." House of the Seven Gables ;" and Winthrop is the typical name of one of the immaculate heroes of the authoress of the "Wide, Wide World." As an historical character, he occupies the proud position of having been one of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England and the head of the little commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay. " It was a merciful Providence," says his wife's biographer,* " that * Memorable Women of the PuritJin Times. By the Rev. James Anderson. Blackie. 260 GOVERNOR WINTHROP's WIFE. such a man as John Winthrop' embarked in'the perilous undertaking of planting an Englisli Christian colony in. the American wilderness. To. eminent, piety he added, political sagacity, wisdom and moderation in counsel,, persuasive eloquence, disinterested devotion to the interests of the infant state, with great firmness of char- acter, all which highly fitted him to preside over, tlie new plantation, where peculiar, difficulties and trials had. to be encountered, and society almost to be formed anew. His gifts as a statesman were indeed such as would have rendered him a meet associate of such men as Prynne, Hampden, Cromwell, and. others who figured so illustriously in England in the times of the civil wars." The short sketch of his wife given in Mr Anderson's book possesses a quaint and tender interest from the love letters , which passed between the pair. during the time they were separated by the broad Atlantic — a gulf so terrible in those days of small sailing ships, that we wonder in our modern days how such separations were endured. Margaret Tindal was bom about the year 1590, and married to Winthrop when she was twenty- eight years old, he being a Suffolk gentleman, come of an ancient family of good estate, and bred a lawyer. Winthrop had been twice married, the first time when he was only seventeen years and three months old ; but his GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. 261 early domestic history imust have been singularly un- fortunate, since at the time of his wedding Margaret Tindal -he was but thirty years of age. He had several children, to whom Mrs Winthrop proved a tender and conscientious step-mother; sons of her own were also born to her — Adam, Stephen, and Deane. As her letters 'to Winthrop furnish most of the details known oi her life, there is little to say of her early married years, except in intervals when his legal business called him to London. Her first extant letter was probably written in 1624 or 1625, and the second in 1628. They are sent from Suffolk to him in London, and are full of beautiful tenderness and piety : — " Most Dear and Loving Husband,—^! cannot express my love to you, as I desire, in .these poor, lifeless lines ; but il do heartily wish you did see my heart, how true and faith- ful.it is to you, and how much I do desire to be always with you, to enjoy. the sweet comfort of your presence, and those helps from you in spiritual and temporal duties, which I am so unfit to perform without you. It makes me to see the want of you, and wish myself with you. But I desire we may be guided in all our ways by God, who is able to .direct us for the best ; and so I will wait with patience upon Him, who is all-sufficient for me. :I shall.not needto write much to you at this time. My brother Gostlingcan tell you any- thing by word of mouth. I praise God, we are all here in health, as you left us, and are glad to hear the same of you and all he rest of our friends at London. My mother and myself remember our best love to you, and all the rest. Our 262 GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. children remember their duty to you. And thus, desiring to be remembered in your prayers, I bid my good husband good night. Little Samuel thinks it is time for me to go to bed ; and so I beseech the Lord to keep you in safety, and us all here. Farewell, my sweet husband. — Your obedient wife, Margaret Winthrop." " My most sweet Husband, — How dearly welcome thy kind letter was to me, I am not able to express. The sweet- ness of it did much refresh me. What can be more pleasing to a wife than to hear of the welfare of her best beloved, and how he is pleased with her poor endteavours ! I blush to hear myself commended, knowing my own wants. But it is your love that conceives the best, and makes all things seem better than they are. I wish that I may be always pleasing to thee, and that those comforts we have in each other may be daily increased,, as far as they be pleasing to God. I will use that speech to thee that Abigail did to David, I will be a servant to wash the feet of my lord. I will do any service wherein I may please my good husband. I confess I cannot, do enough for thee, but thou art pleased to accept the will for the deed, and rest contented. " I have many reasons to make me love thee, whereof I will name two : First, because thou lovest God ; and, se- condly, because that thou lovest me. If these two were want- ing, all the rest would be eclipsed. But I must leave this discourse, and go about my household affairs. I am a bad housewife to be so long from them ; but T must needs borrow a little time to talk with thee, my sweetheart. The term is more than half done. I hope thy business draws to an end. It will be but two or three weeks before I see thee, though they be long ones. God will bring us together in His good GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. 263 time ; for which time I shall pray. I thank the Lord, we are all in health. We are very glad to hear so good news of our son Henry. The Lord make us thankful for all His mercies to us and ours ! And thus, with my mother's and my own best love to yourself and all the rest, I shall leave scribbling. The weather being cold, makes me make haste. Farewell, my good husband. The Lord keep, thee ! — ^Your obedient wife, Margaret Winthrop." From the favourable reports brought to England of the new plantation of Massachusetts Bay, where those who held Puritan tenets might enjoy a liberty of con- science denied to them in England, Winthrop- joined "The London Company of Massachusetts Bay,'.' and embarked a considerable amount of money in the con- cern. When in 1629-30 a considerable emigration took place, more important than the previous ones, he entered with zeal into the undertaking ; and " being well known in his own county of Suffolk, and well approved for his piety, liberality, wisdom, and gravity, he was extremely useful in promoting it, and eventually headed it." These emigrants were persons of education, of large landed estates, and of good family connexions. Some of them were allied by marriage to the aristocracy; some of them were among the principal gentry of the county of Suffolk, to which, indeed, they all belonged ; while the divines were men of acknowledged, abilities and learned in the mother country — university graduates — Cambridge hay- 264 GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE; ing been their Alma Mater. At this time Winthrop's income was about ^^700 a year, equal, says the biogra- pher, to at least ^7000 in our day ; he was happy in his domestic relations, and from his talents and condi- tion in life, might reasonably aspire to the most honour- able and profitable offices in the State. Yet he decided ■ to quit all these actual possible goods, and to emigrate under conditions which we can hardly realise. For Natal or "Vancouver's Island are neither so distant or so unknown as was Massachusetts then. Until the time of his embarkation for America, Win- throp' continued to make frequent jeurneys to London on business connected with the projected new planta- tion. He was elected governor before the company started J and having ^obtained a royal charter which sanctioned sthe existence of the colony, secured its rights, and authorised the Government to be adminis- tered within the territory, he contemplated -embarking in the spring of 1630. To prepare Mrs Winthrop's mind for leaving England and for going out to plant the New World with civilised and Christian men, was now the strenuous aim of her husband. To a woman dwell- ing in .the pastoral flats of Suffolk it must have seemed a desperate undertaking. He gave her all the information he could on the subject. In a letter to his son John, at Groton, dated October 9, 1629, he says: — "I have GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. 265 sent down all the -late news from New England ; I would have some of you read it to your mother." He assured her that to better .the temporal interests of her and her children was one of the motives which prompted him to engage in this American enterprise. " For my care of thee and thine I will say nothing. The Lord knows my heart that it was one great motive to draw me into this course. The Lord prasper me in it, as I desire the prosperity of thee and thine. For this end I purpose to leave ^^1500 with thy friends, if I can sell my lands, which I am now about, but as yet have done nothing. Mrs Winthrop was not to sail with him. The reason appears to be, that at the time fixed upon for the sailing of the emigrants she would be near her confinement ; and her husband was to take all his children with him, except his eldest son, John. In ,the prospect of this separation she therefore sorely needed tender and com- forting words, which were not wanting. Says he, in a letter dated January 31, 1^30, — "I must now begin to prepare thee for our long parting, which grows very near. I know not how to deal with .thee by arguments, for if thou wert as wise and patient as ever woman was, yet it must needs be a great trial to thee, and the greater because I am so dear to thee. That which I must chiefly look at in thee for a ground of contentment is thy godliness. If now the Lord be thy God, thou must 266 V GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. show it by trusting in Him, and resigning thyself quietly to His good pleasure. If now Christ be thy husband, thou must show what sure and sweet intercourse is between Him and thy soul, when it shall be no hard thing for thee to part with an earthly, mortal, infirm husband for His sake The best course is -to turn all our reasons and discourse into prayers, for He only can help who is Lord of sea and land, and hath sole power of life and death." Other letters he wrote her in the same strain, one of which ends, " Farewell, the Lord bless thee and all thy company! Commend me to all, and to all our good friends and neighbours, and remember Monday, between five and six." The reference in the close is to a solemn compact made between the writer and his wife, that so long as separated from each other, whether in conse- quence of his journeys to London, or of his removal to America, they should set aside the particular hour speci- fied, on the Monday and Friday of every week, for the purpose of engaging in prayer for one another. About this time Winthrop and his intended fellow- emigrants were entertained by their friends at a farewell dinner, at which he was so affected at the prospect of parting from them, and from his native country, that the strong man burst into a flood of tears, and set them all a-weeping. He finally went to Southampton, at that GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. 267 time a port of great commerce, to embark on board the Arhella for America. From Southampton he wrote to his wife a letter, dated March 14, 1630, saying, "Mine only best beloved, I now salute thee from Southampton, where, by the Lord's mercy, we are all safe ; but the winds have been such as our ships are not yet come. .... And now, my dear wife, what shall I say to thee ? I am full of matter and affection towards thee, but want time to express it." Again, on the 28th, he writes, " Commend me to all our good friends, as I wrote in my former letter, and be comfortable and trust in the Lord ; my dear wife, pray, pray. He is our God and Father ; we are in covenant with Him, and He will not cast us off." In another letter from shipboard, he says, " Our boys are well and cheerful, and have no mind of home. They lie both with me, and sleep as soundly in a rug (for we use no sheets here) as ever they did at Groton, and so I do myself, (I praise God.) The wind hath been against us this week and more, but this day it has come fair to the north, so we are preparing, by God's assist- ance, to set sail in the morning." The fleet carrying this little colony numbered eleven ships, of whom, however, seven were delayed for a fortnight. " We are, in all our eleven ships, about 700 persons, passengers, and 240 cows, and about sixty horses. The ship which went from Plymouth carried about 140 persons, and the ship 268 GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. which goes from Bristol carrieth about eighty persons. And now, my sweet soul, I must once again take my last farewell of thee in Old England. It goeth verynear to my heart to leave thee j but I know to whom I have committed thee, even to Him who loves thee much better than any husband can Oh, how it re- fresheth my heart to think that I shall yet again see thy sweet face in the land of the living — that lovely counte- nance that I have so much delighted in, and beheld with so great content. I have hitherto been so ^aken up with business, as I could seldom look back to my former happiness ; but now, when I shall be at some leisure, I shall not avoid the remembrance of thee, nor the grief for thy absence. Thou hast thy share with me, but I hope the course we have agreed upon will be some ease to us both. Mondays and Fridays, at five >of the clock at night, we shall meet in spirit till we meet in person. Yet, if all .these hopes should fail, blessed be our God, that we are assured we shall meet one day, if -not as husband and wife, yet in a better condition. Let that stay and comfort thy heart. Neither can the sea drown thy husband, nor enemies destroy, nor any adversity deprive thee of ithy husband and children. Therefore, I