The Viscount de Chateaubriand gratefully memorializes his respect for
the virtue of a distressed family in London by the following touching
narrative prefixed to his Indian tale, entitled “The Natchez:”--
When I quitted England in 1800 to return to France, under a fictitious
name, I durst not encumber myself with too much baggage. I left,
therefore, most of my manuscripts in London. Among these manuscripts was
that of _The Natchez_, no other part of which I brought to Paris but
_René_, _Atala_, and some passages descriptive of America.
Fourteen years elapsed before the communication with Great Britain was
renewed. At the first moment of the Restoration I scarcely thought of my
papers; and if I had, how was I to find them again? They had been left
locked up in a trunk with an Englishwoman, in whose house I had lodged
in London. I had forgotten the name of this woman; the name of the
street and the number of the house had likewise escaped my memory.
In consequence of some vague and even contradictory information which I
transmitted to London, Messrs. de Thuisy took the trouble to make
inquiries, which they prosecuted with a zeal and perseverance rarely
equalled. With infinite pains they at length discovered the house where
I resided at the west end of the town; but my landlady had been dead
several years, and no one knew what had become of her children.
Pursuing, however, the clue which they had obtained, Messrs. de Thuisy,
after many fruitless excursions, at last found out her family in a
village several miles from London.
Had they kept all this time the trunk of an emigrant, a trunk full of
old papers, which could scarcely be deciphered? Might they not have
consigned to the flames such a useless heap of French manuscripts? On
the other hand, if my name, bursting from its obscurity, had attracted,
in the London journals, the notice of the children of my former
landlady, might they not have been disposed to make what profit they
could of those papers, which would then acquire a certain value?
Nothing of the kind had happened. The manuscripts had been preserved,
the trunk had not even been opened. A religious fidelity had been shown
by an unfortunate family towards a child of misfortune. I had committed
with simplicity the result of the labours of part of my life to the
honesty of a foreign trustee, and my treasure was restored to me with
the same simplicity. I know not that I ever met with any thing in my
life which touched me more than the honesty and integrity of this poor
English family.
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