Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century

"The guest-house was prepared with the ostentation which the Orientals are fond of displaying on all occasions. A double row of servants of all ages was drawn up in the vestibule when my husband and I dismounted; and one of the eldest and also the most sumptuously attired, introduced us into a saloon arranged in Oriental fashion, with brightly painted walls and red silk divans. The son of the princess, a charming boy of twelve, who spoke Russian fluently, attached himself to us, politely translated our orders to the servants, and was careful that we should want for nothing. I gave him my letter of introduction, which he immediately carried to his mother, and soon afterwards, returning, he told me, to my great delight, that she would receive me when she had completed her toilette. In my eager curiosity I now counted every minute, until an officer followed by an aged female, veiled, came to usher me into the mysterious palace of which, as yet, I had seen only the lofty outer wall.

"My husband, as we had preconcerted, attempted to follow us, and, no impediment being offered, unceremoniously passed through the little door into the park, crossed the latter, boldly ascended a terrace adjoining the palace, and at last found himself – much surprised at his extraordinary good fortune – in a little room that seemed one of the princess's private apartments. Hitherto no male stranger except Count Worontzov, had entered the palace; the flattering and unlooked-for exception which the princess had made in my husband's favour, induced us to hope that she would carry her complaisance still further. We were soon undeceived. The officer who had acted as our guide, after offering us iced water, sweetmeats, and pipes, took my husband by the hand, and conducted him from the room with significant celerity. As soon as he had disappeared, a curtain was raised at the other end of the apartment, and a strikingly beautiful woman, richly clad, made her entry. Advancing with a singularly dignified air, she took both my hands, kissed me on both cheeks, and with many friendly demonstrations sat down by my side. She was highly rouged, her eyelids were painted black and met over the nose, communicating to her countenance a certain sternness, that, nevertheless, did not impair its agreeable character. To her still elegant figure fitted closely a vest of furred velvet. Altogether she was far more beautiful than I had imagined.

"We passed a quarter of an hour in close examination of each other, interchanging as well as we could a few Russian words which very inadequately expressed our thoughts. But in such cases, looks supply the deficiencies of speech, and mine must have expressed the admiration I felt. Hers, I own, in all humility, seemed to indicate much more surprise at, than approval of, my travelling costume. What would I not have given to know the result of her purely feminine analysis of my appearance! In this tête-à-tête I felt an inward twinge of conscience at having presented myself before her in male attire, which must have given her a strange idea of European fashions.

"I would fain have prolonged my visit in the hope of seeing her daughters, but the fear of appearing intrusive prompted me to take my leave. Checking me with a very graceful gesture, she said eagerly, 'Pastoy! Pastoy!' (Stay, stay!) and clapped her hands several times. At the signal a young girl entered, who, by her mistress's orders, threw open a folding door, and immediately I was silent with surprise and admiration at the brilliant apparition before me. Let the reader imagine the most beautiful sultanas, or 'lights of the harem,' of whom poet and artist have endeavoured to give the presentment, and his conception will still fall far short of the enchanting models on whom my gaze rested. Each of these three was as lovely and as graceful as her companions. Two wore tunics of crimson brocade, embellished in front with broad gold lace. The tunics were open and disclosed beneath them cashmere robes, with very tight sleeves terminating in gold fringes. The youngest was attired in a tunic of azure brocade, with silver ornaments; this was the sole difference between her dress and that of her sisters. All these had superb black hair, which escaped in countless tresses from a fez of silver filagree, set like a diadem over their ivory foreheads; they wore gold embroidered slippers and wide trousers drawn close at the ankle.

