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Title: Napoleon's British visitors and captives, 1801-1815
Author: Alger, John Goldworth
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Napoleon's British visitors and captives, 1801-1815" ***
AND CAPTIVES, 1801-1815 ***
NAPOLEON’S BRITISH VISITORS
NAPOLEON’S
BRITISH VISITORS AND CAPTIVES
1801–1815
BY JOHN GOLDWORTH ALGER
AUTHOR OF THE ‘NEW PARIS SKETCH BOOK’
‘ENGLISHMEN IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION’
‘GLIMPSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION’
AND ‘PARIS IN 1789–94’
New York
JAMES POTT AND COMPANY
1904
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY, 1
CHAPTER II
THE VISITORS
No Thoroughfare--Occasional Visitors--Negotiations--Fox
--M.P.’s--Ex- and Prospective M.P.’s--Peers and their
Families--Baronets--Soldiers--Sailors--Functionaries--
Lawyers--Doctors--Clergymen--Savants--Artists--Actors--
Inventors--Claimants and Men of Business--Writers on
France--Other Authors--Residents--Ancestors--Fugitives--
Emigrés, 12
CHAPTER III
AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS
Parisian Attractions--Napoleon--Foreign
Notabilities--Mutual Impressions--Marriages and
Deaths--Return Visits, 126
CHAPTER IV
CAPTIVITY
The Rupture--Detentions--Flights and Narrow Escapes--Life
at Verdun--Extortion--Napoleon’s Rigour--M.P.’s--The
_Argus_--Escapes and Recaptures--Diplomatists
--Liberations--Indulgences--Women and Children--Captures
in War--Rumbold--Foreign Visitors--British
Travellers--Deaths--The Last Stage--French Leave--Unpaid
Debts, 174
CHAPTER V
TWO RESTORATIONS
The Restoration--Aristocrats and Commoners--Unwelcome
Guests--Wellington in Danger--Misgivings--Napoleonic
Emblems--Spectacles--Visits to Elba--Egerton’s Siege--St.
Helena Eyewitnesses and Survivors, 271
APPENDIX
_A._ MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, 316
_B._ PEERS AND THEIR FAMILIES, 317
_C._ LORD J. RUSSELL AT ELBA (_narrative now first
published_), 319
INDEX OF NAMES, AND LIST OF OTHER VISITORS, 325
I
INTRODUCTORY
The French Revolution, of which--philosophers regarding it as still
unfinished--this book is really a chapter, produced a greater
dislocation of individuals and classes than had been known in modern
times. It scattered thousands of Frenchmen over Europe, some in fact as
far as America and India, while, on the other hand, it attracted men of
all nationalities to France. It was mainly a centrifugal, but it was
partly a centripetal force, especially during the Empire; never before
or since was France so much as then the focus of political and social
life. Men of all ranks shared in both these movements. If princes and
nobles were driven from France there were some who were attracted
thither even in the early stages of the Revolution, while Napoleon
later on drew around him a galaxy of foreign satellites.
To begin with the centrifugal action, history furnishes no parallel to
such an overturn of thrones and flight of monarchs. With the exception
of England, protected by the sea, Scandinavia and Russia by distance,
and Turkey by Oriental lethargy, every dynasty of Europe was shaken or
shattered by the volcano. The Bourbons became wanderers on the face of
the earth. Louis XVI.’s two brothers went hither and thither
before finding a secure resting-place on British soil. The elder,
‘Monsieur,’ Comte de Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII.),
fled from Paris simultaneously with his crowned brother, but, more
fortunate than poor Louis, safely reached Belgium. The younger, Comte
d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.), had preceded him by nine
months. Both re-entered France in 1792 with the German and Royalist
invaders, but had soon to retreat with them. Monsieur betook himself
first to Ham in Westphalia, and next to Verona, but the Doge of Venice,
fearful of displeasing revolutionary France, ‘invited’ him to withdraw.
Russian hospitality likewise proved ephemeral, but in England, first
at Gosfield, then at Wanstead, and lastly at Hartwell, he was able
quietly to await the downfall of the Corsican usurper. D’Artois found
halting-places at Venice, Mantua, Brussels, and St. Petersburg, and for
a few days he was a second time on French soil in the island of Yeu;
but the failure of the expedition to western France soon obliged him
to recross the Channel, where Holyrood and eventually London afforded
him a refuge. Of the jealousies of these two exiled princes, and of
the mortifications and dissensions of their retinues, it is needless
to speak. The Duke of Orleans (the future Louis Philippe), deserting
the Republican army along with Dumouriez, after teaching in a school
in Switzerland, and after a visit to America, where he spent a night
in an Indian wigwam, also repaired to England. There he was doomed to
long years of inactivity, though he would fain have joined the English
forces in Spain, in which case, as having fought against France, he
could scarcely have grasped the French crown. The Duc de Bourbon
likewise settled in England, and it would have been well had his
unfortunate son, the Duc d’Enghien, followed his example. The king’s
two aunts, one of them the reputed mother of the Comte de Narbonne,
himself escorting them and destined to ten years of exile, found their
way to Rome, but driven thence by the French, after many buffetings
they ended their wanderings and their lives at Trieste.
These banished French princes had the doubtful consolation of seeing
other regal or princely personages equally storm-tost. The Statthalter
of Holland had to pass many years of banishment in England, and
even stooped to soliciting a pecuniary indemnity from Napoleon. The
Austrian and Prussian monarchs, though not actually driven out of
their dominions, saw their capitals occupied by French armies, and had
to bow to the stern dictates of the Conqueror. The rulers of German
principalities were swept away by the hurricane. The Spanish royal
family were consigned to the custody of Talleyrand at Valençay. The
Portuguese princes took refuge in Brazil. Italian monarchs fared no
better. The sovereigns of Piedmont had to retire to the island of
Sardinia, the only possession remaining to them. The King of Naples
was likewise driven from his continental dominions, British protection
ensuring him a footing in Sicily. Italian dukes were rudely supplanted
by Napoleon’s relatives or other puppets. Ferdinand III. of
Tuscany was driven to Vienna, though subsequently assigned a duchy
in Germany. Even the Papacy, which had long been unscathed by war or
revolution, was overwhelmed by the current. Forced away from Rome, one
Pope died in the French fortress of Valence, while another became a
prisoner at Savona.
In France not merely the princes, but almost the entire nobility, were
fugitives. England, Germany, Switzerland, and Russia were inundated
with aristocrats, who at first, counting on a speedy and triumphant
return, formed little colonies, in one of which Fanny Burney found a
husband; but the exhaustion of their resources soon scattered them
hither and thither. Some were descendants of Jacobite refugees, who
found shelter in the very country whence their ancestors had fled.
Adversity, in this as in other cases, brought out the best qualities
of some and the worst of others. Frivolity and gravity, self-denial
and selfishness, heroism and poltroonery, intrigue and probity, honour
and unscrupulousness, existed side by side. Some formed royalist corps
subsidised by foreign governments, or actually joined foreign armies,
persuading themselves that they were thus fighting not against France
but against a usurpation. The few who went to America, whether from
choice, like the epicure Brillat Savarin, or from compulsion like
Talleyrand, were spared this sad necessity of accepting foreign alms
or serving foreign states. The Comte d’Estaing took office under an
Indian rajah. Reduced to penury, those who remained in the Old World
resorted to every conceivable expedient. The women were naturally the
greatest sufferers. Delicate fingers which had never done a stroke of
work had to busy themselves in dressing dolls, in embroidery, in flower
or portrait painting, in nursing the sick, and even in milking cows
and making butter for sale. Men brought up in luxury deemed themselves
fortunate if they could earn a livelihood as journalists, translators,
or teachers. More frequently they had to become book-keepers or
tailors, to keep wine shops, to sing at music-halls, to act as
prompters at theatres, and even to be water-carriers. Some, alas! with
the connivance at least for a time of their princes, forged assignats.
Welcomed in some quarters, mobbed or even expelled as vagabonds in
others, they had to exchange palaces for cottages, sumptuous diet
for the roughest fare, jewels and finery for rags. No wonder that
humiliation and anguish drove some to suicide, and the lives of many
others must have been shortened by privations. Yet many, with the
traditional light-heartedness of Frenchmen,
‘Laughed the sense of misery away.’
Besides the _noblesse_, which included the episcopate, there were
thousands of priests and hundreds of nuns, who, fleeing from relentless
persecution, found succour from Protestant governments and Protestant
philanthropy. There were also ex-deputies and publicists, whom the
dungeon, and probably the guillotine, would otherwise have claimed.
Lally Tollendal, the younger Mirabeau, Mounier, and Montlosier, had
sat in the National or Constituent Assembly. Mallet du Pan, Etienne
Dumont, Antraigues, driven to suicide, Lafayette, consigned to an
Austrian fortress, and Dumouriez, offering military counsels to the
English, may also be mentioned. It need hardly be said that wealthy
foreigners like Quintin Craufurd, who had become numerous in Paris
before the Revolution, were frightened away, leaving their property to
be confiscated, for the Jacobins did not even recognise their right to
quit France, which had become not merely inhospitable but dangerous.
Not until the Consulate and the Empire did France again attract wealthy
foreigners, or recover a portion of its then much impoverished nobility.
As for the immigration, though far less important in numbers and
quality, it was not inconsiderable. Men of all nationalities hurried
to Paris between 1789 and 1792 to see or serve the Revolution. There
were English men and women like Paine (or shall we reckon him an
American?), George Grieve, General Money, Thomas Christie, John Oswald,
Helen Williams, and Mary Wollstonecraft. There were Americans like
Barlow, Eustace, Paul Jones, and Joshua Barney; Germans like Cloots,
Trenck, and George Forster; Belgians and Dutchmen like de Kock, father
of the novelist, and Proly, a natural son of the Austrian statesman
Kaunitz; Poles like Wittinghoff; Russians like Strogonoff; Italians
like Rotondo, Cerutti, and Buonarotti; Spaniards like Olavide and
Miranda. Most of these men embraced the cause of the Revolution as a
religion, and were quite ready to fight in its behalf, in defence as
they imagined of liberty and enlightenment, even against their native
countries. Some of them paid the penalty of their enthusiasm by the
dungeon or the guillotine. It is true that when Napoleon seized the
reins such illusions could scarcely have remained, but even then there
were numerous foreigners eager to serve him for the sake of lucre or
adventure, not to speak of Irish refugees and Poles, whom he lured by
the expectation of achieving their independence. Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg, little foreseeing his marriage with our Princess Charlotte
or his elevation to the crown of Belgium, was anxious to become one of
his aides-de-camp. Some men fought by turns for and against him. The
Revolution indeed, though it ended by making Europe nationalist, made
it for a time cosmopolitan. Napoleon did much, moreover, to eradicate
patriotism, especially in the military class. Hence Bernadotte was not
the only soldier who changed sides from personal pique or according
to the prospects of victory, and he did not even imagine that by his
appearance as an invader he would disqualify himself for supplanting
Napoleon on the French throne. Jomini, a Swiss, after serving Napoleon
in high rank, offered his sword to Russia, though Napoleon was
compelled to acquit him of having treacherously revealed his military
secrets. And Talleyrand, while accepting Napoleon’s pay, intrigued
with his foes, doubtless salving his conscience, if indeed he had a
conscience, with the notion that he was thus promoting the interests of
France. Few men were so scrupulous as the Duc de Richelieu, a future
French statesman, in stipulating that Russia should not send him to
fight against his countrymen. As to the rank and file, they had of
course no choice. Belgians, Dutchmen, Germans, Poles, Italians, had to
join or combat French armies according to the political exigencies of
the moment or the periphery of French rule. Napoleon’s armies were thus
a medley of nationalities, and the only wonder is that defections so
rarely occurred.
Such was the France, such the Europe, to which this book relates. It
is a chapter in the history both of England and of Napoleon. We first
see Englishmen pouring over to Paris during the interlude or truce
of Amiens, to make or renew acquaintance with it after ten years
of hostilities, or to recover confiscated property. Peers, M.P.’s,
soldiers and sailors, philosophers, scholars, merchants, were all eager
to see the young Corsican who had already accomplished so much and was
evidently marked out to accomplish much more. We next see hundreds of
these non-combatants detained for eleven years on the paltry pretext
of their being liable to militia service at home, and in defiance of
all international courtesies. We see some of them not merely shifted
from place to place, now permitted to reside in Paris, now relegated to
provincial towns, but actually incarcerated in fortresses. We find the
British Government standing on principle, and declining to exchange the
thousands of French captives for these unfortunates, though there were
not wanting men who urged on it the expediency of stooping to deal with
Napoleon as with a mountain brigand or a barbarous chief, especially
as he was arbitrarily imprisoning without trial Frenchmen whom he
suspected or feared. We meet with cases of crying heartlessness among
these detentions, relieved only by a very rare gleam of humanity or
magnanimity. We then see the sudden collapse of this gigantic tyranny
and the liberation, as from an immense aviary suddenly thrown open,
of grey-headed and despondent captives. This flight of caged birds is
quickly followed by, we might almost say is coincident with, an influx
of fresh visitors, mostly so unmindful of the past as to take for
granted the stability of the restored monarchy. We see a few tourists
repairing to Elba to get a glimpse of the dethroned Emperor, one or
two of them sagacious enough to forebode that reappearance on French
soil which was to scare away nearly all their countrymen. The curtain
falls on the Hundred Days, but it is just raised to show us Napoleon
pathetically trying with little success at St. Helena to master the
language of his jailers.
The centenary of the Peace of Amiens seemed a suitable occasion for
writing, not a political history of that truce, for on this there is
nothing new to be said, but an account of its social aspects, of the
visits paid to Paris by Englishmen, which had never before been so
numerous, of the impression made on each other by guests and hosts,
and of the experiences of those who on the resumption of hostilities
found themselves detained as prisoners. French writers have shown how
Napoleon treated his own subjects; it completes the picture of him to
see how he treated Englishmen, who never, except his guardians at St.
Helena when jailer had become prisoner, came into such close relations
with him. I may fairly claim to have broken new ground. It is true that
I gave two brief chapters on this subject in 1889 in my _Englishmen
in the French Revolution_, but I have since met in the French
National Archives and elsewhere with a mass of additional materials
which enable me to go into much greater detail. The starting-point of
my researches was the discovery, for which and for other communications
I am indebted to M. Léonce Grasilier, of a register of the principal
foreign arrivals.[1] I have also been favoured with information from
three correspondents in reply to questions respecting their ancestors,
and the _Dictionary of National Biography_ has of course much
assisted me, though in some instances the dates of birth given or left
in doubt by it may be supplied or corrected by the register above
mentioned, while visits to Paris have sometimes escaped the notice of
its contributors. I have likewise consulted at the Record Office the
despatches of Anthony Merry, the predecessor of Lord Whitworth at the
Paris Embassy, though these, like the Whitworth series edited by Mr.
Oscar Browning, seldom stoop from political to social incidents. But
the most vivid picture of the life and treatment of the captives is
gained from the police bulletin daily prepared for Napoleon and now
preserved in the French Archives.[2] They also throw a flood of light
on the character of Napoleon’s internal rule, yet, so far as I know, no
French historian has as yet utilised them, and I have every reason to
believe that I am the first English writer who has consulted them. They
have furnished me with most of the data respecting the captives.
As for printed sources, the reports of the Historical Manuscripts
Commission have thus far brought to light but few letters written by
visitors to their friends, yet many of these may still be in existence.
The literature of the Verdun and other captives is disappointing.
Sturt, Forbes, Pinkerton, Lawrence, and Blayney necessarily give
individual experiences rather than a general history of the detentions.
Not one of these writers, moreover, ventured on keeping a journal,
which would have been obviously unsafe, and some of them, publishing
their recollections while comrades were still in captivity, naturally
omitted details which might have lessened the pity felt in England by
revealing the failings of a small minority, or which might have goaded
the jailers to increased rigour. The police bulletins, on the other
hand, written for perusal by one man, a man whom it was dangerous to
attempt to hoodwink, had no reason for reticence.
II
THE VISITORS
No Thoroughfare--Occasional Visitors--Negotiations--Fox--M.
P.’s--Ex-and Prospective M. P.’s--Peers and their
Families--Baronets--Soldiers--Sailors--Functionaries--Lawyers
--Doctors--Clergymen--Savants--Artists--Actors--Inventors--
Claimants and Men of Business--Writers on France--Other
Authors--Residents--Ancestors--Fugitives--_Emigrés_.
The Peace of Amiens reopened France, and not merely France but central
and southern Europe, to British travellers. Since the outbreak of
hostilities in 1793 the ‘grand tour’ had been suspended. Maritime
ascendency, indeed, had always ensured our communications with
North Germany and Italy, but the risk of capture by privateers such
as befell Richard (afterwards the Marquis) Wellesley, the Duke of
Wellington’s elder brother, on his return from Lisbon in 1794, coupled
with intermittent campaigns and conquests by France, had virtually
put a stop to foreign travel. Young noblemen in charge of tutors or
‘bear-wards’ had ceased to traverse the Continent, and French schools
had ceased to receive British students. The schools, moreover, had
mostly been closed by the Revolution. An Arthur Wellesley, even if
inclined, could not have studied horsemanship at Angers, nor could a
Gilbert Elliot have been the comrade of a Mirabeau at Fontainebleau.
So also as to girls. Pentemont Abbey in Paris, where daughters of such
aristocratic families as Annesley, Hobart, De Ros and De Bathe had been
educated between 1780 and 1789, was shut, preparatory to conversion
into a barrack,[3] while the English Austin convent, where for 150
years Towneleys, Dormers, and Fermors had been pupils, sometimes
when adults returning as nuns, though still in the possession of the
community, had not yet been reopened as a school. London newspapers
complacently calculated the money thus prevented from leaving the
country.
It it true that a few of the Englishmen arrested as hostages for Toulon
in the autumn of 1793, though released after the Terror, had been
unable or unwilling to quit France. Christopher Potter, ex-M.P. for
Colchester, in 1796 offered Lord Malmesbury, on behalf of Barras, to
secure peace for a bribe of half a million. Captain Henry Swinburne,
commissioner for exchanging prisoners, a collateral ancestor of the
poet, likewise found in Paris about that date Mrs. Grace Dalrymple
Elliott, ex-mistress of ‘Egalité’ Orleans, who remained till 1801,
Admiral Rodney’s Portuguese wife and her two daughters, Richard
Chenevix, grand-nephew of a Bishop of Waterford, Walter Smythe, brother
of the famous Mrs. Fitzherbert, two sons of the Whitehall preacher
Charles Este, and George Hamilton, a Jamaica planter whose wife, a
daughter of Lord Leven, was afterwards, as we shall see, the companion
of Sir Herbert Croft; but of course there had been scarcely any
fresh arrivals. Indeed it was illegal for British subjects, unless
with special permission, to cross over to France.[4] They were liable
at home to punishment for the attempt, just as they were liable if
they reached the French shore to being prevented from landing or to
incarceration as spies. Lord Camelford, Pitt’s eccentric cousin, who
threatened if Horne Tooke was refused admission as a clergyman to the
seat for Old Sarum,[5] to nominate in his place his negro servant--a
black man in lieu of a black coat--was arrested in February 1799 when
on the point of crossing the Channel; but as his object was to examine
the Mediterranean ports he was liberated, being, however, deprived of
his naval post. We shall hear of him again. Boyd and Ker, bankers of
whom too we shall hear again, made their way back to Paris in 1797 in
the hope of recovering confiscated property, but were promptly packed
off. A London newspaper of that year mentions that two men who had
paid a Prussian captain eighty guineas for a passage from Dover to
Calais were also unceremoniously expelled. Braham, however, and Miss
Storace got to Paris and gave concerts in 1797. Thomas Hardy, the
radical shoemaker, managed to send Thomas Paine a pair of shoes so good
that Paine lent them as a model to a Parisian craftsman, but Hardy
would not have found it easy to carry them over himself. Fishermen and
smugglers, it is true, kept up intermittent communications, conveying
newspapers or merchandise, but they seldom ran the risk of taking
passengers. Even fishing-boats, moreover, which on both sides had been
unmolested, were in January 1801 declared by the British Government
liable to capture; but Bonaparte’s threat of recalling Otto, the
commissioner of exchanges, from a country where the laws and usages
of war were disregarded and violated,[6] coincidentally with the
resignation of Pitt on account of George III.’s objection to
Catholic emancipation, led to this order being rescinded. Indeed the
explanations given on this point by the new Addington Administration
paved the way for peace negotiations.
There had been, it is true, isolated opportunities for Englishmen
of forming or communicating impressions of France. Malmesbury[7]
had not only been at Paris in 1796, but at Lille in 1797, on both
occasions receiving an offer from Barras through a Bostonian named
Melville--probably the son of Major Thomas Melville, one of the Boston
tea-party, the last American to wear a cocked hat--to conclude peace
for £450,000.[8] Malmesbury[9] and his staff on their return assuredly
found much avidity for information on the France transformed by the
Revolution. That staff consisted at Paris of George Ellis, of the
_Anti-Jacobin_, Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, of whom we shall
hear again, and James Talbot, afterwards Secretary of Legation in
Switzerland.[10] To avoid being mobbed they were obliged to wear the
republican cockade whenever they appeared in the street. At Lille
Malmesbury was accompanied not only by Ellis and Talbot, but by Henry
Wellesley, afterwards Earl Cowley, and by Lord Morpeth, afterwards
Earl of Carlisle. Not merely Swinburne but Captain James Cotes and
General Knox were also sent to Paris between 1796 and 1799 to effect
an exchange of prisoners. They must have been eagerly questioned on
their return. The notorious Governor Wall, who, living in the south of
France, had been refused service in the French army,[11] went back to
England in 1797, but clandestinely, and it would have been better for
him had he remained on the Continent. He had to conceal his identity
and his experiences.[12] But Sir Sidney Smith had escaped from the
Temple in 1798 after two years’ incarceration, and Napoleon in the
following year released some English prisoners, sending them home with
professions of a desire for peace. Sir Robert Barclay, a diplomatist
captured at sea, was also, after half an hour’s conversation, liberated
by him. Lord Carysfort, whose mutinous crew had taken him to Brest, was
likewise permitted, in November 1800, after nine months’ detention,
to visit his family on parole. Masquerier managed, moreover, in that
year to visit Paris and to sketch Napoleon’s portrait for exhibition in
London. Tallien, on the other hand, captured by the English on his way
back from Egypt, had been allowed in March 1800 to return to France,
where he could give a glowing account of the attentions paid him by the
Opposition leaders, and of his presence, the observed of all observers,
at parliamentary debates. On re-entering Paris he found that his
handsome wife, Thérése Cabarrus, had become the mistress of the army
contractor Ouvrard, and she never rejoined him.
But, broadly speaking, Englishmen and Frenchmen had for nearly a
decade been perfect strangers, so that a British cartoon entitled ‘The
First Kiss this Ten Years’ depicted Monsieur François stooping to kiss
Britannia with the words, ‘Madam, permit me to pay my profound esteem
to your engaging person and to seal on your divine lips my everlasting
attachment.’ To which Britannia replies, ‘Monsieur, you are truly a
well-bred gentleman, and though you make me blush, yet you kiss so
delicately that I could not refuse you, though I was sure that you
would deceive me again.’
The peace preliminaries were signed on the 1st October 1801. England,
without waiting for the ratifications, released her 14,000 French
prisoners,[13] and on the 23rd October Boulogne, for the first time for
nearly nine years, saw the arrival of an English vessel bringing 160 of
these captives.
It is not my purpose to enter into the details of the negotiations, nor
need I dwell on the rejoicings for the peace. Cobbett in London had his
windows smashed for refusing to illuminate, and the jury recommended
to mercy three of the delinquents, but Cobbett, though invited by
the judge to join in this recommendation, declined, stating that he
expected justice. The London mob took the horses out of Otto’s carriage
and drew it, while Lauriston, grand-nephew of the famous speculator
Law,[14] on coming over with the ratifications received ovations. On
the 1st November Lord Cornwallis, ex-Governor of India, accompanied
by his son, Lord Brome (afterwards the second and last marquis),
by his illegitimate son, Colonel (eventually General Sir Miles)
Nightingale,[15] his son-in-law, Captain Singleton, Colonel Littlehales
(afterwards Sir E. Littlehales Baker), and Francis (brother of Sir
John) Moore, started for Paris.[16]
Amiens had been chosen for the negotiations, but Napoleon, evidently
wishing Lord Cornwallis to see how firmly the Consulate was
established, had invited him to come round by Paris on the plea of
showing him the illuminations of the 9th November in celebration of the
peace with Austria. The road from Calais to Paris, which had since 1793
been almost deserted, was hastily put in repair for him, and was soon
to be dotted with mail-coaches and post-chaises. Cornwallis arrived
on the 7th November; he alighted at the Hotel Grange Batelière, the
finest in Paris, it being an old mansion with spacious grounds, and
he was received by Napoleon on the 10th. Napoleon suggested to him
a reciprocal expulsion of foreign conspirators, the Bourbon princes
to be packed off by England, and the United Irishmen by France; but
Cornwallis naturally evaded so delicate a question. Napoleon did not
invite him to dinner, and did not rise to receive Lord Brome in his
box at the Opera, an incivility much commented upon. Cornwallis gave
a dinner on the 16th to Lord Minto, who was on his way home from the
Vienna Embassy, and five other fellow-countrymen.
‘After dinner,’ says the _Times_, ‘the company went to the
Opera, where the performance was the _Mysteries of Isis_.
Every part of the house was so crowded that numbers were unable
to procure places. Some couplets were sung in celebration of
the union of the two nations, which excited an enthusiasm that
displayed itself by universal and repeated bursts of applause.
‘Lord Cornwallis was so extremely affected by the scene, that he
shed tears! On his rising to go away, the audience recommenced
their testimonies of applause. His Lordship showed how much he
was flattered by the reception he had met with, by bowing to
them in the most affecting manner. The following may be given as
a specimen of the verses sung upon this occasion:--
“Anglais, Français, restez unis,
Qu’à vos chants l’Univers réponde:
Quand de tels rivaux sont amis,
Qui peut troubler la paix du monde?”’
Cornwallis also dined with Talleyrand, and Francis James Jackson,
writing to Speaker Abbot (afterwards Lord Colchester), says:--
‘What do you think of Lord Cornwallis, with all his dignity of
decorum, dining the other day at a table of thirty covers with
the kept mistresses, and being obliged to hand out the ugliest
and frailest of them, because she was in keeping of the minister
for Foreign Affairs?’
On the 28th Cornwallis left for Amiens. There Joseph Bonaparte
conducted the negotiations, and he speaks highly of Cornwallis’s
straightforwardness. Cornwallis carried back with him to England
cotton-velvet goods, to show his countrymen the superiority of Amiens
looms, and the Calais municipality gave him a banquet before he
embarked.[17]
Anthony Merry, who had been Consul in Spain, had been sent to Paris
in July 1801, succeeding Cotes as Commissioner of Exchanges, but he
assisted Cornwallis at Amiens, and during his absence from Paris
Francis James Jackson, who had been Secretary of Legation first at
Madrid, then at Berlin, and afterwards at St. Petersburg, and had
been secretary to Pitt, acted as _chargé d’affaires_. Jackson
was accompanied by his brother George, to whom Parisian sights were
a novelty, and by Dawson Warren[18] and Hill as _attachés_.
Jackson, in reporting his arrival in November, stated that he had been
loaded with attentions such as ‘the most refined system of civility
could suggest.’ On the 4th January 1802 he presented his credentials
to Napoleon, who said, ‘I am very glad to see an English minister
here; it is essential to the civilisation of the world.’[19] Merry
returning from Amiens, Jackson left on the 18th April 1802,[20] and
Merry remained at the head of the embassy till December 1802. He was
reproached with giving no dinner on George III.’s birthday
on the 4th of June, but he was expecting to be superseded by Lord
Whitworth, and his stipend probably did not allow of much display.
The embassy was installed, as before the Revolution, in the Caraman
mansion, faubourg du Roule.
Whitworth, formerly at St. Petersburg, had been appointed ambassador
as early as April 1802, but on account of the delay in the nomination
of the French Envoy to London his instructions were not drawn up till
the 10th September, and he did not start till the 10th November. He
went by Southampton and Havre, and was accompanied by his newly-married
wife, the Duchess of Dorset, widow of the Ambassador to Paris of 1789,
and by her two daughters. Her son, the young Duke of Dorset, remained
at Harrow, where he was the schoolfellow and friend of Byron, but
as we shall see he went over to Paris for the Easter holidays.[21]
Whitworth’s staff consisted of his brother, Colonel Whitworth, James
Talbot, James Henry Mandeville,[22] Captain Edward Pierrepont,[23] and
Benjafield, with the Rev. Thomas Hodgson as chaplain, and Dr. Maclaurin
as physician. The Duchess of Dorset’s retention of her first husband’s
title greatly puzzled the Parisians, many of whom actually believed
that she was not married to Whitworth. According to Maria Edgeworth,
the latter had at Paris the same house, the same wife, and the same
horses as the Duke of Dorset had had in 1789, but the line should
doubtless be drawn at the horses. He took with him six carriages, one
of which had been the admiration of Londoners, though it was less
imposing than that taken over by a Dr. Brodum, whose object was to
promote the sale of his syrup for ensuring longevity. He presented his
credentials on the 6th December 1802, and remained as we shall see till
the 12th May 1803.[24]
The Dover and Calais mail packets did not recommence running till
the 18th November 1801, but English visitors had begun to arrive as
early as September or October, and Savary tells us that these pioneers
facilitated the conclusion of peace, for they returned with assurances
of the stability of the consular government. Napoleon on the 14th
October instructed Fouché freely to admit English visitors, taking
care, however, that they had Foreign Office passports, and were not
French _émigrés_. One of them unfortunately lost his life. Charles
John Clarke, of Hitchin Priory, had gone over with his wife. Their
only child had died two years before, and they sought relief for their
sorrow, intending to go on to Italy. Clarke was on a stand witnessing
the fireworks of the 9th November in the Tuileries gardens when it gave
way, and its eighty occupants were injured, Clarke so seriously, his
spine being fractured, that after lingering nearly a month he expired.
Napoleon sent his surgeon to make inquiries and offer his services,
stating that he should himself call as soon as the patient was well
enough to receive visitors. Clarke, who had been six years married,
was only thirty-one years of age. His widow, several years his junior,
carried his remains home.
Never before had there been such an influx of English visitors as
during these eighteen months. ‘All the idle captives of the land of
fogs,’ says M. Sorel, ‘shook their damp wings and prepared to take
their flight towards the regions of pleasure and brightness.’ Even the
influenza or _grippe_, which prevailed in January and February
1803, did not deter them, and they mostly escaped the malady, an escape
attributed to their being habituated to humidity. ‘Ours,’ says Samuel
Rogers, who was one of the visitors, ‘is a nation of travellers, and no
wonder, when the elements, air, water, and fire attend at our bidding
to transport us from shore to shore, when the ship rushes into the
deep, her track the foam as of some mighty torrent, and in three hours
or less we stand gazing and gazed at among a foreign people. None want
an excuse. If rich, they go to enjoy; if poor, to retrench; if sick,
to recover; if studious, to learn; if learned, to relax from their
studies.’[25] This, though written in 1839, is, with the exception of
the reference to steam, applicable to the influx of 1801–1803. A few
went for health, taking Paris as a stage to Montpellier, then still in
repute, Nice, or Italy, others to recover property or for business, a
few for study, most for pleasure. The current steadily swelled all
the winter, spring, and summer. One of the earliest packets brought
sixty-three ladies, and the Calais hotels were packed, seven hundred
and ninety-eight passengers landing in ten days. In the last decade of
Prairial (June 1802) there were ninety-one arrivals, in the last decade
of Thermidor (August) ninety-seven, in the last decade of Fructidor
(September) one hundred and fifty-six.[26] This last average of fifteen
a day seems small to us, but was surprising for that time. Merry states
that there were once as many as five thousand English in Paris, and
that when he left in December there were one thousand nine hundred.
In the autumn he sent home long lists of persons to whom he had given
return passports, and he had complained in May that he was so busy
in issuing them as to have no time to attend properly to diplomatic
business.
The cost of a trip to Paris was what in those days seemed moderate.
For £4, 13s. you could get a through ticket by Dover and Calais,
starting either from the City at 4.30 A.M. by the old and
now revived line of coaches connected with the rue Notre Dame des
Victoires establishment in Paris, or morning and night by a new line
from Charing Cross.[27] Probably a still cheaper route, though there
were no through tickets, was by Brighton and Dieppe, the crossing
taking 10 or 15 hours. By Calais it seldom took more than 8 hours,
but passengers were advised to carry light refreshments with them.
The diligence from Calais to Paris, going only four miles an hour,
took 54 hours for the journey, but a handsome carriage drawn by three
horses, in a style somewhat similar to the English post-chaise, could
be hired by four or five fellow-travellers, and this made six miles an
hour. £30 would cover the expense of a seven weeks’ visit, including
hotels, sight-seeing, and restaurants.[28] As for fashionable people,
even if they went by coach to Dover, they posted from Calais to Paris,
especially if they formed a family party and took servants with them.
Some, like Lord Guilford, even shipped their own carriages, but he had
to hire four sorry steeds at Calais, for horses were not allowed to
land.[29]
Lord Elgin had four servants, Lord Yarmouth, with his wife and two
children, had eight, Thomas Hope three, and Lady Maynard two. The
journey occupied four days, if we may judge by the French General
Hardy, who, captured in Ireland in 1798, had been exchanged--there
being no English prisoner of equal rank--for four officers, four
non-commissioned officers, and ten privates. It took him a day to get
from London to Dover, another day for the crossing, and two days for
the journey from Calais to Paris.
Passengers by Boulogne if arriving at low tide were landed in a
singular fashion. Thomas Manning, of whom we shall hear presently, in a
letter to his father communicated to me by his grand-nephew, Mr. E. B.
Harris, says:--
‘The tide having ebbed, we were obliged to land without entering
the inner harbour of Boulogne. It was night before the sluggish
boat that the Boulogne mariners sent off could land us all, and
a strange landing it seemed to me. The boat rowed towards the
nearest shore till it ran aground, which happened in the midst
of the breakers. In an instant the boathead was surrounded by a
throng of women up to their middles and over, who were there to
carry us on shore. Not being aware of this manœuvre, we did not
throw ourselves into the arms of these sea-nymphs so instantly
as we ought, whereby those who sat at the stern of the boat were
deluged with sea spray. For myself I was in front, and very
quickly understood the clamour of the mermaids. I flung myself
upon the backs of two of them without reserve, and was safely
and dryly borne on shore, but one poor gentleman slipped through
their fingers and fell over head and ears into the sea.’
This primitive mode of landing had been noted in 1792 by William
Hunter, who states that one of the ‘mermaids,’ unequal to the weight
of a stout Englishman who had been reserved to the last, dropped him
midway. Lanterns dimly lit up this curious scene.[30]
The return voyage had to be made on French bottoms, in order that the
mercantile marine might be encouraged, and this regulation had its
inconvenience, not to say dangers. The _Times_ of 12th January,
1803, says:--
‘A navy Officer, who recently returned from Calais, where he
had spent a few days, was actually under the necessity of giving
directions, and afterwards exerting himself with alacrity, to
preserve his own life and that of the other passengers. The
master of the vessel, who was very much afraid of the violence
of the wind, sat half-way down to the cabin, with his head under
the companion, and covered with a huge night-cap, to prevent its
reaching him, as he was (he said) grievously afflicted with the
rheumatism; and to the repeated demands of the passengers, why
he did not come upon deck and give orders for the safety of the
vessel, he answered, deliberately, taking the pipe out of his
mouth, that there was no immediate danger, and if any should
arise, he had a good sea-boat, which would carry him and all his
crew safe to land.’
Let us now see who were the visitors, beginning not with the earliest
but by far the most eminent of them, Fox. He had not seen France
since 1788, when he passed through with Mrs. Armistead on his way
to Switzerland and Italy. Waiting, like many other M.P.’s, till his
election was over, he started at Dover on the 31st July 1802, again
accompanied by the so-called Mrs. Armistead (only now for the first
time publicly figuring as his wife, though they had been privately
married some years previously), by St. Andrew (afterwards Lord) St.
John, M.P., and by John Bernard Trotter, his secretary.[31] His nephew
Lord Holland had engaged rooms for him in the faubourg St. Germain, but
he seems to have removed to the hotel Grange Batelière and eventually
to the hotel Richelieu, the mansion erected and formerly occupied
by the notorious _roué_, Marshal (grand-nephew of Cardinal)
Richelieu, who had entertained him in 1788. Fox’s chief object was
to consult French records for his life of James II., his
ancestor, and he daily frequented the National Archives for that
purpose, in company with St. John, Robert (afterwards Sir Robert)
Adair, and Trotter. Talleyrand, after his return to England, sent him
a complete copy of Barillon’s despatches, which Fox had declared to be
worth their weight in gold.
Many people in England fancied, however, that he was mainly bent on
seeing Napoleon, and the caricaturists did not neglect so tempting
a subject. Gillray, in a cartoon entitled ‘Introduction of Citizen
Volpone and his suite at Paris,’ represented Bonaparte as seated on
a chair surrounded by Mamelukes, while Fox and his wife,[32] both
extremely corpulent, are bowing and curtseying, Erskine, in legal
costume with his hand on his heart, and Lord and Lady Holland making
up the group. Another caricaturist depicted the reception by the First
Consul of Fox, Erskine, and Combe. To Fox he says, ‘Fox, ha! How old
are you?’ To Combe, ‘A brewer, Lord Mayor, ha! great pomp,’ and to
Erskine, ‘Mr. Brief, ha! a great lawyer; can talk well. There, you may
go.’[33] Trotter tells us what really occurred:--
‘Bonaparte, of a small and by no means commanding figure,
dressed plainly though richly in the embroidered consular coat,
without powder in his hair, looked like a private gentleman,
indifferent as to dress, and devoid of all haughtiness in his
air. The English ambassador, after the presentation of some
English noblemen, announced to him Mr. Fox. He was a good deal
flurried, and after indicating considerable emotion said--“Ah,
Mr. Fox; I have heard with pleasure of your arrival, I have
desired much to see you. I have long admired in you the orator
and friend of his country, who, in constantly raising his voice
for peace, consulted that country’s best interests, those of
Europe, and of the human race. The two great nations of Europe
require peace. They have nothing to fear [from each other]. They
ought to understand and value [esteem] one another. In you,
Mr. Fox, I see with much satisfaction that great statesman who
recommended peace because there was no just object of war, who
saw Europe desolated to no purpose and who struggled for its
relief.”’
Trotter adds that Fox, averse to compliments, neither replied to nor
reciprocated them, and that a few questions and answers respecting his
tour terminated the interview.
Napoleon afterwards invited Fox to a dinner of two hundred guests,
to which he went unpowdered. John King, of whom we shall presently
hear, thought it inconsistent of Fox to accept such attentions, which
acceptance he attributes to a desire to please his wife; but Fox
obviously could not decline an invitation from the ruler of the land
whose hospitality he was enjoying, though he felt perfectly free to
refuse to lunch with the brewer Santerre, notorious for his part in the
execution of Louis XVI. According to the Rev. Stephen Weston,
Napoleon complimented Fox as the greatest man of a great nation. Fox,
as was to be expected, combated Napoleon’s accusations against Pitt,
and especially against Windham, of complicity in the infernal-machine
plot of 1800. Thiers gives an account of Fox being taken by Napoleon to
the Industrial Exhibition at the Louvre, when a courtier sarcastically
pointed on a globe to the small space occupied by England, whereupon
Fox, spreading his arms round the globe, said, ‘Yes, but though we all
spring from there we grasp the whole world.’ The truth is that though
Napoleon and Fox happened to be simultaneously at the Exhibition they
did not come across each other.[34] It was Chaptal who conducted Fox
over the Exhibition, and he tells us that Fox admired the specimens,
but thought them too dear for common use, upon which Chaptal took him
to the cutlery department, where Fox filled his pockets with cheap
knives, and then to a watch stall, where he bought half a dozen watches
at 13 f. a piece.[35] He frequented the theatres. Not only, however,
was his French very imperfect, but he committed a great breach of
decorum by not calling on the two minor consuls, Cambacérès and Lebrun.
He had to apologise through Merry. Lebrun overlooked the blunder and
received Fox on his reparatory visit, but Cambacérès was ruffled, and
insisted that Fox should make an unceremonious call as though he had
been before.
We learn this from a secret agent of the Bourbons,[36] who also
tells us that Fox, after his conversation with Napoleon, said, ‘It’s
all up with liberty.’ He could scarcely, however, have needed that
conversation to form this judgment, for Napoleon on the 2nd August
had been elected consul for life. Fox must have felt much more at
home with Lafayette, with whom he spent a fortnight at La Grange,
planting ivy round the newly-erected towers as a memento. He dined
in Paris with Talleyrand and Junot, and went shooting with General
Berthier. Madame Junot thought he looked with his dark grey coat like
a Devonshire farmer, but when talking his countenance was radiant with
intelligence, sagacity, and eloquence.[37] On the 16th September he
attended a sitting of the Tribunat, when the captain on guard, Boyer,
thanked him for having in 1795 obtained the unfettering, and all but
the liberation, of two hundred French officers at Porchester, a benefit
which they would never forget. ‘Our chains were broken,’ said Boyer:
‘we were almost free.’[38] At Versailles, on entering a room which he
was told had long been shut up, he found his own bust, along with those
of Algernon Sidney, Hampden, Chatham, and Washington.[39] But was this
a stratagem of Napoleon to flatter him? Curiously enough, Napoleon on
his dressing-table at the Tuileries had, as the Edgeworths noticed, the
bust not only of Fox but of Nelson, for whom he also entertained great
admiration. He asked Mrs. Damer for a second bust of Fox, a commission
which the lady could not execute till 1815.
Fox was criticised in England for taking tea with Helen Maria Williams,
for it had been erroneously imagined, by Boswell among others, that
she had marched exultantly over the bodies of the Swiss massacred in
1792. He was also twitted with meeting Arthur O’Connor, the United
Irish exile. The fact was that he and Erskine went to dine with
Madame Tallien without knowing that O’Connor would be there. Fox with
great tact made the best of what he considered an unlucky incident by
treating O’Connor exactly like the other guests, but Erskine was more
embarrassed, for as counsel on his trial at Maidstone in 1798 he had
vouched for O’Connor’s loyalty, whereas the latter had since made a
confession of conspiracy.
Fox remained till the 11th November. ‘I have certainly,’ he wrote,
‘seldom spent a time pleasanter than at Paris, but I never in my life
felt such delight in returning home.’ In 1806 he reciprocated the
civilities shown him by sending word to Talleyrand that a Frenchman
called Guillet had called on him and offered to kidnap Napoleon.
Guillet was consequently arrested in Paris, and consigned, not to
prison, but to Bicêtre lunatic asylum, where he died twelve months
afterwards. Canning was guilty of the bad taste, not to say ignominy,
of censuring Fox in Parliament for giving this warning, the generosity
of which was warmly appreciated by Napoleon, as he told Lord Ebrington
at Elba in 1814.
The general election had come rather inopportunely for visits to
Paris, Parliament being dissolved on the 29th June, and the new House
meeting on the 16th November. Elections, moreover, were much less
expeditiously despatched than nowadays. Nevertheless about eighty
M.P.’s, mostly Foxites, as Liberals were then called, but some Pittites
or Ministerialists, went over either before or after the elections.
Some of these M.P.’s are entitled to notice.[40]
Acheson, who in 1807 became Lord Gosford, revisited Paris in 1814,
and became Governor of Canada. Adair, as we have seen, was the friend
of Fox, and indeed was destined to be his last surviving friend. When
visiting St. Petersburg in 1791 his letters home were in cipher, but
forwarded through Whitworth, the ambassador, and he was absurdly
suspected of having been sent thither by Fox to thwart Pitt’s
policy.[41] Barclay, as already mentioned, was a diplomatist, and
had been a prisoner in France. He had just married a German lady at
Hamburg. Baring was the famous banker, and though deaf from his youth
sat and voted in Parliament. Benfield and Boyd not only come together
alphabetically, but had been partners in a London bank which was wound
up in 1799. Paul Benfield went out to India in the Company’s service,
and there made a fortune, partly by trade, partly by fortification
contracts and by loans. He advanced money to the Nawab of the Carnatic,
on conditions for which Burke afterwards, with his customary vehemence,
branded him as ‘a criminal who ought long since to have fattened the
kites with his offal.’ In 1777 he was ordered to quit India, but he
was subsequently reinstated in his post, and returned to Madras. In
1780 he became M.P. for Cricklade, and in 1796 he exchanged that seat
for Shaftesbury, another of his five pocket-boroughs. He was also
recorder for Shaftesbury, such appointments being sometimes conferred
on or sold by corporations to men not even lawyers. In 1796 he assigned
the second seat to Walter Boyd, whose sleeping partner he had become
in 1793. Boyd had had a bank in Paris, and had been an agent for the
French Revolutionary Government in paying for corn from England; but
threatened with arrest in October 1792 he had fled, with his partner
Walter Ker. It was alleged in December 1794 that he had sold to the
French Treasury drafts for ten million francs on London, boasting that
they would be dishonoured; but the Finance Committee, on investigation,
declared the charge unfounded. In 1795 Boyd contracted for an English
loan, but in 1797 his bank fell into difficulties. Boyd had entered
into imprudent speculations, and when he went to Paris, calculating
on the restitution of his property, the change of government there
frustrated his hopes, and he was expelled. In 1799 Pitt, apparently
in order to extricate him from his embarrassments, concluded a second
loan with him without inviting tenders from any other firm, on the plea
that this had been promised him in 1793. A select committee of inquiry
severely condemned this transaction, but an obsequious House of Commons
condoned it. It did not, however, avert Boyd’s bankruptcy. The two
partners were now among the earliest visitors to Paris. They went at
the close of 1801, Boyd still hoping to recover property. They were on
the point of losing their seats for Shaftesbury, Benfield having sold
that borough for £40,000 to a Colonel Wood. We shall see by and by how
they sped in France.
Best, who became successively Serjeant Best, Sir Thomas Best, and Lord
Wynford, reached the judicial bench in 1818, and in 1824 was made
Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas. Originally a Whig, he ended as a
violent Tory. Brodrick was Secretary to the (India) Board of Control.
Burdett speaks for himself, as when, on being greeted at Calais as the
friend of Fox, he exclaimed, ‘No, the friend of liberty.’ In the summer
of 1793 he had attended the clubs and the Convention. Father of Lady
Burdett-Coutts, he began as a demagogue and ended as a reactionary. He
boasted of his election for Middlesex having cost him £100,000. He,
with his friend Bosville, called on Thomas Paine, giving him £240 to
clear off his debts and return to America. He also called, with his old
tutor Lechevalier, on La Réveillère Lepaux, the theophilanthropist, on
whom he made no favourable impression.[42] Burdett, who had witnessed
the early stage of the Revolution with more curiosity than sympathy,
told Arthur Young, who had likewise seen something of that upheaval,
that the Consulate was the completest military despotism that had ever
existed.[43]
Lord George Cavendish became in 1831 Earl of Burlington, and succeeded
his brother as Duke of Devonshire. Alderman Combe had been Sheriff of
London in 1792 and Lord Mayor in 1799. Fox and Sheridan were godfathers
to the son born to him during his mayoralty. Napoleon, according to
Weston, said to him, ‘You were Lord Mayor in a year of dearth. I
know what it is to have to keep people quiet when bread is dear.’
Unsuccessful at a by-election for the City in 1795, he had been elected
in 1796. In 1800 he had convened a common hall to petition for peace.
In 1805 he gave a dinner in his brewery to the Duke and Duchess of
York, the Duke of Cambridge, Lady Anne Fitzroy, and other aristocratic
guests. He ultimately resigned his aldermanic gown and seat in
Parliament and confined himself to his business. He died in 1818.
Cowper was the son of Earl Cowper. Dallas, on returning home from
the service of the East India Company, was the champion of Warren
Hastings, and in 1793 and 1799 had written pamphlets against the French
Government. The Marquis of Douglas, son of the Duke of Hamilton, was
sent in 1807 as Ambassador to St. Petersburg. Ellis was afterwards Lord
Seaford, taking his title from the little Sussex town for which he and
his brother sat. Erskine, of whom we have already heard, became Lord
Chancellor in the thirteen months’ Administration of ‘All the Talents.’
His son David, who accompanied him, succeeded him in the peerage.
Fitzpatrick, the intimate friend of Fox and the uncle of Lord Holland,
was, like Fox, fond both of the classics and of gambling. He was an
amateur actor and a wit. He had made an impressive speech in 1796
in favour of Lafayette, then a prisoner in Austria, and now visited
him at La Grange. In 1806 he became Secretary for War. John Leslie
Foster became an Irish Judge and lived till 1842. Philip Francis, the
Indian councillor commonly regarded as the author of the _Letters
of Junius_, escorted three of his children, Philip, Elizabeth, and
Harriet, who went on to Nice for the benefit of Harriet’s health.
We have no letters from Francis himself, but young Philip tells us
that Bonaparte renewed (?) acquaintance with his father and was very
civil. He likewise tells us that at Madame Bonaparte’s reception he
saw Bonaparte, after watching her play for some time from behind her
chair, drop a purse into her lap as he moved away. Francis, with his
daughter Catherine, was again in Paris in January 1803, apparently from
alarm at the miscarriage of letters from Nice, and while there heard
of Harriet’s death. The Miss Berrys had been very kind to her. Francis
had twice visited Paris in 1791, and his son had learned French at
Rouen in the summer of 1792.[44] Lord Granville Leveson-Gower became
the first Earl Granville and Ambassador to France. His son we all
remember as Foreign Secretary. Graham, the Ripon Graham, was the father
of Sir James Graham the statesman. Hare, who sat from 1781 to 1804 for
the Duke of Devonshire’s borough of Knaresborough, was a wit and a
classical scholar who broke down in his maiden speech and thenceforth
remained silent. He went to Paris for his health or fell ill when
there, and Fox called on the invalid, who died shortly after his
return. Jekyll, too, who had visited France in 1775, was a famous wit
and a great diner-out. He also sat for a pocket-borough from 1787 to
1816, but his wit did not come out in his frequent speeches. The Prince
Regent, fond of good talkers, made him in 1805 his Solicitor-General,
and procured for him a commissionership in lunacy and a mastership in
Chancery.
Johnston had been British Resident at Lucknow, and was an authority on
India. Kinnaird, who in 1803 succeeded to the peerage, being intimately
connected with the Bonapartists, had information in 1817 of Cantillon’s
intended attack on the Duke of Wellington, and sent him an anonymous
warning. He and his wife afterwards went to Paris to give information
on the subject, and the latter was arrested as an accomplice. Kinnaird
naturally complained of this as a violation of a virtual safe-conduct.
He had been expelled from France in the previous year as a political
intriguer. He eventually lived in Italy on an allowance from his
creditors.[45] Long, afterwards Lord Farnborough, had been Secretary
to the Treasury, became a Commissioner of the Treasury in 1804, and
in 1806 was made Secretary for Ireland. He had written pamphlets on
the French Revolution in 1795. Eventually he was known as an art
connoisseur, and George iv. sought his advice on architecture. His
father-in-law, Sir Abraham Hume, accompanied him.
Lord Lovaine in 1830 succeeded his father as Earl of Beverley, and
eventually in 1865, two years before his death, became Duke of
Northumberland. He was the father of the Duke who adopted Irvingism
and married Henry Drummond’s daughter. He went on to Naples with his
newly married wife, Louisa Wortley, and his father, and on their
return they found themselves, as we shall see, prisoners. Macpherson
had in 1785 been Governor-General of India. Sir C. Morgan became
Judge-Advocate. Lord Morpeth became Earl of Carlisle and father of the
distinguished statesman. Nicholl, a frequent speaker and a strenuous
opponent of the war with France, had visited that country in 1788–1789
and had made the acquaintance of the Abbé Raynal and other economists.
Paget, afterwards Sir Edward Paget, son of the Earl of Uxbridge, was
destined, as we shall find, to pay a second and involuntary visit. He
had already served in Flanders, Minorca, and Egypt. He had been one of
the hostages given to the French at Cairo till they embarked in July
1801. He afterwards served in Sicily and the Peninsula and was Governor
of Ceylon. Parnell was the great-uncle of the Home Rule leader. He
became Secretary for War, Paymaster-General, and Treasurer of the Navy,
and in 1841 was created Lord Congleton. Lord Henry Petty, Chancellor
of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-five, and Pitt’s successor
in the representation of Cambridge University (where he defeated
Lord Palmerston), became on his brother’s death in 1809 Marquis of
Lansdowne. After filling various high offices he survived till 1863
to the age of eighty, the Nestor of the House of Lords. Pollen, the
accomplished son of a Surrey clergyman, had by one vote defeated the
Duke of Norfolk’s nominee at Leominster. He afterwards raised a corps
of Fencibles, whom he accompanied to Nova Scotia. On his way home
in 1808, after several years’ travel in Russia and other countries,
he was wrecked and drowned off Memel at the age of thirty-two. His
wife applied for permission to return home through France, but the
favourable answer being delayed, she embarked at Königsberg for
England.[46] St. John, as we have seen, was the companion of Fox, and
afterwards succeeded to a peerage. Scott was the elder son of Lord
Chancellor Eldon, but predeceased his father, leaving a son to succeed
to the title.
John Spencer Smith, page in his youth to Queen Charlotte, was a
diplomatist. He was asked by Napoleon whether he was not Sidney Smith’s
brother, and Napoleon, on being answered in the affirmative, rejoined,
‘He is a good fellow and a good officer.’ Spencer Smith had been
_chargé d’affaires_ at Constantinople from 1796 to 1799, and there
was a legend of his having married a rich Turkish widow. The truth is,
his wife was daughter of the Austrian Baron Ratzbael. While staying at
Venice for her health with her two sons in 1806, she was arrested as
an alleged spy, and was to have been sent on to Valenciennes, but at
Brescia, through the Marquis di Salvo, a friendly Sicilian, she escaped
by a ladder from the window and made her way first to Austria and
Russia, and ultimately to England.[47] Napoleon had at the same time
tried to arrest her husband, then Ambassador at Würtemberg, but burning
his papers he fled in time. Occupying himself with archæology, Smith
ultimately settled at Caen, where he died.
William Smith interests us as the grandfather of Miss Florence
Nightingale, and also of George Eliot’s friend, Barbara Smith, Madame
Bodichon, whose husband introduced the eucalyptus into Algeria. He is
said to have been the only English Nonconformist in the Parliament
of 1802, and his name was given to an Act of 1819, which relieved
Unitarians from speaking of the Trinity in the marriage-service
responses. Lord Hardwicke’s Act of 1752, while repressing irregular
marriages, had inflicted a grievance on Dissenters by requiring
all marriages except those of Quakers and Jews to be solemnised in
churches. Smith, in 1822, tried to follow up his success of 1819 by
introducing civil marriage, but his bill, though passing through
the Commons, was shelved in the Lords, so that it was not till 1836
that Lord John Russell revived and carried it. A London merchant,
Smith had sat for Sudbury and Camelford. On his standing in 1802
for Norwich, where Dissenters were and still are numerous, Thomas
Grenville, foreseeing that he would oust Windham, directed his brother
the Duke of Buckingham to return Windham for St. Mawes. ‘Smith,’ said
Grenville, ‘was cooping up voters in barns and houses, where they are
kept drunk till the day of poll; and in short, trying all the means
of mischief that his fertile talents can supply in the mysteries of
electioneering.’[48] Smith, who was much respected, sat for Norwich
till his death in 1835, and was succeeded by his son, Benjamin Smith.
Sturt, member for Bridport since 1784, was bred to the sea, but came
unexpectedly into possession of the family estate in Dorsetshire. He
retained, however, his liking for the water, had a narrow escape in a
cutter race, and in 1800 was awarded the Humane Society’s medal for
rescuing a man from drowning. He now went to stay at Havre. In 1801 he
had obtained £100 damages from the Marquis of Blandford, son of the
Duke of Marlborough, for the seduction of his wife, Lady Mary Anne
Ashley, daughter of the Earl of Shaftesbury, whom he had married in
1788. The damages were small because Sturt himself had had an intrigue
with Madame Krumholz, a famous harpist. Sturt’s sister, and he himself
doubtless, had known Madame Dubarry on her visit to London in search of
her stolen jewels. His nephew and namesake was an eminent Australian
explorer. His grandson was in 1876 created Lord Alington.
The brothers Thellusson were sons of the Swiss merchant Pierre
Thellusson, who settled in England, married in 1761 Anne Woodford
of Southampton, and died in 1797, leaving a strange will, by which
two-thirds of his property was to accumulate until the death of his
nine then living descendants for the benefit of the eldest male
descendant of his three sons. The sons disputed the will, but it
was pronounced valid, though an Act of 1800 prevented any similar
eccentricities. The testator’s object, moreover, deservedly failed,
for the litigation of 1856–1859 on the construction of the will
devoured a large portion of the inheritance, which meanwhile had not
inordinately increased. In visiting Paris the Thellussons may have
hoped to recover money due to their father, for he had been French
Consul in London, and was denounced by John Oswald at the Jacobin
Club on the 30th September 1792, on the authority of Paine and Frost,
as a vilifier of the Revolution and a friend of Pitt. Thellusson,
Oswald alleged, had refused to forward consignments of arms to France.
If we are to believe a scurrilous pamphlet by Rutledge, Necker, who
was originally clerk to Thellusson’s brother George in Paris, made
the acquaintance of his future wife, Suzanne Curchod, through her
being governess to the children of the Thellussons’ sister, Madame de
Vermeron. Fournier[49] suggests that the testator’s object was not for
the money to accumulate, but to meet the possible claims of descendants
of guillotined Frenchmen who had intrusted funds to him; but this is
obviously far-fetched. The eldest son, who did not visit Paris, was in
1806 created Lord Rendlesham.
Thompson, if, as seems probable, the same man as the M.P. for Midhurst
1807–1818, was the father of General Thomas Perronet Thompson, M.P.,
the free-trade orator. Tierney spent the summer and autumn of 1802 at
Boulogne, but did not go on to Paris. One would have expected him,
however, to search there for traces of his father, who died during the
Revolution after thirty years’ residence in that capital. Tyrrwhitt
was secretary to the Prince of Wales, and was afterwards Usher of the
Black Rod. He was knighted in 1814. Villiers, eventually third Earl of
Clarendon, was famous for telling long-winded stories. He was Envoy
to Portugal from 1808 to 1810, and was uncle to the diplomatist of
our own time. On his honeymoon in 1791, on his way to Rome, he saw
the French king and queen dine in public at the Tuileries. Coulson
Walhope, son of the Earl of Portsmouth, was on his honeymoon trip,
from which, as we shall see, he never returned. Sir Thomas Wallace had
previously visited Italy. He subsequently held various public posts,
and in 1828 became Lord Wallace. Wyndham was brother of Lord Egremont;
his other brother William, ambassador at Florence, had visited Paris
in 1791. Lord Yarmouth, son and successor of the Marquis of Hertford,
was destined to be depicted in _Vanity Fair_ as Lord Steyne and
in _Coningsby_ as Lord Monmouth. He had in 1798 married Maria
Fagniani, putative daughter of John Baptist Fagniani. Her paternity was
claimed both by George Selwyn and the Marquis of Queensberry, commonly
known as ‘Old Q.’ The latter bequeathed his property to Lord and Lady
Yarmouth, a codicil which reduced the amount to £250,000 being declared
invalid.
Eight of these M.P.’s, Erskine, Fitzpatrick, Francis, Jekyll, St. John,
William Smith, Lord R. Spencer, and Thompson had voted with Fox in 1794
for peace with France.
Several ex-M.P.’s may be here mentioned. Passing over Beckford,
of whom we shall speak hereafter, there was Philip Champion de
Crespigny, King’s Proctor, who sat for Sudbury in 1796. Sir Harry
Featherstonehaugh had sat in two Parliaments for Portsmouth. Sir
Abraham Hume, an F.R.S., had represented Petersfield from 1774 to 1780.
He collected old paintings, fossils, and minerals, and ultimately
published a biography of Titian. Sir Elijah Impey, ex-Chief-Justice of
Bengal, had sat for New Romney in 1790. He was solicitous of recovering
money invested in the French funds, and Madame Grand is said to have
welcomed his arrival as likely to facilitate proof of the divorce
required for her marriage to Talleyrand, for Impey had tried Grand’s
suit against her. Sir John Ingilby was elected for East Retford in
1781. Temple Luttrell, who sat for Melbourne Port from 1774 to 1780,
was son of Lord Irnham and brother to the Earl of Carhampton. His
sister Anne, widow of Christopher Horton, had married the Duke of
Cumberland, so that when Luttrell was arrested at Boulogne in 1793 he
was styled George III.’s brother-in-law. In 1789, as a member of the
Jamaica Council, he drew up a remonstrance to Parliament against the
suppression of the slave-trade. He had shown more enlightenment in the
House of Commons in advocating conciliation to the American colonies
and in predicting their indomitable resistance. Matthew Montagu, nephew
and heir of the great society leader Elizabeth Montagu (_née_
Robinson), to whose gatherings the term blue-stocking was first
applied, had sat in Parliament from 1786 to 1790 and was destined to
re-enter it in 1806. In 1820 he succeeded his brother as Lord Rokeby.
Richard Oliver had in 1790 represented the County Limerick, for which
his son now sat; we shall hear of him again. William Maule Ramsay,
younger son of the Earl of Dalhousie, regained his seat in Parliament
in 1805. In 1831 he was created Lord Panmure, and afterwards succeeded
his cousin in the title of Lord Dalhousie. We shall hear of him, too,
again. Henry Seymour, a kinsman of the Duke of Somerset, had been the
penultimate lover of Madame Dubarry.[50] He arrived with his daughter
Georgina, widow of Comte de Durfort, as early as the 1st November
1801, but did not think it necessary or feasible, it seems, to claim
the restitution of his private papers, confiscated on his flight in
1792. Even if he had claimed them he would have missed a bundle of
Madame Dubarry’s love-letters, which had somehow been abstracted, and
was discovered many years afterwards in a Paris bookstall. Possibly
having been registered as an _émigré_, as though a foreigner could
logically be so treated, he feared that to claim his papers might have
entailed a denial of his right to revisit France. His French wife, whom
he had dismissed on good grounds, was probably the ‘Lady’ Seymour who
in 1806 was living on a handsome income at Cleves. Sir Robert Smyth,
who had been unseated at Cardigan in 1775, but had sat for Colchester
in 1785–1790, had, like Luttrell, suffered imprisonment in Paris during
the Revolution, but through Paine, with whom his wife corresponded
while he was in prison, had in 1796 obtained a passport for Hamburg.
He now returned to Paris to open a bank, but making a journey back to
London he suddenly died there in April 1802.
Prospective M.P.’s may here be mentioned. There was Lord Althorp,
who, just of age, was sent by his father Earl Spencer, the great
bibliophile, to France and Italy in order to cease running into
debt and to acquire polish; but he refused to go into Continental
society, was bored by pictures, and came home as unmannerly as ever,
without having even learned French. He nevertheless developed into a
prominent Whig statesman, and was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the
Grey Cabinet. His accession to the Upper House in 1835 gave William
IV. a pretext for dismissing the ministry. He then retired
into private life. Alexander Baring, son of Sir Francis and afterwards
Lord Ashburton, sat in the House of Commons from 1806 to 1835, was
President of the Board of Trade in 1834, and in 1842 negotiated
the Maine Boundary Treaty with America. A Mr. Benyon was probably
Benjamin Benyon, M.P. for Stafford in 1819. Lord Blayney, who in 1806
was returned for Old Sarum, was shortly destined to revisit France
against his will. Sir Charles Burrell, another visitor, was elected in
the same year for Shoreham. Arthur Harrington Champernowne, elected
for Saltash in 1806, was a friend of Samuel Rogers. Cæsar Colclough,
who, imprisoned in 1793–1794,[51] had apparently remained in France,
became in 1818 M.P. for Wexford. William Congreve, the inventor of the
rocket bearing his name, became in 1812 member for Gatton, and in
1814 succeeded to his father’s baronetcy. Sir Arthur Chichester sat
for Carrickfergus in 1812. General Sir Charles Grogan Craufurd, son
of Sir Alexander and nephew of Quintin Craufurd, translated Tieck’s
_History of the Seven Years’ War_, and in 1800 had married the
Dowager-Duchess of Newcastle. Sent as Commissioner to the Austrian
army, he was wounded, and resigned his post in favour of his brother
Robert, M.P. for East Retford in 1806. He died in 1821.
Lord Duncannon, who in 1844 succeeded his father as Earl of
Bessborough, but in 1802 was only just of age, supported Catholic
Emancipation, introduced O’Connell to the House of Commons when he
refused to take the oath, and helped to frame the Reform Bill. In
1831 he was Commissioner of Woods and Forests; in 1834 he was called
up to the Lords, and from 1846 till his death in 1848 he was Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland. Robert Ferguson of Raith was a Scottish member
in 1806–1807 and again in 1831–1841. Of him we shall hear, not to his
credit. Hudson Gurney, a Norwich banker, of a famous Quaker family, had
an uncle Bartlett Gurney, F.S.A., who in 1796 all but defeated Windham
at Norwich. Bartlett had turned Unitarian, but in 1803 was buried with
the Quakers. Hudson also renounced Quakerism, or rather Quakerism
renounced him, on account of his contributing to the war patriotic fund
of 1804, yet friendly relations were afterwards revived. He sat in six
parliaments, and died in 1864 at the age of eighty-nine. I remember
seeing him as a corpulent old man, who had to be lifted in and out of
his carriage.
