Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
Various

Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN

PART II

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like all angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

    SHAKSPEARE.

My entertainer received me with more civility than I had expected. He was almost fashionably dressed; his grim features were smoothed into an elaborate smile; and he repeated his gratification at seeing me, in such variety of tones that I began to doubt the cordiality of my reception. But I could have no doubt of the elegance of the apartment into which I was shown. All was foreign, even to the flowers in the vases that filled the windows. A few bas-reliefs in the most finished style; a few alabasters as bright as if they had been brought at the moment from Carrara; a few paintings of the Italian masters, if not original and of the highest value, at least first-rate copies—caught the eye at once: the not too much, the not too little, that exact point which it requires so much skill to touch, showed that the eye of taste had been every where; and I again thought of the dungeon in the city, and asked myself whether it was possible that Mordecai could be the worker of the miracle.

Naturally making him some acknowledgment for his invitation, and saying some civil thing of his taste, he laughed, and said, "I have but little merit in the matter. All this is my daughter's. Moorfields is my house; this house is Mariamne's. As our origin and connexions are foreign, we make use of our opportunities to indulge ourselves in these foreign trifles. But we have a little 'réunion' of our neighbours this evening, and I must first make you known to the lady of the fête." He rang the bell.

"Neighbours!" said I; "all round me, as I came, seemed solitude; and yours is so beautiful, that I almost think society would injure its beauty."

"Well, well, Mr Marston, you shall see. But this I advise you, take care of your heart if you are susceptible."

A servant announced that his mistress would attend us in a few minutes, and I remained examining the pictures and the prospect; when a gay voice, and the opening of a door, made me turn round to pay my homage to the lady. I had made up my mind to see one of the stately figures and magnificent countenances which are often to be found in the higher orders of the daughters of Israel. I saw, on the contrary, one of the gayest countenances and lightest figures imaginable—the petit nez retroussé, and altogether much more the air of a pretty Parisian than one of the superb race of Zion. Her manner was as animated as her eyes, and with the ease of foreign life she entered into conversation; and in a few minutes we laughed and talked together, as if we had been acquaintances from our cradles.

The history of the house was simply, that "she hated town and loved the country; that she loved the sea better than the land, and loved society of her own selection better than society forced upon her.—On the sea-shore she found all that she liked, and escaped all that she hated. She therefore lived on the sea-shore.—She had persuaded her father to build that house, and they had furnished it according to their own recollections, and even their own whims.—Caprice was liberty, and liberty was essential to the enjoyment of every thing. Thus, she loved caprice, and laid herself open to the charge of being fantastic with those who did not understand her."

In this sportive way she ran on, saying all kinds of lively nothings; while we drank our coffee out of Saxon porcelain which would have shone on the table of a crowned head.

The windows were thrown open, and we sat enjoying the noblest of all scenes, a glorious sunset, to full advantage. The fragrance of the garden stole in, a "steam of rich distilled perfumes;" the son of the birds, in those faint and interrupted notes which come with such sweetness in the parting day; the distant hum of the village, and the low solemn sound of the waves subsiding on the beach, made a harmony of their own, perhaps more soothing and subduing than the most refined touches of human skill. We wanted nothing but an Italian moon to realize the loveliness of the scene in Belmont.

"The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise—in such a night
Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Jason."

As I glanced on the little, superbly dressed Jewess, sitting between her father and myself, I thought of the possibilities to come.

——"In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
And, with an unthrift love, did run from Venice."

We soon after had the moon herself, rising broad and bright from the ocean; and all was romance, until a party were seen coming up the avenue, laughing and talking very sportively.

"I beg a thousand apologies; but I had forgotten to mention that we have a small dance this evening, chiefly foreign, and, as you may perceive, they keep early hours," said Jessica, rising to receive them.

"They are French, and emigrants," added Mordecai. "All is over with them and theirs in France, and they have made the best of their way to England, therein acting more wisely than those who have stayed behind. I know France well; the 'tigre-singe,' as their countryman described them. These unfortunates have been consigned to me by my correspondents, like so many bales of silks, or barrels of Medoc. But here they come."

I certainly was not prepared for the names which I now heard successively announced. Instead of the moderate condition from which I had supposed Mordecai and his pretty daughter, aspiring as she was, to have chosen their society, I found myself in a circle of names of which the world had been talking since I was in my cradle, if not for a dozen centuries before. I was in the midst of dukes, counts, and chevaliers, maréchals and marchionesses, the patrons and patronesses of the Marmontels and D'Alemberts, the charm of the Du Deffand soirées, and the originals for the charming piquancies and exquisite impertinences of L'Espinasse, and the coterieisme of Paris.

All that I had seen of the peerage of our haughty country was dim and dull to the gay glitter of the crowd around me. Nature never moulded two national characters so distinct in all points, but the French exterior carries all before it. Diamonds and decorations sparkled on every side. The dresses of the women were as superb as if they had never known fear or flight; and the conversation was as light, sportive, and badinant, as if we were all waiting in the antechamber of Versailles till the chamberlain of Marie Antoinette should signify the royal pleasure to receive us. Here was stateliness to the very summit of human pride, but it was softened by the taste of its display; the most easy familiarity, yet guarded by the most refined distinctions The bon-mot was uttered with such natural avoidance of offence, and the arch allusion was so gracefully applied, that the whole gave me the idea of a new use of language. They were artistes of conversation, professors of a study of society, as much as painters might be of the style of the Bolognese or the Venetian school.

I was delighted, but I was still more deeply interested; for the chief topics of the evening were those on which public curiosity was most anxiously alive at the moment—the hazards of the revolutionary tempest, which they had left raging on the opposite shore. Yet, "Vive la France!" we had our cotillon, and our songs to harp and piano, notwithstanding the shock of governments.

