Letters and Recollections of Julius and Mary Mohl

SKETCH OF MADAME MOHL, DRAWN IN PASTEL, BY HERSELF

PHOTOGRAPH OF MADAME MOHL'S SALON

PHOTOGRAPH OF VIEW FROM THE WINDOW

Frontispiece

SKETCH OF M. MOHL, DRAWN IN PEN AND INK, BY MISS

BONHAM CARTER ...

307

LETTERS AND RECOLLECTIONS

JULIUS AND MARY MOHL.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY LIFE (FROM 1793 TO 1830).

Scotch and Irish extraction-Love for Cold Overton-Turbulence-Religious impressions-Madame de Staël-Miss Benger-Habits in London and Paris -Pop teas-Early admirers-Quinet-Thiers-Fauriel-Acquaintance with Manzoni and other Italian friends-Mohl arrives in Paris-Oriental studiesHis visit to England-Lives with Ampère-Miss Clarke at the studiosRevolution of 1830-Early friends.

MARY CLARKE, afterwards Madame Mohl, was born in Millbank Row, Westminster, in 1793, the youngest of three children, of whom the eldest was Eleanor, Mary's only and dearly loved sister, while the second, a boy, died in infancy. On her mother's side she was of Scotch extraction. One of

her ancestors, a Hay, of Hope, fought for William III. at the battle of the Boyne, she preserved the sword he wore on that occasion to the end of her life, it hung over her bed, and she prized it as a precious relic. Another Hay took part in the rebellion of the Young Pretender, and was condemned to be hanged at Carlisle. His friends knew he was to be respited, but no respite arrived, and two of them rode day and night to London to obtain the official paper from the prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle. The duke, who was well known for his absence of mind, said that there was no pardon for John

Hay, on which they begged to be allowed to search his pockets, and the pardon was there. They rode full speed back to Carlisle, and arrived just in time to save his life, for he was to have been executed that morning. He said "the bitterness of death was past."

Mary's grandparents, Captain and Mrs. David Hay, lived, as many English and Scotch did at that time, at Dunkerque, till driven thence by the gathering storm of the French Revolution.

Captain Hay died early, and his widow lived ever afterwards with their only child, who married Mr. Clarke, of Westminster, in the year 1785.

It was to her father's family that Mary owed her extraordinary vivacity: her grandfather, Andrew Clarke, was an Irishman he left wife and family to follow the fortunes of the Stuarts, and was never heard of more; but in recognition of his services the Stuarts accorded a small pension to his son.

In the year 1791, Mrs. Clarke, who never seems to have taken root in England (her chest was delicate, and she hated the atmosphere), went with her mother and daughter to Toulouse. The Revolution was then in full swing, and they intended to return to England by sea, but did not, on account of a presentiment of Mrs. Hay-which was fortunate, for the vessel they were to have sailed in was wrecked on the Goodwin Sands. They travelled, therefore, through Paris, and little Eleanor never forgot the terrible scenes they witnessed, nor how sad it was to see the royal family in the chapel of the Tuileries, looking so melancholy after their return from Varennes, and the poor little dauphin playing in the garden.

It was not until ten years afterwards that Mary, at that time eight years old, first saw the country of her adoption. Her father never would be persuaded to leave England, and her mother suffered so much from the climate that she and

Mrs. Hay determined to live chiefly in the south of France, paying, however, long visits every year to Mr. Clarke, who kept with him his elder daughter, from whom he never would be parted, while little Mary was given up to the care of her mother.

Eleanor represented the Scotch element; she was quiet, beautiful, and dignified. When she was about twenty-two she married Mr. Frewen Turner, of Cold Overton, in Leicestershire, and Brickwall, in Sussex, a member of Parliament, who lived in the same street with Mr. and Miss Clarke, and was so much struck by Eleanor's beauty that he fell passionately in love with her at first sight, and, although thirty years older, succeeded in gaining her heart. The marriage was a very happy one, and he extended his good will to his young sister-in-law, who had for him the greatest regard and affection. Cold Overton became for her, for nearly eighty years, a second home, and she thus describes her feeling for it in a letter written in 1861 to Miss Bonham Carter :

Cold Overton, July 12.

I have been wondering what you are all about, but not at your silence, as you have but too much to do; however, I should like to have a word about you. I came here Saturday¡ my sister wanted me to come over, and I am fonder of the place than I am of any place in the world, so I was glad to come once more and wander about in the groves and alleys in which I have so often gone dreaming and building castles that never were realized. I suppose I am so fond of it because the total absence of incident leaves me more leisure for my dreamy life than I ever have anywhere else, and as one can crowd more thoughts and images and events into one day of mere mental activity than in ten years one can realize, I may really say I have lived centuries in this place, and only a few years in Paris or any other. Be the reason what it may, it is impossible to express what a delicious day I had on Saturday. Having got here by nine o'clock, I had a whole year's worth of thought; but all the analyzing I am capable of could not explain to me why I enjoyed it so much.

There are but two or three servants, the carpets are up, the curtains down, all the house in papillottes except two rooms; the grass plots overgrown with long impertinent herbs of no name except the botanists', nettles not rare; many insurrectionary branches come against all law into one's face in the alleys; the paths are almost obliterated; some stray rose will peep out in the midst of bushes and weeds in the shrubberies; and all this makes it a place more delicious to me than the rambles about Lago Maggiore. I wonder if I could get tired of it! It seems impossible. All my past life comes before me with a vividness it never has in any other place; it is like reading myself over again. Unfortunately, we go Wednesday morning back to a very good place; but I never know where to sit down in it somehow. I feel adrift, like a shell-fish pulled off of its rock by a violent tempest. I can't think there. I said to D——, who asked me where I was going, "I'm looking for a place to think in." She laughed, but she did not understand it. Pray, do you feel so in Paris? I always fancy people must feel so in a new place, yet not when they are travelling. M. Fauriel used to be so fond of ruins because of the dreamy faculty which they excited. I should think any one bred in a ruinous old solitary castle by the sea-shore, with trees, however, near, could not live to think anywhere else. I'm thankful I was not, as it is bad to be such an oyster even as I am.

By her own account Mary was a troublesome child, from her intense turbulence and espièglerie.

My Scotch grandmother (she writes to Lady Augusta Stanley in 1870) used to say when I was a plague, "Mary, you are as impudent as a highwayman's horse." Now, I look upon this as a valuable historical recollection, because when my grandmother was young highwaymen were so common on the roads round London that their horses were instructed to stop at the door of the stage-coach, opened by the riders, while the trembling traveller fumbled for his purse, and the horse poked his head into the carriage, poor fellow ! not knowing how ill he was looked upon.

To curb this turbulence Mary was sent to school at a convent in Toulouse. She always entertained a friendly feeling for the nuns, who, however, did not succeed in

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