on November 4, and took a house there for the winter. Lady Mary's account of the climate, flowers, and barren scenery of Provence is graphic, and easily recognized by the thousands who now winter in the south of France : come over English habits that, with a few flagrant exceptions, high play is rare among women. So foreign is it to our national code of propriety that one must go into Russian society to find card-playing the absorbing pastime of gentlewomen. The death-blow to For the climate I think it Heavenly. Tothat habit was given in London by day I dressed (December 26) with my winSarah, Lady Jersey, and Lady de Gray. dows open in a room without a fire, and as These two beautiful young leaders of I am neither a fool nor a beggar, you may fashion opposed the establishment of guess I am not cold. . . . Spanish jessacard-tables in the side-room of Al- mine is now blowing in the open air. I mack's, and even said that they would bought a large nosegay yesterday in the leave should the Duchess of Leeds in- streets of carnations, violets, jessamine, sist on the introduction of the tables. and a yellow flower I don't remember to In this way they got rid of the habit, I will bring home the seed of the latter with have seen in England (probably the cassia). as well as of another equally pernicious, me. . . . .. My great disappointment is the which had been prevalent up to their death of the Comtesse de Vence (Villetime-viz., that of inviting men to neuve-Vence). She died six weeks before dinner without their wives. To find this custom still in force one must now go to Berlin. Here in England its abolition has worked wonders in the matter of the sobriety of gentlemen, whose fathers were often "three-bot tle" drinkers, and society owes a great deal to these two beautiful women whose firmness and good taste both exacted and carried out such alterations in London. It would assuredly have been better for Lady Mary Coke if some fair reformers had arisen in her day, and, taking the law into their hands, had banished the loo table, Lady Mary never admits it, but it was generally assumed by her family that one of her reasons for going to the Continent (apart from a quarrel with Lady Harriet Vernon, an intimate friend of Princess Amelia's) was the wish to break herself of the habit of gambling. Nightly drains had actually told on her fortune, and after some very heavy losses, she thought it best to disappear from the scene of temptation, and to try for new interests under new skies. In October, 1769, Lady Mary proceeded to the south of France, passing through Geneva, where she saw a good deal of company, and paid a visit at Ferney to Voltaire, who received her dressed in a flowered silk waistcoat and nightgown, a dark periwig without powder, slippers, and a cap on his head. She arrived at Aix, in Provence, I came, of an accident. I had set my heart upon being acquaint with her. Later the traveller does get to know Sophie de Vence's widower : I think 'tis since I wrote you that the Comte de Vence made me a visit, and hear ing the curiosity I had about Madame de Sévigné desired that he might show me the house which Madame de Simiane built, and where she dyed (1737), and in which are the portraits of all the Family. That of Madame de Sévigné is a very fine one, and that of Madame de Grignan is the picture of which Madame de Sévigné writes so much in her letters. Madame de Simiane must have been extremely handsome. Her likeness, by Larguilhière, certainly bears out this remark, and though at Grignan it never was the fashion to praise her much, yet as Pauline had but a small dot, her contemporaries probably found that she made up in beauty for what she lacked in fortune. One envies Lady Mary Coke her sight of these portraits. It was no doubt from Horace Walpole that she had first acquired her cultus for Madame de Sévigné's memory, and he it was who helped to bring the English traveller in Provence into acquaintance with the family of the queen of letter-writers. In a letter to Lady Ossory he mentions, not the autograph of Madame de Sévigné in his own possession, but one which he had seen in the hands of M. de Grasse (C.