‘that some of our travelling Nudes of Fashion intended to conquer the Conqueror of the Continent. What glory would it have brought to this Country, if it could have boasted of giving a Mistress, or a Wife, to the FirstConsul. How pretty would sound Lady G—— (we mean LadyGodiva)Bonaparte?’
‘that some of our travelling Nudes of Fashion intended to conquer the Conqueror of the Continent. What glory would it have brought to this Country, if it could have boasted of giving a Mistress, or a Wife, to the FirstConsul. How pretty would sound Lady G—— (we mean LadyGodiva)Bonaparte?’
Wraxall’s story that the Duchess wanted to wed her daughter to Eugène is confirmed by Maurice Dupin, George Sand’s father, who met them at a dinner-party, and wrote to his mother that they were in love with each other, but that Napoleon would not listen to thematch. Georgina, he added, was reputed a beauty, but like Eugène lacked a good mouth and teeth.[55]
The Duke of Newcastle, afterwards famous for justifying the eviction at Newark of forty tenants who refused to vote for his nominee by saying, ‘May I not do what I will with my own?’ was destined to give Gladstone his first seat in the House of Commons; which Gladstone, however, resigned in 1846 on joining Peel in free-trade. The Duke was yet only a youth of seventeen, in charge of his step-father Sir Charles Craufurd, who has been already mentioned. The Duke of Somerset deserves notice only as the father of the Duke of our time, who was first Lord of the Admiralty and an agnostic writer.
The Marchioness of Donegal was accompanied by her sisters Mary and Philippa Godfrey, friends of Thomas Moore. The Marquis and Marchioness of Tweeddale (she was daughter of Lord Lauderdale) took with them their young son, Lord James Hay.
Of the Earls, Aberdeen—Byron’s ‘travelled thane, Athenian Aberdeen’—was the future Prime Minister of 1852. His six weeks in Paris were said to have cost him £3000. Lady Bessborough had been at school at Versailles before the Revolution, and had been noticed by Marie Antoinette. Beverley, a son of the Duke of Northumberland, had been created a peer in 1790. He had distinguished himself by his courage during the riots of 1780, and we have already heard of his son. Cadogan had divorced his wife in 1796, so that she travelled by herself. Camelford had refused to illuminate for thepeace, and his house had consequently been sacked. He pretended in 1801 to be an American named Rushworth, but was arrested, and after some days expelled. In March 1803 he again landed at Calais, but was discovered and apprehended, for he was said to have boasted in London that he would kill Bonaparte. He wrote, however, from the Temple prison an abject letter to Napoleon, pleading that his mother would die if she heard of his arrest. He also threw out of the window a letter to Lord Grenville, which the picker-up was requested to forward, but it was intercepted. He was sent to Boulogne and shipped to England.[56]Jackson was afraid of his committing suicide, so that he must have shown symptoms of the mental derangement which led in 1804 to a fatal duel with Captain Best. He was reputed to be the best shot in England. Carhampton had in 1796 been commander-in-chief in Ireland. It was reported that incensed at having, in company with other English, to wait three hours in an anteroom without chairs, before being received by Talleyrand, he went next day to the Tuileries in colonel’s uniform without epaulettes. Bonaparte asked him therefore whether he was a militia officer. ‘No,’ he proudly replied. ‘Then what is your rank in the army?’ ‘I was Commander-in-Chief when the French army under General Hoche endeavoured to land in Ireland.’[57]It was scarcely fair of Carhampton thus to retaliate on Napoleon for Talleyrand’s discourtesy.
Cavan had just returned from Egypt, where he had commanded a division under Abercromby. The Cholmondeleys had been in Paris in 1791, their son and heir being born there. We shall hear presently of their equipages. The Countess (afterwards Marchioness) Conyngham is notorious for herliaisonwith GeorgeIV.Egremont was long a prominent figure in London society, but is more deserving of notice as one of the earliest patrons of Turner the artist. Elgin, of marble fame, was on his way home from the Constantinople embassy. We shall have to speak hereafter of his wife and her paramour Ferguson. Fife, afterwards a distinguished general in the Peninsular War, wounded at Talavera and Cadiz, was great-uncle of the present Duke of Fife. Fitzwilliam had in 1794 been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, where his three months’ rule was looked back to with regret. Lady Granard, sister of the Earl of Moira, on her honeymoon in 1780 had seen Cardinal York, and had also witnessed a review by FredericII.Guilford was the son of the Lord North who lost us our American colonies. He stayed seven months, and would have remained longer but for the rupture.
