September 7th.—After our charming tour through Belgium, here we are settled for some little time. We had scarcely arrived when the French ambassador and his lovely young wife (the La Tour Maubourgs) and her charming sister and brother-in-law, Count and Countess D’Oraison came in what they called conspiration, to lay violent hands and detain us here, and we, nothing loath, have consented,—my two girls in the third heaven!
Received visits from Monsieur and Madame Engler. The Frekes, Seymours, Dr. Bowring and Count Hompèche. The latter dined at the table d’hôte with us, and sat beside me, and had we not fun! An English family at the table d’hôte impayable. Mr. J—— turned up his nose at the French wines, “sour stuff, monsieurs,” and called for brandy and water. “I’ll lay you a cheney tea pot,” said he, “they have no melted butter for the salmon.”
Thursday—Dined yesterday at the
Engler’s, a mag-
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Thursday 15.—What a leée to-day of all nations!
Foreigners complain here that there is no society, each menage suffices to itself, and when amusement is to be sought, it is bought ready made. The lower orders fly to their cabarets in the environs, the middle class have their cafés and estaminets, and the highest rank go to their box at the opera; and this with the diversity of a ball in the season and the court ceremonies makes up the whole of their social existence, (very like our own), but there is no house open to receive either morning or evening visits, as there are in Paris. There is no intellectual society as in England; there is no material for it. The women are sedentary and silent, domestic and devote, and resemble the mass of our female English society, but without their habits of intellectual cultivation, which brings ease, grace, and courtesy along with it.
September 17.—We shall have to leave this hotel, as it is all taken for the great fêtes.
September 18.—Hardly got into our pretty apartments in the Rue de la Regence (with our books, flowers, piano, drawings, &c., &c), when enter Lady Clare, and Lady Isabella Fitzgibbons, and Sir Robert Adair. What a pleasant chat of times and people, past and present! How they recall the bright days of the Priory to me!
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September 18.—We dined yesterday at the Palace;
great simplicity, with just as much splendour as any nobleman of good taste and
wealth might indulge in, but nothing more. The Queen—young, fair, simple, and more than
courteous—reminds me of our English girls of rank: a little shy and very
graceful, but nothing of the morgue
of our belles of quality. I looked about me for a ribbon. I spied a gentleman
in black, with the broadest blue scarf from shoulder to flank. I thought he
represented some ancient order of chivalry, pas du
tout. It was an English knight of
the Guelphic Order. The Grand Marechal, a very agreeable Count, asked me what
Order that was. I could not help saying, L’ordre de tout bête. Strange to say, here
was a royal company of forty persons; there was not one Prince amongst them.
There was all the intellect and manhood of the present administration. The
Belgian Lafayette, Baron De
Hoogoorst, the brave, the patriotic commander of the National Guard;
there was Charles Rogier, the Minister
of the Interior, who, in the most awful moment of political fermentation at the
time of the revolution, flung himself into the very gap of anarchy, and
established that character of dauntless devotedness to a great cause which may
be deemed the chivalry of politics; Monsieur Le Beau,
Ministre de Justice, the prose, as Rogier is the poetry of
the revolution; Monsieur Northomel, Secretary-General des
Affaires Etrangers, with countenance full of intellectual fire, pensante et instruit; not one dandy or
dunce amongst them. Could one say as much for a diplomatic table of London? In
short, I was better
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September 20.—What an odd coincidence. We had last night nearly the whole of the last Provisional Government of the Belgian Revolution, with the addition of Colonel Prozinski, Mr. White, author of The King’s Own, the two De Brouckers, Henri et Charles, Quételet, the Royal Astronomer, Jullien, the Orator of the Opposition, Sir Robert Adair, our Ambassador, and the dear, charming, La Tour Maubourgs. The evening was amusing. I had also Van Hallan, the accomplished author of an historical tract of the Trouble Belgique in 1718; he is the type of the character and national feelings of the Belgian youth, and one among the many illustrations of the beneficial change in the character of a people effected by the removal of oppressive and anti-national institutions.
September 26.—A week of carnival festivities. The
Concert d’Harmonie a la Place Royal, by six hundred musicians, consisting
of the corps of the army, with an audience of nearly ten thousand persons in
front of the beautiful Hotel de Ville,—really one of the most imposing
sights I have ever seen. In front was inclosed a space for the Ministers, the
Deputies, and the Senate. The windows and balconies belonging to the houses and
hotels all round filled with elegantly-dressed women. To the right, in a
balcony window, sat the King and Queen and officers of state. The royal party
were received by the music of the “Mar-
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September 28.—The races went on yesterday in spite of the rain; rather a laughable business, men and horses stuck in the mud, and one poor horse broke his back, and the jockey, I fear, much hurt. These are happy times when events are greater than the men that are placed at their head. It is something to represent the first state that has thrown off its slavery. The immense masses of opinion now afloat upon the surface of the political society of Belgium forced into collusion by the ferment and kicking against each other. It requires a cool head and a firm hand to wield the sceptre, and Leopold seems to have both, and has a fine career before him. On the king’s visit to Verviers, he said to the bourgmestre, “Qu’il protegerait toujours l’industrie.” “Sire,” replied the burgomaster, “il n’y en est pas besoin ça va bien comme ça.” The king laughed much at the naïveté of this good fellow,” and this is the essence of all the philosophy of commerce—laissez nous faire.
October.—Just returned to London, and St.
James’ Street, after the most delightful tour up the Rhine
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