"Skins of such dazzling purity, eyelashes of such length, a bloom of youth so delicate, I had never before looked upon. The calm repose that breathed from their lovely countenances had never been disturbed by any profane glance. None but their mother had ever told them that they were beautiful; and this reflection enhanced the charm of their beauty in my eyes. In our Europe, where women, exposed to the gaze of crowds, so quickly learn the art of coquetry, the imagination would not be able to form such a type of loveliness. The features of our maidens are too soon affected by the vivacity of their impressions, for the artist's eye to have any chance of discovering in them that divine grace of beauty and ignorance which so profoundly impressed me in the Tartar princesses. After embracing me they withdrew to the end of the room, where they remained standing in those graceful Oriental attitudes no woman of the West can imitate. A dozen attendants, shrouded in white muslin, were gathered round the door, and regarded the scene with respectful curiosity. This delightful vision lasted an hour. When the princess saw that I had determined on taking my leave, she made signs that I should go and see her garden; but, though gratefully acknowledging the courteous attention, I prepared to rejoin my husband immediately, being impatient to relate to him all the particulars of the interview with which I was completely dazzled."

The Crimea is not without its memorable places. Madame de Hell refers to Parthenit, where still flourishes the great hazel under which the Prince de Ligne wrote to the modern Messalina, Catherine II.; Gaspra, the residence for some years of Madame de Krudener, the beautiful mystic and religious enthusiast who exercised so powerful an influence over the Czar Alexander; Koreis, the retreat of the Princess Galitzin, the soul of so many strange political intrigues, and afterwards one of the associates of Madame de Krudener, and the small villa on the seashore, near Delta, beneath the roof of which died, in 1823, the soi-disant Countess Guacher, now known to have been none other than the notorious Madame de Lamotte, who figured in the strange romantic history of "The Diamond Necklace," and as an accomplice of Cagliostro was whipped in the Place de Grève, and branded on both shoulders with a V for Voleuse, Thief.[8 - See Carlyle's "Biographical Essays, § Diamond Necklace;" also, H. Vizetelly's "True Story of the Diamond Necklace."]

At Soudagh, a valley near Oulou-Ouzon, Madame de Hell visited one of the most remarkable women of her time, Mademoiselle Jacquemart, of whom a long but not wholly accurate biographical sketch appears in the Duc de Raguse's "Excursion en Crimée."

Few women have had a more eccentric career. In her early years her beauty, her wit, and her talents gained her a degree of fame such as rarely attaches to one in the humble position of a governess. From the age of sixteen, when she removed from Paris to St. Petersburg, and entered upon a professional life, she enjoyed an unparalleled social distinction. Suddenly, for no reason apparent to the world at large, she retreated to the Crimea, abandoning everything in which she had hitherto delighted, and voluntarily sentencing herself to a seclusion which to her, of all women, it might have been thought, would have proved most distasteful. Seeing her in the semi-masculine costume, studying geology, painting, music, and poetry, without the shadow of a pretension, one could not help asking oneself in what mysterious drama her strange existence had been involved. Having been apprised, the day before, of Madame de Hell's intended visit, she hastened to meet her, and received her with an unaffectedly cordial welcome. Her guest could not look at her, however, without a feeling of astonishment. Attired in a long brown petticoat, and a vest which concealed her figure, she wore a manly virile aspect, according thoroughly with the character of the life she had adopted.

Her cottage consisted of a single room on the ground floor, which served as dining-room, drawing-room, and bedroom; it was adorned with a guitar, a violin-case, a collection of animals, art-objects, and arms. The exceeding solitariness of her dwelling exposed her to frequent attacks by night, and hence a brace of pistols always hung at the head of her bed. Her fruit, her poultry, and even her vines suffered from prowling depredators; she was continually on the watch, and especially had to guard against a repetition of the cruel attempt to which on one occasion she nearly fell a victim.

Her account of this affair was as follows: – Two days before it occurred, a Greek applied to her for work and food. The former she was unable to give; the latter she would never deny. The next day but one, as she was returning in the twilight from a geological excursion, carrying in her hand a small hatchet which she used for breaking stones, she discovered that this man was walking behind her stealthily. Turning to look in his face, she found herself at the same moment grasped round the waist – the hatchet was snatched from her hand – and blow after blow was rained on her head until she fell to the ground in a swoon. When she recovered consciousness, the assassin had disappeared. How she reached home with her skull fractured she never could explain. For months her life was in peril, and her reason trembled in the balance. At the time of Madame de Hell's visit she still suffered acutely from some fragments of a comb that remained in her head.

