FIFTY YEARS IN BOTH HEMISPHERES.[10]
The memoirs of a man of a singularly adventurous and speculative turn, who, having entered upon the occupations of manhood early, and retained its energies late, has prolonged the active period of his life to upwards of half a century, who has been an eyewitness of not a few of the important events that occurred in Europe and America between the years 1796 and 1850, and himself a sharer in more than one of them, who has been associated or an agent in some of the largest commercial and financial operations that British and Dutch capital and enterprise ever ventured upon, and has been brought into contact and acquaintance—not unfrequently into intimacy—with a number of the remarkable men of his time, can hardly, one would imagine, be otherwise than highly interesting, if the author have but sufficient command of his native tongue plainly to write down what his memory has retained, sufficient discrimination and self-restraint to avoid dwelling upon details of too trifling and egotistical a nature. Generally speaking, we have but little confidence in the interesting qualities of German septuagenarian autobiographers. Garrulity is the privilege of age, and German garrulity is a grievous thing, particularly when it displays itself upon paper. In Germany, where nearly everybody capable of grammar writes a book, even though he have nothing to write about, elderly gentlemen, who really have seen something worth the telling, are apt to imagine they can never make too much of it, and instead of delighting us with the pure spirit, drench us with a feeble dilution. Such was the case, we well remember, with our old acquaintance, Baron von Rahden, whose military experiences during the stirring period of 1813–14–15 we brought before our readers now just seven years since, and who, instead of cutting short the tolerably prolix history of his life and adventures at the date when peace sheathed his sword, elaborated two other ponderous and very wearisome volumes, scarcely relieved by an account of General Chassé’s defence of Antwerp, and by sketches of a campaign in Catalonia, in which the indefatigable and restless old fire-eater, unable to pass his latter days in tranquillity, served under the orders of the Carlist general Cabrera. There is more variety and vivacity in the book now before us than in the baron’s interminable record, of which, however, it has in some respects reminded us. Von Rahden, a soldier by profession and inclination, gave us far too much of his proceedings in times of peace, and dwelt at tedious length on garrison rivalries, his own unrewarded merit, and German provincial topics. Mr Nolte, on the contrary, by profession a man of peace, whose weapon is the pen, his field of battle the Exchange, and his campaigns amongst cotton bales, whose tutelar deity has been Mercury instead of Mars, and whose commanders and allies, instead of the martial-sounding appellations of Blucher, Gneisenau, and Chassé, have borne the pacific but scarcely less famous names of Hope, Labouchere, and Baring, has mingled, in the rather complicated narrative of his mercantile pursuits, triumphs, and disasters, much adventure both by flood and field, in which he himself was personally engaged, and displays, in the telling, not a little of the go-ahead spirit proper to the people amongst whom he has passed a large portion of his life. He has really seen a great deal, and his reminiscences, although here and there his style of narrating them be trivial and in questionable taste—whilst some of his long accounts of financial and commercial operations will more particularly interest bankers and merchants than the general reader—contain much that will attract all. In Germany the first edition of his book has gone off at a gallop,—no small testimony to its merits in a year during which present politics have been the all-absorbing topic. We do not wonder at its popularity; for, besides the mass of anecdote and historical recollections it comprises, the author has contrived to give an interest to his individuality, by the off-hand style in which he tells of his errors and of his triumphs, of his many reverses and disasters, as well as of his rarer moments of prosperity and success.
We should as soon think of attempting, within the compass of an article, a digest of an encyclopædia as of Mr Nolte’s volumes. We should fill half a magazine by merely tracing his itinerary. There never was such a rolling stone. He treats the Atlantic as most men do Dover Straits, and thinks no more of a few hundred leagues of land travel than a modern Cockney of a run to Ramsgate. Whole years of his life must have been passed on board ship, and behind post-horses. His book necessarily partakes of the desultory nature of his career. It better bears dipping into than reading from end to end.
Born at Leghorn, in the year 1779, of a German father, Mr Vincent Nolte’s first reminiscence, of much interest to his readers, is connected with the invasion of Italy by the French under Buonaparte. His father had for some years left Italy, and settled in Hamburg, his native place; but young Vincent, after being educated in Germany, was sent back to Leghorn, to take his place as junior clerk in his uncle’s counting-house, one of the most important in that city. He was in his seventeenth year when, upon the last Saturday in June 1796, a courier from the British minister at Florence brought news to the consul at Leghorn that the French were approaching. There was great bustle amongst the English merchants to get their property shipped, and place it and themselves under the protection of Nelson’s squadron, then cruising off the port. After unremitting labour, and favoured by the wind, the last ships, with English goods on board, left the harbour at noon on Monday. They had been but two hours gone, when it suddenly became known in the city that the French were close at hand, advancing by the Pisa road, and presently a party of cavalry galloped round the fortifications to thePorta Colonella, and rode straight up to the fort, on which the Tuscan flag waved. Suddenly those colours disappeared, and were replaced by the French tricolor, displayed for the first time to the wondering eyes of the Tuscans. Almost at the same moment the cannon of the fort thundered, and sent some shots after those English vessels nearest to the harbour—thus signalling to Nelson the entrance of the French. Young Nolte, who had little love for the desk, whose wish it was to become a painter, and who then, and all his life through, was ardent, impetuous, and a lover of excitement, could sit still no longer, but ran out of the respectable counting-house of Otto Franck & Co., consul for Hamburg, &c., to stare at the invaders. At the head of a body of cavalry, a horseman of remarkable beauty galloped up the street, and alighted at the door of the Genevese banker, Dutremoul. It was Murat. This was between two and three in the afternoon.
“At six in the evening, the news spread that General Buonaparte was at the Pisa gate. No sooner did he learn that the English residents had had time to escape with their property, than he broke into a violent rage. At that moment Count Spannochi, attired in the ordinary uniform, a blue coat, red waistcoat, and white breeches (the full-dress uniform consisted of a white coat and red waistcoat and breeches), and, surrounded by his officers, and by the chief authorities of the city, advanced to welcome the general, who still sat upon his horse. Buonaparte gave him no time to speak, but at once violently assailed him. ‘How dare you,’ he cried, ‘appear before me thus? Do you not know your duty? You are an insolent fellow, a traitor! You have let the English escape; you shall pay for that. A court-martial shall sit immediately. You are my prisoner—give up your sword!’ And Count Spannochi disappeared. Buonaparte’s words were repeated to me that same evening by my fellow-clerk, Giacomini, who had gone with the crowd outside the Pisa gate, and had heard them. Next day we learned that the governor had been sent under arrest to Florence, and that the French general, Vaubois, commanded in his stead. Hardly had Buonaparte and his staff reached the grand-ducal palace, when police-agents went round to all the houses, ordering a general illumination, under heavy penalties in case of disobedience. The only Leghorn newspaper that then existed announced, upon the following day, the arrival of the victor of Lodi and Arcola, adding, that the inhabitants hadspontaneouslyilluminated. I then, for the first time, got a correct idea of aspontaneous illumination, and was never afterwards at a loss to understand the expression. At eleven o’clock the next morning, the foreign consuls waited upon the general, who quickly dismissed them, when suddenly his eye was attracted by my uncle’s red coat. ‘What is that?’ he cried. ‘An English uniform?’ My uncle, taken quite aback, had just enough presence of mind to reply, ‘No, Padrone, questa e l’uniforme di Amburgo!’ and endeavoured, but in vain, to make his escape. Buonaparte burst forth with a violent diatribe against everything that looked English, against all who thought like Englishmen, or had anything to do with England. ‘Those English,’ he said, according to my uncle’s account to me upon his return home, ‘shall get such a lesson as they have never yet had! My road now lies to Vienna, then farther north, to destroy their nests in Hamburg and elsewhere, and then to seek them in their own robbers’ den!’”
Young Nolte was bent upon seeing the hero of the day, who, before attaining his eight-and-twentieth year, had played such havoc amongst Austria’s veteran commanders, and, disregarding his uncle’s commands to keep in-doors, and out of the way of the dense mob upon thePiazza d’Arme, he again played truant, and stationed himself at the corner of the palace, at whose entrance an open carriage awaited the French general. His account of the impression he carried away of Napoleon’s appearance has some originality. The peculiar expression, attributed by him to the eyes, reminds one of the present French Emperor.
