IIIAMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS

Parisian Attractions—Napoleon—Foreign Notabilities—Mutual Impressions—Marriages and Deaths—Return Visits.

It is now time to ask what was seen and done by the visitors. The rue de Rivoli did not yet exist, and a labyrinth of dingy streets separated the Tuileries from the Louvre, but the Champs Elysées were an agreeable promenade, though of course not yet terminated by the Arc de Triomphe, and the Bois de Boulogne had recovered from the vandalism of the Revolution, while on Sundays, when Napoleon held receptions at St. Cloud, the road thither was as crowded with carriages as that to Versailles before 1789. Lovers of art had the opportunity of inspecting the spoils of Italy, a portion of which had to be restored in 1815, though but for Napoleon’s escape from Elba restitution would not have been demanded. He told Lord Ebrington who, as will be seen, visited him in that island that he felt some remorse at having thus despoiled Italy, but he had then thought only of France. Not only was the Louvre thus enriched with paintings and sculptures,[114]but the bronze lionand horses of Venice had been placed on pedestals outside the Tuileries. The biennial Salon also opened at the Louvre in September 1802, and in another part of the building was the Industrial Exhibition visited, as we have seen, by Fox. This, according to a police report, particularly interested the English. ‘Among them,’ it says, ‘have been noticed artisans, who were never tired of examining and admiring, while others tried to understand the mechanism of the objects exhibited. Some observers conclude that this study may lead to imitation of these productions in England.’ But the visitors might be proud of seeing several of their countrymen among the medallists, viz., Hall, who had a pottery at Montereau, near Fontainebleau, and Christopher Potter, of whom more anon. Engraving on glass, too, had been carried to perfection by Robert May O’Reilly, an Irishman whose factory attracted visitors. He published in 1803 a monthly magazine on arts and manufactures. A member of the British Club at Paris in 1792–1793, he had since served in the French army. He audaciously visited London during the peace, thus risking arrest for high treason.[115]There was also the opportunity of witnessing Fulton’s steamboat experiments on the Seine. Fulton mostly lived in Paris from 1799 to 1804, vainly trying to interest the Government first in torpedoes and then, with a view to the invasion of England, in steam navigation. He lived with Joel Barlow, with whom he speculated in panoramas, then a popular novelty. Both, however, went over to England in the summer of 1802.Merry granted a passport to Barlow, but did so by mistake in ignorance of his relations with English agitators, and he suggested that a list of obnoxious foreigners should be sent him, so that he might in future refuse such applications. Yet Barlow after all used an American passport. In notifying a passport to Fulton, Merry, mindful of his proposal for blowing up English vessels, added the warning, ‘verbum sap.’ Fulton was back in Paris in August in 1803, for in that month his steamboat, in the presence of Carnot and Volney, went up and down the Seine for an hour and a half. Another, but much less important, improvement in locomotion was the first attempt, at the instance of Dillon, a Hiberno-Neapolitan engineer, to introduce foot pavements. Guizot married his daughter as his second wife. Professor Charles, whose future young wife was Lamartine’sinnamorata, lectured on chemistry, moreover, to fashionable audiences. His electrifying machine and scientific apparatus at the Louvre were inspected by Carr. Dupuis, who had sat in the Convention, could be heard expounding his cosmical explanation of myths, which had been enthusiastically adopted by his friend Lalande and by the Abbé Barthélémi. Dupuis also claimed to have in 1778 invented semaphore signals.