Remote from the ordinary track as was Mademoiselle Jacquemart's lonely dwelling, many persons were drawn to it by the attraction of her singular story. Not long before, a young and handsome lady, incognita, but evidently of high birth, had spent a whole day there. Her curiosity greatly excited, Mademoiselle Jacquemart said to her on her departure, smilingly, "Queen or shepherdess, leave me your name, that it may always recall to me one of the most delightful souvenirs of my hermit-life."

"Well," replied the unknown, in the same spirit, "pass me your album, and you shall know me as a very sincere admirer of your merit."

She immediately wrote a few lines in the album and departed in haste, while Mademoiselle Jacquemart was reading the following quatrain, improvised in her honour by the Princess Radzivil: —

"Reine ou bergère je voudrais
Dans ce doux lieu passer ma vie,
Partageant avec vous, amie,
Ou ma cabane ou mon palais."

[Queen or shepherdess, I fain
In this sweet spot my life would spend,
Sharing with thee, gentle friend,
Or palace grand or cottage plain.]

Before quitting the Crimea, Madame de Hell visited another distinguished woman, also a solitary, who, in a terribly tragic scene, had nearly lost her life. The Baroness Axinia lived at Oulou-Ouzon, and this was her story:

She was married at a very early age to a man much older than herself. The ill-assorted union was as unhappy as such unions generally are. The Baroness Axinia was beautiful, and drew around her a crowd of admirers, whose flatteries she did not reject, though it does not appear that she listened to professions of love which could have dishonoured her. In a jealous frenzy, not unnatural in the circumstances, her husband struck her with his dagger, and at the same time killed a young man whom for a long time he had regarded as a friend. The result was an immediate separation. The Baron settled upon her a considerable estate, and, in addition, a handsome income. She had the consolation, moreover, of being allowed to retain by her side the youngest of her daughters, and thenceforth she resigned herself to a life of solitude, keeping hid within her bosom the secret of her sorrow, her regret, and, perhaps, her remorse.

Ten years passed, and the baroness never crossed the borders of her estate. This self-imposed penance, so rigidly observed, may be accepted, we think, as a sufficient acknowledgment of the errors of her thoughtless youth.

"At our first interview," says Madame de Hell, "she seemed to me a little timid, nay, even wild (sauvage) – a circumstance amply justified by her exceptional position. But, in the course of a few days, this constraint passed away, and a warm intimacy sprang up between us.

"From the first days of my visit, I remarked with lively surprise that our hostess was incessantly assailed by a crowd of pretty tomtits, who pecked at her hair and hands with truly extraordinary familiarity. The baroness, after enjoying my astonishment, told me that two years before she had brought up a couple of tomtits, and given them their liberty; and that, in the following year, the couple returned with their brood, who were easily taught to take their food from the hands of their charming protectress. Other birds soon imitated their example, and thus the beautiful solitary came to represent, undesignedly, one of the most charming creations of Georges Sand, the bird-charmer, in her novel of 'Tévérino.'"

In one of her walks with Madame de Hell, the baroness conducted her new friend to the scene of the tragic drama which had broken up her life. The house, entirely abandoned by the Baron, was inhabited only by a Tartar, its guardian – a man of wild and gloomy aspect, whom the sight of his mistress seemed to stupefy. While he was opening the doors and windows, which had been kept closed since the fatal catastrophe, a wretched half-starved looking dog, shivering in spite of the sunshine, crawled out of a corner, the wonderful instinct of these animals having made him conscious of the presence of his mistress. The latter, overwhelmed with emotion, burst into tears: "Poor Salghir! poor Salghir!" she cried, and was unable to utter another word.

