It was during the unsettled times that preceded the great French
Revolution of 1848—I think it was in January of that year—that one
of Mr. Rogers’s breakfasts was attended by Prince Louis Napoleon
Buonaparte, afterwards Napoleon III.; Dr. Whately, the Protestant
Archbishop of Dublin; Lord William Pitt Lennox, the son of the Duke
of Richmond (who distinguished himself at the battle of Waterloo, and
died many years afterwards as Governor-General of Canada); and myself.
I was previously acquainted with all these gentlemen, and had met
the Prince a few days previously at the house of Mr. John MacGregor,
formerly Secretary of the Board of Trade, and member of Parliament for
Glasgow. The Prince, who was then forty years of age, had long been a
resident in London as an exile, spoke English exceedingly well, had
thoroughly studied the working of the British constitution, and had
learned to respect and apparently to love the English people. He was
very taciturn and undemonstrative; his dull grey eyes seemed to have
little speculation in them, and to have been given to him, if such
an expression may be used, to look inwards upon himself rather than
outwards upon the world. They brightened up at rare intervals when
anything was said that particularly interested him. On this occasion
the talk of the breakfast table turned a good deal upon French politics
and the probability, more or less imminent, of a revolutionary outbreak
in Paris, consequent upon the unwise opposition of Louis Philippe
and his too obsequious minister, M. Guizot, to the question of the
extension of the franchise and the reform of the French Parliament.
As I had within a fortnight or three weeks returned from Paris, where
I had associated with some leading liberal politicians, among others
with Béranger the poet and the Abbé de Lamennais, my opinion upon the
situation was asked, I think, by Mr. Rogers, and whether I thought
the agitation would subside. “Not,” I said, “unless the King yields.”
“He won’t yield, I think,” said the Prince; “he does not understand
the seriousness of the case.” I told the Prince that Béranger, who
knew the temper and sympathised with the opinions of the people, had
predicted the establishment of a Republic, consequent upon the downfall
of the monarchy, within less than a twelvemonth. Lamennais did not
give the King so long a lease of power, but foresaw revolution within
six months. The Prince remarked that “if there were barricades in the
streets of Paris, such as those by which his way to the throne was won
in 1830, the King would not give orders to disperse the mob by force
of arms.” “Why do you think so?” asked Mr. Rogers. “The King is a weak
man, a merciful man. He does not like bloodshed. I often think he was
a fool not to have had me shot after the affair of Strasburg. Had our
cases been reversed I know that I would have had him shot without
mercy,” I thought little of this remark at the time, but in after
years, when the exiled Prince became the powerful emperor, my mind
often reverted to this conversation, and I thought that if King Louis
Philippe had done what the Prince considered he ought to have done—and
as he would have been fully justified by law, civil and military, as
well as by state policy, in doing—the whole course of European history
would have been changed. Personally, the Prince was highly esteemed by
all who knew him. Stern as a politician, and in pursuit of the great
object of his ambition, as in the famous _coup d’état_ of 1851 by
which he raised himself at a bound from the comparatively humble and
uncertain chair of a President to the most conspicuous imperial throne
in the world—he was, in private life, of a singularly amiable temper.
He never forgot in his prosperity the friends or even the acquaintances
of his adversity; never ceased to remember any benefit that had been
conferred upon him, and not only to be grateful for it, but to show
his gratitude by acts of kindness and generosity, if the kindness or
generosity could be of benefit to the fortunes of the persons on whom
it was bestowed. When he sought the hand in marriage of a Princess of
the House of Austria, and the honor was declined for the occult and
unwhispered reason that he was a parvenu and an upstart, and that his
throne was at the mercy of a revolution (and what throne is not?), he
married for pure love and affection a noble lady of inferior rank, and
raised her to a throne which she filled for many years with more grace
and splendor than any contemporary sovereign born in the purple of
royalty had ever exhibited, Queen Victoria alone excepted.
The Prince thoroughly understood the character of the French people.
Napoleon I. had called the English a nation of shopkeepers. Napoleon
III. knew that the French were entitled in a far greater degree than
the English to that depreciatory epithet. He knew that in their hearts
they did not care so much for liberty and fraternity as they did for
“equality,”—that what they wanted in the first place was peace, so
that trade and industry might have a chance to prosper; and secondly,
that France as a nation might be the predominant power in Europe. For
the first reason, they required a master who would maintain order; for
the second reason, they idolised the name of the first Napoleon. These
two things were patent to the mind of Napoleon III., and formed the
keystone of his domestic and foreign policy.