-J. de Grasse-Bar, mar ried to a cousin who was a Villeneuve | she held her hands before her eyes that she on the mother's side), and adds: "I am quite ignorant whether the M. de Castellan whom I knew is living or not. He was not a descendant of Pauline (Simiane), but had married one" (Julie, third daughter). Then (in one of the Drummond-Moray letters) he writes: I hear you have seen Voltaire, and learned many particulars about Madame de Sévigné and the Grignans. I am ready to print all you impart. If any draughtsman grow in that part of the world, pray bring me a drawing of Grignan. might not see the place where her mother Lady Mary did better: she went her- Sévigné's letters is below, even with the self to see it. Monday, March 11, 1770. Me voici enfin dans ce magnifique château. I have not been sensible of so much pleasure for a very long time as I was when I came in sight of this Castle, at my entrance into it, and the thoughts of passing the remainder of the day, and lodging here at night. I have walked over every room, and have already visited the apartment of Madame de Sévigné three times. The moment I arrived I inquired if there was anybody still living who remembered her, and was told there was an old bourgeois of 88 years of age that came often to the Castle during the time She lived here, and had seen her frequently. Upon this information I desired the Comte de Muy's Agent to desire him to come to me, if he was able to come up to the Castle; if not, I would go to him. He arrived when I was at dinner, which I did not stay to finish, but run into the next room to meet him. He did not appear to be near so old, and his memory as perfect as it could have been fifty years ago. He told me he had seen her often, and that everybody loved her, and greatly lamented her Death. He said he remembered nothing more perfectly than the time of her dying, and that he asked why the Bells did not ring, and that they told him Madame de Grignan's in such very great affliction that the Count had ordered the Bells not to ring. She was buried the next Evening, and he was at her funeral. He went with me to the Church, and showed me where her Coffin was laid. While I was there one of the people belonging to the Church came to us. and said he was present likewise, and confirmed what the other said, with this anecdote of Madame de Grignan-that her Affliction was so great, he remembers for a long time after, whenever she came into the Church terrace, which is the finest I ever saw, much finer than Windsor Castle. My imagination is so totally employed about Madame de S. that I am persuaded by and by that I shall think she appears to me. Every noise I hear I expect to see the door open. I must not forget to mention another anecdote much in favor of Madame de Grignan. She dyed, as I told you, in the Year Six, at a house near Marseilles, where she is buried, but ordered her heart to be carried to Grignan to be placed by her mother, and one of the Chanoines told me that six years ago they opened the Vault, and that he saw the lead coffin of Madame de Sévigné with the case which inclosed the heart of Madame de Grignan on one side of it. The Comte de Muy has promised to place a stone with an inscription over the place where Madame de Sévigné is laid. You cannot imagine with what reluctance I left Grignan. Upon a heath not far from it I gathered some cones of pines, which I shall sow on my return to England, in hopes of seeing something to remind me of that charming place. Lady Mary's enthusiasm was so profound and so genuine, that it would be interesting to determine from which of the published sources she had drawn her knowledge of the daily life and surroundings of the charming marquise, who, like a bee, ranged from courts to garden paths - from the tables where they played hombre, bassette, and lansquenet, to the prie-dieu- from the talk of the town to the books of the closet, and whose passion of maternal love will be as lasting as the language in which it is enshrined. There are at this moment in the Brit His son, ish Museum no less than seven French | lasted nearly half a century. editions (inclusive of Perrin's), of dates the Chevalier de Grignan, married an ranging from 1726 (the Hague: 2 vols.) heiress, but left no children by her. to 1763 (Paris: 8 vols.), as well as an His son-in-law, M. de Simiane, died in English translation (London : 1764, 10 1718, and then on the widowed Pauline vols.), which would enable amateurs of devolved the responsibility of liquidatMadame de Sévigné's style and of her ing her father's enormous debts, and of siècle to become thoroughly acquainted ultimately selling Grignan, with its caswith the marquise, her children, and tle and chapel. They were purchased grandchildren. Great, therefore, was by the Count de Muy. Pauline had Lady Mary's delight when M. de Vence three daughters, and as much as any showed me many of Madame de Sévigné's mother in that impecunious period books, with notes in them, wrote with her which preceded the Revolution did she own hand. He told me there were remain- stand in want of money. She applied ing several letters unpublished, but which for a place at Court, but as she was déhe believed would be some time hence, but modée none was given to her. She sold that hitherto there had been reasons which Grignan, lived at a place called Belomhad prevented the publication. I asked him bre, and there, it is said, received genu what had become of Madame de Grignan's letters? He replied the greater part were