The Abbé Morellet, last survivor of the Encyclopedists, might be met in society, full of revolutionary and pre-revolutionary experiences; and Roget de l’Isle, the author of the Marseillaise, frequented Frascati gardens. Henri Beyle was also in Paris, having just quitted the army, and was taking lessons in Englishfrom Dawtram and an Irish Franciscan whom he calls ‘Jeki,’ but nobody could foresee in him the future Stendhal, who was to illumine French literature; nor did Sutton Sharpe, junior, till long afterwards make his acquaintance. Sénancour was probably in Paris, superintending the publication ofObermann, but he was not likely to be seen in the frivolous or fashionable circles frequented by the English. A few of the visitors, indeed, attended lectures,[116]listening attentively and putting questions to Laplace, Lalande, or Cuvier, but the great majority were bent on pleasure. Frascati, Tivoli, the hotel Richelieu (theroué’sold mansion and grounds, now used not only for a hotel but for balls and concerts), and the so-called Hameau Chantilly were thronged, not to speak of the theatres, which had a very profitable season. Molé, it is true, retired in April 1802, dying in the following December, but there were such tragedians as Talma, Raucourt, Contat, Mars, and George, such dancers as Vestris, who was about, however, to retire, such vocalists as Cherubini,such instrumentalists as Kreutzer. In February 1802 there was the opportunity of witnessing Duval’sEdouard en Écosse, which (though intended only as a glorification of the Young Pretender, who in France was always styled Edward) was so boisterously applauded by royalists as applicable to the Bourbons, that Napoleon, present at the second performance, suppressed it. Blangini taught singing, and among his pupils were Miss Whitworth, Quintin Craufurd’s wife and step-daughter, Lady Conyngham, Lady Annesley, and Lady Liddell. TheJournal des Damesof May 10, 1802, speaking of the influx of parents anxious for their children to learn accomplishments, says:—‘In what other European city could a pupil have two musicians like Garat and Plantade for singing, two professors like Staybelt and Puppo for the piano, two virtuosi like Bode and Kreutzer for the violin, two composers like Paesiello and Méhul for music, and a man like Deshayes for dancing?’ Paris, moreover, in spite of the Revolution again set the fashions, and though its transparent dresses, ‘worn with such grace,’ says George Jackson, ‘as to reconcile you to them,’ had never, whether on account of modesty or climate, been adopted in England, theTimesin 1801 described the way in which Parisian ladies wore their hair. Lap-dogs were frequently to be seen under the arms of promenaders, or in fine weather running at their heels.[117]Shoe-buckles and knee-breeches, though not wigs, had been revived, and foreign ambassadors were resplendent with decorations and diamonds; yet‘muddy boots and dirty linen were seen at Madame Fouché’s receptions,’ ‘the roughnesses of the Revolution,’ says Jackson, ‘not being yet polished off.’ Mademoiselle Bertin, Marie Antoinette’s dressmaker, had returned from exile. Bonaparte, too, had imposed costumes on all public functionaries, and Paris had never seen more brilliant uniforms. His two hundred Mamelukes had been sent up to Paris to figure in the review of the 14th July, which was then, as it is now again, the national festival, and in honour of the peace he reviewed 14,000 troops in the Carrousel.

Napoleon took particular note of the British military uniforms at his receptions, and many British officers witnessed a grand review by Moreau on the 8th September 1802. Maurice Dudevant, the future father of George Sand, wrote to his mother:—

‘All these young lords, who are soldiers at home, question me with avidity on our army. I reply by the recital of our immortal exploits (in Italy), which they cannot sufficiently admire.’

As for private and official festivities, visitors were all anxious to see Madame Tallien, ‘our Lady of Thermidor,’ now, as I have said, the mistress of the army contractor Ouvrard. Madame Récamier gave musical parties at Clichy, she herself playing on the piano. Madame de Montesson, morganatic widow of the Duke of Orleans, Madame Lebrun, wife of the consul, and Madame Junot (Duchess d’Abrantès) also gave entertainments. At some of these Garat’s inimitable voice was to be heard, though he no longer sangin public. Madame de Genlis, though not able on her pension of 6600 f. to afford dinners, received callers. Talleyrand had been, or was about to be, forced by Napoleon to marry Madame Grand, as the only alternative to dismissing her, in order that ambassadors’ wives might visit his house, and he was very hospitable to English notabilities, though there is no reason to think that our Government had given him the £16,000 on which, as Francis Jackson wrote to Speaker Abbot, he counted for having concluded peace. Spain, however, had given him a like sum, and Jackson satirically suggested that such presents would serve as atrousseaufor the lady on the arrival of the dispensation from Rome. But Talleyrand received a dispensation, not from the vow of celibacy, but merely from the obligation of daily reciting the breviary. Whitworth was therefore mistaken in justifying his wife’s acceptance of Madame Talleyrand’s invitations on the ground that the church had sanctioned her marriage.