When she had recovered herself, she turned to Madame de Hell, and bade her observe how the seal of sorrow and forgetfulness was set upon everything. Formerly the very stones of the court had breathed of life, and sunshine, and youth; formerly that poor dog had been bright and well-favoured, and as happy as are all things that are loved. "But now," she exclaimed, "look at these ruins, these crawling mosses; yonder shattered wall, the grass which has obliterated the traces of my footsteps, and agree with me that a kind of curse weighs upon the spot. One feels, one divines that life has been arrested here by one of those fatal crises which involve everything in ruin. Alas, this house is a striking proof of it! It had a youth, a freshness, a coquettishness of its own, when I was young, and fair, and a coquette; now it is gloomy, dank, degraded…"

"Because you are old and ugly?" said Madame de Hell, smiling, "is not that the logical consequence of your reasoning! But, you see, the first looking-glass would flatly contradict it. Come, in spite of the somewhat greenish hue of our surroundings, look at that soft, gentle, and still youthful countenance, those brilliant eyes, that flowing hair, and tell me if it be all in harmony with the unattractive aspect of the scene before you."

"Oh, undoubtedly I have not yet arrived physically," she answered with a faint smile, "at this degree of old age, but if you could read to the bottom of my heart, you would see it as gloomy and as desolate as these chambers with their want of light and air."

The baroness led her guest into every apartment, explaining the destination of each with feverish volubility. On entering her former bedchamber, she turned pale, and pointed with a gesture to her husband's portrait, separated from her own by an antique clock, the motionless hands of which added to the melancholy of the scene. Madame de Hell bestowed a long gaze on the haughty and sombre countenance of the baron. His rough, strongly-marked features were the very emblem of brutal strength, and she felt herself tremble all over in thinking of what his wife must have suffered in the first years of their union. Her unhappy past seemed almost justified by the hard ferocious countenance of such a husband. As for the baroness, there was about her portrait a significantly haggard air. "I carried her out," says Madame de Hell, "upon the balcony, where, overcome by her emotions, the influences of the place, and that yearning after sympathy which is so powerful in solitude, she opened her heart to me, and told me a simple but pathetic story of all that she had endured.

"The promise that I would hold sacred the confidences of that shattered heart compels me to leave my narrative imperfect. Two days later I embarked on board the steamer St. Nicholas, gazing with inexpressible regret at the shores of the Tauric peninsula as they gradually blended with the horizon, their broken outline melting finally into the mists of evening."

That Madame de Hell to a habit of close and profound observation, added very remarkable powers of description, will be apparent, we think, from the preceding summary, brief as it necessarily is, of her record of travel in the Caucasus and the Crimea.

MADAME HOMMAIRE DE HELL

III

Madame de Hell and her husband spent the winter of 1841 at Odessa. Thence, in the following year, they repaired to Moldavia – a country which was just beginning to revive from the barbarism and desolation in which the Turkish rule had so long condemned it to linger. Under the prudent and energetic management of the Aga Assaki, "The Moldavian Bee" and "The Gleaner" announced the resurrection of liberal thought and the patriotic sentiment in literary articles, nearly all signed by Moldavian names and written in the national language.

In the young Princess Morosi, the daughter of the Aga Assaki, afterwards married to Edgar Quinet, Madame de Hell learned to know and love a charming wit and a rare beautiful nature. She studied the French poets with assiduity, and her great ambition was to visit France, little thinking that she would one day become French by her marriage with the illustrious French writer.

In the Caucasian steppes our traveller's life had been singularly calm and serene; in Moldavia it was agitated and disturbed by mundane occupations, by official receptions, balls, concerts, dinners, the theatre, and the thousand and one responsibilities of social life. Worn and weary with the monotonous round of pretended pleasures, she frequently looked back with regret to the solitudes of the Caspian. Yet the event which delivered her from it was one that caused her a very keen anxiety. Her husband was attacked by one of the malarious fevers of the Danube, and in order to recover his health was compelled to throw up his engagement and return to France, after some years of almost constant travel and exploration.