Lady Kenmare (Mary, daughter of Michael Aylmer) was known for her Sunday evening receptions in London, and for a romantic story of her husband’s attachment to her before his first wife’s death, or even before his first marriage. A Gerald Aylmer, who also visited Paris, was probably her kinsman. The Countess of Kingston, who must not be confused with the Duchess of Kingston, the notorious bigamist, wasaccompanied by two unmarried daughters, probably also by her other daughter, Lady Mount Cashell. One of these daughters had in 1798 been the occasion of a duel in which her brother shot his adversary. Lady Lanesborough, daughter of the Earl of Belvedere, had, as we shall see, found a second and plebeian husband. Lauderdale had witnessed and sympathised with the Revolution, Dr. (father of Sir John) Moore then accompanying him as physician. His Whig opinions had made him lose his seat as a Scottish representative peer in the House of Lords, and his anxiety for the maintenance of peace made Whitworth shut his door to him as one of ‘our rascally countrymen.’[58]His son, moreover, a youth of eighteen, styled himself ‘citizen’ Maitland.[59]Minto, the Gilbert Elliot who, ward of David Hume, was at school with Mirabeau, and was consequently sent over in 1790 to bribe him into keeping France neutral in our threatened quarrel with Spain over Nootka Sound, had been Governor of Corsica. He was one of the earliest visitors, was on his way home from the Vienna Embassy, and was destined to be Viceroy of India. Mount Edgecumbe was an amateur actor and musical composer. His wife,[60]with their young daughter Emma Sophia, afterwards Countess Brownlow and writer ofReminiscences of a Septuagenarian, had previously been to Spa, where she met the Duchess of Gordon, the Conynghams, the Bradfords, Charles and Lady Charlotte Greville, andDudley and Lady Susan Ryder. She had a serious illness in Paris. Lord Oxford had a great admiration for Napoleon and also for Murat. His wife, who required change of climate, was very handsome, though not rivalling Madame Tallien. Pembroke was the father of Sidney Herbert, the statesman of our time, and in 1806 was Ambassador at Vienna. He stayed three months, and being an excellent observer and a patient listener, his account of Paris was eagerly sought for. Shaftesbury, uncle of the philanthropist of our day, took his wife, a daughter of Sir John Webb, and their daughter. Winchilsea was the father of the fanatical Orangeman who in 1829 fought a duel, on account of Catholic Emancipation, with Wellington, but happily without bloodshed. Viscount Falkland, less fortunate, was killed in a duel in 1809. Viscountess Maynard was the notorious Nancy Parsons whom Lord Maynard had married in 1766, in spite of her antecedents. She had been a widow since 1775, and had been the mistress of the late Duke of Bedford, who, by his will, continued his annuity to her of £2000. Lord Monck, who took over his wife and two daughters, was the grandfather of the Viceroy of Canada. He died shortly after his return, in June 1802. Viscount Strangford was afterwards Ambassador at Lisbon, Stockholm, Constantinople, and St. Petersburg, and translated Camoëns’Lusiad. Moore, Rogers, and Croker were among his friends.
We now come to the lowest grade of the peerage. Barrington, leaving a wife behind, but taking a mistress with him, probably went, from what we afterwardshear, to escape his English creditors; but we shall find that he got into debt in France. Blayney has been already mentioned among prospective M.P.’s, for, being an Irish peer like Palmerston, he was eligible for the Lower House. Cahir, who crossed over as early as June 1801, was afterwards created Earl of Glengall; he remained till April 1802. Invitations to Madame Bonaparte’s receptions were commonly obtained through his wife’s good offices. Lady Carington was the wife of one of Pitt’s banker peers. There was a rumour that Pitt intended to marry her eldest daughter. It was her grandson who, in 1872, having horsewhipped Grenville Murray on the steps of the Reform Club on account of a scurrilous article on his family inBroad Arrow, was convicted of assault at Clerkenwell sessions, but was simply bound over to keep the peace. Murray shortly afterwards became an outlaw. Cloncurry in 1859 published his reminiscences. He was accompanied by his three sisters, of whom more anon. He dined with Napoleon, and made acquaintance with Kosciusko, Helen Williams, and Madame Récamier. He invited the two Emmets to dinner the day before Robert’s return to Ireland, from which he could not be dissuaded. Cloncurry in the winter of 1802 proceeded to Italy, where he presented a telescope to Cardinal York, who gave him one of his medals, and he returned home after the rupture by way of Germany.[61]Lady Crofton, widow of Sir Thomas Crofton, was a baroness in her own right. Her daughter Frances accompanied her. Grantham, who was onhis way to Italy, in 1833 succeeded his aunt in the De Grey earldom. He was first Lord of the Admiralty in 1834–1835, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1841–1844, was a collector of sculptures, was President of the Institution of British Architects, and publishedCharacteristics of the Duke of Wellington. He was uncle of the present Marquis of Ripon, ex-Viceroy of India. Holland, who had seen Paris in 1791, protested in 1815 against Napoleon’s captivity at St. Helena, and Lady Holland, the divorced wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, forwarded the prisoner books, in gratitude for which kindness Napoleon sent her an antique diamond presented to him by the Pope. Lady Holland’s receptions were afterwards famous. Hutchinson had succeeded Sir Ralph Abercromby in Egypt. On his brother’s death he became Earl of Donoughmore. In the autumn of 1789 he had applied at Paris for an escort to go and rejoin his family near Amiens, disturbances having broken out there, but was told that order had been restored. He was Lafayette’s aide-de-camp from 1789 to 1792. Northwick was an art connoisseur. Stawell was Surveyor of Customs for the Port of London.