will only take thee now and my sweet children in mine arms, and kiss and embrace you all, and do leave you GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE, 369 with my God. Farewell, farewell, 1 bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus." His last letter is dated from the Arlella, while she lay at anchor off Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, and is dated April 3 : — "My Love, MY Joy, MY FAITHFUL One, — .. . . . This is the third letter I have written to thee since I came to Hampton, in. requital, of those two 1 received from thee, which I do often read with much delight, apprehending so much love and sweet affection in them, as I am never satis- fied with reading,, nor can- read them without tears ; but whether they proceed from joy,, sorrow, or desire, or from that consent of affection, which I always hold with thee, I cannot conceive. Ah, my dear heart, I ever held thee in high esteem, as thy love and goodness hath well deserved ; but, if it be possible, I shall yet prize thy virtue at a greater rate, and long more to enjoy thy sweet society than ever be- fore. I am sure thou art not short of me in this desire. Let us pray hard,, and pray in faith, and our God in His good time will accomplish our desire. Oh, how loath am I to bid thee farewell ! but, since it must be, farewell, my sweet love, farewell. Farewell, my dear children and family. The Lord bless you all, and grant me to see your faces once again. Come, my dear, take him and let him rest in thine arm, who will ever remain thy faithful husband, " John Winthrop." We must now follow Governor Winthrop to the New World, on the shores of which he landed on the 12th of 270 GOVERNOR WINTHEOP'S WIFE. June, at Salem, where shortly before Endicott had laid the foundations of the first town in Massachusetts. They came upon evil times ; in the previous winter disease and death had been raging among the colonists, and eighty out of about 300 had died, while many of those still living were weak and sickly. Not, altogether liking Salem, the new comers dispersed and planted themselves at Charlestown, and at suitable sites adjoin- ing; and from Charlestown Winthrop dated his first letter to his wife, on July i6th, sent home probably by the first ship which returned to England. He leaves it to the bearer to give her detailed information of the unfortunate state of the colony, and promises that she siiall receive the full particulars in a letter which he is to send to his " brother Downing by some of the last ships." He ex- pects to see her the following spring on the American shores. This letter tells her the sad news of the death of his son Henry, (by his iirst wife,,) in the twenty-third year of his age, whom he had accidentally left behind him at the Isle of Wight, but who came to America in another vessel, and was unfortunately drowned in a small creek at Salem, on the 2d of July, the very day on which he landed. The prevalence of sickness and mortality, which carried off some of the most distinguished of the colo- nists, and interrupted the survivors in their building GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE, 271 operations, was still the burden of the information which Mrs Winthrop continued to receive from New England. Winthrop and his children, however, escaped; and as there was reason to believe thattlus sickness had been caused by insufficient and unwholesome diet at sea, he would have her, instead of being discouraged thereby, to ta;ke this as a lesson, that on coming out she should be careful to see that a sufficient supply of wholesome food was provided. Mrs Winthrop's whole soul was naturally set upon going out to join her husband. .She writes thus in May or June, 1631, to her step-son, John, who had been left in England : — My Dear Son, — Blessed be our good God, who hath not failed us, but hath given us cause of most unspeakable joy, for the good news which we have heard out of New England. Mr Wilson had been with me before thy letters came to my hands, but brought me no letter. He speaks very well of things there, ao as my heart and thoughts are there already. I want but means to cany my body after them. I am now fully persuaded that it is the place wherein God will have us to settle ; and I beseech Him to fit us for it, that we may be instruments of His glory there. This news came very seasonably to me, being possessed with much grief for thee, hearing how things went concerning thy wife's jointure. But now I have cast off that, and hope God will turn all to the best. If thou canst but send me over when Mr Wilson goeth back, I shall be very, very glad of his company. If 272 GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. thy manifold employments will not suffer thee to go with me, I shall be very sorry for it ; for I would be glad to carry all my company with me. But I will not say any more of this till I hear from thee, how things may be done. I pray con- sider of it, and give me the best counsel you can. Mr Wil- son is now in London, and promised me to come and see you. He cannot yet persuade his wife to go, for all this pains he hath taken to come and fetch her. I marvel what metal she is made of. Sure she will yield at last, or else we shall want him exceedingly in New England. I desire to hear what news my brother Downing hath ; for my husband writ but little to me, thinking we had been on our voyage. And thus, with my love to thyself, my daughter, and all the rest of my good friends, I desire the Lord to bless and keep you, and rest, your loving mother, " Margaret Winthrop." " I received the things you sent down by the carrier this week, and thank my daughter for my band." Mrs Winthrop sailed from England in August 1631, in the ship Lion. She had for her fellow-passengers her step-son, John, and his wife, Mary, and her own four children — Stephen, Dean, Samuel, and Anne. John Eliot, the celebrated apostle of the Massachusetts In- dians, was also on board, and other families, consisting in all of about sixty persons. They had plenty of good food, and lost none of their number except two children, one of which was little Anne Winthrop, aged a year and a half, who died after they had been a week at sea. The voyage lasted ten weeks. They reached Natascot on. GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFfi. 273 the 2d of November; and on the 3d, the wind being contrary, the vessel stopped at Long Island, Modern readers will remember that here it was that poor Mar- garet Fuller was drowned, two hundred and twenty years later. Between Governor Winthrop's wife and the in- tellectual heroine of Massachusetts, what a strange gulf! Such touches of vivid contrast mark the change of na- tions more sharply than an historical essay. At Long Island John Winthrop went on shore, and in the evening the Governor came on board, and husband and wife were re-united. ' The next morning, the wind becoming favourable, the ship again set sail, and cast anchor before Boston. When Mrs Winthrop landed, the infant colony did its best to show her honour. The ship fired seven cannon, shot ; the " captains with their companies, in arms, formed a guard to attend them, and honoured them with volleys of shot and the firing of three artillery pieces." The people from the adjoining plantation sent abundant stores of provisions, as fat hogs, kids, venison, poultry, geese, and partridges, so that the simple resources of gunpowder and cookery were brought into play with much effect. " The like joy," says her husband, " and manifestations of love had never been seen before in New England. It vfas a great marvel that so much people and such store of provisions could be gathered 274 GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. together at so few hours' warning." On the nth of November, a day of thanksgiving was observed at Bos- ton for Mrs Winthrop's safe arrival, and on the 17th, Brad- ford, the Governor of Plymouth, came to Boston to offer congratulations at the wooden house, two stories high, which had been erected for the first lady in the colony. Her high position was worthily occupied. " She was perhaps well-nigh as useful in a private way as he was in his more public and extended sphere. She sustained and cheered him amidst the difficulties and hardship, and toils, and dangers, and sacrifice, that had to be encountered amidst the forests of the New World." When jealousy and suspicion occasionally dogged him, as it does all public men, "he had the comfort to know • that in his own home there was one always the same, always true to him, whoever else might be faithless or change ; and sustained by her presence and sympathy, he maintained his tranquillity, undisturbed by the fickle- ness of others, and continued unceasingly in his exer. tions to advance the welfare of the plantation, even when these exertions were undervalued or ill requited." " Though brought up in the enjoyment of all the luxu- ries and elegancies of life that wealth could provide, Mr and Mrs Winthrop now denied themselves many of these, which even in the colony they might have had, that they might set before others an example of Christian frugality GOVERNOR WINTHROP'S WIFE. 275 and moderation, and might exercise a more abundant liberality towards those who were in need. They sup- plied almost daily some of their neighbours with food from their table. Their house was a temple of piety, and no family was more regular than theirs in attendance upon the duties of public worship." In .the theological controversies which shook the colony in its early days she took no part; but her husband was involved in the proceedings which were entered into against Mrs Hutchinson and her party, who happened at one time to enjoy popular favour. The story of these commotions is well told in the same book from which this little memoir has been abridged, and to it we refer the reader. The following note, dated "& of expression is deluding, and requires great accuracy of judgment not to be imposed upon by it." The italics are the wise old lady's own ; but the whole sentence, though somewHat stiffly ex- pressed, strikes the ear as equally applicable to various theories of the present day. In May 1768 the Dean of Down died, at the age of eighty-four, and this event caused the remainder of his wife's days to be spent in England. She passed a great deal of her time with the Duchess of Portland, at Bul- strode, a delightful old woman, always deep in botany and the natural sciences. The Duchess goes to the Peak to get plants, and M. Rousseau with her, who calls himself I'herboriste de Madame la Duchesse de Portland; she has quite a museum at Bulstrode, has birds, gold and silver fish, shells, fossils, and fungi. Mrs Delany records in evety letter some instance of the Duchess's vivacious MRS DELANY. 381 delight in science. " It is pleasant to see how she enjoys all her own possessions, and at the same time is so ready to give every other place its due. . . . Mr Elliot is here, and she is very busy in adding to her English herbal ; she has been transported at the discovery of a new wild plant, a Helleboria." Her Grace at one time fills her breakfast-room so full with sieves, pans, and platters, being apparently immersed in the study of water-plants, that, notwithstanding twelve chairs and a couch, it be- comes difficult to find a seat She naturally consorts with men of science, and the pair of aged friends go to " Mr Bank's house in New Burlington Street," to see the wonderful plants he has brought from Otaheite, and the remarkable dress worn by the savages who killed Cap- tain Cook. Occasionally we have glimpses of Court life, of which Mrs Delany reports the hearsay to her niece, as, for instance, of a ball at the queen's house, where the queen danced, besides minuets, four country dances with the King of Denmark. The king danced all night, changing partners, as the rest did, every two dances, and finished with Lady Mary Lowther and the Hemp- dressers, that lasts two hours. The eight bars of this exciting melody are given as described by Walsh in 1 7 18, with directions for dancing it, which are far from complicated. Delicious old picture of King George III, in his youth ! One wonders whether Lady Mary Low- 382 MRS DELANY. ther did not get a little tired before the two hours were out! But we must not linger over the endless suggestions of the various correspondences, for we have to see Miss Mary Dewes through her courtship and marriage to one Mr Port of Ham, a gentleman of ancient family and good estate, with whom, nevertheless, the course of true love did not run perfectly smooth ; for the fair lady's uncle, Mr Bernard Granville, was for some unexplained reason opposed to the match, and contrived to make everybody very uncomfortable. The following singular love-letter, if such it may be called, written by Miss Dewes to Mr Port during the cloudy period, shows a mixture of ideas in the young lady's mind, a devotion to grammar and moonlight, a prudential hint regarding the uncle, and an anxiety as to the matching of the furni- ture in her new home, if ever she became its mistress, which is very quaint and amusing : — "Richmond, Saturday, June 9, 1770, Half an hour after seven. " My dear Mr Port, — I sent you such a strange and, I fear, almost unintelligible scrawl last Thursday, that I fear you could scarce make it out, but I was so much straitened in time, that had I not been pretty expeditious, I could not have written at all, which I hope will plead my excuse, other- wise, I am sure, there are many wanted. " There were a vast many people dined at Wimbledon on MRS DELANY. 