William Haldimand, son of a Swiss merchant settled in London, was so
precocious a financier that at twenty-five years of age--seven years
after his Paris visit--he became a director of the Bank of England.
His brother, who accompanied him, apparently died young. William
represented Ipswich from 1820 to 1826. He was munificent in his gifts
to charities and to the Greek war of liberation. In 1828 he retired
to Lausanne, and on his death in 1862 bequeathed most of his property
to a blind asylum there. His sister was Mrs. Marcet, the friend of
Sydney Smith, and well known as a populariser of science and political
economy. Hugh Hamersley, M.P. for Helston in 1812, will come under
another category. Richard Heber, elder brother of the bishop, and a
great book-collector, was member for Oxford University from 1821 to
1826. Sir Thomas Liddell, elected for Durham in 1806, became Lord
Ravensworth and father of a Dean of Christchurch. James Mackintosh, who
in 1813, on his return from Bombay, where he had been recorder, was
elected for Nairn, and retained the seat till his death in 1832, was
the author of the famous answer to Burke. Napoleon, unaware that he had
since ‘abhorred, abjured, and for ever renounced the French Revolution,
the greatest scourge of the world, and the chief stain upon human
annals,’ complimented Mackintosh on his pamphlet,--or rather intended
to have done so--for the order of presentations having been altered he
addressed the compliment to some other Englishman. Shortly after his
return Mackintosh defended Peltier, prosecuted for libelling Napoleon.
Viscount Maitland, afterwards Earl of Lauderdale, was returned for
Camelford in 1806. William (afterwards Sir William) Oglander sat for
Bodmin. Viscount Ossulston sat for Berwick in 1820. Samuel Romilly,
who in 1806 became Solicitor-General and M.P. for Queensborough, was
the great advocate of the mitigation of the penal code, so as to limit
capital punishment to cases of murder. He had seen Paris in August
1789. Sir William Rowley represented Suffolk in 1812, Sir Thomas
Turton, Southwark in 1810–1820, and Sir Walter Stirling, St. Ives in
1807. William Young, whose father wrote a history of Athens, sat for
St. Mawes and became Governor of Tobago.
There was a perfect swarm of peers and peers’ sons;[52] the elderly
or middle-aged anxious to see how Paris looked after the Revolution,
the younger eager to make acquaintance with it. Some, moreover, were
on their way to Italy, for Lemaitre found at Naples, in February
1803, Lords Aberdeen, Mount Cashell, Grantham, Althorp, Brooke, and
Beverley, besides Sir Charles Douglas, Sir Thomas Tancred, and the
Cheshire Egertons, with Lady Hester Stanhope in their charge. The
Dowager-Duchess of Cumberland, whose marriage led to the Royal Marriage
Act, a widow since 1790, was also on her way to Nice, but stayed a
month in Paris for medical advice. According to the _Times_ she
paid a hundred guineas a month for second-rate apartments, and not
having been presented at the Court of St. James’s was not received by
Madame Bonaparte, although previously to the Revolution she had been
treated at Metz as a royal personage.
The Duke of Bedford interests us chiefly as the father of Lord John
Russell, then a boy of eleven, who was left behind with his two
brothers at school. The Duke was not a stranger to France. In March
1788 he and his wife, the latter on the verge of her confinement,
were staying at Montpellier and waiting for that event. Her father,
Viscount Torrington, who was apparently living in Paris, wrote to Louis
XVI.’s Minister of the Household to ask what should be done
to certify the expected birth. This was of some importance, for the
traveller’s elder brother was unlikely to marry. The Minister advised
him to call in two local notaries, adding that it might be well to get
a certificate also from the British Embassy at Paris.[53] The child was
born on the 13th May, and became heir to the Duke of Bedford, for his
father had in March 1802 succeeded his brother, who bequeathed £5000
to Fox. He had learned French when a youth at Orleans, together with
the Duke of Cleveland, and the Duke of Dorset then took them both to
Versailles, where Marie Antoinette played billiards with them. Both
went on to Rome where they went to Cardinal York’s weekly receptions.
Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh was now his travelling companion. The
Duke’s arrival on the 20th April 1803 was considered a sign of the
duration of peace, but he apparently went over to fetch the Duchess
of Gordon and her daughter Lady Georgina, whom he, a widower since
October 1801, took for his second wife five weeks after his return.
Georgina had been engaged to his deceased brother, who left her a
lock of his hair, and her mother made her go into mourning for him,
saying, ‘It is a feather in a girl’s cap to have been intended for
the Duke of Bedford.’[54] The Duchess was reported to have said that
she hoped to see Napoleon breakfast in Ireland, dine in London, and
sup at Gordon Castle, but this is a manifest invention. There may be
more truth in the story that she obtained recruits in 1794 for her
son’s Highland regiment (now the 2nd Gordon Highlanders) by placing
a shilling between her lips to be kissed by them, yet this seems a
variation of the Duchess of Devonshire’s kiss to a Westminster elector.
She died in 1812. As for her daughter Georgina, who had an illness in
Paris, she was a great dancer, and frequently danced, as Napoleon told
Lord Ebrington at Elba in 1814, with his step-son Eugène Beauharnais.
The _Times_, indeed, insinuated that she set her cap at the
step-father himself. ‘It is certain,’ said that journal on the 12th
January 1803,
‘that some of our travelling Nudes of Fashion intended to
conquer the Conqueror of the Continent. What glory would it
have brought to this Country, if it could have boasted of
giving a Mistress, or a Wife, to the First CONSUL. How
pretty would sound Lady G---- (we mean Lady GODIVA)
BONAPARTE?’
Wraxall’s story that the Duchess wanted to wed her daughter to Eugène
is confirmed by Maurice Dupin, George Sand’s father, who met them at a
dinner-party, and wrote to his mother that they were in love with each
other, but that Napoleon would not listen to the match. Georgina, he
added, was reputed a beauty, but like Eugène lacked a good mouth and
teeth.[55]
The Duke of Newcastle, afterwards famous for justifying the eviction at
Newark of forty tenants who refused to vote for his nominee by saying,
‘May I not do what I will with my own?’ was destined to give Gladstone
his first seat in the House of Commons; which Gladstone, however,
resigned in 1846 on joining Peel in free-trade. The Duke was yet only a
youth of seventeen, in charge of his step-father Sir Charles Craufurd,
who has been already mentioned. The Duke of Somerset deserves notice
only as the father of the Duke of our time, who was first Lord of the
Admiralty and an agnostic writer.
The Marchioness of Donegal was accompanied by her sisters Mary and
Philippa Godfrey, friends of Thomas Moore. The Marquis and Marchioness
of Tweeddale (she was daughter of Lord Lauderdale) took with them their
young son, Lord James Hay.
Of the Earls, Aberdeen--Byron’s ‘travelled thane, Athenian
Aberdeen’--was the future Prime Minister of 1852. His six weeks in
Paris were said to have cost him £3000. Lady Bessborough had been
at school at Versailles before the Revolution, and had been noticed
by Marie Antoinette. Beverley, a son of the Duke of Northumberland,
had been created a peer in 1790. He had distinguished himself by his
courage during the riots of 1780, and we have already heard of his
son. Cadogan had divorced his wife in 1796, so that she travelled
by herself. Camelford had refused to illuminate for the peace, and
his house had consequently been sacked. He pretended in 1801 to be
an American named Rushworth, but was arrested, and after some days
expelled. In March 1803 he again landed at Calais, but was discovered
and apprehended, for he was said to have boasted in London that he
would kill Bonaparte. He wrote, however, from the Temple prison an
abject letter to Napoleon, pleading that his mother would die if she
heard of his arrest. He also threw out of the window a letter to
Lord Grenville, which the picker-up was requested to forward, but it
was intercepted. He was sent to Boulogne and shipped to England.[56]
Jackson was afraid of his committing suicide, so that he must have
shown symptoms of the mental derangement which led in 1804 to a fatal
duel with Captain Best. He was reputed to be the best shot in England.
Carhampton had in 1796 been commander-in-chief in Ireland. It was
reported that incensed at having, in company with other English, to
wait three hours in an anteroom without chairs, before being received
by Talleyrand, he went next day to the Tuileries in colonel’s uniform
without epaulettes. Bonaparte asked him therefore whether he was a
militia officer. ‘No,’ he proudly replied. ‘Then what is your rank in
the army?’ ‘I was Commander-in-Chief when the French army under General
Hoche endeavoured to land in Ireland.’[57] It was scarcely fair of
Carhampton thus to retaliate on Napoleon for Talleyrand’s discourtesy.
Cavan had just returned from Egypt, where he had commanded a division
under Abercromby. The Cholmondeleys had been in Paris in 1791, their
son and heir being born there. We shall hear presently of their
equipages. The Countess (afterwards Marchioness) Conyngham is notorious
for her _liaison_ with George IV. Egremont was long a prominent figure
in London society, but is more deserving of notice as one of the
earliest patrons of Turner the artist. Elgin, of marble fame, was on
his way home from the Constantinople embassy. We shall have to speak
hereafter of his wife and her paramour Ferguson. Fife, afterwards a
distinguished general in the Peninsular War, wounded at Talavera and
Cadiz, was great-uncle of the present Duke of Fife. Fitzwilliam had in
1794 been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, where his three months’ rule was
looked back to with regret. Lady Granard, sister of the Earl of Moira,
on her honeymoon in 1780 had seen Cardinal York, and had also witnessed
a review by Frederic II. Guilford was the son of the Lord North who
lost us our American colonies. He stayed seven months, and would have
remained longer but for the rupture.
Lady Kenmare (Mary, daughter of Michael Aylmer) was known for her
Sunday evening receptions in London, and for a romantic story of her
husband’s attachment to her before his first wife’s death, or even
before his first marriage. A Gerald Aylmer, who also visited Paris,
was probably her kinsman. The Countess of Kingston, who must not be
confused with the Duchess of Kingston, the notorious bigamist, was
accompanied by two unmarried daughters, probably also by her other
daughter, Lady Mount Cashell. One of these daughters had in 1798 been
the occasion of a duel in which her brother shot his adversary. Lady
Lanesborough, daughter of the Earl of Belvedere, had, as we shall
see, found a second and plebeian husband. Lauderdale had witnessed
and sympathised with the Revolution, Dr. (father of Sir John) Moore
then accompanying him as physician. His Whig opinions had made him
lose his seat as a Scottish representative peer in the House of Lords,
and his anxiety for the maintenance of peace made Whitworth shut
his door to him as one of ‘our rascally countrymen.’[58] His son,
moreover, a youth of eighteen, styled himself ‘citizen’ Maitland.[59]
Minto, the Gilbert Elliot who, ward of David Hume, was at school
with Mirabeau, and was consequently sent over in 1790 to bribe him
into keeping France neutral in our threatened quarrel with Spain
over Nootka Sound, had been Governor of Corsica. He was one of the
earliest visitors, was on his way home from the Vienna Embassy, and was
destined to be Viceroy of India. Mount Edgecumbe was an amateur actor
and musical composer. His wife,[60] with their young daughter Emma
Sophia, afterwards Countess Brownlow and writer of _Reminiscences of
a Septuagenarian_, had previously been to Spa, where she met the
Duchess of Gordon, the Conynghams, the Bradfords, Charles and Lady
Charlotte Greville, and Dudley and Lady Susan Ryder. She had a serious
illness in Paris. Lord Oxford had a great admiration for Napoleon
and also for Murat. His wife, who required change of climate, was
very handsome, though not rivalling Madame Tallien. Pembroke was the
father of Sidney Herbert, the statesman of our time, and in 1806 was
Ambassador at Vienna. He stayed three months, and being an excellent
observer and a patient listener, his account of Paris was eagerly
sought for. Shaftesbury, uncle of the philanthropist of our day, took
his wife, a daughter of Sir John Webb, and their daughter. Winchilsea
was the father of the fanatical Orangeman who in 1829 fought a duel,
on account of Catholic Emancipation, with Wellington, but happily
without bloodshed. Viscount Falkland, less fortunate, was killed in
a duel in 1809. Viscountess Maynard was the notorious Nancy Parsons
whom Lord Maynard had married in 1766, in spite of her antecedents.
She had been a widow since 1775, and had been the mistress of the late
Duke of Bedford, who, by his will, continued his annuity to her of
£2000. Lord Monck, who took over his wife and two daughters, was the
grandfather of the Viceroy of Canada. He died shortly after his return,
in June 1802. Viscount Strangford was afterwards Ambassador at Lisbon,
Stockholm, Constantinople, and St. Petersburg, and translated Camoëns’
_Lusiad_. Moore, Rogers, and Croker were among his friends.
We now come to the lowest grade of the peerage. Barrington, leaving a
wife behind, but taking a mistress with him, probably went, from what
we afterwards hear, to escape his English creditors; but we shall find
that he got into debt in France. Blayney has been already mentioned
among prospective M.P.’s, for, being an Irish peer like Palmerston, he
was eligible for the Lower House. Cahir, who crossed over as early as
June 1801, was afterwards created Earl of Glengall; he remained till
April 1802. Invitations to Madame Bonaparte’s receptions were commonly
obtained through his wife’s good offices. Lady Carington was the wife
of one of Pitt’s banker peers. There was a rumour that Pitt intended
to marry her eldest daughter. It was her grandson who, in 1872, having
horsewhipped Grenville Murray on the steps of the Reform Club on
account of a scurrilous article on his family in _Broad Arrow_,
was convicted of assault at Clerkenwell sessions, but was simply bound
over to keep the peace. Murray shortly afterwards became an outlaw.
Cloncurry in 1859 published his reminiscences. He was accompanied by
his three sisters, of whom more anon. He dined with Napoleon, and made
acquaintance with Kosciusko, Helen Williams, and Madame Récamier.
He invited the two Emmets to dinner the day before Robert’s return
to Ireland, from which he could not be dissuaded. Cloncurry in the
winter of 1802 proceeded to Italy, where he presented a telescope to
Cardinal York, who gave him one of his medals, and he returned home
after the rupture by way of Germany.[61] Lady Crofton, widow of Sir
Thomas Crofton, was a baroness in her own right. Her daughter Frances
accompanied her. Grantham, who was on his way to Italy, in 1833
succeeded his aunt in the De Grey earldom. He was first Lord of the
Admiralty in 1834–1835, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1841–1844,
was a collector of sculptures, was President of the Institution of
British Architects, and published _Characteristics of the Duke
of Wellington_. He was uncle of the present Marquis of Ripon,
ex-Viceroy of India. Holland, who had seen Paris in 1791, protested in
1815 against Napoleon’s captivity at St. Helena, and Lady Holland, the
divorced wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, forwarded the prisoner books,
in gratitude for which kindness Napoleon sent her an antique diamond
presented to him by the Pope. Lady Holland’s receptions were afterwards
famous. Hutchinson had succeeded Sir Ralph Abercromby in Egypt. On his
brother’s death he became Earl of Donoughmore. In the autumn of 1789
he had applied at Paris for an escort to go and rejoin his family near
Amiens, disturbances having broken out there, but was told that order
had been restored. He was Lafayette’s aide-de-camp from 1789 to 1792.
Northwick was an art connoisseur. Stawell was Surveyor of Customs for
the Port of London.
Of the eldest sons or other successors of peers, Eardley deserves
notice on account of the history of his family. Sampson Gideon, a
Portuguese Jew, made a fortune in London, and as a reward for financial
services obtained a baronetcy, not for himself, for a Jew was then
deemed ineligible, but for his son, then at Eton, at the age of
fifteen. That son, Sampson the second, was brought up a Christian by
his English mother, and was nicknamed ‘Mr. Pitt’s Jew.’ In 1789 he was
made an Irish peer as Lord Eardley, a title explained by his having
married, in 1766, Maria, the daughter of Sir John Eardley Wilmot,
Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas. He was elected first for Coventry
and afterwards for Wallingford, but retired in 1802. He had two sons,
Sampson and William; the former was the visitor to Paris, but both
died before their father, with whom the peerage expired in 1824. His
three daughters married Lord Say and Sele, Sir Culling Smith, M.P.,
and Colonel Childers. Childers, the well-known member of the Gladstone
Cabinet, was doubly descended from Pitt’s Jew, for his father was an
Eardley Childers, and his mother a Culling Smith. Colonel Molesworth
was drowned with his wife on his way to the Cape in 1815.
The younger sons of peers comprised Arthur Annesley (son of Viscount
Annesley), Lord William Bentinck, afterwards Viceroy of India (Duke of
Portland), William Brodrick (Viscount Midleton), Lord John Campbell
(Duke of Argyll), Lord George Cavendish (Duke of Devonshire), Robert
Clifford (Lord Clifford), Colonel Robert Clive (Lord Clive), Edward
Spencer Cowper (Earl Cowper), Keppel Craven (Lord Craven), Francis
Cust (Earl Brownlow), Henry Dillon (Viscount Dillon), Lord Robert
Stephen Fitzgerald (Duke of Leinster), Lord Archibald Hamilton (Duke of
Hamilton), William Hill (Lord Berwick), John King (Lord King), George
Knox (Lord Northland), Lord Frederic Montagu (Duke of Manchester),
Augustus John Francis Moreton (Earl of Ducie), Arthur Paget (Lord
Uxbridge), Henry Pierrepont (Viscount Newark), Lord Arthur Somerset
(Duke of Beaufort), John Talbot (Baroness Talbot de Malahide), and John
Trevor (Viscount Hampden). Charles James Fox, Edward Paget, General
Fitzpatrick, Lord Robert Spencer, and Charles Wyndham, have been
already mentioned as M.P.’s.
There were also several daughters of peers. Lady Elizabeth Foster,
widow of John Thomas Foster, M.P., was daughter of the Earl of
Bristol, and there were strange stories of her relations with the
Duke of Devonshire. According to the generally accepted version[62]
the Duchess, famous in election annals, was forced by her parents, at
sixteen years of age, to marry the Duke, though she was in love with
the Duke of Hamilton, who killed himself in despair. She refused,
however, to allow him the rights of a husband, and Lady Elizabeth
Foster, living harmoniously with them, had several children by the
Duke, who were brought up under an assumed name. In 1789, however, the
Duchess losing £100,000 at play at Spa, the Duke went over and paid
her debts on condition of consummating the marriage. The result was
the birth of a son and heir at Paris in January 1790. The Duchess died
in 1806, and three years afterwards Lady Elizabeth agreed to marry
the widower. Gainsborough painted her as Lady Foster in the picture
mysteriously stolen in London in 1875 and recovered in America in
1900. She was now accompanied to Paris by her legitimate son, Augustus
John Foster, who was just of age. In 1811 he was sent as Envoy to
Washington, in 1814 to Copenhagen, and in 1824 to Turin. In 1831 he
received a baronetcy. Lady Isabel Style, daughter of Lord Powerscourt,
and widow since 1774 of Sir Charles Style, had been a prisoner in
France in 1793, and now revisited France. Lady Anne Saltmarsh was
daughter of the Earl of Fingall. Lady Hester Stanhope, daughter of Earl
Stanhope, who was not yet her uncle Pitt’s housekeeper, was, to avoid a
stepmother, travelling with the Egertons, probably Sir Peter Warburton
Egerton.
There was also Lady Mary Whaley, _née_ Lawless, the widow since
1800 of an Irish M.P., nicknamed Jerusalem Whaley, for, having said
in joke that he was going to Jerusalem, he won a bet (of £15,000 it
is said) that he would really go thither. At sixteen years of age
this Thomas Whaley, inheriting £15,000 from his father, was sent to
Paris with a ‘bear-leader’ to learn French. He there bought a town and
country house, kept a pack of hounds, entertained company, and gambled,
losing £14,000 at a sitting. He returned to Ireland, compounded with
his creditors, and squandered the Jerusalem bet money. He revisited
Paris in 1791, and witnessed the King’s return from Varennes. He became
a cripple for life by jumping from a drawing-room window on to the
roof of a passing hackney-coach, or, as we should now say, cab.[63]
He gambled at Newmarket, Brighton, and London, and eventually settled
in the Isle of Man, where he brought up an illegitimate family.[64]
He married, in January 1800, Lady Mary Catherine Lawless, daughter
of Lord Cloncurry, but died in the following November. His widow
lived till 1831. She was accompanied by her sister, Lady Valentia
Lawless, who afterwards married Sir Francis Burton, Lord Conyngham’s
half-brother, and by Lady Charlotte, who became Lady Dunsany. There
was likewise a Lady Giffard, probably Lady Charlotte Courtenay,
daughter of the Earl of Devon, who in 1788 had married Thomas Giffard
of Chillington, Staffordshire. Lady Charlotte Greville, _née_
Charlotte Bentinck, daughter of the Duke of Portland, was there with
her husband Charles Greville, father of the diarist. Miss Caroline
Vernon, maid of honour to the Queen, was a daughter of Lord Vernon and
died in 1815. Lady Catherine Beauclerk was daughter of the Duke of St
Albans.
The baronets included, besides several already mentioned, William Call,
John Chichester, Simon Clark, John Coghill, William Cooper, James
Craufurd, Herbert Croft, Thomas Clavering, Michael Cromie, George
Dallas, James De Bathe, Beaumont Dixie, N. Dukinfield, Alexander Grant,
John Honywood, John Hope, John Ingilby, William James, Richard Jodrell,
Thomas Lavie, John Morshead, George Prescott, George Shipley, Charles
Talbot, Thomas Tancred, Grenville Temple, Henry Tichborne, Thomas Webb,
Robert John Wilmot, and Charles Wolseley.
Some of these will be mentioned hereafter. At present we need speak
only of Sir Charles Wolseley, who, like Sir Francis Burdett, boxed the
political compass. He witnessed, and apparently took part in, the
capture of the Bastille. In 1819 the Birmingham Radicals nominated
him their so-called ‘legislatorial attorney,’ and in the following
year he was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment for a seditious
speech at Stockport. He ultimately gave up political life, embraced
Catholicism in 1837, and died in 1846.
Then there were also sons of baronets: William Abdy, who succeeded to
the title in July 1803, Ashby Apreece, who predeceased his father in
1807, Alexander Don, Charles Jerningham, Raymond Pelly, John Wombwell,
formerly a merchant at Alicante, Ralph Woodford, afterwards Governor of
Bermuda, John Broughton, and William Oglander, who, already mentioned,
succeeded to the title in 1806, while there were two future baronets,
Thomas Hare and Charles Cockerell.
Next to legislators and aristocrats, military men were the most
numerous class of visitors. Some passed through Paris on their way home
from Egypt, which had just been evacuated, and others were actuated
not so much by curiosity or love of dissipation as by professional
duty, for they did not know how soon they might not have to encounter
Bonaparte’s legions. Of this swarm of visitors I can only mention a
few. There were the two sons of Sir Ralph Abercromby, who had been
killed at Alexandria. The elder was General George already mentioned,
who, eventually succeeding his mother in the peerage, became Lord
Abercromby. The younger, Colonel Sir John, served with distinction, but
died at forty-four years of age without reaching the highest grade.
Sir Charles Ashworth became a general. Captain Benjamin Bathurst,
son of the Bishop of Norwich, then eighteen years of age, was the
diplomatist who in 1809 mysteriously disappeared on returning from a
mission to Vienna. Napoleon was accused of having him murdered, but the
probability is that he was killed for the sake of his valuables by the
ostler of a German inn who was afterwards unaccountably affluent. His
daughter Rose, at the age of seventeen, was drowned at Rome in 1824 by
her horse slipping backwards into the Tiber, and his brother in a race
at Rome was killed by a fall from his horse. Three disasters in one
family.
William Bosville, commonly styled Colonel, though he had only been a
lieutenant in the Guards, must be ranked with soldiers for want of any
other suitable category, though he was more wit than soldier. He had,
however, served in the American War. He dined every Sunday with Horne
Tooke, and, as we have seen, accompanied Sir F. Burdett, whose election
he had zealously promoted. He dressed like a courtier of George II.’s
time. He visited Cobbett in prison and presented him with £1000. Paine,
on reaching the United States, sent a message to ‘my good friend
Bosville.’ Francis Burke, who had been in the Franco-Irish brigade,
became a British general.
General James Callender had served in the Seven Years’ War and had been
Secretary to the Paris Embassy under the Duke of Dorset, who, on his
recall in October 1789, deputed him to wind up his accounts. He had
more recently been Inspector-General at Naples, and had been sent by
Nelson to the Ionian Islands, where he remained till the peace. While
in Paris he made the acquaintance of a Madame Sassen, a German, and
on being detained he sent her to Scotland with a power of attorney,
styling her his beloved wife, to see after his affairs. When released,
however, he denied having married her, and the Court of Session
declared the marriage not proven, but awarded the lady £300 damages.
This latter decision was annulled by the House of Lords, and the lady
passed the rest of her life in fruitless litigation. Callender, who
married three times, died in 1832 at the age of eighty-seven. The
French Police Register describes him, the reason why is not obvious,
as a swindler. On succeeding in 1810 to the estates of his cousin, Sir
Alexander Campbell, he assumed the baronetcy also, but without right
to it.[65] General John Francis Cradock had served in India and in
Egypt, was destined to serve in Spain, and in 1819 became Lord Howden.
He altered the spelling of his name to Caradoc. His son, aide-de-camp
to Wellington in Paris in 1814, and afterwards military _attaché_
at the Paris Embassy, there married in 1830 the widow of the Russian
General Bagration, an ex-mistress of Metternich. In July 1830 he
was deputed by the Duke of Orleans to follow the fugitive Charles
X. and ask him to confide to him his grandson that he might
be proclaimed king. Charles was inclined to consent, but the child’s
mother, the Duchess of Berri, dissuaded him, not thinking that her
boy would be in safe keeping. On Caradoc reporting his failure Louis
Philippe accepted the crown.
James Ferrier, brother of Susan the novelist, had figured in the
siege of Seringapatam, and was questioned about it by Napoleon,
always interested in India, which he thought he should have conquered
but for Sir Sidney Smith and Acre. ‘When he speaks,’ Ferrier wrote
home to his sister, ‘he has one of the finest expressions possible.’
General Dalrymple had visited Paris in 1791. General Henry Edward Fox
was a brother of the great statesman. He was on his way home from
Egypt, where he had refused to allow Lord Cavan to ship Cleopatra’s
needle.[66] Cavan had dug it out of the sand of centuries and set it
upright, but Fox seems to have thought Cavan’s love of antiquities an
absurd craze, and the needle consequently had to wait seventy years
for transport to England. Afterwards Commander-in-Chief in Ireland,
Ambassador at Palermo, and Governor of Portsmouth, Fox was accompanied
by his son Stephen, also destined for diplomacy. General George
Higginson, who married in 1825 a daughter of Lord Kilmorey, lived till
1866, and his widow reached the age of ninety-eight, surviving till
1890. General Baron Charles Hompesch was a Hanoverian in the English
service. Very shortsighted, in 1806 he brushed against a man named
Richardson and two ladies in a London street, and a duel ensued, in
which his antagonist was wounded. On his death in 1822, at the age of
sixty-six, he could boast of having taken part in three sieges, seven
pitched battles, and thirteen minor engagements. Robert Lovelace,
probably a son of Robert Lovelace of Clapham, was reminded by Napoleon
that he bore the name of Richardson’s hero. Napoleon at eighteen
had devoured _Clarissa Harlowe_, but at St. Helena he found it
unreadable.
General John Money served in America under Burgoyne, and not finding
employment at home had fought for the Belgian insurgents in 1788, had
joined the French army in 1792, and had witnessed the capture of the
Tuileries. The German Œlsner, who met him at Verdun in October 1792,
describes him as a thoroughly English Hotspur (_degenkopf_).[67]
In 1761, aide-de-camp to General Townshend, he was famed for standing
on a horse’s back without a saddle and then leaping with it at full
speed over a five-barred gate. Hyde Park was the scene of his feats of
horsemanship. He had a perilous balloon ascent in 1785, being nearly
drowned in the North Sea. George Monro, probably a son of Sir Harry
Monro, M.P., was apparently the Captain George Monro who was sent
to Paris in September 1792 to send reports after the suspension of
diplomatic relations.[68] He had to pretend to fraternise with the
British Jacobins in Paris, but he became suspected and left in January
1793. In 1796 he complained that though promised a handsome provision
no fresh post had been conferred on him.[69] General George Morgan, who
went on to Nice, had been Commander-in-Chief in India, Sir Hildebrand
Oakes, afterwards Governor of Malta, had served in America and Egypt.
Captain Charles John O’Hara was doubtless one of the illegitimate sons
of the general who should have married Mary Berry, and who was captured
by the French at Toulon in 1793. Captain Samuel Owens was an equerry to
George III. Major William Norman Ramsay had served in Egypt,
was afterwards in the Peninsula, and was killed at Waterloo. Colonel
John Rowley, of the Engineers, was an F.R.S. and inspector-general of
fortifications. He became a general in 1821, and died in 1824. General
Sir Charles Shipley, a distinguished military engineer, became in 1813
Governor of Granada. Colonel Edward Stack, a native of Kerry, had
served in the Franco-Irish brigade before the Revolution, had been
aide-de-camp to Louis XV., and had accompanied Lafayette to
America. He was on board Paul Jones’s _Bonhomme Richard_ when it
captured the _Serapis_. He belonged to the orders of St. Louis and
Cincinnatus. He joined the _émigrés_ at Coblentz, but afterwards
entered the English army, in which he rose during his detention in
France to be major-general. He was arrested as a spy in May 1803,
but was liberated on parole. If his age is correctly registered as
forty-five in 1802, he was seventy-six at his death at Calais in 1833.
Captain Francis Tulloch, of the Artillery, had in singular
circumstances made the acquaintance of Chateaubriand. Converted to
Catholicism in London in 1790 by the Abbé Nagot, he had been induced to
resign his commission and to sail with Nagot and three other priests
from St. Malo for Baltimore, in order to become a priest and settle
in America. Chateaubriand, a fellow-passenger, remonstrated with him,
urging that, however ardent a Catholic, he ought not to abandon his
family and his profession. The young man seemed to listen to him,
but the priests recovered their ascendency, and on reaching port he
left with them, not even bidding Chateaubriand farewell. He must,
nevertheless, have changed his purpose, for in 1802 he was still in
the army, and he eventually married and had seven children, two of
whom wedded French noblemen. In 1822 Tulloch renewed acquaintance with
Chateaubriand, then Ambassador at London. In 1827 there were family
differences among his children, which gave rise to recriminatory
pamphlets. Lastly, there was John Alexander Woodford, son of Sir Ralph
Woodford (afterwards Governor of Trinidad, Envoy to the Hanse towns,
and to Denmark). He was apparently the Colonel Woodford who in 1815
began digging up the bones of the killed at the battle of Agincourt,
exciting such a commotion in the district that the French Government
asked the Duke of Wellington to stop him.
Naval officers had less inducement to visit Paris, yet a number of
them figure on the register. One of them, moreover, was a claimant to
a French dukedom. Philippe d’Auvergne, a Jersey man, son of a navy
lieutenant, had been adopted in 1788 by the last Duc de Bouillon, a
descendant of Turenne, as a remote kinsman and heir (his only son being
an idiot), in preference to nearer relations whom he disliked.[70]
The fascinating young sailor, whose elder brother had declined the
heirship, lived with the old duke till the Revolution, when he rejoined
the English navy, and from his station at Montorgueil in Jersey
superintended the despatch of men and money to assist the Chouans.
The duke having died in 1802, d’Auvergne now went over to try and
recover his confiscated estates, but the French Government arrested
him in September 1802 on the ground of his co-operation in the civil
war. If a French duke he was of course liable to punishment, but if
still or again a British subject he could not be prosecuted for the
performance of professional duties. Merry, his letter to whom was at
first suppressed, claimed him as a British subject, and he was released
after about a week from the Temple but expelled. Major Dumaresq, a
fellow Jersey man, had been arrested with him. D’Auvergne rose to be
an admiral, but the Congress of Vienna rejected his pretensions to the
dukedom. His romantic career ended in 1816 at the age of seventy-one.
Admiral Tollemache (afterwards Lord Huntingtower) had an adventure at
Paris. He was playing billiards when a French bully nudged his arm
and spoilt his stroke. On the man doing this a second time Tollemache
pitched him out of the window and then, warned by the landlord, ran
for his life.[71] Other actual or prospective admirals included Sir
Eliab Harvey, who fought at Trafalgar, Francis Ommaney, William Hoste,
Robert Dudley Oliver, John (afterwards Sir John) Talbot, John Temple,
Sir John West, Sir James Hawkins Whitshed, and Sir Edward Berry.
Nelson, on being condoled with by George III. on the loss of
his right arm, presented Berry as his right hand, and it was Berry who
caught him in his arms when wounded at the battle of the Nile.
But the most interesting and tragic naval visitor was Captain John
Wesley Wright, an Irishman and secretary to Sir Sidney Smith. He had
in 1796 been captured and imprisoned with Smith, and had escaped
with him by means of a forged order. He was sent in March 1803 as an
_attaché_ to the Paris Embassy, albeit Whitworth pointed out to
his Government that this was a very injudicious selection. Whether he
remained at the embassy till Whitworth’s departure is not clear, but in
May 1804 he was again captured off the coast, where he had been landing
royalist insurgents. He was consequently regarded as an accomplice
of Georges in the conspiracy to assassinate Napoleon, and was again
confined in the Temple. Gravina, the Spanish Ambassador, interceded
for his being treated as a prisoner of war, but Napoleon replied that
as a criminal he could not be exchanged for an honest French officer,
though he might be given up to the British Government to be dealt with
as it chose, he being convinced that Lord Hawkesbury (afterwards Lord
Liverpool) was alone responsible for having thrice landed conspirators
against his life. This overture, if indeed it was an overture, came
to nothing, and at Georges’ trial Wright was brought up as a witness.
He was threatened with sentence of death by court-martial if he
refused to give testimony, but he insisted on the status of a prisoner
of war, responsible solely to his own Government for his acts. In
October 1805 he attempted to escape, whereupon Napoleon ordered the
‘wretched assassin’ to be immured in a cell in lieu of having the run
of the building. On the 25th October he was found dead in his cell.
He seems to have been a religious man, and a few days before, on his
mathematical instruments being taken from him, he had emphatically
repudiated resort to suicide. Moreover he had on the previous day
ordered three shirts and a French conversation book. The French
Government, however, maintained that he had killed himself on hearing
of the defeat and surrender of the Austrian army at Ulm. Sidney Smith,
on revisiting France after Waterloo, made minute inquiries, and all
the documents were shown him, but he could come to no positive result.
Lewis Goldsmith says he was told by Réal and Desmarets that Wright had
been tortured like Pichegru in order to extract evidence from him, and
consequently could not have been released without this infamy committed
by Fouché being exposed; but he was certainly not tortured prior to
Georges’ trial, and why should he have been tortured afterwards, or,
if tortured, why should he have been allowed to live till October
1805? Sidney Smith erected a monument over his tomb in Père Lachaise.
It had a long Latin inscription which, without directly accusing
the Napoleonic authorities, insinuated foul play, for it described
Smith as ‘confined in the Temple, a prison infamous for its midnight
murders.’ Strange to say this monument is now undiscoverable, and the
cemetery keepers deny that Wright is on their registers, yet the record
of his interment was found and duly copied in 1814.[72] Mystery is thus
added to mystery.
William Sidney Smith, nephew of Sir Sidney, was captured along with
Wright and was sent to Verdun. His knowledge of French proved useful in
1814, when on board the vessel which conveyed Napoleon to Elba.
Diplomatists and other public functionaries took the opportunity of
making acquaintance with France or French statesmen. Francis Drake,
bearing the name of the Elizabethan hero, but claiming descent from
an older family, had been at the Copenhagen legation, and was in
1794 Minister at Genoa, whence he sent Grenville letters from Paris
furnished to him by the royalist agent d’Antraigues, who was then
at Venice, and at first in the service of Spain; but the agency
was transferred to ‘Monsieur’ (afterwards Louis XVIII.),
who was living at Verona.[73] D’Antraigues employed correspondents
or spies in Paris who, whether from credulity or knavery, sent him
the most fabulous stories written in sympathetic ink or in cipher.
The letters of which Drake thus received copies were published in
the second volume of the _Dropmore Papers_ of the Historical
Manuscripts Commission, where they were heralded with a flourish, but
their worthlessness has been exposed by M. Aulard, the most competent
French critic. This royalist agency in Paris was discovered in 1797,
and on Napoleon’s advance into Italy Drake fled to Udine. Temporarily
unemployed by the Foreign Office, Drake in 1802 seems to have visited
not only France but Italy. In 1803 he was Minister at Munich, and was
enticed by Napoleon into dealings with Méhée de la Touche, a spy who
sold himself to all parties and betrayed all. Méhée was for a time
a secretary to the Paris Commune and had a long career of trickery.
Napoleon, always anxious to bring British diplomacy into ridicule, gave
orders that a suitable man should be found to entrap Drake, and Méhée
answered his purpose admirably. He pretended to give information of
political feeling in France and to concert a royalist rising for the
overthrow, if not for the kidnapping (a euphemism for assassination),
of Napoleon. Drake advanced money to this pretended spy, who took all
the letters to Paris, where they were forthwith published, bringing
odium and derision on the English Foreign Office. An attempt was also
made to capture Drake, as well as Spencer Smith, who was slightly
implicated; but he fled precipitately, and the Elector of Bavaria
at the instance of Napoleon refused any longer to recognise him as
envoy. He had obviously broken the eleventh commandment, so vital in
diplomacy, ‘thou shalt not be found out,’ and neither he nor Spencer
Smith was again sent abroad. Wickham, however, who had equally
committed himself, became in 1802 Chief Secretary for Ireland, and
would have been sent as Envoy to Austria and Prussia, but that those
powers, afraid of offending Napoleon, declined to receive him. He
consequently retired on a pension of £1800. English diplomacy was
no match for Napoleon with his flagrant violation of traditions and
courtesies. Retiring to his Somerset home, Drake was highly esteemed
by his neighbours; for his tombstone at St. Cuthbert’s, Wells, speaks
of his integrity and firmness as a magistrate and as recorder of that
city.[74] He married a daughter of Sir Herbert Mackworth, an ancestor
of the poet Mackworth Praed.
Alexander Cockburn, consul at Hamburg, took the opportunity of visiting
Paris with his Creole wife, Yolande de Vignier, and his son, the future
Lord Chief-Justice, was born in France during this visit. Cockburn
was in 1825 appointed Minister to the Central American Republics.
Sir John Craufurd, another nephew of Quintin Craufurd, was Minister
to Lower Saxony from 1795 to 1803. He had visited Paris in 1791, and
he now repeated his visit. We shall see that he stayed longer than
he liked and took French leave. Charles Richard Vaughan, afterwards
knighted, made a tour in France and Germany, and then accompanied Sir
Charles Stuart (ultimately Lord Stuart de Rothesay) to Spain, where
he wrote an account of the siege of Saragossa. He rejoined Stuart as
Secretary at the Paris Embassy at the Restoration, and was eventually
Envoy to Washington. Arthur Paget, son of Lord Uxbridge, was one of
the earliest visitors, being allowed a passport through France in
September 1801 on his way to succeed Minto at Vienna. He reported to
Lord Hawkesbury that he found the roads much better than he expected
and the land well cultivated, but the towns manufacturing silk and
velvet complained of bad trade, and peace with England was universally
desired. Bonaparte, he said, was generally liked, for people dreaded a
revolution, yet Sieyès, he was told at Vienna, had declared that the
Consulate would not last through the winter.[75] George Stuart, his
chief subordinate at Vienna, also visited Paris. Sir Robert Liston,
originally tutor to Gilbert and Hugh Elliot at Paris, and afterwards
secretary to the latter, was Ambassador in America from 1796 to 1802,
was afterwards sent to Holland and Turkey, and lived to the age of
ninety-three. Colonel Neil was Consul at Lisbon. We may also mention a
future diplomatist, Charles (afterwards Sir Charles) Oakley, son of the
ex-Governor of Madras, who, when at the Washington legation, offered
to marry Madame Patterson, and she was not then disinclined to accept
a suitable successor to Jerome Bonaparte. Those who were or had been
in other departments of the public service included Thomas Steele,
Paymaster-General, John King, Under-Secretary at the Home Office, Henry
William Bentinck, Governor of St. Vincent, Perkins Magra, Consul at
Malta and naturally interested in the fate of that island, Donkin,
secretary to George III., and Brook, head of the London detective
force, who was sent to report on the Paris system, while Napoleon sent
a French detective to see what was done in London. There were also
Sir Charles Warre Malet, ex-acting Governor of Bombay, and Sir Robert
Chambers, late Chief-Justice of Calcutta, who before going out to India
had been intimate with Dr. Johnson. This, as we shall see, proved to be
his last journey.
Law, physic, and divinity were not numerously represented. Besides
Erskine and other barristers sitting or destined to sit in the House
of Commons, there was John Campbell, a future Lord Chief-Justice
and Lord Chancellor, and the biographer of his class. He saw the
‘little Corsican,’ and visited Tallien. Thomas Wilde, afterwards Lord
Chancellor Truro, was registered, doubtless in joke by himself or his
companions, as M.P., though he was as yet only twenty years of age.
Curran, who had been before in 1787, dined with Fox. Deploring the
failure of the Revolution, he disliked Napoleon. He little foresaw
that he was about meanly to disown his daughter Sarah on account of
her attachment to Emmet.[76] Stewart Kyd, a friend of Horne Tooke,
prosecuted with other Radicals in 1794, had passed four months in the
Tower, but had now sobered down and become a legal writer. The French
police suspected him of being a spy. He had, in 1796, assisted Erskine
in defending Thomas Williams, the publisher of Paine’s _Age of
Reason_. A native of Arbroath, he died in London in 1811. William
Duppa is best known as brother of the artist and as the biographer of
Michael Angelo. Charles Henry Okey ultimately settled in Paris.
The physicians included Charles Maclean, who had been with Lord Elgin
at Constantinople, and had also been in the East India Company’s
service, but had been sent home by Wellesley on account of his
quarrelsome disposition. Landing at Hamburg in 1801, he proceeded
through Holland to Paris, in order to advocate the establishment at
Constantinople of an international institute for the study of the
plague. He was anxious for information on French suicides, and Holcroft
had recommended him to apply not to a specialist but to Fauriel, the
Sanscrit scholar. He denied the contagiousness of epidemics, and his
medical crotchets, coupled with his controversial temper, prevented
his being employed by the Government, wherefore he considered himself
an ill-used man. George Birkbeck, the future founder of mechanics’
institutes, must be reckoned among the doctors: he accompanied Curran.
Peter Mark Roget, a nephew of Romilly and a friend of Bentham, as yet
Swiss rather than English, went as travelling tutor to the two sons
of John Philips, a Manchester merchant, Edgeworth’s son accompanying
them. His _Treasury of English Synonyms_ is well known. William
Woodville, the disciple of Jenner, and physician to the Smallpox
Hospital, had been with Nowel to Boulogne in the summer of 1801, at the
solicitation of Dr. Antoine Ambert, to introduce vaccination during
a smallpox epidemic. He was an accomplished botanist. Dr. Wickham,
another visitor, was likewise a friend of Jenner. On the other hand
there were two strong opponents of vaccination. William Rowley,
physician to the Marylebone Infirmary and an accoucheur of repute,
and Benjamin Moseley, of Chelsea Hospital, who had been trained in
Paris, and who had a strange theory that the changes of the moon
influenced hemorrhage of the lungs. Tuthill (afterwards Sir George
Tuthill) took over his handsome wife, of whom we shall hear again.
James Carrick Moore, brother of Sir John, became director of Jenner’s
vaccine institute. Benjamin Travers, as yet articled pupil to Sir
Paston Cooper, was the first hospital surgeon to make of ophthalmia a
special study. Thomas Young was inspector-general of hospitals. Of his
distinguished homonym, although also a doctor, we shall speak among
scientists. Of John Bunnell Davis and Farrell Mulvey we shall hear
later on. James Carmichael Smyth, physician to George III.,
was destined to be the step-grandfather of Thackeray, for his son Major
Henry Carmichael Smyth married Thackeray’s mother in India, and ‘sat’
for the character of Colonel Newcome. The physician received £5000 from
Parliament for curing a jail distemper at Winchester in 1796 by nitrous
acid; albeit a Dr. Johnston and a Frenchman also claimed the discovery.
James Chichester Maclaurin, physician to the Paris Embassy 1790–1792,
returned in the same capacity in 1802. He died in 1804 at the age of
thirty-nine. His predecessor Macdonnal also revisited Paris. Michael
O’Ryan had practised at Lyons, where Louis Badger, a silk-spinner of
English descent, one of the victims of the Revolution--mistaken for his
brother Pierre, he refused to undeceive his executioners, but Pierre
was shot a week later--had married his wife’s sister. Fleeing from the
Revolution back to Ireland, O’Ryan now went and settled in Paris. He
was a great advocate of quinine.
Cardinal Charles Erskine, by virtue of his rank, claims priority among
the clerical visitors. His father, Colin Erskine, son of Sir Charles,
a Fifeshire baronet, was an artist at Rome, where he married a Roman
lady. A letter to the French Government of 1808 giving an account of
the College of Cardinals says:--
‘Erskine, 65 years of age, affects the greatest indifference to
the present state of things (Napoleon’s rule), speaking of the
Emperor with apparent moderation, but a dangerous man, perhaps
the most dangerous of all; educated at the English college.’[77]
He was on his way back to Rome, after having been a kind of legate in
England, where in 1801 he had had the invidious task of requiring the
resignations of the French _émigré_ bishops on account of the
Concordat. Fourteen, however, out of the eighteen, headed by Arthur
Dillon, Archbishop of Narbonne, refused to comply, and seven colleagues
on the Continent followed their example. A good scholar, excellent
company, and a loyal Briton, Erskine died in 1811 in Paris, having been
interned there by Napoleon, and was buried in the Pantheon.[78] Dr.
Gregory Stapleton, Bishop of the English midland district, went to St.
Omer to try and recover the property of the English college of which
he had been the head until the Revolution, but he died there, without
having continued his journey to Paris, on the 5th April 1802. A fellow
prelate was Dr. Troy, President of Maynooth, and ultimately Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin, who was anxious to obtain fuller restitution of
the confiscated property of the Irish colleges in France and to re-open
them, for Maynooth with its two hundred seminarists was insufficient.
He went to Lord Cornwallis, who, however, was unable to help him.
A staunch loyalist, he had assisted in carrying the Union, and was
consequently in receipt of a State pension. William Walsh until the
Revolution had been the head of the Irish college in Paris. Driven away
by that event, he eventually recovered his post. Father Peter Flood,
who had narrowly escaped the massacre of September 1792,[79] was sent
over by the Irish Catholic bishops to effect the fusion of all the
Franco-Irish colleges. Tuite, who till the Revolution had been head of
the English college at Paris, found that building converted to secular
uses. John Chetwode Eustace, formerly chaplain to the Jerninghams,
a Maynooth professor and a very liberal Catholic, had visited Paris
in 1790, and was destined to pay a third visit in company with Lord
Brownlow, Robert Rushbrooke, and Philip Roche.
Edward Stanley, the future Bishop of Norwich, and father of Dean
Stanley, represented the Church of England, for he had just been
ordained. He was on his way to Switzerland, and was disappointed at
not seeing Napoleon. He was over again in 1816, when he heard drunken
English soldiers singing on the boulevards:
‘Louis Dix-huit, Louis Dix-huit,
We’ve licked all your armies
and sunk all your fleet.’
And the French royalists imagined the song to be complimentary.[80]
Anglicanism was also represented by Stephen Weston, grandson of a
bishop, who had been to Paris in 1791, and published rather flippant
accounts of both trips. Then there was John Glasse, rector of Hanwell,
a good classical scholar, whose sermon in 1793 on behalf of the French
_émigré_ priests made light of the differences between Catholicism
and Protestantism. Hanwell is associated with lunacy, and Glasse in
1810, in a fit of mental derangement, hung himself at the Bull and
Mouth Inn, London. John Sanford was a witness of the scene between
Napoleon and Lord Whitworth on the 13th March 1803, and in _Notes and
Queries_ of the 3rd April 1852, as the only surviving witness--for
the Duchess of Gordon, her daughters, and Mrs. Greatheed were then
dead--he gave an account of it. W. Hughes, landing at Dieppe in June
1802, visited Rouen, Caen, Blois, and other provincial towns before
proceeding to Paris. Of John Maude, fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford,
we shall hear hereafter, as also of Churchill.
The Church of Scotland may be credited with John Paterson, for he was
probably the future missionary to Russia and Scandinavia. Alexander and
Joseph Paterson may have been his brothers.
Nonconformity was represented by William Shepherd of Gatacre,
Lancashire, an intimate friend of Brougham, author of a life of Poggio,
and also of a history of the American Revolution. The latter work
Lord John Russell read in manuscript before publication. Shepherd
had educated one of Roscoe’s sons, and was now escorting members
of the Roscoe family. He took with him a letter of introduction to
Miss Williams, at whose house he met Carnot and Kosciusko, spending
a most agreeable evening. On repeating his visit in 1814, however,
he apparently, judging by the silence of his _Paris in 1802 and
1814_, neglected to renew the lady’s acquaintance.
Turning to philosophers, scholars, and scientists, priority is due to
Jeremy Bentham and Malthus. Bentham exercised the French citizenship
conferred on him in 1792 by voting for Bonaparte’s life-consulate, an
act not very consistent with his radical doctrines.[81] His father had
taken him over to France in 1764. Malthus, who, though a clergyman,
should be classed as a philosopher or economist, little imagined how
Frenchmen, mostly without having heard of him, would practise his
principle. He revisited the Continent in 1825. Richard Chenevix,
the mineralogist, who had witnessed and been imprisoned during the
Revolution, had taken Brussels and Jena on his way to Paris.
The Institute had in December 1801 elected as foreign associates Banks,
Priestley, Herschel, Neville Maskelyne, James Rennell, the geographer,
and Henry Cavendish in the class of physics and mathematics; Fox in
that of history and classics, and Sir Benjamin West in that of art.
There had apparently been an idea of also electing Arthur Young,
Horne Tooke, Sheridan, Watt, and Sir John Sinclair. Herschel, Fox,
and West were the only three of the eight nominees who acknowledged
the compliment in person. Herschel had the more reason for doing so
as he had in 1790 been elected an associate of the old Academy of
Sciences before it was swept away by the Revolution. Sir Charles
Blagden, Secretary of the Royal Society, whose name is attached to
the law of congelation, was presented to Napoleon, who told him that
Banks was much esteemed in France, and indeed Banks had repeatedly
obtained the restitution of consignments to the Jardin des Plantes
captured at sea by the English.[82] Blagden seems, though a scientist,
to have had a mission from the English Government, for Andreossi,
the French Ambassador at London, writing to Regnier on the 8th April
1803, reported a statement of General Miranda, who was intimate
with Blagden: ‘He is in the pay of the Government; they were not at
first satisfied with his reports, but he has changed his tone, and
they are now better pleased.’ Andreossi added: ‘I am certain that he
has spread it about here (in London) that I was in treaty on behalf
of the Minister of the Interior for the purchase of a machine for
“dividing” mathematical instruments, an object of great advantage to
French industry, and requiring some precautions in order to be carried
out.’ Blagden doubtless renewed his acquaintance with Desgenettes,
the army doctor, who since his visit as a young man to London in 1784
had accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, and was destined to accompany him
to Moscow. Blagden, pronounced by Dr. Johnson ‘a delightful fellow,’
was also acquainted with Count Rumford, for whose daughter’s hand
he was an unsuccessful suitor.[83] After Waterloo he spent half the
year in France and died there. Bonnycastle, Professor of Mathematics
at Woolwich Academy, described by Leigh Hunt as rather vain of his
acquirements, but a good fellow, fond of quoting Shakespeare and of
telling stories, was another visitor, probably in the company of his
friend Fuseli. Dr. John Fleming, Professor of Natural Philosophy at
Aberdeen, published in 1842 a _History of British Animals_.
Osborn, an F.R.S., was living in 1806 at Weimar, where he explained to
Goethe the battle of Trafalgar. Edward Pigott, the discoverer of the
variable star in Sobieski’s belt or sword, had observed the transit
of Venus at Caen in 1769, and that of Mercury at Louvain in 1786. He
dated an astronomical paper from Fontainebleau in 1803, and in 1807
he observed the great comet, but the date and place of his death are
uncertain.[84]
Perhaps the most eminent man of this category, scarcely less eminent
than Herschel (though the latter discovered the planet now named after
him, but originally styled by him the Georgium Sidus and by Frenchmen,
Napoleon), was Thomas Young. He was the author of the undulatory theory
of light, ridiculed at the time in the _Edinburgh Review_ by that
shallow scientist Brougham, yet now almost universally accepted, and he
was the first to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. His uncle, Richard
Brocklesby, the physician and friend of Johnson, Burke, Reynolds,
and Wilkes, bequeathed him £10,000, besides his house, library, and
pictures. In 1801 Young, originally tutor to Hudson Gurney--both being
then Quakers, but both destined to renounce Quakerism--and a medical
practitioner, had found his true vocation as Professor of Natural
Philosophy at the Royal Institution and editor of the _Nautical
Almanac_. He has a nephew, a rent-collector at Bristol, who, however
tells me that he was not born till after his illustrious uncle’s death.
It is difficult to draw an exact line between scholars, connoisseurs,
and savants. Charles Towneley was famous, like Elgin, for his marbles,
the fruits of his Italian travels from 1765 to 1772, and purchased
after his death in 1805 by the British Museum. Turberville Needham, the
scientist, had been his tutor in Paris in 1752, when his uncle John,
translator of _Hudibras_ into French verse, seems to have looked
after him. Sir Abraham Hume, who has been already mentioned, was a
famous collector of minerals and precious stones, and had purchased
pictures by the old masters at Vienna and Bologna. He was one of the
founders of the Geological Society, and lived to be at eighty-eight
the senior F.R.S. Joseph Ritson, the antiquary, had been in Paris in
1791, when he was enthusiastic for the Revolution, and he actually
adopted the Jacobin calendar. A strict vegetarian and an avowed
materialist, he was latterly insane. Stephen Martin-Leake, herald
and numismatist, sent over three of his sons, William, Stephen, and
John, the two last likewise heralds. William Taylor, the friend of
Southey, son of a Norwich manufacturer, and educated by Mrs. Barbauld,
at Palgrave, Suffolk, had been sent on the Continent by his father in
1779, went again in 1788, and now repeated his visit. He was one of the
first to introduce German literature to English readers. He met Paine
at a dinner given by Holcroft, and had an introduction to Lafayette
from his uncle Dyson, a Norfolk man whose son had taught Lafayette
farming.[85] Taylor went back an anti-Bonapartist. Paine had probably
opened his eyes to Napoleon’s tyranny. Alexander Hamilton, a future
F.R.S., had been in the East India Company’s service in Bengal, and on
returning to England, after accompanying Lord Elgin to Constantinople,
had continued his Sanscrit studies. He took with him his Creole wife
and a promising son. Few as were then the students of Sanscrit, fewer
still were the students of Chinese. Thomas Manning was one of them.
Son of the rector of Diss, Norfolk, in whose church Wesley preached a
few weeks before his death, though all other church pulpits had long
been closed to him, Manning was also at Holcroft’s dinner, and we
may imagine his being questioned about Diss by Paine, who had been a
journeyman staymaker there. In his letters to his father--all beginning
‘Honoured sir,’ and subscribed ‘your dutiful son’--he mentions the Abbé
Sicard, the teacher of the deaf and dumb, Carnot, Madame de Staël,
Chateaubriand, and Laharpe. Manning, who suggested to Charles Lamb his
roast pig essay, and was also intimate with Coleridge, is buried, like
Malthus, in Bath Abbey.
Artists flocked to Paris to see the spoils from Italy collected at
the Louvre. There was West (not yet Sir Benjamin West), with his son
Raphael, who was expected to prove himself worthy of his Christian
name, but failed to do so. It was this visit, perhaps, which left
West no time to send a new picture to the Royal Academy exhibition in
1803; but he should not have attempted to palm off as new a ‘Hagar
and Ishmael’ which he had exhibited in 1776. President though he was,
the Academy insisted on its withdrawal. Opie was there with his wife,
Amelia Alderson, who years afterwards gave an account of her visit in
_Tait’s Magazine_. Seated on the boulevards, the future Quakeress
sang ‘Fall, tyrants, fall,’ a pæan on the Revolution singularly
out of place under the iron rule of Napoleon; but she had not yet
discovered him to be a tyrant. Opie was so dazzled the first day by
the white glare of Paris houses that he talked of leaving at once to
avoid blindness, but the alarm soon passed off. Bertie Greatheed,
the dramatist, was accompanied by his son, who copied assiduously at
the Louvre, besides sketching a capital likeness of Napoleon. His
copies were said to be so good that Napoleon refused at first to
let them leave France, but relented on the young man’s death.[86]
Erskine also induced Napoleon to sit for his portrait to Philips,
R.A., who finished it through the courtesy of Josephine while her
husband was at supper. The portrait was sold at Erskine’s death and
was apparently purchased by Lord Howden. Howden, who latterly lived at
Bayonne, bequeathed it to the sub-prefecture of that town, where it
still hangs, but not in a prominent place, so that it escaped notice
till 1895, when, in a controversy on the colour of Napoleon’s eyes,
attention was called to it.[87] Richard Cosway, the miniaturist, and
his wife, the musician and historical painter, repeated their visit
of 1786, when Richard was trying to sell to Louis XVI. some
Raphael cartoons which he had bought of Bonfield. André Chénier, the
poet destined to the guillotine, was then passionately in love with
Mrs. Cosway. He addressed verses to her, some in her name in full,
others inscribed ‘d. r.,’ a contraction for d’Arno, on the banks of
which river she was born. A Polish poet, Niemcewics, likewise enamoured
of her, went to see her in London in 1787. She now studied at the
Louvre, next went to Lyons, and then to Lodi.[88] She subsequently
started a school in Paris, which did not succeed, went again to Lyons,
and eventually became head of a convent near that city. Daughter
of an English hotelkeeper at Leghorn, she thus played many parts.
Another female artist, Mrs. Damer, had been captured by a French
privateer in 1779, but gallantly allowed to proceed to Jersey, where
her father, Field-Marshal Conway, was governor. Josephine, whom she
had known before her marriage, introduced her to Napoleon, who, as
previously stated, bespoke a bust of Fox. Strawberry Hill House had
been bequeathed to her by Horace Walpole. John Claude Nattes, one of
the earliest of water-colourists and a topographical draftsman, took
views of Paris, Versailles, and St. Denis. For unaccountably exhibiting
drawings not his own, he was in 1807 expelled from the Water Colour
Society, but he then resumed sending to the Royal Academy. Masquerier,
of whom we have already heard, was again in Paris. Let it suffice to
name Sir Martin Shee, President of the Royal Academy; Fuseli; Flaxman,
who with his wife accompanied West; Duppa, who had witnessed French
spoliation at Rome in 1798; Farrington, who accompanied Rogers;
Bowyer, the fashionable portrait painter and illustrator of Hume’s
_History_; Edward Hayes, the miniaturist, and his father, the
more distinguished painter, Michael Angelo Hayes; George Bryant,
engaged by the sportsman Thornton; William Dickinson, with his son,
of whom we shall hear later on; Boddington; Hoppner, the naturalised
German;[89] Thomas Daniell; William Turner; Andrew Wilson; John Wright;
Robert Flin; William Sherlock, who forty years before had studied in
Paris, the illustrator of Smollett’s _History_, B. D. Wyatt, the
architect; Abraham Raimbach, the engraver; Charles and James Heath
and Jervis, also engravers; and Thomas Richard Underwood. Likewise
an artist in her way was Mary Linwood, who in 1798 had opened an
exhibition of art needlework, viz. copies of a hundred pictures of old
masters and modern painters, and who went on working till the age of
seventy-five, when eyesight failed her. Her Napoleon in woolwork is now
in the South Kensington Museum.
But few actors had time--they can scarcely have lacked inclination--to
visit Paris. John Philip Kemble, however, described in the register as
_rentier_, went to see his old college at Douai, which he found so
dilapidated that he had not the heart to inspect his old room. Arriving
in Paris in July 1802, he made the acquaintance of Talma, who showed
him, with his companions Lords Hollands and Cloncurry, over the Louvre.
He then proceeded to Madrid to study Spanish acting. His brother
Charles likewise went to Paris on his way to Vienna and St. Petersburg,
not reappearing in London till September 1803. Their father Roger, a
less accomplished actor, who never played but once in London, and then
for the benefit of his son Stephen, is said to have spent from May 1799
to October 1802 in Italy and France; but this seems unlikely at his
age, for at his death in December 1802 he was over eighty. Edmond John
Eyre, the son of a clergyman, had left Cambridge without a degree in
order to take to the stage. He was, however, an indifferent actor at
Bath and Bristol. He published his _Observations made at Paris_.
We may couple with the Kembles and Eyre Mrs. Charlotte Atkyns, though
she had long left Drury Lane where she was known as ‘the pretty Miss
Walpole.’ She married in 1779, at the age of twenty-five, Edward
Atkyns of Ketteringham Hall, Norfolk, who died in 1794. She was in
Paris during the Revolution, and was one of those who endeavoured to
effect the escape of Marie Antoinette. In 1809 she celebrated George
III.’s Jubilee by a feast to the villagers of Ketteringham, at
which she herself proposed the loyal toasts. The death of her only son
in 1804 had then left her sole mistress of Ketteringham, but she seems
ultimately to have lost her property. She was an ardent believer in
the sham Dauphin Bruneau, but was nevertheless pensioned after 1815 by
Louis XVIII. and died in Paris about 1829.
Let us turn to inventors. Congreve has been already named. James
Watt had not seen France since 1786, when his advice was called for
on the Marly aqueduct. This time he does not appear to have had any
professional purpose, albeit that aqueduct was again out of repair.
Thomas Wedgwood, one of the three sons of the great potter, was the
future inventor of photography. An invalid in search of health, he
required change of scene. He deserves mention for settling an annuity
on Coleridge, and as the friend of Sydney Smith. He first went to
Brussels, joined Poole in Paris, went on with him to Switzerland, and
returned home in August 1803. Greathead, another inventor, doubtless
wished to introduce his lifeboat. Robert Salmon, steward to the Duke
of Norfolk and clerk of the works at the rebuilding of Carlton House,
had invented a chaff-cutting machine, and probably wished to make it
known in France, while William Story took out a patent for a blue dye.
There were also men of business and men who went over on business. Sir
Elijah Impey, who has been named among the ex-M.P’s, had been chosen
as delegate by a meeting in London of claimants for compensation for
confiscated property, an article in the treaty having stipulated that
such claims should be promptly settled by the tribunals. The article
was nominally applicable to both countries, but England, of course, had
had no revolution and had confiscated little, if any, French property.
No such claims were settled before the renewal of hostilities, for
Whitworth, reporting a conversation with Napoleon on the 23rd February
1803, says:--
‘I alleged as a cause of mistrust and jealousy the impossibility
of obtaining justice or any kind of redress for any of His
Majesty’s subjects. He asked me in what respect. I told him that
since the signing of the treaty not one British claimant had
been satisfied, though every Frenchman of that description had
been so within one month after that period.’
The claims, as we shall see, were revived in 1815, when France gave
a lump sum of sixty millions, leaving the English authorities to
adjudicate on the separate claims. The claims certainly presented
difficulties, for Merry, on the 12th May 1802, speaks of ‘clamorous
demands,’ and on the 23rd June of ‘incessant and sometimes intemperate
applications’; while on taking his departure in December he expressed
mortification at having the claims unredressed.[90] Even private papers
were not restored, perhaps because being mostly tradesmen’s bills they
were not thought worth reclaiming, but possibly because troublesome
formalities were necessary. Merry had been directed to back the claim
of the Duke of Richmond to the Aubigny estates conferred by Louis
XIV. on his ancestress, Charles _II._’s mistress, but in January 1803
Napoleon decreed that no British subject could possess landed property
in France, and in 1807 Aubigny was definitely confiscated.
Among the business men, bankers may be allowed precedence. I do
not reckon Rogers among them, for his visit had no more to do with
banking than that of his brother-in-law Sutton Sharpe with brewing.
But there were Boyd and Benfield, of whom I have already spoken. I
have also mentioned Sir Francis Baring and his son Alexander. Hugh
Hamersley, son of an Oxfordshire clergyman, and named Hugh on account
of descent from Sir Hugh Hamersley, Lord Mayor of London in 1627,
was one of the earliest lovers of Théroigne de Méricourt. According
to her confessions or interrogatories when a prisoner in Austria, he
promised her marriage, and she remained with him till 1785; but on
coming into possession of his patrimony he took her to Paris, there
indulged in dissipation, and returned without her, but settled 200,000
f. on her. Such a statement of course requires verification, but the
tradition at her birthplace is that she eloped with an Englishman in
the hope of becoming a public singer in London, for she had a fine
voice. (Œlsner states, however, that after bearing a son to Persan de
Doublet, who dismissed her with an annuity of 12,000 f., she went to
London and lived with the Italian singer Carducci, a eunuch whom she
induced to take with him to Italy, but they quarrelled and parted at
Genoa.[91] Œlsner is likely to have ascertained the true version of her
antecedents. Did Hamersley inquire for the poor lunatic in 1802?[92]
He had been agent for the French Government in the maintenance of
French prisoners in England until it changed its system and left
England to support them. Madame Dubarry, on recovering her stolen
jewels in London, deposited them with Hamersley. He subscribed £315 to
the patriotic fund of 1803, and in 1812 was M.P. for Helston. On his
death in 1840 his bank was wound up and yielded only 10s. in the pound.