TheTimesof January 13, 1803, says:—

‘Monsieur, or rather Madame, Talleyrand’s dinners, exceed all others in Paris; about 80 persons sat down to the last dinner. On the table was placed every delicacy possible to be had, and a servant in livery, belonging to the house, behind every chair. The second course, put on like magic, more elegant than the first; around the room, in niches made for the purpose, were statues of the finest marble, each supporting a basket on its head, holding a branch of lustres of about ten lights each, altogether making more than four hundred lights in the room; the furniture of velvet and gold, corresponding with the other elegancies; three rooms were fitted up in this manner, forming a most complete suit. Avery handsome salary is allowed to this Minister, exclusively for the support of his table.’

Talleyrand doubtless allowed his guests plenty of time to do justice to his sumptuous fare, whereas Napoleon unpleasantly hurried over his dinners in half an hour. He deputed prefects, however, to preside in his place at less expeditious state banquets.

Lechevalier, of the Foreign Office, who had lived in England and had taught French to Sir F. Burdett and his wife and her sisters, also laid himself out to be agreeable to British visitors. There was a rage for dancing, not dancing on a volcano ready to explode, as was said in July 1830, but on the ashes of an extinct one.

Conversation, on the other hand, as we learn from German visitors, languished. The salons of the old monarchy, where brilliant paradox and ruthless scepticism had flourished, found no successors. It was not safe to talk politics, for spies abounded, and even the Institute had to avoid philosophy, legislation, or sociology.[118]Riddles were consequently in vogue. But La Métherie, the mineralogist, and his guests ventured to condemn the tyranny of the Consulate, and Besnard relates how Lord Archibald Hamilton, after hearing one of these outbursts, exclaimed, ‘Too fortunate Frenchmen! You have apricots, peaches, cheap and good wine, and yet you complain,’ while, turning to Besnard, he whispered: ‘A peach with us costs 4/ or 5/ and a bottle of champagne or burgundy a guinea.’ The old nobility, indeed, such of them as had remainedor returned, were too impoverished to live in great style, but thenouveaux riches, financiers and contractors, had installed themselves in rural mansions, yet did not succeed in imitating the old aristocracy. They were lavish in some things, parsimonious in others. Stables, gardens, and woods were allowed to become slovenly. ‘There is at present no veritable society,’ says a contemporary, and nobody in the country kept open house.[119]‘Those people who chose to be presented at Bonaparte’s court,’ says Mrs. Villiers (afterwards Lady Clarendon), ‘were invited to many magnificent dinners and assemblies (balls) given by the ministers, but as ourselves, with a very few other exceptions, did not feel inclined to pay homage to Bonaparte, the theatres and the entertainments given by foreigners were mostly our resources.’[120]Mrs. Villiers was certainly, as she says, an exception, as also were Montagu and Ryder, a future peer who declined to be introduced to Napoleon, for it was not till the renewal of the war that admiration turned to hatred and that Bonaparte became a bogey with which children were frightened. Even then no Englishman would have gone the length of saying, as a French ecclesiastic has done nearly a century afterwards, that ‘Napoleon was the greatest enemy of God and of mankind. Would that his name could be effaced from human memories!’[121]A royalist agent remarks:—

‘M. de Calonne states that in England the enthusiasm for Bonaparte is not only general, but carried to an extent which it is difficult to conceive. The Court and the city, the capital and the provinces, all classes of citizens, from ministers to artisans, are agreed to publish his praises and vie in chanting his victories and the lustre of his rule.’[122]

Yet Phillips’sPractical Guide during a Journey from London to Paris, the first book of its kind, had said:—

‘We shall only express our wish that the great man who has done so much for France and mankind may moderate his ambition and make the illustrious Washington his political model.’