Of the eldest sons or other successors of peers, Eardley deserves notice on account of the history of his family. Sampson Gideon, a Portuguese Jew, made a fortune in London, and as a reward for financial services obtained a baronetcy, not for himself, for a Jew was then deemed ineligible, but for his son, then at Eton, at the age of fifteen. That son, Sampson the second, was brought up a Christian by his Englishmother, and was nicknamed ‘Mr. Pitt’s Jew.’ In 1789 he was made an Irish peer as Lord Eardley, a title explained by his having married, in 1766, Maria, the daughter of Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas. He was elected first for Coventry and afterwards for Wallingford, but retired in 1802. He had two sons, Sampson and William; the former was the visitor to Paris, but both died before their father, with whom the peerage expired in 1824. His three daughters married Lord Say and Sele, Sir Culling Smith, M.P., and Colonel Childers. Childers, the well-known member of the Gladstone Cabinet, was doubly descended from Pitt’s Jew, for his father was an Eardley Childers, and his mother a Culling Smith. Colonel Molesworth was drowned with his wife on his way to the Cape in 1815.
The younger sons of peers comprised Arthur Annesley (son of Viscount Annesley), Lord William Bentinck, afterwards Viceroy of India (Duke of Portland), William Brodrick (Viscount Midleton), Lord John Campbell (Duke of Argyll), Lord George Cavendish (Duke of Devonshire), Robert Clifford (Lord Clifford), Colonel Robert Clive (Lord Clive), Edward Spencer Cowper (Earl Cowper), Keppel Craven (Lord Craven), Francis Cust (Earl Brownlow), Henry Dillon (Viscount Dillon), Lord Robert Stephen Fitzgerald (Duke of Leinster), Lord Archibald Hamilton (Duke of Hamilton), William Hill (Lord Berwick), John King (Lord King), George Knox (Lord Northland), Lord Frederic Montagu (Duke of Manchester), Augustus John Francis Moreton (Earl of Ducie), Arthur Paget (Lord Uxbridge), HenryPierrepont (Viscount Newark), Lord Arthur Somerset (Duke of Beaufort), John Talbot (Baroness Talbot de Malahide), and John Trevor (Viscount Hampden). Charles James Fox, Edward Paget, General Fitzpatrick, Lord Robert Spencer, and Charles Wyndham, have been already mentioned as M.P.’s.
There were also several daughters of peers. Lady Elizabeth Foster, widow of John Thomas Foster, M.P., was daughter of the Earl of Bristol, and there were strange stories of her relations with the Duke of Devonshire. According to the generally accepted version[62]the Duchess, famous in election annals, was forced by her parents, at sixteen years of age, to marry the Duke, though she was in love with the Duke of Hamilton, who killed himself in despair. She refused, however, to allow him the rights of a husband, and Lady Elizabeth Foster, living harmoniously with them, had several children by the Duke, who were brought up under an assumed name. In 1789, however, the Duchess losing £100,000 at play at Spa, the Duke went over and paid her debts on condition of consummating the marriage. The result was the birth of a son and heir at Paris in January 1790. The Duchess died in 1806, and three years afterwards Lady Elizabeth agreed to marry the widower. Gainsborough painted her as Lady Foster in the picture mysteriously stolen in London in 1875 and recovered in America in 1900. She was now accompanied to Paris by her legitimate son, Augustus John Foster, who was just of age. In 1811 he was sent as Envoy to Washington, in 1814 toCopenhagen, and in 1824 to Turin. In 1831 he received a baronetcy. Lady Isabel Style, daughter of Lord Powerscourt, and widow since 1774 of Sir Charles Style, had been a prisoner in France in 1793, and now revisited France. Lady Anne Saltmarsh was daughter of the Earl of Fingall. Lady Hester Stanhope, daughter of Earl Stanhope, who was not yet her uncle Pitt’s housekeeper, was, to avoid a stepmother, travelling with the Egertons, probably Sir Peter Warburton Egerton.
There was also Lady Mary Whaley,néeLawless, the widow since 1800 of an Irish M.P., nicknamed Jerusalem Whaley, for, having said in joke that he was going to Jerusalem, he won a bet (of £15,000 it is said) that he would really go thither. At sixteen years of age this Thomas Whaley, inheriting £15,000 from his father, was sent to Paris with a ‘bear-leader’ to learn French. He there bought a town and country house, kept a pack of hounds, entertained company, and gambled, losing £14,000 at a sitting. He returned to Ireland, compounded with his creditors, and squandered the Jerusalem bet money. He revisited Paris in 1791, and witnessed the King’s return from Varennes. He became a cripple for life by jumping from a drawing-room window on to the roof of a passing hackney-coach, or, as we should now say, cab.[63]He gambled at Newmarket, Brighton, and London, and eventually settled in the Isle of Man, where he brought up an illegitimate family.[64]He married, in January 1800,Lady Mary Catherine Lawless, daughter of Lord Cloncurry, but died in the following November. His widow lived till 1831. She was accompanied by her sister, Lady Valentia Lawless, who afterwards married Sir Francis Burton, Lord Conyngham’s half-brother, and by Lady Charlotte, who became Lady Dunsany. There was likewise a Lady Giffard, probably Lady Charlotte Courtenay, daughter of the Earl of Devon, who in 1788 had married Thomas Giffard of Chillington, Staffordshire. Lady Charlotte Greville,néeCharlotte Bentinck, daughter of the Duke of Portland, was there with her husband Charles Greville, father of the diarist. Miss Caroline Vernon, maid of honour to the Queen, was a daughter of Lord Vernon and died in 1815. Lady Catherine Beauclerk was daughter of the Duke of St Albans.
