Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

chassis couvert de papier en lambeaux, qui cachait la tristesse de ce foyer désolé; le déchirures dont il était criblé
laissaient échapper des bruits estranges, des grelottements plaintiffs, des cris étouffés. C’étaient ses pauvre petits
enfans qui couraient se cacher dans cette retraite, à l’arrivée d’un étranger, comme des souris dans leur trou; car ils
étaient tous nus!... Et, au milieu de cette scène poignante, vous apparaissait un homme plein de grandeur, de
stoïcisme et de sérénité.
[It was to the great Convent of the Visitation of St Mary, so deserted, so icy, so melancholy, that the wretched artist
had come for shelter, with his seven children and his wife! To find him it was necessary to enter by the cloister door.
The visitor crossed a damp and ruined gallery… at the end of this gallery a wooden stair case, in the open air… led
to a dusty and decrepit attic. This vast antechamber was inhabited by an extensive family of pet birds which hardly
moved to let the visitor through to the door of a study, the only more or less habitable corner in this vast space where
the four winds met. The Heart contracted horribly on entering the room. Valuable works of art, rich and curious
manuscripts, were cast hugger-mugger on the table, on the mantelpiece, on the chairs, on the ground. In winter
when, frozen by the north wind, you put your hand on the stove, the iron froze your hand, for there was no fire. No
fire in the grate either: the window frame quivered, covered with strips of paper to conceal the wretchedness of this
desolate home; the shreds with which it was heaped gave off strange noises, plaintive shiverings, stifled cries. It was
his poor little children who ran to hide themselves in this sanctum at the approach of a stranger, like mice in their
hole, for they were stark naked!... and, in the midst of this affecting scene, you beheld a man full of dignity, of
stoicism and serenity. ] 71
Some of this is familiar. The profusion of objects, the chaos, the mingling of the precious
with the worthless, but overall the impression is very different from the home life of the English
or Scottish antiquary. There is nothing staged about the way Langlois lives, nothing funny about
him. The poverty is real. The cold is real and so is the nakedness of the children. Indeed in itself
the obtrusion of family into what, in the British antiquarian interior, is a celibate male space
inhabited by the antiquary alone or in occasional company with a like-minded friend, marks a
significant contrast. The objects Langlois has around him have not been bought from brokers’
shops in Soho but rescued from violent social disorder. As Notre Dame is to Waverley, more
lurid more socially realistic, less polite, so is Langlois to Walter Scott. He is not domesticated, as
the British antiquary is, both in art and in life. The Englishman Benjamin Ferrey noticed the
difference when he met Langlois, remarking that: ‘In [England]... things are rather different; it
71 Richard, ‘E-H Langlois’, 1840, pp. 8-10.
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