“At last there came out, accompanied by a number of officers, a little, youthful-looking man, in a plain uniform, with a pale, almost a yellow complexion, and long, lank, raven-black hair, hanging over his ears, after the fashion of the Florida savages calledTalapouches. That was the hero of Arcola! Whilst he took the right-hand place in the carriage, and whilst his aides-de-camp got in, I had a few moments to observe him closely. There was a continued smile round his mouth, with which, however, the man himself had evidently nothing to do, for the fixed indifferent look of his eyes showed that the mind was busy elsewhere. I never again beheld so remarkable an expression. It was the dull gaze of a mummy, barring a certain beam of intelligence betraying the inward life, but only by a faint and glimmering gleam. Macbeth’s words to Banquo’s ghost, ‘There is no speculation in those eyes!’ would almost have fitted here, had not previous and subsequent events sufficiently shown what a spirit lurked behind those impressive orbs. The carriage drove away—seven years elapsed before I again beheld that extraordinary man. He left the town the next day. I must not omit to mention a colossal and well-built officer, who stood, in a respectful attitude, beside the carriage-door. This man, who had just been named town-major of Leghorn, was the grenadier who, seven years previously, on the 14th July 1789, led the storm of the Bastile, and was the first to scale its walls, who afterwards, as General Hullin, was governor of Berlin after the battle of Jena, and presided over the court-martial appointed to try, or rather to shoot, the unfortunate Duke d’Enghien.”
The presence and proceedings of the French in Leghorn were alike odious to the inhabitants, who found an important branch of their trade—that with England—completely cut off, and who had to satisfy unceasing demands for money and equipments. Large bodies of ragged, barefooted troops continually entered the town, to quit it well shod and with new uniforms. The republican cockade became an abomination in the eyes of the Leghornese, who christened itil pasticcino—the little pie—and wrote innumerable lampoons upon its wearers. Leghorn was converted into a camp, and on a large altar in the middle of thePiazza d’Arme, a statue of Liberty was erected, at the foot of which the popular representatives, Garat and Salicetti, daily harangued the troops upon parade. Business was at a standstill; Vincent Nolte deserted his desk and roamed about the town, sketching the groups of foreign soldiers. And even when things began to settle down, he would do nothing but ramble in picture-galleries and make love to pretty Florentines, until at last his uncle, despairing of his doing any good, wrote to his father that he was on the high-road to perdition. This alarming piece of information produced an instant summons to Hamburg, where, in the paternal counting-house, the young scamp amended his ways and applied earnestly to business, displaying great energy, industry, and capacity.
The year 1799 was a disastrous one for Hamburg. Within six weeks there occurred upwards of one hundred and thirty failures for a total of thirty-six millions of marks. The panic was universal, and trade was shaken to its foundations. Mr Nolte’s house weathered the storm, but was compelled, three years later, to suspend its payments in consequence of the failure of the Leghorn establishment. The creditors received eighty-five per cent, and the numerous friends of the unfortunate merchant subscribed a capital of one hundred and twenty thousand marks to start him again in business. Upon the list figured the well-known name of Francis Baring, a former schoolfellow of the insolvent’s, for the munificent sum of twenty thousand marks, upon which he positively refused to receive interest. Thus supported, Mr Nolte again applied himself to business. But he was then a man advanced in years and of little enterprise, and his son, bold and ambitious, saw that he was not likely to strike out new paths to wealth, whereas the old and ordinary avenues to commercial profits were then closed, all over the European continent, by the iron hand of Napoleon, that mortal foe to trade, and contemner of its votaries. And as young Nolte could be of no use to his father, who despised his views as the dreams of a stripling, bent upon pleasure and unworthy of attention, he sought employment abroad. This he found in the house of Labouchere and Trotreau at Nantes, where he accepted an engagement for three years, to carry on the German and English correspondence. And so, in his twenty-fifth year, he took leave of his parents, with a heavy heart, he says, but without uneasiness as to the future, and travelled, by way of Bremen, to Paris.
Mr Nolte’s arrival in the French capital coincided with the proclamation of Napoleon as emperor, and with Moreau’s imprisonment on the charge of a plot against the government and life of the First Consul. It was his first visit to Paris—the period was interesting. He was so fortunate as to find a friend who willingly undertook to be his cicerone, and a few weeks flew rapidly by, during which, thanks to his guide’s familiarity with places and persons, he acquired a better knowledge of both than he would in as many months had he been left to himself; for it would have served him little (except, perhaps, in the way of emptying his pockets) that the doors of Frascati’s, then the favourite resort of the Parisian fashionable world, were open to all who could pay for admission, and who chose to roam through its gorgeous saloons and brilliantly illuminated gardens, had he not had with him some one able to inform him that yonder beautiful woman was Madame Recamier—yonder elegant young man, leaning against the pedestal of a statue, the renowned ball-room hero Trénis—and the one beyond him, with a music-book in his hand, the celebrated singer Garat. But of all that Mr Nolte saw and heard, nothing made a deeper impression upon him than the lively and universal interest taken in the fate of Moreau. “Rarely,” he says, “was that name uttered by the middle and lower classes without an expression of love and respect, and without a curse upon his two implacable persecutors, the First Consul, and the governor of Paris, General Murat, whose proclamations exhibited at every street corner the name of Moreau in juxtaposition with the words—‘Traitor to the Republic.’ Men could not and would not credit the guilt of the distinguished general; and the Paris wits, never at a loss, declared that there were but two parties in France, ‘les moraux(Moreaus)et les immoraux’—a saying which one heard everywhere repeated.” Condemned to banishment, the conqueror of Hohenlinden betook himself, by way of Cadiz, to the United States, where Mr Nolte some years afterwards met him, and made his acquaintance.
Mr Nolte was present at the first review passed by the new emperor, on the Place du Carrousel at Paris. He was very desirous to get a near view of the victorious general and successful adventurer, whom he had first seen, seven years before, in the full flush of triumph at Leghorn. Two officers of the Danish life-guards, with whom he had travelled from Bremen, made interest for him with their ambassador, and procured him admission to the gallery of the Louvre, a favour granted to few. “I saw the great man of the day, surrounded by a brilliant staff, and by uniforms of every kind, ride several times up and down through the ranks, then gallop full speed along the front of the lines of cavalry drawn up outside the inner court, amidst cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ when suddenly his horse fell, and Napoleon rolled upon the ground, still grasping the bridle tightly. In a few seconds he had mounted again, and galloped on, before even a part of his staff, who quickly dismounted, could go to his assistance. The newspapers said nothing of this incident, and its ominous character struck me the more by reason of their silence.”