The baronets included, besides several already mentioned, William Call, John Chichester, Simon Clark, John Coghill, William Cooper, James Craufurd, Herbert Croft, Thomas Clavering, Michael Cromie, George Dallas, James De Bathe, Beaumont Dixie, N. Dukinfield, Alexander Grant, John Honywood, John Hope, John Ingilby, William James, Richard Jodrell, Thomas Lavie, John Morshead, George Prescott, George Shipley, Charles Talbot, Thomas Tancred, Grenville Temple, Henry Tichborne, Thomas Webb, Robert John Wilmot, and Charles Wolseley.
Some of these will be mentioned hereafter. At present we need speak only of Sir Charles Wolseley, who, like Sir Francis Burdett, boxed the political compass. He witnessed, and apparently took part in, thecapture of the Bastille. In 1819 the Birmingham Radicals nominated him their so-called ‘legislatorial attorney,’ and in the following year he was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment for a seditious speech at Stockport. He ultimately gave up political life, embraced Catholicism in 1837, and died in 1846.
Then there were also sons of baronets: William Abdy, who succeeded to the title in July 1803, Ashby Apreece, who predeceased his father in 1807, Alexander Don, Charles Jerningham, Raymond Pelly, John Wombwell, formerly a merchant at Alicante, Ralph Woodford, afterwards Governor of Bermuda, John Broughton, and William Oglander, who, already mentioned, succeeded to the title in 1806, while there were two future baronets, Thomas Hare and Charles Cockerell.
Next to legislators and aristocrats, military men were the most numerous class of visitors. Some passed through Paris on their way home from Egypt, which had just been evacuated, and others were actuated not so much by curiosity or love of dissipation as by professional duty, for they did not know how soon they might not have to encounter Bonaparte’s legions. Of this swarm of visitors I can only mention a few. There were the two sons of Sir Ralph Abercromby, who had been killed at Alexandria. The elder was General George already mentioned, who, eventually succeeding his mother in the peerage, became Lord Abercromby. The younger, Colonel Sir John, served with distinction, but died at forty-four years of age without reaching the highest grade. Sir Charles Ashworth became a general.Captain Benjamin Bathurst, son of the Bishop of Norwich, then eighteen years of age, was the diplomatist who in 1809 mysteriously disappeared on returning from a mission to Vienna. Napoleon was accused of having him murdered, but the probability is that he was killed for the sake of his valuables by the ostler of a German inn who was afterwards unaccountably affluent. His daughter Rose, at the age of seventeen, was drowned at Rome in 1824 by her horse slipping backwards into the Tiber, and his brother in a race at Rome was killed by a fall from his horse. Three disasters in one family.
William Bosville, commonly styled Colonel, though he had only been a lieutenant in the Guards, must be ranked with soldiers for want of any other suitable category, though he was more wit than soldier. He had, however, served in the American War. He dined every Sunday with Horne Tooke, and, as we have seen, accompanied Sir F. Burdett, whose election he had zealously promoted. He dressed like a courtier of George II.’s time. He visited Cobbett in prison and presented him with £1000. Paine, on reaching the United States, sent a message to ‘my good friend Bosville.’ Francis Burke, who had been in the Franco-Irish brigade, became a British general.
General James Callender had served in the Seven Years’ War and had been Secretary to the Paris Embassy under the Duke of Dorset, who, on his recall in October 1789, deputed him to wind up his accounts. He had more recently been Inspector-General at Naples, and had been sent by Nelson to the IonianIslands, where he remained till the peace. While in Paris he made the acquaintance of a Madame Sassen, a German, and on being detained he sent her to Scotland with a power of attorney, styling her his beloved wife, to see after his affairs. When released, however, he denied having married her, and the Court of Session declared the marriage not proven, but awarded the lady £300 damages. This latter decision was annulled by the House of Lords, and the lady passed the rest of her life in fruitless litigation. Callender, who married three times, died in 1832 at the age of eighty-seven. The French Police Register describes him, the reason why is not obvious, as a swindler. On succeeding in 1810 to the estates of his cousin, Sir Alexander Campbell, he assumed the baronetcy also, but without right to it.[65]General John Francis Cradock had served in India and in Egypt, was destined to serve in Spain, and in 1819 became Lord Howden. He altered the spelling of his name to Caradoc. His son, aide-de-camp to Wellington in Paris in 1814, and afterwards militaryattachéat the Paris Embassy, there married in 1830 the widow of the Russian General Bagration, an ex-mistress of Metternich. In July 1830 he was deputed by the Duke of Orleans to follow the fugitive CharlesX.and ask him to confide to him his grandson that he might be proclaimed king. Charles was inclined to consent, but the child’s mother, the Duchess of Berri, dissuaded him, not thinking that her boy would be in safe keeping. On Caradoc reporting his failure Louis Philippe accepted the crown.