383 Thursday. The Duke and Duchess of Grafton, Lord and Lady Jersey, &c Lady Frances Bulkely left us yester- day. She is a most worthy, amiable woman. She desired me to give her compliments to you when I saw you. Alas ! she little thought how uncertain was that day ! " It is most charming weather, and the moon as bright as possible every night but the last. I was true to my appoint- ment last night, and was happy in thinking we were behold- ing the same object at the same hour. That reflection will be a still greater comfort to me as you are removed farther off; for our engagement shall hold good for every full moon (at eleven o'clock) till we meet, and then she will shine forth with double lustre, and every charm be heightened by our beholding it together. Till that time arrives, we must con- sole ourselves in thinking of each other's sincerity, and that everything will turn out as we wish it, if it is for the best it should. " ' Let no fond love for earth exact a sigh, No doubts divert our steady steps aside ; Nor let us long to live, nor dread to die; Heaven is our hope, and Providence cur guide.' I must beg you will send me two or three franks to Lady Mary Mordaunt, for I gave you the whole half-dozen that night, and have none to her ladyship myself. " The nosegay is still alive ! Though the moon was not bright last night, yet we had the pleasure of contemplating the light of it, and looking at the sky, at least, at the same time. " As we were to be out the whole day, I rose earlier than usual in order to have a little time for reading, as food for the mind is full as necessary as for the body ; and I was 3^4 MRS DELANY. always delighted with what Dr Young says in one of his ' Night Thoughts : '— " ' A soul without reflection, Like a pile without an inhabitant, Soon to ruin falls ! ' " It is rather a hardship upon our sex that we have in gene- ral our own education to seek after wt are grown up — I mean as to mental qualification. In our childhood, writing, danc- ing, and music is what is most attended to ; and without being a pedant, such a knowledge of grammar as is requisite to make us speak and write correctly is certainly necessary, and also such a knowledge of history that one may compare past times with present, and be able to enter into conversation when those subjects are started, is very agreeable, and I am convinced one is never too old for improvement. The great Mrs Macauly (I was told by an intimate friend of hers) hardly knew the meaning of the word grammar till she was near thirty years old, and that now all her productions go to the press uncorrected ! " Sunday. — Many thanks for your kind letter, which I have just received. You compliment me so much on my style in writing, that were I not convinced it proceeds from your partiality to me, I should grow too vain ; and though I am conscious I cannot merit all you say on that subject, yet your praises must ever be most pleasing to me. When I entered into the agreement of telling each other of whatever mistakes we made, it was chiefly from self-interest, as the improvement I shall receive will be greater than yours, as my mistakes are more numerous ; and if I do not find you tell me of them, I shall think our bargain at an end. There-^ fore, I am but half pleased at you 'deferring^ to acquaint MRS DELANY. 385 me with the one made in my last letter, and so ends this chapter. And now to proceed to what is of more conse- quence. " I think if you and Mr visit, it would be right to say to him how disappointed and mortified you were upon coming to London at finding so different a reception from what you had reason to expect, especially after your circumstances and estates had undergone all the examination Mr Dewes thought proper to make, and that you could not help wishing Mr G would stand your friend. " As you ask my opinion, this it is, I own, but I am sure you judge better what to say than I can tell you.. Do not take any notice to my brothers of what / think you should say to Mr G , but you may tell them, if you see Mr G , you certainly shall say something to him about the affair, but that you shall be vastly cautious, what, and so you must be. " If the screen you have bought is like Mrs Delany's, hers is blue sarsenet, (not paper,) and yours should be green sarse- net, as near the colour of your hangings as can be. " Lady Cowper desires her compliments to you, and that she should be very glad to see you either with or without my brothers ; but prudential reasons must prevent it for the present. A time will come when I hope we shall both have the superior happiness of enjoying together my dear Lady Cowper's company, whom the more you know the more you will admire, as I have done for these seventeen years past. " I am sure the length of this will make amends for the shortness of my last." It being very evident in this letter that the sooner Mr "G 's" objections are removed, the better for this 2 B 386 MRS DELANY. Stately pair of lovers, the reader is relieved to find that he is induced to give way, apparently through the inter- vention of the good old Duchess of Portland, who, we are told in a letter from one Mrs Ravaud to Mrs Delany, " acts hke herself, and obviates so many disagreeable circumstances, that upon the like occasion I should wish to put myself under her Grace's protection." Not only does the Duchess bring about the union, but she will not allow Mrs Delany and Miss Dewes to leave Bulstrode until it takes place ; and the wedding was privately per- formed there, with the consent of Mr Dewes and Mr Granville, and everybody wrote congratulatory letters to everybody else that all the trouble and delay were over at last. The tender correspondence so long entertained by Mrs Delany with Mary Dewes, is recommenced with Mrs Port of Ham ; the letters preserved being, however, chiefly those of the elder lady. We are introduced to successive children, of whom the eldest, Georgina Mary Ann, forms the text of various sanitary recommenda- tions of the Great Aunt's, more in accordance with the ■ opinions entertained in this century, than with those generally attributed to the last. Lady Llanover men- tions a little box still in existence, on the top of which two old trees are represented, extending their aged arms so as to interlace about a "little lamb," which was a MRS DEL ANY. 387 symbolical present given by the Duchess and Mrs Delany to the child. In the second volume the royal family appear on the scene, visiting the Duchess, inviting Mrs Delany to take tea at Windsor Castle, &c., but on the fertile subject of George III. and his household, we have not space to enter. It is curious truly, in reading such a collection of correspondence as these volumes contain, to remem- ber the reviews which have appeared, and the different points of view from which the life so naturally depicted has been regarded by the various critics. The leading literary paper of tliis day, in a long and animated notice, struck on aU the hints of wild dissipation and extrava- gant behaviour ; on the Duke of Devonshire's gaucherie towards his lovely betrothed ; and Admiral Forbes's ex- ceedingly objectionable reputation; and extracted, in fact, much such a picture of London society as Mr Thackeray gives in the "Virginians," and Fielding (several degrees worse) in " Amelia." We would, how- ever, say to ladies who take up Mrs Delan/s letters, that unless previously acquainted with the wicked his- tory of the times, they would find therein nothing ofihe. sort. Mrs Delany and the Duchess of Portland were exceedingly like clever, cultivated, thoughtful old women of the present day. When they wrote confidentially to each other they were neither coarse nor irreligious, and 388. MRS DELANY. though their sentences were a little long, they were in- variably clear, expressive, and grammatical. It is quite a comfort to find that all the world was not drinking and fighting, and that "Lady Julia Mandeville" is com- mented upon as untrue to life and nature by an old aunt writing to a young niece at the very time it was published. Nay, even Richardson's family characters, good and true and well drawn as they are, are mere stuffed dolls compared to this group of pleasant, kindly Christian women, of Granville blood ; of whom neither children, relatives, friends, nor servants had any cause to be ashamed; and who, while absorbed, one and all, in their family and social duties, at an epoch when there was little scope for any other use of their energies, were neither frivolous nor stupid, dissipated nor dull, and whom, since they were of our grandmothers' generation, it is particularly comfortable and consolatory to find our- selves enabled to heartily respect. X. HARRIOT K. HUNT, A SANITARY REFORMER, HARRIOT K. HUNT, A SANITARY REFORMER. HAVE been deeply interested and touched by a book sent to me from America, with the love of the unknown author inscribed upon its first page. This book contains the autobio- graphy of a noble-hearted woman who has created for herself a useful and respectable professional position as a sanitary physician in Boston : I use these words, de- scriptive of her powers, with some hesitation, yet know not how to choose better. Harriot Hunt is not a regularly educated and accredited physician like Dr Elizabeth Blackwell ; her faculty and her success appear to lie in a loving insight into the lives of those who consult her, and a cleai<-headed recognition and enforce- 392 HARRIOT K. HUNT. ment of sanitary law. NoJ: only is the subject of the memoir outside of any regular profession ; but the whole book is intensely marked by the nationality of New Eng- land. It is American in word and thought and deed to an unparalleled degree; and must be regarded as the product of another nation, akin, yet how different to our own. As such, I offer it to our readers in a .much abridged form ; making Miss Hunt as far as possible tell her own tale. Harriot Kesia Hunt was born in November 1805, and was the eldest child of Joab and Kesia Hunt of Boston. In spite of their quaint Puritan names, her parents were members of the Episcopal Church. Mr Hunt was in the business of eastern navigation; his brother was a sea-captain, and the home associations were of seamen and the sea. Speaking of her own birth, Harriot Hunt thus describes her early home in Boston : — " I come now to speak of my birth. The older portion of the inhabit- ants of the North End can remember when Lynn Street (now Commercial) was open on one side to the broad waters of the harbour, and when the houses on the right hand from Hanover Street side were not built. Those older people can remember, too, a neat, pleasant little dwelhng facing the water, with a garden of flowers all about it. From the windows you could look on the free HARRIOT K. HUNT. 393 tossing of the sea tides, with the ships far and near, and the little ferry-boats plying to and fro. Beyond was Chelsea, where the cows were feeding in the green pas- tures. You could see the beautiful sunsets reflected in the water, kindling its unstable mass into gorgeous colour and shifting flame. And in this house, whose surrounding scenery gave it a soft charm, — a house with flowers without, and birds within, and itself the nest of every comfort, — ^in this house I was born. There had been a preparation for my birth in my mother's life : in her discipline, her activity, and her maturity. She was then thirty-five years of age. Children had been repeat- edly ofiered her for adoption ; to each offer she would say, ' If the Lord wills me to sustain that relation. He will give me a child.' The Lord willed it. " This was their first, and (then) their only child. Congratulations, prayers, and benedictions came in from every quarter. Such was its welcome into life ; such the tenderness and joy with which it was received. I often think now at this mature age, that those blessings were not in vain — were not without a mystic mission. I often think that the incense from those hearts has perfumed my whole existence ; that the gratitude of those parents for a living child has impressed me through subtle, and, it may be, undetectable agencies, with a more reverent and awful sense of the great fact we term 394 HARRIOT K. HUNT. Life." Three years after was born a second little daughter, the darling and the friend of her sister's whole life, up to the hour in which the book was penned. Just before the birth of this little one, the family had moved to a house close to the grand old colonial man- sion described by Cooper in his " Lionel Lincoln." " It was in that Fleet Street home my sister and myself grew up to youth. As our childish characters developed, and our dispositions unfolded, we were very carefully guarded from temptation. Habits of trust and obe- dience were thus more easily formed. Our early play- mates were chosen with more care — ^yes, a great deal more care — than is now given to elect a member for Congress. Our hearts were kept enlarged by family needs ; and the difference between wants and needs was wisely taught us. We were not suifered to grow up in ignorance of the distinction between the apparent and the real^— What Is and What Seem.s. Our fingers were kept busy out of school and play hours, aiding the shirt- maker, helping her in the fine stitching, ruffled bosoms, and button-holes. In the making of the latter,- even now, I am considered an adept. But with all this work, (which would be accounted a terrible hardship in 1866 !) there was always blended a merriment and joy, for our mother managed to make us feel that younger eyes were aiding older ones. HARRIOT K. HUNT. 395 " Taught at home while young by our mother, we re- ceived the impress of her mind. The remembrance of sitting on my father's knee at twihght, learning the multi- plication table, by the bright light of a wood » fire in a Franklin stove flashing softly on the shadows of the cheer- ful room, comes to me now like an interior illumination. Thus early were formed those domestic loves — those sacred attractions which in time lead the child to desire to know that heavenly Parent who guided, blessed, and encouraged the earthly ones. In minds thus prepared, rehgious obedience has its root. The influence of our childhood's home is felt through life, and gives a quality to our conception of a heavenly home. " I think again of our Uttle garden, fragrant with the early