destroyed by Madame de Simiane, but perhaps there might be some remaining. When Lady Mary Coke's editor first glanced at this passage did he not smile at the thought that while Madame de Sévigné's admirers and biographers guessed, and argued from probability, the secret of the fate of the SévignéGriguan manuscripts was quietly reposing in a manuscript stowed away in the charter-room of a country house in Scotland? Only in 1889, and through the pages of the Marquis de Saporta's book, did French men and women get confirmation of their fears, and the assurance that Julie de Simiane had deliberately made away with the manuscripts of her mother's and grandmother's letters. His account not only justifies Lady Mary Coke's tale, but furnishes the reasons" which first delayed or prevented publication of a part of the manuscript, and then condemned the whole of the originals to the flames. 66 Madame de Sévigné died in the spring of 1696, of the small-pox, and was buried twelve hours later at Grignan. Her daughter died in 1706, but the Marquis de Grignan, living to be an extremely old man, closed his eyes in an inn in Marseilles in 1714, and thus ended a rule over Languedoc which had La famille de Madame de Sévigné, en Pro vence par le Marquis de Saporta. 1 vol. Paris (Plon): 1889. ine kindness from the rich and childless a human document, a page in the history of the human heart. most true, if unpalatable, remark, that it is one of the manières de province to make and to keep up quarrels about There was another element at work trifles. The families of "the province which doomed these papers to the of provinces," descendants of Crusad- flames. If historiettes about their neighers, had so much self-love and so little bors, and criticisms of royal and imtaste in epistolary style that they posi-portant persons, were dangerous topics, tively took all this in bad part, and the Jansenist leanings of Madame de made Madame de Simiane smart for the Sévigné and Madame de Grignan were over-smart sayings of her forbears. also calculated to give very serious Pauline had daughters to marry, and offence. It does not appear that they mortgages to pay off, and a house to could have been offensive to Pauline furnish, on a fortune of forty thousand de Simiane personally, for she thought livres. She was also of opinion that de race. As her mother and grandwhen you must sail in a ship, it is a mother had thought so did she. Cerpity to make enemies of nine-tenths of tainly she and her daughter, Sophie de the crew. From the authorized edition Vence, were intimate friends of that all imprudent witticisms must therefore luckless Jansenist, M. Genieis, who be deleted, and such a greatly enlarged was seized in Marseilles, and who exand amended edition would then, she piated his theological errors by nearly hoped, bring peace with honor, and thirty years of imprisonment. And his also with lucre. But the Chevalier really were errors. In proportion as Perrin, the editor of the compilation on Jansenism had gained in numbers and which so many hopes were built, turned in political bias, it had lost in intelliout badly. Appearing to share all gence and in sanity. Madame de SéPauline's scruples, and professing the vigné was herself aware of the change, greatest deference for her wishes, he for in recording the death of Nicole she really made use of her, and the papers spoke of him as "the last of the Roplaced in his hands, to force the doors mans." But little of the old leaven of of the best Parisian salons. Four vol- culture and personal piety was left, umes came out in 1734, but they con- while in many dioceses a petite église tained such personalities that Pauline had assumed really formidable dimenwas assailed with louder complaints sions. Practices both grotesque and then ever. She tried to stop the fur- criminal had come to disgrace the recther publication, but Perrin was at a ords of the sect. Men saw visions, the safe distance, and master in many ways dead were raised, miracles were worked of the situation, since those who cannot at the tombs of favorite preachers. pay are always, like the absent, in the Vaillant and his disciples were convulwrong. In vain did she remonstrate sionists as well as heretics, and, in the and declare that she was the most un- case of the Farinists of the Dombes, fortunate of women, one whom every-lives were even lost through wildly thing conspired to humiliate, and with hysterical excesses. It followed, then, whom nothing succeeded. Perrin that by the time that Thérèse de Siturned a deaf ear, and worked away, on miane married M. de Castellane-Esparlines which suited himself, but not his ron, a taint of Jansenism was realized employer. At last de guerre lasse, and to be very much less creditable in a fearful lest a far worse thing should family than when her great-grandever befall