Englishmen anxious to see republican forms and manners were satirically recommended by theTimes, December 1, 1802, to lose no time in visiting Paris, or the whole ancient system of the court, with all its formalities and regulations, would arrive before them. ‘The ladies of the old court,’ it added,—

‘are in great request in the circle of Madame Bonaparte, and several of the most pronounced royalists among the emigrants are alreadybien acclimatésat theThuilleries. In the gardens of this palace, no persons are admitted to walk in the Jacobin costume.Cocked hatsare indispensable to all who would not be turned out by the sentries. The hightonand extravagance of dress are generally restored, and the fashions at least are as Anti-Jacobin as possible.TuandToi, andCitoyen, which for some time have been banished to the Faux-bourghs and the Offices, are totally out of use in addressing the Consul or Ministers, and would pass for the grossness of disaffection at Court. In short, everythingis returning rapidly to that gaiety, splendour, and urbanity, which is the characteristic of the nation. It was the ingenious expression of a distinguished lady a few nights since at theThuilleries—that “she saw the whole of the ancient monarchy excepting the Bourbons!”’

This reminds us of Victor Hugo’s well-known couplet:—

‘Ce siècle avait deux ans, Rome remplaçait Sparte,Dejâ Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte.’

‘Ce siècle avait deux ans, Rome remplaçait Sparte,

Dejâ Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte.’

A letter from an officer published in the same journal on the 9th February 1803 says:—

‘Nothing can be more wretched or discontented than all descriptions of people; all ruined except a few upstarts, who are immediately self-interested in the present system. It is completely a military government, and the country is kept quiet by the bayonet alone:—taxed at half their income, and more taxes to be laid on.‘The roads wretched—cut up by the artillery and ammunition-waggons, and in no places repaired, but a little picked in on the straight road from Calais to Paris for Lord Cornwallis. Crowded with turnpikes, the produce of which is applied to the public purse, and not to mend their ways. The Inns, as formerly, dirty, and good eating and drinking very dear. The lower classes are civil,—the higher very haughty.‘Yet notwithstanding the distress and poverty of the country, there are no less than 26 theatres open and crowded every night in Paris, independent of shows, jugglers, etc. Nobody can form an idea of what anOperais, unless they have seen the present style of one in Paris—so superb.‘The Bishop of Durham would expire at seeing the dresses of the performers. The ladies are almost quite naked, andreally not covered enough to give the least idea of modesty. There cannot be anything so profligate, so debauched, or so immoral, as the ideas or manners of all ranks of people, particularly the higher class; and poor Virtue and Decency are entirely banished their Calendars.‘The daughter of Madame Bonaparte sits every night in a crimson and gold box at the Opera. The Consul in one directly below, with a gilded grating towards the audience, who see very little of him. He leaves the house before the dropping of the curtain, and escorted by a strong guard of cavalry and torches sets off full gallop for Malmaison, where he sleeps.’

‘The roads wretched—cut up by the artillery and ammunition-waggons, and in no places repaired, but a little picked in on the straight road from Calais to Paris for Lord Cornwallis. Crowded with turnpikes, the produce of which is applied to the public purse, and not to mend their ways. The Inns, as formerly, dirty, and good eating and drinking very dear. The lower classes are civil,—the higher very haughty.

‘Yet notwithstanding the distress and poverty of the country, there are no less than 26 theatres open and crowded every night in Paris, independent of shows, jugglers, etc. Nobody can form an idea of what anOperais, unless they have seen the present style of one in Paris—so superb.

‘The Bishop of Durham would expire at seeing the dresses of the performers. The ladies are almost quite naked, andreally not covered enough to give the least idea of modesty. There cannot be anything so profligate, so debauched, or so immoral, as the ideas or manners of all ranks of people, particularly the higher class; and poor Virtue and Decency are entirely banished their Calendars.

‘The daughter of Madame Bonaparte sits every night in a crimson and gold box at the Opera. The Consul in one directly below, with a gilded grating towards the audience, who see very little of him. He leaves the house before the dropping of the curtain, and escorted by a strong guard of cavalry and torches sets off full gallop for Malmaison, where he sleeps.’

Another visitor is reported by theTimesas describing Paris as ‘more immersed in luxury than at any former period. The theatres are every night full, and the political coffee-houses, unless on particular occasions, nearly empty. Provisions of every kind are cheap and plentiful, and the best wine may be had at three livres the bottle.’