rose and fleur-de-lis. There, on spring mornings, our mother was seen, as many may remember, training and weeding her choice plants and flowers. The early lettuce and pepper-grass on our table spoke of her thrift. How often, while training and weeding in that garden, she must have been reminded of her maternal duties, — of the young ' children like olive plants round about her table ! ' To such a mind as hers, every flower and plant must have borne spiritual leaves and blossoms, and each one conveyed a lesson. She )delded to those natural teachings in her own quiet, sensible way. " Time came when we must go to school. My first 396 HARRIOT K. HUNT. school days were calculated to impart cheerfulness to my mind. Whoever can look back to childhood, and re- call, with gratitude, a good and kind teacher, remembers —no matter what that teacher's name — Mrs Carter of Friend Street. I am sure all who were her pupils, •'eading this work, will agree with me in her unfailing suavity, kindness, and tenderness to children. "Mrs Carter's was a private school; — we never at- tended the public schools ; they were not then the care- fully-modelled institutions they now are, and did not bear their present relation to the public. I have my first school bill to Mrs Carter, dated 18 10. Our bills were always carefully preserved by our mother, that we might realise in maturer years the expense of our education. " Our Christmas family gatherings were doubly joyous. Christmas was the birthday of my only sister ; I remem- ber that my childish fancy thought the merry peals pre- ceding it had had much to do with her birth ! What an exciting affair to me, was my first school prize for spelling ! And also, my medal for proficiency in history! Then came my first essay at letter writing for others. My father's aunt, whose only son had died at the South, wished me to write to his friends for her. I see myself now, sitting down with my slate, — my mother's charge with regard to carefulness in spelling resting upon me. HARRIOT K. HUNT. 397 The draught was prepared; I took it to my aunt; it was approved. I copied it on paper. My heart quivered — my life grew great in importance; I had written to a business man, and the letter was to the point ! For years afterwards I was my aunt's letter writer ; the employment assumed much consequence ; it was of great use to me — a capital discipline — though I sometimes rebelled. My father said he 'never knew money that came in the slave-trade blessed;' and the intricate lawsuits, vexatious delays, and continued disap- pointments of the business transaction which occasioned this correspondence, were always referred to by him in connexion with the iniquity of its origin." The. good mother also was careful to train her little girls to habits of practical usefulness, for she sent them often to help some connexions of the family who were bookfolders, and entirely dependent on their own exertions. With them the children passed many hours, sharing their labour. Under such wise and healthy influence Harriot Hunt grew up to womanhood, until in 1827, when she was twenty-two years old, came her first year of individual responsibility; of professional work for pay. The motives which induced this step appear to have been mixed ; very earnest are the pages in which she dwells on the idle aimless life of most young women after they 398 HARRIOT K. HUNT. leave school. " These admonitions," she says, " are from one who has laboured, yes, and dearly loved to labour." At the same time the family were not rich, and her father's health had not been strong. Therefore, in her early womanhood, with all the promise and joyfulness of a happy home around her, Harriot Hunt began to work: — "The felt necessities of my soul urged me to open for myself some path of usefulness. As our house was large for so small a family, my parents gave me a pleasant chamber overlooking the broad blue ocean, and there I opened a school, and became a teacher." The social respectability of the family soon brought pupils to the young mistress. " The secret of whatever has been worthiest in my existence is in my home. My first independent movement — my school — was blessed by my parents. The pleasant room was soon alive with happy childhood, and I tried to profit by the wise tact that had led me along in leading others. The 9th of April 1827, found me in my school-room with eight pupils, and when the following October came I had twenty-three !" A little further on she observes, how truly, " It is well to enter on the new path in sunlight." But this is what women so seldom do ; not till they are driven out in the dark days of necessity, do they usually begin to exercise the slightest forecast as to their own future. HARRIOT K. HUNT. 399 " I had made out my first school-bills for two quarters; I had earned my first money — had tasted the joy of exerting myself for a useful purpose, and my parents had seen my education ultimated in practical life. I pass over many very pleasant and interesting incidents penned in my diary, for I have much to say on other subjects. When I commenced my school, I relinquished the journal to my sister ; but it will still aid me in keep- ing up the sequence of events which now follow in quick succession. Our domestic hfe lost none of its joys by my stated daily avocation. That avocation but widened our sympathies, it gave us better opportunities to meet the parents of the children on a higher plane. It also opened to me a rich experience in social hfe. Many of my former schoolmates at this time had no graver employment than musUn work. Of course, we were still on visiting terms, though I had lost some caste by becoming useful. I was struck at an early period by the selfish, contemptible indolence they indulged in, as by the lamentable mnui it occasioned. Living on their parents, like parasites, most of them dwindled away and became uninteresting to me. A chasm had yawned between oui-: friendships, — for I was at work, — they were at play. Our lives had nothing in common. My school was a grand use to me, for it not only called out grati- tude to my parents for the advantages they had given 400 HARRIOT K. HUNT. me, but also for the delight and enthusiasm with which I pursued the occupation. I was an -enigma to those who had once been school-girls with me. They knew not the magic of usefulnes. They often told me — boast- ingly! — they had 'nothing to do,' — they had 'all their time!'" But we must not linger too long over these early years. Changes were imminent in the quiet Boston family : the first was the father's death in November of the very year in which Harriot had began her school. The widow and her two daughters were thus left " lone women " in the world; but the strong sense which characterised the household now bore good fruit ; there was no confusion, no loss, and the elder one " saw more clearly than ever before how much an early training had to do with our lives, in assisting us to meet the emergencies and changes that had come upon us. They opened to me my first consciousness of the great need of women being trained to meet business exigencies.'' The father had some years before "sent a small adventure to sea for each of his girls ;'' it had been gradually increasing, and now came home. Thus, although Mr Hunt died at a moment of general mercantile depression, when the navigation business was at the very worst period for profitable settlement, these three women managed to arrange everything in an orderly manner, and to remain HARRIOT K. HUNT. 4OI in their old house. "I know," says the writer, "we should never have saved our homestead, had we given our affairs in charge to others; and so I speak from experience." They found, however, great help in the friendship of one true and noble man. "It was Mr William Parker, the son of the bishop. who married our parents," of whom she speaks in terms of the warmest gratitude. A part of the old house was let off to an- other family, a new school-room built in the garden, and the younger sister opened an infant school. So passed their quiet days for two years; until 1830, the turning- point in Harriot Hunt's life. In this year the younger sister was prostrated by severe illness, and a kind physician of " the good old school " was called in. He was a family friend, and he it was who, when Mr Hunt had suddenly passed away while attending a masonic meeting, had come himself to break their sorrow to the widow and her daughters. He had always been "good and true" to these three solitary ladies; so when he tried bhslers, mercurial medicines, and leeches on his young friend of ,two-and-twenty, she submitted with docile giriish patience, though all the agony and all the remedies brought no rehef Her suf- ferings were. intense, she could not lie down, but was bolstered.upJiriLbed, and another doctor being called in to a cbnsultatibn, her malady was pronounced to be 2 c 402 HARRIOT K. HUNT. disease of the heart. She was sent into the country, got a little better, came back ; got worse, sent for the doctor again, and was attacked with frightful spasms. "Blis- tering and leeching were now. declared to be the only hope, and they were thoroughly tested." Her endur- ance was certainly "heroic." She lost her voice; and relapse upon relapse strained every nerve of the two poor nurses. At last the doctor satisfied himself that blisters, leeching, and mercury could do nothing, and he then proposed a painful surgical operation ; poor loving Harriot could " hardly conceal her horror." The next prescription was prussic acid, four drops three times a day, which frightened heir sister as much as the previous remedy had shocked her. "At last, after forty-one weeks of sickness, and one hundred and six professional calls, my sister was aroused to more thought on the sub- ject. We talked it over together; she obtained some medical works, and finally she came to the conclusion that her case was not understood. But what were we to do i was the question. How often has a similar ques- tion arisen in families, and the severest trials followed the impossibility of an answer." The next symptom that came on was a terrible cough; " so severe, that it was supposed to be whooping-cough, but it was spasmodic. Then came a different train of remedies, all useless and ineffectual." At this time HARRIOT K. HUNT. 403 t Harriot herself took a severe cold, accompanied by a cough, and Dr Dixwell dosed her with calomel. " Catch- ing another cold, I suffered severely in my limbs: I remember those pains as though they were yesterday ! I remember also my wonder that so simple a malady required such severe treatment. I gave up my school for a week, and we were sick together. My sister had lost all confidence in medicine. She reasoned and argued with the doctor: Ais tactics were to arouse her conscience, and then she would tamely submit to a fresh round of torturing prescriptions." A very kind and clever physician, Dr Walker, was then called in by the family, to the annoyance of the old practitioner, who for a long time refused to meet him; but he effected no radical improvement ; indeed, Harriot Hunt implies that professional etiquette stood in the way of any marked change of treatment. At last, in 1833, two " quacks " came to Boston ; a Dr and Mrs Mott, Eng- lish people j and Harriot Hunt, in despairing despera- tion at three years of regular doctors and doctors' bills, set off to see Mrs Mott, amidst all sorts of opposition from friends and acquaintance. "But we were weary and tired out with ' regulars,' and it did not occur to us that to die under regular practice, and with medical etiquette, was better than in any other way.'' Now we heartily hope our readers will not suspect us of favouring 404 HARRIOT K. HUNT. quacks, or at least quack medicines, which are a degree worse than the inordinate use of the regular medicines which the best physicians are gradually learning in great measure to discard ; but the story here set down is that Augusta Hunt, coming under the care of Mrs Mott, did begin to improve. " Even conversing with a new mind awakened hope, and it is often in this way rather than by a change of treatment that invalids are benefited.' " She began to gain strength. After an absence of three years and four months she again went to church. This was new life for us." The reader indulges in a shrewd guess that the leaving off of blisters, leeches, mercury, and prussic acid, may have 'chiefly contributed to this end. " Her first long walk was to the residence of Dr DixweU, in Somerset Street, to pay her bill." Harriot Hunt now took a very extraordinary resolu- tion : to study medicine herself, or rather to study the laws of hygiene, the conditions of life and death among women especially, and to enforce their observance pro- fessionally. She was heart-sick at the old-fashioned prac- tice of medicine, as she had witnessed it tried on a beloved sister, and as many of our readers can well re- member it tried on themselves some twenty or thirty years ago, before the innovations introduced by the water-cure, by homoeopathy, by the spread of sanitary knowledge, had materially affected the ancient r'egtme. HARRIOT K. HUNT. 405 Any unprofessional man or woman can judge, how great is the change, by merely comparing the treatment he or she received when a child and the treatment which he or she would receive now in a case of severe illness, par- ticularly in fever or in infectious disorders. Such patients used to be covered up closely with many blankets, in a room whose windows were always hermetically sealed, and where a hot fire burned night and day. The pro- blem now with the best doctors and nurses is how to secure as free a current of air as possible, without chill- ing the sick person; and the windows are frequently opened near his bed, even in winter, due precautions being taken to shield him from draught. Miss Night- ingale observes, in her " Notes upon Nursing " : — " We must not forget what, in ordinary language, is called ' Infection ;' — a thing of which people are generally so afraid that they frequently follow the very practice in regard to it which they ought to avoid. Nothing used to be considered so infectious or contagious as small-pox ; and people not very long ago used to cover up patients with heavy bed- clothes, while they kept up large fires and shut the windows. Small-pox, of course, under this rigime, is very ' infectious.' People are somewhat wiser now in their management of this disease. They have ventured to cover the patients lightly, and to keep the windows open ; and we hear much less oi the ' infection ' of small-pox than we used to do. But do people in our days act with more wisdom on the subject of ' infection ' in fevers — scarlet fever, measles, &c. — than their 405 HARRIOT K. HUNT. forefathers did with small-pox ? . . . True nursing ignores infection, except to prevent it. Cleanliness, and fresh air from open windows, with unremitting attention to the patient, are the only defence a true nurse either asks or needs. Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection." Again, how completely is blood-letting going out of fashion; in the last century it was a common practice among healthy people to be bled twice a year, in spring and autumn, as a precaution against possible disease ! The withdrawal of healthy blood, or of any blood, when it is not a case of absolute necessity, is now considered the most cruel and most irremediable of injuries to the constitution. We could hardly now hear of a lady who had been " cupped over every inch of her.'' Again, the excessive use of drugs, nay, the use of any drugs that are not positively necessary, is passing away from the most enlightened medical practice ; yet we can aU remember when the atrocious black draught, the poisonous mer- cury, the deadly narcotic, formed heavy items in a heavy bill at each recurring Christmas, and that when the household consisted mainly of little delicate children. That very much yet remains to be done, that the old notions and the old practices lurk yet amongst us in innumerable holes and corners, unswept by the whole- some breath of sanitary knowledge, is too true ; but, knowing how much has been effected, let us sympathise HARRIOT K. HUNT. 407 with this one courageous woman, who nearly thirty years ago took warning by bitter personal experience, and set herself to work to see if there were not laws of hfe and health supreme over us all, by obedience to which sickly and useless women could be restored to their natural spheres, of duty. Her sister Augusta joined in her plan : the ages of the two were respectively thirty and twenty-seven : they were well known and respected in Boston, came of an honour- able family, and had fair outward conditions for work. " Deeper consciousness of the purpose of hfe now took possession of us ; we continued our medical studies with unabated zeal. Our previous experience was of great use. Medical treatment, rather than an investigation of hygienic laws, had heretofore been our lesson. Medi- cation we had seen rather too much of. General and special anatomy — shall I ever forgive the Harvard Medical College for depriving me of a thorough know- ledge of that science, a knowledge only to be gained by witnessing dissections in connexion with close study and able lectures ? Physiology, with all its thousand rami- fications, had a fascination for me beyond all other branches — ^use, abuse — cause, effect — ^beginning and end — all were significant in the light of a science undark- ened by technicalities, doubtful assumptions, tedious dissertations, controversies, and contradictions. My 4oS ' HARRIOT K. HUNT. mind was greedy of knowledge, the more I investigated the more I was dehghted, wonderstruck ; and I was often startled by the rays of . light that . unexpectedly shone during my research. Setting aside medication, we endeavoured to trace diseases to violated laws, and learn the science of prevention. That word 'preven- tive ' seemed a great word to me j curative was small beside it." Our readers will notice an allusion to Harvard College, and though it refers to a time of much later date, we will take this opportunity of saying that Harriot Hunt applied for admission to the medical lectures held there : on the first application she was refused; on the second, in 185 1, the subject of medical education for women had gained much ground with. the public, and the authorities con- sented to receive her; but the. excitement of the gentle- men students was so great that Miss Hunt . wisely and quietly consented to withdraw. We lay great stress on this incident, as proving that she wished to obtain regular medical instruction, that she had none of the spirit of the quack about her, and that the irregularity of her pro- fessional education was beyond her own control. When she first began her work in 1835, she would have been considered preposterously absurd. even to make an appli- cation to be received into any college or classes ; all she could do was to read and observe on her own HARRIOT K. HUNT. 4O9 responsibility, and to discard "blisters, leeches, and mercury." It was in October 1835, that the two sisters began a professional life. Their old mother was then sixty-five years of age, " clear and bright, and as ever watchful over her children." " Then we commenced a life fraught with absorbing interest ; grasping the past to apply it to the present, and prospectively looking to the future. I remember vividly the earnestness, the enthusiasm, with which we received our first patients. To be sure they came along very slowly, but every case that did come was a new revelation, a new wonder, a new study in itself and by itself. Reverence for the human organisation had much to do with my medical life ; and I found my- self questioning cases of dyspepsia, liver complaint, and many others, begging them to tell me why they had imposed these drawbacks on health and life ; and they did tell me of fearful abuses through ignorance, passion, luxury, and vice. Were not my cases guides and men- tors ? We studied with unwearying zeal. When our mother was sweetly asleep, we were reciting our lessons to each other, investigating every case that had been presented to us through the day, often thankful that we had declined cases (and numerous were those we did decline) till we were prepared to meet them. My sister being gifted in the use of her pencil, copied plates. Our 410 HARRIOT K. HHNT. leisure hours slipped away like moments, with use stamped on every one of them. There was an abiding faith about us, an enthusiasm which surprised many of our tame friends. They could not understand that barren technicalities, freshened by the atmosphere of love, blossomed with beauty for us ; or that the diseases of others, with a fervent wish for their removal, gave us mental life." .... Their friends very naturally thought this new life embodied a very crazy notion, . . " Had it not been for our mother, how sad would this (the mis- conception) have been. Her experience pf life enabled her to foresee the trials which necessarily attended such an experiment; this was a salutary corrective to my enthusiasm. " Our business gradually increased. One cure opened the way for other cases, and an enforcement of dietetic rules, bathings and so forth, soon placed on a permanently healthy platform those who attended us. ^' It stands to reason that Harriot Hunt's honesty and tact must have prevented her in the first instance from accepting cases requiring surgical treatment, or such diseases as had grown beyond the reach of sanitary measures, or she could not have succeeded as she did. But there are few common ail- ments which are not now attacked by the best male phy- sicians with the natural weapons furnished by the laws of health, rather than by the phial and the lancet. " Soon HARRIOT K. HUNT. 4H opportunities were offered us to visit country towns. I ac- cepted them cheerfully; my sister remained at home. From these journeys I gathered much, so many 'given-up cases' were presented to my notice ! also chronic diseases of an aggravated character. These last were opportunities for friendly relations and examinations, hut not cases to be ac- cepted professionally. My field of observation broadened wonderfully: if hospitals closed their doors to woman, ex- cept as patient and nurse, the public were beginning to perceive the inconsistency, nay, injustice of the act. We had, before long, patients from the highly cultivated, the delicate, and the sensible portions of the community. . . . My mother always objected to our practising midwifery ; her reasons were satisfactory. In this early stage of wo- man in the profession there was no physician to speak one encouraging word to us, or to whom we could apply. So alone, unaided by any, we established our own code of laws, and wisely concluded not to visit patients at their homes ; for we knew if we did, doctors would say, as we were women, that we were insinuating ourselves into fami- lies, and weakening confidence in the faculty. To remain in our house and receive calls was the best opening for the life in this city. The arrangement was productive of much good to physician as well as to patient. Many home- bound, diamber-ridden, used for years to medical calls, would make a desperate effort, saying, ' Live or die, we 412 HARRIOT K. HUNT. will go and hear what these strange women have to say to us :' that very resolution was the dawn of light, the beginning of new life to them, and a fit preparation for obedience to those physical laws which we insisted upon as absolutely necessary to a cure. Many chronic cases pre- sented themselves; also diseases of children, in curing which my sister always excelled me. Occasionally we visited a patient who was confined to Tier bed ; but we found too often that there was so much opposition to the attendance of a woman as physician among the friends of the invalids, that the good of our visits was neutral- ised. We knew by experience all about these states of mind, and we respected the sufferer's position. " We paid the mortgage on our house in Fleet Street at this period. Who could, or would, forget that thrill of joy as with means in hand we entered the residence of William Parker ! We had lived carefully, economically, but not meanly; and thus we were enabled to gratify this strong desire. " Without the influence of my mother's tempered and religious nature my profession would have had dangers for me, it was so startling, so intensely interesting and successful. In ten years after my father's decease our homestead was unfettered and free, and our professional lives respectable to many. Our struggles never seemed hard to us, our labour was so intimately blended with HARRIOT K. HUNT. 4I3 enjoyment j and the struggles made life even more absorbing. By our own efforts we had cancelled the mortgage on our homestead. Our next step was to continue frugal and painstaking, that we might again live in our own house ; for our mother so enjoyed our own home that the word ' tenant ' grated on her ear as it did on ours." In 1830 George Combe went to Boston and com- menced a course of lectures. His clear and vivid theories upon the body and the brain gave the greatest delight to the two sisters. " My experience confirmed all his teach- ings ; I can never forget them, they stirred the vital pal- pitating depths within me. I needed a more earnest consciousness of laws, I needed to realise that they govern every department of life, and these lectures sup- plied my need. . . . After-hfe proved to me more and more the value of these lectures. His clear exposi- tion of the temperaments and of idiosyncrasies, the con- viction he forced upon me of the necessity of under- standing the quality as well as the quantity of thought, gave me a key which has been constantly and successfully used in my practice, and has been of infinite service to me in the treatment of many obscure cases." We have thus followed Harriot Hunt from her child- hood upwards to the mature and successful exercise of her professional life ; a life which still continues in its 414 HARRIOT K. HUNT. useful course. In 1840, her sister married the son of an old family friend, and Harriot was left to pursue her work alone; though, says the laving sister, "she was still near at hand ; I could still consult with her ; her in- terest was kept, alive in looking after and prescribing for the poor and afflicted : but he^— her husband — a son to my mother, a brother to me, his relation has been so beautifully sustained that my loss has been gain." In 1847, the mother who had so carefully trained and warmly sympathised with her daughters was taken away; very beautiful are the pages which tell of this loss. The latter half of the volume is full of interesting details on the pubhc movements of New England, on anti-slavery, the temperance cause, and the meetings held in reference to the education and industrial position of women. We will conclude with an extract from Fredrika Bremer's " Homes of the New World," in which she de- scribes her visit to Miss Hunt, in a letter dated January I, 1850. The Swedish authoress says of her hostess : — " It is impossible to have a better heart ; one more warm for the best interests of mankind, and, upon the whole, more practical sagacity. . . . She has now been in practice twelve years as a physician of women and chil- dren, acquiring the public confidence, and laying up property, (as for instance, the .house in which she lives, a frugally furnished but excellent house, is her own,) and HARRIOT K. HUNT. 415 aiding, as I heard from many,' great numbers of ladies in sickness. In especial has she been a benefactor to the women of the lower working classes, delivering to them also lectures on. physiology, which have been attended by hundreds of women. She read them to mej and the first I heard, or rather the introductory lecture, gave me a high idea of the little doctor and her powers of mind, I was really delighted with her, and now, for the first time, fully saw the importance of women devoting themselves to the medical profession. The view she took of the human body and of its value had a thoroughly religious tendency; and when she laid it upon the woman's heart to value her own and her child's physical frame, to un- derstand them aright, to estimate them aright, it was be- cause their destination was lofty — because they are the habitations of the soul and the temples of God. There was an earnestness, a simplicity, and an honesty in her representations, integrity and purity in every word ; the style was of the highest class, and these lectures could not but operate powerfully upon every poor human heart, and in particular on the heart of every mother. , . . . But to return to my little human doctoress, who is not without those sparks of a divine life which prove her to belong to the family of Esculapius. One sees this in her eyes, and hears it in her words. But the round short figure has wholly and entirely an earthly character, and 4l6 HARRIOT K. HUNT. nothing in it indicates the higher ideal life, excepting a pair of small, beautiful, and white hands, as soft as silk, almost too soft, and, as I already said, a glance pecu- liarly sagacious and penetrating I saw here various new kinds of people and strangers, because my little doctor has a large circle of acquaintances. Every evening, at the close of the day, she read her Bible aloud, and we had prayers in the old Puritanic style." But our space fails for more quotation, and we can only recommend those who care for fresh vivid writing, and for curious details and suggestions as to the life and thoughts of our American cousins, to "Glances and Glimpses, or fifty years' social, including twenty years' professional life."