James Ferrier, brother of Susan the novelist, had figured in the siege of Seringapatam, and was questioned about it by Napoleon, always interested in India, which he thought he should have conquered but for Sir Sidney Smith and Acre. ‘When he speaks,’ Ferrier wrote home to his sister, ‘he has one of the finest expressions possible.’ General Dalrymple had visited Paris in 1791. General Henry Edward Fox was a brother of the great statesman. He was on his way home from Egypt, where he had refused to allow Lord Cavan to ship Cleopatra’s needle.[66]Cavan had dug it out of the sand of centuries and set it upright, but Fox seems to have thought Cavan’s love of antiquities an absurd craze, and the needle consequently had to wait seventy years for transport to England. Afterwards Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, Ambassador at Palermo, and Governor of Portsmouth, Fox was accompanied by his son Stephen, also destined for diplomacy. General George Higginson, who married in 1825 a daughter of Lord Kilmorey, lived till 1866, and his widow reached the age of ninety-eight, surviving till 1890. General Baron Charles Hompesch was a Hanoverian in the English service. Very shortsighted, in 1806 he brushed against a man named Richardson and two ladies in a London street, and a duel ensued, in which his antagonist was wounded. On his death in 1822, at the age of sixty-six, he could boast of having taken part in three sieges, seven pitched battles, and thirteen minor engagements. Robert Lovelace, probably a son of Robert Lovelace of Clapham,was reminded by Napoleon that he bore the name of Richardson’s hero. Napoleon at eighteen had devouredClarissa Harlowe, but at St. Helena he found it unreadable.
General John Money served in America under Burgoyne, and not finding employment at home had fought for the Belgian insurgents in 1788, had joined the French army in 1792, and had witnessed the capture of the Tuileries. The German Œlsner, who met him at Verdun in October 1792, describes him as a thoroughly English Hotspur (degenkopf).[67]In 1761, aide-de-camp to General Townshend, he was famed for standing on a horse’s back without a saddle and then leaping with it at full speed over a five-barred gate. Hyde Park was the scene of his feats of horsemanship. He had a perilous balloon ascent in 1785, being nearly drowned in the North Sea. George Monro, probably a son of Sir Harry Monro, M.P., was apparently the Captain George Monro who was sent to Paris in September 1792 to send reports after the suspension of diplomatic relations.[68]He had to pretend to fraternise with the British Jacobins in Paris, but he became suspected and left in January 1793. In 1796 he complained that though promised a handsome provision no fresh post had been conferred on him.[69]General George Morgan, who went on to Nice, had been Commander-in-Chief in India, Sir Hildebrand Oakes, afterwardsGovernor of Malta, had served in America and Egypt. Captain Charles John O’Hara was doubtless one of the illegitimate sons of the general who should have married Mary Berry, and who was captured by the French at Toulon in 1793. Captain Samuel Owens was an equerry to GeorgeIII.Major William Norman Ramsay had served in Egypt, was afterwards in the Peninsula, and was killed at Waterloo. Colonel John Rowley, of the Engineers, was an F.R.S. and inspector-general of fortifications. He became a general in 1821, and died in 1824. General Sir Charles Shipley, a distinguished military engineer, became in 1813 Governor of Granada. Colonel Edward Stack, a native of Kerry, had served in the Franco-Irish brigade before the Revolution, had been aide-de-camp to LouisXV., and had accompanied Lafayette to America. He was on board Paul Jones’sBonhomme Richardwhen it captured theSerapis. He belonged to the orders of St. Louis and Cincinnatus. He joined theémigrésat Coblentz, but afterwards entered the English army, in which he rose during his detention in France to be major-general. He was arrested as a spy in May 1803, but was liberated on parole. If his age is correctly registered as forty-five in 1802, he was seventy-six at his death at Calais in 1833.
Captain Francis Tulloch, of the Artillery, had in singular circumstances made the acquaintance of Chateaubriand. Converted to Catholicism in London in 1790 by the Abbé Nagot, he had been induced to resign his commission and to sail with Nagot andthree other priests from St. Malo for Baltimore, in order to become a priest and settle in America. Chateaubriand, a fellow-passenger, remonstrated with him, urging that, however ardent a Catholic, he ought not to abandon his family and his profession. The young man seemed to listen to him, but the priests recovered their ascendency, and on reaching port he left with them, not even bidding Chateaubriand farewell. He must, nevertheless, have changed his purpose, for in 1802 he was still in the army, and he eventually married and had seven children, two of whom wedded French noblemen. In 1822 Tulloch renewed acquaintance with Chateaubriand, then Ambassador at London. In 1827 there were family differences among his children, which gave rise to recriminatory pamphlets. Lastly, there was John Alexander Woodford, son of Sir Ralph Woodford (afterwards Governor of Trinidad, Envoy to the Hanse towns, and to Denmark). He was apparently the Colonel Woodford who in 1815 began digging up the bones of the killed at the battle of Agincourt, exciting such a commotion in the district that the French Government asked the Duke of Wellington to stop him.