Whether by way of entertaining one another or of reciprocating French hospitality, some of the British visitors gave receptions and balls. Maurice Dudevant speaks of Lady Higginson’s balls, where he seems to have heard French nobles decrying their own country, and he warned Englishmen against judging France by this unpatriotic class. He may have been one of Lord Robert Spencer’s guests at Robert’s famous restaurant. The Duchess of Gordon and Mrs. Orby Hunter were prominent for their entertainments, and a Paris newspaper mentions those of Lady ‘Shumley,’ a phonetic approximation to Cholmondeley. Jerningham speaks of the Duchess of Gordon’s balls, and of her addictionto playing athasard, at which she rattled the dice, and whenever she lost exclaimed, ‘God damn!’ Eliza Orby Hunter, aged twenty-three, was apparently the wife of George Orby Hunter, who afterwards, living at Dieppe, translated Byron into French verse, and died in 1843.[123]The Orby Hunter family were owners of Croyland, Lincolnshire.

‘Paris,’ wrote Colonel Ferrier to his sister, ‘is certainly the place of all others for young men. Plenty of amusement without dissipation; no drinking; if a gentleman was seen drunk here he would be looked upon as a perfectbête.’[124]If, however, there was less drinking than in London, there was clearly more gambling. John Sympson Jessopp left with the impression that debauchery abounded. With the natural English desire to see everything, he found himself one night, with his younger brother, in a magnificent gambling-house. Somebody who had lost heavily fell upon the croupier, snatched his rake from him, laid about him furiously, then hit out at a huge chandelier, with scores of wax candles in it, and frantically smashed it. There was terrible panic and confusion. One of the croupiers slipped out through a door leading to a staircase to fetch the police. Jessopp, plucking his brother by the sleeve, managed to get down the stairs and into the street, where they concealed themselves in a doorway. In a few minutes a company of gendarmeshastened up, and leaving two of their comrades at the door mounted the stairs, arrested every soul on the premises, and carried them off to the lock-up. The two young Englishmen, watching their opportunity, hurried back to their hotel. The sequel they never heard.[125]Francis Jackson, moreover, writing to Abbot, described Paris life as an uninterrupted picture of vulgarity and profligacy, and theTimesof the 23rd September says:—

‘Paris, under the Regent of Orleans, was not so profligate and corrupt as it appears to our best travellers at present. Gambling, debauchery, intemperance, and the insatiable desire after public spectacles, with all the vices in the train of indolence and licentiousness, form the monotonous indiscriminable character of the Citizens.’

Some of the visitors must have shared in the stupefaction felt on the 21st January 1803 at seeing the Madeleine draped in crape in memory of the anniversary of LouisXVI.’s death, but they were as ignorant as the rest of the world that this audacious celebration was the act of a man of English parentage, Hyde de Neuville. The Madeleine, as Holcroft tells us, was then ‘a grand colonnade of lofty uncorniced pillars, rising about roofless, half-finished walls.’

British visitors had the opportunity of mixing with some of their countrymen. There was Paine, until his return in September 1802 to America, where his friend Jefferson had become President, and we have seen that Redhead Yorke and Rickman renewed acquaintancewith him. He had had to wait, not only for funds, but for a safe passage without fear of British cruisers. When Redhead Yorke with some difficulty recalled himself to his remembrance, Paine thus unbosomed himself:—

‘Who would have thought that we should meet [again after the lapse of ten years] at Paris?... They (the French) have shed blood enough for liberty, and now they have it in perfection! This is not a country for an honest man to live in. They do not understand anything at all of the principles of free government, and the best way (for foreigners) is to leave them to themselves. You see they have conquered all Europe only to make it more miserable than it was before....‘Republic! Do you call this a republic? Why they are worse off than the slaves at Constantinople, for they are ever expecting to be bashaws in Heaven by submitting to be slaves below; but here they believe neither in Heaven nor Hell, and yet are slaves by choice. I know of no republic in the world except America, which is the only country for such men as you and I. It is my intention to get away from this place as soon as possible, and I hope to be off in autumn. You are a young man, and may see better times, but I have done with Europe and its slavish politics.’

‘Republic! Do you call this a republic? Why they are worse off than the slaves at Constantinople, for they are ever expecting to be bashaws in Heaven by submitting to be slaves below; but here they believe neither in Heaven nor Hell, and yet are slaves by choice. I know of no republic in the world except America, which is the only country for such men as you and I. It is my intention to get away from this place as soon as possible, and I hope to be off in autumn. You are a young man, and may see better times, but I have done with Europe and its slavish politics.’