When London, about three months after the breakfast at Mr. Rogers’, was
threatened, on April 10, 1848, by an insurrectionary mob of Chartists,
under the guidance of a half-crazy Irishman, named Feargus O’Connor,
who afterwards died in a lunatic asylum, the Prince volunteered to act
as a special constable, for the preservation of the peace, in common
with many thousands of respectable professional men, merchants, and
tradesmen. I met him in Trafalgar Square, armed with the truncheon
of a policeman. On this occasion, the Duke of Wellington, then
commander-in-chief of the British army, had taken the precaution to
station the military in sufficient numbers at all the chief strategical
points of the metropolis ready, though concealed from the notice of
the multitude, to act on an emergency. Happily their services were not
required. The sovereign was popular; the upper and middle classes were
unanimous; a large section of the laboring classes had no sympathy with
Chartism, and the display of the civic force, with bludgeons and staves
only, without firearms of any kind, was quite sufficient to overawe the
rioters. I stopped for a minute to exchange greetings with the Prince,
and said I did not think from all that I had heard that the Chartists
would resort to violence, and that their march through the streets
would be orderly. The Prince was of the same opinion, and passed upon
his beat among other police special constables in front of the National
Gallery.
As Lord William Lennox was of the breakfast party, I took the
opportunity to ask him a question with regard to a disputed point.
I had lately visited Brussels, the city in which I had passed my
school-boy days, and which was consequently endeared to my mind by
many youthful associations. The mother of Lord William, the beautiful
Duchess of Richmond, had given a great ball on the night preceding the
battle of Waterloo, in June, 1815, at which Lord William, then in his
sixteenth year, was present. Every lover of poetry will remember the
splendid description of this ball and of the subsequent battle which
occurs in the third canto of Byron’s “Childe Harold.” The passage is
unsurpassed in any language for the vigor, the picturesqueness, and the
magnificence of its thought and diction, and in its relation to one of
the most stupendous events in modern history.
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark: a deep sound strikes like a rising knell.
It has been generally asserted and believed that the ball was given
by the duchess in the grand hall of the stately Hôtel de Ville in the
Grande Place, and when in Brussels I heard the assertion repeated by
many people, though denied by others. One old citizen, who remembered
the battle well, affirmed it to have been at the Hôtel de Ville, which
he saw brilliantly lighted up for the occasion, and passed among the
crowd of equipages that filled the Grande Place, when setting down
and taking up the ladies who graced the assembly with their presence.
Another equally old and trustworthy inhabitant declared that to his
personal knowledge the ball was given in the “Palais d’Aes,” a large
building that adjoins the palace of the King of the Belgians, and is
now used as a barrack; while a third affirmed it to have been held
in the handsome hotel, adjoining the Chamber of Deputies, which was
formerly occupied by Sir Charles Bagot, the British Ambassador to
Brussels and the Hague in 1830. Thinking there could be no better
authority than one who was present on the occasion, one, moreover,
who was so nearly allied to the giver of the entertainment, I asked
Lord William to decide the point. He replied at once that all these
assertions were unfounded. His father, the Duke, took a large house
in a back street, called the “Rue de la Blanchisserie” (street of the
laundry), abutting on the boulevard, opposite the present Botanic
Garden, and that the ball took place in the not extraordinarily
spacious drawing-room of that mansion. He said, moreover, that the
lines—
Within the window’d niche of that high hall
Sat Brunswick’s fated chieftain,
conveyed an idea of magnitude which the so-called “high hall” did not
in reality possess.
Archbishop Whately here said: “If we may be permitted without breach of
good manners to speak of Waterloo in the presence of Prince Napoleon,
I may remark that the correction of the very minor error just made
by Lord William, though exceedingly interesting is not of great
importance. Though contradicted again and again, the report still
circulates, and is still believed, that the Duke of Wellington was
surprised on the eve of the battle of Waterloo by the rapid march of
the emperor, and was thus taken at a disadvantage.”
“I never believed the report,” said the Prince, “though I have my own
views about the battle. I visited Waterloo in the winter of 1832, with
what feelings you may imagine.”
“The truth as regards the alleged surprise,” said the Archbishop,
“appears to be, as Lord Byron explained in a note to the passage in
‘Childe Harold,’ that the Duke had received intelligence of Napoleon’s
march, and at first had the idea of requesting the Duchess of Richmond
to countermand the ball; but, on reflection, considered it desirable
that the people of Brussels should be kept in ignorance of the course
of events. He, therefore, desired the duchess to let the ball proceed,
and gave commands to all the general officers who had been invited
to appear at it, each taking care to quit the room at ten o’clock
quietly, and without giving any notification, except to each of the
under officers, to join their respective divisions _en route_. There is
no doubt that many of the subalterns who were not in the secret were
surprised at the suddenness of the order.”