her―viz., the irresponsible mother read Nicole's treatises in the publication of Madame de Grignan's woods of Les Rochers. The gentleanswers she burnt all the originals men of the Castellane family had Janshe possessed. Thus perished the senism en sainte horreur, and tradition manuscripts of a correspondence that avers that two brothers of it had a hand had not, and never can have, its like, in the destruction of the Grignan letwhether as the history of an official ters and papers which, among many family in the seventeenth century or as other dangerous topics, must have perpetuated the religious opinions of Marie-Françoise de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise of Sévigné, and of the governess of Languedoc. September 24, 1770. It was a thorough mortification, dear Lady when you were so very good as to call. . . . Mary, not to see your Ladyship yesterday, My relapse was, I believe, owing to the sudden change of weather. However, it has humbled me so much that I shall readily obey your commands, and be much more careful of not catching cold again. If it is possible, I shall remove to London before you set out if it is not, I wish you health, We can but regret the auto da fé, and we are sure that if by any fortunate chance a copy of Lady Mary Coke's journal were to find its way into Provence, and into the hands of the Marquis de Saporta, its appearance there would give extreme pleasure. Proven- happiness, and amusement, and, may I say, çals would read with interest these sketches of life in Aix at the time of the marriage of the dauphin (Louis XVI.), and they could see for themselves how deeply the so-called Augustan age in England was leavened with the literature of the age of Louis XIV. The third volume of Lady Mary Coke's journal would appear as a votive wreath laid, after nearly two hundred years, on the grave of the best of female writers, of the kind and witty woman whose family is not yet extinct in Provence, and who sleeps under the stones of Grignan. a surfeit of travelling. I am glad you cannot go and visit the Ottoman Emperor, and I have too good an opinion of you to think you will visit the Northern Fury. If, after this journey, you will not stay at home, I protest I will have a painted oil cloth hung at your Door, with an account of your having been shown to the Emperor of Germany, and the Lord knows how many other Potentates. Well, Madam; make haste! you see how fast I grow old; I shall not be a very creditable Lover long, nor able to drag a chain that is heavier than that of your Yet while a shadow of me lasts, it Watch. will glide after you with friendly wishes, and put you in mind of the Attachment of Your most faithful lover, HOR. WALPOLE. Our spirited traveller had bought Lady Holland's coach for 1007., and in it she made a most triumphal progress (via Brussels), eating at great men's tables, and wearing a riding habit of green and silver, which must have become her fair hair and complexion, but on account of which she was mobbed by the unsophisticated populace of Nuremberg. Though Lady Mary Coke had found her winter in the south of France full of really pleasant episodes, she determined not to return to Aix. She never stated her reason to her sisters. Perhaps it had no other ground than the caprice common to rich and idle women who have the "world before them where to choose." Perhaps the death of the Duke of York at Monaco had put her out of charity with fields of jessamine and groves of orange trees; perhaps she had found the card-tables of M. de Villars, the governor of Pro-views are as fine as upon the Rhine, but I Upon the Danube. I don't think the vence, as fatally seductive as those of am yet in the Bavarian territory. Perhaps Princess Amelia or of Lord Hertford. when I get into the Emperor's country they At all events, she announced that, hav- may mend. . . . October 28th. The masing always had a wish to meet the ter of the vessel promises I shall be in Empress Maria Theresa, she meant to Vienna by four o'clock. The abominable winter next in Vienna. She might creature has not kept his word: 'tis seven have added that in this, as in all other o'clock, and he now says, though I am social matters, she was very fortunate, within half an hour of Vienna, he will not for she had already made in London, go on, and has fastened the vessel to the shore. Tuesday. · At half an hour after and at Spa, some useful acquaintances, while Catholic disabilities always kept Lord Stormont, the British Ambassador, ten I arrived . . . this evening I have seen a small contingent of the English Cath- Lord Algernon Percy . . . and Mr. Dutens. olic gentry engaged in Austrian regi- The First Minister, Prince Kaunitz, has ments. Horace Walpole sent her this inquired every day for this week past valedictory letter: whether I was come. This is doing me a |