Paine, it may be feared, experienced another disillusion on recrossing the Atlantic. Yorke does not seem to have told him of his own change of politics.

Next to Paine in celebrity comes Helen Maria Williams, an eyewitness of the Revolution, whose reminiscences of Madame Roland must have been interesting. She was visited by Sharpe, Rogers, Lord Holland, Kemble, Poole, and Mrs. Cosway, though someEnglish held aloof or even sneered at her. Her attire and manners were certainly open to ridicule,[126]and her cohabitation with John Hurford Stone, the refugee printer, even assuming a secret marriage, exposed her to misconstruction. Stone’s brother William, ruined by twenty-one months’ imprisonment and arrested for debt on his acquittal for treason, had also gone to France, where he became overseer of a paper-hanging factory. We shall hear of him again. There was the widow of Sir Robert Smyth, who remained in Paris after her husband’s death. She and her young children had been painted by Reynolds, and one of those children now married Lambton Este, a son of Charles Este, by turns actor, clergyman, and journalist. Smyth’s old partner, James Millingen, son of a Dutch merchant settled in London, had remained in Paris after the Revolution, though his brother John Gideon had become an English naval official. He was afterwards an eminent archæologist, and his son Michael, archæologist and physician, attended Byron on his deathbed. Anastasia Howard, Baroness Stafford, an ex-nun, had likewise stayed in Paris after her release at the end of the Terror,[127]though her fellow-nuns had in 1800 found a retreat in England. She diedin 1807 at the age of eighty-four. Her nephew Charles Jerningham called on her, but though in good health, senility scarcely allowed her to recognise him. This reminds us of her co-religionists at the Austin convent. They, too, had survived the Revolution, and the Superior, Frances Lancaster, must have had much to tell Sir John Carr of how the nunnery was turned into a crowded political prison. Arabella Williams, daughter of David Mallet, author ofNorthern Antiquities, had had more recent troubles. She had spent most of her life in Paris, but visits to London to obtain her share of her mother, Lucy Estob’s, property brought on her the suspicion of the police and she was arrested. The banker Perregaux and others had to exonerate her from the charge of espionage.[128]Another but more recent resident, representing thedemi-monde, though that term had not yet been invented, was Mrs. Lindsay, the Ellenore of Benjamin Constant’sAdolphe, that romance of the Werther and Corinne school, in which the heroine, depicted as a Pole who deserts her old paramour and her children by him, clings to a man anxious to discard her. We do not even know her Christian name, unless she was the ‘Lady Florence Lindsay’ whom Lady Morgan met at Florence in 1819. She is said to have been Irish on the father’s and French on the mother’s side; handsome and sprightly, she had been brought up in good society. She had lived in Paris from 1786 to 1792, and her confiscated tradesmen’s bills, still in the Archives,[129]indicate that she was then the mistress of Comte de Melfort, a manof Scottish Jacobite ancestry. Another of her lovers was Vicomte Chrétien de Lamoignon, who, the last of his family, was wounded at Quiberon, and after the Restoration was created a peer. She left France in 1792, and in 1795 Chateaubriand made her acquaintance in London, where she was on visiting terms with the French aristocratic exiles. He styles herla dernière des Ninon. On his going to France in disguise in 1800 she, having meanwhile returned to Paris, met him at Calais, escorted him, and hired temporary lodgings for him near her own house. She paid half the rent and another friend the remainder. Constant met her in 1804, and after passing an agreeable evening with her, received a letter in which she said that they strikingly resembled each other, but ‘this is perhaps one reason the less against our suiting each other. It is because men resemble each other that Heaven created women, who do not resemble them.’[130]Constant would have married her, however, but for her age and for her two illegitimate children. Charles Constant, Benjamin’s cousin, describes her as intelligent but devoid of culture. In 1801 she translated into French Cornelia Knight’sLife of the Romans. It is commonly stated that she died at Angoulême in 1820; but if so it was under an assumed name, for I have ascertained that there is no Lindsay on the register. Then there was Mrs. Harvey,néeElizabeth Hill, naturalised in Tuscany, who in 1805 was arrested on an unfounded charge of complicity in Georges’ plot. Her daughter Henrietta, a miniaturepainter, petitioned for her release and the restitution of her papers, the petition being backed by Denon, curator of the Louvre. Scipio du Roure, son of the Marquis de Grisac and grandson of the Countess of Catherlough, Bolingbroke’s sister, may almost be regarded as an Englishman, for he had been educated at Oxford. He eloped with a Mrs. Sandon, who fired at her pursuing husband, whereupon du Roure was prosecuted as the delinquent. A flaw in the indictment secured his acquittal, but he had to take refuge in France. He arrived in the middle of the Revolution and was a member of the Paris Jacobin Commune, but was imprisoned in the Terror. He was now studying jurisprudence and translating Cobbett’sGrammar. He went back to London to claim his mother’s property and that of a half-brother named Knight, and died there in 1822.

