This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Oct. 21, 1939.
There is a strange fascination in an old manuscript. I wrote once about having one of Burns’ letters in my hand when I was in the federal library in Ottawa, and how I ran my fingers reverently over the letter, with a tight feeling in my heart.
A visitor expects to find precious things in that great treasure house — but here in Gordon Head I got a surprise last night.
Some of the neighbours had come in, and we were talking about the anxious crowds waiting for news all over the world — these common people who are so often right in their judgment and feeling.
One of the neighbours quite casually said: “An ancestor of ours was in Paris during the revolution in 1789 and she recorded it in her diary. She, an Englishwoman, wrote that her heart was touched by the appearance of the crowds storming the Bastille. She knew they were right. She wrote: ‘The spirit of the people I revere. They are making a glorious struggle against arbitrary power.’ And so they were even then, 150 years ago, the people were right.”
I asked about this diary. Who was the writer? Had it been published? Where was it?
There seemed to be a little discussion as to just where it was. It had come through many hands — but one of the sisters said she could find it. It had come down through the generations, carefully preserved. Copies had been made of it, but she had the original.
The next day she generously brought it over, and I have read every word of the flowing script with pleasure. The writer was a remarkable woman, who made the trip to Paris by chaises in 1789, leaving Warminster June 23. She had some members of her family with her, but these were kept in the background while she wrote her observations with a free hand.
She visits cathedrals, libraries, inns and parks, and describes them with a wealth of colourful detail. In a foreword she explains that her grandchildren and great-grandchild might be glad to read what she has written, which “may have many imperfections but is correct with respect to facts.”
Here in this book, more than 150 years ago, this English woman speaks her mind, and a very clear mind it is. At Southampton she attended church. The congregation consisted of two old men, one old woman, Madame Estlin and friend. The curate was upset by the presence of strangers and lost his place. When he did find it, he proceeded rapidly.
“It is a sad mockery,” she writes, “to hurry over religious devotions in this slovenly way. Better not to pray at all, than pray thus.”
At Dieppe, Madame Estlin describes the dress of the women. They wear long, flowered linen cloaks, and walk everywhere without hats, “even early in the morning.”
Her party proceeded by asses to Madame de la Motters’ country house at La Folie, and she “likes her mount prodigiously and cannot help thinking that asses are more adapted for women, more delicate and feminine than great head-strong horses, besides being much safer.”
They visit the monastery of the Benedictines founded by William the Conqueror, and the Church of St. Helen, where he lies buried. In the monastery there is every comfort and luxury for the monks, so Madame Estlin does not know what “mortification of the flesh” means here, unless it is that the monks are denied the company and conversation of “us who are politely dominated by the best part of the human race.”
From the monastery she went to the nunnery, founded by Matilda, wife of William, and is shocked by more wealth, more grandeur.
“Shocking reflection,” she write, “that the riches of a nation should be heaped upon altars and thrown away upon enthusiasts, whilst the poor actually want for bread.”
When her party reached Paris they found there had been a revolt and they were requested to turn back. Versailles was worse than Paris, so they turned back presumably, but entered Paris by another route and reached their hotel.
The revolt, they found, was caused by the downfall of Mr. Necker and the Duke of Orleans. These two aristocrats had joined the People’s Party, and so had been sent to jail. The indignant people had broken into shops were arms were sold, armed themselves, disarmed the guards — many soldiers deserted to join the people. Several convents were broken into and the corn found there sold in the public market.
Soldiers were quartered in the churches.
“When we ventured out in a coach, we were stopped eight times. We went to see the king’s botanical gardens and from the Belvedere, which is elevated, we saw a sign which made my heart rejoice. The Bastille stormed and taken! Glorious moment! Down goes that horrid monument of arbitrary power which has so long been the disgrace of the country.”
Her story goes on to tell of the poor creatures who have been imprisoned and forgotten in the Bastille. One, Count Dausch, who had been confined to his dungeon for 40 years, came out blinking at the light, a human skeleton, almost devoid of reason. It was surely time for a revolution.
Madame Estlin and her party put on the cockade of the people, but on the way back, when meeting a regiment of Irish mercenary soldiers on their way to Paris to fight for the royal party, Madame Estlin covers her cockade, not wishing to be subjected to the insults of this unintelligent body of men, who are ready to fight for hire.
But as they passed her coach, one of the officers caught a glimpse of a little end of the cockade, and putting his head into the coach, he saluted and shouted in French: “Long live the people.”
She concludes her diary by writing in a translation of an editorial that appeared in a Paris paper July 15, 1789. It is a curious example of highly emotional writing, soaring into heights of eloquence. The battle for liberty seems to have been won. But alas for human hopes. Madame Estlin adds a sad little note 13 years later: “The friend of humanity, of temperate reform, of national liberty grieved at this sad disappointment of all hopes and expectations.”
So the record ends. And we are feeling the same pangs of disappointment ourselves now. We thought we were travelling forward, too, here in Canada, 1939, but on Sept. 1 we stepped back into the realm of force again, forced back because one part of the world had been allowed to lapse into barbarism.
We thought we could be spectators of this subjugation of a whole nation to force. Now we know there are no spectators. We are all in the play.