On their arrival they were received with the welcome earned by their patience of investigation and strenuous pursuit of knowledge. While the young and already celebrated engineer was rewarded with the Cross of the Legion of Honour, his wife, who had shared his labours and his perils, and co-operated with him in the production of his fine work on the Steppes, was honoured with the special attention of M. Villemain, then Minister of State. Shortly after her return she gave to the world a volume of poetry, entitled "Reveries of a Traveller," a work strongly written, thoughtful, and emotional, which has never obtained the reputation it fully deserves.

In 1846 the two travellers departed on a second expedition to the East, which was cut short by the premature death of M. de Hell. His widow returned to Paris towards the close of 1848, so crushed beneath the calamity that had overthrown her household gods, that, as she has since acknowledged, she never slept without the hope that her sleep might know no waking in this world, but might prove the means of re-uniting her with her beloved husband. However, she was of too clear an intellect and too strong of heart not to recognize that the ties of duty bound her to this world; she had to bring up and educate her children, and to complete and publish the important works her husband had begun. While thus engaged, she contributed several articles on the East to the Presse and numerous other journals. In 1859 she published her own narrative of adventure and travel in the steppes of the Caucasus. Great political changes have occurred since Madame de Hell's visit to that region, which have profoundly affected the character of its people and their social polity; so that her account of it, as well as her account of the Crimea, must be read with the necessary allowances. These, however, will not detract from Madame de Hell's unquestioned merit as a close and exact observer, endowed with no ordinary faculty of polished and incisive expression, and a fine capacity for appreciating and describing the picturesque aspects of nature. She wields a skilful brush with force and freedom; her pictures are always accurate in composition and full of colour.

Her later years have shown no decay of her resolute and active spirit. She has accomplished a tour in Belgium, another in Italy, a visit to London, and several excursions into the South of France. In 1868 she proceeded to Martinique, where her eldest son had for some years been established. We believe she has published her West Indian experiences and impressions. But we have given up to Madame de Hell as much of our limited space as we can spare, and now take leave of her with the acknowledgment that among modern female travellers she deserves a high rank in virtue of her intelligence, her sympathies, and her keen sensibility to all that is beautiful and good.

MADAME LÉONIE D'AUNET

Among the crowd of lady travellers to whom this nineteenth century has given birth, the able and accomplished Frenchwoman, so widely known by her pseudonym of Madame Léonie d'Aunet, merits a passing allusion. Remove from her the mask she is pleased to assume before the public, and she stands revealed as Madame Biard, the wife of the great humoristic painter, whose "Sequel of a Masquerade," "Family Concert," "Combat with Polar Bears," and other pictures, are not less highly esteemed by English than by French connoisseurs. Born about 1820, she is twenty years younger than her husband, whom, in 1845, she accompanied in his excursion to Spitzbergen; an excursion which opened with, by way of prologue, a rapid tour through Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Norway. Of the tour and the excursion she has published a brilliant narrative, which it is impossible to read without pleasure, so polished is the style, and so sharply defined are the descriptions. Her literary skill gives her an advantage over the great majority of female travellers, whose diaries and journals, from want of it, are often bald, colourless, and diffuse. On the other hand, she is deficient in sympathy; she judges rather with the intellect than with the heart, which is at least as necessary to the formation of a fair and intelligent opinion. Her mind, however, is so keen and so incisive, so prompt to seize the most curious facts, so apt in discovering characteristic details, that even when she speaks of places and peoples with whom we are all familiar, she compels us to listen, and irresistibly holds our attention. It has been said that in some respects her manner is that of the elder Dumas, but while she is more honest and less given to exaggeration she does not rise to the same literary standard. The famous author of "Anthony" is still first master in the art, more difficult than the world in general believes it to be, of recording the experiences of travel; he is a master in it, because he does not make the attempt, which must always be unsuccessful, of minutely recording every particular that comes under a traveller's notice, and because he is gifted beyond ordinary measure with the art and verve