* * The book from which the above is extracted has never been reprinted in England, but may be ordered through an American bookseller. XI. MISS BOSANQUET. 2 D XL MISS BOSANQUET. ONSIDERABLE interest having been ex-- pressed concerning an incidental mention of Miss Bosanquet which occurred in a Scotch periodical some time sincej we have thought that a few words explanatory of who she was, and what she did, might not be unacceptable to our readers. Miss Bosanquet closed her long life in 1815, and yet she is intimately linked with much that is going on around us at this hour, having devoted her life to a multitude of labours which were at the time exceedingly unfashion- able, indeed, considered eccentric in the highest degree. So jyonderful a study is it to watch how we change our minds from generation to generation ! Of district visitors, 42t> MISS BOSANQUET. tract distributors, Sunday-school teachers, and hospital nurses. Miss Bosanquet may be taken as the type. She was born on the ist of September, old style, 1739, when John Wesley was thirty-six years of age, and when Methodism had already began to make great progress in London, Bristol, and other parts of the West of England. It was in this very year that Whitefield first began his famous preachings ib the open air ; and by the time the little daughter of the rich city family, who lived down at Leytonstone in Essex, grew old enough to think at all, she came under the influence of the wonderful religious revival which was spreading more widely year by year. Not, however, through her parents ; they seem to have been worthy and religious people, but they disliked the extremes of Methodism, its daily habits, and its dress. It was a servant who first imbued the child with these ideas, and the tiny theologian wished that she could be burnt as a martyr, and so escape from the dilemmas into which she fell. As might be expected, her excitable temperament preyed upon her health ; the servant had left the family, and as no other member except a sister only a few years older sympathised in the intensity of her convictions, the little one struggled on, suffering much ill-health, but lay- ing the foundations of that splendid power of self devo- tion which finally made her a brave and healthy human MISS BOSANQUET. 42! being. Under the severe garb of Methodism, Mary Bosanquet seems to us to have achieved a sane mind in a healthy body, and in telling the story of her childhood she puts in a passing plea for more judicious care of ex- ceptional infants like herself. At the age of thirteen she, by her father's desire, was confirmed at St Paul's, and in the following year she lost her grandfather, Mr Dunster, with whom she frequently lived. He was very religious, and she recalls having " been with him in his chariot when he has suddenly stopped to reprove profane swearing in the road." But still, piety and "Methodism" were far apart, and Mr and Mrs Bosanquet had little suspicion that their child was inclining towards this dreaded sect. But the time was come when she found it necessary to declare herself before men ; — or how should she avoid the playhouse, balls, gay dressing, and various inconsistencies which jarred upon her sensitive conscience 1 So she had a long conversation with her father, whom she quaintly describes as " a man of deep reason, calmness, and condescension," and he very na- turally said, " Child, your arguments prove too much, and therefore are not conclusive. If what you say be true, then all places of diversion, all dress and company, nay, all agreeable liveliness, and the whole spirit of the world,, is sinful." His daughter made answer, and said, "Sir, /see it as such, and, therefore, am determined no 422 MISS BOSANQUET. more to be conformed to its customs, fashions, or maxims." — " This was a season of great trial ; but the Lord stood by me : glory be to His holy name ! " So she went on at home, trying to accomplish a happy medium ; but she naively describes how, still retaining her usual habits of dress, though she did not go to pubhc diversions, she began to "find favour" in the eyes of the company who frequented her father's house, and " felt in great danger of being carried down the stream." " At this time I became acquainted with a gentleman in some degree religious, though I fear not deeply so- He professed much affection for me, and my religious friends advised me to think of him, as it was likely to be very acceptable to my parents, and would open a door to more religious liberty. But I cannot say he was agreeable to me. Neither my understanding nor affec- tion could approve the proposal; yet I was hurt by unprofitable reasonings. Sometimes I thought it might be of the Lord; at others I could not see into it at all." At length, however, some conversation with a pious friend roused up all her latent yearnings to missionary hfe. " The affair of the gentleman was obliterated from my mind ; and the prospect of a life wholly devoted to God drank up every other consideration." This young thing of eighteen " now saw the path in which she ought to walk," and very rationally concluded "not to think MISS BOSANQUET. 423 about a married life, for my present light was to abide single. But the Lord seemed to call me to more activity, insomuch that 1 cried out,. ' Lord, what wilt thou have me to do!'" and. her conclusion was that she would live like the women of gospel times, and be " wholly given up to the Church." But the time came when Mr and Mrs Bosanquet could bear it no longer, and when, their daughter becoming more and more devoted to her Methodist friends, they dreaded the contagion for their sons. Mary was twenty-one years of age ; she had a small fortune of her own ; and it appeared that some decorous plan for her residence away from home might conduce to the harmony and affection of all parties^ rather than a prolonged sojourn where every hour brought its own irritation. It seems that she had come to the conclusion that she ought to wear what was techr nically termed a " plain dress," because " it is not only the talent of money, but of time, which is thrown away by conformity to the world, entangling us in a thousand little engagements, which a dress entirely plain cuts through at once." We cannot refrain from giving our readers the entire story of her departure from home. It is very touching; it is what must have happened over and over again in the times of the early Church, and of the English Reformation, and at all times of religious revival ; and according to their own belief they will 424 MISS BOSANQUET. sympathise with the worthy parents or the enthusiastic child :— " As soon as I saw my way clearly, I ventured to open my mind to my father concerning dress, as I had done before with regard to public places, — entreating him to bear with me while I endeavoured to show him my reasons for refusing to be conformed to the customs, fashions, and maxims of the world. He heard me with great patience ; and as I loved him tenderly, it came very near me to oppose him. My trials increased daily. I was perplexed to know how far to conform, and how far to resist. I feared, on the one hand, disobedience to my parents ; and on the other, disobedience to God. " One day my father said to me, ' There is a particular promise which I require of you, that is,: that you will never, on any occasion, either now or hereafter, attempt to make your brothers what you call a Christian.' I answered, (look- ing to the Lord,) ' I think, sir, I dare not consent to that.' He replied, ' Then you force me to put you out of my house.' I answered, 'Yes, sir, according to your views of things, I acknowledge it ; and if I may but have your approval, no situation will be disagreeable.' He replied, ' There are many things in your present situation which must be, I should think, very uncomfortable.' This I acknowledged, and added, that ' if he would but say he approved of my removal, I would take a lodging which I heard of at Mrs Gold's, in Hoxton Square ; but that no suffering could incline me to leave him, except by his free consei^t.' He replied, with some emotion, ' I do not know that you have ever disobliged me wilfully in your life, but only in these fancies ; and my children shall always have a home in my house.' As I could MISS BOSANQUET. 425 not but discern a separation would take place, (though I knew not how or when,) I judged it most prudent to take the lodgings, that, in case I should be suddenly removed, I might have a home to go to ; which I preferred to the going into any friend's house as a visitor. I also hired a sober girl, to be ready whenever I might want her. I informed my mother, a short time after, of the steps I had taken. She gave me two beds, one for myself, and a little one for my maid ; and appeared to converse on it in a way of approval. Something," however, seemed to hold us on both sides from bringing it to the point. " For the next two months I suffered much : my mind was exercised with many tender and painful feelings. One day my mother sent me word, ' I must go home to my lodgings that night.' I went down to dinner, but they said nothing on the subject ; and I could not begin it. The next day, as I was sitting in my room, I received again the same message. During dinner, however, nothing was spoken on the subject. When it was over I knew not what to do. I was much distressed. I thought, if they go out without saying anything to me, I cannot go ; and if they should not invite me to come and see them again, how shall I bear it ? My mind was pressed down with sorrow by this suspense. Just as they were going out, my mother said, ' If you will, the coach, when it has set us down, taiay carry you home to your lodging.' My father added, ' And we shall be glad to see you to dinner next Tuesday.' This was some relief. I remained silent. When the coach returned, I ordered my trunk into it ; and struggling with myself, took a kind leave of each of the servants, as they stood in a row in tears, in my way out of the house. About eight o'clock I reached my lodgings. " It consisted of two rooms, as yet unfurnished. I had 426 MISS BOSANQUET. neither candle, nor any convenience. The people of the hou s e I had never seen before, only I knew them by character to be sober persons. I borrowed a table and a candlestick, and the window-seat served me as a chair. When bolting my door, I began to muse on my present situation. "The prejudices of education are strong, especially in those persons who have been brought up rather in high life. The being removed from a parent's habitation seemed very awful. I looked on myself as being liable to a deep reproach, and trembled at the thought. But I remembered that word, ' He that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.' " My maid being now come, and having lighted a fire in the other room, and borrowed . a few things of the family, she begged me to come into it, as the night was very cold. And now my captivity seemed turning every moment. That thought, I am brought out from the world ; I have nothing to do but ' to be holy, both in body and in spirit ; ' filled me with consolation. Thankfulness overflowed my heart ; and such a spirit of peace and content poured into my soul, that all about me seemed a little heaven.'' Mary Bosanquet, having now entered on her chosen life, shortly after fixed her residence at Leytonstone, in a house of her own, where she received a pious friend as inmate. Gradually a few Methodists gathered about them, and formed a Society, while in the care of desti- tute orphans her hours were fully occupied. From the time she was seventeen she observes that " some draw- ings towards the care of children had dwelt on my mind," MISS BOSANQUET. 427- but " for a good while our family consisted of a servant, six orphans, and ourselves." But as her friend Mrs Ryan was an invalid, they presently engaged a governess for the children, who increased in number ; some serious women were added to the household : altogether they received thirty-five children and thirty-four grown per- sons, though not at one time. The elder members of the family rose between four and five, and all breakfasted at seven on herb tea and milk porridge, and the first les- son which they endeavoured to impress on the young ones was, that " an idle person is the devil's cushion, on which he rolls at pleasure." It was an industrial train- ing-school, as four or five of the bigger girls were each week kept out of the classes by turns, and employed in housework, cooking, &c., that they might be accustomed to every sort of business, and there was labour enough in so large a family. We wish we had space to give the details of this life, and to show the perpetual woik which fell to the lot of Miss Bosanquet. It naturally followed, from the early neglect which the orphans had suffered, that they had bad health, and many of the grown people were also sickly, for to her warm heart poverty and ill- health were a passport ; but she quietly observes that "in the end all recovered who came in infirm." She says that Mrs Ryan was to her as a mother, helping her, in spite of sickness, to carry out all her plans ; and an 4^8 MISS BOSANQUET.' uncle, writing to her, " My dear child, with much plea- sure I have heard of your charitable undertaking, which I pray God to bless and succeed," sent her an annual gift of two hundred and fifty guineas. Her parents, dying in 1767, within' a short period of each other, ex- pressed towards her the greatest tenderness, and aug- mented her fortune, which proved they were fully satisfied with the result of that conviction which in its growth had given them so much pain. We must not linger over this part of her life, but proceed to her removal from Leytonstone, and settle- ment in Yorkshire, at a place called Crosshall, in the West Riding. Mrs Ryan died shortly after the removal ; but before the final step was taken, and when, the house at Leyton- stone being too small, with no land attached to it, the two friends were consulting together as to what course they should pursue, Mrs Ryan thus addressed Miss Bosanquet : — " ' My dear, I hardly know how to rejoice in the prospect of death, because I see no way for you. I shall leave you in the hands of enemies, but God will stand by you.' I said, ' My dear love, can you think of any way for me ? It is sometimes presented to my mind that I should be called to marry Mr Fletcher.' * She replied, ' I like him the best * "The reader will not be displeased to see 'that such an MISS BOSANQUET. 429 of any man, if ever you do take that step. But unless he should be of a very tender disposition towards you, you would not be happy : but God will direct you.' " From this time vire occasionally, through the course of long years, meet with observations about " Mr Fletcher ;" and though a certain Mr , in Yorkshire, formed for her a most romantic attachment, and, as she quaintly observes, " made me an oifer of his hand, his heart, and his purse," she would not listen to his suit. We must give a curious anecdote about this affair ; it seems that the gentleman, who had lost a wife whom he tenderly loved, had heard of Miss Bosanquet, and. thought that perhaps she " was brought to Yorkshire by the Provi- impression was made on such a mind, preceding the union of that admirable couple. The impression was mutual. In a letter from Mr Fletcher to Mr Charles Wesley {see Mr Fletcher's Works, vol. vii.) we find the following sentiments : — ' You ask me a very singu- lar question, —I shall answer it with a smile, as I suppose you asked it You might have remarked that for some days before I set oft for Madeley I considered matrimony with a different eye to what I had done : and the person who then presented herself to my imagi- nation was Miss Bosanquet. Her image pursued me for some hours the last day, and that so warmly, that I should, perhaps, have lost my peace, if a suspicion of the truth of Juvenal's proverb, Veniuni a dote sagittce, (" The arrows come from the portion," rather than from the lady, ) had not made me blush, fight, and flee to Jesus, who delivered me at the same moment from her image, and the idea of marriage.' There will be some regret perhaps felt, that a long and suffering time should intervene before that union." — Note to Memoir. 430 MISS BOSANQUET. dence of God to repair his loss." But he was personally unacquainted with her, till " One day, as I was returning from a little journey where I had been to meet some people, we called at an inn to Tjait the horse. Mr was standing at a window of that inn. I came out, and stood some time at the block wait- ing for my horse. A thought struck his mind, ' I should like that woman for a wife ;' — but instantly he corrected it with that reflection, I know not whether she be a converted or an unconverted person ; a married or a single woman. Just then Mr Taylor came up with the horse. The gentle- man knew him, and, coming out to speak to him, was much struck to find it was me.'' This is one of the many indications, scattered through the memoir, that Miss Bosanquet possessed remarkable power of personal fascination. She certainly was not a beautiful woman — her portrait marks the reverse — but something tender and genial must have beamed in her countenance, which won men, women, and children alike. On she went, farming, teaching, preaching, praying, and, when she got into trouble, falling back on the memory of Mr Fletcher, whom she had not seen for fifteen years, and who seems, in their mutual youth, to have been deterred by her superior wealth from offering marriage. How deeply this celebrated man had im- MISS BOSANQUET. 43! pressed her imagination may be seen by an extract from her diary in 1773 : — " Nov. 6, Monday. — I have received some upbraiding let- ters, asking me if I yet believed I should see those words fulfilled, ' I will restore to you the ears the locusts have eaten ?' In the midst of my trials it is sometimes presented to my mind. Perhaps the Lord will draw me out of all this by marriage. Opportunities of this kind occur frequently ; but no sooner do I hear the offer, but a clear light seems to shine on my mind, as with this voice, ' You will neither be holier nor happier with this man.' But I find Mr Fletcher sometimes brought before me, and the same conviction does not intervene. His eminent piety, and the remembrance of some little acts of friendship in our first acquaintance, look to me sometimes like a pointing of the finger of Providence, And yet I fear lest it should be a trick of Satan to hurt my mind. I know not even that we shall see each other on this side eternity. Lord, let me not be drawn into a snare! Well, this I resolve on, to strive against the thought, and never to do the least thing towards a renewal of our corre- spondence. No, I will fix my eye on ' the hundred forty and four thousand ;' praying only to live and die to God alone." But " In the month of August 1777, going into a friend's house, who was just come from the Conference, he said, ' Do you know that Mr Fletcher, of Madeley, is dying? Indeed, I know not but he is dead. If he hold out a little longer, he is to go abroad ; but it is a pity, for he will die by the way, being in the last stage of a consumption.' I heard the ac- count with the utmost calmness. For some days I bore his 432 MISS BOSANQUET. burden before the Lord, and constantly offered him up to the will of God. A few days after, another of my acquaintance wrote word — ' Mr Fletcher is very bad ; spits blood profusely, and perspires profusely every night. Some have great hope that prayer will raise him up ; but for my part, I believe he is a dying man, as sure as he is now a living one.' As I was one day in prayer, offering him up to the Lord, these words passed my mind, ' The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.' I said, ' Lord, I dare not ask it ; I leave it to Thy sacred will : Thy will be done ! ' " The following thoughts occurred to my mind, — If the Lord should raise him up, and bring him in safety back to England, and he should propose such a step, could I doubt its being of God, after such an answer to prayer ? Yet fear- ing a deception, I cried to the Lord to keep me in His nar- row way, whatever I might suffer, and felt an unaccountable liberty to ask the following signs, if it really were of Him : — I. That Mr Fletcher might be raised up. 2. That he might be brought back to England. 3. That he would write to me on the subject, before he saw me, though we had been so many years asunder, without so much as a message passing on any subject. 4. That he would in that letter tell me, — It had been the object of his thoughts and prayers for some years. It came to my mind further, that, should this occur in the end of the year 1 781, it would be a still greater con- firmation, as Providence seemed to point me to that season as a time of hope." The rest of the story, coincidences and all, must like- wise be told .in her own words : — " The 7th of June 1781, as I before observed, was the day that began my fourteenth year in Yorkshire. On that day I MISS BOSANQUET. 433 took a particular view of my whole situation, and saw diffi- culties as mountains rise all around me. Faith was hard put to it. The promise seemed to stand sure, and I thought the season was come ; yet the waters were deeper than ever. I thought also, how shall I now hold fast that word so power- fully given to me, ' The Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver?' " At length ' the cloud arose as a man's hand.' The very next day, June the 8th, I received a letter from Mr Fletcher, in which he told me, that he had for twenty-five years found a regard for me, which was stiU as sincere as ever ; and though it might appear odd he should write on such a sub- ject when but just returned from abroad, and more so with- out seeing me first, he could only say that his mind was so strongly drawn to do it, he believed it to be the order of Providence. " In reading this letter I was much struck. So many cir- cumstances all uniting. — i. The season it came in. 2. His writing on the subject before we had met, after an absence of fifteen years ; and without his having the most distant suspicion of my mind being inclined towards it. 3. His mentioning, that for twenty-five years he had had the thought. All these particulars answered to the marks which I had laid down. His unexpected recovery also, and safe return, so plainly pointed out the hand of Providence, that all ground of reasoning against it seemed removed. Yet, on the other hand, a strange fear possessed my mind, lest I should take any step out of the order of God : nor was Satan wanting to represent great trials before me, which he told me I should not have strength to stand in. " We corresponded with openness and freedom till August the 1st, when he came to Crosshall, and abode there a 2 E 434 MISS BOSANQUET. month, preaching in different places with much power ; and having opened our hearts to each other, both on temporals and spirituals, we believed it to be the order of God we should become one, when He should make our way plain. " He then returned to his parish, a hundred and twelve miles from the place where I lived; for we could not think of taking the step till my affairs were more clearly settled. So we took our leave of each other, committing all into- His hand who 'does what He will with His, own.' " In about five weeks he returned ; but still all seemed shut up ; no way opened either for disposing of the farm, or of the family. Conversing one day with Mrs Clapham, of Leeds, she said, 'What do you stick at? The Lord has done so much to convince you that this is to be your de- liverance, how is it that you do not believe, and obey His order ? I verily believe, if you would take the step in faith, your way would be made plain directly.' " So, after a few more pros and cons, Miss Bosanquet married the good man whom she had loved, and who had loved her, from her youth upwards ; and " on Mon- day the i2th of November 1781, in Batley Church, we covenanted in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, to ' bear each other's burdens,' and to become one for ever." For three years and a half we now read in her diary the most joyful utterances of married happiness. John William de la Flechere, whose foreign birth was almost obliterated from memory by his long and arduous ser- vices in the English ministry, was a native of Nyon, in MISS BOSANQUET. 435 Switzerland. His father was of good family, and had been an officer in the French army. His son also in early youth adopted the profession of arms ;.but coming to England on a visit while yet quite a young man, he fell into society which deepened the impressions of religion upon his ever-reverent and sensitive mind, and entered the ministry as a clergyman of the Church of England, and was presently made Vicar of Madeley. The Meth- odists had not at that time separated from the Church, and Mr Fletcher lived and died in the communion, though an intimate friend and disciple of John Wesley's. He was in all ways a remarkable man ; in person tall, dignified, and of great skill in manly exercises, owing to his youthful training. He was an accomplished classical scholar, and versed in polite literature j but in later life his whole being was given over to the service of Chris- tianity. His pohtical opinions were high Tory, and were so acceptable to George III., that that monarch desired to give him preferment. But Mr Fletcher, who cared nothing for riches, and whose Toryism only sprang from his constitutionally loyal and somewhat romantic mind, made the characteristic answer, that " he wanted nothing but more grace." The humble vicar of Madeley was a man whose endowments might have placed him on the eminence of a F^ndon, or a St Vincent de Paul. But he chose to spend his life in comparative obscurity, 43^ MISS BOSANQUET, among a sect who were then ridiculed as fanatics, and despised as fools; and his name, therefore, is appreciated or disregarded in proportion as the great religious revival of the last century is held to be a glory or a reproach. But there are hundreds of thousands of the lower classes in England and America to whom the name of "Fletcher of Madeley " is a dear household word ; and we know not what any man might more desire. Such was the husband of whom Miss Bosanquet writes, " I have such a husband as is in everything suited to me. He bears with all my faults and failings, in a manner that continually reminds me of that word, ' Love your wives as Christ loved the Church.' His constant endeavour is to make me happy ; his strongest desire, my spiritual growth!' Three years they lived together at Madeley, occupied in onerous parish duties ; and then a fever, caught in visiting his people, struck him down. The details of that last illness are all told in a long letter vnritten by Mrs Fletcher to Mr Wesley — the terrible week of anguish in which every hour brought more certain doom, and the prayer which struggled with his failing breath, " Head of the Church, be head to my uuifer It is impossible, in the space of this chapter, to do more than to indicate the outlines of a story which for public and for private in- terest exceeds to our mind almost any biography we MISS BOSANQUET. 