He had married in 1810 Margaret, daughter of John Bevan, a Quaker
banker, and I remember his nephew or cousin as Chairman of Oxfordshire
Quarter Sessions. Herries, brother of Sir Charles Herries, probably
went to fetch his wife, who had been an eyewitness of the Revolution.
Thornton and Power, English bankers at Hamburg and other Continental
towns, opened a branch at Paris in 1802, and in 1805 John Power applied
for French citizenship; but the police reported unfavourably on the
application, alleging that the Hamburg bank acted for the English
Government and that the Paris branch had furnished money to the
conspirator Georges, though pleading ignorance of his criminal purpose.
Thornton, they added, was an illegitimate son of the well-known M.P.
and writer on finance.[93] Thornton and Power seem to have amalgamated
with Perregaux, who had dealings with London banks. Kensington was
another London banker. William Dawes, assistant secretary to the
Bank of England, was probably commissioned to report on the newly
established Bank of France, and Mollien relates how Napoleon, on being
shown an intercepted letter from a Paris to an English banker advising
him to subscribe for its shares, exclaimed, ‘Such are merchants!
Disputes between governments do not disturb their alliances.’
Speaking of merchants, William Ewart was the eminent Liverpool merchant
after whom Gladstone was named on account of his father’s intimacy
with him, while Judah, Henry, and Abraham Salomons were doubtless the
uncles of Sir David Salomons, the first Jew returned to Parliament.
There were also Joseph,[94] Leon, and Moses Montefiore, of Bologna
origin, the first of them already the father of Sir Moses Montefiore
the philanthropist, then a youth of eighteen. This Moses Montefiore was
on his way to Leghorn. James and Thomas Payne, eminent booksellers of
the second generation, were doubtless bent on picking up rare volumes.
James, succeeding to the business of Elmsley, had already profited
by the dispersion of such treasures in the Revolution--the Lamoignon
collection for instance. He had secured many prizes for Lord Spencer
to enrich the famous Althorp collection, which in 1899 was purchased
by Mrs. Rylands and presented to Manchester. He also had dealings with
the British Museum and the Bodleian; and had supplied some rare English
books to the Paris National Library, and helped in its catalogue.
William Hayes was another bookselling tourist, and there was John
Nichols, the printer and publisher, the biographer of Hogarth and for
nearly half a century editor of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. He
had just retired from business, and with his two daughters went to the
south of France. Then there was Thomas Poole, the friend of Paine, the
friend also of Coleridge and Sir Humphry Davy. He went to hear the Abbé
Sicard lecture to the deaf and dumb.
From books to horses is a long jump. Edward Tattersall had been sent
over in 1775 on an invitation from M. de Mezières, equerry to Louis
XVI., and had much enjoyed himself. His father Richard, who
supplied horses for the French royal stud, told the French host not
to spoil the boy, but to make him keep his place, as he would have
to earn his own livelihood.[95] The mention of Tattersall naturally
suggests Philip Astley, who hoped to recover ten years’ rent for his
old circus, which had been converted into barracks; but while engaged
in securing this, his London circus, in which he had introduced French
performances, was burnt down. William Boffin Kennedy was a well-known
florist who had Josephine as a customer, for in 1801, in a letter to
Otto at London, she sent a list of flowers to be ordered of him. Lastly
there was Dorant, proprietor of the York Hotel, Albemarle Street,
London, who went over to cash £2000 in assignats, but found them worth
just 12 f. He acted as cicerone, familiar as he was with Paris, to
young George Jackson of the Embassy.
We now come to authors, whom we have reserved till nearly the last,
not because they were the least important, rather the reverse, but
because they are the most numerous. They may be conveniently divided
into writers on Paris--chiels taking notes--and writers on other
subjects. As to the former, it must be confessed that few of these
accounts of Paris possess much merit or interest. There are, however,
some notable exceptions. Thomas Holcroft, as ‘dogmatic, virulent,
and splenetic as ever’ says King, had been prosecuted in 1794; but
on the acquittal of Horne Tooke and others the case against him was
abandoned. He had been to Paris in 1783, and again in 1785 to fetch
his son back from school, when along with Bonneville, Paine’s future
host, he wrote down Beaumarchais’s _Figaro_ from hearing it at
the theatre, being unable otherwise to procure a copy in order to have
it performed in London. He had paid a third visit in 1799–1801, and he
was now accompanied by his second wife Louise Mercier, who was born
in France but brought up in England.[96] He also took his daughter
Fanny, the future novelist and translator, who married first Dr. Badams
and secondly Danton’s nephew Merget. Holcroft in his _Travels from
Hamburg to Paris_ (1804) gives a good picture of Parisian society.
J. G. Lemaistre, who went to claim a legacy, was one of the earliest
visitors, for he started in October or November 1801, remaining
till May 1802. In the latter year he published a _Rough Sketch of
Paris_. He went on to Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, and in his
_Travels after the Peace of Amiens_ (1806) he gave a curious
account of his dining with Cardinal York, then already getting into
his dotage. Lemaistre was the son of an Indian judge, was described
by Erskine as ‘a most agreeable, good-natured, sensible man,’ and was
obviously of French or Channel Isle descent. Sir John Carr, a Rugby
scholar, wrote numerous books of travel, his _Stranger in France_
(1803) being his first attempt. In 1898 it was translated into French
by M. Albert Babeau. No other visitor of 1802 has had a similar honour,
but _Paris as it was and as it is_ by Francis William Blagdon, a
teacher of languages, was translated at the time into German.
John King, the author of _Letters from France_, reprinted I
think from the _True Briton_, had a singular career. He was
the son of poor Jewish parents, was apparently named (not of course
christened) Isaac, and was brought up at a Jewish charity school.
Thomas Paine, with whom he was afterwards to break lances, knew
him young, penniless, and friendless, a flaming Radical. Clerk in a
Jewish counting-house, he made use of his good abilities and started
as a money-lender and bill-discounter, advancing money on post-obits
to spendthrift heirs. He was also a frequent speaker at a debating
club in Carlisle Street. In 1783 he published, dedicating it to Fox,
_Thoughts on the Difficulties and Distresses in which the Peace
of 1783 has involved the People of England_. He lived in style,
and is described as a banker at Egham, but seems to have been simply
a broker. As such, nicknamed ‘Jew King’ or ‘King of the Jews,’ he
became notorious for litigation, figuring frequently in the courts
as plaintiff, defendant, or witness, and he was roughly handled by
cross-examining counsel. He was, moreover, twice imprisoned for debt.
He had previously visited France, and in December 1792 he had denounced
the Revolution. Twitted by Paine with his change of opinions, he
replied that the Revolution, not he himself, had changed. At Paris
he was accompanied or joined by his wife the Dowager-Countess of
Lanesborough, a widow since 1779, and is said to have procured her son
a rich wife.[97] In any case he himself had obtained a potentially
rich wife, for the Countess in 1814 came into possession for life of
the estates of her brother, the Earl of Belvedere. A police note by
Desmarest of the 2nd October 1802 gives no flattering account of King:--
‘This Englishman, a branded swindler, has just incurred another
disgrace. His daughter, daughter of Lady Lanesborough his wife,
last night quitted King’s house to rejoin her husband M. de
Marescote (Marquis Luigi Marescotti) of Bologna. King for nine
years had detained this young woman from her husband, and had
always refused to give her up. He required Marescote to fetch
her in England, because he would then have presented heavy
bills, which he would have forced him to pay even by litigation.
Madame M. took advantage of her stay in Paris to rejoin her
husband. All this happened under the eyes and with the approval
of the Italian Minister, Marescalchi, who beforehand informed
the Minister of Justice. Mr. King has confined himself to
preferring a charge of robbery against Miss Oliver, Madame
M.’s lady’s-maid. King pretends to have had promises from two
ministers for starting a rival English paper in Paris. He wrote
some days ago to General Moreau, Santerre, Tallien, and a fourth
person to invite them to dine with him, which they refused. It
is presumed that his object was simply to obtain answers from
them which he hoped to produce in London and thus make fresh
dupes. He is always careful to write his letters in his own name
and that of Lady Lanesborough, the latter name procuring him
deference and answers. Senator Perregaux (a banker) who has been
consulted respecting this foreigner, regards him as a swindler
and as a dangerous man.’
This report must be a mixture of fact and fiction, for even if King,
on Lady Lanesborough’s departure from Paris in October 1802, was left
in charge of her daughter, he could not have been sequestrating her
for nine years. Marescotti, moreover, when arrested at Cassel in 1807
and incarcerated at Bouillon, is described in another police report
as a needy adventurer employed by the English Government. A German
translation of Goldsmith’s book on Napoleon was in his possession,
and he was charged with circulating pamphlets of the same kind. He was
released in the following year, on the understanding that his brother
at Bologna would keep him out of mischief.[98] No mention is made of
his wife, who had probably quitted him. Thomas Moore met her at Bologna
in 1819 (her mother also he saw in Paris in 1821), and she lived till
1840. King’s banking partner Lathrop Murray, who pretended to be a
baronet, became bankrupt in the summer of 1802, pleading in excuse that
he had fallen a prey in Paris to King’s wiles, backed by French wines
and by Lady Lanesborough’s attractions. Returning to England, King was
arrested for debt in 1802, but published his book in 1803, and in the
following year he issued a pamphlet entitled _Oppressions deemed no
Injustice toward Some Individuals_. This was a protest against his
rough handling in the Law Courts. He also published a _Universal
System of Arithmetic_, but after his wife’s accession to her
brother’s property, he lived abroad with her in good style. He died at
Florence in 1823, and his wife, aged eighty-seven, in 1828.[99] His
_Letters from France_ are not without interest. He mentions that
Santerre, when lunching with him, justified his beating the drums at
Louis XVI.’s execution, his object being to prevent royalist
cries which would have led to bloodshed.
King naturally brings us to his fellow Hebrew, Lewis Goldsmith.
Born at Richmond, Surrey, about 1773, he seems to have been in
1792 at Frankfort and in 1794 in Poland, whence he wrote to Lord
Stanhope, urging him to bring the Polish cause before Parliament.
Stanhope, however, though sympathising with Kosciusko, stated that
the Anglo-Prussian alliance debarred him from doing so. In 1795
Goldsmith, as a friend of Joel Barlow, wrote a preface to the second
part of Barlow’s _Advice to the Privileged Orders_, an exhortation
to kings and aristocrats to renounce their doomed prerogatives.
According to Lord Campbell, Goldsmith had been an emissary of all the
great European powers, yet in 1801 he published a pamphlet entitled
_The Crimes of Cabinets_, in which he denounced the British
and Continental Governments as bent on dismembering France. It was
to escape prosecution for this tirade that he went to Paris, his
wife Rebecca with their daughter joining him. He alleges, but it is
difficult to believe him, that he was taken to Dieppe in order to be
given up to England as a conspirator in exchange for Peltier, and that
no such exchange being feasible he was sent back to Paris. There, it
is clear, he offered his services to Napoleon, who conceived the idea
of starting an English newspaper in Paris to circulate his ideas in
England and its colonies. Curiously enough Napoleon was an unconscious
plagiary of the Commonwealth, which in 1650 founded or supported a
French weekly newspaper, _Nouvelles Ordinaires de Londres_,
for circulation on the Continent.[100] That newspaper lasted only
eight years, and the Paris _Argus_ lasted about as long. There
must have been a staff of English compositors to bring it out. It
gave copious extracts from the London journals, but was violently
anti-English or at least anti-ministerial in its tone. Goldsmith
afterwards disclaimed responsibility for its diatribes, insisting that
he simply inserted the articles sent him. In November 1802 Napoleon
ordered five hundred copies to be regularly sent to the French West
Indies in order thence to reach the neighbouring British colonies.
The paper was described by Merry as a ‘despicable publication.’ But
in February 1803 Goldsmith was dismissed, which Whitworth notified
as a sign of peace, the paper having changed its tone. His successor
was Thomas Hutton, ex-editor of the _Dramatic Censor_, who soon
incurred disgrace and imprisonment. Goldsmith, pleading penury,
asked for 7000 f. compensation. He had, he said, been promised the
proprietorship, and had been put to great expense by his wife bringing
over her furniture from England. He had also paid in advance for his
daughter’s schooling,[101] and being threatened with assassination
by the English in Paris he was anxious to leave.[102] He remained,
however, for in 1804–1805 he published with Barère the _Memorial
Anti-Britannique_. He also translated Blackstone into French, and he
advertised in the _Petites Affiches_ in 1805–1806 as a pupil of
Scott and Schabracq, London notaries, and as a sworn interpreter ready
to undertake translations and other business.
Returning in 1809 to England with a passport from Dunkirk for America,
he was imprisoned for a short time in Tuthill Fields, but on his
release began to write violently against Napoleon. Goldsmith published
in 1811 the _Secret History of the Cabinet of Bonaparte_, and he
proposed in 1815 that a price should be set on Bonaparte’s head. In
spite of these provocative, not to say scurrilous, publications, he
after Waterloo settled down quietly in Paris till his death in 1846 as
solicitor to the British Embassy. One of his duties was to hand over
the letters or parcels which in those days of dear postage and carriage
were franked by the Foreign Office, and a friend of mine, sent as a
young man to Paris to get a French polish, remembers how Goldsmith
used to quiz or banter him on the supposed feminine source of such
consignments. But the most romantic event in Goldsmith’s career, a
kind of parallel to King’s marriage, was the marriage in 1837 of his
handsome daughter Georgiana, born in Paris in 1807, to Lord Lyndhurst,
ex-Lord Chancellor. ‘I lived in Paris,’ she told Augustus Hare in
1881, ‘with my father, and I was nobody. I never expected to marry.
Why should I? I had no fortune and no attractions.’ Lyndhurst first
saw her when visiting Paris with his first wife. He went over again,
a widower, in 1837 and made her an offer. Hare speaks of her ‘clever
vivacity acquired by her early life in France.’ ‘I had,’ she told
him, ‘twenty-six years of the most perfect happiness ever allotted to
woman.’ Both husband and wife were curious links with the past, for the
former, son of the artist Copley, was born at Boston, U.S., in 1772,
four years before the Declaration of Independence, while the widow
survived till 1891.
Another man who boxed the political compass was James Redhead Yorke.
Visiting Paris in 1792, full of enthusiasm for the Revolution,[103]
and imprisoned for sedition at Dorchester, he not only fell in love
with his jailer’s daughter, whom he married on his release, but turned
anti-Gallican. He nevertheless in 1802 renewed acquaintance with Paine,
who said to him, ‘Do you call this a republic? Why, they are worse off
than the slaves in Constantinople.’ Yet Paine had originally, like
many intelligent Frenchmen, admired Napoleon. Yorke’s _Letters from
France_ were reprinted, like King’s, from a newspaper.
A fourth erratic journalist was William Playfair, brother of the
Edinburgh geologist. He had helped to capture the Bastille, but was so
disillusioned with the Revolution that on returning to London in 1792
he advocated flooding France with forged assignats as the surest means
of overturning the Republic. For this Louis Blanc has pilloried him,
but reprehensible as the scheme was, Playfair--what an irony in his
name!--was not even entitled to originality, for forged Congressional
notes had been circulated during the American War of Independence.
Although the English Government did not act on Playfair’s suggestion
the royalist _émigrés_ did so, and Napoleon, as we shall see,
followed the evil example by counterfeiting English, Austrian, and
Russian notes. Playfair on this second visit to Paris had no literary
purpose, but in 1820 he published a criticism on Lady Morgan’s book on
France. His editorship of _Galignani’s Messenger_, his inventions,
never lucrative, and his pecuniary troubles need not be detailed.
Like King and Goldsmith he must be pronounced an adventurer and a
weathercock.
Another journalist, James Parry, had just disposed of the
_Courier_, and settled in France. If, as Lord Malmesbury and
Goldsmith allege, he had been in the pay of the Directory he deserved,
if contempt, forbearance, yet as we shall find he did not obtain any.
Colonel Thomas Thornton had visited France before the Revolution, and
had shown hospitality in England to _émigrés_. He was the only
visitor whose object was sport, and he took fourteen hounds with him,
albeit game was scarce, as for twelve years the peasants had had it all
their own way. Wolves, however, still existed. He published in 1806
_A Sporting Tour through France_, and going again after Waterloo
he purchased Pont-sur-Seine. The mansion, indeed, had been destroyed
by the Cossacks, but the outbuildings were capable of habitation. He
sold the property, however, in 1821 to Casimir Périer, the grandfather
of the future President of the Republic, and died in Paris seven years
later, leaving a will in favour of an illegitimate daughter which was
annulled by the English tribunals.
We now come to two lady writers. One was Frances Elizabeth, daughter
of Sir Francis Bernard, Governor of Massachusetts, and wife of the
Rev. Richard King, a Cambridgeshire clergyman. She was intimate with
Hannah More, and founded district visiting societies and schools. She
published a _Tour in France_ in which she mentions that Boulogne
was full of English who had remained there during the Revolution, and
that you could scarcely enter a shop there without being addressed in
English. She spent seven months in Paris. The other was Anne Plumptree,
novelist and translator, daughter of a Huntingdonshire clergyman, and
granddaughter of a Cambridge don. She accompanied the Opies. Though
a democrat, she admired Napoleon and actually wished him to invade
England. Her _Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence in France_
(1810) relates chiefly to provincial life, which is an agreeable change
after so many books on Paris. I have already mentioned Francis William
Blagdon, a prolific author, who, having previously visited France in
1784, published _Paris as it was and as it is_. I may also mention
William Thomas Williams, author in 1807 of _The State of France_;
David Morrice, a schoolmaster, with his _View of Modern France_
and _Practical Guide from London to Paris_; Stewarton who wrote
anonymously or otherwise against Napoleon and Talleyrand; and Israel
Worsley, with his _State of France_ (1806). Worsley went back to
Dunkirk after Waterloo to re-open a school. In 1828 he undertook to
prove the descent of the American Indians from the lost tribes. George
Tappen, who was interested in painting and architecture, published a
_Tour through France and Italy_.
John Dean Paul, a banker and future baronet, went over in August 1802
as one of a party of five, accompanied by two servants and a courier.
He tells us in his anonymous book, _Journal of a Party of Pleasure to
Paris_, that a young friend of his in the uniform of the Wiltshire
Militia was tapped on the shoulder in the Louvre and asked to what
regiment he belonged. The inquirer was Bonaparte, who frequently thus
accosted British officers. Paul’s son and heir, then an infant, became
unpleasantly notorious fifty years later. His daughter married in
1827 Edward Fox Fitzgerald, son of Lord Edward. She lived till 1891.
William Beckford, the author of _Vathek_, had paid several visits
to Paris. In October 1782 he passed through it on his way home from
Naples. ‘A little impertinent, purse-proud puppy,’ Samuel Meek styled
him in his diary, for though staying at the same hotel he had refused
to answer an inquiry respecting a nephew of Meek at Naples. He was
again in Paris from April 1791 to June 1792, when he ordered a tapestry
for his London house, and went on to Lausanne, where he purchased
Gibbon’s library. He paid a third visit in February 1793, and left in
May with a passport from the municipality viséd by Lebrun, the Foreign
Minister; but the Calais authorities detained him until the Convention
had been consulted. He left behind him his two riding-horses, which
were seized for military baggage trains. The General Safety Committee,
declaring them unfit for such work, ordered them to be restored,[104]
on the ground that Beckford had offered to present two cart-horses
which would be much more serviceable, and that from love of liberty he
had lived much in France. We hear no particulars of his visit of May
1802.
As for authors on non-French subjects, their name is legion. Let us
begin with poets. Wordsworth, it is true, did not go further than
Calais, but I have already named Rogers, who had also seen Paris
during the Revolution, and now paid it a second visit. He described
Napoleon as having a very strong profile, a sallow but not disagreeable
complexion, light grey eyes, and scarcely perceptible eyebrows. Fox
commissioned Rogers to buy andirons for him in the Palais Royal
Arcades. Then there was Walter Savage Landor, who started with
admiration for Napoleon, but found ‘not an atom of liberty left.’
He witnessed the festival in the Tuileries gardens in honour of the
life-consulate, and he wrote to his brother: ‘I expected that the sky
would have been rent with acclamations. On the contrary, he (Bonaparte)
experienced such a reception as was given to Richard III. He
was sensibly mortified. All bowed, but he waved to and fro, and often
wiped his face with his handkerchief. He retired in about ten minutes.’
On returning home and reprinting his _Gebir_, Landor appended a
qualifying note to his line:
‘A mortal man above all mortal praise.’
He called on Paine, and in his _Imaginary Conversations_ (fifth series,
XI.) introduced a minute description of him. He represents him as
uncombed, unshaven, and unwashed, and as solacing his misfortunes by
brandy, yet he makes him foresee Napoleon’s inordinate ambition and
fall. Landor revisited Paris in 1814 and 1840. Paine, by the way, was
escorted to Havre at the end of August 1802 on his way to America by
Thomas, or ‘Clio,’ Rickman, a versifier if not exactly a poet, who
named his six sons Paine, Washington, Franklin, Rousseau, Petrarch,
and Volney. They were surely to be pitied. Another versifier was
William Parsons, who in 1785 had published a magazine at Florence and
had associated there with Madame Piozzi, Robert Merry, and Bertie
Greatheed. Greatheed, as we have seen, was also now in Paris.
Amongst other writers of works of imagination were Thomas Hope, the
author of _Anastasia_, art connoisseur, and father of Beresford
Hope;[105] William Combe, who had married Mrs. Cosway’s sister, author
of _Dr. Syntax_, a book widely read in its day; and Edgeworth,
who was arrested and but for Whitworth’s remonstrance would have been
expelled. He fancied that he had been taken for a brother of the Abbé
Edgeworth, Louis XVI.’s confessor, a distant kinsman whom he
had never even seen; but the police register[106] states that he had
indulged in ‘indiscreet talk.’ His eldest son Lovell, as we shall find,
did not come off so lightly. Edgeworth was accompanied by his fourth
wife, his distinguished daughter Maria, and her younger half-sister
Charlotte. He had intended to stay two years, but happily left in time.
Maria revisited Paris in 1820.
More matter-of-fact writers included Anthony Aufrere, an art
connoisseur, a contributor to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, a
translator from the German and Italian, and editor of _Lockhart’s
Letters_. Hazlitt, the critic and essayist, who was introduced to
Prosper Merimée’s father, the artist, copied at the Louvre, and paid a
second visit in 1824. Filon fancifully suggests that the unborn Prosper
was influenced by his mother’s impression of Hazlitt. There was also
John Allen, the Edinburgh Reviewer, a ‘man of vast information and
great conversational powers,’ says Macaulay, but who, living with Lord
Holland from 1801 till his death in 1843, wrote little. John Gifford,
the Tory pamphleteer, editor of the _Anti-Jacobin Review_, a
continuation of the famous _Anti-Jacobin_, had been the author,
concocter, or arranger of _Letters from France in 1792_. His
visits to France did not lessen his insular prejudices. In contrast to
him there was David Williams, Nonconformist minister and schoolmaster,
but now best known as founder and secretary of the Royal Literary
Fund. He had been in Paris in the winter of 1792, but seemingly did
not attend the British dinner at which an address to the Convention
was adopted. Madame Roland regretted that he had not been elected a
member of that body in lieu of Paine, but he had reason to congratulate
himself on this. Lebrun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, entrusted him
with a letter to Grenville regretting the imminence of hostilities and
suggesting that, as in the previous war, a few packets might continue
to ply between Dover and Calais;[107] but the letter received no
answer. James Anderson, whose extensive view ranged from chimneys to
cattle-breeding and political economy, had corresponded with Washington
on ‘moral philosophy and agricultural topics.’ Last, but far from
least, was Henry Hallam, as yet a young man of twenty-five.
We now come to four men who made France their home. Quintin Craufurd,
a nabob from Manila, acting on his maxim, ‘Make your fortune where
you like, but enjoy it at Paris,’ settled there in 1780. He provided
the carriage in which the royal family in 1791 attempted to escape.
He himself had gone to Brussels, perhaps expecting to meet them,
and not venturing to return, his furniture was confiscated. He was
now able to resume life in Paris, and frequently played whist with
Talleyrand, for cards were his passion. Herbert Croft, nominally a
clergyman as well as a baronet, though he had little of the reverend
about him, and was dependent on a Government pension of £200, had been
the friend of Johnson, whom he furnished with a life of Chatterton.
He, like Boswell, was duped by the Ireland forgeries. Just too late
to succour Chatterton, he was also just too late to succour a French
poet, Grainville, a cousin of Bernardin de St. Pierre; but he happily
did not foresee a more direct connection with a third suicide, that of
his brother and successor in the title, Princess Charlotte’s surgeon.
He wrote in the _Argus_ in 1805 in favour of peace. Becoming the
companion of Lady Mary Hamilton, daughter of Lord Leven, another state
pensioner (but only to the amount of £80), Croft in 1809 engaged
Charles Nodier as his secretary, and Nodier for two years turned into
French his and the lady’s productions. Both these amateur authors died
in 1816.
The third Anglo-Frenchman was John Fraser Frisell, a Glasgow student
who in 1792, at the age of sixteen, went to France to complete his
education. Enthusiastic for the Revolution, he was imprisoned for
fifteen months at Dijon during the Terror. That imprisonment, however,
procured him the lifelong friendship of fellow-captives, Guitant and
his wife, who offered him a home from 1794 to 1802, and he thus became
intimate with Chateaubriand and Joubert. Chateaubriand styled him the
Greek Englishman. Marrying a Frenchwoman, he indulged his passion for
Greek authors, for the chase, and for travelling. On the death of a
daughter in 1832, Chateaubriand, then himself a political prisoner,
wrote an elegy on her. Frisell published in French a treatise on the
British constitution, and presented a copy of it to Louis Napoleon
in Switzerland, who promised him in return his own sketch of a
French constitution. Frisell also contributed to the _Journal des
Débats_.[108] He turned Catholic just before his death, which took
place at Torquay in 1846.
The fourth Anglo-Frenchman was Henry Grey MacNab, a scion of a
Scotch-Irish family who had studied under Reid at Glasgow University.
When detained in 1803 he went to Montpellier for eleven years, there
studying medicine, political economy, and pedagogy. Before quitting
England he had published a pamphlet against a proposed tax on coal,
and in Paris in 1808 he wrote on education, on Robert Owen, of whom
he was an enthusiastic admirer, and on the state of the world at the
beginning of the 19th century. He was honorary physician to the Duke
of Kent, to whom he dedicated his book on Owen and whose portrait he
prefixed to the French translation. He died in Paris in 1823, leaving
an unfinished work on premature burial.
Some visitors deserve notice on account of kinsmen or friends.
There are Mary and Agnes Berry, for instance, the ‘sister-wives’ of
Horace Walpole, one of whom, born in 1743, survived till 1852. They
accompanied their father. Mrs. Damer introduced them to Napoleon, his
mother, Josephine, and Madame de Staël. This last lady thought Mary
by far the cleverest Englishwoman she had met. The Berrys had seen
Paris in 1791. They must have been pleased with their visit in the
spring of 1802, for they went again in October with Mrs. Damer on
their way to Nice and Geneva, passing through Germany and embarking at
Hamburg for England in May. We may dispose more summarily of Francis
(brother of Sir John) Moore; William Monsell, whose son, successively
Paymaster-General, Postmaster-General, and Vice-President of the Board
of Trade, became Lord Emly; and Sir Herbert Pakington, grandfather of
the Secretary for War of 1867–1868. Henry Bickersteth, surgeon, was the
father of the hymnologist and of Lord Langdale, Master of the Rolls,
while Sir Henry Tichborne and his brother James were respectively
great-uncle and grandfather of the Roger Tichborne personated by
Arthur Orton. Henry Herbert Southey, a youth of nineteen studying
medicine at Norwich, had there made the acquaintance of William Taylor,
whom he now accompanied. His brother, the poet, had, on a visit to
Norwich in 1798, formed a friendship with Taylor, in spite of their
political and religious differences. Young Southey became physician
to George iv. and Queen Adelaide.[109] Timothy Priestley must have
been the son of Timothy, brother of the famous Priestley. The two
brothers, both Nonconformist ministers, differed in doctrine. James
Wollstonecraft was probably one of the three brothers of Mary. He was a
London merchant, and in 1798 had been expelled from Paris, apparently
as a suspected spy. A Mr. Adderley was probably Charles Bowyer
Adderley, great-uncle of the present Lord Norton, but he may have been
Thomas Adderley, an Irish M.P. in 1790. Mrs. Peploe of Herefordshire,
who accompanied her husband, was the aunt of Sir George Cornewall
Lewis. Anthony Storer, Secretary of the Paris Embassy in 1783, was
apparently the nephew and heir of Anthony Morris Storer of Purley, a
man of fashion and a bibliophile, an M.P. in 1772. General Scott was
probably the father-in-law of Canning and of the Duke of Portland; he
was reputed to have made money at previous visits by gambling, and
Canning’s wife had a bequest of £100,000. Shuckburgh Ashby Apreece had
a fascinating wife, the widow of a John Kerr. Her literary receptions
at Edinburgh were famous, and people fancied she was the original of
Madame de Staël’s _Corinne_. Again a widow, she married in 1812
Sir Humphry Davy. A Mr. Tilt was probably the father of John Tilt, a
Brighton physician who introduced into England the speculum, with which
he had become acquainted through Récamier. Denis Disney Ffytche was
doubtless the nephew of Dr. John Disney, a Lincolnshire vicar related
I think to the Tennysons, who became a noted Unitarian minister in
London, and also of Lewis Disney of Swinderby, who added his wife’s
name of Ffytche. If so, he must have been bent on recovering his
uncle’s property at Chambourcy, near Paris, for Lewis Disney, leaving
for Switzerland with his two daughters and their governess in March
1793, had been classed as an _émigré_ and had vainly pleaded for
restitution. James Forbes, a nabob of whom we shall hear again, was the
grandfather of Montalembert, the French historian. Of Richard Trench,
a barrister, father of Archbishop Trench, we shall also hear later on.
John Sympson Jessopp, a landowner and barrister, was destined to be
the father of Dr. Augustus Jessopp. He was accompanied by his younger
brother, and we shall hear of them too again.
Should we reckon among Englishmen George Francis Grand, Madame
Talleyrand’s first husband? He was a native of Lausanne, but entered
the East India Company’s service, started an English factory, and
married in India Catherine Noel Judde, daughter of Peter John Worle, a
Dane, harbour-master of Chandernagor. He divorced her in India, and in
1798, having returned to Europe in straitened circumstances, obtained
a French, divorce likewise. He now repaired to Paris, to solicit
through his ex-wife’s influence a Government appointment; but he was
unjustly suspected of seeking to extort money from Talleyrand. It was
alleged, indeed, that he exacted 80,000 f. by a threat of disputing the
validity of the divorce, and that on returning to London he demanded
an additional £10,000. ‘Never did a husband,’ writes a Bourbon agent,
‘make so much profit out of his wife’s infidelity, and never did a man
play so pitiful a role as M. de Talleyrand.’[110] What is certain is
that Grand was assigned a post at the Cape under the so-called Batavian
republic, really a French dependency. When England seized the Cape he
remained there till his death in 1821.[111] He is said to have married
again.
There were fugitives from law or justice, and other black sheep.
William Ward, yeoman and land-agent of Benenden, Kent, who had been
enthusiastic for the French Revolution, got into difficulties--‘through
slovenly book-keeping’ says Mr. C. F. Hardy, editor of the _Benenden
Letters_,--and took refuge in France, where he died in 1821, aged
ninety-three. He had settled at Valenciennes, and under the Berlin
decree of 1807 was for five years, in spite of his age, treated as a
prisoner of war. His honesty seems unimpeachable, but as much cannot
be said for another land-agent, Thomas Stone, who had acted for the
Duke of Bedford and for Lord Digby. They had every apparent reason to
trust him, for he was an Enclosure Commissioner and was employed by
the Board of Agriculture in writing county reports. His love of style
and conviviality, however, led him astray, and he now absconded to
Paris with his wife and five children, leaving a large sum due to Lord
Digby. He for a time lived in luxury, affected to be bent on improving
French agriculture, and talked of buying and stocking a large farm.
In reality he had no money, and in 1804 he was charged with forging a
cheque, but was acquitted. He more than once applied for permission to
visit Normandy to buy sheep, but was refused.[112] Latterly dependent
on the earnings of his wife and daughter, he died in Paris in 1815, at
the age of eighty-three. Speaking of land-agents reminds me that some
small English land-owners, as the Marquis of Buckingham was informed,
sold their property, invested part of the proceeds in the funds, so as
to ensure the same income as before, and had settled in France on land
purchased at ten and a half years’ rental. Such cases, however, must
have been very rare, and Napoleon, as we have seen, debarred foreigners
from holding real property; but Thomas Talbot, brother of an admiral,
may have had the idea of colonisation in France, though he ultimately
obtained a grant of 5000 acres on the shore of Lake Erie, where he
founded Port Talbot. As for artisans who went over, enticed by reports
of high wages and cheap living, they were speedily disillusioned and
were glad to return.
We may include among the outlaws, though he was not of English birth,
Bodini, who had been editor of _Bell’s Messenger_ and had been
expelled under the Alien Act. He joined the staff of the _Argus_
in Paris. A note of the French police describes him as a man of
caustic speech, turning everything into ridicule, and consequently
having no friends. He pretended, it says, to have made important
revelations to Napoleon, for whom, according to another account, he
dissected, so to speak, the London newspapers.
We come lastly to _émigrés_ who took the opportunity of returning
to France, for several of them were Britons by birth, while others,
having resided in England, possess some interest for us. There was
Charles Jerningham, who had served in the French army, and now,
reclaiming confiscated papers, pleaded that he had never in exile
fought against France.[113] Lady Jerningham, his mother, however,
was so patriotic an Englishwoman that on the renewal of the war she
proposed to raise and head a body of six hundred men, who, in case of
invasion, should drive all the cattle from the East Anglian coast into
the interior of the country. Daniel Charles O’Connell, of Darrynane,
styled in France Count O’Connell, uncle of the Liberator, was one of
the earliest arrivals. Entering the French army in 1762 at the age
of seventeen, he had taken part in the siege of Gibraltar in 1766,
and in 1788 had drawn up articles of war by which the French army is
still governed. On the fall of the monarchy he went to England, where
in 1796 he married the Countess Bellevue, an exile like himself. In
February 1802 he repaired to Paris with his wife and two stepdaughters,
in the hope of recovering her property in St. Domingo. He calculated
on returning in August, but he stayed, as we shall see, too long.
He was naturalised in 1818, and was made a French peer; he died in
1835. Another _émigré_ was Arthur Dillon, a connection of the
guillotined general of that name, who had with difficulty escaped
from France during the Terror. Curiously enough Réné de Montalembert,
though an _émigré_, visited Paris as an English officer, for
in 1799 he had entered the British army, and had served in the West
Indies and Egypt. He afterwards served in India and Spain, rising to
the rank of lieutenant-colonel, but after Waterloo returned to France
and was appointed to an embassy at Stuttgart. He had married in 1808
James Forbes’s daughter, Eliza Rose, and their son, mostly brought
up by Forbes, was the historian of whom Pasquier aptly said, ‘he is
an Anglo-Saxon Frenchman.’ Fagan, ex-captain in Dillon’s regiment,
who also re-entered France, was despatched in 1810 by Fouché, without
Napoleon’s knowledge, to discuss peace with Lord Wellesley. This
occasioned Fouché’s dismissal. Alexander d’Arblay preceded his English
wife, the famous Fanny Burney. His friend Lauriston had arranged that,
after serving a year in St. Domingo, he should retire from the French
army on a pension; but on his writing an indiscreet letter to Napoleon
to say that he could never bear arms against England he was struck off
the roll. Hoping, however, that Napoleon’s irritation would evaporate,
he sent for his wife and child in April 1802, and on war breaking out
they were unable, being French subjects, to return to England till
1812, when, during the Emperor’s absence, d’Arblay managed to procure
a passport for them. He himself had meanwhile obtained a post in the
Ministry of the Interior. Lally Tollendal, who went over to obtain
restitution of his property, had also married an Englishwoman, Amelia
Hardcastle, and in April 1802 she rejoined her husband and his daughter
by his first wife.
The most prominent of the returning exiles was Calonne, Louis
XVI.’s Minister of Finance. He was the man who, when asked
by Marie Antoinette to do something which she acknowledged to be
difficult, replied, ‘If it is merely difficult, madam, you may consider
it already done: if it is impossible it shall be done.’ Shortly after
his dismissal from office he had married Madame Haveley, widow of a
rich Paris financier. She is described as English, but I am unable to
ascertain her maiden name. Taking refuge in England in 1788, and there
assisting Madame La Motte in her scurrilous pamphlet on the diamond
necklace, Calonne was at first very bountiful to his fellow-exiles, but
he soon quarrelled with them. He went to Paris in May 1802, but must
have intended returning to England, for he had applied to Merry for
a passport when he was taken ill, and expired on the 30th September.
Another prominent politician was Montlosier, the member of the National
Assembly who, in opposing the confiscation of the bishops’ revenues,
exclaimed, ‘You deprive them of their gold crosses, but they will
take the wooden cross which has saved the world.’ He had edited the
_Courrier de Londres_, which was so favourable to Napoleon that he
was allowed to return from exile and have his paper partly printed in
Paris. It was, however, suppressed after a few weeks, and Montlosier
was appointed editor of the _Bulletin de Paris_, in which he
requited British hospitality by vilifying the English. In all other
respects his political career down to his death in 1838 was highly
creditable. Cazalès, who before emigrating had deprecated violent
measures in the National Assembly, also re-entered France, and was
offered, but declined, office under the Consulate.
The Duke and Duchess de Fitz-James--he was a descendant of James
II. with the bend sinister--were _émigrés_ of a different
stamp, being staunch royalists. So also, I believe, was Colonel
O’Mahony. Patrick Wall, who at eighteen had in 1745 been with the
Young Pretender, had been wounded at Culloden, and had then entered
the French army, in like manner returned to France. An uncle, also a
Jacobite refugee, had bequeathed him a handsome property. He died at
Chatillon-sur-Seine in 1809.
The returning exiles included a multitude of priests. Sir John Carr
crossed over from Southampton to Havre with some of them, one being,
he says, ninety-five years of age, who was scarcely expected to land
alive. There were also wives and daughters of Toulon refugees. It
is unpleasant to read in Henri Martin’s history that some of these
clerical passengers afterwards repaid the hospitality they had enjoyed,
by vilifying England in episcopal pastorals, in order to curry favour
with Napoleon.
III
AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS
Parisian Attractions--Napoleon--Foreign Notabilities--Mutual
Impressions--Marriages and Deaths--Return Visits.
It is now time to ask what was seen and done by the visitors. The
rue de Rivoli did not yet exist, and a labyrinth of dingy streets
separated the Tuileries from the Louvre, but the Champs Elysées were
an agreeable promenade, though of course not yet terminated by the Arc
de Triomphe, and the Bois de Boulogne had recovered from the vandalism
of the Revolution, while on Sundays, when Napoleon held receptions at
St. Cloud, the road thither was as crowded with carriages as that to
Versailles before 1789. Lovers of art had the opportunity of inspecting
the spoils of Italy, a portion of which had to be restored in 1815,
though but for Napoleon’s escape from Elba restitution would not have
been demanded. He told Lord Ebrington who, as will be seen, visited
him in that island that he felt some remorse at having thus despoiled
Italy, but he had then thought only of France. Not only was the Louvre
thus enriched with paintings and sculptures,[114] but the bronze
lion and horses of Venice had been placed on pedestals outside the
Tuileries. The biennial Salon also opened at the Louvre in September
1802, and in another part of the building was the Industrial Exhibition
visited, as we have seen, by Fox. This, according to a police report,
particularly interested the English. ‘Among them,’ it says, ‘have been
noticed artisans, who were never tired of examining and admiring, while
others tried to understand the mechanism of the objects exhibited.
Some observers conclude that this study may lead to imitation of
these productions in England.’ But the visitors might be proud of
seeing several of their countrymen among the medallists, viz., Hall,
who had a pottery at Montereau, near Fontainebleau, and Christopher
Potter, of whom more anon. Engraving on glass, too, had been carried
to perfection by Robert May O’Reilly, an Irishman whose factory
attracted visitors. He published in 1803 a monthly magazine on arts
and manufactures. A member of the British Club at Paris in 1792–1793,
he had since served in the French army. He audaciously visited London
during the peace, thus risking arrest for high treason.[115] There
was also the opportunity of witnessing Fulton’s steamboat experiments
on the Seine. Fulton mostly lived in Paris from 1799 to 1804, vainly
trying to interest the Government first in torpedoes and then, with a
view to the invasion of England, in steam navigation. He lived with
Joel Barlow, with whom he speculated in panoramas, then a popular
novelty. Both, however, went over to England in the summer of 1802.
Merry granted a passport to Barlow, but did so by mistake in ignorance
of his relations with English agitators, and he suggested that a
list of obnoxious foreigners should be sent him, so that he might in
future refuse such applications. Yet Barlow after all used an American
passport. In notifying a passport to Fulton, Merry, mindful of his
proposal for blowing up English vessels, added the warning, ‘verbum
sap.’ Fulton was back in Paris in August in 1803, for in that month
his steamboat, in the presence of Carnot and Volney, went up and down
the Seine for an hour and a half. Another, but much less important,
improvement in locomotion was the first attempt, at the instance of
Dillon, a Hiberno-Neapolitan engineer, to introduce foot pavements.
Guizot married his daughter as his second wife. Professor Charles,
whose future young wife was Lamartine’s _innamorata_, lectured on
chemistry, moreover, to fashionable audiences. His electrifying machine
and scientific apparatus at the Louvre were inspected by Carr. Dupuis,
who had sat in the Convention, could be heard expounding his cosmical
explanation of myths, which had been enthusiastically adopted by his
friend Lalande and by the Abbé Barthélémi. Dupuis also claimed to have
in 1778 invented semaphore signals.
The Abbé Morellet, last survivor of the Encyclopedists, might be met
in society, full of revolutionary and pre-revolutionary experiences;
and Roget de l’Isle, the author of the Marseillaise, frequented
Frascati gardens. Henri Beyle was also in Paris, having just quitted
the army, and was taking lessons in English from Dawtram and an Irish
Franciscan whom he calls ‘Jeki,’ but nobody could foresee in him
the future Stendhal, who was to illumine French literature; nor did
Sutton Sharpe, junior, till long afterwards make his acquaintance.
Sénancour was probably in Paris, superintending the publication of
_Obermann_, but he was not likely to be seen in the frivolous or
fashionable circles frequented by the English. A few of the visitors,
indeed, attended lectures,[116] listening attentively and putting
questions to Laplace, Lalande, or Cuvier, but the great majority
were bent on pleasure. Frascati, Tivoli, the hotel Richelieu (the
_roué’s_ old mansion and grounds, now used not only for a hotel
but for balls and concerts), and the so-called Hameau Chantilly were
thronged, not to speak of the theatres, which had a very profitable
season. Molé, it is true, retired in April 1802, dying in the following
December, but there were such tragedians as Talma, Raucourt, Contat,
Mars, and George, such dancers as Vestris, who was about, however,
to retire, such vocalists as Cherubini, such instrumentalists as
Kreutzer. In February 1802 there was the opportunity of witnessing
Duval’s _Edouard en Écosse_, which (though intended only as a
glorification of the Young Pretender, who in France was always styled
Edward) was so boisterously applauded by royalists as applicable
to the Bourbons, that Napoleon, present at the second performance,
suppressed it. Blangini taught singing, and among his pupils were Miss
Whitworth, Quintin Craufurd’s wife and step-daughter, Lady Conyngham,
Lady Annesley, and Lady Liddell. The _Journal des Dames_ of May
10, 1802, speaking of the influx of parents anxious for their children
to learn accomplishments, says:--‘In what other European city could
a pupil have two musicians like Garat and Plantade for singing, two
professors like Staybelt and Puppo for the piano, two virtuosi like
Bode and Kreutzer for the violin, two composers like Paesiello and
Méhul for music, and a man like Deshayes for dancing?’ Paris, moreover,
in spite of the Revolution again set the fashions, and though its
transparent dresses, ‘worn with such grace,’ says George Jackson, ‘as
to reconcile you to them,’ had never, whether on account of modesty or
climate, been adopted in England, the _Times_ in 1801 described
the way in which Parisian ladies wore their hair. Lap-dogs were
frequently to be seen under the arms of promenaders, or in fine weather
running at their heels.[117] Shoe-buckles and knee-breeches, though not
wigs, had been revived, and foreign ambassadors were resplendent with
decorations and diamonds; yet ‘muddy boots and dirty linen were seen
at Madame Fouché’s receptions,’ ‘the roughnesses of the Revolution,’
says Jackson, ‘not being yet polished off.’ Mademoiselle Bertin, Marie
Antoinette’s dressmaker, had returned from exile. Bonaparte, too, had
imposed costumes on all public functionaries, and Paris had never seen
more brilliant uniforms. His two hundred Mamelukes had been sent up
to Paris to figure in the review of the 14th July, which was then, as
it is now again, the national festival, and in honour of the peace he
reviewed 14,000 troops in the Carrousel.
Napoleon took particular note of the British military uniforms at his
receptions, and many British officers witnessed a grand review by
Moreau on the 8th September 1802. Maurice Dudevant, the future father
of George Sand, wrote to his mother:--
‘All these young lords, who are soldiers at home, question me
with avidity on our army. I reply by the recital of our immortal
exploits (in Italy), which they cannot sufficiently admire.’
As for private and official festivities, visitors were all anxious
to see Madame Tallien, ‘our Lady of Thermidor,’ now, as I have said,
the mistress of the army contractor Ouvrard. Madame Récamier gave
musical parties at Clichy, she herself playing on the piano. Madame
de Montesson, morganatic widow of the Duke of Orleans, Madame Lebrun,
wife of the consul, and Madame Junot (Duchess d’Abrantès) also gave
entertainments. At some of these Garat’s inimitable voice was to be
heard, though he no longer sang in public. Madame de Genlis, though
not able on her pension of 6600 f. to afford dinners, received callers.
Talleyrand had been, or was about to be, forced by Napoleon to marry
Madame Grand, as the only alternative to dismissing her, in order that
ambassadors’ wives might visit his house, and he was very hospitable
to English notabilities, though there is no reason to think that our
Government had given him the £16,000 on which, as Francis Jackson
wrote to Speaker Abbot, he counted for having concluded peace. Spain,
however, had given him a like sum, and Jackson satirically suggested
that such presents would serve as a _trousseau_ for the lady on
the arrival of the dispensation from Rome. But Talleyrand received
a dispensation, not from the vow of celibacy, but merely from the
obligation of daily reciting the breviary. Whitworth was therefore
mistaken in justifying his wife’s acceptance of Madame Talleyrand’s
invitations on the ground that the church had sanctioned her marriage.
The _Times_ of January 13, 1803, says:--
‘Monsieur, or rather Madame, Talleyrand’s dinners, exceed all
others in Paris; about 80 persons sat down to the last dinner.
On the table was placed every delicacy possible to be had, and a
servant in livery, belonging to the house, behind every chair.
The second course, put on like magic, more elegant than the
first; around the room, in niches made for the purpose, were
statues of the finest marble, each supporting a basket on its
head, holding a branch of lustres of about ten lights each,
altogether making more than four hundred lights in the room;
the furniture of velvet and gold, corresponding with the other
elegancies; three rooms were fitted up in this manner, forming a
most complete suit. A very handsome salary is allowed to this
Minister, exclusively for the support of his table.’
Talleyrand doubtless allowed his guests plenty of time to do justice
to his sumptuous fare, whereas Napoleon unpleasantly hurried over his
dinners in half an hour. He deputed prefects, however, to preside in
his place at less expeditious state banquets.
Lechevalier, of the Foreign Office, who had lived in England and had
taught French to Sir F. Burdett and his wife and her sisters, also laid
himself out to be agreeable to British visitors. There was a rage for
dancing, not dancing on a volcano ready to explode, as was said in July
1830, but on the ashes of an extinct one.
Conversation, on the other hand, as we learn from German visitors,
languished. The salons of the old monarchy, where brilliant paradox
and ruthless scepticism had flourished, found no successors. It was
not safe to talk politics, for spies abounded, and even the Institute
had to avoid philosophy, legislation, or sociology.[118] Riddles were
consequently in vogue. But La Métherie, the mineralogist, and his
guests ventured to condemn the tyranny of the Consulate, and Besnard
relates how Lord Archibald Hamilton, after hearing one of these
outbursts, exclaimed, ‘Too fortunate Frenchmen! You have apricots,
peaches, cheap and good wine, and yet you complain,’ while, turning
to Besnard, he whispered: ‘A peach with us costs 4/ or 5/ and a
bottle of champagne or burgundy a guinea.’ The old nobility, indeed,
such of them as had remained or returned, were too impoverished to
live in great style, but the _nouveaux riches_, financiers and
contractors, had installed themselves in rural mansions, yet did not
succeed in imitating the old aristocracy. They were lavish in some
things, parsimonious in others. Stables, gardens, and woods were
allowed to become slovenly. ‘There is at present no veritable society,’
says a contemporary, and nobody in the country kept open house.[119]
‘Those people who chose to be presented at Bonaparte’s court,’ says
Mrs. Villiers (afterwards Lady Clarendon), ‘were invited to many
magnificent dinners and assemblies (balls) given by the ministers, but
as ourselves, with a very few other exceptions, did not feel inclined
to pay homage to Bonaparte, the theatres and the entertainments given
by foreigners were mostly our resources.’[120] Mrs. Villiers was
certainly, as she says, an exception, as also were Montagu and Ryder,
a future peer who declined to be introduced to Napoleon, for it was
not till the renewal of the war that admiration turned to hatred and
that Bonaparte became a bogey with which children were frightened. Even
then no Englishman would have gone the length of saying, as a French
ecclesiastic has done nearly a century afterwards, that ‘Napoleon was
the greatest enemy of God and of mankind. Would that his name could be
effaced from human memories!’[121] A royalist agent remarks:--
‘M. de Calonne states that in England the enthusiasm for
Bonaparte is not only general, but carried to an extent which it
is difficult to conceive. The Court and the city, the capital
and the provinces, all classes of citizens, from ministers to
artisans, are agreed to publish his praises and vie in chanting
his victories and the lustre of his rule.’[122]
Yet Phillips’s _Practical Guide during a Journey from London to
Paris_, the first book of its kind, had said:--
‘We shall only express our wish that the great man who has done
so much for France and mankind may moderate his ambition and
make the illustrious Washington his political model.’
Englishmen anxious to see republican forms and manners were satirically
recommended by the _Times_, December 1, 1802, to lose no time in
visiting Paris, or the whole ancient system of the court, with all its
formalities and regulations, would arrive before them. ‘The ladies of
the old court,’ it added,--
‘are in great request in the circle of Madame Bonaparte, and
several of the most pronounced royalists among the emigrants are
already _bien acclimatés_ at the _Thuilleries_. In the
gardens of this palace, no persons are admitted to walk in the
Jacobin costume. _Cocked hats_ are indispensable to all who
would not be turned out by the sentries. The high _ton_
and extravagance of dress are generally restored, and the
fashions at least are as Anti-Jacobin as possible. _Tu_ and
_Toi_, and _Citoyen_, which for some time have been
banished to the Faux-bourghs and the Offices, are totally out of
use in addressing the Consul or Ministers, and would pass for
the grossness of disaffection at Court. In short, everything
is returning rapidly to that gaiety, splendour, and urbanity,
which is the characteristic of the nation. It was the ingenious
expression of a distinguished lady a few nights since at the
_Thuilleries_--that “she saw the whole of the ancient
monarchy excepting the Bourbons!”’
This reminds us of Victor Hugo’s well-known couplet:--
‘Ce siècle avait deux ans, Rome remplaçait Sparte,
Dejâ Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte.’
A letter from an officer published in the same journal on the 9th
February 1803 says:--
‘Nothing can be more wretched or discontented than all
descriptions of people; all ruined except a few upstarts, who
are immediately self-interested in the present system. It is
completely a military government, and the country is kept quiet
by the bayonet alone:--taxed at half their income, and more
taxes to be laid on.
‘The roads wretched--cut up by the artillery and
ammunition-waggons, and in no places repaired, but a little
picked in on the straight road from Calais to Paris for Lord
Cornwallis. Crowded with turnpikes, the produce of which is
applied to the public purse, and not to mend their ways. The
Inns, as formerly, dirty, and good eating and drinking very
dear. The lower classes are civil,--the higher very haughty.
‘Yet notwithstanding the distress and poverty of the country,
there are no less than 26 theatres open and crowded every night
in Paris, independent of shows, jugglers, etc. Nobody can form
an idea of what an _Opera_ is, unless they have seen the
present style of one in Paris--so superb.
‘The Bishop of Durham would expire at seeing the dresses of the
performers. The ladies are almost quite naked, and really not
covered enough to give the least idea of modesty. There cannot
be anything so profligate, so debauched, or so immoral, as the
ideas or manners of all ranks of people, particularly the higher
class; and poor Virtue and Decency are entirely banished their
Calendars.
‘The daughter of Madame Bonaparte sits every night in a crimson
and gold box at the Opera. The Consul in one directly below,
with a gilded grating towards the audience, who see very little
of him. He leaves the house before the dropping of the curtain,
and escorted by a strong guard of cavalry and torches sets off
full gallop for Malmaison, where he sleeps.’
Another visitor is reported by the _Times_ as describing Paris as
‘more immersed in luxury than at any former period. The theatres are
every night full, and the political coffee-houses, unless on particular
occasions, nearly empty. Provisions of every kind are cheap and
plentiful, and the best wine may be had at three livres the bottle.’
Whether by way of entertaining one another or of reciprocating French
hospitality, some of the British visitors gave receptions and balls.
Maurice Dudevant speaks of Lady Higginson’s balls, where he seems to
have heard French nobles decrying their own country, and he warned
Englishmen against judging France by this unpatriotic class. He may
have been one of Lord Robert Spencer’s guests at Robert’s famous
restaurant. The Duchess of Gordon and Mrs. Orby Hunter were prominent
for their entertainments, and a Paris newspaper mentions those of Lady
‘Shumley,’ a phonetic approximation to Cholmondeley. Jerningham speaks
of the Duchess of Gordon’s balls, and of her addiction to playing
at _hasard_, at which she rattled the dice, and whenever she
lost exclaimed, ‘God damn!’ Eliza Orby Hunter, aged twenty-three, was
apparently the wife of George Orby Hunter, who afterwards, living at
Dieppe, translated Byron into French verse, and died in 1843.[123] The
Orby Hunter family were owners of Croyland, Lincolnshire.
‘Paris,’ wrote Colonel Ferrier to his sister, ‘is certainly the place
of all others for young men. Plenty of amusement without dissipation;
no drinking; if a gentleman was seen drunk here he would be looked upon
as a perfect _bête_.’[124] If, however, there was less drinking
than in London, there was clearly more gambling. John Sympson Jessopp
left with the impression that debauchery abounded. With the natural
English desire to see everything, he found himself one night, with his
younger brother, in a magnificent gambling-house. Somebody who had lost
heavily fell upon the croupier, snatched his rake from him, laid about
him furiously, then hit out at a huge chandelier, with scores of wax
candles in it, and frantically smashed it. There was terrible panic
and confusion. One of the croupiers slipped out through a door leading
to a staircase to fetch the police. Jessopp, plucking his brother by
the sleeve, managed to get down the stairs and into the street, where
they concealed themselves in a doorway. In a few minutes a company
of gendarmes hastened up, and leaving two of their comrades at the
door mounted the stairs, arrested every soul on the premises, and
carried them off to the lock-up. The two young Englishmen, watching
their opportunity, hurried back to their hotel. The sequel they never
heard.[125] Francis Jackson, moreover, writing to Abbot, described
Paris life as an uninterrupted picture of vulgarity and profligacy, and
the _Times_ of the 23rd September says:--
‘Paris, under the Regent of Orleans, was not so profligate
and corrupt as it appears to our best travellers at present.
Gambling, debauchery, intemperance, and the insatiable
desire after public spectacles, with all the vices in the
train of indolence and licentiousness, form the monotonous
indiscriminable character of the Citizens.’
Some of the visitors must have shared in the stupefaction felt on the
21st January 1803 at seeing the Madeleine draped in crape in memory
of the anniversary of Louis XVI.’s death, but they were as
ignorant as the rest of the world that this audacious celebration was
the act of a man of English parentage, Hyde de Neuville. The Madeleine,
as Holcroft tells us, was then ‘a grand colonnade of lofty uncorniced
pillars, rising about roofless, half-finished walls.’
British visitors had the opportunity of mixing with some of their
countrymen. There was Paine, until his return in September 1802 to
America, where his friend Jefferson had become President, and we have
seen that Redhead Yorke and Rickman renewed acquaintance with him. He
had had to wait, not only for funds, but for a safe passage without
fear of British cruisers. When Redhead Yorke with some difficulty
recalled himself to his remembrance, Paine thus unbosomed himself:--
‘Who would have thought that we should meet [again after the
lapse of ten years] at Paris?... They (the French) have shed
blood enough for liberty, and now they have it in perfection!
This is not a country for an honest man to live in. They do
not understand anything at all of the principles of free
government, and the best way (for foreigners) is to leave them
to themselves. You see they have conquered all Europe only to
make it more miserable than it was before....
‘Republic! Do you call this a republic? Why they are worse off
than the slaves at Constantinople, for they are ever expecting
to be bashaws in Heaven by submitting to be slaves below; but
here they believe neither in Heaven nor Hell, and yet are slaves
by choice. I know of no republic in the world except America,
which is the only country for such men as you and I. It is my
intention to get away from this place as soon as possible,
and I hope to be off in autumn. You are a young man, and may
see better times, but I have done with Europe and its slavish
politics.’
Paine, it may be feared, experienced another disillusion on recrossing
the Atlantic. Yorke does not seem to have told him of his own change of
politics.
Next to Paine in celebrity comes Helen Maria Williams, an eyewitness
of the Revolution, whose reminiscences of Madame Roland must have been
interesting. She was visited by Sharpe, Rogers, Lord Holland, Kemble,
Poole, and Mrs. Cosway, though some English held aloof or even sneered
at her. Her attire and manners were certainly open to ridicule,[126]
and her cohabitation with John Hurford Stone, the refugee printer, even
assuming a secret marriage, exposed her to misconstruction. Stone’s
brother William, ruined by twenty-one months’ imprisonment and arrested
for debt on his acquittal for treason, had also gone to France, where
he became overseer of a paper-hanging factory. We shall hear of him
again. There was the widow of Sir Robert Smyth, who remained in Paris
after her husband’s death. She and her young children had been painted
by Reynolds, and one of those children now married Lambton Este, a son
of Charles Este, by turns actor, clergyman, and journalist. Smyth’s old
partner, James Millingen, son of a Dutch merchant settled in London,
had remained in Paris after the Revolution, though his brother John
Gideon had become an English naval official. He was afterwards an
eminent archæologist, and his son Michael, archæologist and physician,
attended Byron on his deathbed. Anastasia Howard, Baroness Stafford,
an ex-nun, had likewise stayed in Paris after her release at the
end of the Terror,[127] though her fellow-nuns had in 1800 found a
retreat in England. She died in 1807 at the age of eighty-four. Her
nephew Charles Jerningham called on her, but though in good health,
senility scarcely allowed her to recognise him. This reminds us of her
co-religionists at the Austin convent. They, too, had survived the
Revolution, and the Superior, Frances Lancaster, must have had much
to tell Sir John Carr of how the nunnery was turned into a crowded
political prison. Arabella Williams, daughter of David Mallet, author
of _Northern Antiquities_, had had more recent troubles. She
had spent most of her life in Paris, but visits to London to obtain
her share of her mother, Lucy Estob’s, property brought on her the
suspicion of the police and she was arrested. The banker Perregaux
and others had to exonerate her from the charge of espionage.[128]
Another but more recent resident, representing the _demi-monde_,
though that term had not yet been invented, was Mrs. Lindsay, the
Ellenore of Benjamin Constant’s _Adolphe_, that romance of the
Werther and Corinne school, in which the heroine, depicted as a Pole
who deserts her old paramour and her children by him, clings to a man
anxious to discard her. We do not even know her Christian name, unless
she was the ‘Lady Florence Lindsay’ whom Lady Morgan met at Florence
in 1819. She is said to have been Irish on the father’s and French on
the mother’s side; handsome and sprightly, she had been brought up
in good society. She had lived in Paris from 1786 to 1792, and her
confiscated tradesmen’s bills, still in the Archives,[129] indicate
that she was then the mistress of Comte de Melfort, a man of Scottish
Jacobite ancestry. Another of her lovers was Vicomte Chrétien de
Lamoignon, who, the last of his family, was wounded at Quiberon, and
after the Restoration was created a peer. She left France in 1792, and
in 1795 Chateaubriand made her acquaintance in London, where she was on
visiting terms with the French aristocratic exiles. He styles her _la
dernière des Ninon_. On his going to France in disguise in 1800 she,
having meanwhile returned to Paris, met him at Calais, escorted him,
and hired temporary lodgings for him near her own house. She paid half
the rent and another friend the remainder. Constant met her in 1804,
and after passing an agreeable evening with her, received a letter in
which she said that they strikingly resembled each other, but ‘this
is perhaps one reason the less against our suiting each other. It is
because men resemble each other that Heaven created women, who do not
resemble them.’[130] Constant would have married her, however, but
for her age and for her two illegitimate children. Charles Constant,
Benjamin’s cousin, describes her as intelligent but devoid of culture.
In 1801 she translated into French Cornelia Knight’s _Life of the
Romans_. It is commonly stated that she died at Angoulême in 1820;
but if so it was under an assumed name, for I have ascertained that
there is no Lindsay on the register. Then there was Mrs. Harvey,
_née_ Elizabeth Hill, naturalised in Tuscany, who in 1805 was
arrested on an unfounded charge of complicity in Georges’ plot. Her
daughter Henrietta, a miniature painter, petitioned for her release
and the restitution of her papers, the petition being backed by Denon,
curator of the Louvre. Scipio du Roure, son of the Marquis de Grisac
and grandson of the Countess of Catherlough, Bolingbroke’s sister,
may almost be regarded as an Englishman, for he had been educated
at Oxford. He eloped with a Mrs. Sandon, who fired at her pursuing
husband, whereupon du Roure was prosecuted as the delinquent. A flaw
in the indictment secured his acquittal, but he had to take refuge in
France. He arrived in the middle of the Revolution and was a member of
the Paris Jacobin Commune, but was imprisoned in the Terror. He was
now studying jurisprudence and translating Cobbett’s _Grammar_.
He went back to London to claim his mother’s property and that of a
half-brother named Knight, and died there in 1822.
The war, putting a stop to British imports, had given a stimulus to
French manufactures, several of which were carried on by Englishmen.
These were mostly in the provinces, and English tradesmen had scarcely
yet reappeared in Paris. Henry Sykes, for instance, unable to continue
selling Wedgwood’s pottery in the rue St. Honoré, had in 1792 started
cotton-spinning at St. Rémy, though he had originally applied for
and obtained the use of the unfinished Madeleine as a factory. The
Convention, on the 29th April 1795, granted him a site for the erection
of cotton mills at La Magdelaine, near Verneuil (Eure). He was joined
in 1802 by his future son-in-law, William Waddington, of Walkeringham,
Notts, a descendant of Charles II.’s Pendrells. Waddington,
the grandfather of the French statesman of our day, apparently had a
visit from his brother Samuel, a hop merchant at Tunbridge, who had
published an answer to Burke’s famous pamphlet, and in 1801 had been
sentenced to £500 fine and a month’s imprisonment for ‘forestalling.’
His fellow hop-merchants gave him an ovation on his release. Then there
was Christopher Potter, who had been an army victualler and whose
election for Colchester in 1784 led to the Act disqualifying Government
contractors from sitting in Parliament. His successful opponent was Sir
Robert Smyth, and the two rivals may have met in Paris. He reopened
during the Revolution the porcelain factory at Chantilly formerly
carried on by the Condé princes, thus justifying his name--_nomen
omen_--but he had now removed to Montereau. A police report of the
8th March 1796 thus denounced him:--
‘The Anglo-Pitts purchase nearly all the national property which
is sold in the department of the Oise. Their chief broker is a
man named Poter (_sic_), owner of the porcelaine factory
at Chantilly, a man who was deep in debt two years ago, but who
has now paid up and is worth more than two millions. He was
twice arrested under the revolutionary government. This man was
twice M.P. in England, and belonged to the Court party. There
is no doubt that he is in France the secret agent of Pitt, with
whom he has been closely connected since the Revolution. He
made many visits to England in 1792 and 1793. Since that time
he has remained at Paris or Chantilly, where he daily makes
purchases.’[131]
This report was made by an ‘observer’ named Martin, whose chief, Marné,
sent it in as usual to the Directory. That body, or probably Barras,
who seems to have examined these daily reports, instructed Marné to
inquire whether Potter really visited England in 1792–1793, whether
there was any proof of his connection with the court party, whether
there was any probability of his being Pitt’s agent, and what purchases
he had made. Martin replied to this veiled rebuke on the 13th March:--
‘I have learned nothing further on Poter. My object was not to
denounce him. I do not know him intimately. I have merely had to
do my duty as observer, and to call attention to him, according
to notices which have been transmitted to me by persons whom I
believe to have no interest in calumniating him. My guarantee of
all the facts is therefore solely for the purpose of my mission.
It is then for the Government to watch any particular person.
Here, however, is my reply to the various questions which have
been submitted to me by citizen Marné, and which I subjoin.
‘1. Poter paid visits to England in 1792 and 1793, without this
implying that he was betraying our cause, for our relations with
England were not suspended till the middle of 1793 if I remember
rightly.
