STAY IN EUROPE.
Monroe, as Morris's successor, entered upon his new duties with an
immense flourish, and rapidly gave a succession of startling proofs that
he was a minister altogether too much to the taste of the frenzied
Jacobinical republicans to whom he was accredited. Indeed, his capers
were almost as extraordinary as their own, and seem rather like the
antics of some of the early French commanders in Canada, in their
efforts to ingratiate themselves with their Indian allies, than like the
performance we should expect from a sober Virginian gentleman on a
mission to a civilized nation. He stayed long enough to get our affairs
into a snarl, and was then recalled by Washington, receiving from the
latter more than one scathing rebuke.
However, the fault was really less with him than with his party and with
those who sent him. Monroe was an honorable man with a very un-original
mind, and he simply reflected the wild, foolish views held by all his
fellows of the Jeffersonian democratic-republican school concerning
France--for our politics were still French and English, but not yet
American. His appointment was an excellent example of the folly of
trying to carry on a government on a "non-partisan" basis. Washington
was only gradually weaned from this theory by bitter experience; both
Jefferson and Monroe helped to teach him the lesson. It goes without
saying that in a well-ordered government the great bulk of the employees
in the civil service, the men whose functions are merely to execute
faithfully routine departmental work, should hold office during good
behavior, and should be appointed without reference to their politics;
but if the higher public servants, such as the heads of departments and
the foreign ministers, are not in complete accord with their chief, the
only result can be to introduce halting indecision and vacillation into
the counsels of the nation, without gaining a single compensating
advantage, and without abating by one iota the virulence of party
passion. To appoint Monroe, an extreme Democrat, to France, while at the
same time appointing Jay, a strong Federalist, to England, was not only
an absurdity which did nothing towards reconciling the Federalists and
Democrats, but, bearing in mind how these parties stood respectively
towards England and France, it was also an actual wrong, for it made our
foreign policy seem double-faced and deceitful. While one minister was
formally embracing such of the Parisian statesmen as had hitherto
escaped the guillotine, and was going through various other theatrical
performances that do not appeal to any but a Gallic mind, his fellow was
engaged in negotiating a treaty in England that was so obnoxious to
France as almost to bring us to a rupture with her. The Jay treaty was
not altogether a good one, and a better might perhaps have been secured;
still, it was better than nothing, and Washington was right in urging
its adoption, even while admitting that it was not entirely
satisfactory. But certainly, if we intended to enter into such
engagements with Great Britain, it was rank injustice to both Monroe and
France to send such a man as the former to such a country as the latter.
Meanwhile Morris, instead of returning to America, was forced by his
business affairs to prolong his stay abroad for several years. During
this time he journeyed at intervals through England, the Netherlands,
Germany, Prussia, and Austria. His European reputation was well
established, and he was everywhere received gladly into the most
distinguished society of the time. What made him especially welcome was
his having now definitely taken sides with the anti-revolutionists in
the great conflict of arms and opinions then raging through Europe; and
his brilliancy, the boldness with which he had behaved as minister
during the Terror, and the reputation given him by the French _emigres_,
all joined to cause him to be hailed with pleasure by the aristocratic
party. It is really curious to see the consideration with which he was
everywhere treated, although again a mere private individual, and the
terms of intimacy on which he was admitted into the most exclusive
social and diplomatic circles at the various courts. He thus became an
intimate friend of many of the foremost people of the period. His
political observation, however, became less trustworthy than heretofore;
for he was undoubtedly soured by his removal, and the excesses of the
revolutionists had excited such horror in his mind as to make him no
longer an impartial judge. His forecasts and judgments on the military
situation in particular, although occasionally right, were usually very
wild. He fully appreciated Napoleon's utter unscrupulousness and
marvelous mendacity; but to the end of his life he remained unwilling to
do justice to the emperor's still more remarkable warlike genius, going
so far, after the final Russian campaign, as to speak of old Kutusoff
as his equal. Indeed, in spite of one or two exceptions,--notably his
predicting almost the exact date of the retreat from Moscow,--his
criticisms on Napoleon's military operations do not usually stand much
above the rather ludicrous level recently reached by Count Tolstoi.
Morris was relieved by Monroe in August, 1794, and left Paris for
Switzerland in October. He stopped at Coppet and spent a day with Madame
de Stael, where there was a little French society that lived at her
expense and was as gay as circumstances would permit. He had never been
particularly impressed with the much vaunted society of the salon, and
this small survival thereof certainly had no overpowering attraction for
him, if we may judge by the entry in his diary: "The road to her house
is up-hill and execrable, and I think I shall not again go thither."
Mankind was still blind to the grand beauty of the Alps,--it must be
remembered that the admiration of mountain scenery is, to the shame of
our forefathers be it said, almost a growth of the present century,--and
Morris took more interest in the Swiss population than in their
surroundings. He wrote that in Switzerland the spirit of commerce had
brought about a baseness of morals which nothing could cure but the
same spirit carried still further:--"It teaches eventually fair dealing
as the most profitable dealing. The first lesson of trade is, My son,
get money. The second is, My son, get money, honestly if you can, but
get money. The third is, My son, get money; but honestly, if you would
get much money."
He went to Great Britain in the following summer, and spent a year
there. At one time he visited the North, staying with the Dukes of
Argyle, Atholl and Montrose, and was very much pleased with Scotland,
where everything he saw convinced him that the country was certain of a
rapid and vigorous growth. On his return he stopped with the Bishop of
Landaff, at Colgate Park. The bishop announced that he was a stanch
opposition man, and a firm whig; to which statement Morris adds in his
diary: "Let this be as it will, he is certainly a good landlord and a
man of genius."
But Morris was now a favored guest in ministerial, even more than in
opposition circles; he was considered to belong to what the czar
afterwards christened the "parti sain de l'Europe." He saw a good deal
of both Pitt and Grenville, and was consulted by them not only about
American, but also about European affairs; and a number of favors, which
he asked for some of his friends among the _emigres_, were granted. All
his visits were not on business, however; as, for instance, on July
14th: "Dine at Mr. Pitt's. We sit down at six. Lords Grenville, Chatham,
and another come later. The rule is established for six precisely, which
is right, I think. The wines are good and the conversation flippant."
Morris helped Grenville in a number of ways, at the Prussian court for
instance; and was even induced by him to write a letter to Washington,
attempting to put the English attitude toward us in a good light.
Washington, however, was no more to be carried off his feet in favor of
the English than against them; and the facts he brought out in his reply
showed that Morris had rather lost his poise, and had been hurried into
an action that was ill advised. He was quite often at court; and relates
a conversation with the king, wherein that monarch's language seems to
have been much such as tradition assigns him--short, abrupt sentences,
repetitions, and the frequent use of "what."
He also saw a good deal of the royalist refugees. Some of them he liked
and was intimate with; but the majority disgusted him and made him
utterly impatient with their rancorous folly. He commented on the
strange levity and wild negotiations of the Count d'Artois, and
prophesied that his character was such as to make his projected attempt
on La Vendee hopeless from the start. Another day he was at the Marquis
de Spinola's: "The conversation here, where our company consists of
aristocrats of the first feather, turns on French affairs. They, at
first, agree that union among the French is necessary. But when they
come to particulars, they fly off and are mad. Madame Spinola would send
the Duke of Orleans to Siberia. An abbe, a young man, talks much and
loud, to show his _esprit_; and to hear them one would suppose they were
quite at their ease in a _petit souper de Paris_." Of that ponderous
exile, the chief of the House of Bourbon, and afterwards Louis XVIII, he
said that, in his opinion, he had nothing to do but to try to get shot,
thereby redeeming by valor the foregone follies of his conduct.
In June, 1796, Morris returned to the continent, and started on another
tour, in his own carriage; having spent some time himself in breaking in
his young and restive horses to their task. He visited all the different
capitals, at one time or another; among them, Berlin, where, as usual,
he was very well received. For all his horror of Jacobinism, Morris was
a thorough American, perfectly independent, without a particle of the
snob in his disposition, and valuing his acquaintances for what they
were, not for their titles. In his diary he puts down the Queen of
England as "a well-bred, sensible woman," and the Empress of Austria as
"a good sort of little woman," and contemptuously dismisses the Prussian
king with a word, precisely as he does with any one else. One of the
entries in his journal, while he was staying in Berlin, offers a case in
point. "July 23d, I dine, very much against my will, with Prince
Ferdinand. I was engaged to a very agreeable party, but it seems the
highnesses must never be denied, unless it be from indisposition. I had,
however, written a note declining the intended honor; but the messenger,
upon looking at it, for it was a letter patent, like the invitation,
said he could not deliver it; that nobody ever refused; all of which I
was informed of after he was gone. On consulting I found that I must go
or give mortal offense, which last I have no inclination to do; so I
write another note, and send out to hunt up the messenger. While I am
abroad this untoward incident is arranged, and of course I am at
Bellevue." While at court on one occasion he met, and took a great fancy
to, the daughter of the famous Baroness Riedesel; having been born in
the United States, she had been christened America.
In one of his conversations with the king, who was timid and hesitating,
Morris told him that the Austrians would be all right if he would only
lend them some Prussian generals--a remark upon which Jena and Auerstadt
later on offered a curious commentary. He became very impatient with the
king's inability to make up his mind; and wrote to the Duchess of
Cumberland that "the guardian angel of the French Republic kept him
lingering on this side of the grave." He wrote to Lord Grenville that
Prussia was "seeking little things by little means," and that the war
with Poland was popular "because the moral principles of a Prussian go
to the possession of whatever he can acquire. And so little is he the
slave of what he calls vulgar prejudice, that, give him opportunity and
means, and he will spare you the trouble of finding a pretext. This
liberality of sentiment greatly facilitates negotiation, for it is not
necessary to clothe propositions in honest and decent forms." Morris was
a most startling phenomenon to the diplomatists of the day, trampling
with utter disregard on all their hereditary theories of finesse and
cautious duplicity. The timid formalists, and more especially those who
considered double-dealing as the legitimate, and in fact the only
legitimate, weapon of their trade, were displeased with him; but he was
very highly thought of by such as could see the strength and
originality of the views set forth in his frank, rather over-bold
language.
At Dresden he notes that he was late on the day set down for his
presentation at court, owing to his valet having translated _halb zwoelf_
as half past twelve. The Dresden picture galleries were the first that
drew from him any very strong expressions of admiration. In the city
were numbers of the _emigres_, fleeing from their countrymen, and only
permitted to stop in Saxony for a few days; yet they were serene and
gay, and spent their time in busy sightseeing, examining everything
curious which they could get at. Morris had become pretty well
accustomed to the way in which they met fate; but such lively
resignation surprised even him, and he remarked that so great a calamity
had never lighted on shoulders so well fitted to bear it.
At Vienna he made a long stay, not leaving it until January, 1797. Here,
as usual, he fraternized at once with the various diplomatists; the
English ambassador, Sir Morton Eden, in particular, going out of his way
to show him every attention. The Austrian prime minister, M. Thugut, was
also very polite; and so were the foreign ministers of all the powers.
He was soon at home in the upper social circles of this German Paris;
but from the entries in his journal it is evident that he thought very
little of Viennese society. He liked talking and the company of
brilliant conversationalists, and he abominated gambling; but in Vienna
every one was so devoted to play that there was no conversation at all.
He considered a dumb circle round a card-table as the dullest society in
the world, and in Vienna there was little else. Nor was he impressed
with the ability of the statesmen he met. He thought the Austrian nobles
to be on the decline; they stood for the dying feudal system. The great
families had been squandering their riches with the most reckless
extravagance, and were becoming broken and impoverished; and the
imperial government was glad to see the humiliation of the haughty
nobles, not perceiving that, if preserved, they would act as a buffer
between it and the new power beginning to make itself felt throughout
Europe, and would save the throne if not from total overthrow, at least
from shocks so fierce as greatly to weaken it.
Morris considered Prince Esterhazy as an archtypical representative of
the class. He was captain of the noble Hungarian Guard, a small body of
tall, handsome men on fiery steeds, magnificently caparisoned. The
Prince, as its commander, wore a Hungarian dress, scarlet, with fur cape
and cuffs, and yellow morocco boots; everything embroidered with
pearls, four hundred and seventy large ones, and many thousand small,
but all put on in good taste. He had a collar of large diamonds, a plume
of diamonds in his cap; and his sword-hilt, scabbard, and spurs were
inlaid with the same precious stones. His horse was equally bejeweled;
steed and rider, with their trappings, "were estimated at a value of a
quarter of a million dollars." Old Bluecher would surely have considered
the pair "very fine plunder."
The Prince was reported to be nominally the richest subject in Europe,
with a revenue that during the Turkish war went up to a million guilders
annually; yet he was hopelessly in debt already and getting deeper every
year. He lived in great magnificence, but was by no means noted for
lavish hospitality; all his extravagance was reserved for himself,
especially for purposes of display. His Vienna stable contained a
hundred and fifty horses; and during a six weeks' residence in
Frankfort, where he was ambassador at the time of an imperial
coronation, he spent eighty thousand pounds. Altogether, an outsider may
be pardoned for not at first seeing precisely what useful function such
a merely gorgeous being performed in the body politic; yet when summoned
before the bar of the new world-forces, Esterhazy and his kind showed
that birds of such fine feathers sometimes had beaks and talons as well,
and knew how to use them, the craven flight of the French noblesse to
the contrary notwithstanding.
Morris was often at court, where the constant theme of conversation was
naturally the struggle with the French armies under Moreau and
Bonaparte. After one of these mornings he mentions: "The levee was oddly
arranged, all the males being in one apartment, through which the
Emperor passes in going to chapel, and returns the same way with the
Empress and imperial family; after which they go through their own rooms
to the ladies assembled on the other side."
The English members of the _Corps Diplomatique_ in all the European
capitals were especially civil to him; and he liked them more than their
continental brethren. But for some of their young tourist countrymen he
cared less; and it is curious to see that the ridicule to which
Americans have rightly exposed themselves by their absurd fondness for
uniforms and for assuming military titles to which they have no warrant,
was no less deservedly earned by the English at the end of the last
century. One of Morris's friends, Baron Groshlaer, being, like the other
Viennese, curious to know the object of his stay,--they guessed aright
that he wished to get Lafayette liberated,--at last almost asked him
outright about it. "Finally I tell him that the only difference between
me and the young Englishmen, of whom there is a swarm here, is, that I
seek instruction with gray hairs and they with brown.... At the
Archduchess's one of the little princes, brother to the Emperor, and who
is truly an _arch_-duke, asks me to explain to him the different
uniforms worn by the young English, of whom there are a great number
here, all in regimentals. Some of these belong to no corps at all, and
the others to yeomanry, fencibles and the like, all of which purport to
be raised for the defense of their country in case she should be
invaded; but now, when the invasion seems most imminent, they are
abroad, and cannot be made to feel the ridiculous indecency of appearing
in regimentals. Sir M. Eden and others have given them the broadest
hints without the least effect. One of them told me that all the world
should not laugh him out of his regimentals. I bowed.... I tell the
prince that I really am not able to answer his question, but that, in
general, their dresses I believe are worn for convenience in traveling.
He smiles at this.... If I were an Englishman I should be hurt at these
exhibitions, and as it is I am sorry for them.... I find that here they
assume it as unquestionable that the young men of England have a right
to adjust the ceremonial of Vienna. The political relations of the two
countries induce the good company here to treat them with politeness;
but nothing prevents their being laughed at, as I found the other
evening at Madame de Groshlaer's, where the young women as well as the
girls were very merry at the expense of these young men."
