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.