‘2. The real fact, and which Poter cannot contradict, is that
he was twice M.P., and that the kind of popularity which he
had gained induced the Court to place him on the list of
candidates in 1783 or 1784 for making him a Minister. Pitt
was the successful man. After that he fought a duel with the
latter.[132] Was it because he was not a Minister?
Thus the question whether he had then thrown himself into the
Court party remains to be solved. It would not perhaps be
difficult to ascertain the fact, for it is well known that Fox,
driven from office, became more popular than ever. It is also
known that he drew the Prince of Wales into the Opposition.
‘3. As to this I will repeat what I have said above. It is for
the Government to order its agents to watch him. As for me I
promise to neglect nothing in Paris, and if any positive facts
reach me I will transmit them to the Directory. Only yesterday I
ascertained where he lives and the places which he frequents.
‘4. It is quite certain that Poter has made purchases besides
his Chantilly factory. To ascertain this it will merely be
necessary to apply to the Senlis district. I remember having
stated in my report of the 16th (_sic_) that Poter eighteen
months ago was in everybody’s debt, and that now he had settled
with everybody. This is perhaps what has given rise to the
belief that he might have dealings with Pitt in France, for in
fact his fortune at this moment is marvellous; but it may be the
result of great speculations or of stock-jobbing, which in the
last twenty months has made the fortune of so many.
‘I think I have dwelt enough on this subject. I repeat that my
sole object has been to do my duty as surveillant. I will add
this. Formerly entrusted with powers by the General Security
Committee in the department of the Oise, I ascertained that
Poter did much good at Chantilly, that he professed republican
principles, and that I had even occasion to render him justice
before the committee against the persecution which for eleven
months he had been undergoing from the Chantilly revolutionary
committee.’
These reports seem to have induced Barras to make Potter’s acquaintance
and to send him first to Malmesbury[133] in Paris in 1796, and next to
London in 1797, with an offer to conclude peace for a handsome bribe.
On his return he warned the Directory that one of its members regularly
communicated its deliberations to England. These relations with Barras
probably protected him from further molestation during the Directory,
but on the 13th December 1800 a police bulletin again denounced him as
an English emissary sent to ruin French pottery and hat-making.[134] In
1800 he was a first-class medallist at the Paris Industrial Exhibition,
and in 1802 he was one of the gold medallists to whom Napoleon gave a
dinner. His Montereau factory, an old monastery where he employed a
hundred men, was burnt down in 1802. He probably remained in France
till 1814; he died in England three years later.
Among the silver medallists in 1802 was White, a mechanical inventor,
probably the uncle or grandfather of Dupont White, sub-Minister of
Justice in 1848, President Carnot’s father-in-law. The exhibits also
included a filter by Smith, an Englishman, perhaps the James Smith who
in 1813 succeeded to Stone’s printing business.
There were of course teachers of English. They included Robert, of whom
Napoleon might have learned the language at the Paris military school,
a lost opportunity which he regretted; Mrs. Galignani, _née_
Parsons, who had married an Italian ex-priest, ultimately the founder
of the newspaper bearing his name; and Samuel Baldwin, employed before
the Revolution in the French Foreign Office, who was arrested as a spy
in the Terror, and having been inscribed on a long list of prisoners
for trial would, but for Robespierre’s fall, have been guillotined.
He had taught English to the Royal Family before 1789, and he was
accused of associating with priests and receiving frequent letters
from Calais. He latterly published English and Spanish lesson books,
and died in 1804, aged seventy-nine. There were also Cresswell,
Davies, Fox, Hickie, Boswell, Macdermott, who kept a school, Stubbs,
who had a reading-room with such English newspapers as were allowed
to enter France, and Roche, probably Hamilton Roche, teacher at the
military school, whose son Eugenius became a journalist in London.
There were also two maiden ladies named Haines, ultimately joined by a
Mrs. Poppleton, who carried on a school. She was probably the wife or
widow of George Poppleton, who had taught English. There was likewise
the daughter of a Scotsman named James Mather Flint, the widow of
the clever but unprincipled anti-revolutionary pamphleteer Rivarol.
Flint and his wife settled about 1734 in France, where their daughter
Louisa in 1768 translated into French one of Shakespeare’s plays with
Dr. Johnson’s notes,[135] and Johnson wrote to her in French a letter
of thanks, in which he humorously rallied her on detaining in Paris
the sister of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Fanny Reynolds had apparently gone
to lodge with the Flints, for Northcote is incorrect in stating that
Louisa accompanied her to France. Reynolds himself in the following
year, when visiting Paris, called on the Flints. On the death of his
wife, Flint, who had embraced Catholicism, entered the priesthood
and received a small benefice which was supplemented by a pension of
200 francs from the General Assembly of the Clergy. This pension he
enjoyed till the Revolution, and he must have died before 1793, for
his daughter alone was then arrested as an Englishwoman. She had, it
is true, in 1780 married Rivarol and had given birth to a son, but
Rivarol had long deserted her, leaving her and her infant in such
distress that the Montyon prize, much to his mortification, was awarded
in 1788 to a Frenchwoman who had kindly succoured them. Madame Rivarol
afterwards tried to maintain herself by translations from the English.
Her faithless husband died in Germany as an _émigré_ in 1810, and
her son Daniel was now serving till his death in 1810 in the Danish or
Russian army. She herself survived till 1821. She is not likely to have
been hunted up by any of her fellow-Britons in 1802 or 1814.
Nor were political refugees likely to be sought by them, otherwise
they might have made numerous acquaintances. Most of them were Irish,
but King mentions two Englishmen, Ashley, an ex-member of the London
Corresponding Society, who had a flourishing business in Paris, and
‘Hodgson,’ a hatter, either Richard Hodson, one of the Reformers
prosecuted in 1794, or William Hodson, who in December 1793 incurred
twelve months’ imprisonment and a fine of £200 for saying that the
world would not be happy till there were no more kings. There was
also one Scot, Robert Watson, who had crossed the Channel in 1798,
secretary and biographer of Lord George Gordon, alleged teacher
of English (but more probably ‘skimmer’ of English newspapers) to
Napoleon, rescuer from rain and rats of the Stuart papers at Rome; his
career was full of romance, and it ended in the tragedy of suicide at
a London inn at the age of eighty-eight. As for the Irish, some had
been long domiciled in France, while others had just been liberated
under a secret article, or at least a secret understanding, of the
Treaty of Amiens. They would, according to French documents, have been
executed in Ireland but for the threat of reprisals against General
Sir George Don, who, as will be explained hereafter, had been arrested
in France.[136] These ex-prisoners included James Napper Tandy, given
up by Hamburg, along with James Blackwell, Hervey Montmorency Morris,
and Wm. Corbett, to Sir James Craufurd, but all claimed by Napoleon
as French officers.[137] Tandy landed at Bordeaux in March 1802,
and died there in the following year, not having been allowed to go
to Paris. In December 1802, describing himself as a French general,
he sent a challenge to Elliott, an English M.P., who had spoken of
him as an ‘arch traitor,’ and on Elliott taking no notice of his
letter he denounced him as a coward.[138] Morris, who had fought for
Austria against the Turks before fighting for the French Revolution,
after a visit to Paris returned to Ireland, but in 1811 rejoined the
French army. Corbett had escaped from Kilmainham prison, an episode
utilised by Miss Edgeworth in one of her stories. He, too, joined
the French army, became a general, and later on helped to liberate
Greece. Blackwell, who, a student in the Irish College, had joined in
the attack on the Bastille, was penniless on now landing in France,
and Napoleon first gave him 6000 francs and then a pension of 3000
francs ‘for his services to liberty,’ Napoleon not having yet ceased
to talk of liberty. In 1803 Blackwell commanded Napoleon’s Irish
legion, Corbett serving under him, as also John Devereux,[139] who,
though a conspirator of 1798, waited on Lord Whitworth with a letter
of introduction from Lord Moira. He was permitted in 1819 to enlist
recruits for Bolivar at Dublin, the British authorities being doubtless
glad thus to get rid of restless spirits. He became a general in the
service of Colombia, and in 1825 revisited Paris, where, as a ‘most
active and dangerous man,’ his movements were suspiciously watched
by detectives.[140] Arthur O’Connor, nephew of Lord Longueville and
ex-M.P. for Cork, has been already mentioned. He married Condorcet’s
daughter, and latterly devoted himself to agriculture and to his
village mayoralty. He just lived to see the French empire restored.
Robert Emmet returned to Dublin in October 1802, and was executed for
a fresh conspiracy. So also was Thomas Russell, who while a soldier
in Ireland became acquainted with Tone and was won over to his views.
Thomas Addis Emmet, Robert’s brother, went in 1804 to New York, where
he became a barrister. William James Macnevin likewise crossed the
Atlantic.
Other Irishmen had been or were now employed in the French civil
service. Aherne, an ex-priest, had served under Delacroix or Carnot.
Nicholas Madgett was in the Foreign Office under the Directory, as
also a nephew, Sullivan, who had been a professor of mathematics
at La Flèche and had gone with Hoche’s expedition to Ireland.[141]
Edward Joseph Lewins, who had dubbed himself first Luines and then de
Luynes, as though related to the French duke of that name, had been
educated at the Irish College, Paris. Sent by the United Irishmen to
France, he was employed by the Directory in missions and reports,
and on the abandonment of French expeditions to Ireland he joined
the Duc de Larochefoucault-Liancourt in industrial enterprises,
to carry on which he applied for the reimbursement of his secret
service expenses. Talleyrand endorsed this application.[142] He was
afterwards the _soi-disant_ Thompson who, according to Goldsmith,
was employed in opening English letters at the post-office, for he
had been originally in the Irish post-office. He subsequently had
appointments in the Foreign and Education Offices. He was still
living in Paris in 1824, but his son refused, doubtless for cogent
reasons, to give any information on him to Madden for his history of
the United Irishmen. William Duckett, one of the instigators of the
mutiny of the Nore, had been employed by the diplomatic committee of
the Convention, but eventually turned pedagogue. Patrick Lattin, so
brilliant in conversation, according to Lady Morgan, as to reduce
Curran and Sheil to silence, had served in the Franco-Irish brigade
till 1791, and was in the carriage when Theobald Dillon was murdered
by his troops at Lille in 1792. He had settled near Lyons, but
occasionally visited Paris, where he died about 1849. But it is not
always easy to distinguish him from another Lattin. John Fitzgerald,
also a Franco-Irish officer, had emigrated at the Revolution but
returned in 1802, and his dinners from 1823 to 1836 drew the best
British and French company.[143] William Putnam M’Cabe, one of Lord
Edward Fitzgerald’s bodyguard in 1798, was now starting a cotton mill
near Rouen, but sold it in 1806 to Waddington. He had hairbreadth
escapes from arrest on repeated visits to England and Ireland, and died
in Paris in 1821. He had been intimate with Tone,[144] the funeral of
whose daughter Mira in March 1803 drew together all the Irish refugees.
Tone’s son had entered the French army, but after Waterloo went to
America with his mother, who then married an old Scottish friend,
Hugh Wilson of Bordeaux. In 1803 she took out a patent for clarifying
liquids. Wilson, after a roaming life, ended his days at Santa Cruz in
1829.
The English, of course, found many foreigners in Paris, though except
in the aggregate in much smaller numbers than themselves. The Russians
were already noted for their prodigality. Swedes were tolerably
numerous. The Germans were mostly economical. Among Americans were
Rufus King, Livingston, Jay, the Ambassador at London, and the future
president, Monroe. There was also Colonel James Swan, a native of
Dunfermline, but one of the ‘Boston tea-party,’ whose contracts with
the French Government had involved him in litigation with his partner
Schweizer, and who, rather than meet what he considered an unjust
claim, was to undergo twenty-two years’ imprisonment in a Paris
debtors’ prison.[145] Count Rumford, the inventor, now likewise settled
in Paris.[146] The visitor of highest rank was the Prince of Orange,
afterwards suitor to our Princess Charlotte and ultimately King of
Holland. His father had sent him from London to claim an indemnity
for the loss of the statthalterate, and he appears to have succeeded
in his mission. Charlotte’s eventually successful suitor, Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg, also visited Paris, but not till 1810, when he offered, it
is said, to be aide-de-camp to Napoleon. Higher destinies awaited him.
The Russians and Poles included Count Zamoiski, Count Potocki, Prince
Troubetski, Prince Galitzin, and Princess Demidoff, an accomplished
dancer. Nor should we forget Kosciusko, who had failed to liberate
Poland. Shepherd found him in a cottage near the barriers, with a small
garden which he cultivated himself. He must have been able to relate
Polish imitations of the French Revolution--a massacre of prisoners, a
revolutionary tribunal, pillages, and confiscations; but he could claim
credit for Stanislas having been honourably treated as a captive, in
lieu of having been executed like Louis XVI. Possibly a South
American youth, Bolivar, the future Liberator, made his acquaintance.
There was also Madame de Krudener, the Delphine of Madame de Staël’s
story, now famous for her beauty and her gallantries, not yet for the
mysticism which was to captivate the Tsar Alexander and the Queen of
Prussia. She was at this time enamoured of the singer Garat, but was
shortly to accompany her sick husband who, before reaching Aix, his
destination, died of apoplexy. Madame de Staël herself, described
in a police note as known for her love of intrigue, was not yet
banished from the capital outside which she was miserable, and there
was her satellite, Benjamin Constant, not yet much known, though he
had been arrested in 1796 for declaring that France needed a king. A
fellow Swiss visitor was Pestalozzi, the educationist, noted by the
police as having an English pension. Another educationist was the
German Campe, who in 1792, along with Cloots, Paine, Priestley, and
others, had received French citizenship. He was surprised to find the
Parisians taciturn and apathetic, instead of being lively, talkative,
and enthusiastic as in 1792. Science was represented by Oersted,
who, however, was as yet merely a youth who had gained a travelling
scholarship.
Alexander Humboldt did not arrive from South America till 1804, but
his brother William, statesman and philologist, was spending three
years in Paris. Germany also sent the Landgrave of Hesse Rothenburg
and Princess Hohenzollern, the latter anxious to purchase the field in
which her guillotined brother, Prince Salm Kyrburg, had been buried.
Prince Emanuel of Salm, apparently her uncle, accompanied her on
her pious mission. Adam Gottlob von Moltke, a cousin of the famous
strategist and like him a Dane, was a versifier of the Klopstock school
and was intimate with Niebuhr. On the outbreak of the French Revolution
he had styled himself Citizen Moltke. He helped to draw up the
Schleswig-Holstein constitution. Another Danish visitor was Baggesen,
who had witnessed the Revolution, imitated Klopstock and Wieland, and
enjoyed a pension from his sovereign. Samson Heine, father of the
poet, a Dusseldorf merchant, was a visitor on business, like several
of his Jewish co-religionists. His son was too young to accompany him.
Another business visitor was Johann Maria Farina, who opened depôts for
his ‘veritable eau de Cologne.’ Frederic Jacobi, a friend of Richter,
went in vain quest of health. He revived his acquaintance with Count
Schlabrendorf, whom he had met in London in 1786. ‘For eight years,’
said Schlabrendorf, reviewing his revolutionary experiences, ‘it was
here all a scuffle like a village beershop, everybody pitching into
each other. Then came Bonaparte with a “stop that.” The first thing
he did was to blow out the candles. He wanted no questions settled,
but merely the stoppage of disputes. Liberty or no liberty, religion
or no religion, morality or no morality, was all immaterial to him.
Liberty and equality remain, and now nobody opens his mouth or
strikes another.’ I may here remark that the comparison of Bonaparte
to Cromwell, obvious as it now appears to us, was not made by any
English observer, though it did not escape German visitors. Jacobi
also went to see St. Martin, the disciple of Boehme and Swedenborg,
who had known William Law in England in 1787, and regarded the French
Revolution as a precursor of the Day of Judgment. St. Martin, who
was living in seclusion till his death in October 1803, said to him,
‘Everybody has told you I am mad, but you see that I am at least a
happy madman. If, moreover, some madmen should be fettered there are
others to be left unfettered, and I think myself one of the latter.’ A
disciple of Jacobi, Jacob Frederic Fries, who had been educated by the
Moravians and was ultimately a professor at Jena, was also a visitor.
His democratic opinions for a time occasioned his suspension from his
post. Frederic Schlegel, an intimate friend of Novalis, studied at the
Louvre, was taught Sanscrit by Alexander Hamilton, and lectured on
German literature and philosophy. He and his Jewish wife, a daughter
of Moses Mendelssohn, embraced Catholicism in 1803. Less eminent than
his brother Augustus, he was an orientalist and art critic. Living with
them at Montmartre was Helmine von Klenke, who had made an unfortunate
marriage with Baron Hastfer, and having divorced him was destined to be
but little more successful with a second mate, Chézy, to whom Schlegel,
his teacher of Persian, introduced her. Helmine was cured of a violent
headache by Mesmer, who sat beside her at dinner, and unobserved by the
other guests made some passes over her forehead. Mesmer, unlike what
happened to him in 1781 and 1785, attracted no curiosity. Helmine also
met Hardenberg, the future Prussian statesman, Achim von Arnim, a poet
and novelist, and Mademoiselle Rodde, daughter of a Swiss professor,
and herself at seventeen adorned with a doctor’s degree.[147]
Reichardt, the composer, and Fabricius, the Danish naturalist, should
also be mentioned. Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow, who had twice visited
America, had there embraced Swedenborgianism, had been ruined by a
glass speculation, and was now dependent on his pen, likewise visited
Paris. An admirer of Napoleon, this historian and pamphleteer had had
adventures, and was destined to have others. Julius von Voss, poet and
novelist, was another visitor.
Last but not least among the German visitors comes Schopenhauer. His
father, Henry Florian Schopenhauer, a Hamburg merchant, with his wife
and son, went to London in July 1802. Leaving Arthur at school with
the Rev. Thomas Lancaster at Wimbledon, the parents travelled about
England and Scotland. They got back to London in October, and after a
six weeks’ stay all three embarked for Rotterdam. Mercier, the prolific
writer, showed them the sights of Paris. In January 1803 they proceeded
to Bordeaux. Thence father and son returned to Hamburg, while the
mother went to Toulouse, Toulon, Hyères, and Switzerland, an account of
which trip she published. Pecuniary losses affected the father’s mind,
and in 1805, at the age of fifty-nine, he fell or threw himself into
a canal. Griesbach denies that he committed suicide, alleging that he
slipped through a trap-door in his warehouse into the canal. He was an
habitual reader of the _Times_, a taste inherited by his son.
The Italians include Bartolini, sculptor of a colossal bust of
Napoleon, and a daughter of Beccaria, the Italian philosopher, who had
inherited his intelligence and love of liberty, and possessed beauty
into the bargain. She had divorced her insane husband. Helen Williams
in 1794–1795 had found her residing by the lake of Lugano. She seems
to have settled in Paris in 1798, and Paine then made acquaintance
with her. She presented Redhead Yorke with a portrait of her father,
and Holcroft was now struck by her intelligence and affability.
At her house he met Melzi, who had presented the keys of Milan to
Napoleon on his entering that city, and who had scandalised lovers of
liberty by accepting the vice-presidency of the so-called Cisalpine
republic, though Napoleon soon superseded him by his step-son Eugène
de Beauharnais. Another well-known Italian, though born in Paris, was
Caraccioli, the author of _Pope Ganganelli’s Letters_ and many
other works; but he was an octogenarian and died in 1803. Then there
was Casti, canon and poet, an imitator of Boccaccio. Prince Jerome
Moliterno Pignatelli had figured in Neapolitan politics, and was now
conspiring to deliver the Neapolitan ports to England. Though Merry
granted him a passport he was stopped at Calais and incarcerated in
the Temple, along with his English wife or mistress, a Mrs. Dorinda
Newnham, an Irishwoman,[148] possibly the wife of a London alderman and
ex-M.P. She was again arrested at Rome in 1809, but liberated as being
both ill and mad. It was thought, however, that she had been forewarned
of arrest and had burnt her papers.[149] Ultimately both of them got to
England.
How did the English demean themselves and what was the impression
produced on both sides? Francis Jackson, writing on 2nd February 1802
to Speaker Abbot, says:--
‘I only wish you would extend the efforts of your police to keep
at home a parcel of disorderly women who come abroad without
bringing anything with them that does credit to the national
character. There is Lady C. (Cholmondeley), who is one day taken
up by the police and carried to the chief lock-up for persisting
to drive in the Champs Elysées at forbidden hours and through
forbidden roads. Another day she quarrels with people at the
masquerade. A third she invites a dozen Frenchmen and women to
her house and abuses them all for slaves. Then we have Lady M.
(Monck), whose dear friend would welcome H. M. Williams and who
gets into all the bad company in Paris. You must suppose it is
very bad when here it is reckoned _mauvais ton_. You really
should keep these people at home. As for your swindlers, of whom
there has been a nest here for some time, they are not near so
troublesome, for there are swindlers in all countries and the
police here is very good.’[150]
There is evidently a little exaggeration here, but we have already seen
that Lord Whitworth shut his doors against some of his countrymen whose
inordinate admiration of Napoleon was not conducive to the maintenance
of peace, since it must have given the impression that there was a
strong French party in England, so that Napoleon might dictate his own
terms. Whitworth acknowledged that the Duke of Bedford, fully alive to
Napoleon’s projects, conducted himself very properly, adding, ‘I wish I
could say as much of many of my countrymen and countrywomen.’[151] Lady
Oxford even considered Napoleon handsome--an opinion, says a royalist
spy, not shared by a single Frenchwoman. The Duchess of Gordon, though
another of his admirers--pointing to his portrait she would say to the
wife of Consul Lebrun, ‘Voilà mon zéro (héros)’--went rather beyond the
bounds of politeness when, seated between Berthier and Decrès,[152]
Ministers of War and Marine, she said, ‘I am always frightened when
I look at you (Berthier), but fortunately you (turning to Decrès)
reassure me.’[153] This, however, might pass for one of her usual
sallies, intimating that the French army was formidable, but not the
navy. Yet Thibaudeau says:--
‘Paris was infatuated with the arrival of these foreigners.
It was a scramble among all classes to give them the best
reception. It was the height of fashion to dine and amuse them
and give them balls; the women especially were enamoured of
the English and had a rage for their fashions. In short France
seemed to eclipse itself before a few thousands of these proud
and unprofitable foreigners, towards whom the attentions of
hospitality were carried to a ridiculous excess. Frenchmen of
the old school did not share this intoxication, but sighed over
this forgetfulness of national dignity.’[154]
And Reichardt speaks of French fops parading English garments, horses,
and dogs. Even Napoleon, he says, sent to England for horses and
hounds. Frenchmen, with their keen sense of the ludicrous, were amused,
he tells us, with the middle-class Englishman, who had never previously
visited Paris. Caricaturists depicted him standing open-mouthed in
front of public buildings, with the wife in insular toilette or
grotesquely aping French fashions. A short play entitled _l’Anglais
à Paris_, which was apparently never printed, doubtless made
good-humoured fun of the visitors.
At a theatre two of these were once so unceremonious as to take off
their coats on a hot July night, whereupon there was a scene. They were
obdurate, alleging that this was allowable in London, until a police
inspector arrived and expostulated with them. Their habit of carrying
umbrellas and their nankeen or black gaiters were, however, adopted by
the French, but their beverages probably found less favour, albeit an
English tea-warehouse had been opened, as also a beershop which boasted
of its _aile_ (sic) as especially suitable for cool or damp
weather.
Vernet drew a caricature of the Duchess of Gordon as a stout woman
holding her daughter by the hand. There were other family parties.
‘English women,’ says the _Journal des Débats_ (Sept. 1, 1802),
‘are readily to be distinguished. If their grave and becoming demeanour
were not sufficiently marked, the group of children accompanying
them would be more than enough to show the difference between them
and Parisian ladies.’ Although tradesmen were glad to see English
customers, they missed the extravagant _milords_ of old times.
The Cholmondeleys, indeed, had astonished Calais by their lavishness,
requiring five-and-twenty horses for their coaches to Paris, where they
were doubtless equally prodigal, and Lord Aberdeen was also lavish; but
most of the visitors haggled about prices, bought only cheap goods, and
frequented cheap restaurants. Even rich nabobs seemed bent on spending
as little as possible. A royalist agent, while remarking that all
Europe was infected with the enthusiasm for Bonaparte and hastened to
Paris to behold the great man at least once, says:--
‘It is easy to see that curiosity alone attracts foreigners,
especially the English. The proof is that they never make a long
stay among us. They come to see the First Consul, attend the
parade and theatres, visit the museums and other curiosities;
then they leave. Paris is thus for foreigners merely a huge inn,
where they come to examine the consequences of the Revolution
and admire the masterpieces stolen from Italy and Flanders.’[155]
This is corroborated by a Weimar magazine, _London und Paris_,
which speaks of the wealthiest visitors as apparently resolved on
economising, beating down shopkeepers and chiefly frequenting the
museums and other gratuitous spectacles, or gaping from morning to
night in the squares and on the bridges. Campe speaks of a fortnight as
the average stay, and accepting the obviously exaggerated calculation
of a Paris newspaper that there were 32,000 English arrivals a month,
he estimated that each spent 30 guineas and that Paris was the richer
by 960,000 guineas a month. Reichardt estimated 20 guineas as the cost
of the journey and of ten days’ stay in Paris.
As for English impressions of France a few words will suffice. Most
of the ‘chiels’ who took notes were struck with the liveliness of
French society. The absence of roughness and hustling in the crowds at
fireworks and regattas also then, as now, attracted notice. Eyre speaks
of the readiness with which Parisian crowds made way for foreigners.
On the other hand, the frequency of divorce and of _liaisons_
excited comment. King speaks of obscenity, immorality, and profligacy
as universal in Paris, a remark which we might attribute to British
cant but for his statement that he also saw drunken Englishmen
reeling in the Palais Royal arcades. The term _monsieur_ had
been generally revived, though in the public offices _citoyen_
was still retained. Madame Récamier showed visitors of both sexes
her sumptuously furnished bedroom. Pinkerton and Hughes were charmed
with the affability and grace of Frenchwomen, and Williams wished
France and England could bestow on each other the one gaiety the other
seriousness, while Miss Plumptree vindicated the virtue of the great
majority of Frenchwomen. Miss Edgeworth was struck by the absence of
beggars on the coach-roads--in Paris, however, carriages were beset
by them--and by the good manners of the lower orders. Forbes found
the coachdrivers so polite as to stop and allow their fair passengers
to sketch the landscape. Eyre was delighted with the Palais Royal,
whereas Redhead Yorke styles it a den of iniquity, and Miss Plumptree
considered its erection a greater sin of Égalité Orleans than even his
Jacobinical delinquencies.
Holcroft, who had a French wife and had paid previous visits, tells us
more than other writers of comparative manners. He himself was taught a
lesson of politeness. He was leaning against the mantelpiece apparently
monopolising the fire, when a girl came up and in lieu of saying ‘You
are in my way,’ employed the delicate periphrasis of ‘I am in your
way.’ He took the hint and moved, but this was not all. She touched
a cup and saucer on the mantelpiece, expecting him to remove it. He
did not perceive her meaning, whereupon she took the cup and saucer
and handed it to him. Again when a friend was lolling in a chair with
his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out, a French lady
remarked to Mrs. Holcroft, ‘Look at that Englishman, he is anything but
squeamish.’ Yet Holcroft saw Frenchmen in similar attitudes, not to
speak of their spitting on the floor or pulling out white handkerchiefs
bedaubed with snuff. The French were scandalised at the appearance at
the Tuileries of an officer in Highland costume; but Holcroft observed
women in male attire in the streets and also at the theatres, where
they thus evaded the regulation excluding women from the pit. He saw
a married couple undistinguishable in point of dress, but he admits
that the woman showed timidity and the utmost propriety. On another
occasion, however, he sat behind a girl in male dress who, manifestly
to attract his notice, pretended to be making love to a female friend
by her side. Little girls, moreover, were frequently dressed as boys,
while boys had all sorts of outlandish costumes. Naughty children were
often threatened with being sent back to their nurses on the ground
that they must be changelings, and putting children out to nurse was so
universal that in eighteen months Holcroft, except among the poor, saw
only two infants in arms in the streets. He found French politeness in
several respects wanting. Shopkeepers were the reverse of obsequious,
and when his heels were trodden upon or his coat soiled by a cane or
umbrella carried under the arm he seldom received an apology. If,
moreover, at a theatre a neighbour borrowed his copy of the play it
would have been retained till the end of the performance if Holcroft
had not asked for it back.
There were marriages and deaths among the visitors. Lady Catherine
Beauclerk, daughter of the Duke of St. Albans, was married at the
Embassy to the Rev. James Burgess, the Duchess of Cumberland being
present; she died nine months afterwards at Florence. The Baroness
Crofton’s daughter was married to St. George Caulfeild of the county
Roscommon, probably the ex-Guardsman and man of fashion who on
the 2nd February 1803 appeared at Covent Garden as Hamlet. He was
‘well-proportioned and genteel,’ but too laboured in his attitudes and
gesticulations. Richard Trench married Miss St. George. Lady Isabel
Style died at St. Omer in December 1802, Champion de Crespigny in Paris
on New Year’s Day, 1803, and Luttrell in the same month. Sir Robert
Chambers, ex-Chief Justice of Bengal, who had intended going south,
died in Paris in May 1803, and was buried in the Temple Church, London.
Mrs. Charles Ellis, granddaughter of the Earl of Bristol, Lady Mary
Eyre, relict of Thomas Eyre and sister of the Earl of Uxbridge, Lady
Anne Saltmarsh, and Colonel Alexander Malcolm also died in Paris or the
provinces.
Before passing on to the renewal of the war, I may mention some of
the return visits to London. These were sufficiently numerous for
sheets of voting-papers on Napoleon’s life-consulate to be sent over
to the French Embassy. Let us hope that one of these was not filled
up by the most prominent visitor, Grégoire, Constitutional Bishop of
Blois, who had sat in the Convention, but was happily absent in Savoy
at the time of Louis XVI.’s trial. He was no doubt eagerly
questioned on the events of the Revolution and on the horrors from
which he had rather unaccountably escaped. He plumed himself on being
the first Catholic prelate who since 1688 had promenaded in St. James’s
Park in full costume, and he wittily remarked to Fulton, ‘The English
are a magnanimous, hospitable, and kindly people, and the country
would be enchanting if it had but pleased God to give it sunshine and
French cookery.’ Sir Joseph Banks showed him the sights of London.
Madame Récamier was welcomed at London and Bath. She was noticed by
the Prince of Wales, and made or renewed acquaintance with the Duchess
of Devonshire, Lady Elizabeth Foster, the Marquis of Douglas, his
sister the Duchess of Somerset, the Duke of Orleans (afterwards Louis
Philippe), and his brothers. Her portrait was in great request, but she
was mobbed in Kensington Gardens on account of her transparent French
costume.[156] Her husband, the banker, joined her in London in May
1802. Madame Vigée-Lebrun, who had painted Marie Antoinette, went in
April 1802 and stayed three years. The Prince of Wales and Lord Byron
were among her sitters. Madame Tussaud, an artist of another order,
settled permanently in London with her waxwork collections. Delille
recited his verses, but was addicted to eating jellies meanwhile, which
with his rapid pace made it difficult to understand him. He returned
in August 1802, and had obtained or was about to obtain dispensation
from deacon’s orders so as to marry his housekeeper. Garnerin,
the aeronaut, made a long stay, and ascending at Ranelagh Gardens
alighted at Colchester. He made another ascent at Bath. Félissent, the
worthless second husband of the great singer Mrs. Billington, had to
her surprise followed her from Italy to London; but the Government,
doubtless out of friendliness to her, expelled him under the Alien
Act. Was he anxious to share the 4000 guineas which she was earning
that season, or was he jealous, and not without cause, of the Duke of
Sussex? Talleyrand shamelessly gave his brother, Colonel Archambaud
(afterwards Duc de Talleyrand), a letter to the Prime Minister,
Addington, requesting him to procure the payment of a considerable sum
due to him while commanding a regiment of _émigrés_ in English
pay. Archambaud returned with the money, but the London newspapers
revealing his _incognito_ mission, Napoleon banished him from
Paris, as also another Bozon, who had likewise fought against France
but had since cringed to Napoleon. Fiévée, the press censor, was
sent to write letters on or rather against England in the _Mercure
de France_,[157] as also Colonel Beauvoisin, who on his return was
ordered by Napoleon to write against Pitt, Grenville, and the Court. He
was sent on a second visit with directions not only to write letters to
his paper (apparently the _Débats_), and to send all anti-French
pamphlets, but to ‘find pretexts for traversing the whole coast from
the Thames to beyond Plymouth, the Bristol Channel, Edinburgh and the
Scotch coasts.’ He was to ‘have a fixed salary, and extra pay whenever
he answers the expectations formed of his talents and fidelity.’[158]
Beauvoisin, according to Goldsmith, was intimate with Despard, the
conspirator. Bonnecarrère, Madame Bonneuil, who had previously had a
mission to Russia, Madame Visconti, mistress of General Berthier, and
Madame Gay, are also mentioned by Goldsmith as Napoleon’s emissaries.
Military men were also appointed by him as consuls at London, Bristol,
Hull, Glasgow, Dublin, Cork, and Jersey; but a letter from Talleyrand
to Fauvelet at Dublin, instructing him to make plans of Irish harbours,
was intercepted, whereupon the English Government insisted on the
withdrawal of these spies, a demand the more easily made by it as it
had not itself appointed any consuls to France. A more legitimate
visitor was Coquebert, a scientist and diplomatist who was deputed to
discuss a commercial treaty, but failed to effect an agreement.
Some of the visitors were of an undesirable class, for in September
1803, when a royal proclamation ordered a general expulsion, the
_Times_ said:--
‘What did France send to us? With the exception of a few persons
who came on commercial speculations, she sent a multitude of
adventurers, who were starving at home and hastened hither,
impelled by the reports of our riches and the simplicity of our
character; and in return for the wealth which our nobility and
gentry carried over to their country, they came among us with no
other possessions than their vices.’
Shall we reckon among French visitors Maurice Drummond, a descendant
of the Jacobite Drummonds, who took over with him his wife, daughter
of Lord Elphinstone, and his daughter Clementina, destined as Lady
Clementina Davies to write _Recollections of Society_? She went at
Edinburgh to a school kept by the sister of Professor Playfair, and her
brother was born in 1807 on British soil. The latter, in 1841, proved
his right to the French title of Duke of Melfort and Perth, while in
1853 an Act of Parliament, reversing the attainder, restored to him his
ancestral British title of Earl of Perth and Melfort. He survived till
1902, when, his son and grandson having predeceased him, the earldom
passed to Viscount Strathallan.
A less doubtful British immigrant was John Gamble, probably brother
of the James Gamble who witnessed the Revolution. He had been in
partnership as a paper-maker at Essonne with Jules Didot St. Léger,
who had married his sister Maria.[159] Accompanied by Nicolas Louis
Robert, the Essonne overseer, inventor of a machine for endless
paper-making, he started paper-mills in 1804 at Frogmore, Herts, but
these did not succeed. Didot himself, however, was more fortunate at
Two Waters, Hemel Hempstead, where he remained from 1802 till 1816.
IV
CAPTIVITY
The Rupture--Detentions--Flights and Narrow
Escapes--Life at Verdun--Extortion--Napoleon’s
Rigour--M.P.’s--The _Argus_--Escapes and
Recaptures--Diplomatists--Liberations--Indulgences--Women and
Children--Captures in War--Rumbold--Foreign Visitors--British
Travellers--Deaths--The Last Stage--French Leave--Unpaid Debts.
It is not my purpose to discuss the causes of the renewal of the
war. M. Martin Phippson, in the _Revue Historique_, March
to June 1901, contends that though England, owing to Addington’s
incapacity, was seemingly the aggressor, Napoleon was really so,
albeit desirous at the last moment of postponing the rupture till
his armaments were completed. Of all the explanations of the rupture
the strangest, yet the most recent, is that of M. Albert Sorel, who,
quoting some anonymous English writer, represents the renewal of the
war as necessary to the English ruling classes in order to avert the
establishment of a government like the French.[160] The truth is that
all reflecting Englishmen perceived Napoleon to be a tyrant, and Paine,
as we have seen, regarded Frenchmen as worse off than the slaves of
Constantinople.
The treaty of Amiens, moreover, had never been more than a truce.
Whitworth had never appeared to instal himself for a permanency, and
English visitors consequently complained of his want of hospitality. On
the 13th March 1803 Napoleon rudely apostrophised him at Joséphine’s
reception. Whitworth’s own account of this has been published by
Mr. Oscar Browning, but Napoleon’s version addressed to Andréossi,
which seems to have been overlooked in England, is to be found in his
correspondence. It reads thus:--
‘The First Consul being at the presentation of foreigners
which took place to-day at Madame Bonaparte’s, and finding
Lord Whitworth and M. de Markoff side by side, said to them,
“We have been fighting fifteen years (_sic_). It seems
that a storm is brewing at London, and that they want to fight
another fifteen years. The King of England says in his message
that France is preparing offensive armaments. He has been
misled. There is no considerable armament in the French ports,
all having started for St. Domingo. He says that differences
exist between the two Cabinets; I know of none. It is true that
England should evacuate Malta. His Majesty is pledged to this by
treaty. The French nation may be destroyed but not intimidated.”
‘Going round and finding himself alone with M. de Markoff, he
said in a low tone that the discussion related to Malta, that
the British Ministry wanted to keep it seven years, and that you
should not sign treaties when you would not execute them. At the
end of the circle, the English minister being near the door, he
said to him: “Madame Dorset has spent the bad season at Paris;
I ardently hope that she may spend the fine one; but if it is
true that we are to have war, the entire responsibility in the
eyes of God and man will be on those who repudiate their own
signature and refuse to execute treaties.”’
This storm blew over, and on the 30th March the young Duke of Dorset,
the Harrow schoolboy, set off to spend Easter with his mother, his
two little sisters, and his step-father at Paris. It was also stated
that the Embassy was about to be newly furnished. But in April matters
again looked threatening. Madame de Rémusat tells us that people
collected outside the British Embassy, to judge by the preparations for
departure whether there was to be peace or war. Whitworth[161] left
Paris on the 12th May and landed at Dover on the 20th. His staff met
with some obstacles. Talbot, on his way to Calais, was stopped at St.
Denis because his passport had expired. He acknowledged that he ought
to have renewed it, but the Prefect of Police, on being consulted,
said he was exempt from the decree, and after a few hours’ delay
Talbot, who admitted that he had been courteously treated, proceeded
on his journey.[162] Mandeville not being allowed, probably for the
same informality, to embark at Calais, returned temporarily to Paris.
Hodgson, the chaplain, and Maclaurin, the physician to the Embassy,
also encountered difficulties. On the 6th May it had been announced in
the House of Commons that Andréossi had asked for his passports. On
the 17th messages to both Houses and a notification in the _London
Gazette_ dated the 16th announced an embargo on all French and
Dutch vessels in British ports, together with the issue of letters of
marque. On the 19th two French vessels laden with timber and salt were
captured off Brest. On the 23rd a decree was communicated to the French
Chambers providing that all Englishmen enrolled in the militia or
holding commissions in the army or navy should be detained as reprisals
for this embargo and capture prior to the declaration of war on the
18th. The decree was even extended by being made applicable to all
persons between eighteen and sixty, even if, like clergymen and others,
not enrolled in the militia. Talbot before leaving wrote a letter of
remonstrance to Talleyrand, who stated that Talbot having no longer any
official status he could not reply.
The only precedents for this detention were the arrest in 1746, without
any apparent reason, of all the English in Paris on the return of
the Young Pretender, and that of all Englishmen in France in 1793 as
hostages for Toulon. Thomas Moore heard Lord Holland in 1819 justify
Napoleon, but Mackintosh maintained that the seizure of vessels was
warranted by international law, and a French jurist, Miot de Mélito,
describes the detention as a ‘violent measure unusual even in the
bitterest wars,’ while Henri Martin, the French historian, charges both
Governments with having violated international law. The truth is that
Napoleon acted in a passion, and as in the case of the Duc d’Enghien
was too proud ever to acknowledge a mistake. As to an embargo, he
himself as early as the 13th May had despatched orders for the seizure
of British vessels in Holland, Genoa, and Tuscany. If, moreover, we
are to believe Madame Junot, Napoleon’s decree was due to his having
been informed that Colonel James Green had in a café threatened in
his cups to assassinate him, and though Junot, being acquainted with
Green, vouched for his having left Paris prior to the date of the
alleged threat, Napoleon refused to cancel the decree. So swiftly was
it enforced that the _Prince of Wales_ packet and the cutter
_Nancy_, which had made their usual passage from Dover to Calais,
were seized and their crews detained. When a few weeks afterwards
Napoleon visited Calais, Captain Sutton, of the _Prince of Wales_,
petitioned him for release, but he met with a peremptory refusal, and
Napoleon, on the two vessels being pointed out to him in the harbour,
said, ‘You have plenty of mud there; let them lie and rot.’
The aggregate number of the British captives, represented by the French
as seven thousand five hundred, was really only seven hundred, four
hundred of them, according to Sturt, being small tradesmen. Napoleon,
according to Maclean, was much disappointed at the smallness of the
haul. Everything indeed had been done to induce the visitors to stay.
The _Argus_ had on the 10th May remonstrated against any fear
of detention as in 1793, France, it said, being no longer under a
Robespierre, and provincial authorities had given assurances that
expulsion with reasonable notice was the worst that could befall.
It was unfair, however, to accuse Napoleon of having ‘enticed’ the
English to remain. His assurances of safety were probably sincere at
the time, but his moral sense did not impress upon him the sacredness
of such a virtual pledge. He had no scruples as to suddenly changing
his mind to the detriment of persons who had trusted him. Most of the
visitors, however, had deemed it prudent to return home while the
issue was still uncertain. As late indeed as May arrivals in Paris had
continued. From May 10th to 19th there were 48, and from the 20th to
the 29th there were 38, but in the next ten days the number fell to 17
and in the following ten days to 6. Most of these visitors, moreover,
must have come up from the provinces on their way home, while others
came to fetch relatives. There were some narrow escapes. Sir William
Call was just in time to leave Geneva, and Miss Berry and Mrs. Damer,
warned by Lord John Campbell, hurried away from that city, forgetting
or possibly not thinking it safe to pass on the warning to others. The
Duke of Bedford, the Duchess of Gordon and her daughter, and Sir Harry
Featherstonehaugh left Paris four days after Whitworth. The son of Sir
G. Burrell and a companion escaped by making their valet pass for an
American and themselves for his servants. Young Edgeworth, on the other
hand, received his father’s letter of warning just too late, and was
detained till 1814, though his companions, Roget as a Swiss and the
Philips boys as below the age, obtained exemption. Yet not only had
men been detained when over sixty, but some youths of ten or twelve,
and therefore well under the limit of sixteen, had been stopped on the
plea of their producing no certificates of birth. Augustine Sayer,
aged thirteen, whom his parents had apparently placed in a school,
was not allowed to return home, but was forced to maintain himself by
tuition. He was eventually physician to the Duke of Kent and to the
Lock Hospital, dying in 1861. He may have been one of the English boys
sent to Dubufe’s school, for Dubufe, a member of the London Society of
Arts, contradicting a statement that Protestants were refused admission
to French schools, mentioned that he had received such pupils. John
Charles Tarver, the future educationist and teacher of French at
Eton, might surely, however, have been sent to his parents in London
between 1794 and 1802, even if this was impossible after 1803. Farel,
the engineer, in whose care he had been left by them on their release
from captivity at Dieppe after the Terror, had virtually adopted him.
Born at Dieppe in 1790, he had practically been naturalised, and Farel
in 1805 got him into the French civil service. He remained in it till
March 1814, when, obtaining leave of absence, he went to London and
found his mother, brothers, and sisters still living; but he returned
to France during the Hundred Days, intending apparently to resume his
official post. Disappointed in this hope, he recrossed the Channel and
found a more distinguished career open to him.
Before entering into details respecting the captives, I should speak
of the unusual bitterness given to the war by Napoleon. Anglophobia,
indeed, had been displayed by him even during the peace. The publishers
of the _Almanach National_ were sharply rebuked for proposing
to insert ‘Angleterre’ with its royal family at the head of the
alphabetical list of foreign powers. They had to relegate it lower down
as ‘Grande Bretagne,’ and curiously enough British representatives at
international Congresses are to the present day seated according to
this nomenclature. Napoleon, moreover, during his tour in Normandy
scolded his minister Chaptal for speaking of ‘_jardins anglais_.’
‘Why,’ he vehemently exclaimed, ‘do you call them English gardens? Do
you not know that this style of gardening came to us from China, that
it was brought to perfection in France, and that no good Frenchman can
credit England with it? Bear in mind that “French gardens” is the only
proper term for them, and never again grate on my ears with “English
gardens.”’[163]
His animosity was naturally intensified on the resumption of
hostilities. The theatres were forbidden to perform pieces containing
allusions complimentary to England, while plays of an opposite
character were ordered to be performed not only in Paris but at
Boulogne, Bruges, and other ports where troops were being collected for
the invasion. A corps of Irish interpreters was formed, and Chaptal was
directed to get some invasion songs written and set to music. Pamphlets
demonstrating the facility of the invasion or vilifying the English
were likewise published. One of them was entitled, ‘The English people,
swollen with pride, beer, and tea, tried by the tribunal of reason.’
This was a reprint of Montlosier’s articles, but issued without his
consent. Caricatures were also multiplied. One of them represented
George III. as dragged on the ground by his hair by a French
soldier. His crown tumbles off, and the soldier, striking him with his
fist, says, ‘Look to thy crown and defend thy coasts.’[164] The Bayeux
tapestry was brought over to Paris to suggest the practicability or
imminency of a landing in England, and the Joan of Arc celebration at
Orleans, suspended since the Revolution, was revived. Even indeed in
February, three months before the rupture, Napoleon had emphatically
approved, if not suggested, the erection by the Orleans municipality
of a statue of the heroine. This gave the _Times_ a text for
commenting on the anomaly of the glorification by a usurper of the
maiden who restored the French crown to its rightful owner. Napoleon
might, however, have rejoined that he had not usurped the crown, but
had picked it out of the gutter of the Revolution. The teaching of
English in schools, too, as Lamartine testifies, was forbidden. Yet
it is but fair to say that French was discouraged, as Lord Malmesbury
tells us, in English schools, and that the _Times_ of January 4,
1803, contained the following curious article:--
The political ill-consequences of the spread of the French
language throughout Europe are admitted; and we do not conceive
that its bad effects upon the morals and character of other
countries will be disputed. We have no hesitation to add, that
a nation which adopts the language of a superior is prepared to
admit its yoke. There is no better or quicker road to dominion,
than by imposing the necessity, or compassing the mode, of
making a language general. In this word are comprised the
ideas, character, and love of the people whose idiom you prefer
to your own.
We never heard it alleged as _unwise_ in the Government
of _China_, to intercept all communication between its
subjects and foreigners.
Except as a _first step_ and beginning of mischief, all
apprehensions from the representation of a French Comedy are
ridiculous. It is as the _mali labes_, the first spot
and eruption, that we are induced to contend against anything
so contemptible as the pic-nickery and nick-nackery--the pert
affectation, and subaltern vanity of rehearsing to an audience
that cannot understand, in a language one cannot pronounce!
Does any one advantage result to the community of Great Britain,
from the practice of teaching French indiscriminately to every
girl whose parents can send her to a boarding-school?
Does any advantage result from its being taught to shopkeepers’
sons, at a day-school, for fear foreigners should not pawn or
buy, for want of understanding them?
Are not the great part of the female sex, and of the uninformed
part of ours, exposed, by this practice, to the moral and
political corruptions of another country? Is not the business of
French Emissaries facilitated by the half-understanding of low
and ignorant Englishmen?
Ought a girl to be able to read any book that her father cannot?
Ought she to converse in a gibberish, which her mother cannot
detect?
Ought the mass of a virtuous and happy people to be educated to
form ideas different from the manners, habits, and institutions
of their own country? Ought it to be in the power of an enemy to
poison their minds, corrupt their principles, and seduce them
from their allegiance and religion?
Napoleon’s letters show how jealously he watched over the detention of
the English, and over everything relating to England. Thus in 1806 he
ordered all Englishmen to be expelled from the Papal States, and this
order perhaps accounts for Coleridge’s belief that he had a narrow
escape from being seized on account of his articles in the _Morning
Post_. It is extremely unlikely, however, that Napoleon ever heard
of Coleridge. He likewise decreed that English civilians found in any
country occupied by his troops should be prisoners, and all English
property or merchandise confiscated. Even any neutral vessel which had
entered an English port was also to be forfeited. Lord Oxford, Lord
Mount Cashell, and General Morgan would have been arrested at Florence
but for the refusal of the Queen Regent to act as Napoleon’s policeman.
Again in 1806 Napoleon writes, ‘I do not know why English prisoners
have been placed at Arras; no doubt to be near home so that they may
escape.’ He writes eight months later from Posen: ‘Issue a circular
and take measures that throughout the Empire all letters coming from
England or written in English and by Englishmen shall be destroyed. All
this is very important, for England must be completely isolated.’ In
1807 he complains that English prisoners still received letters. Two
years later, on a report that the English at Arras and Valenciennes
were meditating escape, he ordered their removal further inland. This
measure was extended in 1811 to the prisoners at Brussels. The daily
police report, which constantly spoke of the English prisoners, was
evidently scanned by him, even when absent from Paris, with great
attention; and seemingly anxious that no other eye should see these
documents, he directed that during his absence in Russia they should
be destroyed. There is consequently a gap of four months in 1812.
Even to the last the prisoners were never forgotten by him, for on
the 6th January 1814 he ordered their removal from Verdun to Orleans,
manifestly to prevent their release by the allied armies. Only in one
instance do I find his severity relenting. On the 12th November 1812 at
Givet he remarked English prisoners (captured soldiers or sailors, of
course, not _détenus_) who had been set to repair a swivel bridge.
Eight or ten of them jumped with alacrity into a boat to help to make
the mechanism work. He directed that these men should be picked out,
presented with 100 francs each, and sent back to England. An English
clergyman at Givet who had petitioned for a three months’ visit home
was to escort them. A petition from another Englishman there was also
to be favourably considered. It is pleasant to find Napoleon for once
good-humoured and generous.[165] When, in 1812, he directed that the
smuggling of coffee and sugar into Corsica by English vessels should
be winked at, and that sugar and coffee seized in British bottoms
should not, like British manufactured goods, be burnt, he was obviously
inspired by more selfish considerations. French fishing-boats were
forbidden to pass the night out at sea, lest they should smuggle
English goods, yet they were authorised to smuggle (the French had
adopted the word _smogler_) spirits into England. Fishing-boats
on both sides were unmolested, unless indeed they had clandestine
passengers on board; and the _Times_, running a light cutter in
the Channel, procured from them Paris newspapers. Letters were probably
conveyed occasionally in the same way. England had not retaliated
against French products, for in 1807 the _Monthly Review_ appealed
to British patriots not to continue spending a million and a half a
year on French brandies and other goods. But Cancale must have been
unable to continue sending its oysters, one hundred and nineteen
millions of which had been forwarded in the twenty months of peace. The
export of oysters from Granville and St. Malo was, however, permitted
by Napoleon in 1810.
The Irish refugees, whom Napoleon, as we have seen, had offered
Cornwallis to expel, now became his cats-paws. In July 1803, while
declining to see Arthur O’Connor, he deputed General Truguet to treat
with him and Berthier to advance him small sums of money. He promised
to send 25,000 troops to Ireland, and if 20,000 Irishmen would join
them he pledged himself to make Irish independence a condition of
peace. But he found that the Irish refugees or emissaries were split
into two parties, not always on speaking terms, O’Connor accepting,
the Emmets rejecting, the idea of a French protectorate. In July 1804,
having read a memoir by the Emmets, Lewins, and other exiles, he
decreed that all Irishmen accompanying the projected expedition should
be considered Frenchmen, and if not treated when captured as prisoners
of war reprisals would be exercised.[166] Robert Emmet had had an
audience of Napoleon previously to the peace, and an Irish legion was
formed in November 1803. MacSheehy organised it at Brest, and on the
Emperor’s coronation it was presented, like the French regiments, with
an eagle and colours. Irish dissensions, however, are proverbial, and a
duel between MacSheehy and O’Mealy led to the former being transferred
to a French regiment and to the latter resigning and apparently
returning to Baltimore. In 1806 the legion was ordered to Landau and
had to pass through Verdun.
The governor [says Myles Byrne] took upon himself to lodge
the Irish legion in a suburb, lest its presence might not be
agreeable to the British prisoners. At daybreak he had the
drawbridge let down and the gates opened to let the legion march
through before the English prisoners could have light to see
and contemplate our green flag and its beatific inscription, so
obnoxious to them, ‘the independence of Ireland.’ Our march,
however, through the town at that early hour attracted great
notice. As our band played up our national air of Patrick’s Day
in the Morning we could see many windows opened and gentlemen in
their shirts inquiring across the street in good English what
was meant by this music at such an early hour.
Some months later the legion was ordered to Boulogne, to be ready for
the invasion of England, and at Arras ‘the governor,’ says Byrne, ‘had
the good sense to make the English sleep one night in the citadel
until we marched out in the morning.’ The legion was eventually sent
to Spain. The experiment of inviting English prisoners to join it
did not succeed, and in 1810 Napoleon stopped it. ‘I do not want any
English soldiers,’ he wrote; ‘I prefer their being prisoners to answer
for my prisoners in England; moreover the majority desert.’ This had
apparently happened in Spain. In 1811 Napoleon directed Clarke to
send for O’Connor and his fellow-exiles in Paris and try to revive
an insurrection. He was ready to send 30,000 troops if sure of a
rising and if England continued to send forces to Portugal. O’Connor
accordingly sent Napoleon a preliminary memoir, whereupon in September
he commissioned Clarke to despatch agents to Ireland.
In spite of his ostentatious preparations Napoleon told Metternich in
1810 that he had never been mad enough to think of invading England
unless in the wake of an insurrection, the Boulogne army being all
along aimed at Austria. The latest and fullest French writer on the
subject, Colonel Desbrières, from an examination of the confused orders
and counterorders, so unlike the rest of Napoleon’s plans, comes to
the same conclusion.[167] All that Napoleon could have intended was
to disquiet England, and thus prevent her from despatching troops to
the Continent. This was legitimate strategy, and he was obviously,
moreover, as much entitled to use the Irish as pawns as England had
been to use the Vendeans, but his manufacture of counterfeit notes is
less excusable. A manufactory of forged notes in Paris, enshrouded
in mystery, was superintended by Lale, a clerk in the engraving
department of the War Office, Fouché, Savary, and Desmarest being the
only confidants of the secret. A Hamburg Jew named Malchus and two
Frenchmen, Blanc and Bernard, were sent to buy merchandise with the
notes. They were instructed to go to Scotland and Ireland, so as to
disappear before the fraud was discovered. They were ostensibly told
to destroy what they bought, but they naturally preferred smuggling it
into France, and this was winked at, so that they made large profits.
The fraud was, however, soon discovered. Malchus was hanged. His
confederates escaped in an English smuggling boat which was captured by
a French revenue vessel. They were at first imprisoned at Boulogne, but
Savary promptly ordered their release, together with funds to return
to Paris for further employment. Napoleon, at a later date, practised
the same trick on Russia and Austria. On the restoration of peace with
the latter in 1810, he offered an excuse or rather defence of the act
to Metternich. He had at that time just ordered Fouché to resume the
forgery of English notes.[168]
Napoleon, it may be remarked, attributed the rupture of 1803 to his
refusal to conclude a commercial treaty ‘which would necessarily
have been detrimental to the manufactures and industry of his
subjects,’[169] and he never relaxed stringency in excluding British
merchandise. As late as 1810 such goods were seized and burned at
Roscoff, Bâle, and Strasburg, though the prefect of Strasburg suggested
that textiles should be utilised in hospitals and ambulances. The war
thus gave a stimulus to French manufactures, except to those hampered
by want of raw materials. The ports, however, suffered severely through
the English blockade, especially Nantes and other towns which had had
a large trade with the West Indies. During the short peace Nantes had
sent out merchantmen, and sixty of these, unable to get back, were
captured. Marseilles also suffered, but the blockade could not entirely
stop its trade.
Even some Englishmen long resident in France were declared prisoners
and had to plead for exemption. Chalmers, a Bordeaux merchant, Scottish
on the father’s side, French on the mother’s; James Macculloch, who had
been in Brittany for thirty-five years; James Smith, Stone’s successor
as printer; and James Milne, who taught cotton-spinning at the Arts
et Métiers, were in this position. Chalmers found naturalisation
the only resource. Smith and Milne, perhaps also Macculloch, were
struck off the list of captives. As a rule rich residents as well
as manufacturers and artisans were unmolested, for Napoleon was not
insensible of the advantage thus accruing to Parisian tradesmen. Thus
Francis Henry Egerton, brother and eventual successor of the Earl of
Bridgewater, an eccentric clergyman or ex-clergyman of whom we shall
hear anon, was not disquieted. According to a French writer he had
created a scandal which necessitated expatriation, but this assertion
I have not been able to verify. His chess parties in 1807 excited much
notice. In 1813 he visited Italy. Quintin Craufurd was also unmolested,
along with his _quasi_-wife Mrs. Sullivan, who, according to
a French police register, was originally an Italian ballet-dancer,
married John O’Sullivan, Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies,
and eloped with Craufurd. Another version, however, states that she
had been the mistress or morganatic wife of the King of Würtemberg,
on whose legitimate marriage she withdrew with her daughter to Paris,
subsequently marrying Sullivan. What is certain is that she had
cohabited with Craufurd in Paris as long ago as 1787, for in that year
she had had to fetch him home at 9 A.M. from the British
Embassy after a whole night at the card-table. Nothing worse now befell
Craufurd than a robbery. Madame de Genlis writes on the 23rd March 1811
to her adopted son, Casimir Becker:--
That poor Mr. Craufurd was robbed yesterday while he was playing
whist at Madame de Talleyrand’s. All his superb jewels, caskets,
rings, gold medals, 300 louis d’or, etc. The window was opened
by means of a hole cut in the shutter, and the desk was forced.
But it is believed from several indications that what was done
to the window was merely a feint and that the thief belonged to
the house.[170]
Even Craufurd, however, being uncle, as we have seen, of two British
diplomatists, incurred the suspicions of Fouché’s spies, for their
report of the 22nd May 1804 says:--
It may be supposed that this old man, now _blasé_, has
no longer the activity which formerly rendered his house at
Frankfort a centre of political movements very hostile to
France, but he is still under the influence of Madame Sullivan,
that foreigner of easy virtue who facilitated the departure of
Louis XVI. and started the same day for Brussels.[171]
Talleyrand’s protection nevertheless ensured him against molestation,
and he was even permitted to procure books from England. In 1816 he
obtained the restitution of his papers,[172] seized, like his other
effects, in 1793, and he claimed 2,230,000 francs compensation for his
losses. A smaller sum was probably awarded him. He continued living
in Paris till his death in November 1819. A painful episode disturbed
his last months. Sir James Craufurd went over, and as far as can be
judged endeavoured to extort from the sick uncle a will or a bequest of
£48,000 in his favour. Though forbidden entrance, he flourished pistols
in the faces of two servants and forced his way in. He next prosecuted
Mrs. Craufurd and several of her fashionable friends for spreading
reports of his conduct, and in court he indulged in such personalities
that he had to be expelled. He also charged the servants with
assaulting him, but this, like the other accusations, was dismissed,
and he was eventually twice sentenced by default to six months’
imprisonment for libellous pamphlets, in one of which he accused Mrs
Craufurd of bigamy.[173] Quintin Craufurd was very charitable to the
poor of Paris. Though primarily a man of fashion, he ranks as an author
by works on India, Mary Stuart, and Marie Antoinette, some of them in
French. His widow, retaining to the age of eighty-four her vivacity
and charm, died in Paris about 1832. Her daughter[174] married Count
Albert d’Orsay, one of Napoleon’s generals, and thus became the mother
of Count Alfred d’Orsay, the handsome fop, spendthrift, and amateur
painter, who in 1827 married Lady Harriet Gardner, step-daughter of the
famous Lady Blessington. Sir James (latterly Sir James Grogan) Craufurd
died in 1839.
Fraser Frisell, who, except for a brief visit to his native Scotland in
1802, had lived in France since 1792, was likewise allowed full liberty.
Americans, it may be mentioned, were liable to be arrested as English,
for the latter sometimes attempted to pass themselves off as Americans.
George Matthew Paterson, a cousin of Madame Paterson-Bonaparte’s
father, was detained as a British subject. He had, indeed, been born
in Ireland. He was sent to Valenciennes, and then to Lille, whence
he wrote letters to Madame Paterson-Bonaparte complimenting her on
her marriage with Jerome and desiring to make her acquaintance.[175]
William Russell was at least half American. He had got up the Bastille
dinner at Birmingham in 1790, whereupon his house was burnt down by
the mob. He had gone to America in 1795, but in 1802, being in France
on his way to England, he was detained till 1814.
Junot, who as Governor of Paris had to carry out the order of
detention, was, according to his wife’s memoirs, very reluctant to do
so, and consented only under great pressure. He seems, indeed, by all
accounts to have been inclined to leniency, and Forbes tells us that he
suggested his obtaining exemption by pretending to be a sexagenarian.
For a time some captives were allowed to remain in Paris, but this did
not last long. Napoleon, in this as in other cases, interested himself
in the smallest details. On the 3rd July he ordered a hundred of the
English in Paris to be sent off. They were allowed to choose between
Melun, Meaux, Fontainebleau, Nancy, and Geneva, only twenty-five,
mostly Irishmen, being permitted to remain in Paris. He complained too
of having found English at Boulogne and Calais. Accordingly forty-eight
hours’ notice was given them--that is to those not of the age to be
prisoners--to embark for England or to remove into the interior. On
the 7th July Napoleon gave orders that the English officers should be
sent to Fontainebleau or some other town: only forty were to remain in
Paris; ‘the presence of so great a number of English in Paris cannot
but cause and does cause great mischief.’[176] On the 23rd November he
ordered that officers, old men, and men with wives and children should
be interned at Verdun. The prisoners at Fontainebleau, Phalsbourg,
and Marsal were accordingly transferred thither. Persons giving cause
of complaint were to be confined at Bitche,[177] Sedan, or Sarrelouis,
while privates and sailors were to be imprisoned at Charlemont and
Valenciennes.
Verdun was obviously chosen because its distance from the sea rendered
escape difficult. It was a town of ten thousand inhabitants, and the
influx of English, mostly in affluent or at least easy circumstances,
was a windfall for it. A French newspaper compared them in fact to
sheep enclosed in a fold to manure the soil, and it suggested that
other towns should share the advantage. The mayor of Metz, indeed,
applied on behalf of that city, but ineffectually. Verdun retained a
kind of monopoly, a regulated monopoly, for Napoleon in one of his
letters (Nov. 24, 1804) warned the municipality that unless it kept
down the price of lodgings, which had risen from 36 to 300 francs
a month, the English would be sent elsewhere. Some of the army or
navy officers and captains of merchantmen captured during the war
were, of course, without means, and they had the option of gratuitous
accommodation in the barracks. Another reason for the choice of Verdun
may have been the absence of any upper class with whom the captives
could mix, whereas at Nancy, the former capital of Lorraine and still
a kind of provincial Paris, they had much more congenial surroundings.
Austrian and Russian prisoners there joined them in 1804 in celebrating
Carnival. The number of captives at Verdun from 1803 to 1814 varied
from six to eleven hundred, but the highest number included captives
made at sea or on battlefields. They procured remittances from England
through Perregaux, the Paris banker, and some obtained permission for
their families to join them. They had to give their parole not to
escape as a condition of being allowed to hire their own lodgings, a
breach of parole entailing incarceration. They had to answer to the
roll-call morning and night. They beguiled their captivity as best they
could. There were amateur theatricals, cock-fights, and horse-races.
The prisoners were described by the _Argus_ in January 1804 as
‘playing, dancing, singing, and drinking all day long.’
Two clubs were formed, one English at Concannon’s house,[178] the other
Irish at Carron’s, but the latter was broken up on account of Hibernian
quarrels in 1807. Lady Cadogan gave entertainments, and on the Prince
of Wales’s birthday in 1804 Mrs. Concannon issued a hundred and twenty
invitations to a ball and supper, when the costly toilettes of Mrs.
Clive, wife of Colonel Robert Clive, and those of Mrs. Annesley, were
much remarked. In 1807 the townspeople were invited by four captives to
a masquerade ball.[179]
‘Young Englishmen,’ wrote George Call in his diary, after passing
through Verdun in 1810, ‘are much the same whether prisoners or
at home, playing, driving, and shooting each other (_sic_)
... One might fancy oneself in London.’ The richer prisoners gave
monthly subscriptions for their poorer brethren or for schools, and
the Birmingham Quakers in 1807 opened a subscription for them, an
example followed in 1811 by London. The English Government, moreover,
at the instance of Robson, sent £2000. Dr. Davis gave gratuitous
medical services to the poorer prisoners. Maude and Jordan held
Church of England services in the college hall, and solemnised
marriages the validity of which was afterwards disputed. When fellow
of Queen’s College, where he died in 1852, Maude used to relate his
experiences.[180] Captivity reveals character, and there was not
unbroken harmony or unalloyed respectability. Some speedily got into
debt, and the authorities had to consider whether imprisonment for
debt could be resorted to. This seems to have been at first settled
in the negative. Lord Barrington, in June 1804, gave a Frenchman a
draft on London which was dishonoured. The holder thereupon sued him
and obtained judgment, but on appeal this was reversed, on the ground
that being detained Barrington could not have arranged for an extension
of time. Ultimately, however, we find arrests for debt made, and in
1807 Napoleon ordered that such judgments should be enforced. Waring
Knox was in a debtors’ prison at Saargemünd when, on the intercession
of the Grand Duke of Berg, he received permission to live at Melun,
provided his creditors agreed to his exit. While in prison for debt
at Valenciennes in 1811, he asked for 200 louis and a passport that
he might go to England, where, having been brought up with the Prince
Regent, he could procure a confidential post and could discover and
reveal the secret projects of the British Government. General Clarke,
whose Irish extraction and knowledge of England, where he had found
his first wife,[181] made him a good judge of such applications,
believed, however, that he simply wanted to escape from his numerous
French creditors. Whether the offer was sincere or not it was almost
equally contemptible. Yet we ultimately hear of his giving his poorer
countrymen a daily meal at Valenciennes, where he died in a debtors’
prison in December 1813, just before release would have come. It is
significantly stated that Sir William Cooper and Lady Cadogan, on
being allowed to quit Verdun for Nancy, left no debts behind them,
whereas half a dozen others had left half a million francs unpaid.