The war, putting a stop to British imports, had given a stimulus to French manufactures, several of which were carried on by Englishmen. These were mostly in the provinces, and English tradesmen had scarcely yet reappeared in Paris. Henry Sykes, for instance, unable to continue selling Wedgwood’s pottery in the rue St. Honoré, had in 1792 started cotton-spinning at St. Rémy, though he had originally applied for and obtained the use of the unfinished Madeleine as a factory. The Convention, on the 29th April 1795, granted him a site for the erection of cotton mills at La Magdelaine, near Verneuil (Eure). He was joined in 1802 by his future son-in-law, William Waddington, of Walkeringham, Notts, a descendant of CharlesII.’s Pendrells.Waddington, the grandfather of the French statesman of our day, apparently had a visit from his brother Samuel, a hop merchant at Tunbridge, who had published an answer to Burke’s famous pamphlet, and in 1801 had been sentenced to £500 fine and a month’s imprisonment for ‘forestalling.’ His fellow hop-merchants gave him an ovation on his release. Then there was Christopher Potter, who had been an army victualler and whose election for Colchester in 1784 led to the Act disqualifying Government contractors from sitting in Parliament. His successful opponent was Sir Robert Smyth, and the two rivals may have met in Paris. He reopened during the Revolution the porcelain factory at Chantilly formerly carried on by the Condé princes, thus justifying his name—nomen omen—but he had now removed to Montereau. A police report of the 8th March 1796 thus denounced him:—

‘The Anglo-Pitts purchase nearly all the national property which is sold in the department of the Oise. Their chief broker is a man named Poter (sic), owner of the porcelaine factory at Chantilly, a man who was deep in debt two years ago, but who has now paid up and is worth more than two millions. He was twice arrested under the revolutionary government. This man was twice M.P. in England, and belonged to the Court party. There is no doubt that he is in France the secret agent of Pitt, with whom he has been closely connected since the Revolution. He made many visits to England in 1792 and 1793. Since that time he has remained at Paris or Chantilly, where he daily makes purchases.’[131]

This report was made by an ‘observer’ named Martin, whose chief, Marné, sent it in as usual to the Directory. That body, or probably Barras, who seems to have examined these daily reports, instructed Marné to inquire whether Potter really visited England in 1792–1793, whether there was any proof of his connection with the court party, whether there was any probability of his being Pitt’s agent, and what purchases he had made. Martin replied to this veiled rebuke on the 13th March:—

