Miss Helen Maria Williams[1] lives at the hotel of Alexander Berthier,
Minister of War. Helen is a personage, and at the Ministry of War she
holds her court.
The notorious Mr. Stone,[1] who has driven away from his side
and cruelly ill-used his wife, lives with Helen, in a virtuous
philosophical platonic friendship. It is singular so spiritual a
damsel should harbour and entertain a man of whom no one, not even in
Paris, speaks a good word. It is difficult to describe his services;
his functions being so variously compounded of the German squire, the
Italian cicisbeo, the English master of the ceremonies, and the French
peroquet (as those fellows are termed whom the French Republican ladies
keep to puff them, their beauty, toilets and talents in the Journals).
He also acts as her “garde des archives” and her chamberlain. He is in
short a man of all work!
These things give no offence in this easy capital, where it is a common
thing for a man to sit down at table with his wife and children and
his mistress, and _vice versâ_. I have been present at many
of these happy meetings, or, as they are called here, _mélanges
morales_.
[Sidenote: LAX VIEWS ON MARRIAGE]
A Parisian man of fashion told me the other day in the presence of his
wife, a very handsome woman, that after the first child, he thought
both parties were at liberty to do as they pleased. This would have
been a good plea before an English jury for the mitigation of damages.
In Paris they are more enlightened than in London, and you never hear
of a single action for “crim. con.” from beginning to the end of the
year in the French capital.
I have assisted at a dinner given by Madame Tallien,[1] who has long
been separated from her husband, and now lives with a rich merchant,
who I mentioned in a former letter as the present proprietor of the
late Duke of Orleans’ château of Rincy. There were sixteen persons at
table, exclusive of Madame and her “cher ami,” and one of the sixteen
was Tallien himself. He sat by the side of his _ci-devant_ spouse,
and was engaged during most of the banquet in an animated and almost
affectionate conversation with her.
A fashionable French philosopher has lately announced, after the most
recondite meditation, that he has discovered “marriage to be the most
odious of all monopolies.” This important discovery has, so far, made
no progress in England; but in this city, the favourite abode of true
philosophy, it is taught in every _stoa poecile_. If I could
borrow the pencil of Gilray, I might hope to delineate this nuptial
banquet in its proper colours--a banquet at which Venus Suadala was
present, accompanied by all the Loves and Graces in playful dalliance.
When Tallien was in Egypt, his patriotic wife, feeling for the grievous
losses which the Republic had sustained in the number of its sons
cut off by the sword, pestilence and famine, with a generous and
disinterested ardour contributed her material labours towards making
up the deficiency in the population. Two little Republicans, presented
to the State during her husband’s absence, attest her zeal, and it
is pleasant to add she was by no means singular in this sublime and
Spartan devotion.
On the return of the illustrious Commissioner, he followed (for it is
by no means etiquette for a husband and wife to go together) his lovely
spouse to a ball.
When he arrived, he found her in a state so resembling a state of
nature (she had but one apology for a garment, and that was of the
thinnest muslin), that he was indignant. He reproached her for her
indecent attire, and received the reply that he was free to get another
wife to dress more to his mind. She told him coolly that she had never
loved him, and only married him to save her life. But that as she was
no longer in terror of the guillotine, he was welcome to her fortune,
but should have nothing more to do with her person. “You know,” she
added, “what I can tell if I choose.”
The ladies of Paris, from Madame Bonaparte downwards, highly approve of
the spirited conduct of Madame Tallien, whom they consider a persecuted
beauty as well as a charming woman.
The fact is that when she was Marquise de Fontenay, and in prison
at Bordeaux, Tallien, then on a mission to that city, which he was
reorganising in torrents of blood, proposed to save her head if she
would surrender to him her purse and person, but threatened her with
death should she reject his offer. She gave her hand, therefore,
to this renowned Sans Culotte--a circumstance which engendered an
irreconcilable hatred between him and Robespierre, which exploded on
the 9th of Thermidor in favour of the former.
Some of Tallien’s exploits during the Revolution are worthy of record.
In the days of September 1792, he knocked out with his own hands the
brains of one old priest eighty years old, and bludgeoned six others.
At Bordeaux only eighteen persons were executed on his own personal
recommendation, but he brought away with him from that city 1,700,000
livres (£64,000 sterling) in solid cash--money paid to him as bribes
for generously restoring to liberty “good citizens he discovered to
have been falsely accused.”
[Sidenote: WILLIAMS AND BECCARIA]
But to return from this digression to Helen Williams. This priestess
of the Revolution has a nightly synod at her apartments, to which the
political dramatists and _literati_ of the capital resort. Here
she is in her glory. Perched like the bird of wisdom on her shrine, she
snuffs up the mounting incense of adulation offered up by homicides and
plunderers of the public. At the instant of inspiration she becomes
convulsed like the Delphic Priestess. By an ingenious device she
contracts her lips into the form of a pipe, and literally whistles out
the words of the oracle she pronounces. The keeper of the archives
is at hand to record what passes for the benefit of the booksellers.
The instant each ruling party is overthrown, out come two or four
little duodecimos, which this fanatical female calls “Anecdotes of the
Founders of the French Revolution,” &c., in which she records all their
_sayings_, and abuses in turn those whom she before received with
smiles at her conversaziones. If you wish to become acquainted with a
devil in the shape of a philosopher, a general, a legislator, a quiz or
a thief, you will find any of these characters at Helen’s coteries.
I mention Madame de Beccaria in this place by way of a contrast. She is
the daughter of the celebrated Marquis de Beccaria, author of the book
on Crimes and Punishments. Elegant in her manners, she is possessed of
a pleasing person, and is modest, affable, and good-natured. Though
a rigid Catholic, she does not pose as a saint, nor does she keep a
coterie, or wish to take advantage of her father’s celebrity to collect
around her the fops of philosophy. She had a great disappointment in
her marriage. Her husband was an Italian nobleman, whose union with her
has been annulled on account of his insanity.
Madame de Beccaria[1] will go to England very shortly for the purpose
of having her father’s writings translated there. She made me a present
of her father’s portrait, assuring me that he never wrote an Italian
work entitled _Saggio sopra la Politica e la Legislatione Romana_.
Kosciusko has disappointed my expectations; perhaps I judge of him too
rashly, but if in two hours’ conversation with _any_ man upon
subjects most interesting, not a _spark_ of extraordinary light is
emitted, I think it is but fair to conclude that such a man is not fit
to move out of the common circle. According to my way of thinking, the
negro General Toussaint is immeasurably his intellectual superior. But
his valour and sufferings will always excite sympathy, and the cause in
which he strove the interest of mankind.