Among literary travellers a place must be assigned to Lady Morgan (born 1777), the novelist, who in her books of travel exhibits most of the qualities which lend a characteristic zest to her fictions. She and her husband, Sir Charles Morgan, visited France in 1815, and compounded a book upon it, which, as France had been for so many years shut against English tourists, produced a considerable sensation, and was eagerly read. Its sketches are very bright and amusing, and its naïve egotism was pardonable, considering the flatteries which Parisian society had heaped upon its author. Its liberal opinions, which the Conservatives of to-day would pronounce milk-and-water, fluttered the dove-cotes of Toryism under the régime of Lord Liverpool, and provoked Wilson Croker, the
"Rigby" of Lord Beaconsfield's "Coningsby," to fall upon it tooth and nail. Lady Morgan revenged herself by putting her scurrilous attaché into her next novel, "Florence Macarthy," where he figures as Crawley. In 1819 the book-making
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couple repaired to Italy, and, of course, a sojourn in Italy meant a book upon Italy, which Lord Byron declared to be very faithful. It is said to have produced a greater impression than even the book upon France; and as a tolerably accurate representation of the moral and political condition of Italy at the period of the Bourbon restoration, it has still some value.
In 1830 Lady Morgan's fecund pen compiled a second book upon France, which, indeed, seemed to exist in order that Lady Morgan might write upon it. This second book, like its predecessor, is cleverly and smartly written; it contains many lively descriptions, and some just criticisms upon men and things. Names appear upon each page, with a personal sketch or a mot, which makes the reader at once of their society. There is a visit to Béranger, the great French lyrist, in the prison of La Force; and there are two memorable dinners, one at the Comte de Segur's, with a record of the conversation, as graphic and amusing as if it were not on topics half a century old; the other is a dinner at Baron Rothschild's, dressed by the great Carême, who had erected a column of the most ingenious confectionery architecture, and inscribed Lady Morgan's name upon it in spun sugar. Very complimentary, but, unfortunately, sadly prophetic! It is only upon "spun sugar" that her name was inscribed by herself or others.
Mrs. Mary Somerville, the illustrious astronomer and physicist, would not have claimed for herself the distinction
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of traveller, nor has she written any complete book of travel; but there are sketches of scenery in her "Personal Recollections" which make one wish that she had done so. And, indeed, the fine colouring of the pictures which occur in her "Physical Geography" show that she had the artist's eye and the artist's descriptive faculty, both so essential to the full enjoyment of travel. Much clear and forcible writing, with many vivacious observations, will be found in the "Sketches and Characteristics of Hindustan," published by Miss Emma Roberts in 1835. More minute and exact are the details which Mrs. Postans has collected in reference to the mode of life, the religion, and the old forms of society and government in one of the north-western provinces of India, under the title of "Cutch."
It includes a very animated account of a Suttee, that cruel mode of compulsory self-sacrifice which the British Government has since prohibited. On this occasion the widow, a remarkably handsome woman, apparently about thirty, seems really to have been a willing victim, and behaved with the utmost composure.
"Accompanied by the officiating Brahmin, the widow walked seven times round the pyre, repeating the usual mantras, or prayers, strewing rice and cowries on the ground, and sprinkling water from her hand over the bystanders, who believe this to be efficacious in preventing disease and in expiating committed sins. She then removed her jewels and presented them to her
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relations, saying a few words to each with a calm, soft smile of encouragement and hope. The Brahmins then presented her with a lighted torch, bearing which
'Fresh as a flower just blown,
And warm with life, her youthful pulses playing,'
she stepped through the fatal door, and sat within the pile. The body of her husband, wrapped in rich kincob, was then carried seven times round the pile, and finally laid across her knees. Thorns and grass were piled over the door, and the European officers present insisted that free space should be left, as it was hoped the poor victim might yet relent, and rush from her fiery prison to the protection so freely offered. The command was readily obeyed; the strength of a child would have sufficed to burst the frail barrier which confined her, and a breathless pause succeeded; but the woman's constancy was faithful to the last. Not a sigh broke the death-like silence of the crowd, until a slight smoke curling from the summit of the pyre, and then a tongue of flame darting with bright and lightning-like rapidity into the clear blue sky, told us that the sacrifice was complete. Fearlessly had this courageous woman fired the pile, and not a groan had betrayed to us the moment when her spirit fled. At sight of the flame a fiendish shout of exultation rent the air, the tom-toms sounded, the people clapped their hands with delight as the evidence of their murderous work burst on their view; whilst the English spectators of this sad
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scene withdrew, bearing deep compassion in their hearts, to philosophize as best they might on a custom so fraught with horror, so incompatible with reason, and so revolting to human sympathy. The pile continued to burn for three hours; but from its form it is supposed that almost immediate suffocation must have terminated the sufferings of the unhappy victim."
There is a very charming book, brightly written, and dealing with an interesting people, which reaches very high in the literature of travel. We refer to Lady Eastlake's "Residence on the Shores of the Baltic, described in a series of Letters," in which, with a polished pen and a quick observation, she sets before us the patriarchal simplicity of life and honest character of the Esthonians. Travel-books by ladies were rare at the time that Lady Eastlake (then Miss Rigby) wrote, and the success of her work was influenced, no doubt, by this rarity; but its reputation may well rest upon its genuine merit. Only, justice compels us to say that writing of almost equal merit, sometimes of superior, is now poured out every year, nay, every month, by adventurers of the "other sex." A female traveller has ceased to be a rara avis; delicately-nurtured women now climb Mont Blanc or penetrate into the Norwegian forests, or cross the Pacific, or traverse sandy deserts, or visit remote isles, in company with their husbands and brothers, or
"unprotected." This great and rapid increase in the number of female travellers is partly due, no doubt, to the greater facilities of locomotion;
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but we believe it is also due to the greater freedom which women of late years have successfully claimed, and to the consequent development of powers and faculties, their possession of which was long ignored or denied.
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