But we had scarcely sat down to the supper which Mordecai's hospitality and his daughter's taste had provided for us—and a most costly display of plate and pine-apples it was—when our entertainer was called out of the room by a new arrival. After some delay, he returned, bringing in with him a middle-aged officer, a fine soldierly-looking figure, in the uniform of the royal guard. He had just arrived from France with letters for some of the party, and with an introduction to the Jew, whom I now began to regard as an agent of the French princes. The officer was known to the whole table; and the enquiries for the fate of their friends and France were incessant and innumerable. He evidently suppressed much, to avoid "a scene;" yet what he had to tell was sufficiently alarming. The ominous shake of the Jew's head, and the changes of his sagacious visage, showed me that he at least thought the evil day on the point of completion.

"Living," said he, "at this distance from the place of events which succeed each other with such strange rapidity, we can scarcely judge of any thing. But, if the king would rely more on his peasantry and less on his populace, and more on his army than either, he might be king of France still."

"True!—true!" was the general acclamation.

"He should have clung to his noblesse, like Henri Quatre," said a duke.

"He should have made common cause with his clergy," said a prelate, with the physiognomy of one of Titian's cardinals.

"Any thing but the Tiers Etat," was uttered by all, with a general voice of horror.

"My letters of this evening," said Mordecai, "tell me that the fête at Versailles has had dangerous consequences."

"Ciel!" exclaimed a remarkably handsome woman of middle age, with the "air noble" in every feature. "Pardon me, it must be an error. I was present. It was the most brilliant of all possible réunions. It was a pledge to the salvation of France. I hear the sound of 'Richard, O mon Roi!' in my ear at this moment. When, oh when, shall I hear it again!" She burst into a passion of tears.

The name was electric. All began that very charming air at the moment. Sobs and sighs stole in between the pauses of the harmony. Their rich and practised voices gave it the sweetness and solemnity of a hymn. Fine eyes were lifted to heaven; fine faces were buried in their clasped hands; and the whole finished like the subsidence of a prayer.

But madame la duchesse was full of her subject, and we were full of curiosity. We implored her to give us some idea of a scene, of which all Europe was thinking and talking. She required no importunity, but told her tale with the majesty of a Clairon. It was at first all exclamation. "O my king!—O my unhappy but noble queen!—O my beloved but noble France! O Richard! O mon Roi!—Le monde vous abandonné!" She again wept, and we again sympathized.

"For weeks," said she, "we had been tortured at Versailles with reports from the capital. We lived in a perpetual fever. The fury of the populace was terrible. The wretches who inflamed it constantly threatened to lead the armed multitude to the palace. We were almost without defence. The ministers could not be prevailed on to order the advance of the troops, and we felt our lives from hour to hour dependent on chance."

"It was my month of waiting as lady of honour. I found the queen always firm; or, if she ever trembled, it was at the want of firmness in others. She had made up her mind for the worst long before. She often said to me, in those revolutionary nights when we sat listening for the sound of the cannon or the tocsin from Paris—'France is an abyss, in which the throne must sink. But sovereigns may be undone—they must not be disgraced.' The world never possessed a more royal mind.

"At length an opportunity seemed to offer of showing the true feeling of the court to the army. The regiment of Flanders had come to take its tour of service at the palace, and the garde du corps had sent them an invitation to a grand military banquet. There was nothing new, and could have been nothing suspicious, in the invitation; for it was the custom of the garde, on the arrival of any regiment at Versailles, as a commencement of mutual civility. The regiment of Flanders was a distinguished corps—but the whole army had been tampered with; and the experiment was for the first time a doubtful one. As if to make it still more doubtful, the invitation was extended to the national guard of Versailles."

Every eye was now fixed on the narrator, as she went on with increasing animation.

"Never was there a day of greater anxiety. We were sure of the garde du corps; but treachery was roving through France, and the banquet might only produce a collision. The entertainment, by being in the opera salon, was actually within the palace, and all the royal suite remained in the royal apartments, in fear and trembling, during the entire day.

"But as the night advanced, the intelligence, which was brought to us every five minutes from the salon, became more tranquillizing. The coldness which had existed in the beginning between the garde and the troops of the line had vanished, and loyal healths, gay speeches, and charming songs succeeded. At length a gallant young lieutenant of the garde, in a fit of noble enthusiasm, cried—'We all are the soldiers of France—we all are loyal, all are happy—Why shall not our king witness our loyalty and our happiness?' The tidings were instantly conveyed to the royal apartments. The king rose—the court followed. We entered the salon. Oh, that sight!—so new, so touching, so indescribable!"

Her voice sank for a moment. She recovered herself, and proceeded—

"The queen leaned on the arm of the king, the dauphin and dauphiness followed; Madame Elizabeth, that saint on earth if ever there was one, headed the ladies of the court. All rose at our entrance; we were received with one acclamation. The sight is still before me. I had seen all that was brilliant in the courts of Europe. But this moment effaced them all. The most splendid salle on earth, crowded with uniforms, all swords drawn and waving in the light, all countenances turned on the king, all one shout of triumph, loyalty, and joy! Alas! alas! was it to be the last beat of the national heart? Alas! alas! was it to be the last flash of the splendour of France; the dazzling illumination of the catafalque of the Bourbons; the bright burst of flame from the funeral pile of the monarchy?"

Her voice sank into silence; for the first time unbroken throughout the room.

At length, to relieve the pause, Mordecai expressed something of a hope that the royal family slept in peace, for that one night at least.