437 know j linked as it is by the closest connexion to the great measures of social amelioration which have marked this century. In all essential respects, Mr and Mrs Fletcher were democratic, and the spirit of their exer- tions was immeasurably wider than their creed, and that was not bigoted, though devoutly rigid. They adopted fellowship with the great bulk of the Protestant communions; and perhaps no pages in Mrs Fletcher's memoirs are more characteristic than those descriptive of her intercourse with the Roman Catholic priest in Madeley, and with her husband's nephew, who was a Deist. For those who differed from her in controversy she had sweet courtesy and clear statements of her own views j for those who were of one faith with herself she had sympathy and tenderness unbounded; for those who agreed with her neither in belief nor in practice she cherished hope and charity up to the furthest hmits pos- sible to one of her decided creed. After her husband's death she passed her long thirty years of widowhood in Madeley ; and so great was the respect of the new vicar for Mrs Fletcher, that, as he did not reside himself, he allowed her to recommend the curate, who was invari- ably appointed according to her recommendation. In- finitely characteristic were the last words she uttered, December 8, 1815. Having failed, by reason of great age, for many days, she was closely tended by a female 438 MISS BOSANQHET. friend. The last night of her life she insisted on this lady going to bed, and then said, "That's right; now, if I can rest I will ; but let our hearts be united in prayer, and the Lord bless both thee and me." In the night she slept quietly away, and went to join him of whom, thirty- one years after his death, she had written — " It seems but yesterday, and he is near and dear as ever" xn. MRS JAMESON. XII. MRS JAMESON. jT was no common loss which occurred to us in March 1861. The hfe which had been so suddenly cut off was not merely that of a woman who had achieved high distinction in literature, but of a great and good character, whose social influence extended far and wide. Let others sum up the long recotd of Mrs Jameson's laborious works ; let the student of art consider the series of her volumes on his special subject, analyse their excellence, admire their accurate research, their philosophical thought and power of poetical criticism. It was as an art critic of rare per- fection that she was best known to the purely intellectual public at home and abroad, and that public will do justice to the eminence which she attained. How many foreign households grieved for the English friend who • knew how to sympathise with every nation's best ; how many learned and literary circles in Rome, in Florence, in Vienna, in Dresden, in Paris, regretted the bright 442 MRS JAMESON. mind, the accomplished talker, the affectionate heart which recognised merit, and cheered the student, and made the studio and the salon gay and pleasant with her cordial smile ! To see her kindle into enthusiasm amidst the gorgeous natural beauty, the antique memo - rials, and the sacred Christian relics of Italy, was a sight which one who witnessed it will never forget. There is not a cypress upon the Roman hills, or a sunny vine overhanging the southern gardens, or a picture in those vast sombre galleries of foreign palaces, or a catacomb spread out vast and dark under the martyr-churches of the City of the Seven Hills, which is not associated with some vivid flash of her intellect and imagination, and with the dearer recollections of personal kindness. But it is not on these things that we would dwell here. We have another and a nobler tribute to pay to her memory who is. gone from among us. Hers was, as it seemed to us, a most influential, a most valuable life to the social interests of England, — to the joint interests of men and women, and to the growth of her own sex in all that is good. Many of those who acknowledged her intellectual power, did not recognise how much habitual thought she gave to social questions. Any one who should' examine her writings with this intention, would see scattered on almost every page, some reflection, some allusion, which show how keen were her perceptions in MRS JAMESON. 443 regard to the moral life; and of late years she gave public expression to her opinions about the position, education, and utilitarian training of women, with an openness and moral courage never to be sufficiently- admired. She did not compromise herself by adher- ence to the views of any particular party ; her age, her high social reputation, her pecuharly balanced mind, kept her as it were aloof and in a sphere apart ; yet Mrs Jameson was ever the first to come forward in support of any measure she individually approved. When an effort was made some years ago to pass a bill through parliament, securing to married women the use of their own earnings, her name was the first attached of all the many thousands upon the various petitions. Her two lectures on " Sisters of Charity at Home and Abroad " and the "Communion of Labour," were each read in per- son to a veiy large drawing-room audience, and contain more sound thought, fearlessly expressed, than anything that has appeared elsewhere on woman's life and labour. The earnest eloquence of her "Letter to Lord John Russell," prefixed to the last edition of these lectures, should touch many hearts to the quick, now that the hand which penned it is cold in deatL She speaks from the calm heights of " sixty years," with a force and a power which will echo long amidst us. Where shall we find such another advocate? Where shall we find such another heart; one so just, so gentle; so sympathetic with men, 444 MRS JAMESON. yet so brave for women; so generous and affectionate for all? By nature eminently domestic and womanly, the story of Mrs Jameson's outward life, so far as it concerns or interests the public, is but a slight thread on which to hang the record of her great gifts and many virtues. She was of Irish extraction, and was the eldest daughter of Mr Murphy, painter in ordinary to the Princess Charlotte, an artist well known during the earlier years of the pre- sent century. Her vivid temperament and warm feel- ings told of Ireland to the last ; they made her the light of the social circle, and prompted the unsparing sym- pathy which she bestowed on all around her. As a young woman she occupied the post of governess in two or three families of distinction, and to the last she used occasionally to speak of the young girls who had been her pupils, particularly of one who had died early. She never forgot what she had loved. At thirty years of age, however, she had entered on her literary career, by the publication of notes on foreign travel under the name of the " Diary of an Ennuyde." It appeared anonymously, but had a very great success, and thenceforth her course was fixed. About the same time she married Mr Robert Jameson, late Vice-Chan- cellor of Canada, a man of some talent and artistic taste, but so unsuited to her that in spite of many patient efforts on her part, a separation took place. She sur- MRS JAMESON. 445 vived her husband six years. It may not be amiss here to remark, that her views upon the marriage question were extremely rigid, and that, in the universal discus- sion of first principles which accompanied the passing of the New Divorce Bill, she again and again lifted up her voice in private circles to urge that the best interests of women were involved in the sanctity of the marriage tie. Mrs Jameson's literary life may be divided into three epochs, though of course in her richly stored mind there was at all times a constant interchange of subject. The first includes various books of foreign travel, containing social and artistic criticism, also volumes of critical essays. " Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada " is one of the most striking books of this series ; and she herself spoke of it as containing some of the best thoughts she had expressed. " The Characteristics of Women," a work full of subtle criticism on the female characters of Shakespeare, is another j also the " Lives of the Female Sovereigns." To the second epoch belong her elaborate works on Art proper, beginning in 1842 with a " Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art in and near London," and carried through the large and copiously illustrated volumes of " Sacred and Legendary Art," " Legends of the Monastic Orders," and " Legends of the Madonna." These de- lightful volumes are fuU of true history and of legendary lore, and are enriched by the most beautiful etchings of 446 MRS JAMESON. famous and interesting pictures. Compared to other dry critical books, Mrs Jameson's are full of vital warmth and poetry. She used to say that a picture to her was like a plain writing ; when she looked at it, she seemed to feel instantly for what purpose it had been wrought. She loved to fancy the old artist painting it in his studio; and the man wha bought it to offer it as a votive offer- ing for the health of some one he loved, or in com- memoration of some one who was dead. If Saints or Fathers were introduced into the composition, she knew each by his aspect, and why he was in attendance, and could tell the story of their lives, and what they had done for the Church. The strange mystic symbolism of the early mosaics was a familiar language to her ; she would stand on the polished marble of the Lateran floor, or under the gorgeously sombre Basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore, reading off the quaint emblems and expound- ing the pious thoughts of more than a thousand years ago. At Rome there is a little church, close under the blood-stained amphitheatre of the Coliseum, dedicated to St Clement, the companion of St Paul. Tradition says he lived there ; at any rate the present building is of the date A.D. 800 ; and built on the foundation of one.much older. In this church she delighted, and to it she would take any one who sympathised with her peculiar feeling for art. Her talk, as she described it, was a running com- mentarv on the books she published on kindred subjects. MRS JAMESON. 447 . At the time of her death she was engaged on the last of the series : a " Histoiy of the Life of Our Lord, and of His Precursor, St John the Baptist ; with the Person- ages and Typical Subjects of the Old Testament, as represented in Christian Art," since completed by Lady Eastlake. The third epoch of Mrs Jameson's literary hfe is repre- sented by her two lectures and her " Letter to Lord John Russell." They are now pubhshed in one closely-' printed volume, but they must have cost her a very great deal of research and labour, to say nothing of personal inspection, at different times of her life, of innumerable institutions. She reviews all the branches of benevolent work attended to by Sisters of Charity in foreign countries, and considers what may be effected here by . Protestants : prisons, reformatories, schools^ hospitals, workhouses, all engage her attention ; and she pleads that women may take their share in every good work with men. When the " Letter to Lord John Russell" was written and published, she said, " Now I have said all I can say upon these subjects, and I must return to art." But had she lived she would inevitably have returned again and again to those, moral questions which were to her of such vital importance. For in- stance, she attended the Social Science Meeting at Brad- ford in October 1857, and sat during the whole of one day in the Section B, where papers on the em.ployment 448 MRS JAMESON. of women were being read, and occasionally joined, in the discussion which ensued. When Mrs Jameson spoke, a deep hush fell upon the crowded assembly. It was quite singular to see the intense interest she excited. Her age, and the comparative refinement of her mental powers, had prevented her sphere of action from being exactly " popular" iii the niodern sense, and this of course created a stronger desire to see and hear her of whom every one had heard so much in the world of higher literature, but of whom they knew little personally. Her singularly low and gentle voice fell hke a hush upon the crowded room, and every eye bent eagerly upon her, and every ear drank in her thoughtful and weighty words. And then she was taken — so suddenly. She came up to London from Brighton, where she resided, to work at the " Life of Our Lord." At the British Museum, whither she went to inspect some prints, she caught a severe cold, which increased to inflammation of the lungs j and on Saturday evening, the 17th of March i860, within eight days of her seizure, she passed away, in the vigour of her warm heart and beautiful intellect, at the comparatively early time of old age — sixty-five years. Ballantyne, Roberts, and Co., Printers, Edinburgh.