Naval officers had less inducement to visit Paris, yet a number of them figure on the register. One of them, moreover, was a claimant to a French dukedom. Philippe d’Auvergne, a Jersey man, son of a navy lieutenant, had been adopted in 1788 by the last Duc de Bouillon, a descendant of Turenne, as a remote kinsman and heir (his only son being anidiot), in preference to nearer relations whom he disliked.[70]The fascinating young sailor, whose elder brother had declined the heirship, lived with the old duke till the Revolution, when he rejoined the English navy, and from his station at Montorgueil in Jersey superintended the despatch of men and money to assist the Chouans. The duke having died in 1802, d’Auvergne now went over to try and recover his confiscated estates, but the French Government arrested him in September 1802 on the ground of his co-operation in the civil war. If a French duke he was of course liable to punishment, but if still or again a British subject he could not be prosecuted for the performance of professional duties. Merry, his letter to whom was at first suppressed, claimed him as a British subject, and he was released after about a week from the Temple but expelled. Major Dumaresq, a fellow Jersey man, had been arrested with him. D’Auvergne rose to be an admiral, but the Congress of Vienna rejected his pretensions to the dukedom. His romantic career ended in 1816 at the age of seventy-one. Admiral Tollemache (afterwards Lord Huntingtower) had an adventure at Paris. He was playing billiards when a French bully nudged his arm and spoilt his stroke. On the man doing this a second time Tollemache pitched him out of the window and then, warned by the landlord, ran for his life.[71]Other actual or prospective admirals included Sir Eliab Harvey, who fought at Trafalgar,Francis Ommaney, William Hoste, Robert Dudley Oliver, John (afterwards Sir John) Talbot, John Temple, Sir John West, Sir James Hawkins Whitshed, and Sir Edward Berry. Nelson, on being condoled with by GeorgeIII.on the loss of his right arm, presented Berry as his right hand, and it was Berry who caught him in his arms when wounded at the battle of the Nile.
But the most interesting and tragic naval visitor was Captain John Wesley Wright, an Irishman and secretary to Sir Sidney Smith. He had in 1796 been captured and imprisoned with Smith, and had escaped with him by means of a forged order. He was sent in March 1803 as anattachéto the Paris Embassy, albeit Whitworth pointed out to his Government that this was a very injudicious selection. Whether he remained at the embassy till Whitworth’s departure is not clear, but in May 1804 he was again captured off the coast, where he had been landing royalist insurgents. He was consequently regarded as an accomplice of Georges in the conspiracy to assassinate Napoleon, and was again confined in the Temple. Gravina, the Spanish Ambassador, interceded for his being treated as a prisoner of war, but Napoleon replied that as a criminal he could not be exchanged for an honest French officer, though he might be given up to the British Government to be dealt with as it chose, he being convinced that Lord Hawkesbury (afterwards Lord Liverpool) was alone responsible for having thrice landed conspirators against his life. This overture, if indeed it was an overture, came tonothing, and at Georges’ trial Wright was brought up as a witness. He was threatened with sentence of death by court-martial if he refused to give testimony, but he insisted on the status of a prisoner of war, responsible solely to his own Government for his acts. In October 1805 he attempted to escape, whereupon Napoleon ordered the ‘wretched assassin’ to be immured in a cell in lieu of having the run of the building. On the 25th October he was found dead in his cell. He seems to have been a religious man, and a few days before, on his mathematical instruments being taken from him, he had emphatically repudiated resort to suicide. Moreover he had on the previous day ordered three shirts and a French conversation book. The French Government, however, maintained that he had killed himself on hearing of the defeat and surrender of the Austrian army at Ulm. Sidney Smith, on revisiting France after Waterloo, made minute inquiries, and all the documents were shown him, but he could come to no positive result. Lewis Goldsmith says he was told by Réal and Desmarets that Wright had been tortured like Pichegru in order to extract evidence from him, and consequently could not have been released without this infamy committed by Fouché being exposed; but he was certainly not tortured prior to Georges’ trial, and why should he have been tortured afterwards, or, if tortured, why should he have been allowed to live till October 1805? Sidney Smith erected a monument over his tomb in Père Lachaise. It had a long Latin inscription which, without directly accusing the Napoleonicauthorities, insinuated foul play, for it described Smith as ‘confined in the Temple, a prison infamous for its midnight murders.’ Strange to say this monument is now undiscoverable, and the cemetery keepers deny that Wright is on their registers, yet the record of his interment was found and duly copied in 1814.[72]Mystery is thus added to mystery.
William Sidney Smith, nephew of Sir Sidney, was captured along with Wright and was sent to Verdun. His knowledge of French proved useful in 1814, when on board the vessel which conveyed Napoleon to Elba.
Diplomatists and other public functionaries took the opportunity of making acquaintance with France or French statesmen. Francis Drake, bearing the name of the Elizabethan hero, but claiming descent from an older family, had been at the Copenhagen legation, and was in 1794 Minister at Genoa, whence he sent Grenville letters from Paris furnished to him by the royalist agent d’Antraigues, who was then at Venice, and at first in the service of Spain; but the agency was transferred to ‘Monsieur’ (afterwards LouisXVIII.), who was living at Verona.[73]D’Antraigues employed correspondents or spies in Paris who, whether from credulity or knavery, sent him the most fabulous stories written in sympathetic ink or in cipher. The letters of which Drake thus received copies were published in the second volume of theDropmore Papersof the Historical Manuscripts Commission, where they were heralded with a flourish, but their worthlessness has been exposed by M. Aulard, the most competent French critic. This royalist agency in Paris was discovered in 1797, and on Napoleon’s advance into Italy Drake fled to Udine. Temporarily unemployed by the Foreign Office, Drake in 1802 seems to have visited not only France but Italy. In 1803 he was Minister at Munich, and was enticed by Napoleon into dealings with Méhée de la Touche, a spy who sold himself to all parties and betrayed all. Méhée was for a time a secretary to the Paris Commune and had a long career of trickery. Napoleon, always anxious to bring British diplomacy into ridicule, gave orders that a suitable man should be found to entrap Drake, and Méhée answered his purpose admirably. He pretended to give information of political feeling in France and to concert a royalist rising for the overthrow, if not for the kidnapping (a euphemism for assassination), of Napoleon. Drake advanced money to this pretended spy, who took all the letters to Paris, where they were forthwith published, bringing odium and derision on the English Foreign Office. An attempt was also made to capture Drake, as well as Spencer Smith, who was slightly implicated; but he fled precipitately, and the Elector of Bavaria at the instance of Napoleon refused any longer to recognise him as envoy. He had obviously broken the eleventh commandment, so vital in diplomacy, ‘thou shalt not be found out,’ and neither he nor Spencer Smith was again sent abroad. Wickham, however, who had equally committedhimself, became in 1802 Chief Secretary for Ireland, and would have been sent as Envoy to Austria and Prussia, but that those powers, afraid of offending Napoleon, declined to receive him. He consequently retired on a pension of £1800. English diplomacy was no match for Napoleon with his flagrant violation of traditions and courtesies. Retiring to his Somerset home, Drake was highly esteemed by his neighbours; for his tombstone at St. Cuthbert’s, Wells, speaks of his integrity and firmness as a magistrate and as recorder of that city.[74]He married a daughter of Sir Herbert Mackworth, an ancestor of the poet Mackworth Praed.