After leaving Vienna he again passed through Berlin, and in a
conversation with the king he foreshadowed curiously the state of
politics a century later, and showed that he thoroughly appreciated the
cause that would in the end reconcile the traditional enmity of the
Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs. "After some trifling things I tell him that
I have just seen his best friend. He asks who? and, to his great
surprise, I reply, the Emperor. He speaks of him well personally, and I
observe that he is a very honest young man, to which his Majesty replies
by asking, "Mais, que pensez vous de Thugut." "Quant a cela, c'est une
autre affaire, sire." I had stated the interest, which makes him and the
Emperor good friends, to be their mutual apprehensions from Russia. "But
suppose we all three unite?" "Ce sera un diable de fricassee, sire, si
vous vous mettez tous les trois a casser les oeufs.""
At Brunswick he was received with great hospitality, the Duke, and
particularly the Duchess Dowager, the King of England's sister, treating
him very hospitably. He here saw General Riedesel, with whom he was most
friendly; the general in the course of conversation inveighed bitterly
against Burgoyne. He went to Munich also, where he was received on a
very intimate footing by Count Rumford, then the great power in Bavaria,
who was busily engaged in doing all he could to better the condition of
his country. Morris was much interested in his reforms. They were
certainly needed; the Count told his friend that on assuming the reins
of power, the abuses to be remedied were beyond belief--for instance,
there was one regiment of cavalry that had five field officers and only
three horses. With some of the friends that Morris made--such as the
Duchess of Cumberland, the Princess de la Tour et Taxis and others--he
corresponded until the end of his life.
While at Vienna he again did all he could to get Lafayette released from
prison, where his wife was confined with him; but in vain. Madame de
Lafayette's sister, the Marquise de Montagu, and Madame de Stael, both
wrote him the most urgent appeals to do what he could for the prisoners;
the former writing, "My sister is in danger of losing the life you
saved in the prisons of Paris ... has not he whom Europe numbers among
those citizens of whom North America ought to be most proud, has not he
the right to make himself heard in favor of a citizen of the United
States, and of a wife, whose life belongs to him, since he has preserved
it?" Madame de Stael felt the most genuine grief for Lafayette, and very
sincere respect for Morris; and in her letters to the latter she
displayed both sentiments with a lavish exaggeration that hardly seems
in good taste. If Morris had needed a spur the letters would have
supplied it; but the task was an impossible one, and Lafayette was not
released until the peace in 1797, when he was turned over to the
American consul at Hamburg, in Morris's presence.
Morris was able to render more effectual help to an individual far less
worthy of it than Lafayette. This was the then Duke of Orleans,
afterwards King Louis Philippe, who had fled from France with Dumouriez.
Morris's old friend, Madame de Flahaut, appealed to him almost
hysterically on the duke's behalf; and he at once did even more than she
requested, giving the duke money wherewith to go to America, and also
furnishing him with unlimited credit at his own New York banker's,
during his wanderings in the United States. This was done for the sake
of the Duchess of Orleans, to whom Morris was devotedly attached, not
for the sake of the duke himself. The latter knew this perfectly,
writing: "Your kindness is a blessing I owe to my mother and to our
friend" (Madame de Flahaut). The bourgeois king admirably represented
the meanest, smallest side of the bourgeois character; he was not a bad
man, but he was a very petty and contemptible one; had he been born in a
different station of life, he would have been just the individual to
take a prominent part in local temperance meetings, while he sanded the
sugar he sold in his corner grocery. His treatment of Morris's loan was
characteristic. When he came into his rights again, at the Restoration,
he at first appeared to forget his debt entirely, and when his memory
was jogged, he merely sent Morris the original sum, without a word of
thanks; whereupon Morris, rather nettled, and as prompt to stand up for
his rights against a man in prosperity as he had been to help him when
in adversity, put the matter in the hands of his lawyer, through whom he
notified Louis Philippe that if the affair was to be treated on a merely
business basis, it should then be treated in a strictly business way,
and the interest for the twenty years that had gone by should be
forwarded also. This was accordingly done, although not until after
Morris's death, the entire sum refunded being seventy thousand francs.
Morris brought his complicated business affairs in Europe to a close in
1798, and sailed from Hamburg on October 4th of that year, reaching New
York after an exceedingly tedious and disagreeable voyage of eighty
days.