Police reports of 1804–1805 mention one Wilson as behaving indecently
with his French mistress at the theatre, and striking the officer
who reprimanded him. He was deservedly sent to Bitche. Wilbraham was
charged with forgery and with swindling his fellow-countrymen. We hear,
too, of a duel between ‘Gold’ (Valentine Goold, or Francis Goold, a
surgeon?) and Balbi, the keeper of the gaming-tables, in which the
latter was wounded. ‘Gold’ was consequently confined in the fortress,
but Napoleon (this proves that he looked into everything) ordered his
liberation. ‘A prisoner of war,’ he said, ‘may fight a duel.’ One of
the brothers Mellish, interned at Orleans, actually challenged the
prefect to an encounter. A duel in 1806 between Captain Walpole and
Lieutenant Miles, both of the navy, in which the latter was killed,
probably arose out of a gaming quarrel. In the gaming-room figured the
notice, ‘This bank is kept for the English; the French are forbidden to
play at it.’[182]
The gaming-tables, Lord Blayney was told, cost the English prisoners
£50,000 a year, but they were eventually closed. A Captain Cory, in
one of his drunken fits, assaulted a French soldier. Colonel William
Whaley, probably the brother of ‘Jerusalem’ Whaley, who indulged in
quarrelling, duelling, and betting, was in 1808 sent to Moulins. He is
described as ‘notorious for immorality and extravagant conduct, and
capable of the most desperate enterprises.’ The English Government had
refused him a passport for France, but he had managed to get there,
and after six months’ incarceration in the Temple at Paris, where he
excited a mutiny among the prisoners, had been sent to Verdun. There
in 1811, to revenge himself for a refusal to receive him, he denounced
Blayney as having clandestinely procured plans of French fortresses.
The charge was investigated and declared unfounded. There were other
men base enough falsely to denounce fellow-captives. Morshead and
Estwicke in 1808 were fined 20,000 francs for calumny and swindling.
Sir Thomas Wallace was denounced out of revenge by MacCarthy as being
deep in debt and meditating escape or suicide.[183] In August 1813
there was a scuffle between prisoners and townsmen, which gendarmes
had to repress. Hutchinson, a teacher of languages, was sent to Bitche
for insulting a French officer. A Captain Hawker and a man named
Raineford, who entered a jeweller’s shop on pretence of paying a bill,
and seriously assaulted him, were sentenced in 1808 to twelve and six
months’ imprisonment respectively. ‘Restless spirits,’ says Call, ‘do
their best to compel the French to treat the prisoners harshly.’
Some captives, indeed, brought punishments on themselves. Thomas
Devenish, having inveighed against Napoleon, was sent to Doullens
fortress, but after a time was allowed to return, and Brodie, who
had taught English at Blois, audaciously sent General Wirion, the
commandant at Verdun, a letter of diatribes against Napoleon, for which
he was relegated to Bitche. A surgeon named Simpson, who at the theatre
hissed a bust of Napoleon and next day boasted of the act, pleaded
inebriation, but was consigned to the fortress. On the other hand
Neilson, captain of a merchantman, obviously tried to curry favour by
naming his infant Napoleon, and Felix Ellice, a prisoner at Thionville,
composed four sonnets and an ode on the birth of the King of Rome.
Williams, imprisoned at Bitche, who had been employed by the Admiralty
till 1799, but had apparently been dismissed, offered in 1804 and again
in 1808 to detect the spies acting for England, but his overtures were
refused, it being believed that the spies had been changed. Two navy
lieutenants were imprisoned for fourteen days in 1805 for striking a
French officer. A Captain Bannatyne and two officers got up theatricals
on the plea of intending to pay debts, but in reality, it was said, to
swindle their countrymen. Captain Nanney was sent to Arras for seducing
a townsman’s wife, but escaped in August 1809. Gentlemen’s servants
are not always of exemplary behaviour, and we hear of ten valets being
packed off from Verdun.
These black sheep were of course exceptions, and we hear on the
other hand of Colonel Reilly Cope indulging in botanising, of Forbes
having his daughter taught to dance, and of Captain Molyneux Shuldham
constructing a carriage propelled by sails at seven or eight miles an
hour. Horses, however, being frightened by this monster, and a cart
being overturned by it, it was hissed and stoned by the peasantry.
Shuldham also invented a boat which, placed on a kind of skates, slid
over the ice.[184] He and others likewise amused themselves with
rowing, but anglers complained that they frightened away the fish, and
the pastime was consequently forbidden.
General Wirion, the commandant of Verdun, had clearly no enviable
position. Not only had he to keep the captives in order and prevent
escapes, but he had to deal with a swarm of French adventurers of
both sexes who sought to make money by facilitating escapes. It was
accordingly ordered in July 1805 that all suspicious women should be
expelled, and that no passports should be allowed to Verdun unless
good reasons were shown. Frenchmen, like foreigners, could not then
go freely from one town to another.[185] Women who had caused quarrels
among the captives were expelled, but some of them then settled in the
neighbouring villages. An honourable commandant would have found his
post unpleasant and irksome, and Wirion, the son of a pork butcher, was
not even an honourable man. He recognised Lord Barrington’s mistress,
Madame St. Amand, who was at first passed off as his wife, by calling
on her, and he took money for winking at illicit amours. He is said
to have recommended housekeepers or mistresses who were his spies,
and in one case an Englishman who had foolishly told his mistress his
plans of escape was betrayed by her. Wirion may have thought this a
legitimate stratagem, but he likewise unblushingly levied blackmail,
and his subordinates followed suit. He would invite himself or be
invited to dinner with the wealthier captives, and they would allow him
to win from them at cards, in order to obtain small favours or to avoid
being sent to Bitche, to which they were liable at his mere caprice.
He inflicted a fine of 3 francs on men failing to present themselves
at the roll-call morning and night, but not finding many able to pay
6 francs a day for late rising and an evening promenade he commuted
this for 6 francs or 12 francs a month. In the winter of 1804, however,
he made one roll-call a day suffice, and allowed exceptionally good
prisoners to appear only every fifth day.[186] He received, according
to Sturt, 600 francs or 1000 francs a month from the gaming-tables as
the price of his protection, and he is said to have extorted no less
than 136,000 francs from a prisoner named Garland.
Wirion’s gendarmes got up lotteries for articles which sometimes
did not exist, and prisoners had to take tickets as the price of
small favours. Complaints of his extortion were unavailing until the
appointment as Minister of War of General Clarke. Wirion was thereupon
summoned to Paris in 1810, and rather than face a court-martial he shot
himself in the Bois de Boulogne. No French newspaper, indeed, records
this, and though affirmed by Lord Blayney, who arrived at Verdun
shortly afterwards, I should have felt doubts of its accuracy but for
finding a passage in _Letters from the Cape_, a pamphlet dictated
by Napoleon at St. Helena in 1817. It says:--
The English prisoners detained at Verdun were treated with great
attention (_sic_), and a French officer who commanded
that depôt having been guilty of some extortions upon them,
an inquiry was in consequence ordered by the Emperor, and the
culprit was so much afraid of his anger that he committed
suicide.
I have, moreover, discovered in the police bulletin of April 8, 1810,
the following record:--
General Wirion went yesterday morning at ten o’clock in a
hackney coach to the Bois de Boulogne. Alighting a few steps
from the Porte Maillot, he blew out his brains. Upon him was
found a letter to his wife and another to the doctor, asking him
to attend to her in these sad circumstances. It appears that
impatience at the apparent tardiness of the commission deputed
to investigate the complaints against him was the reason of the
suicide.[187]
Wirion’s chief subordinate and successor, Colonel Courselles, though
far from immaculate, was more cautious and moderate in his extortions.
He confined himself to a monopoly of the wine supply, charging
exorbitant rates, and to paying the allowance to the poorer prisoners
in _livres tournois_ in lieu of francs, thus clearing a profit.
Courselles, in his turn, was called to account, but he threw the blame
on his subordinates, one of whom, Lieutenant Massin, shot himself
through apprehension of a court-martial. He had simply by Courselles’
orders destroyed incriminating documents, but thus thrown over by his
chief he left a note stating that though innocent he could not face
threatened dishonour. It is satisfactory to learn that Courselles was
likewise removed, that his successor was so upright a man that on his
death in 1813 all the English attended the funeral, and that the next
commandant was still more indulgent, allowing captives to live not
merely in the outskirts of Verdun but in neighbouring towns.
The captives were popular at Verdun. Some of the inhabitants were
suspected of allowing letters under cover to be directed to them in
order to evade their being opened and read. It is true that a boy five
years old, on being jocularly asked by Eyre whether he would go with
him to England, replied, ‘No, all Englishmen are bad’; but when in
1805 a hundred and seventy of them were transferred to Valenciennes,
Givet, and Sarrelouis, two hundred inhabitants collected to see them
off. Women shook hands, even gave kisses, and exclaimed, ‘Poor young
fellows!’ a proof, says Wirion, that the prisoners had gained great
influence and that their removal was urgent.[188]
Three M.P.’s being among the captives, it will naturally be asked
whether they retained their seats. They could not or did not resign,
but in those days a constituency did not suffer much from going without
a representative. The next general election did not take place till
1806. Lord Yarmouth was then re-elected for the Irish pocket borough of
Lisburn, and continued--we can hardly say to sit--for it. In 1822 he
was called to the Upper House. Lord Lovaine, in like manner, remained
member for Beeralston, Devonshire. He was even nominated in 1804 a
Lord of the Treasury, and in 1807 an India Commissioner. Thomas Brooke
was likewise again re-elected for Newton in 1806, but he, as we shall
see, had escaped from Valenciennes. Green, who is described in the
police register as a man of letters, and Sturt were not re-elected.
Tufton, who with his brother Charles was detained at Fontainebleau, and
Thompson, who at Orleans inveighed against Napoleon, had ceased to be
M.P.’s.
One of the privations of detention was not merely the censorship
exercised over correspondence but the total deprivation of English
newspapers. Even before the rupture, indeed, only one paltry Sunday
paper in the pay of Napoleon[189] was allowed to pass through the
post-office, though the Embassy of course could be subject to no
such restriction, and other journals could be clandestinely perused.
Napoleon in August 1802 rebuked Talleyrand for allowing English
newspapers to reach ‘a large number of persons’ by being addressed
under cover to the Foreign Office,[190] and Galignani’s newly opened
reading-room must have undergone unforeseen restrictions. When the
war broke out Napoleon repeated his order that reading-rooms should
be allowed only one particular English paper, which was supplied
them gratuitously. Madame de Rémusat says he had, however, largely
subsidised English journalists and writers, apparently to little
purpose, but this may be considered an exaggeration. Galignani’s
_Monthly Repertory of English Literature_, started in 1807, did
not compensate for the absence of newspapers. Even the _Morning
Post_, though siding with France, was not admitted.
As long as the _Argus_ lasted the captives were fain to subscribe
to it, for ‘infamous’ as Forbes styles it, it gave copious extracts
from the London press, but in 1810 Napoleon suppressed it, and the
prisoners became dependent on the meagre and carefully manipulated
intelligence of the Paris papers. In 1804–1805 several prisoners had
sent the _Argus_ letters and verses in favour of peace, hoping
thus, perhaps, to procure release.
For a time the captives were buoyed up by the expectation of being
exchanged for French soldiers and sailors, the balance of numbers
being always largely against France; but the British Government
refused to exchange combatants for civilians, as this would have
been a recognition of the validity of the detention. In the autumn
of 1805 the prisoners petitioned the Electress (afterwards Queen) of
Würtemberg, Princess Royal of England, to intercede for them, but she
did not venture to comply, sending word that the matter was one for the
two Governments.[191] There was again a gleam of hope in 1806, when,
as we shall presently see, Lord Yarmouth went to Paris to negotiate,
but the sky was soon overcast. The temptation to escape became stronger
as time elapsed and as it became clear that the fall of Napoleon
would alone bring liberation. Some broke their parole. Others thought
they satisfied honour by sending word just before starting that they
withdrew their parole. Sir James Craufurd, who had been allowed to go
for two months to Aix-la-Chapelle to take the waters, did not return,
but got round to England by Sweden, justifying himself on the ground
that his wife was ill and that a lucrative post had been given to
another man in his absence. The police bulletin scouted his alleged
anxiety for his wife (a daughter of General Gage), stating that he
had scandalously treated her, that she had consequently gone home,
and that he had been living with a mistress.[192] Lord Yarmouth was
informed by a correspondent that the King turned his back on Craufurd
at a levée, telling him that prisoners ought to keep their parole; the
letter added that Craufurd was universally despised in England.[193] A
later report, however, represented him as receiving £1000 a year from
the Government, and the Duke of York was reported to have said that
in such arbitrary detention the parole was not binding. Colombine de
Jersey, allowed a month in England, also did not return. Lord Archibald
Hamilton escaped in January 1804. Sir Beaumont Dixie disappeared from
Verdun in September 1804, leaving his clothes on the river bank as
though he had been drowned; but he had falsified a passport and had
been assisted by neighbouring villagers in his flight.[194] He was,
however, recaptured and sent to Bitche, for attempts to escape or
other misdemeanours entailed removal to that or some other fortress.
‘There,’ says the late Mr. Childers, ‘the younger members of this
unlucky colony appear to have amused themselves _more Britannico_
in cutting deeply their names and descriptions on the outer stone walls
of the barrack which formed their prison, and I read more than one name
belonging to well-known English, Scottish, or Irish families.’[195]
Fox and Addison, doctors on board merchantmen, let themselves down by
a rope from Verdun citadel, but being unable to get across the canal
at the foot they had to give themselves up. Two other doctors, Thomas
Clarke and Farrell Mulvey, were likewise recaptured and sent to the
fortress of Metz, Mulvey, however, in 1806 being allowed to return
on parole to Verdun. Three surgeons, Baird, Cameron, and Hawthorn,
escaped. In 1807 a midshipman named Temple escaped by crouching at the
extremity of a carriage, so as to be concealed by two women, his French
mistress and her maidservant. The carriage got to Strasburg, where the
mistress, being a native of the town, obtained a passport, and Temple
was smuggled in the same manner to Austria, whence he wrote to Colonel
Arthur Annesley expressing a hope that nobody had been molested as an
accomplice. Unfortunately he was not equally solicitous or scrupulous
with regard to his creditors, for he left so many debts behind him that
some of the principal prisoners, revolted by his dishonesty, forwarded
a memorial to the British Government, praying for his dismissal from
the navy. Annesley himself, whose honeymoon had ended in captivity, got
away in December 1811. A Dr. Alderson, married to a Frenchwoman, not
obtaining an answer to an application for a visit to England to recover
£400, took French leave, but his large farm near Lille was consequently
confiscated. Leviscourt, a navy lieutenant, who after several years at
large on parole had been confined in the fortress and was no longer
on parole, endeavoured to escape, but being recaptured was dragged by
gendarmes through Verdun, with a heavy cannon-ball fastened to his
leg. Worsley, the schoolmaster, escaped from Mons to Holland. James
Henry Lawrence, son of a Jamaica planter and himself a Knight of Malta,
escaped in 1810 by pretending on the road to be a German. He had lived
several years in Germany, and had published in German a Malabar
story, which on his arrival in England he issued in English, as also a
_Picture of Verdun_. He subsequently led a roving life, chiefly
on the Continent, and died in 1840. His father remained a captive.
Another foreign knight, of the Order of Maria Theresa, Baron Charles
Blount, obtained permission to reside at Bonn, but went to Cleves
and fled. He was, however, recaptured and sent to Coblentz fortress.
From Valenciennes there were forty escapes, and Lawrence says, ‘Every
morning those who came upon the promenade inquired who had decamped in
the preceding night.’ Fortunately there was yet no electric telegraph
to give the hue and cry. Colonel Hill, of the Shropshire militia,
probably a brother of Lord Hill, escaped and rejoined his regiment.
Brooke, M.P. for Newton, Lancashire, quitting a large dinner-party at
Valenciennes in October 1804, audaciously drove through the town with
his French valet, who had obtained a passport for two merchants, and
safely reached Cologne. Francis and Thomas Jodrell waited in December
1803 on the commandant of Valenciennes, told him they withdrew their
parole, and drove off. Colonel Smyth accompanied them. All three were
recaptured in the duchy of Berg, albeit Bavarian soil, and Napoleon had
ordered a court-martial, but they giving a sentry the slip got clear
off. Francis was High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1813; Thomas was killed
at Rosetta in 1807. Philip de Crespigny, who had been married at the
Danish Embassy in 1809, escaped from St. Germain in 1811. Wright, a
midshipman, brother of the unfortunate Captain John Wesley Wright,
facilitated the escape of a friend by holding the rope with which he
descended from the ramparts at Verdun, whereupon he was consigned to
the fortress. So also was Knox, he having become surety for a Captain
Brown, who escaped but was recaptured.
Wirion, by Napoleon’s orders, gave notice in 1805 after three escapes
that the captives must be responsible for one another if they wished
to be treated as men of honour, and that at the first escape all
would be sent to fortresses. In 1806, moreover, a reward of 50 francs
for the capture of any fugitive was offered at Valenciennes. It was
very hard on the sureties to be shut up in a fortress if the men for
whom they were answerable did not return on the expiration of their
leave of absence, but this may in some cases have been preconcerted.
When in 1807 the Arras and Valenciennes captives were removed to
Verdun, Wirion gave warning that the first man attempting to escape
would be shot, such being the legal punishment for breach of parole.
This excited murmurs against terror and tyranny. Yet very shortly
afterwards he reported escapes, and it does not appear that he ever
enforced his threat, although Napoleon in January 1811 ordered that
attempted escapes should be punished with death and that the sentences
should be placarded.[196] It is obvious, indeed, that England would
have threatened reprisals. Sentences of six years’ confinement in
irons were, however, inflicted on private soldiers and sailors, for
I find that in 1812 Thomas Hudson, who by means of a forged passport
had attempted in 1808 to escape from Metz, had the remainder of
the penalty remitted on the ground that he had been instigated by a
fellow-prisoner.[197] Had such punishments been imposed on captives
of higher status England would manifestly have retaliated. Alexander
Don, heir to a Scottish baronetcy, escaped from Paris in 1810. In 1808
he had been required to leave that city for either Verdun or Melun,
but must have obtained leave to return. An Italian lady, claiming to
have been married to him in Paris, but suspected of being merely his
mistress, was living at Florence in 1812. He became intimate with Sir
Walter Scott, who speaks of his literary and artistic tastes, his
lively manners, his love of sport, and his oratorical powers, while
Lockhart describes him as courteous, elegant, accomplished, and the
model of a cavalier. He was latterly M.P. for Roxburghshire, and died
in 1826 at the age of forty-seven. His uncle, General Sir George Don,
had been captured and detained at Lille in 1799, when he went with
a flag of truce to General Daendels bearing a proclamation from the
exiled Statthalter. The French Government threatened to shoot him in
reprisals if Napper Tandy and his companions were executed. An exchange
for Don with Tandy was declined by England, as also an exchange with a
French general. England in 1800 claimed his unconditional release, on
pain of imprisoning the French generals at liberty on parole. His wife,
seeing no prospect of his release, applied for a passport to join him.
He continued a captive till June 1800. John, afterwards General Sir
John Broughton, a Staffordshire baronet’s heir, got off in the guise of
a courier.
Two sailors named Henson and Butterfield escaped from Verdun, traversed
all France, and reached the Mediterranean coast, but were there
arrested and sent to Bitche. Philip Astley, the circus owner whose
arrival in Paris has been mentioned, obtained a passport for Savoy on
pretence of wishing to open a circus there, but he went on to Italy
and thence escaped. He was destined to revisit and be buried in Paris
in 1814. James Callender or Campbell of Ardinglas, endeavouring to
escape, was sent to Ham, the fortress in store forty years later for
Louis Napoleon. While there he became the successor to a cousin’s
estates of £3000 a year, but it was several years before he heard of
it. He offered to present his horse to Napoleon, thinking thus to be
liberated, but Napoleon insisted on his fixing a price and then sent
him double the sum. Campbell revisited Paris in 1815 and was sent by
Napoleon to the Conciergerie. This was probably at the instigation of
his alleged wife.[198] Captain Charles Cunliffe Owen, father of Sir
Philip of South Kensington fame, seems in 1811 to have shammed lunacy
and was consequently placed in an asylum at Valenciennes.[199] He
had cut a vein, but not dangerously, and had denounced an imaginary
plot for seizing Belleisle. He was transferred to a private asylum in
Paris, whence in July 1812 he escaped. Captain Francis Tulloch, who in
1808 had been removed from Cambrai to Verdun, effected his escape in
December 1810.
John Harvie Christie, who had gone to France to economise, after
spending three weeks in Paris repaired to Bordeaux. Returning after two
months to the capital, he found that arrests had just been ordered.
He went to the Norman coast, hoping to embark as an American, but was
apprehended at Fécamp, having unluckily in his possession a manuscript
copy of satirical verses on Napoleon and Josephine.[200] He was tried
on the charge of espionage, and though acquitted remained a prisoner.
Henry Dillon and Lynch were arrested at Caen in 1809, and Poppleton,
the teacher of English, who with three Frenchwomen had abetted their
escape, was sent to prison for two months.[201] John Giffard, arrested
in 1811 on the point of embarking at Honfleur, was consigned to a
lunatic asylum. William Throckmorton, a friend of Miss Berry, was
also recaptured at Honfleur in the same year. Another fugitive bore
the appropriate name of Hurry, and Wirion being just then absent, his
subordinate Courselles was suspected of having been bribed. Hurry was
a freemason, and with a hundred of the captives had been admitted into
the Verdun lodge. Wirion recommended that such admissions should be
forbidden, for a French mason had confessed in private conversation
that he should have felt bound, had Hurry applied to him, to facilitate
his escape.[202] But non-masons also promoted escapes, for filthy
lucre’s sake. Indeed this became a trade, and in 1811 two captains
at Bruges were arrested for visiting the _dépôts_ and offering
passports.[203] In 1809 six inhabitants of Arras were prosecuted for
facilitating the escape of an English lord, and at Verdun a breach was
discovered in the walls just in time to prevent escapes. These had
been so numerous among captains and officers of merchantmen that, with
the exception of those above fifty years of age or those having their
wives with them, they were ordered to sleep in the citadel. Permission
to go outside the town within four miles was also revoked, but was
afterwards renewed on condition of mutual suretyship. Augustus Bance,
at Valenciennes, applied for French citizenship and for permission to
open a soap factory at Antwerp. The latter application was refused,
on the ground of Antwerp being too near the frontier, but while the
naturalisation question was pending he escaped.
Mogg and three companions escaped from Arras in 1810, concealing
themselves in the day-time and guided at night by the moon towards
the coast. In a wood near Boulogne, they cut down trees and made a
small boat, which a layer of suet rendered watertight, and they had
brought sails and rope with them. They were, however, discovered.
The authorities ordered the boat to be launched as an experiment,
and there was not the slightest leakage. The men’s ingenuity was
admired, and they told the police inspector that if the Emperor was
informed of their daring scheme he would certainly grant them their
liberty. One of them was accordingly taken before Napoleon, who asked
him whether his motive had not been a desire to rejoin a mistress.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘it was to see my aged mother.’ Thereupon Napoleon,
remarking that she must be a good mother to have such a son, released
him, giving him a small sum for his mother. We are not told whether
his companions were also liberated. Equally venturesome was William
Wright. He became interpreter to General Brabançon, and ultimately
contrived to get on board an English flag-of-truce vessel. He crept
into a trunk till the usual search before departure was over, and after
passing an hour in this uneasy posture was safe. In his _Narrative
of the Situation and Treatment of the English arrested by order of
the French Government_, Wright states that at Valenciennes an
English hotelkeeper, King, who had resided there for twenty years, was
very kind to his captive countrymen. Prisoners without money, says
Wright, were harshly treated, but the officials were open to bribes.
William Hamilton, according to a Boulogne tradition, was assisted in
an unsuccessful attempt to escape by his jailer’s daughter, whom he
afterwards married. He had entered the navy in 1803, and was captured
in 1805. In 1817 he was appointed Consul at Flushing, in 1818 at
Ostend, in 1820 at Nieuport, and in 1822 at Boulogne. He was knighted
on his retirement in 1873, and died in 1877, aged eighty-eight, being
probably the last survivor of Napoleon’s prisoners.
Stewart Kyd, the ex-radical, and Dr. Barklimore escaped, but the two
bankers, Boyd and Benfield, had to undergo the full time of detention.
Benfield died in Paris, in straitened circumstances, in 1810. One of
his daughters married Grantley Berkeley. According to a police bulletin
Benfield was a nullity, whereas Boyd was acquiring a thorough knowledge
of French institutions. He arbitrated on a claim against the French
Government by Schweizer, Swan’s partner and antagonist, who pronounced
him to be a man of great culture and acknowledged probity. He also
wrote pamphlets on financial subjects. He was indemnified for French
confiscation, and from 1828 to 1830 was M.P. for Lymington. He died
in 1837. Another man who made good use of his time was Tuckey, who,
captured in 1805, compiled a maritime geography in three volumes. He
had previously published an account of a voyage to Botany Bay with a
cargo of convicts. He died while exploring the River Congo in 1816.
In several instances besides those already mentioned detention was
followed up by actual incarceration. James Smith, the filter-maker, was
sent to the Temple in 1804 for talking against the French and extolling
the defences of England, to which he had paid frequent visits.[204]
Colonel Stack was charged in the same year with espionage. It is even
alleged, but this cannot be verified, that he was condemned to be
shot as an accomplice of the Due d’Enghien, but was reprieved. What
is certain is that he spent three years in Bitche citadel, afterwards
remaining a prisoner at Verdun till 1814. Colonel William Edwards,
a Jamaica planter, brother I think of Bryan Edwards, M.P., was
imprisoned seven years on suspicion of having facilitated escapes. The
youngest of his twenty-nine children, born at Bruges in 1800, was Milne
Edwards, the eminent French naturalist.
We now come to the liberations and permissions to visit or settle
in various towns, for each of which Napoleon’s express sanction was
necessary, and we may begin with Lord Yarmouth, since he owed his
liberty to negotiations, albeit fruitless, for peace. He had become a
prisoner under trying circumstances. He went over to fetch his wife and
children just as the rupture had occurred, and he inquired at Calais
whether he might safely land. He was answered in the affirmative, yet
no sooner had he done so than he, with all his fellow-passengers,
was declared a prisoner. Curiously enough, however, he professed to
consider the detentions as justified by the embargo in England. He
was sent to Verdun, but it was alleged in March 1804 that he had been
seen in Paris. Wirion, reproached with laxity on this account, denied,
however, that he had gone further afield than Clermont on an affair
of gallantry. He had been exempted, indeed, from the twice-a-day
roll-call till all exemptions had been abolished, and he had also
been allowed to go out shooting; but Wirion urged that permission
to go outside the town tended to prevent escapes by rendering them
dishonourable, and if such permissions were to be refused the garrison
should be strengthened, the walls being so dilapidated that egress was
easy.[205] Yarmouth’s mother had been in favour with the Prince of
Wales, and he himself had then, as a youth, been admitted to Carlton
House. When, therefore, Fox in 1806, on the death of Pitt, became
Foreign Secretary, the Prince asked him to intercede with Talleyrand
for Yarmouth’s release. Napoleon is said to have imagined that Fox was
himself interested in Yarmouth. He consequently not only gave Yarmouth
unlimited leave of absence, but suggested that negotiations should be
opened through this channel. In August 1805 Yarmouth had already been
authorised to quit Verdun for six months and to live near, but not at,
Paris. He announced that he chose Versailles, but nevertheless joined
his wife in Paris. This contravention was reported by the police, but
was winked at for a time.[206] In September, however, he was ordered to
repair to Melun. In May 1806 he was allowed, together with Lord Elgin,
General Abercromby, and Captain Leveson-Gower, to embark at Morlaix
for England. He returned _viâ_ Calais in June with credentials
authorising him to negotiate. He was not a novice in diplomacy, for
in 1793 he had been sent on a mission to Prussia, charging only his
expenses. The police bulletins show how closely all his movements
were now watched. They tell us how he went to the Opera, and how he
wanted to buy French rentes to the amount of a million francs at one
stroke, but could only purchase first 100,000 francs and then 500,000
francs. He called on Quintin Craufurd, Mrs. Sullivan being a friend
of Lady Yarmouth, and he was said to be in love with her daughter,
the so-called Mademoiselle de Dorset.[207] In case of the success of
his mission he was said to intend buying up all the French brandy in
the market and selling it at triple price. A man of pleasure and an
art connoisseur, Yarmouth could scarcely be much of a diplomatist, and
in August Lord Lauderdale was sent to join him. He was believed to
feel annoyance at this. Lauderdale, as we have seen, was a follower
of Fox and had always advocated peace. At the end of August Yarmouth
was recalled, announcing, however, that he should return in January,
and hoped then to conclude peace, but Lauderdale had really superseded
him. Lauderdale nevertheless had committed a mistake at the outset. He
had asked to be presented to Napoleon, and had had to be told that it
was not customary for a plenipotentiary of a country still at war to
be allowed an audience, yet it was evidently no fault of his if the
negotiations proved abortive. According to a French writer who had
studied the documents of the French Foreign Office,[208] Yarmouth on
the 17th July submitted to Champagny a draft treaty by which England
gave up Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte and recognised Napoleon’s conquests
in Holland, Germany, and Italy; but Napoleon, instead of closing with
so advantageous an offer, awaited the result of his negotiations with
Russia. All August was consequently wasted in futile discussions of
formalities, and when the Russian negative answer arrived Napoleon
gave vent to his exasperation by breaking off the negotiations with
England, so that Lauderdale at the beginning of October quitted Paris.
The last police bulletin in which he is mentioned absurdly describes
him as a spy, who had doubtless sent home information of military
movements and of public feeling in Paris.
Both he and Yarmouth now disappear from the scene, but Lady Yarmouth
remained in France, being allowed to pay occasional visits to
England.[209] Lady Hester Stanhope alleges that she had a French lover.
If this scandal has any foundation Yarmouth shared the fate of Lord
Elgin, who, as we have seen, was liberated with him. His too was a
hard case. Returning from the Constantinople Embassy, he had passports
from French consuls in Italy, and though not reaching Paris till after
Whitworth’s departure had been assured by Talleyrand that he might
safely remain, and he doubtless hoped French waters might relieve
his chronic rheumatism. Lord Hawkesbury (afterwards Lord Liverpool),
who, according to Trotter’s _Life of Fox_, had in 1802 accepted
a handsome Sèvres dinner-service from Napoleon, in his diplomatic
circular of the 30th April 1804 made a pointed allusion to Elgin when
he said:--
‘They (the French Government) promised their protection to such
of the subjects of England as were resident in France who might
be desirous of remaining there after the recall of His Majesty’s
ambassador. They revoked this promise without any previous
notice, and condemned these very persons to be prisoners of war,
and still retain as such in defiance of their own engagements
and of the universal usage of all civilised nations. They
applied this new and barbarous rule even to individuals who had
the protection and authority of French ambassadors and ministers
at foreign courts to return in safety through France to their
own country.’
Talleyrand, in his annotations to this circular in the _Moniteur_
of the 5th November 1804, and in his counter-circular, was
significantly silent on this passage, which indeed was obviously
unanswerable. Elgin, at first detained with sixty fellow-captives
at Orleans, was allowed to go to Barèges and to send to England in
October 1803 for Dr. William Scott, on whose report he was permitted
to repair to Paris. Owing, however, to an unfounded rumour that
General Boyer was incarcerated in Scotland, whereas he was really on
parole at Chesterfield, Elgin was ordered back to the Pyrenees. His
wife remained in Paris, and he was not allowed to go thither to her
confinement, which took place on the 4th March 1804; but the infant
expired on the 20th April. He arranged, however, for daily tidings of
her. When Thiébault delivered a message from him to her she showed
no sign of affection, and General Sebastiani was then lolling on her
sofa as though quite at home. She had, however, already made the
acquaintance of Robert Ferguson of Raith, son of William Ferguson, who
in 1793 had succeeded to the property of his uncle Robert Ferguson, a
rich China merchant. Being also one of the British captives, Ferguson
was frequently invited to the Elgins’ Paris house. He was released
as an F.R.S. and a mineralogist in 1805. Lady Elgin, who had joined
her husband at Barèges in June 1804, went over to England in 1806 to
try and get her husband exchanged for General Boyer. Thence she wrote
affectionate letters, and Ferguson also wrote as though interested
in the exchange. But Elgin on his release in 1807 discovered letters
addressed to her by Ferguson, which Garrow, Ferguson’s counsel at
the _crim. con._ trial, described as ‘a most ridiculous medley
of love and madness, or love run mad.’ ‘They would disgrace,’ he
said, ‘the worst novel of the last century.’ £10,000 damages were
awarded. Ferguson married the frail lady--Anne Nesbit was her maiden
name[210]--got into Parliament for Fife in 1806, and died in 1841. He
was cousin to the Miss Berrys, and had once been engaged to Agnes.
Before leaving Elgin, it should be stated that Napoleon, styling him
‘one of the greatest enemies of the nation,’ had rebuked General
Olivier for showing him attentions at Livourne. Napoleon had a grudge
against Elgin, who, he imagined, sent the information which enabled
Nelson to follow the French fleet and destroy it at Aboukir. Elgin
married again in 1810, was the father of Dean Stanley’s wife, and died
in Paris in 1841.
Lady Elgin was not the only faithless wife, for in 1808 Scott, formerly
vice-consul at Naples, declined to take back his wife, who had been
arrested while cohabiting with an Englishman at Saarlibre, and he
recommended her being sent to England, as he had long disowned her
and she was penniless.[211] Lady Webb, letting herself down from a
window in Paris, is said, moreover, to have eloped with Fursy-Guesdon,
a novelist, and grandson of the actor Préville.[212] She knew Madame
Récamier and Chateaubriand.
Lord Beverley and Lord Lovaine, the eldest of his fourteen children,
found more indulgence. Though not released, they were permitted in 1805
to reside at Moulins, which Lovaine liked so well that he remained with
his young family after 1814, though no longer a captive. He was fond
of hunting, lived in style, and was very charitable. At the age of
eighty-seven he became Duke of Northumberland, but enjoyed the honour
only two years. Just after the capitulation of Paris in 1814 he and two
of his sons lunched with Josephine, who told him that the English were
the only people generous enough to speak respectfully of the fallen
Napoleon. In order to have done with peers, let me here note that Lord
Duncannon must have been released before November 1805, when he married
in England, and that the Duke of Newcastle, who came just within the
age of Napoleon’s terrible decree, was released with his mother in
1807. The mother had pleaded ill-health and family affairs, had offered
a profusion of compliments to Napoleon, and had adduced her succour to
French prisoners previously to the peace. She had been allowed in 1804
to go to the Pyrenees and in 1806 to settle at Tours.
Some scientists, scholars, and physicians owed their release to Banks
and Jenner on the one hand, and Carnot, Cuvier, and French doctors
on the other. Lord Shaftesbury appears to have been liberated as an
F.R.S., but possibly as a friend of Fox. James Forbes, another F.R.S.,
who with his wife and daughter arrived in Paris from Brussels the very
day after the decree was issued, was liberated in June 1804 through
Carnot. He had previously been allowed to visit at Tours his brother
Major Charles Forbes, with his wife and five children.[213] Pinkerton,
the geographer, was likewise released in 1805. Dr. Carmichael Smyth,
having in early life travelled in France and kept up a correspondence
with French physicians, profited by their intervention.[214] Dr.
Maclean urged that he had not been in England for ten years, and this
plea availed him. Jenner sent a letter to Napoleon in behalf of William
Thomas Williams, which Napoleon at first cast aside, but Josephine
picking it up told him it was from Jenner. ‘Ah,’ he then exclaimed,
‘I can refuse nothing to so great a man.’ Williams, who on watching
Napoleon for a full hour at the Paris Opera had noticed that he never
once smiled, thought his countenance, on seeing him again at Nancy in
1805, mild, though haughty. Jenner, a correspondent of the Institute
in 1808 and a foreign associate of it on the death of Maskelyne in
1811, also secured the release of Dr. Wickham,[215] and through
Corvisart, the Emperor’s physician, that of Nathaniel Garland and
Valentine Goold. Corvisart likewise intervened for Dr. Burrell Davis,
who after graduating in medicine at Montpellier had been relegated to
Verdun, and who published a striking pamphlet against premature burial.
This he forwarded to Corvisart, along with a petition to Napoleon.
Doctors indeed, as was but right, were less harshly treated. They were
permitted to make journeys to English patients, and in 1810 nine were
granted passports for England. Alexander Hamilton, though not yet an
F.R.S., doubtless owed his release to having catalogued the Sanscrit
manuscripts in the Paris Library. Colclough became a member of a
literary society at Nîmes, in order to procure release as a scholar,
but whether this availed him is doubtful, for we do not hear of him as
a resident Irish landlord till after Napoleon’s fall.
John Spencer Stanhope, of Cannon Hall, Yorkshire, treacherously
delivered up in 1810 by a Gibraltar privateer, was liberated in March
1813, at the intercession of the Institute, in order to make an
archæological visit to Greece: but literary or artistic accomplishments
did not always secure release. Joseph Forsyth discovered this to his
cost. An Elgin man, his father intimate with Isaac Watts, he had
eagerly embraced the opportunity of visiting Italy. Starting as early
as October 1801, he reached Nice on Christmas Day and spent seventeen
months in Italy, but on re-entering France in May 1803 he found himself
a prisoner and was confined at Nîmes. Attempting in the winter to
escape, he was relegated to Bitche, where for two years he was in close
confinement. He was then allowed to go on parole to Verdun. There he
prepared and published in London an account of his artistic tour, and
had copies sent to France in the hope that it would serve him a good
turn. But from want of interest, perhaps too on account of his unlucky
attempt to escape, he could obtain no greater favour than permission
to live in Paris, and even this after four months was revoked. He had
to repair to Valenciennes and wait till 1814. He died in the following
year. Curiously enough, he regretted the publication of his book,
albeit it possessed considerable merit.
Monroe, author of the famous ‘doctrine,’ then American Ambassador at
London, was applied to by prisoners’ friends to solicit their liberty
through his Paris colleague Livingston, whose dispatches to Washington
were sent by flag of truce through Morlaix. Ferguson, Lady Elgin’s
paramour, seems to have been thus released, and a Colonel Johnston was
thus allowed to go to France to see a kinsman named Oliphant.
But while release came to some after a few months, it did not come to
others till after long years. Robson, ex-M.P., confined at Nîmes, must
have had influential friends to obtain permission to embark at Emden as
early as November 1803. Sir Thomas Hare and young Augustus Foster were
apparently indebted to friends in high quarters for release. A wife’s
heroic efforts, which, however, are not particularised, also effected
the liberation of General Sir Charles Shipley.
Chenevix, whose friendship with Berthollet stood him in good stead,
in July 1803 read a paper before the Institute on ‘palladium,’ the
metal discovered in platinum ore by Wollaston, and sent articles to a
French chemical journal. He was one of the original contributors to
the _Edinburgh Review_, in which, according to Thomas Moore, who
met him at Paris in 1821, he wrote against France. He was able without
hindrance to visit Germany and Spain, as well as the Black Sea. In 1812
he married a French countess, and remained in France until his death in
1830.
One of the likeliest ways of obtaining release was to petition Napoleon
or Josephine in person. Mrs. Tuthill managed to present her petition to
the Emperor while out hunting, and he could not deny a lady, especially
a great beauty. Mrs. Cockburn obtained an introduction to her
fellow-Creole Josephine, whereupon Napoleon[216] in July 1803 wrote,
‘Do what is proper for Coxburn’ (_sic_). It was not, however, till
1805 that he obtained permission to go to England for twelve months,
doubtless a euphemism for release. Cockburn, like Yarmouth, had been
allowed to go out hunting at Verdun. John Maunde, an old Bluecoat
scholar, was released in 1807, whereupon he went to Oxford to study for
the Church, became curate of Kenilworth, and formed an intimacy with
Lucien Bonaparte, in his turn a captive, whose poem he was translating
into English when he died in 1813.
Sir Grenville Temple was allowed in 1804 to go to Switzerland, and in
1810 to embark for America with his rich Bostonian wife and their four
children. Sampson Eardley was released in March 1806. Captain Walter
Stirling was liberated in time to testify at the Elgin trial to the
conjugal harmony which had previously existed. Colonel Molesworth in
1804 had permission to visit England, which probably meant release.
John Parry, more fortunate than his brother James, was struck off the
list of captives. He alleged that he had been expelled from England for
writing in favour of peace, and he solicited and obtained permission in
1809 to go and see after his brother’s property, intending to return
and marry at Tours. Henry Seymour, the ex-M.P. and lover of Madame
Dubarry, was allowed in 1809 to go to Switzerland. He had previously
been permitted to reside at Melun and Paris. Richard Trench, who had
been married at the British Embassy in March 1803 to Melesina, daughter
of the Rev. Philip Chenevix and widow of Colonel St. George, was
allowed in August 1803, on account of ill-health, to go to Orleans,
his wife having managed through influence to save her husband from
being sent to Verdun. From Orleans she made repeated visits to Paris
to intercede for him. Her husband once in 1805 accompanied her, and
in a secluded part of the Bois de Boulogne meeting the Emperor, told
him which way the stag had gone. Napoleon, however, was angry at thus
meeting alone a tall young Englishman who had come to Paris without
leave, and after a night in prison Trench was ordered to Verdun. He
was soon allowed to live in Paris, but it was not till 1807 that Mrs.
Trench, by personally presenting her petition, secured her husband’s
release.[217] Meanwhile she had given birth to Francis, a theological
writer whom I remember as rector of Islip, but Richard, the archbishop,
was not born till 1808, after her return to Dublin.
There is no record in the police bulletins of the release of Thomas
Manning, who hastened to Paris from Angers on hearing of the rupture.
The family tradition is that he owed his deliverance to Carnot and
Talleyrand. Let us hope that he got back in time to be one of the Diss
volunteers who in October 1803 received notice to be in readiness to
march to London on the first notification of a French invasion--an
invasion, however, which, argued a letter in the _Times_, should
be welcomed as ensuring a grand haul of prisoners. In 1817, on his way
back from Tibet, he stopped at St. Helena and presented the captive
Emperor--their positions had been almost reversed--with tea, coffee,
tobacco, two silk pocket-handkerchiefs, and two feather fans.[218] He
had been strictly charged to address Napoleon as ‘general,’ but when
asked by whom his passport in 1803 had been signed, he replied, ‘By
yourself, by the Emperor.’ Napoleon’s face lit up at this recognition
of his rank by an Englishman. Impey was released in July 1804, perhaps
through Madame Talleyrand, whom he must have known at Calcutta. Sir
James de Bathe is said to have procured the intercession of the Pope,
to whom it was represented that his children in England might in his
absence be made Protestants. His son and heir was then only a boy of
ten. Sir James died in 1808. Greathead, the lifeboat inventor, was
released in December 1804, quite cured of democracy, it was said, by
his French treatment. Greatheed, with whom he must not be confused,
was allowed with his son to go to Dresden and thence to Italy. The son
died at Vicenza in 1804 at the age of twenty-three. Granby Sloper, who
had settled at Paris in 1789 and had been imprisoned there in 1794,
though struck off the list of captives in 1803 and allowed to live in
Paris, had been arrested in 1806 as an accomplice of Wickham; but on
proof that he had simply when at Berne asked the latter for a passport
for England he was liberated.[219] William Stone, who, as already
stated, had taken refuge in France after his acquittal of high treason
in London in 1796, was unmolested, and became eventually steward to an
Englishman named Parker at Villeneuve St. George.
One of the most singular cases of lenity is the permission given
in 1808, on the recommendation of a Paris professor, to the two
brothers Lambert to leave Givet and exhibit themselves all over
France. For several generations their family had had a scaly or horny
epidermis.[220]
There is a solitary case of refusal to accept release. Richard Oliver,
ex-M.P. for the county of Limerick, though in ill-health and anxious
to leave with his mother and sister, declined without consulting them
on learning that the passport had been granted at the instance of
Arthur O’Connor, whom he had formerly known. He disdained to be under
obligation to a conspirator.
It would have been strange if money as well as influence had not
sometimes secured release. The Rev. W. H. Churchill, of Colliton,
Devon, was on his way to Lyons in May 1803 when he was stopped and
ordered to return to Paris. There he was dismayed to learn that all the
English had been consigned to Verdun. He pleaded for leave to escort
an invalid brother home, but was told by Junot that unless he repaired
to Verdun he would be sent to the Temple prison. He nevertheless
resolved to wait and see what would happen. A gendarme duly appeared
with an order to take him to the Temple, but the name was misspelt,
and the gendarme for a consideration withdrew, promising to say that
he had not found the man. Churchill then feigned illness, and a French
doctor prescribed for an ulcerated throat. In January 1804 Churchill,
through bribery, as is believed, was permitted to escort his invalid
brother.[221]
Next to freedom the greatest favour was leave to visit or reside where
the prisoners chose. Ill-health was naturally one of the commonest
grounds for such applications, and naturally these were viewed with
some scepticism. Lawrence states that Dr. Madan at Verdun made money
by giving certificates of indisposition for exemption from morning
roll-call. Two ex-M.P.’s, Nicholl and Waller, obtained permission
to repair respectively to Lyons and Nîmes. Nicholl’s son was also
allowed to go to a neighbouring town to marry a Miss Mount.[222] He
was ultimately released. The bookseller Payne was authorised to go to
Plombières and Barèges. We thus see that watering-places profited, as
well as Verdun, by the detentions.
Sir Thomas and Lady Webb were in 1809 allowed to go to Savoy. Lady
Webb, a convert to Catholicism, adopted in 1813 a little English girl
seemingly lost by her parents and found among a troop of jugglers at
Lyons.[223] The waif, after being educated and apprenticed, became
a nun. Macnab was permitted to study medicine at Montpellier. James
Heath, the engraver, was allowed in 1810 two months at Paris to copy
architectural designs. In that year also visits to the capital were
permitted to two clergymen, Maude and Lancelot Lee, as well as to Lord
Shaftesbury, Captain Lovelace, Colonel de Blaquiere, and the brothers
Tichborne, Henry being in ill-health. In June 1810, however, all or
nearly all permissions for Paris were revoked. But in 1813 Halpin
was allowed to return to Paris to complete his art studies. Colonel
Phillips, who had accompanied Cook round the world, was permitted to
visit England in the summer of 1804, and General Scott was allowed to
visit his family at Versailles; but on refusing to name a man who had
extorted money from him by pretending to have obtained such permission
he was ordered back to Verdun.[224] Sir Thomas Clavering, whose father
had been one of Warren Hastings’ opponents at Calcutta, had married a
Frenchwoman, the daughter of an Angers dressmaker, and was consequently
allowed to remain at Orleans. There he drove his own carriage and
had fine English horses. He was friendly with his neighbour, the
actress Raucourt, and once took young Bonneval (afterwards Marquis
and General) to her house, where there was much card-playing and the
youth lost all his pocket-money. In 1808 he was permitted to live at
St. Germain. In 1810 he sent his wife to England to try and effect an
exchange. Meanwhile he was at Paris, living with a Vaudeville actress,
Arsène. She treacherously sent the police an anonymous letter warning
them that he talked against Napoleon and intended to escape. Cuthbert
Sharpe, through Regnier, Minister of Justice, was in 1804 struck
off the list of captives, allowed to live in Paris, and ultimately
liberated. Cramer, a man of a good Irish Protestant family, though
originally detained at Verdun, had leave, on its being known that he
was against the war, to travel freely about France. Settling at Tours,
he married a Mademoiselle Fereau and made the acquaintance of Courier,
the future pamphleteer. He died at Florence in 1827. Edward Dillon,
a naval cadet, being related to General Clarke, was permitted to
complete his education in Paris. Sir John Morshead had permission to
go to Versailles to undergo an operation, and was ultimately released.
As near the end of the war as January 1814, Colonel William Cox,
ex-governor of Almeida, solicited permission to visit Paris.
Among the _détenus_ permitted to visit or reside in Paris between
1806 and 1811[225] were Colonel Arthur Annesley, Charles Jerningham,
Lovell Edgeworth, Charlotte, Elizabeth, and Henry (sisters and son of
Sir William) Wolseley, John Daniel, ex-president of Douai College,
Thomas William Atkinson, Theobald, Henry, and William Dillon, the Rev.
Robert Bland, Count Daniel O’Connell, and George Woodyatt, a student
from Westphalia, afterwards a doctor at Worcester, and grandfather of
George Woodyatt Hastings, president of the Social Science Association,
the M.P. who misappropriated his ward’s money, making the usual plea
that he intended to refund it. They also included General Lord John
Murray, General Sir Edward Paget, Sir Herbert Croft, Archdall Cope and
his brother, students in Paris since their childhood, Blount, another
student, Atkinson, a medical student, John Jervis, the engraver,
Terence M’Mahon, Christopher Potter, Smith, an engraver, Laurence
Stoddart, a paralytic Scotsman, Edward Hayes, the miniature painter,
and his father, Sir John Coghill, and Benfield, the banker.
Although women and children were not included in the decree they
could not always leave without difficulty. In July 1803 some girls,
who had been imprudently sent to school at Rouen, had got to Calais
on their way home when an order came to detain them as hostages for
a young nephew and niece of Madame Bonaparte who had apparently been
captured on their voyage from Martinique. There may have been some
delay in the passage to France of this ‘Master and Miss la Pagerie,’
as the _Times_ styled them; but assuredly England had no thought
of detaining children, and it may be presumed that the exchange
was promptly effected. As for women, Anne Plumptre, as free in her
movements as at home, easily procured a passport in 1805; but her
Francomania was in her favour. The divorced wife of Comte de Melfort
(she was sister of the Earl of Barrymore, and her husband a descendant
of the Scottish Drummonds) was allowed in 1810 to go to England with
her two daughters to look after property, leaving behind her two sons,
one page to the Emperor, and the other at St. Cyr military college.
She is said to have had a _liaison_ with the Prince Regent, and
Melfort alleged that his marriage at the British Embassy had been
invalid on account of the difference of religion; but he was himself
a debauchee. Arrested in London for debt, he found a titled lady to
pay the amount and elope with him to France. Lady Donegal[226] and her
sisters, Mary and Philippa Godfrey, got back to England as early as
October 1803. Lady Maynard and Lady Ancram also obtained passports.
A woman named Thompson, ninety-two years of age, captured in 1809
on board a merchantman which stranded off Calais, was at once, in
consideration of her age, sent back to England.
Sometimes women who had gone home on business did not find return an
altogether easy matter. Thus Mrs. Clarke, who had obtained a passport
for England _viâ_ Holland in April 1807, was arrested by the
English authorities on attempting to return, was sent in custody to
London, and was interrogated on suspicion of being a spy in the French
service. She easily cleared herself, but then waited to see her elder
daughter Eleanor married to Frewen-Turner, M.P. for Athlone, and in
1808 she landed in France from Jersey. She was arrested, however, at
St. Lô, and had to give an account of herself. She stated that in 1791
she visited Toulouse with her daughter and her mother, Mrs. Hay,[227]
and that in 1801 she took her mother and a younger daughter Mary to
Toulouse; that they removed to Paris two days before Whitworth’s
departure, that her visit to England had been purely on business,
and that had she not got a passage from Jersey she should have tried
going round by America. She was allowed, on her story being verified,
to rejoin her mother and daughter.[228] The latter as Madame Mohl,
ultimately famous for her receptions in Paris, coquettishly concealed
her age, not liking to confess to seniority to her German husband. At
her death in 1883 she was ninety years of age. Miss Lemprière, probably
sister of the author of the _Classical Dictionary_, was permitted
to return. Mary Masquerier, a governess, sister, doubtless, of the
artist already named, was allowed in 1812 to embark at Morlaix for
London. A Mrs. Cornuel in the same year obtained permission to go to
England to fetch her two daughters, one of whom had for ten years been
in the charge of an uncle in London, and all three returned on board
a smuggling vessel.[229] A girl named Warren, eleven years of age,
on board a vessel captured by a privateer in 1805, was restored to
her father, quartermaster at Malta. Three children named Crane, aged
from ten to sixteen, who had been sent to school in Paris in 1802,
but whose father could no longer afford to pay for their education,
were permitted in 1805 to embark at Rotterdam.[230] Mrs. Story and her
four little children, also captured by a privateer, were liberated in
December 1813, as likewise ‘Madame Kirkpatrick’ with her four children
and two nieces, who had all been residing in Paris. We shall hear
presently of her husband. Catherine Russell, a young woman captured
in 1812 by a privateer and landed at Amsterdam, showed such despair
at being parted from her friends that she was allowed to return
to England.[231] Mrs. Mary Bishop in 1813 had leave with her four
daughters to pay a visit to England, ostensibly to obtain possession
of property, but really, so she alleged after the Restoration when
appealing to Louis XVIII. for recompense, on a mission from
royalists. Lady Boyle had like permission in July 1813, but her
husband, the future Earl of Glasgow, could merely obtain leave to visit
Paris. Occasionally the English authorities objected to the landing
of such passengers. Thus a Mrs. Borel, wife of a London merchant, was
refused permission to land at Dartmouth in 1813 for want of a formal
permit; she took passage on another vessel for Portsmouth in the
hope of there finding less difficulty.[232] The English Government
apparently suspected that some of these arrivals might be spies in
French pay.
Englishwomen, sometimes accompanied by little children, having obtained
leave from both Governments, mostly in order to rejoin captive
husbands, continued to land at Morlaix up to 1813. Thus Mrs. Dorothy
Silburn, who had liberally befriended French _émigré_ priests in
England, was authorised in 1807 to settle at Roscoff, where she spent
the remainder of her life, her tomb being still prominent in the old
churchyard. The Countess Bruce, separated wife of Puschkin--he made
in 1810 curious experiments in galvanism, as it was then called--went
from Venice to Paris in 1811 to solicit the pardon of a negro servant
who had been condemned to death for the murder of a female servant,
whereas the two domestics had agreed to die together because they
could not legally marry. He accordingly shot her, and wounded, but
failed to kill, himself. Among the arrivals was also the notorious Lady
Craven, Margravine of Anspach. This fair but frail lady, who had sat
to Reynolds and Romney, had visited the Austrian and Russian Courts,
had immediately on becoming a widow married the Margrave, a nephew
of Frederick II., and had lived with him at Hammersmith,
but had been cold-shouldered by London society and even by her own
daughters. She had paid a short visit to Paris in 1802, and she went
again in 1807 to take possession of her second husband’s property. We
hear little more of her till her death at Naples in 1828, where she
had settled in 1805, being joined by one of her sons, Keppel Craven,
of whom we have already heard.[233] Another restless woman, wife of
Colonel Henry (brother of Viscount) Dillon, arrived in Paris in 1808,
ostensibly to join her husband but really to bring over letters from
royalist exiles, perhaps also to meet her lover, Latour du Pin. She
was arrested, and her husband disowned her. In 1810 he notified the
police that she had taken her children from Bordeaux and gone with them
without his knowledge to England, where he feared she would divulge his
offer to join the French army. Sir Robert Adair’s French wife in 1808
obtained leave to remove from Vienna to Rheims, in order to bring up
her daughters by her former marriage.
The celebrated Pamela, widow of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was allowed
in 1810 to come to Paris, Napoleon directing Fouché to ‘pump’ her on
English and Irish affairs,[234] as also probably on Count Stahremberg,
Austrian Ambassador at London, her reputed lover, for she had quitted
her second husband Pitcairn, American Consul at Hamburg. Her daughter
by the latter, who survived till a few years ago, seems to have been
left behind, either in Germany or in England.
Julia Sayers, who had been a visitor in 1802, was allowed in 1805 to
come over and marry Pougens, the blind author,[235] natural son of
the Prince de Conti, to whom she had been introduced in London in
1786. His fortune had disappeared in the Revolution, and he had turned
bookseller. She was a niece of Admiral Boscawen and of the Duchess of
Beaufort.
Wives were sometimes, however, refused permission to come over and
join their captive husbands. Margaret Stuart, who in 1806 had married
Hingston Tuckey, both having been captured at sea, on returning in 1810
from a visit to England was unceremoniously shipped back. Sir Thomas
Lavie, stranded on the French coast in 1806, was refused his wife’s
company, whereupon England forbade the wives of French prisoners to
land in England. This retaliation apparently brought the French to
reason, for as late as January 1813--so little was Napoleon’s fall
foreseen--Englishwomen landed at Morlaix.[236]
Nor did women always escape imprisonment. A Mrs. Moore was arrested in
1810 on the charge of facilitating her husband’s escape from Bitche.
She was, however, soon released. Again in 1812 an Englishwoman named
Taylor, living at Rouen, returning to Morlaix after a visit to England,
met at the inn three sailors who had just been liberated from British
pontoons. ‘Ah,’ said she, ‘you only come from one prison to enter
another. You will be forced to serve in the French navy, and will be no
better off than in English prisons. You will never be better off till
Bonaparte’--here she made a gesture indicating the guillotine. On being
arrested for this imprudent speech she at first denied everything, but
on being confronted with the sailors admitted all except the remark on
Bonaparte. She was ordered to be sent back to England.[237]
The banker Coutts wrote in 1810 to Lafayette, asking him to obtain
passports for the south of France for his invalid daughter, Lady
Bute, her husband[238] and two children, a doctor and two servants.
Lafayette, in endorsing the application, stated that Coutts was banker
(he should have said son-in-law) to Burdett, who had rendered service
to the French prisoners. Lady Bute and her sister had been educated in
Paris previously to the Revolution by Madame Daubenton. Lord Bute died
at Geneva in November 1814, and his remains were conveyed to England.
Coutts also obtained permission for another son-in-law, Lord Guilford,
to revisit France, but Guilford died before being able to profit by it.
He had long suffered from injury to the spine, occasioned by a fall
from his horse in the act of presenting a basket of fruit to his future
wife. His brother, who succeeded to the title, established himself at
Corfu during the Greek struggle for independence, and was attired like
a Greek professor.
J. Cleaver Bankes was allowed, on the recommendation of Benjamin
Constant, to come and examine Sanscrit manuscripts at the National
Library. In 1813 Sir Humphry Davy and his wife, with his secretary
young Faraday, passed through Paris on their way to Italy. They
visited the laboratory of Chevreul (not the future centenarian) at the
Jardin des Plantes, and at Malmaison were shown by Josephine books
and extracts relating to Cromwell, marked in pencil by Napoleon. The
institute had in 1809 awarded Davy the £60,000 prize for electrical
improvements.
Mrs. Bathurst and her brother, George Call, were allowed to pass
through France in 1810, on their search for her husband. Call on
his way back solicited an audience of Napoleon,[239] whose portrait
adorned his snuff-box, a request which shows that he had not the
slightest idea of accusing Napoleon. His belief, indeed, and that of
the widow, was that Bathurst had been wrecked in the Baltic.[240]
Colonel Macleod of Colbeck, uncle of Lord Moira, after being liberated,
actually in 1810 asked leave to settle in France. He was described by
the police bulletin as honest but weak-minded, and as having incurred
unpleasantness in Scotland by his liking for France and his advocacy of
peace.
Shirley, a Jamaica planter, was also allowed in 1806 to settle in
the south, and Colonel Vesey, on the recommendation of the King of
Prussia, was permitted to go to Barèges on account of his wound.
The British blockade of course barred the way by sea. The Marquis of
Douglas in 1808 was allowed to pass through France on his way home
from Russia, his health being unequal to a sea passage. Talleyrand
had recommended him as favourable to France. Father Gordon in 1810
solicited leave to return to Paris to urge his reinstatement as head
of the Scots College. He apparently did not know that that institution
had been fused with the Irish College, where Walsh had, it seems, been
reinstated, for in 1807 Walsh had asked permission for some students
to come over from Ireland. Walsh himself, however, along with other
Irish priests, was not allowed by the British Government to return in
1811 to Ireland, such journeys to and fro being considered suspicious.
Five quasi-Britons--Admiral Alexis Greig, born in Russia of Scottish
parents; Admiral Robert Elphinstone, a native of Plymouth; Captain
Thomas Candler, of Dublin; Moffat, of Dalkeith; and William Crowe--all
in the Russian navy, were authorised in 1808 to pass through France on
their way back from Lisbon.
Turning to involuntary visitors, precedence is due to Lord Blayney,
who, sent with troops to Malaga in 1810, imprudently allowed himself
to be captured by the French immediately on landing. His book gives an
interesting account of his journey across Spain and France to Verdun.
He was treated with great respect, and in Spain could hunt and make
excursions without restriction. He does not tell us much, however, of
life at Verdun, where he passed three years. In 1812 England offered
to exchange for him General Simon, who had been wounded and required
mineral waters, but Napoleon apparently did not consider him equal in
rank to Blayney, although assured by General Clarke that the latter had
not held a high military post.[241] Another general captured in Spain
was Sir Edward Paget, who had previously lost his right arm in battle,
but was able, after about three years’ detention, to resume active
service. He had in 1806 resigned his seat for Carnarvon. Lord John
Murray seems likewise to have been captured in Spain. Sir Thomas Lavie,
as already mentioned, who was wrecked on the French coast, was for
some months confined in the citadel of Montmédy and debarred writing
materials. He was very kind to his fellow-captives at Verdun, and was
allowed to go to Melun. Governor of the Royal Naval Asylum, he died in
1821.
Roger Langton, captured at sea in 1808, made an unsuccessful attempt
to escape, and remained at Verdun till 1814.[242] Aytoun, an Edinburgh
man, captured in an Austrian vessel in 1806 and sent to Verdun, was
probably a kinsman--perhaps Richard the father--of William Edmonstoune
Aytoun, the champion of Mary Stuart.
Another involuntary visitor was Captain Donat Henchy O’Brien, of the
Hussars, who was wrecked off Brest in February 1804, and was sent
first to Bitche and ultimately to Verdun. Two unsuccessful attempts to
escape--the first time he was recaptured at Étaples, and the second,
after crouching among a drove of oxen to pass the Rhine, he was
given up by the German authorities at Lindau--entailed incarceration
in filthy and stifling casemates, but in a third attempt in 1808 he
reached the Austrian frontier and was able to resume service. He
published a full account of his adventures,[243] which was reprinted
in 1902. Another sailor, Miller, captured in 1804 in the man-of-war
_Wolverine_, escaped in 1811, and published an anonymous
narrative. Moir, a naval surgeon captured at sea, was joined by his
wife, who in 1808 gave birth to a son, destined to become the ‘father’
of the Royal College of Physicians, and to reach the age of ninety-one.
That son, John Moir, a prominent Free Churchman, remembered being
taken in his mother’s arms or by her hand when she waited on Napoleon
to entreat her husband’s liberation, but we are not told whether she
was successful. Moir on regaining his liberty settled in Edinburgh.
Francis Milman, brother of the future Dean, was captured in Spain, and
detained at Verdun till January 1814,[244] when Jenner obtained his
release. Edward Boyse, midshipman of the _Phœbe_, was captured
in July 1803 in a boat off Toulon, and conducted first to Verdun and
then to Valenciennes; but with two comrades he escaped from the latter
fortress.[245]
Clandestine visitors were naturally suspected of being spies.[246] Thus
the son of Dickinson, the artist, ex-secretary to the Ottoman Embassy
in London, entered France under the name of Lambert in 1805, apparently
in order to join his father in Paris; but he had given up painting and
had been in the employ of the British Government. He proved that he
had come to see a Madame Gourbillon, of whom he had been enamoured in
London, but the authorities suspected that he might occupy his leisure
in sending reports to England, and he was consequently despatched to
Verdun,[247] albeit his sister was companion to Madame Talleyrand. But
he must have been liberated, for we hear of another visit in 1810.
Thomas Graham, arrested at Pepignan in 1810, had entered France from
Spain, but having a mission to General Clarke and Arthur O’Connor he
was released. William Hayne, lace-maker of Nottingham, and having an
extensive continental trade, was arrested in Paris in 1807, having a
stock of lace in his possession. What was done with this venturesome
trader is not stated. Nathaniel Parker Forth, a diplomatic emissary,
the satellite of the Duke of Orleans who procured Pamela for Madame
de Genlis, was reported to be in Paris in 1805, and was ordered to
be watched;[248] but if such ‘a consummate intriguer’ had really
been there he would certainly have been arrested and expelled. James
Mathews, another diplomatic interloper, who had been arrested in Paris
in 1793, landed at Havre without a passport in 1807 and vainly tried
to pass for an American. The notorious swindler, Lisle Semple, was
also reported to have been seen in Paris in 1805, yet this too is
unconfirmed. He had been expelled as a spy in 1802.
There was even a report in Paris in 1805 that six English officers had
come over to witness the coronation, but this seems highly improbable.
Napoleon’s long arm reached not only to Hamburg but to Italy. In 1806
all Englishmen found there were ordered to be arrested, and Graham,
consequently apprehended at Venice, was sent to Valenciennes. Edward
Dodwell, living at Rome, had to apply for leave to visit England in
order to publish a work on Greece. John Wilson, a native of Liverpool,
residing in Italy, was authorised in 1810, on account of his health,
to live at Geneva. He afterwards asked permission to become partner in
a firm at Bordeaux.[249] The Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry, would
probably have been arrested, as he had been in 1798, had he not died at
Albano on the 8th July 1803, before Napoleon had had time to look so
far afield for his prey.
Sir George Rumbold, British Minister at Hamburg and son of Warren
Hastings’ opponent at Calcutta, was seized by order of Napoleon in
1804. It is believed by the Rumbold family that this was instigated
by the famous Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, who was then at Hamburg
and in league with the Irish exiles there, to whom Rumbold’s vigilant
observation was very irksome.[250] If so, she was guilty of treachery,
for she had been very intimate with him.
Rumbold lived in a neighbouring village, going twice a week into
Hamburg on mail days. A hundred soldiers under Major Maison landed at
night on the coast, and ten or twelve of them drove in two carriages to
the spot to surround the house and prevent any alarm. A sentinel was
placed in front of every door and window. On the arrival of the rest
of the detachment, a German civilian knocked at the door and stated
that he had brought despatches. A servant bade him deliver them at the
window, but the door was forced open and Rumbold was arrested in his
bed. He expected nothing less than to be shot, as the Duc d’Enghien had
been six months before, but Maison assured him that his life was safe.
All his papers were seized, and these were expected to implicate the
British Government in plots to assassinate Napoleon, an expectation,
however, which was not realised. The Prince Regent, moreover, according
to a police bulletin of 1805, referring to such plots, had said, ‘Let
us meet Bonaparte like men, not like assassins.’[251] Rumbold, on being
taken to Paris, was induced on the promise of the restitution of his
papers to sign an engagement never to approach on non-British territory
within a hundred miles of any post occupied by French troops. In Paris,
if we may credit a police report, his terror revived. He asked for time
to pray and to write to his family, adding that for eighteen months he
had been disgusted with politics, and but for his children’s interests
would have thrown up his appointment. He passed ten days in the Temple,
and here is the description given of him:--
‘5 ft. 11 in. Hair brownish grey. Eyebrows dark grey. Forehead
ordinary. Eyes greyish brown. Nose short, slim above and rather
thick below. Mouth medium. Lips thick. Chin round. Face oval and
full. A small mark on the left cheek.’
The King of Prussia had remonstrated against such a violation of German
territory, and had ordered his Ambassador to Paris to demand his
passports unless Rumbold were released. Accordingly the preposterous
intention of trying him for conspiracy, if ever entertained, was
abandoned, and he was escorted to Cherbourg, where, not without
renewed apprehensions of being shot, he was handed over to a British
frigate. He had already repented of signing the engagement, an act
of cowardice, he said, tantamount to resignation. The gendarme major
told him he might keep the matter secret, but Rumbold replied that he
should be bound to inform his Government. He also expressed regret at
his family affairs being pried into in his papers.[252] Rumbold, if
the French reports are to be trusted, certainly showed pusillanimity,
but the recent fate of the Duc d’Enghien was in his mind. The promise
of restoring his papers was not fulfilled, and being censured by the
English Government for the engagement entered into by him, he offered
to go back to France and revoke that engagement. This, of course, was
not allowed. In the following spring he repaired to Berlin to thank
the King of Prussia for his intervention, and he followed the royal
family in their retreat to Memel. There, tended by Prince Augustus when
attacked with fever, he expired in December 1807. His widow in 1810
married Sir Sidney Smith, who likewise had had experience of the Temple
prison. Both she and Sir Sidney ended their days in Paris.
In 1876 Sir Horace Rumbold obtained permission to inspect his
grandfather’s confiscated papers in the French Archives, but found
the family matters in them very meagre, while he suspected that the
political portions had been withheld from him.[253]
Talleyrand, in a diplomatic circular justifying such high-handed
acts, charged England with prostituting the functions of ambassadors
by making them instigate the assassination of the Emperor; but Lord
Hawkesbury in reply, while indignantly denying the charge, insisted
that a belligerent was entitled to have dealings with malcontents,
and he twitted France with incitement of Irish rebellions. Napoleon’s
evident maxim, however, was that all was fair on his own side, and it
must be confessed that, whereas no Irishman proposed to assassinate
George III., French malcontents looked for no success unless
through Napoleon being kidnapped or murdered.
A Colonel Butler was also arrested at Hamburg in November 1806. In
the French Dragoons until the Revolution, he had for eleven or twelve
years, along with Dutheil, been an agent for the Bourbons and had paid
secret visits to Paris. Two of his many children were there and were
rich with their mother’s property. What became of him is not stated.
Possibly he escaped.
James Smithson, natural son of the Duke of Northumberland, born in
France in 1765, and future founder of the Smithsonian Institute at
Washington, was likewise arrested at Hamburg in 1809, but at the
solicitation of Banks received a passport for England. He had visited
Paris in 1791, when he wrote--‘The office of king is not yet abolished,
but they daily feel the inability or rather the great inconvenience
of continuing it. May other nations at the time of their reforms
be wise enough to cast off at first the contemptible incumbrance!’
Smithson, who must by this time have been sadly disillusioned with the
Revolution, died at Genoa in 1829, having mostly spent his later years
in Paris.
George Sinclair, eldest son of Sir John, the great agriculturist, in
1806, at the age of sixteen, was arrested by the French as a spy,
having been found between the French and German lines just before the
battle of Jena. Sinclair, who became a general and lived till 1868,
published in 1826 in the _Representative_ an interesting account
of his interview at Auma with Napoleon, before whom he was taken,
together with his companion, a German named Rigel, by Count Frohberg.
He found Napoleon in a dressing-gown and white night-cap, and he was
required not only to show that he had been on purely private business,
but to trace all his movements on a map and to answer questions as
to the German troops through which he had passed. ‘All Napoleon’s
questions,’ he says, ‘were remarkable by their perfect clearness. He
omitted nothing that was necessary; he asked nothing superfluous.’
‘What guarantee can I have,’ said Napoleon, ‘of the truth of your
story? Englishmen do not usually travel on foot and without a servant
and in such a dress.’ Sinclair was wearing a coarse brown overcoat. ‘It
is true, sire,’ he replied, ‘that my conduct may seem a little odd, but
imperative circumstances and the impossibility of procuring a horse
forced me to do all that I have done.’ He produced some family letters,
which Napoleon asked Frohberg to skim, and one of them was from Sir
John Sinclair, commending his study of Greek and Latin and exhorting
him to master German and French. Thereupon Napoleon, softening his
tone, said, ‘So you have learned Latin and Greek. What authors have you
read?’ Surprised at such a question, Sinclair named Homer, Thucydides,
Cicero, and Horace. It was well he could not or did not name Tacitus,
the object of Napoleon’s aversion. ‘Very good, very good,’ he rejoined,
and turning to General Berthier, he said, ‘I do not think this young
man is a spy, but the other is probably less innocent, and they must be
kept together to avoid suspicion.’ A nod indicated that the interview
was over, and Sinclair, bowing, withdrew. ‘When taken before him,’ he
writes, ‘I had the strongest prejudice against him. I considered him
the enemy of my country and the oppressor of the rest of Europe. On
quitting him, the grace and fascination of his smile and that superior
intelligence which illumined his face had entirely subjugated me.’
Napoleon directed Frohberg to tell the young man he was much pleased
with the frankness of his answers. Rigel in like manner exonerated
himself, and both, subjected to a few days’ honourable detention, were
liberated after the battle of Jena, a place which Sinclair had passed
on his route and had pointed out to Napoleon on the map.
Should we reckon among the British--she was at any rate among the
notable--involuntary visitors the Countess of Albany, widow of the
Young Pretender, quasi-widow of the poet Alfieri, and quasi-wife of
Fabre of Montpellier? She started from Florence for Paris in 1806, with
the view of publishing Alfieri’s works, but turned back at Turin on
finding that François Xavier Fabre, as an _émigré_, would not be
allowed to re-enter France. In the autumn of 1809, however, Napoleon
required her to come to Paris to exculpate herself from a charge of
intrigues with England. All that she had really done had been to refuse
to receive Clarke when French Minister at Florence, and to apply to
the English Government for an annuity to compensate the one lost by
the death of her brother-in-law, Cardinal York, the titular Henry
IX. She had accordingly been granted £1000 a year. She easily
cleared herself, and Napoleon seems to have been a little ashamed of
disturbing so inoffensive a woman. He jestingly told her that her
influence on Florentine society hampered the fusion desired by him
between Tuscans and French. This, he said, was why he had summoned
her to live in Paris, where she would have more ample opportunity of
gratifying her artistic tastes. The interview lasted only a quarter of
an hour, Napoleon gave her his box at the theatre one night that she
might see Talma. It was not till the end of 1810 that she was permitted
to return to Florence.[254] A letter addressed to her in 1814
piquantly contrasted her husband’s expulsion from France in 1748 with
her own enforced residence there, adding, ‘You have left many regrets
in the great Babylon.’
Such of the English as were allowed to inhabit Paris, the permits for
which, however, were, as we have seen, grudgingly granted and liable to
be cancelled by wholesale, had the slender consolation of reflecting
that they were in the ‘hub’ of the universe, for Paris in the height
of Napoleon’s rule was more the centre of fashion and business than
it has ever been since. It swarmed with Jews--bankers, jewellers, and
merchants--to whom the war afforded many opportunities of enriching
themselves. It also swarmed with adventurers of all nationalities, so
that in February 1803 the regulations as to visitors, whether French
or foreign, were made almost as stringent as those issued during the
Revolution. A list of the inmates had not indeed, as then, to be
placarded outside every house, but every householder was required to
notify the police of the arrival of any visitor or lodger and to send
in the passport. This had to be applied for within three days by such
guest or lodger, to whom a permit to stay in or quit Paris was then
granted. A foreigner’s permit was conditional on the certificate of
his ambassador, or, in default of an ambassador, by a banker or two
well-known citizens.[255]
On the other hand there was no lack of celebrities or of men who
interest us on account of distinguished descendants. Let us begin with
Pius VII., the first Pope who had touched French soil since
the return to Rome from Avignon in 1408. Like the Doge of Genoa at
Versailles, he must have thought himself the most surprising object
in Paris. Manzoni, the Italian poet and novelist, Oersted, the Danish
scientist, and Francis Arago, the future astronomer, whose family
had sought at Perpignan a refuge from Spanish commotions, may next
be noted. Spurzheim, the phrenologist, comes considerably lower down
in eminence. The statesmen include Baron Hardenberg, destined to
regenerate Prussia, and Count Nesselrode, the future author of the Holy
Alliance and the Crimean War. The Poles include Prince Constantine
Czartoryski, who, though a member of a great patriotic family, served
in the Russian army, Count John Wielopolski, and Stanislas Wolowski,
probably a collateral ancestor of the economist who sat in the French
National Assembly of 1871. Marquis Emanuel del Campo, Spanish Minister
of Foreign Affairs, ex-ambassador at London and in 1795 at Paris, was
the natural son of a Spanish grandee, an envoy also to London, by an
Englishwoman named Field, a name which he had turned into Campo. He
commenced life in an orphanage. James and Julius Beccaria were probably
kinsmen of the Milanese philosopher. Count Tolstoi, the Russian
ambassador, and Andrew Tolstoi, apparently his son, may have been
ancestors of the great novelist. Ferdinand de Hérédia was probably the
father of the French Minister of Public Works in 1887, and grandfather
of the academician and poet. Dias and Emanuel Oliveira, the former a
merchant at Oporto, the latter a doctor, were probably ancestors of
the Benjamin Oliveira who in the House of Commons anticipated Cobden by
advocating reduced tariffs on foreign wines. Joseph Samuda, a Barcelona
merchant, was probably uncle of the great East London shipbuilder and
M.P. Philip Gavazzi, an Italian merchant, may have been the father of
the anti-papal ecclesiastic who joined Garibaldi in Naples and died in
1889.
Englishmen domiciled, if not naturalised, abroad were not subject to
detention, which indeed was not prospective in the decree, but was
limited to persons then on French soil. The Berlin decree of 1807
ordered, it is true, the capture of all British subjects irrespective
of sex or age found in territories occupied by French or allied
troops; but this does not seem to have been enforced. Hence the
police registers[256] show visits to Paris between 1806 and 1813 by
Englishmen settled on the Continent, but it is not always easy to
distinguish these from men of English names, descendants of Jacobites
or other emigrants, born abroad. In any case the registers are evidence
that British subjects or men of British descent were sprinkled all
over Europe, some as soldiers of fortune, others as manufacturers or
artisans, and a few as land-owners. Thus the register of Spaniards
gives us Colonel Peter Aylmer, Patrick MacMahon, a merchant at San
Sebastian, Thomas Moore, a landowner born in Spain, William Mulvey, a
native of Cadiz, O’Farrill, Ambassador to Berlin, William Stirling, a
merchant born at Barcelona, Charles Willcox, a landowner also born
there, and Colonel Charles Augustus Joseph Walsh de Serrant, one of
whose family conveyed the Young Pretender to Scotland in 1745. The
so-called Portuguese included Henry Gallwey and Joseph O’Moran, latter
a commercial traveller.
The Dutchmen comprise General O’Connor, a native of Holland, Benjamin
John Hopkinson, a domiciled landowner, and Robert Twiss, a merchant,
apparently the father of Francis and Richard Twiss, and the grandfather
of Horace Twiss. The Belgians were considered Frenchmen, or we should
have heard of William Cockerill, one of the three sons of the man who
founded the famous ironworks at Seraing. The Prussians and Poles, who
are classed together, comprise William Flint and Augustus and John
Simpson, merchants, Catherine and Richard Fitzgerald, land-owners,
natives of Dublin, Samuel Turner, ‘president of canton,’ whatever that
may mean, also from Dublin, and Baron Butler, a major captured in the
field. Among Danes are Edmund de Bourke, Ambassador to Spain, and
David Turnbull, a manufacturer at Altona. The Russians include Baron
John Richard Bourke, Reuben Beasley, a merchant, Dr. William Birt, and
William Lind, surgeon, both natives of St. Petersburg.
Among Swiss are John Archer and Walter and David Johnston, two sons
of a wine merchant at Bordeaux who had not yet been naturalised
in France, but was unmolested and allowed in 1812 to visit Paris.
Last but not least is William Kirkpatrick, a son of the Scottish
(Closeburn) baronet, who was a winemerchant at Malaga, and had married
Françoise de Grévignée, daughter of a Walloon, also settled at Malaga.
Kirkpatrick, who had been appointed Consul at Hamburg by the Grand Duke
of Oldenburg, was in Paris in 1808 and was anxious to return to Malaga,
but the French police suspected him of relations with England and had
arrested his partner Turnbull. His daughter Maria Emanuele, born in
1796, was destined to be the mother of the Empress Eugénie, while her
mother’s sister, wife of Mathieu de Lesseps, was destined to be the
mother of Ferdinand de Lesseps.
There were of course in eleven years deaths, and even tragical deaths,
among the captives. The Marquis and Marchioness of Tweeddale were
allowed to visit Paris in November 1803, but were soon relegated to
Verdun, and the gendarme who escorted them thither insisted, Lawrence
tells us, on riding inside the carriage and even on dining with them.
Lady Tweeddale, sister of Lord Lauderdale, died at Verdun in 1804, and
her husband, while awaiting permission to have her buried in England,
was also taken ill, and died two months afterwards.[257] Napoleon’s
offer, ‘as a mark of respect for Fox,’ of twelve months’ leave, came
too late. James Parry, ex-editor of the _Courier_, had been
imprisoned in 1799 for six months for an article animadverting on the
Tsar, whom the British Government then wished to court; he had sold
his newspaper to Daniel Stuart, proprietor of the _Morning Post_,
and in 1802 had settled at Arles. Though for three years a paralytic
he was mercilessly ordered to Verdun and died there. His young son was
adopted by Ginguené, the eminent literary critic.
James Payne, the bookseller, died in Paris in 1809 at the age of
forty-three, leaving a young widow who went back to England in 1811.
She was escorted by the Widmers, nephews of the calico-printer
Oberkampf, who thus returned the long compulsory stay with their uncle
of Robert Hendry. Hendry was a Glasgow dyer, whom Napoleon on a visit
to Oberkampf’s calico-factory allowed to return home, nominally for a
visit; but this was doubtless an euphemism for release. John Leatham,
formerly of Madras, died at Nantes in 1811. Peter Colombine, of London,
died in Paris in 1813. He was probably the brother of the Norwich
alderman known to Mrs. Opie, who in 1802 was defrauded of his property
and reduced to accepting an annuity of £100 from the Corporation of
that city.
The Rev. J. Bentinck, an Oxonian who is said to have been promised a
bishopric, died at Paris in June 1804. The Rev. John Dring, rector
of Heathfield, Sussex, died at Orleans in 1806. Coulson Walhope,
ex-M.P., was subjected to special surveillance, apparently on account
of a report, doubtless calumnious, that he had visited France just
after Napoleon’s return from Egypt with the design of shooting him.
Walhope likewise ended his days at Verdun in 1807, shortly after
giving a dinner-party. A doctor captured at sea committed suicide in
1805, leaving a bottle inscribed, ‘No more medicine after this.’ A
third clergyman, White of Lancaster, died at Verdun in 1806, and a
fourth, Annesley, at Geneva in 1807, his widow being then allowed a
passport for England. He was probably a kinsman of the colonel already
mentioned, but I cannot trace him in the Annesley pedigree. Thomas
Talbot, aged twenty-eight, suffocated himself by charcoal at Paris in
1806, leaving a letter to his mother with a list of his debts (probably
at cards) which he begged her to discharge.[258] Dr. Walter Kirby also
died at Paris. A man named Burgh or Burke, on account of gambling
debts, shot himself at Paris in August 1813.
A considerable number of incurable prisoners had been sent back by
England, and in 1810 there were negotiations for an exchange. Colin
Alexander Mackenzie[259] was sent to Morlaix for that purpose, with
William Dickinson as his secretary. He went on to Paris, to witness
Napoleon’s marriage festivities. France proposed an exchange _en
masse_, with payment of a sum of money to cover the difference
in numbers. On this being declined, she suggested an exchange, man
for man, grade for grade, and offered to throw 20,000 Spaniards into
the bargain. She wished 3000 Frenchmen to be exchanged for 1000
English and 2000 Spaniards. England offered to give 3000 French for
17,000 Hanoverians, but France insisted on 6000 of the former. As
for the _détenus_, the British Government, reluctantly waiving
the legality of their arrest, proposed that Lord Lovaine should be
exchanged for a general, sons of peers or privy councillors for
colonels or navy captains, baronets and knights for officers, untitled
gentlemen for captains of the line or naval lieutenants, tradesmen
for subalterns, servants and mechanics for privates or seamen. There
was a difficulty, however, as to Hanoverians and Spaniards, and no
agreement was arrived at. Mackenzie, who had arrived on the 24th April,
accordingly left on the 6th November. During his stay at Morlaix his
movements had been closely watched, and objection was taken to his
wolf-hunting expeditions, as though these might screen confabulations
with royalists or observations on privateers. There had been, however,
and continued to be, individual liberations. England continued to send
back prisoners incurably ill, and on the other hand a sailor who had
become blind was released in 1809 by France. He took with him a book
in which a number of Verdun captives had written messages to friends.
Powell, vicar of Abergavenny, having shown much kindness to French
prisoners there, Clarke recommended, let us hope successfully, the
exchange of an English sailor in whom the vicar was interested.[260]
Admiral Villeneuve in 1806 was exchanged at Morlaix, but unwilling to
face Napoleon after his defeat, he committed suicide at Rennes on the
way to Paris. There was also an offer to exchange Admiral Jurien de
la Gravière for two colonels, but this was not accepted. The balance
of prisoners was always largely against France, while the balance of
escapes was--shall we say in favour?--of France. Thus in 1812 the
British Government published a list of 270 escapes and 590 attempted
escapes by French officers, whereupon the _Moniteur_ gave a
list of 355 English escapes, which it was urged was a much greater
proportionate number. Sir James Craufurd figured at the head of the
list. But the great majority of these English fugitives were officers
or sailors of merchant vessels captured at sea after the resumption of
hostilities. Some of the French escapes were effected through a noted
English smuggler named Robinson; we do not hear of his assisting any of
his own countrymen, as this would obviously have stopped his favourable
reception in France.
Applications for release or for permission to visit England latterly
became numerous. Release was besought in many instances on the plea of
age and infirmity (and we may suppose that doctors were complaisant
in granting such certificates) or for having rescued French citizens
from fire or shipwreck. Two sailors who in a rescue from the waves had
actually been captured had irresistible claims not so much to clemency
as to gratitude. Poor Colonel Cope’s botanical studies, moreover, had
not apparently warded off insanity, on which ground his sister in 1813
petitioned for his release. William Story, the chemist, had reached
the age of sixty-three, and Napoleon’s decree had fixed sixty as the
limit of detention. He applied for six months’ leave of absence to
take possession of property bequeathed to him. Viscountess Kirkwall
urged that unless her brother, whose father’s death had made him Lord
De Blaquiere, was allowed to settle affairs in person, the family
would be ruined. Lord Lovaine, with his sons Algernon and Percy, born
in France, likewise petitioned for a business visit.[261] Sir Michael
Cromie in 1811, pleading that he had been a friend of Fox, and had
purchased property in France, asked leave to go to England to his
daughter’s wedding.[262] Samuel Hayes, who in 1802 had come over with
his children that they might learn French, was allowed in 1813, having
become nearly blind, to return home. As late as the 18th March 1814,
sixteen released prisoners embarked at Morlaix.
Curiously enough, an escaped prisoner was sent back by the English
Government on the very eve of the termination of the war. It is the
only case on record. A Lieutenant Sheehy, aged twenty-seven, of the
89th Infantry, had escaped from Verdun in October 1813, but the Prince
Regent and the Commander-in-Chief, rebuking him for breach of parole,
despatched him by flag of truce to Morlaix, where he arrived on the
5th March 1814. The Morlaix commissary reported that he denounced the
Prince Regent as a sot, and that if he had talked like this in England
it might account for his being returned, but that such talk might be a
blind for some secret mission. Pending instructions from Paris, Sheehy
was kept in custody, and we hear no more of him.[263]
The failure of the Mackenzie negotiations must have been a terrible
disappointment for captives who had already waited nine years and a
half. As late as 1812 there was so little prospect of deliverance
that a prisoner at Briançon amused himself by scratching a sun-dial
on a slate, appending to the motto ‘Rule Britannia’ imprecations
against Napoleon.[264] In April 1813, twenty-five chests of Bibles and
Testaments had been sent by a flag of truce, apparently by the Bible
Society, to Morlaix for distribution among the captives. They were
detained at the custom-house pending a decision, and we do not hear
the result,[265] but in any case the books could scarcely have reached
their intended recipients.
Yet although nobody foresaw the end of the war, Napoleon seems to have
shown a little more leniency, while England in 1813 sent back 8000
invalided prisoners, and agreed, moreover, to occasional exchanges
even of soldiers for civilians. Thus in 1812 she offered to exchange
a French captain for the banker Boyd, but this offer must have been
declined, for in 1814 Boyd pleaded the loss of the sight of one eye as
ground for repeating it.[266] Release must soon have ensued without
the necessity of an exchange. In December 1813, fourteen English
doctors were exchanged for French prisoners, and we may hope that these
included Moir, Armstrong, Watt, Campbell, Hogarth, and Jones, whose
volunteer services to the French wounded had been notified to Napoleon
by General Clarke, as a hint for their release.[267]
The allies having entered France on the north-east and Wellington on
the south, the Verdun, Arras, and other captives were removed further
inland. Napoleon, writing on the 11th January 1814 to Clarke, said,
‘I suppose you have removed the English from Verdun’; but it was not
till the following day that the first detachment started for Blois.
Prisoners with means provided their own vehicles or horses, but others,
mostly captains and officers of merchantmen, seem to have been marched
on foot. Most of them, Lord Blayney[268] says, were accompanied by
French mistresses who had acquired a surprising mastery of English
sailors’ oaths. A second detachment set out next day. This sudden
removal had caused consternation, for though many had been captured
during the war, many others had been at Verdun ever since 1803, and
had got to feel at home there. Those, moreover, just under sixty when
originally detained, were getting into years and disinclined to stir.
Logically, of course, they should have been released on reaching that
age, but logic was not to be looked for from Napoleon. Tradesmen and
house-owners, moreover, had given numerous prisoners credit, yet the
latter, if out of funds, had perforce to leave their creditors in the
lurch. They could not wait for remittances, the order for departure in
three days being imperative. Some, indeed, borrowed money of friends,
but when the Verdun shopkeepers collected at the gate to make a last
demand for their dues, some of the prisoners who could have paid coolly
showed their purses to their creditors and then returned them to their
pockets, sarcastically remarking that the Cossacks would discharge the
debt. Five Arras captives made their way to the coast in lieu of going
south, but finding no boat gave themselves up. Two others succeeded in
their purpose. On the way to Blois, the younger child of Tuckey fell
ill and died. On reaching their supposed destination, the prisoners
were ordered on to Guéret. That town on the 11th of March 1814 had
no less than 1064 English prisoners. Tidings of Wellington’s advance
naturally created restlessness among them. Sixty-four escaped from
the convent at Périgueux, to which they had been consigned, although
the officers had some days before, lest they should head a rising,
been transferred to Cahors. A hundred and one escaped in a body from
Angoulême, and as many more, under a negro named Louis, conspired
to follow suit, but were detected in time. The gendarmerie captain
recommended their removal to spots more out of reach of the English
army.[269] There had, moreover, been escapes on the way south. In
February seven men, ordered from Arras to Tours, gave their convoy the
slip, but were arrested in a barn near St. Valéry. Five other fugitives
were apprehended near Montreuil. A Frenchman at Dunkirk was arrested
for offering to facilitate escapes.
News soon arrived of Napoleon’s abdication. The Bitche prisoners, who
had been sent to Chatellerault, would but for that event have been sent
on to Rennes. A few of the English in Paris had obtained permission to
remain, and were there witnesses of the short siege and the entrance
of the allies. One of these was James Richard Underwood, for whom
the dethroned Josephine had interceded. He published in the _London
Magazine_ an account of the siege and capitulation.
Article 3 of the treaty of peace of 1814 stipulated ‘that the
respective prisoners of war shall be bound to pay before their
departure from the place of their detention any private debts which
they may have contracted there, or at least to give satisfactory
security.’ This doubtless took effect in England, where prisoners could
not leave without the knowledge or sanction of the authorities, but in
France, occupied by foreign armies, there were obviously no means of
enforcing it. Hence it is not surprising to find that at Verdun there
were indignant creditors. We do not hear of complaints in any other
town, but at Bitche and other fortresses the captives were lodged and
victualled by the French Government, and though clothes must have
worn out, the shopkeepers were probably chary of giving credit, while
the captives on parole in Paris, Orleans, and other towns were men of
means and doubtless of a high sense of honour. The eight or eleven
hundred prisoners at Verdun, on the other hand, were of all sorts and
conditions. Some could not, others would not, pay. When, therefore,
Verdun learned that the sixty millions paid by France to England to
satisfy claims for compensation for confiscation had left a balance of
nine millions, it perceived an opportunity for sending in its bill.
What could be more legitimately paid out of this balance than the three
and a half million debts of the prisoners? Negotiations were carried
on from 1837, and in October 1839, doubtless by the advice of the
French Government, Routhier, a barrister, empowered to represent the
creditors, went over to London. On a second visit he was accompanied by
four townsmen, themselves apparently creditors. The memorial drawn up
by them said:--
‘During twelve years’ residence in a town in which they were
debarred the opportunity of procuring aid from their families
and their country,[270] the English prisoners could not but
contract debts and obligations, and they will doubtless
acknowledge that the kindness and generosity of the inhabitants
may have helped them to forget the disasters and misfortunes
of war.... At the moment of the invasion the majority of the
prisoners waited neither for official orders to depart nor
for the conclusion of treaties. They quitted the country with
all the facilities which circumstances naturally afforded. By
depriving the creditors of their pledge, by sending the general
officers, some to India, others to China, in the service of
His Britannic Majesty, and thus rendering it impossible for
the inhabitants of Verdun to sue their debtors, the English
Government made itself responsible for the payment of the debts.
The inhabitants put forward their claim from the outset, and
from the outset notes on the subject were exchanged between
the different Ministers.... If in that list there should prove
to be a single usurious debt, one that cannot be verified by
proper vouchers, let it be immediately rejected.... The number
of prisoners always exceeded 1200, and frequently amounted to
2000.’[271]
The memorial asked for an instalment of 5000 francs ‘to relieve the
most urgent cases of distress’ pending examination of the claims by a
mixed commission.
The _Times_ of October 18, 1839, says:--
‘A deputation from the inhabitants of Verdun in France has just
arrived in London to claim the payment of £140,000, the amount
of private debts incurred by English prisoners detained in that
city during the war. The deputation, composed of MM. Routhier,
Quentin, Leorat, Massé, and Trebout has, we are assured, been
most kindly received by Lord Palmerston, who seems to have
impressed the members of the deputation with the belief that no
time will be lost in submitting the demand of the inhabitants of
Verdun to a mixed commission charged with the liquidation of the
debts. Marshal Soult,[272] we understand, has written personally
to Lord Palmerston to suggest that a part of the nine million
francs (the unappropriated balance of a sum of sixty millions
paid by France in 1815 in liquidation of the claims of British
subjects) ought to be applied in payment to the inhabitants of
Verdun.’
But nothing came of this mission, and we hear of no further attempt
by Verdun to obtain satisfaction. Thus ends the history of these
involuntary guests.
V
TWO RESTORATIONS
The Restoration--Aristocrats and Commoners--Unwelcome
Guests--Wellington in Danger--Misgivings--Napoleonic
Emblems--Spectacles--Visits to Elba--Egerton’s Siege--St.
Helena--Eyewitnesses and Survivors.
While the fall of Napoleon thus enabled numbers of Englishmen to return
home, it allowed and tempted a smaller but yet considerable number to
make or renew acquaintance with France. According to Wansey, there were
four or five hundred of these,[273] scarcely any, however, staying
more than a fortnight or three weeks. The through fare from London was
now £5. The visitors had the interesting spectacle of the restoration
of the Bourbons, while the very few who made a more lengthened stay
witnessed also the Hundred Days’ reign of Napoleon, and his second
and final fall. Never surely in Europe in modern times were more
startling vicissitudes crowded into so brief a period. Even Spain
with its _pronunciamientos_ was not destined to present such a
kaleidoscope. For a parallel we must go forward to the Central American
republics or backward to the time when the pretorians made and unmade
Roman emperors.
These visitors, like those who hurried over in 1802, included all sorts
and conditions of men. There were statesmen like Castlereagh, anxious
to weigh the chances of stability of the reinstated dynasty. He paid
two visits, the first in August 1814 on his way to the Vienna Congress,
the second in February 1815. It was probably on the first visit that
Ney, dining with him and with officers of the allied armies, had the
bad taste or want of tact to argue that an invasion of England, which
he said he had strenuously urged on Napoleon, would certainly have
succeeded. There were subordinate officials like Wellesley Pole, Master
of the Mint and brother to Wellington, and Croker who, as we learn from
the police bulletins, preferred a complaint that American privateers
were still being sheltered at Bordeaux. It was not at this visit but
at a subsequent one in July 1815 that Croker inspected the memorable
scenes of the Revolution, discovered in the possession of Marat’s old
printer Colin a large collection of pamphlets, and was introduced
by him to Marat’s sister, whom he found as repulsive-looking as her
brother. ‘Colin,’ said Croker, ‘had in some small dark rooms up two or
three flights of stairs an immense quantity of brochures of the earlier
days of the Revolution. What he had least of were the works of Marat,
even those which he himself printed, which he accounted for naturally
enough by saying that there were times in which it might be somewhat
hazardous to possess them.’ Croker induced the British Museum in 1817
to purchase the collection, and he afterwards formed a collection
of his own which ultimately had the same destination. There were
politicians like Grey, F. J. Robinson, Fazakerley, Grattan, Whitbread,
and Brougham. Brougham attended the sittings of the Institute, of
which he was afterwards to be an associate, saw Laplace, and had a
long conversation with Carnot. This was his first visit to France, for
his step-grandson Sir Edward Malet is mistaken in stating that he once
heard Mirabeau speak. ‘I never,’ says Brougham, ‘spent any time by half
so delightful. My fortnight passed like a day.’ Are we to attribute to
this visit the birth of an infant afterwards known as Madame Blaze de
Bury, who died in 1894 at the age of eighty, and who in spite of her
alleged birth as a Stewart in Scotland was believed to be Brougham’s
daughter by a French mother? She strongly resembled him both physically
and mentally. Her husband had an English mother named Bury; her
daughter, like herself a writer, died in December 1902.
There was Thelwall, the acquitted Radical of 1794, who had temporarily
renounced politics and taken to the cure of stammering. There was
Arthur Thistlewood, who, it is said, had visited Paris in 1794, and
who soon entered into conspiracies, the last of which, named from
Cato Street, resulted in his conviction and execution in 1820. He was
decidedly an exception among the visitors, yet the Paris air may have
helped to lead him astray, for it was an atmosphere of conspiracy.
There were philosophers and historians such as Sir James Mackintosh,
who was anxious to explore the French archives, taking ten copyists
with him; but these formidable preparations not unnaturally
occasioned obstruction from a suspicious curator, Hauterive,[274]
so that Wellington had to urge that no mischief could result from
the disclosure of political secrets half a century old. Mackintosh’s
son-in-law, Claudius James Rich, the traveller, accompanied him, and
the transcripts then made are now in the British Museum. They are
limited to the times of the Stuarts.
Archibald Alison, the future historian, accompanied by a fellow Scot
and fellow historian, Patrick Fraser Tytler, also went in May 1814,
returning by Flanders. It is not clear from their joint narrative
whether both or Tytler alone went in the autumn to Aix, staying till
the eve of Napoleon’s return.
There were three poets, Rogers, Moore, and Campbell, the last stopping
at Rouen to see his brother Daniel, from whom he had parted at Hamburg
in 1800. Mrs. Siddons took over her daughter Cecily, who did not
continue her mother’s fame, but married a Scottish lawyer, George
Combe. Kemble escorted her, with Mrs. Twiss, whose brother-in-law
Richard had seen Paris in 1792. There was Mrs. Damer, the artist, of
whom we have already heard and shall hear again. There was the more
eminent sculptor Chantrey, who made the acquaintance of Canova. There
was Curran, who had just resigned his judgeship, and Serjeant Best,
not yet a judge. The Duke of Sussex had given Curran an introduction
to the future Charles X. Everything he heard intensified
his hatred of Napoleon.[275] There were military men like General
Ramsay, Bruce, destined to assist in the escape of Lavalette, and
Lord Cathcart, who had taken part in the expedition to Copenhagen and
was subsequently Ambassador to St. Petersburg. Madame Junot, in whose
house Cathcart was quartered, and who speaks highly of his courtesy,
had also to receive Lord and Lady Cole, who sent for Eliza Bathurst.
She was the handsome daughter of the diplomatist who so mysteriously
disappeared. Another military visitor was Colonel William Carmichael
Smyth, who had accompanied his father in 1802; but Count Nugent, though
born in Ireland, was an Austrian officer. The Navy was represented by
Sir Sidney Smith, who was bound for the Congress of Vienna to plead for
the reinstatement of Gustavus IV. on the throne of Sweden. He
also advocated an international expedition against the piratical Dey
of Algiers, of which he would himself have taken the command. Nothing
came of either scheme, but he got up a subscription dinner, attended
by royal and other celebrities, the proceeds of which were devoted to
the redemption of prisoners in Algiers. Science was represented by a
Scottish professor, John (afterwards Sir John) Leslie, an Edinburgh
Reviewer and eminent mathematician, who formed the habit of paying
yearly visits to the Continent. There were philanthropists like
Clarkson, who, as on his visit in 1789, was eager to obtain the consent
of the new French Government to the abolition of the slave-trade,
while Wilberforce and Zachary Macaulay, the historian’s father, were
interesting themselves at home in the same cause, the latter sending
over, or taking advantage of the presence of, his brother General
Macaulay. Clarkson found sympathy from Lafayette, Bishop Grégoire, and
Madame de Staël. The antiquary and connoisseur, James Millingen, passed
through Paris on his way to or from Florence, as also William Stewart
Rose, translator of Ariosto, friend of Ugo Foscolo, Walter Scott, and
the Countess of Albany. He was destined to find a wife at Venice. There
were painters like Stothard, Wilkie, and Haydon, to the last of whom we
are indebted for the liveliest account of Paris, though this, like the
rest of his journal, was not published till after his tragical death.
He represents Wilkie as constantly exclaiming, ‘What a fool Napoleon
was to lose such a country! dear, dear!’ Both Wilkie and Haydon sang
‘God save the King’ in the streets of Rouen, to the amazement or
amusement of the townsmen, one of whom said they were English milords.
In Paris Wilkie tried to sell his prints, and had frequent disputes at
restaurants about change. Another note-taker was Thomas Raikes, brother
of the founder of Sunday-schools, but unfortunately his diary does not
begin till 1832. A third diarist was Henry Crabb Robinson, to whom
street urchins at Dieppe shouted ‘Be off!’ and who in a Rouen theatre
heard a line against England applauded. He spent five weeks in Paris
without a moment’s _ennui_, yet left it without a moment’s regret,
travelling to Boulogne in company with Copleston, ‘a very sensible,
well-informed clergyman,’ just elected Provost of Oriel at Oxford, and
destined to be Bishop of Llandaff. Stephen Weston and William Shepherd
went doubtless with the intention of again reporting their adventures.
William D. Fellowes found material for one of his books, and on another
visit in 1817 he visited the old monastery of La Trappe. There were
agriculturists like Morris Birkbeck of Wanborough. There were doctors
like Hume, chief physician to the army, and Williams the oculist.
Among the aristocratic visitors were Viscount Ponsonby, afterwards
Ambassador to Constantinople and Vienna, and the Duke and Duchess of
Rutland, parents of the present Duke of Rutland, the Duke publishing
his fortnight’s journal and receiving many attentions from Count
Dillon. There were also the Earl of Charlemont, the Earl of Bradford,
Lord Forbes, Lord Lucan, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Kinnaird, Lady
Aldborough (who remained till after Waterloo), the Marquis and
Marchioness of Lansdowne, the Marquis of Downshire, Lord Ilchester,
Lord Hill, the Marquis and Marchioness of Bath, the Earl and Countess
of Hardwicke, Lord and Lady Coventry, the Duke and Duchess of Richmond,
Lord Binning (afterwards Earl of Haddington), Lord Compton, the Marquis
of Exeter, Lord and Lady Ranelagh, the Duke of Portland, Lord Gosford,
Lord Trimleston, the Earl and Countess Darnley, the Duke of Devonshire,
his stepmother, Lord and Lady Morpeth, Lord Geo. Leveson-Gower, Sir
John Sebright, M.P. for Hertfordshire, Lord Sunderland, grandson of
the Duke of Marlborough, Sir John and Lady Stepney, Lady Augusta
Cotton, Lord and Lady Holland, the Earl of Clare, Lord Carington, Lord
Brownlow, Lady Bentinck, the notorious Lady Hamilton, the aged Duchess
of Melfort with her son, the Marquis of Aylesbury, Lord Miltown,
who, paralysed in his legs from childhood, went about in a chair,
William Henry (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, Lord Burghersh (as Earl of
Westmorland he became a diplomatist), Lord Apsley, son and heir of
Earl Bathurst, the Earl of Essex,[276] Sir John and Lady Knatchbull,
Sir W. Clayton, Bagot (afterwards Sir Charles), and the Marquis of
Clanricarde, who married Canning’s daughter, was famous for gymnastic
feats, and was afterwards Ambassador to Russia, Postmaster-General,
and Lord Privy Seal. Edward John Littleton, M.P. for Staffordshire,
a classical scholar, was accompanied by his handsome wife, Hyacinth
Mary, natural daughter of the Marquis Wellesley, but recognised by the
Wellesley family. Lady Priscilla Wellesley, daughter of the Earl of
Mornington, another but legitimate niece of Wellington, just of age
and destined to be Lady Burghersh and Countess of Westmorland, was in
time to see d’Artois enter Paris. She survived till 1879.[277] Lord
Fitzroy Somerset, son of the Duke of Beaufort, in 1852 became Lord
Raglan and was destined to die before Sebastapol. He married in August
1814 Wellington’s other favourite niece, Lady Emily Wellesley. The Earl
of Harrowby was accompanied by Wellesley Pole and Gerald Wellesley,
son of Sir Henry and afterwards Prebendary of Durham. Lord Aberdeen,
Ambassador at Vienna, who had accompanied the Austrian army in its
march into France, was one of the English diplomatists who signed the
Treaty of Paris of May 1814. John William Ward, afterwards Viscount
and Earl of Dudley, a contributor to the _Quarterly_ and M.P. for
Ilchester, was also in Paris on his way to Italy. He rated Napoleon
above Alexander and Cæsar. Ward’s travelling companion from Calais was
General Montagu Mathew, M.P. for Tipperary, brother of the Earl of
Landaff and a strenuous advocate of Catholic Emancipation. Thompson,
M.P. for Midhurst--it is not clear whether he was the ex-M.P. for
Evesham, a captive in 1803--was second on the 9th February 1815 in a
bloodless duel between Colonels Quentin and Palmer, the latter firing
in the air after his antagonist had fired and missed.
We should not omit among the visitors Anne Perry, the wife of James
Perry of the _Morning Chronicle_. Perry himself had spent a year
in Paris in 1792, sending of course letters to his paper, and he may be
regarded as the earliest of Paris correspondents. He had, moreover, for
the previous twelve months obtained the services of a French barrister
named Sanchamau, the translator of several English works. Sanchamau
at first found a seat on sufferance in the Assembly, in the gallery
allotted to the _suppléants_, that is to say, the men destined
to fill up vacancies from death or other causes; but he applied on
the 22nd January 1792 for a permanent seat in the new journalists’
gallery.[278] To return to Perry’s wife, she was captured by Algerian
pirates on her way home from Lisbon, and although soon released,
captivity and seventeen weeks of a boisterous sea aggravated her
already precarious health. She expired at Bordeaux in February 1815, at
the age of thirty-eight. We do not hear whether her husband attended
her deathbed.
Even London shopkeepers went over for a week. John Scott, editor of
the _Champion_, encountered one full of anti-French prejudices,
ignorant of the language, unprovided even with a passport, and equipped
only with Bank of England notes.[279]
To accommodate the visitors, an Anglican service was held in a chapel
of the Protestant Oratoire, probably the upper room which was hired
from about 1860 to 1885 by the Church of Scotland, and _Galignani’s
Messenger_ was started, an edition of which, after Waterloo and
during the stay of the British garrison, was published at Cambrai.
‘The English at that time,’ says Madame de Chastenay, ‘almost did us
the honours of Paris’; that is to say, they seemed hosts rather than
guests, and after the first ball both sexes discarded their eccentric
costumes. Yet they did not find themselves altogether welcome. The
middle classes feared an English monopoly of trade, returned prisoners
told stories of ill-treatment in England, and the populace resented the
arrogance of conquerors. Miss Anne Carter must have been strangely
mistaken in writing to her sister, ‘It is impossible to describe the
enthusiasm with which we are everywhere received as English.’[280]
Thomas Campbell, on the other hand, had been hooted at Dieppe, which
he found incensed against the English, yet he does not speak of any
incivility in Paris, where he danced attendance for nearly two months
on Mrs. Siddons.[281]
A confidential police bulletin of the 17th October 1814 says:--
‘The attention of the police has been called to the multitude
of English who inundate Paris, and whose obscure station
occasions uneasiness as to their destination and intentions.
It is remembered on this point that after the Treaty of Amiens
the French Government made an official complaint that the
London police had vomited (_sic_) six or seven hundred
persons, the scum of England, who secretly influenced trade,
public opinion, and police. We see collected here a number
of disreputable people who appear to be without means of
subsistence, and whose arrival from England seems an enigma.’
Again on the 4th November:--
‘It is positively stated that on Saturday last Lord Wellington
complained to the King of the mortification and ill-treatment
which various Englishmen have experienced and are daily
experiencing in Paris, as well as of the lack of supervision
shown by the French authorities in putting an end to these
dangerous aggressions. It is a fact that at the Café Tortoni,
the Opera, the restaurants, and in other public places,
Englishmen are constantly affronted. These disorders are
attributed to a troop of half-pay officers or to some turbulent
men discharged from the Guard of Honour. It seems certain,
moreover, that Lord Wellington has expressly enjoined the
English who are in Paris to behave very circumspectly, and not
to notice provocations which might disturb the harmony necessary
between the two nations.’
And on 19th December:--
‘Every day there are fresh occasions of remarking the hatred of
the Parisians for the English. Yesterday at the Salon the most
violent language was used respecting them, and that to their
faces.’
In flat contradiction, however, to the police bulletins, Wansey
describes the Parisians as glad to see English visitors once more
amongst them.[282] The British milord was good-naturedly burlesqued,
as Weston tells us, in a farce called _La Route de Paris_. A
provincial innkeeper welcomes milord and miladi. His bad French and her
veil excite amusement. The lord asks for beefsteak for dinner. The lady
is enchanted with everything. The lord cries ‘God dem, vive la paix,’
while the lady remarks that French and English have always been near
enough to shake hands. The landlord rejoices that the lily after twenty
years’ preservation in an English conservatory is as flourishing as
ever. Birkbeck, moreover, testifies to the welcome given to Englishmen
at Montpellier, which he attributed to the kindness shown to French
prisoners in England. Yet Haydon relates that on the performance of
Ducis’ _Hamlet_ at the Comédie Française, the whole pit rose and
applauded a line against England, shouting ‘Bravo, à bas les Anglais,’
and pointing to the English present.
If the French authorities looked askance on English visitors, it is but
fair to say that some of the latter sympathised with Napoleon. Lord and
Lady Holland were doubtless among them, for Lord Holland subsequently
protested against the transportation to St. Helena, and Lady Holland,
as already stated, forwarded books thither to the captive. They were
not likely, when in Paris, to parade their anti-Bourbon sentiments,
but Hervey Montmorency Morris was less scrupulous. He, on the 19th
April 1814, presented his newly born infant at the mairie of the tenth
arrondissement, and gave its name as Napoleon.[283] A young Irishman
named Charles Honoré Lyster, describing himself as a student, a few
months later landed at Toulon from Elba, and the authorities very
naturally ordered him to be watched. Lord Oxford’s papers, moreover,
were seized, and Wellington acknowledged that this was justified by
his conduct and conversation, and by the Bonapartist correspondence of
which he had taken charge.
I have spoken of Wellington, but it should be stated that the Embassy
was at first filled by Sir Charles Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de
Rothesay. He presented his credentials to Louis XVIII. on the
22nd June, but was soon transferred to The Hague. Wellington arrived
with his troops from Spain on the 7th May, but went back to Madrid to
see the Spanish dynasty restored, returned to England to take his seat
in the Lords as Duke, and was then appointed ambassador. He presented
his credentials on the 24th August, but with much greater pomp than
Stuart. Three royal carriages, each drawn by eight horses, escorted
from the Embassy his three carriages, each drawn by six horses. He was
accompanied by Major Fremantle and Major Percy. On reaching the foot
of the throne he made a profound reverence, whereupon the King rose,
then sat down again, putting on his hat and motioning to Wellington and
the princes of the blood to cover also. The crowd murmured at these
honours, though they were also accorded to all the other ambassadors,
while the ultra-royalists professed indignation at the Duke’s fixing
a ball in honour of Queen Charlotte’s birthday for the 18th January
1814, as being a date too close to the 21st, the anniversary of Louis
XVI.’s execution. They were also suspicious of his intimacy
with the Duke of Orleans. He paid a visit to the Abbé Sicard’s deaf
and dumb boys, who were not, however, dumb, for they articulated
‘Vive notre bon roi Louis XVIII.!’ The Duchess of Wellington
was presented by the King with a Sèvres dinner-service. The British
Government was very uneasy lest Wellington should be ‘kidnapped’--an
euphemism for being murdered--in some military rising. Anxious,
therefore, for him to leave, its first idea was to send him to America
to command in the short war with the United States. He himself,
however, wished to remain in Paris, thinking that his departure
would weaken Louis XVIII. A mission to the Vienna Congress
he considered a poor pretext, but the Government persisted, though
allowing him to choose his own time for departure. General Macaulay
meanwhile went back to London with alarming reports. Wellington,
writing to Lord Liverpool on the 23rd October, said:--
‘It appears to me that Macaulay considers the danger of a revolt
more certain and more likely to occur than I do, that is to say,
he believes it certainly will occur within a very short period
of time. I think it may occur any night, but I know of no fact
to induce me to believe it is near, excepting the general one
of great discontent and almost desperation among a very daring
class of men.’
Macaulay feared that the royal family would be massacred and Wellington
‘detained.’ Wellington stayed, however, till the 22nd January.
Meanwhile he was besieged with all sorts of applications. Hervey
Montmorency Morris asked permission to return to Ireland, promising
to be a loyal subject. Wellington demurred, suggesting that in spite
of his good intentions he would fall back into the company of his old
associates through the disinclination of loyalists to associate with
him. Morris accordingly remained in the French army, was naturalised in
November 1816, and remained in France till his death in 1839.
A man designating himself representative of De Beaune, who in 1790
negotiated a loan for the three English royal dukes, also called on
Wellington. He stated that the bondholders were pressing him for
payment of the principal and of the twenty years’ arrears of interest.
Wellington forwarded his documents to London, but nothing more is
heard of the affair. Impey was there again on the same errand as in
1802, and Long, ex-president of the Irish College, went over to seek
restitution; but these claims all stood over till after the Hundred
Days. The Scottish College, however, was restored to its owners, and on
the 13th December Robertson, bishop-coadjutor of Dublin and inventor
of a process of embossing books for the blind, solemnised a _Te
Deum_ there in the presence of numerous British ecclesiastics.
Quintin Craufurd likewise sent in a statement of British claims to
compensation, and he obtained the restitution of eighty pictures,
engravings, and sculptures confiscated in 1792.
Wellington received directions to prevent Princess Caroline from
repairing from Strasburg to Paris, though his own opinion was that she
might safely have been permitted to amuse herself. Louis XVIII., out of
consideration for the Prince Regent, had resolved not to receive her.
She nevertheless in October paid an incognito visit.
But few of the English visitors could have been in time to see the
Tsar, with his sons Constantine and Nicholas, the Emperor of Austria,
and the King of Prussia, with his two sons, one of them the future
William I., destined to re-enter Paris as a conqueror in 1871,
for their stay was very short. The Russian and Prussian sovereigns
went on to England in June, while the Austrian Emperor pleaded Italian
affairs as preventing him from also going. The brilliant uniforms
of their officers, however, continued to enliven the streets of the
capital. Louis had pressed the Prince Regent to come over, telling
him that the three monarchs seconded the invitation, but the Prince,
‘fat, fair, and forty,’ or rather, as Leigh Hunt had been imprisoned
for describing him, ‘an Adonis of fifty,’ probably shrank from the
fatigue of the journey, or possibly he was not too confident of the
stability of the restored dynasty. He made the excuse that a Regency
Act would be necessary if he left his realm, yet his ancestors had paid
visits to Hanover. His subjects were of course eager to be presented at
Court. Shepherd speaks of Louis as ‘uncomfortably corpulent and seemed
very infirm in his feet, but his countenance is extremely pleasing,
and if any reliance is to be placed on physiognomy, he is a man of a
very benevolent disposition.’[284] Shepherd went in clerical costume,
fancying that this would be sufficient, but Stuart telling him the
contrary, he had to hurry off to a tailor to get properly equipped.
Dr. Williams presented the King with portraits of George III.
and the Prince Regent, ‘two princes to whom,’ Louis said, ‘he had vowed
the most faithful remembrance.’ Sir Herbert Croft presented to him
verses addressed to the Duchess of Angoulême. Galignani, who, though
an Italian ex-priest, may be considered an Englishman by marriage
and adoption, presented thirty volumes of his English reprints, his
_Paris Guide_, and his _Modern Spectator_. Street, editor and
part proprietor of the _Courier_, also had an audience, and was
complimented on his journal’s ten years’ advocacy of the cause of the
Bourbons.[285]
Those visitors who were not presented at Court had an opportunity
of seeing the King on his way to chapel. Haydon, who describes him
as ‘keen, fat, and eagle-eyed,’ joined in shouting ‘Vive le roi!’
He remarked that Napoleon’s initials still dotted the vestibule of
the chapel. The Duke of Rutland also remarked that the draperies of
the Tuileries were dotted with bees, and that ‘N’ or an eagle was
visible on all the furniture. This was a perpetual reminder to the
Bourbons of the dethroned ruler. But few of these emblems appear
to have been at first effaced in Paris, lest this should provoke
counter-demonstrations, though provincial authorities displayed more
zeal and less tact. Yet Stephen Weston speaks of thousands of workmen
being employed in removing them, and Birkbeck observed men busily
effacing Napoleon’s name and eagles from public buildings, which he
thought very pitiful, while Scott noticed ingenious attempts to turn
‘N’ into ‘L’ or ‘H’ in honour of Louis XVIII. or Henri IV. He also
speaks of a sign ‘Café de l’Empereur’ being converted into ‘Café des
Empereurs’ in honour of the Russian and Austrian monarchs.
On the 21st January, the anniversary of Louis XVI.’s execution, there
was an imposing procession on the transfer of his and his Queen’s
remains to St. Denis, and requiem masses were celebrated all over
France, the Protestant pastors Monod and Marron also holding services,
albeit the latter had flattered Napoleon. These masses were ordered
to be annual, but were never repeated. There were other spectacles.
There was the proclamation of peace by a herald on the 1st June with
all the revived formalities of the old Monarchy. The spoils of Italian
art, including the Venetian horses, still embellished Paris, though
destined to removal as a punishment for the Hundred Days. Sunday and
festival observance was enforced on shops and factories, by a decree
of the Prefect of Police on the 7th June. The host, for the first time
since the Revolution, was carried through the streets on Corpus Christi
day, all houses on the route having to be draped, and bystanders being
expected, if not required, to uncover as it passed. The streets, says
Haydon, were hung with tapestries, and altars were erected at various
points. It was the first Sunday since the Revolution that shops had
been shut, yet the gaming-tables were open as usual. Parisians did
not fail to remark that these measures were decreed by a notorious
sceptic, Beugnot. When Corpus Christi day came round again on the 25th
May 1815, Napoleon was once more on the throne. On the 29th August the
King paid a State visit to the Hotel de Ville, in honour of which Paris
illuminated. The fountains in the Champs Elysées poured forth wine for
all comers, and comestibles were also gratuitous.[286]
The London newspapers expressed distrust in the stability of the new
government, and doubtless on that account were prohibited admission to
France. English officials seem to have shared this sentiment, for in
July 1814 Admiral Mackenzie, who had brought over the Duc de Berri,
suddenly renounced his intended wintering in the south and recrossed
the Channel. Crabb Robinson remarked that when the King reviewed
the National Guard the cheers were very faint, and that there were
some cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Even the Rev. R. W. Wake, curate of
Maidstone, who, having only a week’s holiday, went no further than
Calais and Boulogne, was struck by the regret with which Napoleon’s
fall was spoken of.[287] Yet some of the visitors descried no troubles
ahead. Wansey, who was in Paris in June, going thither by Dieppe and
returning by Boulogne, says:--
‘That there are many dissatisfied with the new order of things,
particularly among the military, there is no doubt, and we may
expect to hear of partial insurrections and commotions among the
men returned from the wars.... But a Government that employs
men of such talents as those I have mentioned (Talleyrand,
Fouché, Louis, and Montesquiou) will not be easily overturned,
particularly as the leaders of the army are with the Court; and
as to the return of Napoleon, he ran the full length of his
tether. You will hear no more of his rule in France.’[288]
John Scott, however, in the diligence between Dieppe and Paris, heard
an officer with Napoleon’s portrait on his snuff-box say, in reply to
English expressions of satisfaction at the peace, ‘All very well, this
tranquillity of Europe is a fine thing, but will it not keep me always
a captain?’ Another officer, though originally forced away from the
study of medicine into the army, spoke with enthusiasm of Napoleon,
and the mass of the people, while admitting Napoleon’s faults, were in
Scott’s judgment in his favour. ‘Ah but he was a great man!’ was the
common phrase.
Richard Boyle Bernard, M.P., son of the Earl of Bandon, remarked that
Louis XVIII., passing on his way to mass, was repeatedly greeted
with cries of ‘Vive le roi!’ and he believed the most respectable
portion of the nation to be loyal; but the number of discontented
spirits would, he thought, necessitate prolonged vigilance. At Calais
theatre, moreover, on his way back in the autumn, Bernard heard a
passage expressing satisfaction with the peace hissed by the officers
present.[289] He was struck, too, by the dislike felt in France for the
English, which was in striking contrast to their cordial welcome in
Germany.
Ward, who saw Louis XVIII. enter Paris, remarked that the
applause was neither long nor vehement, and that the Bourbons were
received with cold acquiescence.[290]
Eustace, the Catholic priest, likewise gives no hint of another
overturn, yet his visits of 1790 and 1802 should have taught him the
instability of French politics. Moreover, a sentry told him that
the Emperor had in ten years done more to embellish Paris than the
Bourbons in a century, and that had he reigned ten years longer he
would have made it the finest city in the world. Jones, chaplain on
board the _Blenheim_ at anchor off Marseilles, was more excusable
in regarding the fall of Napoleon as definitive, yet the very parallel
which he drew in his 29th May sermon between the English and the French
Restoration might have reminded him that 1660 was reversed by 1688.
Weston, however, was struck not by any feeling in favour of Napoleon,
but by the sarcasms heaped on him; and Shepherd, though he doubted the
allegiance of the army, thought the mass of the people friendly to the
Bourbons. The smallest spark amid so much inflammable matter might,
he knew, produce an extensive conflagration. Some of the numerous
pamphlets on Napoleon which, pending the institution of a censorship,
were freely hawked in the streets, were the work of admirers, and the
Grand Duke Constantine heard Louis XVIII. gravely reply,
when the rest of the royal family had been disparaging Napoleon,
‘Napoleon has done wonders for the glory and welfare of France, and
if I can render her happy it will be by following the documents which
he has left. I should like to have as good a head as he whose chair
I am occupying and whose table is serving me to write at, for I feel
myself inferior to him.’[291] But even pessimists, while apprehending a
revolution, had no fear of Napoleon’s return.
Return however he did, and those Englishmen who had visited him at
Elba cannot have been among the most startled. As early as the 29th
July, less than three months after Napoleon’s arrival in his little
realm, General Spallannchi reported from Florence that some Englishmen
had gone out of curiosity to Elba but had returned in ill-humour, the
fallen monarch having barely allowed them to see him and that only in
his garden. It seems from the statement of Vice-Consul Innes that the
party numbered seven, including one lady, and that after being kept
a long time waiting for an answer the garden interview was assigned
them for the next day. A Warwickshire man who had passed through
Paris and whose letter, intercepted by the Leghorn police, was signed
‘Richard,’ evidently his Christian name, sailed from Leghorn with his
sister on the 24th November, but was told that Napoleon refused to
receive curiosity-mongers. Not easily to be foiled, however, he made a
second voyage and on alighting at an hotel at Porto Ferrajo on the 2nd
December found covers laid for thirty Corsican functionaries in honour
of the anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation in 1804. Such a celebration
did not argue renunciation of empire. On the following day he was
allowed an audience, but nothing having been said about his sister he
had to leave her outside. Napoleon, whom he found standing in a small
room, advanced with an affable air and asked, ‘Where do you come from?’
‘Warwickshire.’
‘I do not remember the name.’
‘It is in the very centre of England.’
‘What is your occupation?’
‘General commerce, but chiefly manufactures.’
‘Do you find much custom in Italy?’
‘Tolerable.’
‘None in France, eh?’
‘None at present, for want of a commercial treaty.’
‘A commercial treaty would suit you?’
‘Certainly, but I do not think we shall get it.’
‘I did your commerce much mischief.’
‘Not so much as was supposed. Our trade found outlets out of Europe
which were very profitable.’
‘The troubles in Spain will open up their colonies to you?’
‘Yes, but at first they will be jealously closed.’
‘Your licence system was bad. It was semi-robbery.’
‘This kind of conversation’ (says Richard), ‘lasted about an
hour, and then turned on France.... He asked me whether I was
in Paris during the Peace of Amiens. “Yes.” “You found it now
much altered?” “Yes, much larger than in 1802.” “It is a fine
city,” he added.... I took the opportunity of reminding him of
my sister, but he took no notice. He then conversed for a few
minutes, making altogether half an hour. On getting up to leave
he asked me to introduce my sister, whom he received with the
greatest affability, keeping up a conversation with her till a
carriage was heard coming, when he bowed and we retired.... He
frequently put his fingers into a small snuff-box, but did not
seem to take much notice of its contents. He asked me whether
I thought the Bourbons were really popular in France. He told
me he had found the heat more trying in Russia in the month of
August than in any other part of Europe, and he explained the
reason. I remarked evident signs of interest and inquisitiveness
when speaking of the Bourbons. He twice asked me whether they
were popular in France and what was said of them, and was not
satisfied with a vague reply.’[292]
Frederick Douglas, M.P., son of Lord Glenbervie, on his way home from
Athens had a courteous reception, which did not however prevent him
from speaking and voting in 1815 for the renewal of the war.
‘Why have you come?’ asked Napoleon.
‘To see a great man.’
‘Rather to see a wild beast,’ rejoined Napoleon, who inquired whether
Douglas had seen Murat or the Pope. The latter, said Napoleon, ‘is an
obstinately resigned old man. I did not treat him properly. I did not
go the right way to work with him.’ As to the state of France, Douglas
reported that there was much enthusiasm for the Bourbons, though there
were a few malcontents. ‘Yes,’ remarked Napoleon, ‘people who belong
to whatever party pays them and make much stir in order to get money.’
Napoleon went on to complain of the treachery of his officers, of the
pamphleteers who styled him a usurper, of his brothers for not having
seconded him, and of the sovereigns who had abandoned him. Douglas
reported that he could no longer mount a horse, and that he had fallen
into profound apathy. Perhaps Napoleon intentionally gave him this
erroneous impression, knowing that he was on his way to Paris, which he
reached in January 1815.[293]
Lord William Bentinck, afterwards Viceroy of India, with a friend were
sumptuously regaled, but we have no record of the conversation, and an
English lady ‘of angelical beauty,’ whom Pons does not name, but who
may have been Lady Jersey, for he says she showed the Emperor continued
sympathy during the St. Helena captivity, was received with marked
favour. When, on her return to London, she saw the Russian and Prussian
sovereigns pass by, she said to the fashionable gathering round her,
‘Those men cannot seem imposing to persons who like me have had a close
view of the Emperor Napoleon.’ Another visitor in September 1814 was
John Barber Scott, of Bungay, Suffolk, ultimately a Fellow of Emmanuel
College, Cambridge, but then a graduate twenty-two years of age, who
was accompanied by Major (Patrick?) Maxwell, R.A., Colonel (afterwards
General) John Lemoine, R. A., Captain Smith, and Colonel Niel Douglas.
They encountered Napoleon as he was out riding, and on their saluting
him he stopped for a few minutes to question them. They thought he
looked more like a crafty priest than a hero. On being told that Scott
was a Cantab he said, ‘What, Cambridge, Cambridge? Oh yes, you are a
young man; you will be a lawyer. Eh, eh, you will be Lord Chancellor?’
Being told by Douglas that he belonged to a Highland regiment, Napoleon
asked whether they did not wear kilts (_jupes_). On Douglas
replying in the affirmative, Napoleon asked whether he had brought his
kilt with him, as he should like to see it, but Douglas was unable to
gratify his curiosity.[294]
Equally short, or even shorter, had been the interview of Sir Gilbert
Starling and a Mr. Campbell.[295]
One visitor said he was as pleased to have spent nine days at Elba
as if he had won £30,000. Napoleon, however, refused audiences to
Englishmen whom he suspected of simple curiosity or of exultation at
his fall.[296] When he went to Longone, the second town in the island,
there were numerous English visitors, and it was remarked to him that
they followed him wherever he went. He replied, ‘I am an object of
curiosity; let them satisfy themselves. They will go home and amuse the
gentlemans (_sic_) by describing my acts and gestures.’ He added
in a sad tone, ‘They have won the game; they hold the dice.’
Yet so far from showing him disrespect, Pons states that these sixty
visitors of all classes vied in extolling him. Pons also acknowledges
that Colonel Campbell, though deputed by his Government to watch
Napoleon, veiled his supervision so carefully that only the closest
observation could detect it.[297]
But the principal visitor, and the only one invited to dinner, was
Lord Ebrington, afterwards Earl of Fortescue and in 1839–1841 Viceroy
of Ireland. He first waited on the Emperor at 8 P.M. on the
6th December, and for three hours walked up and down the room with
him. ‘You come from France; tell me frankly,’ said Napoleon, ‘whether
the French are satisfied.’ ‘Only so-so,’ replied Ebrington. ‘It cannot
be otherwise,’ rejoined Napoleon; ‘they have been too much humiliated
by the peace. The appointment of the Duke of Wellington as Ambassador
must have seemed an insult to the army, as also the special attentions
shown him by the King. If Lord Wellington had come to Paris as a
visitor, I should have had pleasure in showing him the attentions due
to his great ability, but I should not have liked his being sent to me
as Ambassador.’
The justice of this remark is obvious. Napoleon extolled the House of
Lords as the bulwark of the English constitution. He denounced the
duplicity of the Emperor Alexander, expressed esteem for the Austrian
Emperor, and spoke slightingly of the King of Prussia. ‘How should I
be treated,’ he asked Ebrington, ‘if I went to England? Should I be
stoned?’ Ebrington replied that he would run no risk, and that the
irritation formerly existing against him was daily dying out. ‘I think,
however,’ rejoined Napoleon, ‘that there would be some danger from your
mob’--he used the English word--‘at London.’
‘The grace of his smile and the simplicity of his manner,’ says
Ebrington, ‘had put me quite at my ease. He himself appeared to wish
me to question him. He replied without the least hesitation, with a
promptitude and clearness which I have never seen equalled in any other
man.’
Next day, just as Ebrington was preparing to sail, came an invitation
to dinner, and this second interview lasted from seven till eleven.
Napoleon inquired for the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Whitworth,
Erskine, and Holland, and spoke especially of Fox. Informed that Fox
felt much flattered at his reception in 1802, Napoleon said, ‘He had
reason to be so. He was everywhere received like a divinity because
he was known to be in favour of peace.’ ‘Tell Lord Grenville,’ added
Napoleon, ‘to come and see me. I wager that you in England thought me
a devil, but now that you have seen me and France also you must be
somewhat disabused.’ He justified the detentions of 1803. Ebrington,
however, maintained that the embargo on French shipping in British
ports prior to the formal declaration of war was in accordance with
precedent, on which Napoleon replied, ‘Yes, you considered it right
because it was to your advantage; other nations who lost by it thought
it wrong. I am sure that at heart you in England approved me for
showing force of character. Do you not see that I am a bit of a pirate
like yourselves?’
Napoleon half in earnest advocated polygamy, especially in the
colonies, where a planter might have a wife of each colour, so that the
two families might grow up together harmoniously. He inquired for ‘my
good friend Ussher’--Captain, afterwards Sir Thomas Ussher--who had
conveyed him to Elba.
On surprise being expressed by Ebrington at his calm endurance of
adversity, Napoleon said, ‘It is because everybody was more surprised
at it than myself. I have not too good an opinion of mankind, and
have always distrusted fortune. Moreover, I had little enjoyment. My
brothers were much more kings than I was. They tasted the sweets of
royalty, while I had only the worries and cares.’[298]
Lord John Russell, the future statesman, then twenty-three years of
age, being taken by his father to Florence in the autumn of 1814,
embraced the opportunity of visiting Elba. ‘When I saw Napoleon,’ he
says, ‘he was in evident anxiety respecting the state of France and his
chances of again seizing the crown which he had worn for ten years. I
was so struck with his restless inquiry that I expressed in a letter
to my brother in England my conviction that he would make some fresh
attempts to disturb France and govern Europe.’[299]
But by far the most curious incident of Napoleon’s reign at Elba was
his presence at an entertainment in honour of George III.’s
birthday, given on the 4th June 1814 by Captain Tower on board
the frigate _Undaunted_. Napoleon, on reaching Fréjus after
his abdication in April, had embarked in the _Undaunted_ in
preference to a French vessel assigned for his passage to Elba, and
had taken a fancy to the captain, Ussher. The _Undaunted_ went
to and from Elba and Leghorn, and it might have celebrated the royal
birthday at the latter port. Napoleon afterwards thought that Colonel
(ultimately Sir Neil) Campbell purposely planned the celebration at
Elba. When, however, Towers invited him to come on board, and sent
round invitations to the principal inhabitants of Porto Ferrajo, he
readily accepted the invitation, and directed his courtiers, if such a
phrase can be used, to do likewise. One of these, Pons de l’Hérault,
to whom we are indebted for the fullest account of the festival--not
published, however, till 1897[300]--was inclined indeed to regard the
invitation as an insult and the festival as a bravado; but his master
told him that it was the duty of British sailors to observe their
sovereign’s birthday wherever they might happen to be. A ‘throne,’
says Pons, had been prepared for the Emperor on the bridge; and he
continues:--
‘The Emperor arrived, and the ship’s officers received him at
the top of the ladder. Guns could not be fired, as they were
not mounted, but the crew, clustered on the rigging, gave him
three hearty cheers, and the Emperor looking up at them raised
his hat. He then passed to the quarter-deck. There all were
ranged in a circle, and the Emperor, as though quite at home,
his left hand as usual in his fob, put the trivial questions
which he nearly always employed on such occasions, for he did
not bother himself with finding remarks appropriate to each
particular individual. It was not his moment for parade. When
the circle had broken up the Emperor asked for an interpreter
and went to talk to the sailors, especially to a mate with whom
he had several times conversed during his passage from Fréjus
to the isle of Elba. The entire crew seemed eager to see him
again. The countenances of these good fellows expressed the very
contrary of the perversity of their Government. Captain Tower
sincerely admired the Emperor, and watched all his movements
with a gaze full of respect and interest. He had one of those
open countenances which inspire confidence. The Emperor said
to me ... “The English Government will never forgive me for
having been the most determined Frenchman in breaking down its
supremacy. Not that hatred actuated me, it was duty, it was love
of country.[301]
All well-bred Englishmen consequently honour me. If I went to
England the English Government would be afraid of my popularity
and would pack me off.” ... The same cheers accompanied the
Emperor on his departure, and he responded with the same
salute.’[302]
Pons, with his wife and children and the other guests, remained to
the dinner and ball. Unfortunately, two of the ship’s officers drank
a little too much, and so misbehaved themselves as to oblige several
of the ladies to withdraw. It is pathetic to think that Napoleon’s
next and last acquaintance with British tars was when, thirteen months
later, he gave himself up to the _Bellerophon_, and was conveyed
as a captive in the _Northumberland_ to St. Helena.
One Englishman at least was a spectator of Napoleon’s departure from
Elba. A Mr. Grattan (probably the father of Thomas Colley Grattan, the
traveller and novelist) had landed on the island on the 24th February.
On the evening of the 26th he noticed unusual bustle, as though
something was about to happen, and at 9 P.M. he saw Napoleon, escorted
by General Bertrand, come out in his sister Pauline’s four-horse
carriage, enter a boat, and go on board the brig _Inconstant_.
Thereupon the whole flotilla got under way, the soldiers shouting ‘Vive
l’Empereur!’ Scarcely believing his eyes, Grattan hired a boat to go
alongside the brig, and thence he saw Napoleon in his grey overcoat
and round hat pacing the quarter-deck. One of the boatmen, however,
cried out that there was an Englishman on board, upon which an officer
on the poop of the _Inconstant_ demanded who he was and what he
wanted. Grattan had to explain that he had merely come to have a look
at the Emperor, whereupon he was told to be off, and he complied with
alacrity, expecting every instant to be fired at or arrested.[303]
Up to the 20th March the _Moniteur_ had continued publishing loyal
addresses to Louis XVIII., but on the 21st it announced, ‘The
King and the Princes left last night. His Majesty the Emperor arrived
this evening at eight o’clock in his palace of the Tuileries.’ One of
Napoleon’s first inquiries to a lady of his court was whether there
were many English in Paris. On being told that nearly all had left
he exclaimed, ‘Ah, they recollect what I did before, but those times
are past. You do not repeat yourself.’ John Cam Hobhouse, Byron’s
friend, afterwards Lord Broughton, tells us this, and he adds that
the detentions of 1802 were against French feeling and could not
have been repeated in 1815 in defiance of such a feeling. Napoleon,
moreover, may have thought there was a chance of his recognition by
the allies,[304] and the detention of foreigners would have been a
virtual declaration of war. Yet the stampede was obviously prudent,
and the principal Englishman who remained did not escape molestation.
Francis Henry Egerton, as we have seen, had come over to Paris in
1802, and he had apparently continued to reside uninterruptedly, for
he published several works there, both in English and French, between
1812 and 1826. He had hired a house till 1814, but on the restoration
of the Bourbons he purchased the mansion of the Noailles family in
the rue St. Honoré, and to show his sympathy with the new Government
he paid up at once, on the 2nd March 1815, in lieu of by instalments,
the stamp duty of 30,000 francs. This seems to have marked him out for
Napoleon’s resentment. The house with its contents was requisitioned
to serve for a Government office. Egerton resisted, stood a kind of
siege, and appealed to the tribunals. He could not, it is obvious, have
permanently withstood Napoleon, but he seems to have held his ground
until Waterloo arrived and put an end to the affair. He lost no time in
securing legal domicile and civic rights, for in default of the latter
one alien could not bequeath property to another, such property being
forfeit to the French Crown. His support of the Bourbons should have
shielded him from further annoyance, but in 1818 he had an unpleasant
episode. Workmen who were placing flower-pots on the pillars of the
Tuileries gardens found it convenient to fasten ropes to the wall of
his back garden in the rue de Rivoli. Egerton drove out in his carriage
and required them to desist. An altercation ensued, there were cries of
‘Down with the Englishman!’ and he was dragged out of his carriage to
the guardhouse. Though promptly released, he was very punctilious in
exacting an apology for this indignity, threatening otherwise to quit
France. He was very eccentric in his latter years, if we are to believe
that cats and dogs dressed up as human beings sat at his dinner-table,
and that he kept rabbits and partridges in his garden in order to have
shooting on his own premises. He died as Duke of Bridgewater in 1829,
aged seventy-nine, and left £8000 for eight prize treatises which were
named after him. The Hôtel St. James, into which his house has been
converted, contains the original staircase and other relics of the
mansion in which Marie Antoinette welcomed Lafayette and Noailles on
their return from America.
Englishmen who, like Egerton, remained or arrived during the Hundred
Days witnessed curious scenes. Hobhouse in his passport of 1814 had
seen the word _empire_ erased and _royaume_ substituted. He
now found a contrary change made. He saw Napoleon review the National
Guard on the 16th April, and attend the Comédie Française on the
21st, on both which occasions his reception was enthusiastic. He also
witnessed the ceremony on the Champ de Mars, when Napoleon closely
scrutinised the crowd with his eyeglass during the mass on which he
had resolved in order to show that the Empire was not anti-catholic.
Hobhouse, though strenuously opposed to the renewal of the war by the
allies, acknowledges that Napoleon was not popular in Paris except
with the military, and that the cheers were very faint. Yet he courted
popularity by visiting public institutions and by walking about almost
unattended and conversing with people of all classes. He removed on
the 17th April from the Tuileries, where, however, he still held his
councils, to the Elysée, close to the Borghese palace which Wellington
had purchased for the British Embassy. The latter was of course
vacant, for all the ambassadors had followed Louis XVIII. to
Ghent, Fitzroy Somerset assuring him previously to his flight that
England would stand by him. In the absence of ambassadors foreigners
could not of course be formally presented, but Mrs. Damer obtained an
interview to give Napoleon the bust of Fox, which she had promised
him in 1802. The jewelled snuff-box bearing his own portrait which he
gave her in return is now in the British Museum. Up to the 4th May,
if not later, the Calais and Dover mail-packets continued to run, and
took many French passengers. When Corpus Christi festival arrived the
processions, as from the Revolution till 1813 and as ever since, were
confined in Paris to the churches or their enclosures.
Napoleon affected liberal views, not only by summoning Benjamin
Constant to his councils, but by inviting to return to Paris his friend
Madame de Staël, who had not joined in the exultation at his fall,
and indeed had sent him warning to Elba, through his brother Joseph,
of a plot against his life. She did not accept the invitation, but
wrote to Quintin Craufurd a letter intended for transmission to the
English Government, in which she affirmed the sincerity of his liberal
professions. Yet she might justly have distrusted these.
Among the Frenchmen who fled to England was one whose Irish extraction
entitles him to mention. Jean Baptiste Lynch, whose Jacobite ancestors
had settled at Bordeaux, was imprisoned during the Revolution. In 1808
Napoleon made him Mayor of Bordeaux, and in 1810 created him a Count.
Lynch was lavish in his professions of fidelity to the Empire, but in
1813 he had secret dealings with a royalist emissary, and in 1814, on
the approach of Wellington’s army, he proclaimed Louis XVIII.
at Bordeaux. He was the first man in France to do this, and he also
sent a deputation to Louis in England. On hearing of Napoleon’s return
from Elba and unopposed march on Paris, he despatched the Duchess of
Angoulême to England to be out of his reach, and he himself followed
her. He was at Newcastle on a visit to a relative when news of Waterloo
arrived, and he was cheered by the populace.[305] Louis, who in 1814
had awarded him the grand cross of the Legion of Honour, thus giving
him a Napoleonic decoration for deserting Napoleon, made him a peer. In
a letter written to a Bordeaux editor in 1816 Lynch urged the justice
of Catholic emancipation, but deprecated Irish independence, and
expressed a wish to go and deliver loyalist speeches in Ireland, that
he might render service to his ancestral as he had done to his native
country.
No foreigners applied during the Hundred Days for domicile or
naturalisation, whereas previously Philip Dormer Stanhope had obtained
domicile,[306] as also James George Hartley, a law student, and
naturalisation had been accorded to two Irish officers in the French
service--Julius Terence O’Reilly and William Corbett.
On the 12th June Napoleon left for the frontier, and a period of
suspense followed. Hobhouse started on the following day for Geneva,
but found he could not pass through the armies, and accordingly
returned to Paris on the 28th. ‘I cannot help wishing,’ he says in his
letters to Byron, which the _Quarterly_ characterised as ‘infamous
libels on the English name and character,’ ‘that the French may meet
with as much success as will not compromise the military character of
my own countrymen; but as an Englishman I cannot be witness of their
triumph; as a lover of liberty I would not be a spectator of their
reverses.’ This was an utterance published after the event. Perhaps
Hobhouse at the time, like Byron, was nevertheless sorry to hear of
Waterloo. He seems to have quitted Paris before the re-entry of Louis
XVIII., but British residents like Helen Williams, Croft,
Craufurd, and Egerton, witnessing the first fall of Napoleon, the
accession of Louis, his flight, the arrival of Napoleon, his return
from Waterloo, and the re-accession of Louis, beheld in the short space
of fourteen months a series of vicissitudes unexampled in human annals.
No Englishman who saw Napoleon in Paris after Waterloo, if any such
there were, has left any record of it. It is obvious, indeed, that
the few Englishmen then in Paris would shun observation during those
days of suspense. An Englishwoman, daughter of one of the officers
detained in 1803 and herself born in captivity, may, however, have then
seen him. In any case her husband, Legouvé, the Academician who died
in March 1903, at the age of ninety-four, was in all probability the
last survivor of those who had seen Napoleon in Paris, for he was six
years of age in 1815. The last survivor who had mixed in his society
at St. Helena was Madame Hortense Eugénie Thayer, daughter of General
Bertrand by Henrietta, daughter of General Arthur Dillon. This was one
of Napoleon’s compulsory marriages, but Bertrand succeeded in gaining
his unwilling bride’s affection. Hortense, born at Paris in 1810, was
presented by Napoleon at St. Helena with a pair of earrings, and he
witnessed the boring of her ears for this purpose, complimenting her on
her composure during the operation. She married Amédée Thayer, a French
Senator under the Second Empire, of American extraction. Dying in 1890,
she bequeathed to Prince Victor Bonaparte a red damask coat presented
to her by Napoleon for a spencer to be made out of it, but preserved
intact, together with other relics. We do not hear what became of the
earrings. Her mother gave Napoleon lessons in English at St. Helena,
and I subjoin a short article on this subject published by me in the
_Atlantic Monthly_, November 1895:--
A recent exhibition of Napoleonic relics in Paris comprised,
among numerous specimens of handwriting--one of them the draft
abdication of Fontainebleau, another the draft ‘Themistocles’
letter to the Prince Regent--a lesson in translating French
into English. Pitying Napoleon as we must, though conscious
that captivity alone secured France and Europe against another
Hundred Days, his attempt to learn English is irresistibly
pathetic. We are reminded of Ovid learning to speak, and even
to versify, in Dacian, but Napoleon does not seem to have
mastered English sufficiently to be able to write in prose
without numerous mistakes. He had been acquainted from his
youth, by translations, with several English authors. He was
fond of Ossian, and a collection of thirty-four books, given
him by his sister Pauline to take with him to Egypt, included
Bacon’s Essays, in which he marked in pencil two passages:
one in the chapter Of Great Place, from the third sentence,
‘It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty,’
to the sentence preceding the lines from Seneca; the other in
the chapter Of Kingdoms and Estates, from ‘triumph amongst
the Romans’ to the end. Patronised by the younger Robespierre
and by Barras, he had already exemplified the saying, ‘By
indignities men come to dignities’; and he was destined also,
like Bacon himself, to find that ‘the standing is slipping, and
the regression is either a downfall or at least an eclipse.’ He
never, apparently, saw acted even an adaptation of Shakespeare,
yet on the eve of the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens he
surprised his Council of State by diverging from a coinage
question into a tirade against both Shakespeare and Milton.
Too busy, even if inclined, to study English, he would, had he
invaded England in 1803 and commissioned Sir Francis Burdett
to organise a republic, have taken with him one hundred and
seventeen interpreter guides, in red coats and white trousers--a
corps which he expected to recruit from Irish and other
refugees. One of these refugees, the notorious Lewis Goldsmith,
read the London newspapers for him. But Napoleon was not fated
to get nearer to English soil than William III.’s
landing-place, Torbay.
Captivity afforded him the requisite leisure and also a strong
inducement, for he was anxious, not to acquaint himself with
English literature, but to see what was said of himself in the
English press. Accordingly, on the six weeks’ voyage to St.
Helena, he took two lessons from Las Cases, who, when himself an
exile, had taught French and learned English in London. It seems
likely that he had acquired just a smattering before Waterloo,
if not before Elba; for while waiting at Balcombe House till
Longwood was ready for him, he occasionally spoke English
(desiring her to correct his mistakes) to the lively Betsy
Balcombe, that _enfant terrible_ who coolly questioned
him not only as to his supposed atheism, but as to the ‘happy
dispatch’ of the wounded French at Jaffa and as to the execution
of the Duc d’Enghien. He sent, moreover, for some English books,
one of them an edition of Æsop, and, pointing to the picture
of the ass kicking the sick lion, he remarked in English, ‘It
is me (_sic_) and your governor’ (Sir Hudson Lowe). His
accent then, and probably to the last, was very peculiar, and
he usually talked and joked with Betsy in French, though her
French was not of the best. He got her to translate to him Dr.
Warden’s account of the voyage of the _Northumberland_.
Though addicted to teasing, he had so won her affection that
she shed many tears on quitting the island, where, according
to a recent French visitor, the recollections of Napoleon have
been effaced by a wild-beast show, a visitor quite as rare as an
imperial captive. When settled at Longwood, Napoleon resolved
on seriously renewing the study. Las Cases gave him a daily
lesson; sometimes finding him a diligent scholar, at other
times so inattentive that Napoleon would himself laughingly
ask his teacher whether he did not deserve the rod, regarded
by him as an essential adjunct to education. He even wrote
several letters in English to Las Cases, but the irregular verbs
overtaxed his patience. He managed, however, to read after a
fashion, and, according to Las Cases, might at a push have made
himself understood in writing; but it does not appear that
the lessons went on more than a few weeks. They had probably
ceased long before December 1816, when Las Cases had to quit the
island. A scrap of paper, presented by him to a friend, and also
included in the exhibition, is the only trace of these lessons.
We read on it, in his pupil’s handwriting: ‘Gone out, _aller
dehors_, _sortir_. Opened, _ouvert_. To see,
_voire_ (_sic_), _regarder_.’
Napoleon’s next professor, after how long an interval we cannot
tell, was Countess Bertrand, daughter of General Arthur Dillon
by Anne Laure Girardin, cousin to the Empress Josephine. She had
never even visited England, but her father, guillotined when
she was eight years of age, had probably taught her his native
tongue. Napoleon, disposing of rich heiresses with Oriental
despotism, had required her to marry Bertrand, one of his
generals; and though the poor girl was at first in despair and
refused to see her suitor, she speedily became attached to him,
and they lived happily ever after. One of their children, named
Arthur, not, as one of the St. Helena narratives states, after
the Duke of Wellington, but after the grandfather--was born on
the island in January 1817, and archly introduced by the mother
to Napoleon as ‘the first Frenchman who had entered Longwood
without a pass from Sir Hudson Lowe.’ She was extremely fond
of society, and though, with her husband, she had accompanied
the Emperor to Elba, she was so averse to St. Helena that she
stormed at Napoleon for involving Bertrand and his family in his
banishment, and even tried to throw herself overboard. This,
unlike some of her other antipathies, she never overcame, and
at the time of Napoleon’s death she was arranging for a return
to France, on the plea of getting her children educated. One
of those children, whose ears were bored in Napoleon’s presence
that he might present her with earrings, survived, as Madame
Thayer, widow of one of Napoleon III.’s senators, till
1890. Madame Bertrand, apparently, gave a specimen of Napoleon’s
lessons to Madame Junot, whose granddaughter, Madame de la
Ferrière, lent it to the recent exhibition. A sheet of letter
paper, yellow with age, contains alternate lines of French and
English; but it will be more convenient to give first the theme,
and then the translation, which has never yet been published.
The italics in brackets indicate the erasures.
‘Quand serez-vous sage?
‘Quand je ne serai plus dans cette île. Mais je le deviendrai
après avoir passé la ligne.
‘Lorsque je débarquerai en france, je serai très content. Ma
femme viendra près de moi, mon fils sera grand et fort, il
pourra boire sa bouteille de vin à dîner, je trinquerai avec
lui. Ma mère sera vieille, mes sœurs seront laides, ce qui ne
leur sera pas agréable, elles seront _toujours_ coquettes,
car les femmes se croient toujours jolies.’
‘When will you be wise?
‘Never [_then that_] as long as I [_should_] could
be in this isle, but I shall become vise after [_have_]
having passed the line. When I shall [_landed_] land in
france I shall be very content. Mi [_wive_] wife shall
come [_after_, _bef_-] near me. Mi son shall be great
and [_fort_] strong. He [_shall get_] will be able to
take his bottle of wine at dinner. I shall trink with him. Mi
mother shall be olde, mi sisters shall ... for the women believe
they....’
The pronoun _I_ is uniformly written _j_. The
corrections are mostly inserted above the line, but some are
a continuation of the line, showing that the translation was
written in Madame Bertrand’s presence. The first sentence, it
is evident, had been playfully uttered by her on account of
Napoleon’s teasing her for being boisterously gay; for it is
the question addressed to obstreperous or fretful children,
and Napoleon himself used to say to Betsy Balcombe, ‘Quand
seras-tu sage?’ _Sage_ does not here mean wise, but good
or well behaved. Madame Bertrand passed over this and some
other obvious blunders, either because her own English was
defective, or because she would not discourage her pupil by too
many corrections. At one corner of the sheet is a rude drawing
of a ship, the imaginary ship in which Napoleon was to return
to France, and in another corner is a sketch apparently meant
for a line of muskets extended for firing. There are also the
words, ‘Qui vous a apporté cette lettre? (Who has brought you
this letter?) The writing is small and cramped, but fairly
legible; much more so than other specimens at the exhibition,
such as the audit of Napoleon’s accounts. The allegation that he
wrote a scrawl to conceal his bad spelling seems far-fetched.
Like many people, he had a hasty scrawl for drafts, which he was
sometimes himself unable to decipher, and a plainer hand for his
correspondents.
To quote from Manzoni’s famous ode:--
‘He vanished, in a narrow isle
His vacant days to keep,
Object of boundless envy once,
Now of compassion deep,
Of inextinguishable ire
And of unconquered love.’
There still survive two English witnesses of Napoleon’s funeral, for
_Public Opinion_ of the 28th March 1903 contained a letter from
Mr. G. B. Bennett of Cape Town, who states that he was born at St.
Helena on the 30th November 1816, that he attended the funeral, and
that his sister, three and a half months old, was also present in her
nurse’s arms.
The daughter of Sir Hudson Lowe, born at St. Helena in 1818, is also
still living, unmarried, at Balham, near London. Considering, however,
the strained relations between her father and Napoleon, she is scarcely
likely, in her nurse’s arms, to have seen the caged lion.
* * * * *
_PS._--Miss Clara Lowe died at Tooting on the 7th May 1904.
APPENDIX
_A_ (see p. 34)
MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT
_Asterisks indicate members not re-elected in 1802, and italics
new members._
Acheson, Arch., Armagh.
Adair, Robert, Camelford.
_Barclay, Sir Robert_, Newton, Hants.
Baring, Sir F., Chipping Wycombe.
*Benfield, Paul, Shaftesbury.
_Best, Wm. Draper_, Petersfield.
*Bird, Wm. Wilberforce, Coventry.
*Boyd, Walter, Shaftesbury.
Brodrick, Wm., Whitchurch.
Burdett, Sir F., Middlesex.
Cavendish, Lord G. A. H., Derbyshire.
*Chambers, (Sir) Geo., Honiton.
*Clarke, Edward, Wootton Basset.
*Clifden, Viscount, Heytesbury.
_Cockerell_, (_Sir_) _Chas._, Tregony.
Combe, Alderman H., London.
_Cowper, Edward Spencer_, Hertford.
_Cust, John_, Clitheroe.
Dalkeith, Lord, Ludgershall.
*Dallas, Sir Geo., Newport, I.W.
Dillon, Augustus, Mayo.
_Douglas, Marquis of_, Lancaster.
Egerton, Wm., Cheshire.
Ellis, Chas. Rose, Seaford.
Erskine, Thos., Portsmouth.
_Fitzgerald, Lord Rt._, Kildare.
Fitzpatrick, General, Tavistock.
Foster, Jno. Leslie, Louth.
Fox, Chas. Jas., Westminster.
_Francis_, (_Sir_) _Philip_, Appleby.
Frankland, Wm., Thirsk.
Garland, George, Poole.
Gower, Lord Granville Leveson, Staffordshire.
Graham, Sir Jas., Ripon.
_Graham, Jas._, Cockermouth.
_Green, Wm._, Dungarvan.
_Hamilton, Lord Arch._, Lanark.
*Hare, James, Knaresborough.
Hinchingbrook, Lord, Hunts.
Huntingfield, Lord, Dunwich.
Jekyll, Joseph, Calne.
Johnstone, Geo., Heydon.
_Kinnaird, Chas._, Leominster.
Knox, Hon. Geo., Dungannon.
Lascelles, Edward, Northallerton.
_Loftus, Earl_, Wexford.
Long, Charles, Wendover.
Lovaine, Lord, Beeralston.
_Mackenzie-Fraser, Gen. Alex._, Cromarty.
*Macpherson, Sir John, Horsham.
Mathew, Viscount, Tipperary.
Montagu, Lord Fred., Hunts.
Morgan, Sir Chas., Brecon.
Morpeth, Viscount, Morpeth.
*Morshead, Sir John, Bodmin.
*Nicholl, John, Tregony.
Paget, Hon. Edw., Carnarvon.
*Parnell, Henry, Maryborough.
Pelham, Hon. Chas., Grimsby.
_Petty, Lord Henry_, Calne.
*Pollen, Col. G. A., Leominster.
*Pringle, Mark, Selkirk.
*Robson, Richard B., Okehampton.
St. John, St. Andrew, Beds.
_Scott, Hon. Jno._, Boroughbridge.
_Smith, John Spencer_, Dover.
Smith, William, Norwich.
Spencer, Lord Robert, Tavistock.
*Sturt, Charles, Bridport.
Thellusson, Chas., Evesham.
Thellusson, Peter Isaac, Castle Rising.
*Thompson, Thos., Evesham.
Tierney, George, Southwark.
*Tufton, Henry, Rochester.
*Turner, Sir Gregory, Thirsk.
Tyrwhitt, Thos., Portarlington.
Villiers, Jno. Chas., Dartmouth.
*Walhope, Hon. Coulson, Andover.
*Wallace, (Sir) Thomas, Penrhyn.
*Waller, John, Limerick.
*Wyndham, Chas., Shoreham.
Yarmouth, Earl of, Lisburn.
_B_ (see p. 51)
PEERS
_An asterisk indicates that the wife accompanied her husband._
_Dukes_--Bedford, Cumberland (Duchess), Gordon (Duchess),
Newcastle (and Dowager-Duchess), *Somerset.
_Marquises_--Bute,[307] *Donegal, *Tweeddale.
_Earls_--Aberdeen, *Bessborough, *Beverley, Buckinghamshire,
Cadogan (see p. 54), Caledon, Camelford, *Carhampton, Cavan,
*Cholmondeley, Clarendon, *Conyngham, Cowper, Dysart (Countess),
Egremont, *Elgin, *Fife, Fitzwilliam, Granard (Countess), *Guilford,
*Kenmare, Kingston (Countess), Lanesborough (Countess), Lauderdale,
Longford, Mexborough (Countess), Minto, Mount Cashell, *Mount
Edgecumbe, *Oxford, Pembroke, Pomfret, Sefton, Shaftesbury,
*Shrewsbury, Winchilsea, Yarborough.
_Viscounts_--Annesley (Viscountess), Barrington, Castlemaine,
Falkland, Gosford, Maynard (Viscountess), Monck, Strangford.
_Barons_--Blayney, Boringdon, *Bradford, *Cahir, Carington
(Baroness), Cloncurry, Coleraine, Crofton (Baroness), Grantham,
*Holland, Hutchinson, Longford, *Montfort, Northwick, *Say and Sele,
Stawell, *Whitworth.
_Eldest sons or other successors of Peers_--General George
Abercromby (son of Baroness Abercromby), William Annesley (Earl of
Annesley), Archibald Acheson (Viscount Gosford), Viscount Althorp
(Earl Spencer), Lord Charles Beaulieu (Earl of Beaulieu), Viscount
Boyle (Earl of Glasgow), Viscount Brooke (Earl of Warwick), Lord John
Campbell (Duke of Argyll), John Somers Cocks (Lord Somers), Earl of
Dalkeith (Duke of Buccleuch), John De Blaquiere (Lord De Blaquiere),
Augustus Dillon (Viscount Dillon), Marquis of Douglas (Duke of
Hamilton), Lord Duncannon (Earl of Bessborough), Sampson Eardley
(Lord Eardley), Francis Henry Egerton (Earl of Bridgewater), Viscount
Fincastle (Earl of Dunmore), Admiral Garlies (Earl of Galloway), Lord
Gustavus Hamilton (Viscount Boyne), Viscount Hinchingbrook (Earl
of Sandwich), John Hely Hutchinson (Earl of Donoughmore), Charles
Kinnaird (Lord Kinnaird), Edward Lascelles (predeceased the Earl of
Harewood), Viscount Loftus (Marquis of Ely), Lord Lovaine (Earl of
Beverley), Viscount Maitland (Earl of Lauderdale), Viscount Mathew
(Earl of Landaff), Colonel W. J. Molesworth (Viscount Molesworth),
Viscount Morpeth (Earl of Carlisle), Viscount Ossulston (Earl of
Tankerville), Charles Pelham (Lord Yarborough), Viscount Petersham[308]
(Earl of Harrington), Lord Henry Petty (Marquis of Lansdowne), Dudley
Ryder (Viscount Sandon, afterwards Earl of Harrowby), St. Andrew St.
John (Lord St. John), John Scott (predeceased the Earl of Eldon),
Admiral Tollemache (Countess of Dysart), John Hampden Trevor (Viscount
Hampden), Charles Tufton (Earl of Thanet), Colonel John Vesey (Viscount
de Vesci), John Charles Villiers (Earl of Clarendon) and Earl of
Yarmouth (Marquis of Hertford). Several of these have been mentioned
among actual or prospective M.P.’s. There was also Lady Ancrum,
daughter-in-law of the Marquis of Lothian.
_C_ (see p. 300)
LORD JOHN RUSSELL AT ELBA
I have been favoured by the Hon. Rollo Russell with a copy, and
permission to publish it, of the letter addressed in 1868 by his
father, Earl Russell, to the eminent Belgian statesman, M. Van de
Weyer. A few copies were then printed for private distribution.
PEMBROKE LODGE: _Nov. 28, 1868_.
MY DEAR VAN DE WEYER,
You wish to have some account of my visit to the First Napoleon
at Elba.
It is long since I paid that visit, and I can give you only
glimmering recollections.
I was at Florence in December 1814, with my father and his
family.
I wished very much to see Napoleon; some of my friends had been
to Elba; a cousin of mine by marriage, Mr. Whitmore, was going
there.
I was told that the season was bad, and that I should do well to
put off my journey till the spring. But I determined to go then.
Colonel Campbell, the Commissioner of the British Government,
was usually resident at Florence; he was then returning to Elba,
and a brig-of-war had been placed at his disposal. I was glad to
take advantage of the opportunity. He told us on the way that
Napoleon had sate up late at night, revising the list of the
Municipal Council of Porto Ferrajo for the ensuing year. Colonel
Campbell seemed to consider this circumstance a proof that the
deposed Emperor could be as busy upon a trifling affair as on
the destinies of Europe. But no doubt Napoleon wished to have a
municipality on whom he could rely in case of need.
The first person Whitmore and I saw at Porto Ferrajo was General
Bertrand, and he introduced us to his wife, a Dillon by birth.
In conversation with General Bertrand, he asked us the meaning
of a paragraph in the _Courier_ newspaper, sent him by
Colonel Campbell, to the effect that the Congress of Vienna had
it in contemplation to send the Emperor to St. Helena. We had
not seen the paragraph, and could not account for it. I have
never referred to the _Courier_ newspaper of that period
to ascertain its wording, or guess at its origin. But it had
evidently made a great impression on General Bertrand.
In the evening of that day, about eight o’clock, I went to the
house at the top of the town where Napoleon resided. He received
me in his drawing-room. He was dressed in uniform--a green coat,
single-breasted, white breeches, and silk stockings. I was much
struck with his countenance--eyes of a muddy colour and cunning
expression; the fine features which we all know in his bust and
on his coins; and, lastly, a most agreeable and winning smile.
He was very courteous in his manner. I was with him for a long
time--I think an hour and a half. He stood the whole time, only
sometimes leaning on the chimney-piece.
What struck me most in his conversation was a certain uneasiness
about his position--a suspicion that something serious was about
to happen to him, and he seemed to have a desire to entrap me
into giving him information which I was neither able nor willing
to afford. With this view, as I supposed, he asked me a number
of questions of little interest to him--such as, whether I was
in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, whether my father
had kept up much state as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and
whether the Lady-Lieutenant had any _dame d’honneur_ in her
suite? When I replied that she had only a young lady, who was
her cousin, in the house with her, he remarked, ‘_C’était une
dame de compagnie, pas une dame d’honneur_.’ These questions
he would intersperse with eager enquiries respecting the state
of France; and when I replied that I had not come through
France, but by sea from Portugal, he would not let me off, but
asked me what Lord Holland, whom I had seen at Florence, thought
of French opinion--enquiring, with much emphasis, ‘_L’armée
est-elle contente?_’
He spoke also of Italy; and when I said that Italy had no union,
and therefore would probably remain quiet, he said, ‘_C’est
vrai_.’ I told him that I had heard everywhere, that during
his reign the robberies and pillage, which had been so common
before, had almost ceased; he said quickly, ‘_C’était la
gendarmerie_.’
He seemed alarmed regarding his own safety, asking me, more than
once, whether our Minister at Florence was a man to be trusted;
whether fearing that he might be carried off by force, or
wishing to obtain some assurance of safety and protection from
Lord Burghersh, the British Minister, I cannot tell. I told him
that Lord Burghersh had been attached, as a military officer, to
one of the allied armies which had invaded France; but of this
he seemed to know nothing.
It was evident to me that the paragraph in the _Courier_,
which had been mentioned to me by General Bertrand, had been
shown to Napoleon, and had produced a great impression upon
him. He seemed to me to be meditating some enterprise, and yet
very doubtful whether he should undertake it. When we heard
afterwards of his expedition from Elba, the Count de Mosbourg,
a minister of Murat, was asked what could have induced Napoleon
to run so great a hazard; ‘_Un peu d’espoir et beaucoup de
désespoir_,’ was his reply. Such appeared to me to be, when I
saw him, the state of his mind; and when I got to Rome, I wrote
to my brother, Lord Tavistock, that I was sure Napoleon was
thinking of some fresh attempt.
Napoleon seemed very curious on the subject of the Duke of
Wellington. He said it was a great mistake in the English
Government to send him Ambassador to Paris. ‘_On n’aime pas
voir un homme par qui on a été battu_.’ He had never sent as
Ambassador to Vienna a man who had entered Vienna as an officer
of the French invading army. (Count Lebzeltern, the Austrian
Ambassador at Rome, denied the truth of this assertion.) As
I had seen a good deal of the Duke of Wellington in Spain,
Napoleon asked me what were likely to be his occupations. I
answered that during his campaigns the Duke had been so much
absorbed by his attention to the war that I did not well
understand how he could give his mind to other subjects. He
remarked, rather sharply, as if he thought I was inclined to
think lightly of military talents, ‘_Eh bien, c’est un grand
jeu, belle occupation!_’ He spoke at some length of his
plans respecting Spain. He would have divided the large landed
properties in the hands of the grandees, of the monasteries,
and of the clergy. He would have introduced into Spain the
enlightened principles of religious toleration and facilitated
commercial intercourse in the interior, etc.
I said that I thought Spain was not ready for such changes,
and that the Spanish people would resist them. ‘_Ils
succomberaient_,’ he said, and then the subject dropped.
He asked me whether I knew anything of what was passing at the
Congress of Vienna. I said, ‘Nothing.’ He said he expected that
each Power would have confirmed to it by treaty the territories
which its forces occupied. In respect to the three great
military Powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, this prediction
was nearly verified. Mr. Pitt, however, had intended, in 1805,
to give Belgium to Prussia; Lord Castlereagh gave it to the
Netherlands.
Napoleon spoke of Lord Ebrington, whom he had recently seen,
and said he was ‘_un homme fort instruit; du moins, il m’a
paru un homme fort instruit_.’ It struck me afterwards that
while he had spoken to Lord Ebrington of great events of his
past life--of Jaffa, of the execution of the Duc d’Enghien,
and other acts on which the world had passed its judgment--he
spoke to me almost entirely of the existing aspect of affairs.
His past history had ceased to be his main object, and his mind
was busy with the present and the future. He said, ‘You must be
very well satisfied, you English, to have finished the war so
successfully.’ I answered, ‘Yes, Sire, especially as at one time
we thought ourselves in great danger.’
He burst out laughing, ‘_Ha! ha! ha! C’était le système
continental, eh?_’
I said, ‘Yes, Sire; but as that system did not ruin us, it did
us a great deal of good. For men are much governed by their
physical wants.’
The interview ended soon after this. The next morning I was
told that a horse from the Emperor’s stable was at my disposal,
and I rode to a villa which he was constructing for his summer
occupation.
The day after I embarked, in the gun-brig in which I had come,
for Civita Vecchia.
I remain, my dear Van de Weyer,
Yours truly,
RUSSELL.
Lord J. Russell in his diary, wrote of Napoleon:--
‘His manner is very good-natured, and seems studied to put
one at one’s ease by its familiarity; his smile and laugh are
very agreeable; he asks a number of questions without object,
and often repeats them, a habit which he has no doubt acquired
during fifteen years of supreme command. To this I should also
attribute the ignorance he seems to show at times of the most
common facts. When anything that he likes is said, he puts his
head forward and listens with great pleasure ... but when he
does not like what he hears, he turns away as if unconcerned,
and changes the subject. From this one might conclude that he
was open to flattery and violent in his temper.’
Sir Spencer Walpole in his _Life of Lord J. Russell_, adds:--
Lord John was with him [Napoleon] an hour and a half, conversing
on many subjects--the Russell family, Lord John’s own allowance
from the Duke, the state of Spain and Italy, the character
of the Duke of Wellington, and the arrangements likely to be
made at Vienna for the pacification of Europe. He used to say
in his old age, that as the Emperor became interested in his
conversation, he fell into the singular habit which he had
acquired, and pulled him by the ear.
INDEX OF NAMES
(_Members of a family are mostly indexed together_.)
Abbot, Speaker, 20, 132, 139, 161.
Abdy, W., 65.
Abercromby, 56, 60, 65, 219, 279, 318.
Aberdeen, Lord, 51, 54, 164, 317.
Abrantès. _See_ Junot.
Acheson. _See_ Gosford.
Adair, Sir R., 29, 34, 240, 316.
Adderley, 118.
Addington, Hy., 170, 174.
Adelaide, Queen, 118.
Albany, Countess, 254, 276.
Aldborough, Lady, 277.
Alderson, Dr., 209.
Alexander I., 156, 286, 298.
Alfieri, F., 254.
Alison, Sir A., 274.
Allen, John, 114.
Althorp, Lord, 48, 51, 99, 318.
Ambert, Dr. Antoine, 80.
Ancrum, Lady, 236, 318.
Anderson, James, 115.
Andreossi, General, 86, 175.
Anglesey. _See_ Paget.
Angoulême, Duchess, 287, 307.
Annesley, 13, 61, 130, 196, 209, 235, 261, 318.
Anspach, Margrave, 239.
Antraigues, Comte d’, 6, 75.
Apreece, S. A., 65, 118.
Apsley. _See_ Bathurst.
Arago, F., 256.
Arblay. _See_ Burney.
Archer, Jno., 258.
Armstrong, Dr., 265.
---- Sergeant, 16.
Arnim, A., 159.
Artois. _See_ Charles X.
Ashburton. _See_ Baring.
Ashley, 150.
---- Lady M. A., 43.
Ashworth, Sir C., 65.
Astley, Philip, 99, 212.
Atkinson. T. W., 235.
Atkyns, Mrs., 94.
Aufrere, A., 114.
Aulard, F. A., 76.
Aumale, Mme. d’, 233.
Auvergne, V. d’, 71.
Aylesbury, Lord, 278.
Aylmer, Gerald, 56, 257.
Aytoun, 245.
Babeau, A., 101.
Bacon, Lord, 310.
Badams, Dr., 101.
Badger, L. and P., 81.
Baggesen, J., 157.
Bagration, General, 67.
Baird, Dr., 209.
Balcombe, Betsy, 311, 314.
Baldwin, S., 149.
Bance, A., 215.
Bandon, Lord, 291.
Banks, Sir J., 85–87, 169, 224, 252.
---- J. C., 14, 243.
Bannatyne, Captain, 201.
Barbauld, Mrs., 89.
Barclay, Sir R., 17, 34, 316.
Barillon, Marquis, 29.
Baring, 34, 48, 96, 316.
Barklimore, Dr., 216.
Barlow, Joel, 6, 105, 127.
Barney, Joshua, 6.
Barras, P., 13, 146, 148, 310.
Barrington, Bishop, 136.
---- Lord, 58, 197, 202, 318.
Barthélémi, Abbé, 128.
Bartolini, L., 160.
Bath, Lord, 277.
Bathurst, Captain B., 66, 243, 275.
---- Lord, 277.
Beasely, Reuben, 258.
Beauclerk, Lady C., 64, 168.
Beaufort, Duchess, 241.
Beauharnais, Eugène, 53, 160.
Beaulieu, Lord C., 318.
Beaune, de, 285.
Beauvoisin, Colonel, 171.
Beccaria, 160, 256.
Becker, Casimir, 19.
Beckford, W., 46, 111.
Bedford. _See_ Russell, Lord J.
Bellevue, Countess, 122.
Belvedere, Lord, 57, 102.
Benfield, P., 34, 36, 96, 216, 235, 316.
Benjafield, 22.
Bennett, G. B., 314.
Bentham, Jeremy, 80, 85.
Bentinck, H. W., 78.
---- Rev. John, 260.
---- Lord W., 61, 278, 295.
Benyon, 48.
Berkeley, G., 217.
Bernadotte, Marshal, 7.
Bernard, 189.
---- Sir F., 109.
---- R. B., 290.
Bernardin de St. Pierre, J. H., 115.
Berri, Duke and Duchess, 67, 289.
Berry, Agnes and Mary, 38, 70, 117, 179, 214, 223.
---- Sir E., 73.
Berthier, Marshal, 162, 171, 186, 253.
Bertin, Rose, 131.
Bertrand, General H. G., 302, 309, 312, 320, 321.
Berwick. _See_ Hill, W.
Besnard, 133.
Bessborough. _See_ Duncannon.
Best, Captain, 55.
---- _See_ Wynford.
Beugnot, J. C., 289.
Beverley. _See_ Lovaine.
Beyle, H., 128.
Bickersteth, H., 117.
Billington, Elizabeth, 170.
Binning. _See_ Haddington.
Bird, W. W., 316.
Birkbeck, G., 80.
---- M., 277, 282, 288.
Bishop, Mary, 238.
Blackwell, J., 151, 152.
Blagden, Sir C., 86.
Blagdon, F. W., 101.
Blanc, 189.
---- Louis, 108.
Bland, Rev. R., 235.
Blandford, Lord, 43, 277.
Blangini, Jos., 130.
Blayney, Lord, 11, 48, 59, 189, 199, 203, 244, 245, 265, 318.
Blaze de Bury, Mme., 273.
Blessington, Lady, 193.
Blount, Baron Chas., 210.
---- 235.
Boddington, E. W., 92.
Bode, 130.
Bodichon, Mme., 42.
Bodini, 121.
Boehme, J., 158.
Bolivar, S., 152, 156.
Bonaparte, Jerome, 78, 193.
---- Joseph, 20, 220, 306.
---- Lucien, 228.
---- Mme. _See_ Josephine.
---- Napoleon, _passim_.
---- Pauline, 302, 310.
---- Victor, 309.
Bonfield, 91.
Bonnecarrère, G. de, 171.
Bonneuil, Mme., 171.
Bonneval, General, 231.
Bonneville, N., 100.
Bonnycastle, J., 87.
Borel, Mrs., 239.
Boringdon, Lord, 318.
Boscawen, Admiral Edward, 241.
Bosville, W., 36, 66.
Boswell, 149.
---- James, 33, 105.
Bouillon. _See_ Auvergne.
Bourbon, Duc, 3.
Bourke, E. de, 258.
---- J. R., 258.
Bowyer, R., 92.
Boyd, Walter, 14, 34, 36, 96, 216, 265, 316.
Boyer, Captain, 32.
---- General J. P., 222.
Boyle, Lord, 238, 318.
---- R. B., 27.
Boyne. _See_ Hamilton.
Boyse, E., 246.
Brabançon, General, 216.
Bradford, Lord, 57, 277, 318.
Braham, J., 14.
Bridgewater. _See_ Egerton.
Brillat-Savarin, A., 4.
Bristol, Lord, 62, 248.
Brocklesby, R., 88.
Brodie, Captain, 200.
Brodrick, W., 36, 61, 316.
Brodum, William, 23.
Brook, 78.
Brooke, Lord, 51, 318.
---- T., 203, 210.
Brougham, Lord, 18, 19, 85, 88, 273.
Broughton, Sir J., 65, 212.
---- _See_ Hobhouse.
Browning, Oscar, 10, 175.
Brownlow, Lord, 57, 83, 278.
Bruce, Countess, 239.
---- Lieutenant Michael, 275.
Bryant, George, 92.
Buckingham, Duke, 42.
Buckinghamshire, Lord, 317.
Bulow, T. H., 159.
Buonarotti, M., 6.
Burdett, Sir F., 36, 64, 66, 133, 242, 310, 316.
Burgess, Rev. J., 168.
Burgh or Burke, 261.
Burghersh, Lord, 278, 321.
Burke, Edmund, 34, 50.
---- General F., 66.
Burlington, Lord, 36, 121.
Burney, Fanny, 4, 123.
Burrell, Sir C., 48, 179.
Burton, Sir F., 64.
Bute, Lord, 242, 317.
Butler, Baron, 258.
---- Colonel, 251.
Butterfield, 212.
Byrne, Miles, 187.
Byron, Lord, 22, 54, 170, 303, 308.
Cabarrus. _See_ Tallien.
Cadogan, Lady, 54, 178, 317.
Cadoudal. _See_ Georges.
Cahir, Lord, 59, 318.
Caledon, Lord, 317.
Call, Sir W., 179, 196, 200, 243.
Callender, General J., 66, 213.
Calonne, C. de, 124, 134.
Cambacérès, J. J., 31.
Cambridge, Duke, 37.
Camelford, Lord, 14, 54, 146, 317.
Cameron, Doctor, 209.
Campbell, 296.
---- Sir A., 67.
---- Doctor (Edward?), 265.
---- Lord, 79.
---- Lord J., 51, 179, 318.
---- Sir Neil, 303, 319, 320.
---- Thomas, 274, 281.
Campe, J. H., 156, 164.
Candler, Captain T., 244.
Canning, George, 16, 33, 118, 278.
Canova, A., 274.
Cantillon, André N., 39.
Caraccioli, L. A., 161.
Caradoc. _See_ Cradock.
Carducci, Barth., 97.
Carhampton, Lord, 46, 317.
Carington, Lord, 59, 278, 318.
Carlisle, Lord, 16, 40, 277, 303, 317, 318.
Carnot, Lazare, 85, 90, 128, 152, 225, 273.
Caroline, Queen, 286.
Carr, Sir J., 101, 125, 128, 142.
Carter, Anne, 240.
Carysfort, Lord, 17.
Casimir Périer, 109.
Casti, J. B., 161.
Castlemaine, Lord, 318.
Castlereagh, Lord, 272.
Cathcart, Lord, 275.
Caulfeild, St. G., 168.
Cavan, Lord, 56, 68, 317.
Cavendish, Lord G., 61, 316.
---- _See_ Burlington.
Cazalès, J. A., 125.
Cerutti, J. A. J., 6.
Chalmers, 190.
Chambers, Sir R., 79, 168, 316.
Champagny, J. B., 220.
Champernowne, A. H., 48.
Chantrey, Sir F., 274.
Chaptal, J. A., 31.
Charlemont, Lord, 277.
Charles X., 2, 67, 274, 278.
---- XIV. _See_ Bernadotte.
---- Edward, Prince, 177.
---- J. A. C., 128.
Charlotte, Princess, 7, 155.
---- Queen, 284.
Chastenay, Mme. de, 280.
Chateaubriand, F. R. de, 71, 90, 116, 143, 224.
Chatham, Lord, 32.
Chatterton, Thomas, 115.
Chenevix, R., 13, 85, 227, 229.
Chénier, André, 91.
Cherubini, L. C., 129.
Chevreul, 243.
Chichester, Sir A., 49.
---- Sir J., 64.
Childers, Hugh C. E., 61, 200.
Cholmondeley, Lord, 56, 138, 161, 164, 317.
Christie, J. H., 214.
---- Thomas, 6.
Churchill, Rev. W. H., 232.
Clanricarde, Lord, 278.
Clare, Lord, 277.
Clarendon. _See_ Villiers.
Clarke, C. J., 23.
---- General, 18, 188, 198, 203, 235, 245, 247, 254, 262, 265, 266.
---- Mrs., 237.
---- Sir Simon, 64.
---- Dr. T., 208.
Clarkson, Thomas, 275.
Clavering, Sir T., 64, 234.
Clayton, Sir W., 278.
Cleveland, Duke, 54.
Clifden, Lord, 316.
Clifford, Robert, 61, 198.
Clive, Colonel Robert, 61, 198.
Cloncurry, Lord, 59, 64, 93, 318.
Cloots, Anacharsis, 6, 164.
Cobbett, William, 18, 66.
Cockburn, Alexander, 77, 228.
Cockerell, Sir C., 65, 316.
Cockerill, William, 258.
Cocks, J. Somers, 318.
Coghill, Sir J., 64, 235.
Colchester, Lord. _See_ Abbot.
Colclough, Cæsar, 48, 266.
Cole, Lord, 275.
Coleraine, Lord, 318.
Coleridge, S. T., 90, 94, 99, 184.
Colin, 272.
Colombine, P., 260.
Combe, George, 274.
---- Alderman Thomas, 29, 37, 316.
---- William, 113.
Compton, Lord, 277.
Concannon, John, 196.
Congleton, Lord. _See_ Parnell.
Congreve, Sir W., 48, 65, 94.
Constant, Benjamin, 142, 243, 306.
Constantine, Grand Duke, 292.
Contat, Louise, 129.
Conti, Prince, 241.
Conway, Field-Marshal, 92.
Conyngham, Lord, 56, 64, 130, 317.
Cook, Captain James, 233.
Cooper, Sir Paston, 81.
---- Sir W., 64, 197.
Cope, Archdall, 235.
---- Reilly, 201, 263.
Copleston, Bishop, 276, 291.
Copley, J. S., 107.
Coquebert, C. E., 171.
Corbett, William, 151–152, 308.
Cornuel, Mrs., 238.
Cornwallis, Lord, 18–21, 83, 136, 186.
Corvisart, Dr., 226.
Cory, Captain, 199.
Cosway, R., 91, 113, 140.
Cotes, Captain, 16.
Cotton, Lady A., 277.
Courier, P. L., 234.
Courselles, Colonel, 204, 214.
Courtenay. _See_ Giffard.
Coutts, Thomas, 242.
Coventry, Lord, 277.
Cowley, Lord, 16.
Cowper, Lord, 37, 61, 316, 317.
Cox, Colonel William, 235.
Cradock, General, 67, 91.
Cramer, F., 234.
Crane, 238.
Craufurd, Sir C., 49, 54.
---- Sir J., 64, 77, 151, 192, 207, 263.
---- Quintin, 6, 49, 115, 130, 191, 286, 306, 308.
Craven, Lord, 61, 239.
Crespigny, 46, 168, 210.
Cresswell, 149.
Croft, Sir H., 13, 64, 115, 235, 287, 308.
Crofton, Lady, 59, 168, 318.
Croker, John Wilson, 58, 272.
Cromie, Sir M., 64, 264.
Cromwell, Oliver, 243.
Crowe, William, 244.
Cumberland, Duchess, 46, 51, 317.
Curran, J. P., 79, 154, 274.
Cust, Francis, 61, 316.
Cuvier, Baron, 129, 225.
Czartoryski, Prince, 256.
Dalhousie. _See_ Ramsay.
Dalkeith, Lord, 316, 318.
Dallas, Sir G., 37, 64, 316.
Dalrymple, General Robert, 68.
Damer, Anne S., 32, 92, 117, 179, 274, 306.
Daniel, Rev. John, 235.
Daniell, Thomas, 92.
Darnley, Lord, 277.
Davies, 149.
---- Lady C., 172.
Davis, Dr. J. B., 81, 197, 226.
Davy, Sir H., 99.
Dawes, William, 98.
Dawtram, 129.
De Bathe, Sir J., 13, 64, 230.
De Blaquiere, Lord, 233, 263, 318.
Decrès, Admiral Denis, 162.
De Jersey, C., 208.
Delacroix, Charles, 153.
Del Campo, Marquis, 256.
Delille, J., 170.
Demidoff, Princess, 156.
Denon, D. V., 143.
Derby, Lord, 303.
De Ros, 13.
Desbrières, Colonel, 188.
Desgenettes, Dr. N., 87.
Deshayes, 130.
Desmarest, P. M., 74, 102, 189.
Despard, E. M., 171.
Devenish, Thomas, 200.
Devereux, John, 152.
De Vesci. _See_ Vesey.
Devon. _See_ Giffard.
Devonshire. _See_ Burlington.
---- Duke and Duchess, 38, 53, 62, 169, 277.
Dickinson, William, 92, 246.
Didot St. Léger, Jules, 172.
Digby, Lord, 120.
Dillon, Archbishop, 82.
---- Arthur, 128, 309.
---- Augustus, 316, 318.
---- Edward, 235, 277.
---- Henry, 214, 240.
Disney-Ffytche, D., 119.
Dixie, Sir B., 64, 208.
Dodwell, Edward, 248.
Don, Sir A., 65, 151, 211, 212.
Donegal, Lord, 54, 236, 317.
Donkin, 78.
Donoughmore. _See_ Hutchinson.
Dorant, 100.
Dormer, 13.
Dorset, Duchess, 22, 52, 66, 175–176, 220.
Doublet, P. de, 97.
Douglas, Sir Charles, 51.
---- Hon. Frederick S. N., 295.
---- Marquis, 37, 169, 244, 316, 318.
---- Sir Niel, 296.
Downshire, Lord, 277.
Drake, Francis, 75.
Dring, Rev. J., 260.
Drummond, Henry, 40.
---- Maurice, 172.
Dubarry, Mme., 43, 47, 97, 229.
Dubufe, 180.
Duckett, William, 154.
Dudley, Lord, 279, 291.
Dugard, William, 105.
Dumaresq, Major, 72.
Dumont, Etienne, 6.
Dumouriez, General, 26.
Duncannon, Lord, 49, 54, 224, 303, 317.
Dunmore. _See_ Hutchinson and Fincastle.
Dunsany. _See_ Lawless.
Dupin, Maurice, 53, 131, 137.
Du Pan. _See_ Mallet.
Duppa, William, 79, 92.
Dupuis, C. F., 128.
Durfort, Comte, 37.
Du Roure, Scipio, 144.
Eardley, Lord, 60, 229, 318.
Ebrington, Lord, 33, 53, 126, 297–299, 323
Edgeworth, R. L., 22, 32, 80, 235.
Edwards, William, 217.
Egerton, F. H., 51, 63, 113, 152, 166, 179, 190, 304, 308, 318.
Egremont, Lord, 45, 56, 316, 317.
Eldon. _See_ Scott, J.
Elgin, Lord, 26, 56, 80, 88, 219, 221, 227, 317.
Ellice, Felix, 200.
Elliot. _See_ Minto.
Elliott, 151.
Ellis, C. and G., 16, 37, 316.
---- Mrs. Charles, 168.
Elphinstone, Lord, 172.
Ely. _See_ Loftus.
Emmet, R. and T. A., 59, 79, 153, 186.
Enghien, Duc, 3, 177, 217, 249, 250, 311, 323.
Enniskillen. _See_ Cole.
Erskine, Cardinal Charles, 82.
---- Lord, 29, 33, 37, 45, 79, 91, 101, 298, 316.
Essex, Lord, 278.
Estaing, Comte d’, 4.
Este, 13, 141.
Estob, Lucy, 142.
Estwick, 199.
Eugénie, Empress, 259.
Eustace, Rev. J. C., 83, 291.
---- John Skey, 6.
Ewart, Joseph, 98.
Exeter, Lord, 277.
Eyre, E. J., 93, 165, 201.
---- Lady M., 168.
Fabre, F. X., 254.
Fabricius, J. C., 159.
Fagan, 123.
Fagniani, J. B., 45.
Falkland, Lord, 318.
Faraday, Sir M., 243.
Farel, 180.
Farina, J. M., 157.
Farington, J., 92.
Farnborough, Lord, 39, 317.
Fauriel, Claude, 80.
Fauvelet, 171.
Fazakerley, J. N., 273.
Featherstonehaugh, Sir H., 46, 52, 179.
Félissent, 170.
Fellowes, W. D., 277.
Ferdinand IV., 3.
Fereau, Mlle., 234.
Ferguson, Robert, 49, 222, 227.
Fermor, 13.
Ferrier, James, 68, 138.
Fiévée, Joseph, 170.
Fife, Lord, 56, 317.
Filon, Auguste, 114.
Fincastle, Lord, 318.
Fingall, Lord, 63.
Fitzgerald, C. and R., 258.
---- Lords E. and R., 51, 111, 154, 240, 247, 248, 316.
Fitzherbert, Maria Anne, 13.
Fitzjames, Duc de, 125.
Fitzpatrick, General Richard, 37, 45, 62, 316.
Fitzroy, Lady A., 37.
Fitzwilliam, Lord, 56, 317.
Flaxman, J., 92.
Fleming, Dr. John, 87.
Fleury, Duchesse, 15.
Flin, Robert, 92.
Flint, J. M., 149.
---- William, 259.
Flood, Peter, 83.
Forbes, Lord, 277.
---- James, 11, 119, 123, 166, 194, 201, 206, 225.
Forster, George, 6.
Forsyth, Joseph, 226.
Fortescue. _See_ Ebrington.
Forth, N. P., 247.
Foscolo, Ugo, 276.
Foster, Lady E. and Sir A., 62, 169, 227, 277.
---- J. Leslie, 38, 316.
Fouché, Joseph, 23, 74, 123, 131, 189, 192, 240, 290.
Fox, 149.
---- Charles James, 28, 34, 37, 41, 45, 52, 79, 86, 94, 102, 112,
219, 220, 225, 264, 298, 306, 316.
---- General H. E., 68.
Francis I., 286.
---- Sir P., 38, 45, 316.
Frankland, William, 316.
Frederick II., 56.
Frederick William III. and IV., 286, 298.
Fremantle, Major, 284.
Fries, J. F., 158.
Frisell, J. Fraser, 116, 193.
Frohberg, Count, 252.
Frost, John, 44.
Fulton, Robert, 127.
Fursy-Guesdon, Alexander, 224.
Gage, General Thomas, 207.
Gainsborough, Thomas, 62.
Galignani, John Ant., 149, 206, 288.
Galitzin, Prince, 156.
Galloway. _See_ Garlies.
Gallwey, Henry, 258.
Gamble, John, 172.
Garat, J. P., 130.
Garland, George, 316.
---- Nathaniel, 203, 225.
Garlies, Lord, 318.
Garnerin, A. J., 170.
Garrow, Sir W., 223.
Gavazzi, P. 257.
Gay, Sophie, 171.
Genlis, Mme. de, 132, 156, 162, 191, 247.
George III., 15, 73, 78, 81, 86, 94, 175, 182, 209, 251, 288, 300.
---- IV., 39, 45, 56, 118, 147, 169, 170, 198, 219, 236, 249, 264,
286, 310.
Georges, 74, 98, 129, 143.
Gideon, Sampson, 60.
Giffard, T. and Lady, 64.
Gifford, John, 114, 214.
Gillray, James, 29.
Ginguéné, P. L., 260.
Gladstone, W. E., 54, 98.
Glasgow. _See_ Boyle.
Glasse, Rev. John, 84.
Glenbervie, Lord, 295.
Glengall. _See_ Cahir.
Godfrey, Misses, 54, 236.
Godrich, Lord (afterwards Ripon). _See_ Robinson, F. J.
Goethe, J. W., 87.
Goldsmith, Lewis, 74, 104, 109, 153, 171, 225, 311.
Goold, Valentine, 198.
Gordon, 244.
---- Duchess, 52, 57, 84, 137, 162, 164, 179, 317.
---- Lord George, 151.
Gosford, Lord, 34, 277, 316, 318.
Gourbillon, Mme., 247.
Gower. _See_ Leveson-Gower.
Graham, 248.
---- Sir James, 38, 316.
---- Thomas, 247.
Grainville, J. B., 115.
Granard, Lady, 56, 317.
Grand, G. F., 40, 119, 132.
Grant, Sir Alexander, 64.
Grantham, Lord, 51, 59, 318.
Granville, Lord, 16, 38, 316.
Grasilier, L., 10, 250.
Grattan, H., 273, 302.
Gravina, Duke, 73.
Greathead, Henry, 94, 231.
Greatheed, B., 84, 90, 113, 231.
Green, James, 178, 205.
---- William, 316.
Grégoire, Bishop, 141, 276.
Greig, Admiral A., 244.
Grenville, Lord, 42, 55, 75, 114, 171, 298.
Greville, Charles, 57, 64.
Grey, Lord, 273, 303.
Grieve, George, 6.
Guilford, Lord, 26, 56, 242, 303, 317.
Guillet, 33.
Guitant, 116.
Guizot, F., 128.
Gurney, Hudson, 49, 88.
Gustavus IV., 275.
Haddington, Lord, 277.
Haines, Misses, 149.
Haldimand, William, 50.
Hallam, Henry, 115.
Halpin, John Edward, 233.
Hamersley, H., 50, 96, 97.
Hamilton, Alexander, 89, 158, 226.
---- Lord A., 61, 133, 208, 316.
---- Duke, 62.
---- George, 13, 115.
---- Lord Gustavus, 318.
---- Sir W., 216.
---- Lady, 278.
---- _See_ Douglas.
Hampden, John, 32.
---- _See_ Trevor.
Hardenberg, Baron C. A., 159, 256.
Hardi, General J., 26.
Hardy, Thomas, 14.
Hare, James, 316.
---- Sir Thomas, 38, 65, 227.
Harewood. _See_ Lascelles.
Harrington. _See_ Petersham.
Harris, E. B., 26.
Harrowby, Lord. _See_ Ryder.
Hartley, J. G., 307.
Harvey, Sir Eliab, 72.
---- Elizabeth, 143.
Hastfer, Mme., 159.
Hastings, G. W., 235.
---- Warren, 37, 243, 248.
Hawkesbury. _See_ Liverpool.
Hawthorn, Dr., 209.
Hay, Mrs., 237.
Haydon, B. R., 264, 276, 282, 288, 289.
Hayes, M. A. and E., 92.
---- William, 99.
Hayne, William, 247.
Hazlitt, William, 114.
Heath, C. and J., 93, 233.
Heger, Joseph, 129.
Heine, S., 157.
Hendry, Robert, 260.
Henry IV., 288.
Henson, 212.
Herbert, Sidney, 58.
Hérédia, F. de, 256.
Herries, 97.
Herschel, Sir W., 85, 87.
Hertford. _See_ Yarmouth.
Hesse, Landgrave, 57.
Hickie, 149.
Higginson, Lady, 137.
Hill, Lord, 277.
---- William, 21.
---- Colonel, 210.
Hinchingbrook, Lord, 316, 318.
Hobart, 13.
---- _See_ Mount Edgecumbe.
Hobhouse, J. Cam, 303, 305, 308.
Hoche, General Joseph, 55.
Hodgson, Rev. T., 22, 176.
Hodson, 150.
Hogarth, Dr., 265.
Hohenzollern, Princess, 157.
Holcroft, Thomas, 80, 89, 100, 139, 160, 166, 168, 171.
Holland, Lord, 28, 37, 60, 93, 114, 140, 177, 278, 283, 318, 321.
Hompesch, Baron, 68.
Honywood, Sir J., 64.
Hope, Sir John, 64.
---- Thomas, 26, 113.
Hopkinson, B. J., 258.
Hoppner, John, 92.
Horne Tooke, J., 14, 65, 85, 100.
Hoste, Sir William, 73.
Howden. _See_ Cradock.
Hudson, Thomas, 211.
Hughes, W., 84, 166.
Hugo, Victor, 136.
Humboldt, W., 157.
Hume, Sir A., 39, 46, 88.
---- Dr. J. R., 277.
Hunt, Leigh, 87, 287.
Hunter, Mrs. Orby, 137.
---- William, 27.
Huntingford, Lord, 316.
Huntingtower. _See_ Tollemache.
Hurry, 214.
Hutchinson, Lord, 60, 318.
---- 200.
Hyde de Neville, J. G., 139.
Ilchester, Lord, 277.
Impey, Sir E., 46, 95, 230, 285.
Ingilby, Sir J., 46, 64.
Innes, Consul, 293.
Irnham, Lord, 46.
Jackson, F. and G., 20, 21, 55, 100, 130, 132, 139.
Jacobi, F., 157.
James II., 29.
James, Sir W., 62.
Jay, John, 155.
Jefferson, Thomas, 13, 139.
Jekyll, Joseph, 39, 45, 316.
Jenner, Dr. E., 80, 225, 246.
Jerningham, C., 65, 122, 138, 142, 235.
Jersey, Lady, 296.
Jervis, John, 73, 235.
Jessopp, J. S., 119, 138.
Joan of Arc, 182.
Jodrell, F. and T., 64, 210.
Johnson, Dr., 79, 115, 149.
Johnston, Colonel, 227.
---- Dr., 81.
---- W. and D., 258.
Johnstone, George, 39, 316.
Jomini, Baron Henri, 7.
Jones, Dr., 265.
---- Paul, 6, 70.
---- Rev., 292.
Jordan, Rev., 197.
Josephine, Empress, 91, 100, 117, 175, 224, 225, 228, 243, 312.
Joubert, Joseph, 116.
Junot, Marshal, 32, 131, 178, 194, 232, 275, 313.
Jurien de la Gravière, Admiral, 262.
Kaunitz, Prince, 6.
Kemble, J. P., 93, 140.
Kenmare, Lord, 56, 317.
Kennedy, W. B., 100.
Kent, Duke, 117, 180.
Ker, Walter, 14, 35.
Kilmorey, Lord, 68.
King, Frances, 109, 161.
---- John, 30, 100, 150, 166.
---- Rufus, 155.
Kingston, Countess, 56, 317.
Kinnaird, Lord, 39, 277, 316, 318.
Kirby, Dr. Walter, 261.
Kirkpatrick, Mme., 238.
---- William, 258.
Kirkwall, Lady, 263.
Kirwan, W. B., 27.
Klenke, Helmine, 159.
Klopstock, F. T., 157.
Knatchbull, Sir J., 278.
Knight, 144.
---- Cornelia, 143.
Knox, General John, 16.
---- George, 61, 317.
---- Waring, 197.
---- 210.
Kock, J. G. de, 6.
Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 59, 85, 105, 130, 141, 156.
Kreutzer, Rod., 130.
Krudener, Mme. de, 156.
Krumholz, Mme., 43.
Kyd, Stewart, 79, 216.
Lafayette, Marquis, 32, 38, 60, 70, 85, 244, 276.
Laharpe, J. F., 90.
Lalande, J. J. L., 128.
Lale, 189.
Lally Tollendal, Gérard, 5, 124.
Lamartine, A., 128, 182.
Lamb, Charles, 129.
Lambert, 231.
La Métherie, Jean, 133.
Lammenais, F. de, 233.
Lamoignon, C. F. de, 143.
La Motte, Mme., 124.
Lancaster, Frances, 142.
---- Rev. T., 159.
Landaff, Lord, 279, 318.
Landor, W. S., 112.
Lanesborough, Lady, 57, 89, 102–104, 317.
Langdale, Lord, 117.
Langton, Roger, 245.
Lansdowne, Lord, 40, 277, 303, 317, 318.
Laplace, P. S., 129, 273.
Larochefoucauld, Duc, 153.
La Reveillière Lepeaux, 36.
Las Cases, G. P. B., 311, 312.
Lascelles, Edward, 317, 318.
Latouche, Elizabeth, 102.
Lattin, P., 154.
Lauderdale, Lord, 50, 51, 54, 57, 220, 259, 303, 318.
Lauriston, Marquis, 18, 123.
Lauzun, Duc, 15.
Lavalette, A. M. C., 275.
Lavie, Sir T., 64, 241, 245.
Law, William, 158.
Lawless. _See_ Burton, Dunsany, and Whaley.
Lawrence, J. H., 11, 209, 232, 259.
Leake. _See_ Martin-Leake.
Leatham, John, 260.
Lebrun, Consul C. F., 31, 111, 114.
Lebzeltern, Count, 322.
Lechevalier, J. B., 36, 133.
Lee, Rev. Launcelot, 233.
Legouvé, Ernest, 309.
Lemaistre, J. G., 51, 101.
Lemoine, General John, 296.
Lempriere, Miss, 237.
Leopold, King, 7, 155.
Leorat, 270.
Leslie, Sir J., 275.
Lesseps, M. de, 259.
Leveson-Gower. _See_ Granville and Sutherland.
Leviscourt, Lieutenant, 209.
Lewins, E. J., 153, 186.
Lewis, Sir G. C., 118.
Liddell, Sir T., 130.
Lind, William, 258.
Lindsay, Mrs., 142.
Linwood, Mary, 93.
Liston, Sir C., 78.
Littlehales Baker, Sir E., 18.
Littleton, E. J., 278.
Liverpool, Lord, 73, 78, 221, 251, 285.
Livingston, Robert, 155, 227.
Loftus, Lord, 317, 318.
Long. _See_ Farnborough.
---- 286.
Longford, Lord, 318.
Lothian. _See_ Ancrum.
Louis, Baron L. D., 290.
---- XVI., 2, 156, 169, 192, 284, 288.
---- XVIII., 2, 75, 94, 238, 281, 283, 284, 286–298.
Louis Philippe, King, 2, 13, 67, 131, 166, 169, 247, 284.
Lovaine, Lord, 13, 40, 51, 54, 205, 224, 261, 264, 317, 318.
Lovelace, Robert, 68, 233.
Lowe, Sir H., 311, 315.
Lucan, Lord, 277.
Luttrell, Temple, 46, 168.
Lynch, J. B., 307.
---- 214.
Lyndhurst, Lord, 107.
Lyster, C. H., 283.
Macaulay, Lord, 114.
---- Z. and General, 275, 285.
MacCabe, W. P., 154.
MacCarthy, 199.
MacCulloch, 190.
Macdermott, 149.
Macdonald, Marshal, 18.
Macdonnal, Dr., 81.
Mackenzie, General C. A., 260.
---- Admiral George, 289.
Mackenzie-Fraser, General A., 317.
Mackintosh, Sir J., 50, 117, 273, 303.
Mackworth, Sir H., 77.
Maclaurin, Dr. J. C., 22, 81, 176.
Maclean, Charles, 80, 178, 225.
Macleod, Colonel, 243.
MacMahon, P., 257.
---- Terence, 235.
Macnab, H. G., 116, 233.
Macnevin, W. J., 153.
Macpherson, Sir J., 40, 317.
MacSheehy, B., 187.
Madden, R. R., 154, 232.
Madgett, N., 153.
Magra, Perkins, 78.
Maison, Major, 249.
Maitland. _See_ Lauderdale.
Malchus, 189.
Malcolm, Colonel, 168.
Malet, Sir C., 79, 273.
Mallet, David, 142.
Mallet du Pan, J., 5, 53.
Malmesbury, Lord, 13, 15, 109, 148, 182.
Malthus, T. R., 85, 90.
Mandeville, J. H., 22, 176.
Manning, Thomas, 26, 129, 230.
Manzoni, A., 256, 314.
Marat, J. P., 272.
Marcet, Jane, 50.
Marcoff, 175.
Marescalchi, Ferdinand, 103.
Marescotti, Marquis, 103.
Marie Antoinette, Queen, 52, 54, 124, 169.
Marlborough. _See_ Blandford.
Marmé, 146.
Marron, P. H., 288.
Mars, Anne F. H., 129.
Martin, 146.
---- Henri, 125, 177.
Martin-Leake, 89.
Maskelyne, N., 85, 225.
Masquerier, L., 237.
Massé, 270.
Massin, Lieutenant, 204.
Mathew, General M., 279, 317.
Matthews, James, 247.
Maude, Rev. J., 84, 197, 233.
Maunde, Rev. J., 228.
Maxwell, Major, 296.
Maynard, Lady, 26, 58, 236, 318.
Meek, Samuel, 111.
Méhée de la Touche, J. C., 76, 246.
Méhul, E. H., 130.
Melfort, Comte, 142, 236, 278.
Mellish, 199.
Melville, 15, 40.
Melzi, F., 160.
Mendelssohn, M., 158.
Mercier, S., 160.
Merget, 101.
Mérimée, J. F. L., 114.
Merry, Anthony, 10, 21, 25, 31, 72, 95, 106, 113, 124, 128, 161.
Mesmer, F. A., 159.
Metternich, Prince, 189.
Mexborough, Lady, 318.
Meyer, Canon F. L. J., 141.
Mezières, 99.
Miles, Lieutenant, 199.
Miller, 246.
Millingen, J., 141, 276.
Milman, F., 216.
Milne, James, 190.
Milton, John, 105, 310.
Miltown, Lord, 278.
Minto, Lord, 12, 19, 57, 78, 317.
Miot de Mélito, A. F., 177.
Mirabeau, Count, 5, 57, 273.
Miranda, General F., 86.
Moffat, 244.
Mogg, 215.
Mohl. _See_ Clarke.
Moir, Dr., 246, 265.
Moira, Lord, 56, 152, 243.
Molé, L. M., 129.
Molesworth, Colonel, 61, 229, 318.
Moliterno, Prince, 161.
Mollien, N. F., 98.
Moltke, Adam, 157.
Monck, Lord, 58, 162, 318.
Money, General John, 6, 69.
Monod, Jean, 288.
Monro, George, 69.
Monroe, James, 155, 227.
Montagu, Lord F., 134, 317.
---- Matthew, 46.
Montalembert, 119, 123.
Montefiore, 98.
Montesquiou, F., 290.
Montesson, Mme. de, 131.
Montlosier, F. D., 5, 124, 181.
Moore, F. and J. C., 18, 57, 117.
---- Thomas, 54, 58, 104, 117, 228, 274.
---- T., 257.
---- Mrs., 241.
More, Hannah, 110.
Moreau, General J. V., 103, 131.
Morellet, André, 128.
Moreton, Augustus, 61.
Morgan, Sir C., 40, 317.
---- General, G., 69, 184.
---- Sydney, Lady, 109, 142.
Morley. _See_ Boringdon.
Mornington. _See_ Wellesley.
Morpeth. _See_ Carlisle.
Morrice, David, 110.
Morris, H. M., 151, 152, 241, 283, 285.
Morshead, Sir J., 64, 199, 235, 317.
Mosbourg, Count, 322.
Moseley, Dr. B., 81.
Mounier, J. J., 5.
Mount, Miss, 233.
Mount Cashell, Lord, 51, 57, 184, 318.
Mount Edgecumbe, Lord, 57, 318.
Mulvey, Dr. F., 81, 208.
---- William, 257.
Murat, Joachim, 58, 295, 322.
Murray, Grenville, 58.
---- Lord J., 235, 245.
---- Captain R. W. F. Lathrop, 104.
Nagot, Abbé, 70.
Nanney, Captain, 201.
Napoleon III., 116.
Narbonne, Count, 3.
Nattes, J. C., 92.
Necker, Jacques, 44.
Needham, T., 88.
Neil, Colonel, 78.
Neilson, Captain, 200.
Nesbit. _See_ Elgin.
Nesselrode, Count, 256.
Newcastle, Duke and Duchess, 49, 54, 224.
Newnham. _See_ Moliterno.
Ney, Marshal, 272.
Nicholl, John, 40, 232, 317.
Nichols, John, 99.
Niebuhr, B. G., 157.
Niemcewics, J. U., 91.
Nightingale, F. _See_ Smith, W.
---- Sir M., 18.
Nodier, Charles, 88, 116.
North, Lord, 56.
Northcote, James, 150.
Northumberland. _See_ Lovaine and Smithson.
Northwick, Lord, 60, 318.
Nowel, Dr., 80.
Nugent, Count Laval, 275.
Oakeley, Sir C., 78.
Oakes, Sir H., 69.
Oberkampf, G. P., 260.
O’Brien, Captain D. H., 245.
O’Connell, Count, 49, 122, 235.
O’Connor, Arthur, 33, 152, 186, 188, 231, 247.
---- General, 258.
Oelsner, Conrad E., 69, 97.
Oersted, H. C., 157, 256.
O’Farrill, Gonzalo, 257.
Oglander, Sir W., 51, 65.
O’Hara, Captain Charles, 70.
Okey, C. H., 80.
Olavide, P., 6.
Oliveira, D. and E., 256.
Oliver, Admiral R. D., 73.
---- Richard, 47, 231.
O’Mealy, 187.
Ommaney, Sir J., 73, 125.
O’Moran, Joseph, 258.
Opie, J. and Amelia, 90, 260.
Orange, Prince, 155.
O’Reilly, Julius T., 308.
---- R. M., 127.
Orleans. _See_ Louis Philippe.
Orsay, Comte d’, 193.
O’Ryan, Dr. M., 81.
Osborn, 87.
Ossulston, Lord, 51, 318.
O’Sullivan, John, 191.
Oswald, John, 6, 44.
Otto, L. G., 15, 16, 100.
Ouvrard, J., 17, 131.
Owen, Captain C. Cunliffe, 213, 261.
---- Robert, 117.
Owens, Captain S., 70.
Oxford, Lord, 58, 162, 184, 277, 283, 318.
Paget, Sir Arthur, 78.
---- Sir E., 40, 62, 168, 235, 245, 317.
Paine, Thomas, 6, 14, 36, 44, 66, 89, 90, 99, 100, 102, 103, 112,
114, 139, 156, 160, 174.
Paisiello, G., 130.
Pakington, Sir H., 117.
Palmer, Colonel, 279.
Palmerston, Lord, 40, 59, 270.
Pamela. _See_ Fitzgerald.
Parker, 231.
Parnell, Henry, 40, 317.
Parry, James and John, 109, 229, 259.
Parsons, William, 113.
---- _See_ Galignani and Maynard.
Paterson, John, 84.
Paterson Bonaparte, 78, 193.
Paul, Sir John Dean, 110.
Payne, James, 98, 233, 260.
Peel, Sir R., 54.
Pelham, Charles, 317, 318.
Pelly, Raymond, 65.
Peltier, J. G., 50.
Pembroke, Lord, 58, 318.
Peploe, Mrs., 118.
Percy, Major, 284.
Perregaux, A. C., 98, 107, 142, 196.
Perry, James, 279.
Perth. _See_ Melfort.
Pestalozzi, J. H., 156.
Petersham, Lord, 318.
Petty. _See_ Lansdowne.
Philips, John, 80, 179.
Phillips, Sir J., 135.
---- Thomas, 91.
---- Colonel, 233.
Phippson, Martin, 174.
Pichegru, General Charles, 74.
Pierrepont, E. and H., 6, 22.
Pigott, Edward, 87.
Pinkerton, John, 11, 166, 225.
Piozzi, Mme., 113.
Pitcairn, 240.
Pitt, William, 16, 21, 31, 34, 35, 61, 63, 145, 147, 171, 323.
Pius VII., Pope, 255, 295.
Plantade, C. H., 130.
Playfair, William, 108, 172.
Plumptre, Anne, 110, 166, 236.
Pollen, Colonel, G. A., 41, 317.
Pomfret, Lord, 318.
Pons de l’Hérault, A., 296, 300, 302.
Ponsonby, Lord, 277.
Poole, Thomas, 94, 99, 140.
Poppleton, 144, 214.
Porchester Dupré, 14.
Portland, Duke, 118, 277.
---- _See_ Greville.
Portsmouth, Lord, 45.
Potocki, Count, 156.
Potter, Christopher, 18, 145, 235.
Pougens, C. J., 241.
Powell, Rev., 262.
Power, John, 97.
Powerscourt, Lord, 63.
Praed, W. Mackworth, 77.
Prescott, Sir G., 64.
Priestley, J. and T., 85, 118, 156.
Pringle, Mark, 317.
Proly, B., 6.
Provence. _See_ Louis XVIII.
Puppo, 130.
Puschkine. _See_ Bruce.
Quentin, Colonel, 279.
---- 270.
Queensberry, Duke, 45.
Raglan, Lord, 278.
Raikes, Thomas, 276.
Raimbach, A., 92.
Ramsay, W. Maule, 47.
---- Major W. N., 70, 275.
Ranelagh, Lord, 277.
Ratzbael, Baron, 4.
Raucourt, 129, 224, 234.
Ravensworth. _See_ Liddell.
Raynal, Abbé Jean, 40.
Réal, P. F., 74.
Récamier, Mme., 59, 131, 166, 169, 224.
Regent, Prince. _See_ George IV.
Regnier, Claude, 86, 234.
Reichardt, J. F., 138, 141, 159, 163, 165.
Rémusat, Mme. de, 176, 206.
Rendlesham, _See_ Thellusson.
Rennell, James, 86.
Reynolds, Sir J., 141, 150, 239.
Rich, C. J., 274.
Richard, 293.
Richelieu, Duc, 7, 29.
Richmond, Duke, 96, 277.
Richter, J. P., 157.
Rickman, Thomas, 113, 139.
Rigel, 252.
Ripon. _See_ Robinson, F. J.
Ritson, Joseph, 89.
Rivarol, Mme., 149.
Robert, N. R., 173.
---- 148.
Robertson, Bishop, 286.
Robespierre, M., 178, 310.
Robinson, F. J., 60, 273.
---- H. Crabb, 276, 290.
---- 263.
Robson, R. B., 197, 227, 317.
Roche, 80, 83, 149.
Rodde, Mlle., 159.
Rodney, Admiral, 13.
Rogers, Samuel, 24, 48, 58, 96, 112, 140.
Roget de l’Isle, C. J., 128, 179.
Rokeby, Lord. _See_ Montagu.
Roland, Mme., 114, 140.
Romilly, Sir S., 51, 80, 303.
Romney, George, 239.
Roscoe, William, 85.
Rose, W. Stewart, 276.
Rotondo, J. B., 6.
Routhier, 269.
Rowley, Sir W., 51, 70, 81.
Rumbold, Sir G., 248.
Rumford, Count, 87, 155.
Rushbrook, Robert, 83.
Russell, Catherine, 238.
---- Lord J., 42, 51, 58, 85, 298, 300, 317, 319.
---- Hon. Rollo, 319.
---- Thomas, 153.
---- William, 193.
Rutland, Duke, 277, 288.
Rutledge, James, 44.
Ryder, Dudley, 58, 134, 278, 318.
Rylands, Mrs., 99.
St. Albans. _See_ Beauclerk.
St. Amand, Mme., 202.
St. George, Miss, 168.
St. John, Lord, 28, 41, 45, 317, 318.
St. Martin, L. C., 158.
Salm, Prince, 157.
Salomons, Judah, 98.
Saltmarsh, Lady A., 63, 168.
Salvo, Marquis, 41.
Samuda, Joseph, 257.
Sanchamau, 279.
Sand, George, 53, 131, 265.
Sandon, Mrs., 144.
---- _See_ Ryder.
Sandwich. _See_ Hinchingbrook.
Sanford, John, 84.
Santerre, Claude, 30, 103.
Sassen, Mme., 67.
Savary, General J. J., 189.
Say and Sele, Lord, 61, 318.
Sayer, Augustine, 175.
Sayers, Julia, 241.
Schlabrendorf, Count, 157.
Schlegel, F., 158.
Schopenhauer, H. F., 159.
Schweizer, 155.
Scott, General, 118, 234.
---- Hon. John, 41, 317, 318.
---- John, 280, 276, 288, 290.
---- Sir W., 212.
---- Dr. William, 222.
---- 223.
Scott and Schabracq, 106.
Seaford. _See_ Ellis.
Sebastiani, Marshal, 222.
Sebright, Sir J., 277.
Sefton, Lord, 318.
Selwyn, George, 55.
Semple, Lisle, 247.
Sénancour, E. P., 129.
Seymour, Henry, 47, 229.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 43, 58, 225, 233, 318.
Shakspere, 310.
Sharpe, S. and C., 96, 129, 140, 234.
Shee, Sir M., 92.
Sheehy, Lieutenant, 264.
Sheffield, Lord, 72.
Shelley, Sir T., 303.
Shepherd, Rev. W., 85, 156, 277, 287, 292.
Sheridan, R. B., 37, 86.
Sherlock, William, 92.
Shipley, Sir C., 70, 227.
---- Sir G., 64.
Shirley, 243.
Shrewsbury, Lord, 318.
Shuldham, M., 201.
Sicard, Abbé, 90, 99, 284.
Siddons, Sarah, 274, 281.
Sidmouth, Lord. _See_ Addington.
Sidney, Algernon, 32.
Sieyès, Emm. Joseph, 78.
Silburn, Mrs., 239.
Simon, General, 245.
Simpson, A. and J., 259.
Simpson, Dr., 200.
Sinclair, General G., 86, 252.
Singleton, Captain, 18.
Sloper, Granby, 231.
Smith, Sir Culling, 61.
---- James, 148, 190, 217.
---- J. Spencer, 41, 76, 317.
---- Sir J. Sidney, 16, 41, 68, 73, 75, 94, 251, 275.
---- William, 42, 45, 317.
---- Captain, 296.
---- 235.
Smithson, James, 251.
Smyth, J. Carmichael, 81, 225, 275.
---- Sir R., 47, 141, 145.
---- Colonel, 210.
Smythe, Walter, 13.
Somers. _See_ Cocks.
Somerset, Duke, 47, 54, 169, 317.
---- _See_ Raglan.
Sorel, Albert, 24, 174.
Soulès, F., 23.
Soult, Marshal, 270.
Southey, H., 89, 118.
Spallannchi, General, 293.
Spencer, Lord R., 45, 52, 137, 317.
---- _See_ Althorp.
Spurzheim, J. G., 256.
Stack, General E., 70, 217.
Staël, Mme. de, 90, 117, 156, 276, 306.
Stafford, Lady, 141.
Stahremberg, Count, 240.
Stanhope, Lady Hester, 5, 63, 221.
---- J. Spencer, 226.
---- Lord, 63, 105.
---- P. Dormer, 307.
Stanley, Bishop E., 83, 223.
---- _See_ Derby.
Stapleton, Bishop, 82.
Starling, Sir G., 296.
Stawell, Lord, 60, 318.
Staybelt, 130.
Steele, Thomas, 78.
Stendhal. _See_ Beyle.
Stepney, Sir J., 277.
Stevens, Catherine, 278.
Stewarton, 110.
Stirling, Sir W., 51, 229.
---- William, 257.
Stodart, L., 235.
Stone, J. H. and W., 141, 231.
---- Thomas, 120.
Storace, Anna S., 14.
Storer, Anthony, 118.
Story, William, 95, 238, 263.
Stothard, Thomas, 276.
Strangford, Lord, 58, 318.
Strathallan, Lord, 172.
Street, T. G., 288.
Strogonoff, Count, 6.
Stuart, Daniel, 259, 287.
---- Margaret, 241.
---- de Rothesay, Lord, 77, 283, 287.
Stubbs, 149.
Sturt, Charles, 11, 43, 178, 202, 205, 317.
Style, Sir C., 63, 168.
Sullivan, 153.
Sunderland. _See_ Blandford.
Sussex, Duke, 170, 274, 303.
Sutherland, Duke, 277.
Sutton, Captain, 178.
Swan, Colonel James, 155.
Swedenborg, E., 158.
Swinburne, H., 13, 16.
Sykes, Henry, 144.
Talbot, Sir C., 64.
---- James, 16, 22, 176.
---- John, 62.
---- Sir John, 73.
---- Thomas, 121, 261.
Talleyrand, Prince, 3, 4, 7, 20, 23, 29, 32, 46, 55, 110, 119,
120, 153, 170, 191, 206, 230, 242, 244, 247, 251, 290.
Tallien, J. L., 17, 33, 58, 79, 103, 131.
Talma, F. J., 129, 254.
Tancred, Sir T., 51, 64.
Tandy, J. Napper, 151.
Tankerville. _See_ Ossulston.
Tappen, George, 110.
Tarver, J. C., 180.
Tattersall, Edward, 99.
Taylor, Mrs., 241.
---- William, 89, 118.
Temple, 209.
---- Sir G., 64, 228.
---- Admiral John, 73.
Thanet. _See_ Tufton.
Thayer. _See_ Bertrand.
Thellusson, 43, 317.
Thelwall, John, 273.
Théroigne de Méricourt, 96.
Thibaudeau, A. C., 163.
Thiébault, General P. C., 222.
Thiers, A., 31.
Thistlewood, A., 273.
Thompson, 153.
---- Thomas, 44, 205, 279, 317.
---- Mrs., 236.
Thornton, 97.
---- Colonel T., 92, 109, 222.
Thrale. _See_ Piozzi.
Throckmorton, William, 214.
Tichborne, Sir H., 64, 117, 233.
Tierney, George, 44, 303, 317.
Tilt, 119.
Tollemache, Admiral, 72, 318.
Tolstoi, Count, 256.
Tone, T. Wolf, 153.
Tooke. _See_ Horne Tooke.
Torrington, Lord, 52.
Tourton, Sir T., 51.
Tower, Captain, 300, 301.
Towneley, Charles, 13, 88.
Townshend, General, 69.
Travers, Dr. Benjamin, 81.
Trebout, 270.
Trench, R., 119, 161, 229.
Trenck, Baron, 6.
Trevor, John H., 62, 318.
Trimleston, Lord, 277.
Trotter, J. B., 28, 30, 221.
Troubetski, Prince, 156.
Troy, Archbishop J. T., 83.
Truguet, Admiral L. J. F., 186.
Truro, Lord, 79.
Tuckey, J. H., 217, 241, 265.
Tufton, H. and C., 205, 317, 318.
Tuite, Father, 83.
Tulloch, Captain F., 70, 213.
Turnbull, 259.
Turner, Sir G., 317.
---- J. W. M., 56.
---- Samuel, 258.
---- William, 92.
Tussaud, Mme., 170.
Tuthill, Sir G., 81, 228.
Tweeddale, Lord, 54, 259, 317.
Twiss, Robert, 258, 274.
Tyrwhitt, Sir Thomas, 45, 317.
Tytler, P. Fraser, 274.
Underwood, T. R., 93.
Ussher, Sir T., 298.
Uxbridge. _See_ Paget.
Van de Weyer, 319, 324.
Vaughan, Sir C., 77.
Vernon, Caroline, 64.
Vesey, Colonel John, 318.
Vestris, Mme. G. A. B., 129.
Vigée-Lebrun, Mme., 14, 131, 162, 167.
Villeneuve, Admiral P. C., 188, 262.
Villiers, J. C., 45, 134, 317, 318.
Visconti, Mme., 171.
Volney, C. F., 128.
Voss, Julius, 159.
Waddington, William, 144, 154.
Wake, Rev. R. W., 290.
Wales, Prince. _See_ George IV.
Walhope, C., 45, 260, 317.
Wall, Governor Joseph, 16.
---- Patrick, 125.
Wallace, Sir T., 45, 199, 317.
Waller, John, 232, 317.
Walpole, Horace, 92, 117.
---- Captain, 199.
---- _See_ Atkyns.
Walsh, Dr. William, 83, 244.
---- de Serrant, 258.
Wansey, Henry, 271, 290.
Ward, William, 120.
Warden, William, 311.
Warren, 238.
---- Dawson, 21.
Washington, George, 32.
Watson, Robert, 151.
Watt, James, 86, 94.
---- Dr., 265.
Watts, Isaac, 226.
Webb, Sir J. and T., 58, 64, 224, 233.
Webster, Sir G., 60.
Wedgwood, Thomas, 94, 144.
Wellesley, Lord, 12, 123, 272, 278, 303.
---- _See_ Cowley.
Wellington, Duke, 14, 39, 58, 71, 80, 265, 267, 272, 274, 278, 281,
283–286, 297, 306, 307, 319, 322, 324.
Wesley, John, 89.
West, Sir B., 80, 90, 92.
---- Sir J., 73.
Westmorland. _See_ Burghersh.
Weston, Rev. S., 30, 37, 84, 126, 277, 282, 288, 292.
Whaley, ‘Jerusalem’ and W., 63, 199.
---- Lady M., 63.
Whitbread, S., 273, 303.
White, 148.
---- Rev., 261.
Whitmore, W. W., 319.
Whitshed, Sir J., 73.
Whitworth, Lord, 10, 22, 34, 57, 73, 84, 95, 100, 130, 152, 162,
175, 298, 318.
Wickham, William, 76, 231.
---- Dr., 80, 225.
Widmer, 260.
Wieland, Christopher, 157.
Wielopolski, Count, 256.
Wilberforce, William, 275.
Wilbraham, 198.
Wilde. _See_ Truro.
Wilkie, Sir D., 93, 276.
Willcox, C., 257.
William IV., 48.
Williams, 200.
---- Arabella, 142.
---- David, 114.
---- Dr., 277, 288.
---- Helen M., 6, 33, 59, 85, 140, 160, 162, 308.
---- W. T., 110, 166, 225.
Wilmot, Sir R., 64.
Wilson, 198.
---- Edmund, 233.
---- Hugh, 155.
---- John, 248.
Winchilsea, Lord, 58, 318.
Windham, William, 31, 42, 49.
Wirion, General, 200–218.
Wittinghoff, General, 6.
Wollaston, W. H., 228.
Wollstonecraft, Mary and J., 6, 118.
Wolowski, S., 256.
Wolseley, Sir C., 64, 235.
Wombwell, John, 65.
Woodford, Ralph, 65, 71.
Woodville, Dr. W., 80.
Woodyatt, G., 235.
Wordsworth, William, 112.
Worsley, Israel, 110, 209.
Wortley, Louisa, 40.
Wraxall, Sir N., 53.
Wright, John, 92.
---- Captain, J. W., 73, 210.
---- William, 216.
Wurtemberg, King and Queen, 191, 207.
Wyndham, C., 45, 62, 317.
Wynford, Lord, 36, 274, 316.
Yarborough. _See_ Pelham.
Yarmouth, Lord, 26, 45, 205, 207, 218–221, 228, 317.
York, Cardinal, 52, 56, 59, 101, 254.
---- Duke and Duchess, 37, 208.
Yorke, H. Redhead, 108, 139, 140, 160, 166.
Young, Arthur, 86.
---- Thomas, 81, 88.
---- Sir William, 51.
Zamoiski, Count, 156.
OTHER VISITORS AND CAPTIVES.[309]
1801–1813
Abernethy, James. Adams, John. Addison, Dr., escaped. Ainsley.
Ainsworth, Jas. Wroth. Aitken, David, surgeon, Glasgow. Aitken,
Robert. Aitken, Thomas, banker. Allen, Major Alex. Allen, Major John.
Allen, Luke. Allsop, Barleton. Anderson, Lieut. Thomas. Andrews, Alex.
Andrews, Henry. Annesley, Gilbert. Anstey, Capt. Anstruther, Col.
David. Arbuthnot, Major Thos. Arcedeckne, Jas. Archdall, Edward. Argle,
Capt. Geo. Arthur, Daniel, secretary to Portuguese Embassy. Ashford,
Wm. Ashton, Jno. Ashworth, escaped. Atkinson, Jno. Atkinson, Wm.
Aubrey, Major. Austin, Jno. Austin, Thos.
Balfour, Jno. Balgrove. Ballantyne, Jas. Banks, Jos. Barber, Capt.
Barretti, Jas. Barry, Edwd. Bateman, Wm. Battley, Geo. Bazalgette,
Louis. Beamish, Chas. Beaumont, Chas. Beckwith, Samuel. Benson, Capt.
Richd., escaped. Bentham, Wm. Bermingham, Lieut. Bernard, Geo. Berry,
Jno. Best, Louis. Betts, Charles. Betts, Geo. Bevington, Geo. Bingham.
Birch, Capt. Jno. Birch, Major Thos. Blackmore, Robt. Blair, Capt.
Hunter. Blake, Arthur. Blake, Benj. Blake, Col. Wm. Blanckney. Bode,
Jno., escaped. Bold, Peter. Bold, Lieut. Thos. Bonham, Jno., barrister.
Boothby, Capt. (afterwards Rev.) Charles. Bord, Jno. Botwright, Wm.
Bourne, Samuel. Bouverie, Capt. Bowles, Lieut. Humphrey. Bradby,
Jas., barrister. Bradford, Lieut.-Col. Brandrum, Thos. Brenton, Sir
J. Brettell, Jno. Brewer, Capt., escaped. Brewer, Edward. Bridge, Wm.
Briggins, Dr. Brine, escaped. Brodie, Capt. Brown, Capt., escaped.
Brown, Lieut. Bruce, Alex. Buchanan, Jas. Bunbury, Thos. Burke, Major
Fras. Burns, Major. Burrows, Dr. Geo. M. Burton, Jas. Byrne, Jas.
Campbell, R. Campbell of Jamaica. Carleton, Jno. Carey, Capt. Carey,
Peter. Carron. Casenove. Cavendish, Geo. and Louis. Channing, Jno. and
Thos. Chetham, Col. Christie, Fras. Clarke, Dr. Jas. Clifton, Capt.
Colvert, Gen. Colville, Geo. Combe, Capt. Congreve, Capt. Conolly.
Cooper, Rev. Sir Wm. Cope, Lieut.-Col. Corbett, Jas. Cotterell.
Courtenay, Wm. Courvoisier, Peter. Cox, Col. Craufurd, Lieut. Jas. Hy.
Craufurd, Rev. Jno. Creswick, Fred. Croke, Jno. Cussans, Thos. Cusy.
Cuthbert, Jno. Ramsay. Cutler.
Dacre. Dale, Jos., escaped. Dalrymple, Capt. Dalyell, Wm. Daniell, Wm.
Darby, escaped. Dare. David, Dr. Davies. Deane, Capt. De Boyne, Gen.
Devonshire, Col. Fras. D’Ivernois, Col. Dobson, Geo. Douglas, Mrs.
Dowse, Major. Duff, Col. Dukinfield, Sir N. Dupré, Wm. Dyson, Geo.
Elrington. Elwin. Este. Eustace, Major. Evans.
Fagin. Falkenham. Fane, Capt., released. Fiott. Fitzgerald, Richd.
Fletcher, Edward. Floyd, Gen. Sir Jno. Forsyth. Foster, Peter Le Neve,
father of the scientist. Fox, Dr., escaped. Fraser, escaped. Fulk.
Garland, Jno. Watt. Garland, Peter. Gamier. Gellibrand, Wm. George,
Lieut. Gerrard, Alex., liberated. Gerrard, Capt. Jno. Giffard, Jno.
Goodman. Gordon, Col. Green, Jos. Grey, Sir Thomas. Grosvenor, Mary.
Halifax. Hankey, Jno. Peter. Hare. Harvey, Col. Hawey, Col. Heathcote.
Henderson. Hendley, Capt. Hewitson, Dr. Hibberd. Hill, Samuel. Hill,
Thos. Hodgson, Thos. Carlisle. Hollond, Thos. Honywood, Courtenay.
Hooke, Chas. Howard, Capt. Humphreys, Wm. Hunter, Orby. Hutchins.
Jackson, Edward. Jackson, John. Jackson, Mills, escaped. Jackson,
Richmond. Jackson, Wm., liberated. Jenner, Wm. Johnston, Major. Jones,
Lieut.
Kennedy. Kensington, Charles. Kensington, J. B. King, Geo. Kingston,
Major Strickland. Kinnersley.
Later. Laurens, Dr. Geo. Lee, Wm. Leigh, Philip, escaped. Le Mesurier,
Fras. Le Soulf, Hauteville. Leveson-Gower, Capt. Wm. Light. Little,
escaped. Livie, Alex. Lloyd, Dr. Wm. Lorimer. Lynch, Gen.
Macdonnell, Jas. Macdonnell, Jos. Macfarlane. Mackay, Capt. Mackenzie,
Major, escaped. Macnamara, Col. Macnamara, Geo. MacTaggart, Sir Jno.
Madan. Mandeville, Robt. Massingberd, C. Burrell. Masterson. Maude,
Jno. Baptist. May, Dr. Mercer, Jos., died at Bitche. Merivale, Robert.
Montgomerie, Thos. and Geo., liberated. Moore, Anthony. Moore, Col.
Moore, Jno., liberated. Mountney. Muriel. Murray, Col. Nasmyth, Capt.
Jas. Marshall. Newman, Henry. Newland, Gideon. Nicholson, Col., escaped.
O’Byrne. Oliphant, Edward. Olive. O’Reardon Otto. Ouvrard.
Palmer, Gen. Thos. Palmer, Mrs. Parsons. Pater, Capt. Paterson, Dr.
Jas. Philipps, Jno. Burton and Nathaniel. Pigott, Gillery. Pigott,
Jno., Hy., and Edwd. Pilling, Jno. Plunket, Oliver and Peter. Popham,
Major. Potter, Ralph. Power, Capt. Power, Jno. Prescott, Lieut.
Pridham, Lieut.
Raikes, Capt. Rennell, Capt. Richardson, Col. Ridman. Roberts. Roupell
Sir (?) Win. Ruddock, Col. Rumsey, Major. Russell, Wm. Thos.
St. Leger, Harewood (son of Viscount Doneraile?). Scott, Col.
Scott-Moncrieff. Shuttleworth, Jos. Sibbald. Smith, Rev. Dr. Spalding,
Col. Spencer, Col. (_qy._ Gen. Wm.). Stack, Jno., mineralogist.
Stacpoole, Capt. Stanhope, Capt. Chas. and Hy., midshipman (sons of
Lord Chesterfield); Henry, escaped. Strachey, Capt., R.N. Sutton,
Capt., escaped. Swayne, Col. Hy.
Taylor, Edward. Tindall, Lieut.-Col. Travers. Trevelyan. Truelock, Wm.
Tupper, naturalised. Turton, Thos., bishop of Ely.
Walker, Capt., escaped. Walpole, Jno., Robt., Edwd. Wardrop,
Cunningham, Glasgow, aged 17. Warburton, Willis. Warwick. Wayland.
Wetherdown. Whitaker, Capt., escaped. White, Rev. Wm., vicar of
Lancaster, escaped. Willis, Richd. and Thos. of Scarborough, died at
Bitche. Windham, Frances. Wingfield, Col. Wolfe, Rev. Robt. Woodford,
Jno. Alex. Worth, son of admiral. Wright, Jno. Masey, artist. Wyndham,
Col.
1814–1815.
Ainslie, Miss. Bennett, Wm., bishop of Cloyne. Black, Capt. Clive.
Colnaghi, jun., printseller. Du Cane. Heneage. James, Sir Walter.
Leman. Lutwyche. Planta, Edwd. Robertson. Rotch, Benj. Seymour, Hy.
Swinburne. Twining, Richd. Vyner, Miss. Whalley, Thos. Sedgwick, D.D.
Wyburn.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
FOOTNOTES:
[1] National Archives, F. 7, 2231. See _English Historical
Review_, October 1899.
[2] A. F. iv. 1490–1563. References not otherwise indicated relate to
the French Archives.
[3] Jefferson also placed his daughter there.
[4] This was granted in 1800 to John Cleaver Banks in order to examine
manuscripts in the National Library.
[5] Camelford, in 1802, sold the borough for £42,000 to Dupré Porcher.
[6] _Times_, March 3, 1801.
[7] In January 1793, quitting his wife, he followed to Paris Aimé de
Coigny, Duchess de Fleury, of whom he had become the paramour at Rome,
and who had gone to London for her accouchement. Being arrested, he
applied to her previous lover Lauzun to procure his release, but was
liberated without any necessity of mediation and returned to London.
[8] Pitt was inclined in 1797 to entertain the overture, but the
French _coup d’état_ put an end to negotiations. See _Fortescue
Papers_, iii. pp. 356–357. The French authorities ordered Melville’s
arrest, but he apparently fled in time, and coolly revisited Paris in
1802.
[9] The Jacobins were scandalised at the pomp with which he entered
Paris, where the market-women waited on him to make and receive
presents.
[10] Talbot, when acting at Berne in Wickham’s absence in 1797,
advanced money to French conspirators for a scheme of massacring the
members of the Directory at the Luxembourg, and he applied to his
Government for further funds for that purpose; but Grenville and
Canning refused to countenance the scheme and directed him to get back
the money (Martel, _Historiens Fantaisistes_). Though thus rebuked
Talbot was not dismissed.
[11] J. F. Neville, _Leisure Moments_.
[12] Detected in 1802 he was hanged for the murder of Sergeant
Armstrong at Goree in 1782.
[13] This was a saving of expense, for Napoleon had refused to pay the
£2,000,000 demanded for their maintenance.
[14] It is pleasant to think that Lauriston, Macdonald, and Clarke,
three men of British extraction, were among the few French generals who
on Napoleon’s return from Elba remained faithful to the Bourbons.
[15] M.P. for Eye in 1820.
[16] The suit of carriages for the use of Marquis Cornwallis in France
consists of a town coach, the body yellow, with arms, supporters,
crests, and the Order of the Garter, surrounded with mantles, all
highly emblazoned. The lining morocco with rich silk lace, and
reclining cushions of silk and morocco. The carriage crane-neck;
the hammer-cloth a bear-skin ornamented with silver paws. A town
chariot painted to correspond, with arms, supporters, crests, and
the Garter, but no mantles; crane-neck. A travelling coach, painted
the same; crane-neck with imperials, etc. Harness has been made
for twelve horses ornamented with silver in coronets, crests, and
the Garter, with reins, tassels, and toppings, decorated with silk
button-hangers.--_Times._
[17] The termination of the Congress at Amiens was an object of the
deepest regret to the Prefects and officers, civil as well as military.
The establishment of each ambassador had its particular merit. That
of Marquis Cornwallis was distinguished for the magnificence of his
liveries, and the splendour of his table and equipage. On all his grand
dinners, his Lordship had twelve servants in rich liveries, besides six
_Valets-de-Chambre_ also in a kind of scarlet uniform.
But in regard to the luxuries of the table, and the choice of his
wines, citizen Schimmelpenninck, the Batavian plenipotentiary, outdid
all other competition. He had his turbot and eels from Holland,
pike and perch from the Rhine; and the heaths and woods of Provence
supplied him with game. No wonder that the absence of such a man
should be lamented by the _Mayor and Common Council_ of that
city.--_Times_, April 2, 1802.
[18] The Warrens and the Jacksons were kinsmen, for in 1796 a Rev.
Dawson Warren had married Caroline Jackson.
[19] Despatches, Record Office.
[20] In 1809 he was appointed minister at Washington.
[21] He died from a hunting accident in 1815.
[22] Afterwards minister to the Argentine Republic.
[23] Son of Lord Pierrepont (created Earl Manvers in 1806).
[24] The embassy apparently required a Frenchman to translate or
correct its letters to Talleyrand, for in 1804 François Soulès, who had
lived twelve years in England and had translated English works, applied
for the Legion of Honour on the ground that he had not only helped to
capture the Bastille, but had been employed by Whitworth.
[25] Rogers, _Italy_.
[26] A. F. 1539–1543.
[27] The return coach left Paris at 6 A.M., but from July 1802
there was also a _berline_ with six places which started at 4
P.M., travelled all night, and arrived as soon as the morning
coach.
[28] _Practical Guide ... London to Paris._ R. Phillips, 1802.
[29] Mrs. F. E. King, _Tour in France_.
[30] In 1814, according to Kirwan, the fishwives no longer carried
passengers on their backs, but wading through the water tugged or
pushed small boats ashore. But Richard Bernard Boyle was carried ashore
by three men, one holding each leg and the third pushing behind.
[31] Also his biographer. Trotter died in poverty in 1818, aged
forty-three.
[32] Her age is given in the police register as sixty-three, but
as she died in 1842 at the age of ninety-two, she was really only
fifty-two. Fox’s age, on the other hand, is given as fifty, whereas
it was fifty-three. The ages in the register seem sometimes to be
hotel-keepers’ random guesses.
[33] Ashton, _English Caricature on Napoleon_.
[34] Adair, _Mission to the Court of Vienna_, p. 505.
[35] Chaptal, _Industrie Française_, 1817.
[36] Remacle, _Bonaparte et les Bourbons_.
[37] Duchesse d’Abrantès, _Mémoires_.
[38] _European Magazine_, 1802.
[39] Lascases speaks by mistake of a statue.
[40] For full list see Appendix A.
[41] _Dropmore Papers_, ii. 11.
[42] La Réveillère Lepaux, _Mémoires_.
[43] A. Young, _Journal_.
[44] _The Francis Letters_, 1901.
[45] Pasquier, _Mémoires_, vol. iv.
[46] F. 7, 3759.
[47] Duchesse d’Abrantès, _Souvenirs_; di Salvo, _Travels in
1806_.
[48] Buckingham, _Court and Cabinets of George III._
[49] _Les Rues de Paris._
[50] See my _Englishmen in the French Revolution_, and _Westminster
Review_, January 1897.
[51] See my _Paris in 1789–1794_.
[52] See Appendix B.
[53] O. 1, 486.
[54] _Life of Lord Minto._ Two other daughters married the Duke of
Richmond and Marquis Cornwallis.
[55] George Sand, _Mémoires_.
[56] F. 7, 6307, 6339, 6534, 6481. He seems to have tried to conceal
this adventure, alleging that he had been courteously received by
Napoleon, which may have been true, but was not the whole truth.
[57] _Times_, December 21, 1802.
[58] Cholmondeley and Guilford had also in 1794 voted for peace.
[59] _Notes and Queries_, February 6, 1892.
[60] Lady Sophia Hobart, daughter of the Earl of Buckinghamshire, had
been educated at the Bernardine convent at Paris.
[61] Cloncurry, _Recollections_.
[62] See article on Spa in _Nineteenth Century_, October 1902.
[63] Cloncurry, _Recollections_.
[64] _Monthly Review_, December 1800.
[65] _Notes and Queries_, May 4, 1901.
[66] _Courrier de Londres_, July 1802.
[67] _Minerva_, January 1793.
[68] See my _Englishmen in the French Revolution_.
[69] _Dropmore Papers_, iii. 286, 472.
[70] Lord Sheffield and his daughter visited Bouillon in 1791.
[71] _Fortnightly Review_, July 1892.
[72] _Naval Chronicle_, 1816, p. 98.
[73] Drake does not give the source of the letters, but this may be
inferred from Pingaud, _Un Agent Secret sous la Révolution_.
[74] I am indebted for this and other data to Miss Evelyn Drake of
Grampound, a great-granddaughter.
[75] _Paget Papers_, 1896.
[76] See _Cornhill Magazine_, September 1903.
[77] A. F. iv. 1503.
[78] _Notes and Queries_, November 30, 1901.
[79] See my _Englishman in the French Revolution_, p. 130.
[80] _Early Married Life of Lord Stanley of Alderley._
[81] Again in 1831, at the request of Lafayette, he addressed to ‘my
fellow-citizens of all places and times’ a pamphlet on a Second or
Upper Chamber.
[82] Bonaparte, with similar courtesy, had in 1800 sent the Royal
Society Marchand’s _Voyage autour du Monde_, and in 1802 he presented
copies to George III. and all the European sovereigns.
[83] _Atlantic Monthly_, February 1893.
[84] A Mrs. Pigott, living at Geneva 1807–1815, may have been his widow.
[85] An E. Dyson died at Palgrave in 1812, aged eighty-seven.
[86] _Monthly Review_, 1826.
[87] _Revue Hebdomadaire_, October 19, 1895.
[88] Paris _Temps_, December 13 and 25, 1878.
[89] His ‘Countess of Dysart’ was sold in June 1901 for 14,050 guineas,
the highest price ever given at an auction in England for a picture.
[90] Despatches, Record Office.
[91] _Revue Historique_ (Paris), Jan. 1903.
[92] The visitor of 1802 may, however, have been not Théroigne’s lover,
but her lover’s son.
[93] A. F. iv. 1494.
[94] Joseph Montefiore, arrested in 1803 on returning from a visit
to London, is described as having been born there and as residing at
Marseilles.
[95] Many of Richard’s letters to Mezières, in indifferent spelling,
are in the French Archives. T. 132.
[96] She was the daughter of Sebastian Mercier, and after Holcroft’s
death married James Kenney, the dramatist. She died in 1853. Her
brother accompanied Holcroft back to England, but the printing-office
started by them did not succeed.
[97] The son, who married Elizabeth Latouche, died in 1806, leaving a
son who became a lunatic in 1826 and died unmarried in 1847.
[98] F. 7, 3755 and 3759.
[99] _Monthly Review_, Nov. 1823, and _Gentleman’s Magazine_,
Feb. 1824.
[100] It was published by William Dugard, a Worcestershire man, but
to judge by his name, of French extraction. He was master of Merchant
Taylors’ School, London, printer to the Council of State, and a friend
of Milton. See _Dictionary of National Biography_, which does not,
however, mention his newspaper.
[101] This daughter apparently died in childhood.
[102] _Souvenirs et Mémoires_, Oct. 1899.
[103] See my _Paris in 1789–1794_.
[104] A. F. ii. 288.
[105] His age is registered as thirty, which, if correct, settles the
date of his birth.
[106] F. 7, 2232.
[107] _Révolution Française_, February 1890.
[108] _Fraser’s Mag._ 1860: _le Correspondant_, 1897–1898.
[109] Another brother was captured at sea during the war and
incarcerated at Brest.
[110] Remacle.
[111] _Gentleman’s Magazine._
[112] A. F. iv. 1503.
[113] F. 7, 5735; T. 1112; _Jerningham Letters_.
[114] Weston tells us that some of the pictures, much damaged in
transit, had had to be repaired. Shepherd noticed many soldiers at the
Louvre gazing triumphantly at the pictures conquered by them.
[115] Redhead Yorke, _Letters from France_.
[116] One of these was Manning. At first, indeed, imperfect knowledge
of French deterred him, for Lamb wrote to him:--‘Your letter was just
what a letter should be, crammed and very funny. Every part of it
pleased me till you came to Paris, then your philosophical indolence or
indifference stung me. You cannot stir from your rooms till you know
the language. What the devil! Are men nothing but ear-trumpets? Are men
all tongue and ear?’
But presently he says:--‘ ... the god-like face of the First Consul....
I envy you your access to this great man much more than your
_seances_ and conversaziones, which I have a shrewd suspicion must
be something dull.’ (S. Wheeler, _Letters of Lamb_.)
Among the lectures by which he profited were those on Chinese by Joseph
Heger, a German whom he may have previously met in London.
[117] Holcroft, _Travels_.
[118] _Mémoires d’un Nonagénaire._
[119] De Bray, _Revue de Paris_, February 15 and March 1, 1901.
[120] _Westmorland MSS._ (Hist. MSS. Commission).
[121] Mgr. Justin Févra, _Revue du Monde Catholique_, June 15,
1900.
[122] Remacle, _Bonaparte et les Bourbons_, p. 99.
[123] Charles Orby Hunter, probably his father, had died at Paris in
1791.
[124] Reichardt, however, comparing France with Germany, speaks of the
increase of drinking, and of young men deliberately assembling for a
carouse; he also speaks of gormandising.
[125] Information kindly supplied by Canon Jessopp.
[126] Reichardt, who met Bishop Grégoire and Kosciuski at her house,
describes her as wearing a cap with long flaps covering her cheeks, and
with a large bouquet falling down from her hair to her nose, so that
with her constant nods and gesticulations there were only occasional
glimpses of her eyes and mouth. He was bored, too, by the poetical
recitations of Vigée, Madame Vigée-Lebrun’s brother. Poole, however,
was pleased at meeting so many _literati_, and Meyer, canon of
Hamburg, thought the hostess resembled Angelica Kaufmann.
[127] _Jerningham Letters_, 1896.
[128] F. 7, 6251, dossier 4980.
[129] T. 777 and 1640.
[130] _Revue Internationale_, 1887.
[131] A. F. iv. 1473.
[132] I can find no confirmation of this story. If there was a duel, it
must have been with Thomas Pitt, Lord Camelford, but Christopher was
probably confused with Thomas Potter, a member of Wilkes’s Hell-fire
club, who, elected as an anti-Pittite, joined Pitt, and in 1756 was
appointed Paymaster of the Forces. The two Potters may or may not have
been kinsmen.
[133] Malmesbury, who did not take the overture seriously, says--‘He
came to me _avec des projets insensés_.’
[134] A. F. iv. 1329.
[135] Probably Letourneur’s Edition.
[136] F. 7, 1672.
[137] Hamburg was fined four millions by Napoleon for this act.
[138] _Times_, February 25, 1803.
[139] Kirwan in _Fraser’s Magazine_, 1860; Fitzpatrick, _Secret
Service under Pitt_.
[140] Année, _Livre Noir_, 1829.
[141] _Dublin Review_, April 1890.
[142] F. 7, 1671.
[143] _Fraser’s Magazine_, 1860.
[144] W. T. Tone’s autobiography appeared in a French review, the
_Carnet_, in 1899.
[145] _Atlantic Monthly_, September 1890. His tomb at Père
Lachaise is no longer discoverable.
[146] _Atlantic Monthly_, February 1893.
[147] Helmine von Chézy, _Unvergessenes_.
[148] She pretended, however, to be Dorinda Rogers, an American.
[149] A. F. iv. 1496 and 1498.
[150] Lord Colchester, _Letters_. King speaks of the swarm of
English bankrupts and sharpers at Calais and Boulogne.
[151] Oscar Browning, _England and Napoleon in 1803_.
[152] Brother to Madame de Genlis.
[153] Remaele, _Bonaparte et les Bourbons_.
[154] Thibaudeau, _Mémoires_.
[155] Remacle, p. 93.
[156] Some French ladies, who were disagreeably crowded by public
curiosity in Kensington Gardens, complained heavily of our want of
_politesse_. They should remember, however, that they were not
quite undressed in the fashion, and that the English ladies always walk
out with something upon their heads, however they treat the rest of
their persons.--_Times_, April 19, 1803.
[157] Holcroft was told by a French lady, who sent for him to make this
confidence and received him in her bath, that Fiévée was commissioned
to bribe London newspapers (_Travels from Hamburg to Paris_).
Holcroft believed that the mission was unsuccessful.
[158] Napoleon, _Correspondance_.
[159] See my _Englishmen in the French Revolution_ and _Paris in
1789–94_.
[160] _Révue des Deux Mondes_, Sept. 1, 1902, p. 115.
[161] A police note charges him with having transmitted letters to and
from _émigrés_.
[162] A. F. iv. 1327.
[163] Remacle, _Bonaparte et les Bourbons_.
[164] Remacle.
[165] England in like manner released in 1810 eighty-four sailors of a
captured privateer who had rescued a shipwrecked British crew.
[166] _Correspondance._
[167] _Projets de Débarquement_, 1902. Napoleon mystified his
subordinates as well as the foreigner, for on the 22nd August 1805
he wrote to Admiral Villeneuve, ‘England is ours. All is embarked.
Appear for twenty-four hours and all is ended’ (_Eng. Hist. Rev._,
October 1903).
[168] See a full account of this in _Humanité Nouvelle_, July to
September 1899; Allonville, ‘Mém. Secrets’; Metternich, ‘Mémoires’;
Lecestre, ‘Lettres de Napoléon,’ containing letters on this subject
which were suppressed in the collection published by Napoleon
III.
[169] Talleyrand’s letter to Fox, April 1, 1806.
[170] _Lettres de Madame de Genlis._
[171] A. F. 1493.
[172] T. 1910.
[173] _Moniteur_, 1819–1820.
[174] See p. 220.
[175] _Correspondence of Jérôme Bonaparte._ Baltimore, 1878.
[176] _Correspondance._
[177] Now German territory and spelt Bitsch.
[178] Concannon was ultimately allowed to visit Vienna and to reside
near Epernay.
[179] At Fontainebleau also there was a theatrical performance for the
benefit of the penniless captives, Concannon writing the prologue.
[180] _Notes and Queries_, November 18, 1899.
[181] Elizabeth Alexander, divorced by him in 1795.
[182] Lawrence, _Picture of Verdun_, 1810.
[183] F. 7, 3716.
[184] A. F. iv. 1504. Folkard, _The Sailing Boat_, 1853.
[185] A. F. iv. 1495.
[186] A. F. iv. 1491.
[187] F. 7, 3767.
[188] A. F. iv. 1502–1504.
[189] _Bell’s Weekly Messenger_, according to Maclean.
[190] Brotonne, _Lettres de Napoléon_.
[191] A. F. iv. 1495.
[192] A. F. iv. 1491. The mistress was probably the lady for whose
arrival from Paris he had waited at Calais in 1803, thus losing
his chance of escape. His breach of parole led to many English at
Aix-la-Chapelle and elsewhere being relegated to Verdun.
[193] A. F. iv. 1491.
[194] Allonville states that Frenchmen, indignant at the detentions,
assisted escapes.
[195] _Nineteenth Century_, May 1888, art. Niederbronn.
[196] Brotonne, _Lettres de Napoléon_.
[197] A. F. iv. 1234.
[198] See p. 67.
[199] F. 7, 3773 and 3776.
[200] A. F. iv. 1237.
[201] F. 7, 3763.
[202] F. 7, 3716.
[203] F. 7, 3773.
[204] A. F. iv. 1490.
[205] A. F. iv. 1328.
[206] A. F. iv. 1494.
[207] There is a mystery about her paternity, but there seems to be a
hint that she was a natural daughter of the Duke of Dorset.
[208] M. Coquelle, paper read at the Congress of French Learned
Societies at Paris, 1902.
[209] Her son, Lord Henry Seymour, born in 1805, is said to have never
set foot in England.
[210] Her father, Hamilton Nesbit, had in 1802 returned through Paris
from a visit to her at Constantinople.
[211] F. 7, 3716.
[212] _Revue Rétrospective_, vol. 14.
[213] Charles escaped in August 1810.
[214] _Notes and Queries_, February 3, 1900.
[215] Baron, _Life of Jenner_.
[216] Who little imagined that Admiral Cockburn, a kinsman of the
prisoner, would convey him in the _Northumberland_ to St. Helena.
[217] _Remains of Mrs. Trench._
[218] Mr. E. B. Harris, _Athenæum_, February 24, 1900.
[219] A. F. iv. 1496.
[220] A. F. iv. 1512.
[221] _Journal of Mary Frampton._
[222] This was not the only marriage among the captives.
[223] This was not the only case of unaccountable desertion. Edmund
Wilson, born in Italy, was left behind in France at the age of three
years by his English parents--there was an Andrew Wilson, an artist,
a visitor, but surely he was not the delinquent--and was adopted by
the Comtesse d’Aumale. He became a prominent liberal Catholic, and
from 1829 to 1831 contributed to the _Correspondant_ till it was
superseded by the more advanced _Avenir_ of Lamennais. It was,
however, revived in 1842 and still exists. For seventeen years ‘le sage
Wilson,’ as he was called on account of his habitual circumspection,
presided over Sunday gatherings of Parisian apprentices. He was
unmarried, a sort of lay monk, was very charitable, and was never
naturalised in France. He died in 1862.
[224] A. F. iv. 1498–1499.
[225] F. 7, 2250.
[226] Her use of strong language earned her the nickname of
Billingsgate.
[227] They then saw the royal family dining in public at the Tuileries.
[228] F. 7, 3716.
[229] F. 7, 3744.
[230] F. 7, 3750.
[231] F. 7, 3744.
[232] F. 7, 3779.
[233] Keppel, author of books on Southern Italy, died at Naples in
1851. He had a natural son Augustus, a diplomatist, who married Mdlle.
de la Ferronaye, the French authoress.
[234] A. F. iv. 1504.
[235] A. F. iv. 1493.
[236] A. F. iv. 1523. One of these was the wife of Montmorency Morris,
with her four children and two female friends.
[237] A. F. iv. 1504.
[238] A. F. iv. 1504. Bute, son of George III.’s favourite,
also wrote himself to Talleyrand.
[239] F. 7, 3768.
[240] _Westminster Review_, 1890.
[241] A. F. iv. 1158.
[242] F. 7, 3750.
[243] Some of these suggested incidents in _Peter Simple_.
[244] A. Milman, _Life of Dean Milman_.
[245] _Narrative of Captivity._
[246] Napoleon judged the English Government by his own standard, for,
not to speak of Mehée de la Touche, he sent over to England in 1808
Bourlac, who, pretending to be a royalist emissary, obtained interviews
with Hawkesbury and Canning.
[247] A. F. iv. 1498.
[248] A. F. iv. 1493.
[249] F. 7, 3116.
[250] Sir Horace Rumbold, _Recollections of a Diplomatist_.
[251] A. F. iv. 1494; F. 7, 3750.
[252] Grasilier, _Enlèvement de Rumbold_, Paris, 1901.
[253] _National Review_, August 1903.
[254] _Archives du Nord de la France_, iii. 449.
[255] _Moniteur_, February 14, 1803.
[256] F. 7, 2241–56.
[257] Both bodies were conveyed to England.
[258] A. F. iv. 1498.
[259] General in 1814; died in 1815.
[260] A. F. iv. 1158.
[261] A. F. iv. 1158.
[262] A. F. iv. 1158.
[263] F. 7, 3882.
[264] _Intermédiaire_, February 10, 1902.
[265] A. F. iv. 1527.
[266] A. F. iv. 1158.
[267] _Ibid._
[268] He stopped a night at Nohant on his way to Blois, and again on
repairing to Paris. Did he notice there a tomboy ten years old destined
to be famous as George Sand?
[269] F. 7, 3782.
[270] This, as we have seen, is not quite accurate.
[271] _Réclamation de Verdun._ The number never exceeded 1100.
[272] Then Ambassador at London.
[273] A Paris paper absurdly estimated them in October 1814 at 12,000.
[274] Artaud, _Vie de Hauterive_.
[275] _Life of Curran._
[276] An octogenarian, who in 1838, three months a widower, married
Catherine Stevens, the vocalist, whose age was forty-four.
[277] _Letters of Lady Burghersh._
[278] National Archives, Paris, A. A. 40.
[279] _A Visit to Paris in 1814._ Scott went again after Waterloo.
[280] _Letters from a Lady to her Sister._
[281] Beattie, _Life of Campbell_.
[282] F. 7, 3784.
[283] F. 7, 3785.
[284] _Paris in 1802 and 1814._
[285] Retiring in 1822, he lived till 1846. His co-proprietor, Daniel
Stuart, died in 1847.
[286] F. 7, 3783.
[287] _Mon Journal de Huit Jours._
[288] _Visit to Paris in June 1814._
[289] _Tour through Some Parts of France._
[290] _Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff._
[291] _Memoirs of Moriolles_, p. 157.
[292] Livi, _Napoleon a Elba_, 1888; _Siècle_, August 23,
1887.
[293] _Quotidienne_, February 6, 1815.
[294] _Temple Bar_, October 1903.
[295] _Ibid._
[296] _Nuova Antologia_, January 1887.
[297] Pons de l’Hérault, _Souvenirs d’Elbe_, edited by Pelissier,
1897.
[298] Ebrington’s _Memorandum of Two Conversations_, published in
1823 as a pamphlet of thirty-one pages and never reprinted.
[299] Earl Russell, _Recollections_. See Appendix C.
[300] _Souvenirs de l’ile d’Elbe._
[301] We know how Napoleon as a youth detested France, regarding
Corsica alone as his country, but he doubtless got to consider himself
a real Frenchman.
[302] According to an English account Napoleon, on the band striking up
the National Anthem, hummed the tune. (_Temple Bar_, October 1903.)
[303] Sir Neil Campbell, _Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba_,
1869.
[304] As it was, the Marquis Wellesley (Wellington’s brother), the Duke
of Sussex (the Prince Regent’s brother), Lords Lansdowne, Grey, Byron,
Lauderdale, Guilford, Bessborough, and three other peers voted in his
favour, as also Mackintosh, Romilly, Whitbread, Tierney, Lord Morpeth,
Sir Timothy Shelley (the poet’s grandfather), Lord Stanley (father of
the ‘Rupert of Debate’), Lord Duncannon, and twenty-nine other members
of the Lower House.
[305] Mackenzie, _History of Newcastle_, 1827.
[306] Philip Dormer Stanhope had settled in France or Belgium about
1790, and during the war procured remittances from England through
the Paris bankers Perregaux and Laffitte. Was he a son of Lord
Chesterfield’s illegitimate son? If so, the latter was a father at
the age of nineteen, for he was born in 1732, and this Philip Dormer
Stanhope gave his age in September 1814 on applying for domicile
in France as sixty-three. Possibly, however, this last figure is a
misprint in the _Bulletin des Lois_.
[307] He seems to be the visitor who registered himself as Lord John
Stuart.
[308] A dandy famous for his collection of snuff-boxes, said to number
365.
[309] Subject to orthographic errors in French records.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
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