Alexander Cockburn, consul at Hamburg, took the opportunity of visiting Paris with his Creole wife, Yolande de Vignier, and his son, the future Lord Chief-Justice, was born in France during this visit. Cockburn was in 1825 appointed Minister to the Central American Republics. Sir John Craufurd, another nephew of Quintin Craufurd, was Minister to Lower Saxony from 1795 to 1803. He had visited Paris in 1791, and he now repeated his visit. We shall see that he stayed longer than he liked and took French leave. Charles Richard Vaughan, afterwards knighted, made a tour in France and Germany, and then accompanied Sir Charles Stuart (ultimately Lord Stuart de Rothesay) to Spain, where he wrote an account of the siege of Saragossa. He rejoined Stuart as Secretary at the Paris Embassy at the Restoration, and was eventuallyEnvoy to Washington. Arthur Paget, son of Lord Uxbridge, was one of the earliest visitors, being allowed a passport through France in September 1801 on his way to succeed Minto at Vienna. He reported to Lord Hawkesbury that he found the roads much better than he expected and the land well cultivated, but the towns manufacturing silk and velvet complained of bad trade, and peace with England was universally desired. Bonaparte, he said, was generally liked, for people dreaded a revolution, yet Sieyès, he was told at Vienna, had declared that the Consulate would not last through the winter.[75]George Stuart, his chief subordinate at Vienna, also visited Paris. Sir Robert Liston, originally tutor to Gilbert and Hugh Elliot at Paris, and afterwards secretary to the latter, was Ambassador in America from 1796 to 1802, was afterwards sent to Holland and Turkey, and lived to the age of ninety-three. Colonel Neil was Consul at Lisbon. We may also mention a future diplomatist, Charles (afterwards Sir Charles) Oakley, son of the ex-Governor of Madras, who, when at the Washington legation, offered to marry Madame Patterson, and she was not then disinclined to accept a suitable successor to Jerome Bonaparte. Those who were or had been in other departments of the public service included Thomas Steele, Paymaster-General, John King, Under-Secretary at the Home Office, Henry William Bentinck, Governor of St. Vincent, Perkins Magra, Consul at Malta and naturally interested in the fate of that island, Donkin, secretary to GeorgeIII., and Brook,head of the London detective force, who was sent to report on the Paris system, while Napoleon sent a French detective to see what was done in London. There were also Sir Charles Warre Malet, ex-acting Governor of Bombay, and Sir Robert Chambers, late Chief-Justice of Calcutta, who before going out to India had been intimate with Dr. Johnson. This, as we shall see, proved to be his last journey.
Law, physic, and divinity were not numerously represented. Besides Erskine and other barristers sitting or destined to sit in the House of Commons, there was John Campbell, a future Lord Chief-Justice and Lord Chancellor, and the biographer of his class. He saw the ‘little Corsican,’ and visited Tallien. Thomas Wilde, afterwards Lord Chancellor Truro, was registered, doubtless in joke by himself or his companions, as M.P., though he was as yet only twenty years of age. Curran, who had been before in 1787, dined with Fox. Deploring the failure of the Revolution, he disliked Napoleon. He little foresaw that he was about meanly to disown his daughter Sarah on account of her attachment to Emmet.[76]Stewart Kyd, a friend of Horne Tooke, prosecuted with other Radicals in 1794, had passed four months in the Tower, but had now sobered down and become a legal writer. The French police suspected him of being a spy. He had, in 1796, assisted Erskine in defending Thomas Williams, the publisher of Paine’sAge of Reason. A native of Arbroath, he died in London in 1811. William Duppa is best known as brother of the artist and as the biographerof Michael Angelo. Charles Henry Okey ultimately settled in Paris.