“I heard, when I visited the field of Waterloo less than a month ago,”
I said, “that many of the officers joined the march in their dancing
shoes, so little time was left for them to obey orders.”
“It has been proved to the satisfaction of every real inquirer into
the facts,” said Mr. Rogers, “that as far as the duke himself and
his superior officers were concerned, there was no surprise in the
matter. You know the daring young lady, who presumed on her beauty to
be forgiven for her impertinence, who asked the Duke point-blank at an
evening party whether he had not been surprised at Waterloo. ‘Certainly
not!’ he replied ‘but I am now.’”
“A proper rebuke,” said Lord William, “I hope the lady felt it.”
Byron, in the beautiful stanzas to which allusion has been made,
describes the wood of Soignes, erroneously called Soignies, in the
environs of Brussels, a portion of the great Forest of Ardennes:
And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
Dewy with Nature’s tear-drops as they pass.
Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave.
In a note to this passage he speaks of Ardennes as famous in
Boiardo’s “Orlando,” as immortal in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”
Whatever may have been the case with Boiardo, it is all but certain
that Shakespeare’s “Arden” was not the Ardennes near Brussels,
but the forest of Arden, in Warwickshire, near his native town of
Stratford-on-Avon. He frequented this “Arden” in his youth, perhaps in
chasing the wild deer of Sir Thomas Lucy, perhaps in love-rambles with
Anne Hathaway. Portions of this English forest still remain, containing
in a now enclosed park—the property of a private gentleman—some
venerable oak trees, one of which as I roughly measured it with my
walking-stick is upwards of thirty feet in circumference within a yard
of the ground. This tree, with several others still standing, must
have been old in the days of Shakespeare; and in the shadow of which
he himself may have reclined in the happy days ere he went to London
in search of fame and fortune. “Arden,” spelled Ardennes in French,
is a purely Celtic word, meaning the high forest, from _Ard_, high,
and _Airdean_, heights. The English district is still called “Arden,”
and the small town of Henley, within its boundaries, is described as
Henley-in-Arden to distinguish it from the many other Henleys that
exist in England.
Lord William Lennox married the once celebrated cantatrice, Miss Wood,
from whom he was divorced. He was a somewhat voluminous author of
third-rate novels, and a frequent contributor to the periodical press.
He died in 1880, in his eighty-first year.
Dr. Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, was the author of a very able
treatise on Logic and Rhetoric, long the text-book of the schools;
and also of a once famous _jeu d’esprit_ entitled “Historic Doubts
concerning Napoleon Buonaparte,” in which he proved irrefragably by
false logic likely to convince idle and unthinking readers, that
no such person as Napoleon Buonaparte ever did exist or could have
existed. In this clever little work he ridiculed, under the guise of
seeming impartiality and critical acumen, the many attempts that had
been made, especially by French writers of the school of Voltaire, to
prove that Jesus Christ was a purely imaginary character, as much a
myth as the gods of Grecian and Roman mythology. Mr. Greville, in his
“Memoirs of the Courts of George III., George IV., and William IV.,”
records that he met Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, at a dinner-party,
and describes him “as a very ordinary man in appearance and
conversation, with something pretentious in his talk, and as telling
stories without point.” Nevertheless he admitted him to be “a very able
man.” My opinion of the Archbishop was far more favorable. The first
thing that struck me with regard to him was the clear precision of
his reasoning, as befitted a man who had written with such undoubted
authority on Logic and Rhetoric, and the second his rare tolerance for
all conscientious differences of opinion on religious matters. Two
years previously I had sat next to him on the platform of the inaugural
meeting held by the members of The Athenæum at Manchester in support of
that institution. Several bishops had been invited, and had signified
their intention to be present, but all of them except Dr. Whately had
withdrawn as soon as it was publicly announced that Mr. George Dawson,
a popular lecturer and Unitarian preacher of advanced opinions, was
to address the audience. Mr. Dawson, who was at the time a very young
man, spoke with considerable eloquence and power, and impressed the
audience favorably, the Archbishop included. “I think,” said Dr.
Whately, turning to me at the conclusion of the speech, “that my
reverend brethren would have taken no harm from being present to-night,
and more than one of them, whom I could name, would be all the better
if they could preach with as much power and spirit, as this boy has
displayed in his speech.” On another occasion, when I was in Dublin in
1849. I heard that several ultra-orthodox Protestant clergymen in the
city had been heard to express regret that Dr. Whately was so lax in
his religious belief, and set so bad an example to his clergy. I asked
in what manner, and was told in reply that he had publicly spoken of
Dr. Daniel Murray, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, then in his
81st year, as “a good man, a very good man,” adding the hope that he
himself should be found worthy to meet Murray in Heaven.
This large-minded prelate died in 1863, in his seventy-seventh year.