The chief partner of the mercantile house into whose employment Mr Nolte now entered, was a younger brother of the late P. C. Labouchere, of the celebrated house of Hope of Amsterdam. Mr A. M. Labouchere was very desirous to extend his connection and business with the United States, but did not seem fully to appreciate the facilities for so doing afforded him by his close alliance with the Hopes and Barings, whose names appeared as references in the circulars of the Nantes house. Nolte, whose energy and talent early earned him a considerable share of his employer’s confidence, urged Mr Labouchere to send an agent to the States to carry out his wishes, and offered to go himself, if no better was to be found. He was told to put upon paper his ideas concerning America, and concerning the advantages to be derived from a journey thither. This statement he executed in a manner to excite the warm approval of Mr Labouchere, who desired him to forward it to his brother in Amsterdam. The reply was a summons to the Dutch capital. There the elder Labouchere, who had formed a high opinion of Nolte from his correspondence, unfolded to him a gigantic project, the mere sketch of which bewildered him; and although not diffident of his own powers, he declared that he did not hold himself sufficiently experienced to undertake such responsibility, and felt that he should not be able to come up to his employer’s expectations. “That is my business, and not yours,” Mr Labouchere replied. “I have but one thing to recommend to you, and that is, never to do aught that shall give you cause to blush before me or before yourself.” This was lightening the load of responsibility from which the young man shrank, and giving him fresh confidence by showing him that others appreciated him more highly than he did himself, and he no longer made objections. He was to go to the United States, and for a few months merely to look around him and acquire a knowledge of the country. Before entering, however, which he does at great length, into an account of the important business about to be confided to him, and into whose details he was not initiated until some time afterwards, he gives an amusing chapter to a sketch of the celebrated banker and contractor Ouvrard, from whose combinations the proposed operation issued, and with whom Mr Nolte was well acquainted, and had frequent intercourse at several periods of his life. The chapter includes some curious traits and anecdotes of Napoleon, who, it is well known, detested Ouvrard, and tyrannised over him, although he was more than once obliged to seek his aid. Napoleon notoriously hated and despised traders and bankers. “I do not like merchants!” he is reported to have said—with thatbrusqueriewhich, in a less man, would have been designated as brutal ill-breeding—to the deputation from the merchants of Antwerp that went to welcome him to the town; “a merchant is a man who would sell his country for a three-franc piece!” He was jealous of, or at least indignant at, Ouvrard’s enormous wealth, and the influence it gave him—both of which he considered too great for any private person to possess; but, according to Mr Nolte, who seems quite conversant with the scandalous chronicles of any day during the last half-century, there were other private causes of irritation, which most of Napoleon’s biographers either were ignorant of, or thought it unnecessary to mention, and which certainly are less out of place in the present author’s far from prudish pages than they would be in a grave biography. Ouvrard’s own Memoirs, published nearly thirty years ago,[11]are now little remembered; and Mr Nolte is evidently indebted to them for the outline of his sketch, as well as for several incidents and anecdotes, but he has filled up details which the great speculator thought proper to omit. The relative positions of Ouvrard and Napoleon, at different periods of their lives, present the strangest contrasts. When the former, quitting the army in which he had for a short time served, applied himself with skill and success to commercial and speculative operations, and quickly realised a fortune of several millions of francs, Napoleon was so needy as to be desirous to avail himself of a decree of the Committee of Public Safety, by which officers were entitled to receive as much cloth as would make them a uniform. The anecdote is well known. Napoleon’s application was rejected because he was not just then employed, and he was very glad when Ouvrard, with whom he had become acquainted at the house of the Director Barras, induced Madame Tallien, whose lover the capitalist then was, to give him a letter of recommendation to the commissary of the 17th military division; a letter which procured young Buonaparte what he had great need of—a new uniform. Subsequently, in Napoleon’s days of power and magnificence, when he began to spite and squeeze Ouvrard, the latter loved to tell this anecdote—a contrast with Talma, who had been Napoleon’s intimate, and had often lent him money in his days of penury, and who became ever more reserved in his communications and behaviour the higher his friend ascended upon fortune’s ladder. To Ouvrard Napoleon was unquestionably harsh, cruel, and unjust. His dislike to him seemed to augment in a direct ratio with the magnitude of the gains which the capitalist owed to the circumstances of the times, to his great financial capacity, and to the vastness of his operations. Of the extent of these and of his profits, we may form some idea from a passage in Mr Nolte’s book, where he states positively that Ouvrard cleared six hundred thousand pounds sterling by his contract for victualling the Spanish fleet under Mazaredo when it lay at Brest, and afterwards at Cadiz. But if his gains were large, his losses, arising chiefly from Napoleon’s ill-will and despotic acts, were also heavy. During the Egyptian campaign, the Directory borrowed ten millions of francs from him, which he produced with the greatest ease. After Buonaparte’s return and the fall of the Directory, the First Consul asked him for twelve millions more. Ouvrard declined. The other Paris bankers were applied to; they either could not or would not. The First Consul was furious—doubly so when Ouvrard claimed repayment of the ten millions lent to the Directory. He had him paid in assignments on the revenue of the past year, which had all been expended. It was equivalent to a repudiation of the debt. Soon afterwards, Ouvrard was arrested, under pretext of fraud in his dealings with the government and supply of the French navy. He was kept in strict confinement, his papers were sealed up, and a committee of councillors of state was appointed to investigate his affairs. Nothing could be substantiated against him, but it was ascertained that his fortune, in landed property, money and Frenchrentes, (then worth but 15 per cent) amounted to twenty-seven millions of francs. “On this occasion,” says Mr Nolte, quoting almost the words of Ouvrard, “a discovery was made which deeply wounded the First Consul—namely, that, during his absence in Egypt, Ouvrard had supplied Josephine, who was an old friend of his, and who had remained at Malmaison, with money. She had become his debtor to a considerable amount. This circumstance, combined with the refusal of the twelve millions, inspired Buonaparte with the most violent antipathy to Ouvrard, at whose arrest all Paris (especially the bankers) was indignant and loud in complaint. Collot, afterwards director of the mint, who was one of the First Consul’s most intimate advisers, did not scruple to tell him that it was beginning badly, thus to let all apprehend that they might in their turn be the victims of such arbitrary measures. ‘A man,’ replied Buonaparte ‘who possesses thirty millions, and sets no value on them, is much too dangerous for my position.’” Josephine and other influential personages interceded for Ouvrard, who escaped the military tribunal with which Napoleon threatened him, and was set at liberty, but remained under the surveillance of gens-d’armes. This in no way prevented his continuing to receive with princely hospitality at his château of Raincy (afterwards the Duchess of Berry’s) the best society of Paris, and the most distinguished foreigners who visited that capital—amongst others, Fox and Lord Erskine, who were his guests after the peace of Amiens.
But we must take Mr Nolte away from Paris—which seems his favourite city, but where he can never linger without getting scandalous—and across the Atlantic. He sailed in July 1805, and reached New York in forty-two days, then a marvellously rapid passage. The astonished owner of the American ship “Flora” could hardly believe his eyes when he saw her come into port before he had received advice of her arrival at Amsterdam. Mr Nolte found the yellow fever in New York, and left the place for a few weeks, but returned thither in time to witness the arrival in the bay of a vessel from Cadiz, with General Moreau on board. The drums beat, and the militia turned out and formed up in Broadway. As each company had a different uniform—sometimes a very odd one—the effect of the whole display was a good deal like that produced by a harlequin’s jacket, which did not prevent the commander of the motley corps from being prodigiously proud of his warriors, and asking Moreau—when he landed, plainly dressed in a blue coat, and rode into the town, upon a horse in waiting for him, amidst cheers and music, and surrounded by the variegated staff of the militia—what he thought of the American troops? Moreau replied that he had never in his life seen such soldiers—which he probably never had. A similar reply has been since attributed to General Bertrand, when he landed in the States some years ago, and a review was held in his honour. The speculative spirit of the Yankees, who love to combine business with pleasure, and to turn an honest dollar whilst admiring a hero or listening to a Lind, slumbered not in 1805 any more than in 1850. The same genius for advertisement which made a hatter pay some hundred dollars for the best place at the Swedish Nightingale’s concert, stimulated the promoters of one that was to be given, on the night of General Moreau’s arrival, in the great hall of the City Hotel—then the first in New York—to beseech his presence, and, as soon as he had promised it, to placard his name. The crowd was tremendous. Moreau, it was on all hands agreed, looked very little like a French general, in his simple dress, without cocked hat, feather, or embroidery—whereas General Morton, chief of the militia, had a most martial aspect in his Washington uniform. He introduced to the French leader all who chose, and there was a prodigious shaking of hands. Mr Nolte was standing near the two generals when a Quaker was presented, who shook Moreau’s hand heartily. “Glad to see you safe in America,” quoth Broadbrim. “Pray, general, do you remember what was the price of cochineal when you left Cadiz?” The hero of Hohenlinden shrugged his shoulders and confessed his ignorance. It was not until some time afterwards, in Philadelphia, that Mr Nolte became personally acquainted with Moreau, whom he found, he says, “a mild, agreeable, but, in an intellectual point of view, upon the whole, an insignificant and uninteresting man. His manners were simple, and possessed a certain naturalness which was attractive, but his conversation, or rather his monologue—for we seldom had long dialogues—fettered the attention only when its subject was that of his certainly highly remarkable and distinguished military exploits. Then there was pleasure in listening to him. Of Napoleon he scarcely ever spoke but as ‘the tyrant.’” The best portrait—indeed, the only good one we are acquainted with—of Moreau, that by Gérard, conveys quite the same idea here given of him by Mr Nolte—that of a mild, amiable, but by no means a highly intellectual man, with less of the military air and look about the head than perhaps in any other distinguished general of the French republic or empire.
We do not purpose going into the details of Mr Nolte’s commercial proceedings as one of Hope’s agents in America. They were connected with Ouvrard’s well-known colossal plan for drawing specie from Mexico, in whose treasury—owing to the interruption, by the war with England, of intercourse between Spain and her colonies—seventy millions of dollars had accumulated. The duties assigned to Mr Nolte compelled him to take up his quarters at New Orleans, then in its infancy as a commercial city, and in the worst possible repute. Louisiana, after belonging alternately to France and Spain, and then to France again, had been but recently sold to the United States, and three-fifths of the white population of its capital were French by birth or extraction. New Orleans then had about sixteen thousand inhabitants, one-third of whom were slaves and coloured people. The character its citizens enjoyed in the Northern States may be judged of by the following anecdote: A friend of Mr Nolte’s, who had just formed an establishment at New Orleans, finding himself at Boston, and seeing a vessel advertised to sail thence for the former city, called upon the owner to ask him to consign the ship to his house. Whereupon the owner told him in strict confidence that he had just as much intention of sending his vessel to the moon as to New Orleans, and that he had inserted the advertisement merely in the expectation that amongst the persons applying for a passage he should find a rascal who had defrauded one of his friends of a considerable sum. “It is probable,” he added, “that he will try to get to New Orleans, that being the natural rendezvous of all rogues and scoundrels.” Not one of the eighteen or twenty commercial houses existing at New Orleans when Mr Nolte first went there possessed capital worth the naming, and a respectable character was nearly as great a rarity as ready cash. Roguery, disguised under the polite name of “cleverness,” was commonly practised and indulgently viewed. Juries and authorities were corrupt, false witnesses easily purchased, and justice was hard to obtain. In illustration of this state of things Mr Nolte tells some curious stories, one in particular, in which the celebrated American jurist Edward Livingston figures. “I well remember,” he says, “the remarkable trial of a certain Beleurgey, the editor of one of the first American newspapers which appeared in New Orleans, in 1806 and 1807, in French and English, under the name ofLe Telegraphe. To obtain money he had forged the signature of a rich planter, to whom, when his crime was discovered, he wrote, confessing his guilt, and earnestly entreating him not to prosecute him. The planter seemed disposed to accede to his prayer, but the letter was already in the hands of justice. How then did Livingston contrive, as Beleurgey’s counsel and defender, to obtain his acquittal in spite of that damning proof of his guilt? Davezac (Livingston’s brother-in-law and factotum) brought forward witnesses who swore that they knew Beleurgey to be such a liar that no word of truth had ever issued from his lips. ‘See here,’ then said Livingston to his French jury—‘it is proved that the man is incapable of speaking the truth; the very confession is a lie, for none but a madman would accuse himself. So that Beleurgey either has lied or is out of his senses; in either case he knew not what he did, and cannot be found guilty!’ And the jury acquitted him!” New Orleans was evidently not a tempting place to settle in, for an honest man, with money to be robbed of; but then, with conduct and judgment, there was money to be made, and moreover Mr Nolte, as a mere agent for others, had no choice but to abide there. Presently the arrival, in quick succession, of three fast-sailing schooners from Vera Cruz, bringing half a million of Mexican dollars to the address of Vincent Nolte, drew attention to the young man whom previously few had heeded—save the French planters, to whom his knowledge of their language was a recommendation. But now boundless hospitality was shown him, no party was complete without him, and for three months he passed a pleasant enough life, when suddenly the yellow fever laid him on his back. Upon the morning of the third day there appeared at his bedside one Zachary, the cashier of the Louisiana bank, and one of the very limited number of honourable men in the city, and gravely asked him if he had made his will. To this ominous inquiry Mr Nolte replied by a negative and an interrogative. “No! Why?”—“Well,” continued Zachary, “I suppose I need not tell you that you have got the yellow fever, and that it is more than possible you will die tomorrow, for the fourth is the critical day, which one does not generally get over. You have large sums lying at the bank—larger sums than have ever before been seen here—and, if you die, the capital will fall into very unsafe hands. The persons appointed by the State to take charge of the property of foreigners dying intestate, are not only undeserving of confidence, but, to speak plainly, are downright rascals.” The sick man’s reply was that he neither felt inclined nor intended to die. “And as I am sure not to die,” he concluded, “I see no use in bothering my head about my will.” Zachary looked hard at him. “Well, my dear Mr Nolte,” he at last said, “since that is your mood, I too am certain you will not die,”—a prognostic justified by the patient’s speedy recovery. In the yellow fever, as in other maladies, a faint heart kills many.
We pass over several chapters and some years. They include a good deal of interesting matter, and, of course, abundance of travelling;—a return to Europe, and brief residences in various cities of the United States, in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Hamburg. On a voyage from the Havana to Baltimore, Mr Nolte was wrecked upon the Carysford reef, which owes its name to the total loss of the frigate Carysford in 1774; and he gives a capital account of his sufferings and those of his ten companions on a raft composed of three small spars, six oars, and a hencoop, half immersed, and neglected by passing vessels, who took them for shipwrecked Spaniards, and feared to succour them, lest, when rescued, they should rise against their deliverers and take the ship into Cuba, an act of ingratitude that had been recently perpetrated under similar circumstances. A woodcut of the frail and curiously-constructed raft is the only illustration the book contains. At Philadelphia, Mr Nolte, who, it is to be observed, has been all his life an unlucky man, was run away with in his tandem, and, jumping out, broke his leg, which, badly set by two ignorant American Sawbones, occasioned him terrible suffering and long confinement. His agency for Hope’s house at an end, and after declining two advantageous offers of partnerships in Europe, one of which he would perhaps have done wisely in accepting, he determined to apply the very liberal sum he had received for his services to the establishment of a commercial firm at New Orleans, in aid of which the houses of Hope and Baring advanced him funds, opened him a credit, and allowed him to put their names in his circular as his friends and supporters. This brings us to the most interesting portion of his book.
Mr Nolte has a habit of interlarding his German, especially the scraps of dialogue scattered through his volumes, with a great deal of English and French, both of which languages he evidently understands as well as his mother-tongue. To readers in the same case, this practice gives to the book additional character and pungency; but to those to whom German alone is familiar it will prove troublesome, since he does not subjoin translations. As an instance of this, we will give his account of a casual meeting with a man who has since become universally celebrated. It was during his journey on horseback from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, where he was to join a friend with whom he had entered into partnership, and whence they were to proceed, with a couple of flat boats laden with flour, two thousand miles down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, there to form their mercantile establishment. Steam had not at that date annihilated distance in America; there were no boilers bursting on the rivers, or trains on railroads rattling through the States, and travelling was slow work, particularly with goods. The voyage by flat boats from Pittsburg to New Orleans was a forty or fifty days’ business. On a cold December morning, after a solitary ride over Laurel Hill, the highest of the Alleghanies, Mr Nolte halted, towards ten o’clock, at a small tavern by the falls of the Juniata river, and asked for a solid breakfast.
“The hostess showed me into a room, and said I might just take my food with a strange gentleman who was seated there already. ‘He is quite a stranger,’ she said. On stepping in, the man at once struck me as being what is commonly called an odd fellow. He sat at a table, in front of the fire, with a Madras handkerchief round his head, after the fashion of a French sailor, or of labourers in a French seaport. I courteously approached him, with the words: ‘I hope I don’t incommode you, by coming to take my breakfast with you?’ The reply was: ‘No, sir!’ spoken with a strong French accent, and sounding like ‘No, serre.’ ‘Ah!’ I continued, ‘vous êtes Français, Monsieur?’ ‘No, serre!’ was the reply; ‘ai em en Henglieshmen’ (I am an Englishman). ‘Why,’ I continued, ‘how do you make that out? You look like a Frenchman, and you speak like one.’ ‘I am an Englishman, because I got an English wife,’ replied he, with the same accent. Without further investigation of the matter, we agreed, over our breakfast, to ride together to Pittsburg. He showed himself more and more of an oddity, but at last admitted that he was a born Frenchman, from La Rochelle, had been brought to Louisiana when a child, had grown up in the sea-service, but had gradually become a real American. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘but how do you reconcile that with your quality of an Englishman?’ To which he replied, in French at last: ‘Au bout du compte, je suis un peu cosmopolite; j’appartiens à tous les pays.’”
When we mention that all the dialogue in the above extract, with the exception of one sentence, is, in the original, in the same languages in which we here give it, and that such polyglot passages are of constant occurrence throughout these volumes, it becomes evident that Mr Nolte will sorely puzzle and tantalise such of his German readers as are unacquainted with French, and with that composite Anglo-Saxon tongue for which the learned German has declared his preference over all other modern languages. The eccentric traveller was Audubon, the famous ornithologist, who was also bound for New Orleans. On reaching Pittsburg, no means of conveyance offered except Mr Nolte’s boat, and as he had by this time discovered that the naturalist was not only an accomplished draughtsman, but a good and amiable man, he offered him a cot in his little cabin, a service which Audubon afterwards thankfully recorded and acknowledged in the third volume of the text to his great work on “American Ornithology.” Mr Nolte knew nothing of the object of his guest’s journey until they reached Limestone, a small place in the north-western corner of Ohio State. There they landed their horses, intending to visit Lexington, and thence proceed to Louisville, where Audubon expected to find his wife—the daughter of an Englishman named Bakewell. “At Limestone,” says Mr Nolte, “we had hardly finished our breakfast, when Audubon suddenly sprang up. ‘Now, then,’ he cried to me, in French, ‘I must begin to lay the foundations of my establishment!’ Thereupon he took from his pocket a parcel of address-cards, a hammer, and some small nails, and began nailing one of the cards upon the door of the little tavern. It contained the words:
Audubon & Bakewell,Commission Merchants.Pork, Lard, and Flour.New Orleans.
Audubon & Bakewell,Commission Merchants.Pork, Lard, and Flour.New Orleans.
Audubon & Bakewell,Commission Merchants.Pork, Lard, and Flour.New Orleans.
Audubon & Bakewell,
Commission Merchants.
Pork, Lard, and Flour.
New Orleans.
So, said I to myself, you have found a rival before reaching your journey’s end. But I felt little inclination to deal in the flesh of swine, or apprehensive of very formidable opposition from my new acquaintance. We rode on to Lexington, chief town of Kentucky, a flourishing place, where I heard much talk of a certain highly-gifted lawyer, who, during the elections for Congress, had distinguished himself by his pugilistic prowess in the streets and taverns. This man, who soon afterwards became more and more celebrated, was Henry Clay, whose exterior was no way calculated to give a high idea of his intellectual qualities, but who had already acquired great fame as an orator.
“A horrible custom was at that time almost universal amongst the inhabitants (for the most part rough and brutal people) of the Western States. It was that of allowing the finger-nails to grow until they could be cut into the shape of small sickles, which were used, in the quarrels and fights that continually occurred, to scoop out the eyes of an opponent. This barbarous art was called gouging. During our ride through Kentucky, we saw several persons who wanted an eye, and others who had lost both. The excitement then prevalent in the United States on account of the misunderstanding with England, was much greater in the western provinces than on the seaboard, and the feeling of irritation in the former was very considerable. Passing through Frankfort on my way to Louisville, I learned that the Kentucky State Legislature was just then sitting, and I determined to witness its proceedings, in order to compare it with the Territorial Legislature of Louisiana, which was composed of the strangest mixture of born Americans, and of French and Spanish creoles. Hardly had I entered the hall, when I heard a very animated orator indulging in a violent diatribe against England. ‘We must have war with Great Britain,’ he said. ‘War will ruin her commerce! Commerce is the apple of Britain’s eye—there we mustgougeher!’ This flower of rhetoric was prodigiously applauded, and I could not deny that for a Kentucky audience it must have a certain poetical charm.”
Thus, sketching by the way a state of society which a lapse of forty years has fortunately greatly altered for the better, Mr Nolte reached Louisville. The Ohio had been for some days frozen, and his boats, with his friend and partner, Hollander, were fast bound in the ice some distance higher up the stream. “Three days afterwards, just as we sat down to dinner, the whole house was violently shaken; glasses, plates, and bottles fell from the table—most of the guests sprang up, with the cry: ‘There is the earthquake, by jingo! There is no humbug about it!’ and ran out into the street. The commotion was soon over, and people returned to their houses. Early next morning I learned that the shock had broken up the ice on the river, and that several boats had come down to Shippingport, a little town about a league off.” Among them were Nolte’s craft, and he continued his journey, presently quitting the clear transparent stream of the Ohio, and entering the slimy waters of the Mississippi. In voyages of that kind it was customary to bring-to at nightfall, and make fast the boats to the shore until next morning, snags and sawyers rendering progress unsafe during the darkness. On the evening of the 6th February 1812, the halting-place was hard by the little town of New Madrid. About twenty boats, which had left Shippingport together, were there assembled. “It was a bright moonlight night,” says Mr Nolte; “at eleven o’clock my partner, Hollander, had gone to bed, and I was sitting at a little table drawing a caricature of President Madison—who had just published a flaming proclamation, calling upon the nation to ‘put on armour and warlike attitude,’ but who was said to be himself completely under petticoat government—when a terrible report, like the sudden roar of cannon, echoed without, immediately succeeded by innumerable flashes. The Mississippi foamed up like the boiling water in a kettle, and then again receded with a rushing sound; the trees of a little wood near to which we had moored our boats, cracked, broke, and were overthrown. The terrible spectacle lasted for several minutes: there seemed no end to the vivid lightning, to the alternate rise and fall of the troubled water, and to the crash of falling trees. Hollander, startled from his sleep, called out, ‘What is that, Nolte?’ I could only tell him that I myself did not know, but took it for an earthquake. I went on deck. What a sight! The river, which had resumed its ordinary course, was covered with floating trees and branches, borne rapidly along by the current. Of the town, only a few very distant lights were to be seen. It was a real chaos. Our little crew consisted of three sailors, whom want of employment, in consequence of the embargo, had driven to Pittsburg, and of a river-pilot. They told me that the other boats had all cut loose from the shore and floated on, and asked me if we should not do the same. It struck me that if, under ordinary circumstances, it was unsafe to proceed by night, it must be doubly dangerous now that the river was covered with floating trees. And so we remained where we were. The rising sun showed us the unfortunate city of New Madrid more than three parts destroyed, and flooded, with here and there one of the wretched inhabitants making his way out of the ruins. Our boats were in the centre of a sort of island formed by falling trees, and several hours passed before we could extricate ourselves. At Natchez, which we reached on the thirty-second day, and where we remained a week, we heard full particulars of the earthquake, but we saw nothing of any of the boats that had surrounded us on the evening of the 6th February. At New Orleans, the only sign perceived of the commotion was a swinging to and fro of the chandeliers in the ball-room, and the sickness and fainting of a great number of ladies. This remarkable earthquake commenced in the north-west of Missouri state, was felt more or less throughout Louisiana, and extended through the Gulf of Mexico to Caraccas, where it played great havoc, destroying nearly the whole city, and swallowing up or reducing to poverty forty thousand persons. Nothing more was ever heard of the boats, and if we had not remained stationary we should doubtless have shared their fate.”
After five years’ absence, Mr Nolte found New Orleans greatly increased in size, but very little improved with respect to the character of its inhabitants, who had added to their former bad qualities a taste for lawsuits and chicanery, introduced amongst them by an immigration of greedy advocates from the Northern States. Mr Nolte—who, as somebody said of him, many years later, when he was an inmate of the Queen’s Bench at the suit of the litigious and crack-brained ex-duke of Brunswick, was all his life the plaything of misfortune, and whose best concerted and most prudent plans were invariably marred by some unforeseen incident or disaster—had no sooner taken and furnished a house in the chief city of Louisiana than news came from Washington of war having been declared against England—a crushing blow to our poor adventurer’s well-founded hopes of extensive and profitable transactions with the great European houses who wished him well and favoured his enterprise. There was no help for it; he could but cross his hands and pray for peace. The Mississippi was blockaded by British men-of-war. The state of things at New Orleans resembled the intolerable monotony and inactivity of a calm at sea, with the difference that the latter can last but a few days or weeks, whilst the former might endure for years. The only incidents that varied the monotony of life at New Orleans during that war were of an unpleasant nature. In August 1812, a frightful hurricane drove on shore eighteen of the ships in harbour, and unroofed nearly the whole city. A few months later, Mr Nolte broke his right arm at the elbow by a fall from his horse, and the limb ever afterwards remained stiff and crooked. Party-spirit ran high; private scandal, quarrels, and duels, were resorted to by the restless and disreputable citizens of New Orleans as a refuge from ennui. This portion of Mr Nolte’s book abounds in curious details. “The whole neighbouring coast was kept in a state of alarm by the piracies of the brothers Laffitte from Bayonne, by Jauvinet, Beluche, Dominique, Gamba, and others, who might be seen promenading the streets of New Orleans in broad daylight, and wholly unmolested. They had their friends and connections and warehouses in the city, and sold, almost openly, their stolen goods, especially English manufactures. But the slave trade was their great resource. They captured Spanish and other slavers on the high seas, and took them to their chief depôt, the little island of Barataria on the coast near New Orleans, whither the planters, chiefly of French extraction, went to purchase the slaves—for one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars, instead of six hundred or seven hundred, which they would have paid in the market—and conveyed them to their plantations, up the numerousbayousor creeks intersecting that district. And as the pirates would be paid in hard dollars, specie soon began to be rare in the city.” Brought into contact, by certain banking operations, with reckless and unscrupulous men, Mr Nolte managed to get involved in a couple of duels, in which his stiff arm was of course highly disadvantageous to him, and, with his usual good luck, he received a bullet in his leg, which he still carries about with him. A serious danger put a temporary end to these squabbles. An attack was expected from the English, and General Jackson made his appearance at New Orleans with fifteen hundred men, the most efficient amongst whom were five hundred riflemen who had served with Jackson in the Indian war, and were known as Coffee’s Brigade, from their commander’s name. These were the fellows who picked off the British officers from behind the cotton-bale barricades, of which the materials proceeded from Mr Nolte’s stores. Trained in repeated encounters with the savages, they were the sort of men Sealsfield has so vividly painted, totally ignorant of military organisation and discipline, but inaccessible to fear, perfectly cool in danger, of great presence of mind and personal resource, and, above all, unerring marksmen. Mr Nolte, although his stiff arm exempted him from service, did not choose to see his friends go out to fight and himself remain behind—the less so that he was already suspected of partiality to the English—and he joined the light company of a battalion of militia, several of whose officers had served under Napoleon. According to Mr Nolte’s account, Jackson, blustering, presumptuous, and overweeningly self-confident, would have led his militia and irregulars to certain destruction at the hands of the well-drilled British troops, but for the advice given him by Livingston, who acted as one of his aides-de-camp, to consult a French emigrant major named St Gême, who had formerly been in the English service in Jamaica, and now commanded a company in the battalion in which Mr Nolte had enrolled himself. “This officer had been a great deal with Moreau, when the latter, on a visit to Louisiana a few years previously, had scanned, with the critical eye of a tactician, the position of New Orleans and its capabilities of defence. St Gême rendered General Jackson and the American cause the great service of making him understand that, in the open field, the English would surround him and his handful of inexperienced followers, who had but the name of soldiers, would utterly rout and certainly capture them; and he pointed out to him the M’Carthy canal as the position which Moreau had himself fixed upon as the most defensible, especially for raw troops.” Mr Nolte, who writes impartially, and without visible leaning either to English or to Americans, praises Jackson for the self-command (a quality he did not often display) with which he waived his own wishes in deference to the opinion of the French general (he must have been mad to have disregarded it), and abandoned plans which assuredly, if carried out, would have led to the annihilation of his army and the capture of New Orleans. Livingston, by whose representations he was induced to take counsel of the French major, was a much better lawyer and statesman than warrior, according to Mr Nolte, and showed himself but little where bullets were flying. When the position decided upon was to be taken up and redoubts built, the ground was found to be swampy and slimy, and the earth unavailable for any sort of fortification, whereupon a French engineer suggested the employment of cotton bales. The plan adopted, Jackson would lose no time. “It was observed to him,” says unlucky Mr Nolte, lugubriously, “that he certainly might have plenty of cotton in the city for six or seven cents a pound, but its conveyance would cause a day’s delay, whereas a barque, already laden with cotton, and whose departure for the Havana had only been prevented by the arrival of the English squadron, lay close to the shore. It had on board two hundred and forty-five bales, which I myself had shipped just before the invasion, and sixty others belonging to a Spaniard of New Orleans. I was ill-pleased, when they could have had cheap cotton for six or seven cents in the town, to see them land, from a ship all ready to sail, my best quality, which had cost me ten or eleven cents, and I said as much to Livingston, who was my usual legal adviser in New Orleans, and whom I fell in with at Battery No. 3. He was never at a loss for an answer. ‘Well, Nolte,’ said he, ‘since it is your cotton, you will not mind the trouble of defending it.’ A reply which was the foundation of the story that, when the owner of the cotton complained of its seizure, Jackson sent him a musket, with the message that upon no man was it so incumbent to defend the bales as upon their owner, and that he therefore hoped he would not abandon them.” Mr Nolte’s whole account of the operations at New Orleans is clear and graphic, but that brief campaign has been so often described that we are not induced to dwell at much length upon his narrative, although it contains some passages that, proceeding from an actor on the American side, possess particular interest. On the left wing were the best sharpshooters of Kentucky and Tennessee, invisible in the cypress wood, and loading their rifles with three or four buckshot besides the bullet. Their good weapons and sure aim sent destruction through the ranks of the English, who saw no foe, but beheld all their officers picked off. The whole right flank of the English column was raked by this deadly fire, whilst in front the American batteries kept up an uninterrupted discharge. “From time to time,” says Mr Nolte, “when the smoke blew aside, I and my company obtained a view over the battle-field, and there we saw the whole English centre retreating, throwing away their fascines, and a staff-officer on a black horse gallop forward, his hat in his hand, which he angrily waved as if threatening the flying column. Suddenly, struck by several bullets, he fell backwards from his horse—some soldiers wrapped him hastily in blankets and carried him off. We learned in the evening that the staff-officer was the commander-in-chief, General Pakenham.” The fight was soon over. As Mr Nolte justly observes, it was a butchery rather than a battle. The Americans, completely sheltered, had but some thirty men killed and wounded, whilst their opponents had to deplore the loss of many hundred good soldiers, than whom none braver ever bore muskets, but whose commander’s good fortune was, upon that occasion, unfortunately not equal to his often-tried valour, and who, moreover, was misled by false information.
Mr Nolte does ample justice to the coolness, energy, and resolution of General Jackson, and shows that even the gasconades and exaggerations in which he constantly indulged had their use, since he thereby deluded his own people, and all the prisoners taken by the English concurred in such formidable accounts of the forces at his disposal as could not fail to influence the proceedings of the invaders. But after the affair of the 8th January, Jackson, prodigiously elevated by his triumph, was anxious to assume the offensive. For the second time he was indebted to Livingston for sound advice. “What would you have more?” said the lawyer; “the city is saved; the English will not renew the attack. Against troops like those, whose intrepidity amidst the most frightful slaughter you yourself have witnessed, what is the use of exposing yourself and your handful of men to be roughly handled, to the diminution of your glory and at risk of valuable lives?” As in the case of the position, the general took his aide-de-camp’s sensible advice, and, as is not unusual, got the whole credit of adopting the only rational course. Livingston, some of whose eulogists have made of him a hero as well as a lawgiver, was seized, it appears from Mr Nolte’s version of the campaign, with a bad colic on the evening of the 7th, just after it became known that the English would attack next morning, and retired into New Orleans, where he next day received news of the action. An hour afterwards he was back in camp—the English and the colic having retreated together. Another of Jackson’s volunteer aides-de-camp, also a lawyer, was off into the city before daybreak on the 8th, without even a pretext, and passed the morning riding about the streets, shouting out that the foe was at hand, and calling upon all to arm and hasten to the field—whereas all capable of bearing arms were in the field, except a few skulkers like himself. No notice was taken of these gentlemen’s shy behaviour, and Jackson, in his despatch, drawn up by Livingston, thanked his military and voluntary aides-de-camp “for their cool and deliberate bravery!”
The cotton bales used for the redoubts, and a quantity of blankets that had been taken from Mr Nolte’s warehouse during his absence from the city, gave rise to discussions which brought out the least favourable side of Jackson’s character. Immediately after the embarkation of the English, a commission was appointed to settle all claims. Mr Nolte’s was for 750 blankets and 245 bales of cotton. The former he was allowed for at the price of the day on which the English landed—namely, eleven dollars a-pair; but when the order was submitted to Jackson for his signature and ratification, he said that as the blankets had been taken (almost forcibly) by the Tennessee riflemen, they should be paid for in Tennessee notes—then worth 10 per cent less than New Orleans paper-money. Mr Nolte was fain to submit to this shabby trick, worthy of a Connecticut pedlar. As regarded his cotton he had much more trouble. He produced the invoice, proving that he had bought it, two years previously, at 10 cents a pound, from a well-known wealthy cotton-grower. He claimed that price, with the addition of two years’ interest. During the whole of that time, it had never been lower than 10 to 11 cents a pound, and a few days before the landing of the English he had bought some at 12½ cents. But when the British troops were on shore, and close at hand, there was a panic; markets fell, the timid realised at any price, and a small parcel of cotton of the same quality was sold at 7 cents. When Mr Nolte’s claim was submitted to Jackson, he allowed it, and said the cotton must be paid for at the price it would have fetched upon the day the American troops marched out of the town. No notice being taken of Mr Nolte’s written protest against such manifest injustice, he went to Jackson, then in all the intoxication of his triumph, and of the exaggerated homage paid him by his countrymen, and very well disposed to exert the arbitrary power given him by the military law he still quite unnecessarily maintained—a stretch of authority for which it will be remembered that he was afterwards fined by the civil tribunals. In reply to Mr Nolte’s representation and remonstrance—
“‘Aren’t you very lucky,’ he asked, ‘to have saved the rest of your cotton through my defence of the city?’
“‘Certainly, general,’ answered I, ‘as lucky as every other man in the place, but with this difference, that it costs them nothing, and that I have to bear all the loss.’
“‘Loss?’ cried the general, getting rather angry—‘loss? You have saved everything!’
“I saw it was no use arguing with such an obstinate man, and remarked to him that I only wanted compensation for my cotton, nothing more, and that the best compensation would be to give me back the same quantity and quality that had been taken from me; that I would appoint one merchant, he another; they would agree as to quality, buy the cotton, deliver it me, and he should pay for it.
“‘No, no, sir!’ replied Jackson; ‘I like straightforward business, and that is too complicated. You must take 6 cents for your cotton. I have nothing more to say.’
“I wanted to make the whole thing clear to him, but he cut me short: ‘Come, sir, come! Take a glass of whiskey-and-water; you must be damned dry after all your arguing.’
“All I could do was to say: ‘Well, general, I did not expect such injustice at your hands! Good morning, sir!’ And I went away. Three days afterwards news came of the conclusion of peace, and the consequence was an immediate rise of cotton to 16 cents, at which price I bought several parcels. The committee of claims were embarrassed; they felt that it was now impossible to fob me off with 6 cents. At last I was asked if I wouldnowbe content with payment of my invoice; and I agreed to be so, since I must else have complained to Congress, and the affair might have dragged on for years.”
Some pages are devoted by Mr Nolte to an appreciation of Old Hickory’s character. He condemns his arbitrary and overbearing disposition, and his cruelty to the unfortunate Indians, whom he so implacably and perseveringly hunted down, but does justice to his shrewdness and other good qualities, considering, however, that good luck had more to do than commanding talent with the distinction and popularity he attained to in the States—an opinion which we suspect to be now entertained by a very large number of Jackson’s countrymen. Of the general’s tone and manners—rough as those of a far-west woodsman—Mr Nolte gives some humorous examples. After the action in front of New Orleans, demonstrations innumerable were made in the hero’s honour. On his return into the city, Mrs Livingston placed a crown of laurel upon his head, which seemed considerably to embarrass the slayer of Seminoles, who took it off as if it burned his brow; the ladies subscribed for a costly set of jewels for Mrs General Jackson; and the principal inhabitants got up a grand ball in the French Exchange. Mr Nolte, who had seen more public festivities than most of the people of New Orleans, was a prominent and active member of the committee.
“The upper part of the Exchange was arranged for dancing, the lower part for supper, with flowers, coloured lamps, and transparencies. Before supper, Jackson desired to go alone and take a view of the arrangements, and I had to show him the way. On one of the transparencies, between the arcades, were to be read the words: ‘Jackson and victory, they are but one.’ The general turned round to me, in a more cordial manner than I might have expected, and asked, ‘Why did you not say Hickory and victory, they are but one?’ After supper the hero of the day gave us the diverting spectacle of apas de deuxbetween him and his wife—an Irish emigrant of low origin and considerable corpulence, whom he had taken away from a planter in Georgia. To see those two, the general a long lean man with skeleton-like limbs, and his wife, a short thick specimen of the female figure, dancing opposite to each other like half-drunken Indians, to the wild tune of ‘Opossum up a gum tree,’ was truly one of those remarkable spectacles which would be sought in vain in any European ballet.”
During the second year of the war between England and the States, a fine West Indiaman of 900 tons burthen, the “Lord Nelson,” was captured by the Yankee privateer Saratoga, taken into New Orleans, and sold by auction for a fourth of its value. Mr Nolte was the purchaser. Now that the war was over, he loaded her with cotton and deerskins, altered her name to the “Horatio,” and sailed for Nantes, with several passengers on board. The ship was but just outside the mouths of the Mississippi, when she spoke a vessel that had made an unusually short voyage from Havre, and brought news of Napoleon’s landing at Cannes, rapid march through France, and reinstallation in the Tuileries. Two Frenchmen, who were amongst the passengers, and one of whom had served under the emperor, were overjoyed. Presently it was discovered that the “Horatio” had not enough ballast for her two thousand bales of cotton, and she put into the Havana to supply the deficiency, thus somewhat lengthening her voyage. Off the Scilly Islands she spoke the monthly packet from London to New York. After the interchange of a little nautical information: “What news from France?” roared Mr Nolte’s captain through his speaking-trumpet. “The Duke of Wellington and the British army are in Paris,” was the reply. “Where is Buonaparte?” “Fled—nobody knows where.” And the two ships pursued their respective courses. The French passengers would not believe a word of it. It was English news, they said, manufactured in London; and they proved to each other, as clear as sunlight, that it was physically and morally impossible the intelligence should be true. It took the testimony of a French pilot, and the sight of the white flag on the banks of the Loire, to convince them that Napoleon had again fallen. The French population of New Orleans went yet farther in their incredulity. The BuonapartistCourrier de la Louisianeanalysed the news, and ingeniously proved that the pretended victory of the Allies was merely a mask for a total defeat; that the emperor had achieved one of his great triumphs, which should forthwith be celebrated. And accordingly Napoleon’s bust, crowned with laurels, was that evening carried in procession, by the light of hundreds of torches, with several bands of music playing French national airs;—premature rejoicings, which the confirmation of the defeat of the French converted into profound consternation.
Paris, whither Mr Nolte hastened as soon as possible after landing, was full of novelty and excitement, and the focus on which the eyes of Europe were fixed. He devotes an interesting chapter to sketches of “Paris after Waterloo.” Amongst the crowds of foreign uniforms were here and there to be seen, he says, “spectral figures, in long blue coats buttoned to the chin, spurred boots, and hats pressed down over their eyes. These men, who cast such gloomy glances around them, were the officers of the disbanded French army. The ribbon of the Legion of Honour had disappeared from their button-hole, but it was easy to recognise them by their flashing eyes and fierce expression when an English uniform drew near. An accidental push or touch on the foot, often unavoidable in a crowd, and they would burst out, in great bitterness, with an angry—‘Je suis Français, Monsieur!’ or, ‘No, Padrone, questa e l’uniforme di Amburgo!’ and if the ‘Pardon, Monsieur!’ was not forthcoming, a quarrel was the almost inevitable result. The police had the difficult task of keeping these remnants of the French army out of Paris, but they were not very successful in so doing. Notwithstanding the violent irritation of the French military, which was kept under only by the strong hand, nobody in Paris went amongst them more fearlessly than the Duke of Wellington, who showed himself everywhere in a plain blue frock, with the English red scarf round his waist, and a simple red and white feather in his cocked hat, and usually rode about alone, followed only by a sergeant. Thus plainly equipped and slenderly escorted, I saw him one morning ride into the court of the Hotel de l’Empire, and ask for the celebrated London banker Angerstein, who was stopping there.” Ney’s death, the restaurants and coffeehouses then in vogue, and which were thronged with English and Prussian officers, and grand reviews of the allied troops, are in turn glanced at. At the review of the Russian guard, drawn up along the whole length of the boulevards, Mr Nolte had a particularly good view of the sovereigns. By favour of a colonel, with whom he had fallen into conversation, he was allowed to remain within the line cleared by the sentries, and close to the colonel’s horse. “Suddenly the three monarchs came riding rapidly up, the Emperor Alexander in the middle, his eyes directed to the ladies in the balconies and at the windows—on his right the Emperor Francis, with a serious straightforward gaze—on his left King Frederick-William III., who seemed to be examining the grisettes in the crowd rather than the ladies at the windows. The staff, according to the estimate of my obliging colonel, comprised more than a thousand military men of all nations. As good luck would have it, the sovereigns and their whole retinue paused in front of the regiment on my right, and the colonel pointed out to me the Russian grand-dukes, the Austrian archdukes, several Prussian princes, Wellington, Schwarzenberg, Blucher, Platoff,” &c. &c. Of all the commanders then assembled in Paris, the most dissatisfied was the American general, Scott (since noted for his campaign in Mexico), who had been opposed to the English on the Canadian frontier, had taken a fort or two, and was looked upon by his countrymen as a military star of the very first magnitude—second only to Jackson, and equal to any other warrior then extant. He had been sent to Europe to increase his military knowledge and study the art of war, and reached Paris fully convinced that all the great chiefs of the Continental armies would hasten to greet and compliment him. “To his visible vexation, he found himself completely mistaken. In the great military meetings in the French capital, where Wellington, Blucher, Schwarzenberg, Kutusoff, Woronzoff, and a host of other celebrities, laden with stars and orders, were assembled—the long thin man, in his blue coat without embroidery, and with only a pair of moderate-sized epaulets, excited no attention. Scott could not get over the contrast between the figure he had so recently cut in his native land, and the insignificance he was condemned to in France, and he often exhibited bitter and somewhat laughable ill-humour.” After a visit to the field of Waterloo, Mr Nolte returns to America, on cotton speculations intent—of which, and of Baring Brothers, he for some time discourses, until we are not sorry to see the theme changed, and him back in Paris, passing a Sunday at the country-house ofMaison sur Seine, built by Louis XIV., and then just purchased from the French government by the banker Jacques Laffitte, whom he found in his park, accompanied by two plainly-dressed and plain-mannered Englishmen, who talked knowingly about cotton, and whom he took for Manchester cotton-spinners. At dinner, to his surprise, although Casimir Perrier and several deputies and Frenchmen of mark were present, the places of honour were for the Englishmen. He made up his mind that they must be very great people in the cotton-spinning line—perhaps the first in Manchester—and that they must have large credits on Laffitte’s house—that giving, not unfrequently, the measure of the hospitality of Parisian bankers. Laffitte, who was a great talker—given to discourse for hours together, with scarcely a break, and with innumerable digressions totally irrelevant to the subject under discussion—was loquacious as usual, and related many things that had occurred during the Hundred Days. At that time Napoleon had sent for and consulted him almost daily. Laffitte said that he had never been a worshipper of Napoleon’s, but he then had opportunity of convincing himself that the emperor possessed, in the highest degree, the art of popularity. “‘He was very confidential with me,’ said Laffitte, ‘spoke without reserve, and once made a striking remark concerning our nation. “To govern the French,” he said, “one must have arms of iron and gloves of velvet.”’ My readers may probably have heard this remark, but not the reply immediately made by Madame Laffitte’s right-hand neighbour (one of the Manchester cotton-spinners aforesaid). ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is very true, but—he often forgot to put on his gloves.’ The remark was so apt and true that all present laughed heartily. I asked my next neighbour who the witty foreigner was, and learned that it was the Marquis of Lansdowne.”
Involved in the commercial disasters of 1825–6, Mr Nolte left New Orleans, sixteen years after his first establishment there, and went to seek in Europe that fortune which had constantly eluded his grasp in the States. His success in the Old World was little better than in the New. In after years, he again more than once visited America, and engaged in enormous cotton speculations, in which he burnt his fingers. Cotton seems to have had for him the same irresistible attraction that dice have for the veteran gambler. Although many of his misfortunes were the result of circumstances neither to be foreseen nor guarded against, and although we may suppose that he makes out the best case he fairly can, the impression left by his book upon the reader’s mind is, that Mr Vincent Nolte has been, to say the least, a very venturesome person, and that his abilities and opportunities would have amply sufficed to insure him ultimate affluence, had he been less impatient to acquire a large and rapid fortune. On the other hand, he deserves credit for his unflinching pluck, and for his elasticity under misfortune. When he left New Orleans, he attempted to form a partnership at Havre, but in vain; and he himself frankly admits that he was unsuccessful, because the merchants with whom he would have associated himself were deterred by his reputed taste for the vast and daring operations in which he had been early initiated. The slow but sure gains of the steady trader he never had patience to collect; the ordinary routine of commercial affairs was to him wearisome and intolerable; he carried into the peaceful paths of trade something of that venturesome and aspiring spirit which, upon the battle-field, insures the soldier high distinction or sudden death—a bullet or a marshal’s baton. We regret to fear that it has led Mr Nolte, after his long and busy life, to no very prosperous position; although he seems to preserve to the last the spirit and vigour that have borne him through so many trying vicissitudes. At the time now referred to, he was still in his prime, and full of hope and confidence. From Havre he betook himself to his favourite city of Paris, where, by the assistance and introduction of his staunch friends the Barings, he was on the eve of concluding a partnership for the establishment of a house at Marseilles. The circulars were printed; Mr Nolte took a run to Hamburg, Holland, and England, to visit commercial friends, and everywhere he met a kind and encouraging reception. He reached Southampton, on his return to Paris, two hours after the departure of the packet, and, with characteristic impatience, rather than wait two days, hired an open boat, whose owner undertook to land him at Havre early the next morning. It was a moonlight night, and a fair wind at starting, but he was becalmed in the Channel, and lay a whole day roasting in the sun. Upon the morning of the 26th July 1830, he landed at Havre, and posted on to Paris. At Rouen he remarked signs of uneasiness, and the troops were under arms; at Courbevoie he received the first news of the fatal ordinances; outside the Paris barrier, a few persons stopped his chaise, and tore the white cockade from the postilion’s hat. Paris was enacting the most peaceful and respectable of its numerous revolutions.