The physicians included Charles Maclean, who had been with Lord Elgin at Constantinople, and had also been in the East India Company’s service, but had been sent home by Wellesley on account of his quarrelsome disposition. Landing at Hamburg in 1801, he proceeded through Holland to Paris, in order to advocate the establishment at Constantinople of an international institute for the study of the plague. He was anxious for information on French suicides, and Holcroft had recommended him to apply not to a specialist but to Fauriel, the Sanscrit scholar. He denied the contagiousness of epidemics, and his medical crotchets, coupled with his controversial temper, prevented his being employed by the Government, wherefore he considered himself an ill-used man. George Birkbeck, the future founder of mechanics’ institutes, must be reckoned among the doctors: he accompanied Curran. Peter Mark Roget, a nephew of Romilly and a friend of Bentham, as yet Swiss rather than English, went as travelling tutor to the two sons of John Philips, a Manchester merchant, Edgeworth’s son accompanying them. HisTreasury of English Synonymsis well known. William Woodville, the disciple of Jenner, and physician to the Smallpox Hospital, had been with Nowel to Boulogne in the summer of 1801, at the solicitation of Dr. Antoine Ambert, to introduce vaccination during a smallpox epidemic. He was an accomplished botanist. Dr. Wickham, another visitor, was likewise a friend of Jenner. On the other hand therewere two strong opponents of vaccination. William Rowley, physician to the Marylebone Infirmary and an accoucheur of repute, and Benjamin Moseley, of Chelsea Hospital, who had been trained in Paris, and who had a strange theory that the changes of the moon influenced hemorrhage of the lungs. Tuthill (afterwards Sir George Tuthill) took over his handsome wife, of whom we shall hear again. James Carrick Moore, brother of Sir John, became director of Jenner’s vaccine institute. Benjamin Travers, as yet articled pupil to Sir Paston Cooper, was the first hospital surgeon to make of ophthalmia a special study. Thomas Young was inspector-general of hospitals. Of his distinguished homonym, although also a doctor, we shall speak among scientists. Of John Bunnell Davis and Farrell Mulvey we shall hear later on. James Carmichael Smyth, physician to GeorgeIII., was destined to be the step-grandfather of Thackeray, for his son Major Henry Carmichael Smyth married Thackeray’s mother in India, and ‘sat’ for the character of Colonel Newcome. The physician received £5000 from Parliament for curing a jail distemper at Winchester in 1796 by nitrous acid; albeit a Dr. Johnston and a Frenchman also claimed the discovery. James Chichester Maclaurin, physician to the Paris Embassy 1790–1792, returned in the same capacity in 1802. He died in 1804 at the age of thirty-nine. His predecessor Macdonnal also revisited Paris. Michael O’Ryan had practised at Lyons, where Louis Badger, a silk-spinner of English descent, one of the victims of the Revolution—mistaken for his brother Pierre, he refused to undeceive his executioners,but Pierre was shot a week later—had married his wife’s sister. Fleeing from the Revolution back to Ireland, O’Ryan now went and settled in Paris. He was a great advocate of quinine.
Cardinal Charles Erskine, by virtue of his rank, claims priority among the clerical visitors. His father, Colin Erskine, son of Sir Charles, a Fifeshire baronet, was an artist at Rome, where he married a Roman lady. A letter to the French Government of 1808 giving an account of the College of Cardinals says:—
‘Erskine, 65 years of age, affects the greatest indifference to the present state of things (Napoleon’s rule), speaking of the Emperor with apparent moderation, but a dangerous man, perhaps the most dangerous of all; educated at the English college.’[77]
‘Erskine, 65 years of age, affects the greatest indifference to the present state of things (Napoleon’s rule), speaking of the Emperor with apparent moderation, but a dangerous man, perhaps the most dangerous of all; educated at the English college.’[77]
He was on his way back to Rome, after having been a kind of legate in England, where in 1801 he had had the invidious task of requiring the resignations of the Frenchémigrébishops on account of the Concordat. Fourteen, however, out of the eighteen, headed by Arthur Dillon, Archbishop of Narbonne, refused to comply, and seven colleagues on the Continent followed their example. A good scholar, excellent company, and a loyal Briton, Erskine died in 1811 in Paris, having been interned there by Napoleon, and was buried in the Pantheon.[78]Dr. Gregory Stapleton, Bishop of the English midland district, went to St. Omer to try and recover the property of the English college ofwhich he had been the head until the Revolution, but he died there, without having continued his journey to Paris, on the 5th April 1802. A fellow prelate was Dr. Troy, President of Maynooth, and ultimately Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, who was anxious to obtain fuller restitution of the confiscated property of the Irish colleges in France and to re-open them, for Maynooth with its two hundred seminarists was insufficient. He went to Lord Cornwallis, who, however, was unable to help him. A staunch loyalist, he had assisted in carrying the Union, and was consequently in receipt of a State pension. William Walsh until the Revolution had been the head of the Irish college in Paris. Driven away by that event, he eventually recovered his post. Father Peter Flood, who had narrowly escaped the massacre of September 1792,[79]was sent over by the Irish Catholic bishops to effect the fusion of all the Franco-Irish colleges. Tuite, who till the Revolution had been head of the English college at Paris, found that building converted to secular uses. John Chetwode Eustace, formerly chaplain to the Jerninghams, a Maynooth professor and a very liberal Catholic, had visited Paris in 1790, and was destined to pay a third visit in company with Lord Brownlow, Robert Rushbrooke, and Philip Roche.
Edward Stanley, the future Bishop of Norwich, and father of Dean Stanley, represented the Church of England, for he had just been ordained. He was on his way to Switzerland, and was disappointed at not seeing Napoleon. He was over again in 1816, whenhe heard drunken English soldiers singing on the boulevards: