Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 1/Letter 126

To MRS. RUXTON.

AT MR. MOILLIET'S, PREGNY, GENEVA,

August 5, 1820.

Whenever I feel any strong emotion, especially of pleasure, you, friend of my youth and age,&mdash;you, dear resemblance of my father,&mdash;are always present to my mind; and I always wish and want immediately to communicate to you my feelings.

I did not conceive it possible that I should feel so much pleasure from the beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this country. The first moment when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an era in my life&mdash;a new idea, a new feeling, standing alone in the mind.

We are most comfortably settled here: Dumont, Pictet, Dr. and Mrs. Marcet, and various others, dined and spent two most agreeable evenings here; and the fourth day after our arrival we set out on our expedition to Chamouni with M. Pictet, as kind, as active, and as warm-hearted as ever. Mrs. Moilliet was prevented, by the indisposition of Susan, from accompanying us; but Mr. Moilliet and Emily came with us at five o'clock in the morning in Mr. Moilliet's landau: raining desperately&mdash;great doubts&mdash;but on we went: rain ceased&mdash;the sun came out, the landau was opened, and all was delightful.

My first impression of the country was that it was like Wales; but snow-capped Mont Blanc, visible everywhere from different points of view, distinguished the landscape from all I had ever seen before. Then the sides of the mountains, quite different from Wales indeed&mdash; cultivated with garden care, green vineyards, patches of blé de Turquie, hemp, and potatoes, all without enclosure of any kind, mixed with trees and shrubs: then the garden-cultivation abruptly ceasing&mdash;bare white rocks and fir above, fir measuring straight to the eye the prodigious height. Between the foot of the mountain and the road spread a border-plain of verdure, about the breadth of the lawn at Black Castle between the trellis and Suzy Clarke's, rich with chestnut and walnut trees, and scarlet barberries enlivening the green.

The inns on the Chamouni roads are much better than those on the road from Paris; we grew quite fond of the honest family of the hotel at Chamouni. Pictet knows all the people, and wherever we stopped they all flocked round him with such cordial gratitude in their faces, from the little children to the gray-headed men and women; all seemed to love "Monsieur le Professeur." The guides, especially Pierre Balmat and his son, are some of the best-informed and most agreeable men I ever conversed with. Indeed for six months of the year they keep company with the most distinguished travellers of Europe. With these guides, each of us armed with a long pole with an iron spike, such as my uncle described to me ages ago, and which I never expected to wield, we came down La Flegère, which we mounted on mules. In talking to an old woman who brought us strawberries, I was surprised to hear her pronounce the Italian proverb, "Poco a poco fa lontano nel giorno." I thought she must have been beyond the Alps&mdash;no, she had never been out of her own mountains. The patois of these people is very agreeable&mdash;a mixture of the Italian fond diminutives and accents on the last syllable&mdash; Septembré, Octobré.

Our evening walk was to the arch of ice at the source of the Arveron, and we went in the dusk to see a manufactory of cloth, made by a single individual peasant&mdash;the machinery for spinning, carding, weaving, and all made, woodwork and ironwork, by his own hands. He had in his youth worked in some manufactory in Dauphiné. The workmanship was astonishing, and the modesty and philosophy of the man still more astonishing. When I said, "I hope all this succeeds in making money for you and your family," he answered, "Money was not my object: I make just enough for myself and my family to live by, and that is all I want; I made it for employment for ourselves in the long winter evenings. And if it lasts after me, it may be of service to some of them; but I do not much look to that. It often happens that sons are of a different way of thinking from their fathers: mine may think little of these things, and if so, no harm."

The table-d'hôte at Chamouni&mdash;thirty people&mdash;was very entertaining. We had a most agreeable addition to our party in M. and Madame Arago: he was very civil to us at Paris, and very glad to meet us again. As we were walking to a cascade, he told me most romantic adventures of his in Spain and Algiers, which I will tell you hereafter; but I must tell you now a curious anecdote of Buonaparte. When he had abdicated after the battle of Waterloo, he sent for Arago, and offered him a considerable sum of money if he would accompany him to America. He had formed the project of establishing himself in America, and of carrying there in his train several men of science! Madame Bertrand was the person who persuaded him to go to England. Arago was so disgusted at his deserting his troops, he would have nothing more to do with him.

We returned by the beautiful valley of Sallenches and St. Gervais to Geneva. I forgot to mention about a dozen cascades, one more beautiful than the other, and I thought of Ondine, which you hate, and mon Oncle Friedelhausen. We had left our carriage at St. Martin, and travelled in char-à-bancs, with which you and Sophy made me long ago acquainted&mdash;cousin-german to an Irish jaunting-car. We were well drenched by the rain; and as we had imprudently lined our great straw hats with green, we arrived at St. Gervais with chins and shoulders dyed green. The hotel at St. Gervais is the most singular-looking house I ever saw. You drive through a valley, between high pine-covered mountains that seem remote from human habitation&mdash;when suddenly in a scoop-out in the valley you see a large, low, strange wooden building round three sides of a square, half Chinese, half American-looking, with galleries, and domes, and sheds&mdash;the whole of unpainted wood. Under the projecting roof of the gallery stood a lady in a purple silk dress, plaiting straw, and various other figures in shawls, and caps, and flowered bonnets, some looking very fine, others deadly sick&mdash;all curious to see the new-comers. M. Goutar, the master, reminded me of Samuel Essington: full of gratitude to M. Pictet, who had discovered these baths for him, he whisked about with his round perspiring face, eager to say a hundred things at once, with a tongue too large for his mouth and a goitre which impeded his utterance, and showed us his douches and contrivances, and spits turned by water&mdash;very ingenious. Dinner was in a long, low, narrow room&mdash;about fifty people; and after dinner we were ushered into a room with calico curtains, very smart&mdash;a select party let in. Many unexpected compliments on Patronage from a Dijon Marquise, who was at the baths to get rid of a redness in her nose. Enter, a sick but very gentlewomanlike Prussian Countess, Patronage again: Walter Scott's novels, as well known as in England, admirably criticised. She promised me a letter to Madame de Montolieu.

At Chamouni there is a little museum of stones and crystals, etc., where MM. Moilliet and Pictet contrived to treat their geological souls to seven napoleons' worth of specimens. An English lady was buying some baubles, when her husband entered: "God bless my soul and body, another napoleon gone!"

At the inn at Bonneville&mdash;shackamarack gilt dirt, Irish-French. Pictet bought a sparrow some boys in the street threw up at the window, and said he would bring it home for his little grandson. It was ornamented with a topping made of scarlet cloth. He put it in his hat, and tied a handkerchief over it; and hatless in the burning sun he brought it to Geneva.

August 6.

The day after our return we dined at Mrs. Marcet's with M. Dumont, M. and Madame Prevost, M. de la Rive, M. Bonstettin, and M. de Candolle, the botanist, a particularly agreeable man. He told us of many experiments on the cure of goitres. In proportion as the land has been cultivated in some districts the goitres have disappeared. M. Bonstettin told us of some cretins, the lowest in the scale of human intellect, who used to assemble before a barber's shop and laugh immoderately at their own imitations of all those who came to the shop, ridiculing them in a language of their own.