A JOURNEY IN FRANCE.* Tins is not a chronicle of
small beer, but of respectable champagne, a trifle flat. Madame Cradock spent some years in France with an elderly husband ; she kept the very best company; she rarely stirred beyond the portal of her hotel unattended by persons of quality ; and a word from her husband opened the door of every church, monastery, and gallery within the limits of France. Being devoid of imagina- tion and insight, she kept the simplest of ingenuous journals, and it is by the very reason of her defects that the book is invaluable. Incapable of what the Scottish minister called "drawing inferences," she merely saw with an eye that was not too acute, and recorded with a pen which limped hope- lessly in attempting the vivid expression of a truth. And the result is a picture of France, drawn a few years before the Revolution, unconsciously definite and sincere. Perhaps it may correct an ancient superstition, but it bears on every page the stamp of a guileless faith, and at least the author is free from the historical bias which on one side or the other has obscured her period.
The fate of the book is curious, even unique. Written in English it speedily found its way to the rubbish-heap, but instead of making coats for fish or bags for sugar it was rescued by the piety of Madame Balleyguier, was skilf ally trans- lated, and thus appears for the first time in a foreign tongue. The work was well worth the doing, for the Cradocks were notable people after their fashion. The husband was a kind of elderly Beckford, without genius, who for many years posed as a patron of art and letters, and who in his country- house behaved as a veritable Mmenas. He was even indiscreet enough to build a private theatre, to convert Shakespeare's Henry VIII. into Cradock's Fall of Wolsey, and himself to essay the part of the Cardinal. Thereafter he became ambitious of a larger public, and accordingly he translated Voltaire's tragedy, Les Scythes, which, under the title of Zobeicle, was produced at Covent Garden, with Mrs. Yates in the principal role, and a prologue by Goldsmith.
It was his wife's spleen that carried them abroad, but they made the most of such simple pleasures as the travel of the time afforded. If they had not "Baedeker" to help them, at least they beguiled the road with Sterne's Sentimental Journey. Too polite to be adventurous, they carried to Paris the refined habit of an English country life, and entertained Lord and Lady Sussex with other grand folk at their modest hotel in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. That they should have been proud to stay in the Rue Jacob, now little better than a slum, is proof enough of the transformation of Paris ; the Hotel d'Yorek must have been different, indeed, a hundred years ago from those vast buildings, which the modern journalist is wont to call the peiTons du monde. For the rest, the life of the eighteenth century was much the same as the life of to-day save that times and seasons have undergone a complete change. Mrs. Cradock dined at three, and went to the theatre at five, but she took her ices in the Palais Royal, as she might do in this present year, she went gaping after kings and queens, she paid an extravagant price for a seat at the opera on a gala night, she waited hours to watch the ascent of a balloon, and she records with enthusiasm her first eight of a sea-hon. The shopkeepers of France then, as now, did their best to extort money from the facile tourist, and poor Mrs. Cradock was mercilessly fleeced at Montpelier. But in one respect France and the world have advanced since the eighteenth century; no longer need the traveller reproach the inns that shelter him with filth and vermin. Mrs. Cradock's journey in the South of France was one perpetual struggle for comfort. It was seldom, indeed, that she was not compelled to share her room with others, and most of her nights were devoted per- force to the doubtful pleasures of the chase.
In adventure, as we have said, the journey was not rich. A dispute with the landlord of the Hotel d'Yorek, threw Mrs. Cradock into so fearsome an excitement that nothing but continual bleeding restored her equanimity ; 1 and then for days she was perturbed by the importunity of a neighbour, one Minns, who demanded again and again an introduction to Lady Sussex. Tact was of no avail, and at last the lady had recourse to the snub severe, and henceforth
le Inannsorit et original iniklit. Par Mum 0. Delphi:a Balleygnier. Paris:
Perrin.
• Journal ds Madame Cradock: Patin' en Fran" iI783 178.0. Tradnit d'area
we hear no more of Mr. Minns. Lord Stanhope, moreover relieved the monotony of a quiet existence, for we have it on Mrs. Cradoek's authority that after dinner he was always more " animated " than became a judicious Peer. But it is at Toulouse that the most moving incident of the journey is recorded. They dined at 1 o'clock, and the second course was scarcely put upon the table when four soldiers entered and arrested a guest, habited as an Abbe. This gentleman, elegant in aspect and manners, had spent some days in the hotel, and none suspected that he was an officer in disguise. However, the truth was presently revealed, and M. de X. proved to be a captain in a distinguished regiment, whose gambling debts had so bitterly incensed his father that he had arrested him by a " lettre de cachet." But Monsieur l'Abbe did not yield meekly, and the four soldiers were com- pelled to dispute every inch of the ground. Three days after- wards M. de X., with a charming politeness, returned to apologise for the scene he had unwillingly created. The dis- pute between himself and his father was all but settled, and once more he dined at the hotel, this time in the garb not of an Abbe but of an officer.
In the record of these trifling experiences there is an interest which the more pompous utterances of statesmen or writers are wont to lack, and if Mrs. Cradock is dull at times,. we are glad to have made her acquaintance. But the real value of the book lies in what is left unsaid. The journey was continued until 1786, and you would expect that at least a rumour of discontent was heralding the Revolution. And yet Mrs. Cradock goes out- of her way again and again to. record the country's tranquillity. " Comme d'ordinaire," she writes, on the occasion of a fete, "pas la moindre bagarre." In Paris she saw the King more than once surrounded by a mob of enthusiastic citizens, and she encountered the Queen in the Palace of Versailles itself. "As the Queen passed," she writes, "she smiled and bowed, and my maid nearly fainted with emotion." And since the diary is completely sincere, since it was written by an English lady, honourably free from prejudice, it may be accepted as a worthy, if super- ficial, witness of the truth.
Previous page
