The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 1Edgeworth, Maria
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The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 1
Edgeworth, Maria
Edgeworth, Maria, 1768-1849; Novelists, Irish -- 19th century -- Biography
We breakfasted at Passy on our way here: beautiful views of Paris and
its environs from all the balconied rooms; and Madame François showed us
all their delightful comfortable rooms--the bed in which Madame Gautier
and Madame François had slept when children, and where now her little
Caroline sleeps. There is something in the duration of these family
attachments which pleases and touches one, especially in days of
revolution and change.
We arrived here in good time. La Celle [Footnote: La Celle St. Cloud,
built by Bachelier, first valet de chambre of Louis XIV., afterwards
sold to Madame de Pompadour, who sold it again in two years.] is as old
as Clotwold, the son of Clovis, who came here to make a hermitage for
himself--La Cellule. Wonderfully changed and enlarged, it became the
residence of Madame de Pompadour. The rooms are wainscotted: very large
_croissées_ open upon shrubberies, with rose acacias and rhododendrons
in profuse flower: the garden is surrounded by lime-trees thick and
high, and cut, like the beech-walk at Collon, at the end into arches
through the foliage, and the stems left so as to form rows of pillars,
through which you see, on one side, fine views of lawn and distant
country, while on the other the lime-grove is continued in arcades,
eight or nine trees deep.
To each bedroom and dressing-room there are little dens of closets and
ante-chambers, which must have seen many strange exits and entrances in
their day. In one of these, ten feet by six, the white wainscot--now
very yellow--is painted in gray, with monkeys in men's and women's
clothes in groups in compartments, the most grotesque figures you can
imagine. I have an idea of having read of this cabinet of monkeys, and
having heard that the principal monkey who figures in it was some real
personage.
The situation of La Celle is beautiful, and the country about it. The
grounds, terraces, orchards, farmyard, dairy, etc., would lead me too
far, so I shall only note that, to preserve the hayrick from the
incursion of rats, the feet of the stand, which is higher than that in
our back yard, are not only slated, but at the part next the hay covered
with panes of glass: this defies climbing reptiles.
M. and Madame de Vindé are exactly what you remember them; and her
grand-daughter, Beatrice, the little girl you may remember, is as kind
to Fanny and Harriet as M. and Madame de Vindé were to their sister.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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