‘I have learned nothing further on Poter. My object was not to denounce him. I do not know him intimately. I have merely had to do my duty as observer, and to call attention to him, according to notices which have been transmitted to me by persons whom I believe to have no interest in calumniating him. My guarantee of all the facts is therefore solely for the purpose of my mission. It is then for the Government to watch any particular person. Here, however, is my reply to the various questions which have been submitted to me by citizen Marné, and which I subjoin.‘1. Poter paid visits to England in 1792 and 1793, without this implying that he was betraying our cause, for our relations with England were not suspended till the middle of 1793 if I remember rightly.‘2. The real fact, and which Poter cannot contradict, is that he was twice M.P., and that the kind of popularity which he had gained induced the Court to place him on the list of candidates in 1783 or 1784 for making him a Minister. Pitt was the successful man. After that he fought a duel with the latter.[132]Was it because he was not a Minister?Thus the question whether he had then thrown himself into the Court party remains to be solved. It would not perhaps be difficult to ascertain the fact, for it is well known that Fox, driven from office, became more popular than ever. It is also known that he drew the Prince of Wales into the Opposition.‘3. As to this I will repeat what I have said above. It is for the Government to order its agents to watch him. As for me I promise to neglect nothing in Paris, and if any positive facts reach me I will transmit them to the Directory. Only yesterday I ascertained where he lives and the places which he frequents.‘4. It is quite certain that Poter has made purchases besides his Chantilly factory. To ascertain this it will merely be necessary to apply to the Senlis district. I remember having stated in my report of the 16th (sic) that Poter eighteen months ago was in everybody’s debt, and that now he had settled with everybody. This is perhaps what has given rise to the belief that he might have dealings with Pitt in France, for in fact his fortune at this moment is marvellous; but it may be the result of great speculations or of stock-jobbing, which in the last twenty months has made the fortune of so many.‘I think I have dwelt enough on this subject. I repeat that my sole object has been to do my duty as surveillant. I will add this. Formerly entrusted with powers by the General Security Committee in the department of the Oise, I ascertained that Poter did much good at Chantilly, that he professed republican principles, and that I had even occasion to render him justice before the committee against the persecution which for eleven months he had been undergoing from the Chantilly revolutionary committee.’

‘1. Poter paid visits to England in 1792 and 1793, without this implying that he was betraying our cause, for our relations with England were not suspended till the middle of 1793 if I remember rightly.

‘2. The real fact, and which Poter cannot contradict, is that he was twice M.P., and that the kind of popularity which he had gained induced the Court to place him on the list of candidates in 1783 or 1784 for making him a Minister. Pitt was the successful man. After that he fought a duel with the latter.[132]Was it because he was not a Minister?

Thus the question whether he had then thrown himself into the Court party remains to be solved. It would not perhaps be difficult to ascertain the fact, for it is well known that Fox, driven from office, became more popular than ever. It is also known that he drew the Prince of Wales into the Opposition.

‘3. As to this I will repeat what I have said above. It is for the Government to order its agents to watch him. As for me I promise to neglect nothing in Paris, and if any positive facts reach me I will transmit them to the Directory. Only yesterday I ascertained where he lives and the places which he frequents.

‘4. It is quite certain that Poter has made purchases besides his Chantilly factory. To ascertain this it will merely be necessary to apply to the Senlis district. I remember having stated in my report of the 16th (sic) that Poter eighteen months ago was in everybody’s debt, and that now he had settled with everybody. This is perhaps what has given rise to the belief that he might have dealings with Pitt in France, for in fact his fortune at this moment is marvellous; but it may be the result of great speculations or of stock-jobbing, which in the last twenty months has made the fortune of so many.

‘I think I have dwelt enough on this subject. I repeat that my sole object has been to do my duty as surveillant. I will add this. Formerly entrusted with powers by the General Security Committee in the department of the Oise, I ascertained that Poter did much good at Chantilly, that he professed republican principles, and that I had even occasion to render him justice before the committee against the persecution which for eleven months he had been undergoing from the Chantilly revolutionary committee.’

These reports seem to have induced Barras to make Potter’s acquaintance and to send him first to Malmesbury[133]in Paris in 1796, and next to London in 1797, with an offer to conclude peace for a handsome bribe. On his return he warned the Directory that one of its members regularly communicated its deliberations to England. These relations with Barras probably protected him from further molestation during the Directory, but on the 13th December 1800 a police bulletin again denounced him as an English emissary sent to ruin French pottery and hat-making.[134]In 1800 he was a first-class medallist at the Paris Industrial Exhibition, and in 1802 he was one of the gold medallists to whom Napoleon gave a dinner. His Montereau factory, an old monastery where he employed a hundred men, was burnt down in 1802. He probably remained in France till 1814; he died in England three years later.

Among the silver medallists in 1802 was White, a mechanical inventor, probably the uncle or grandfather of Dupont White, sub-Minister of Justice in 1848, President Carnot’s father-in-law. The exhibits also included a filter by Smith, an Englishman, perhaps the James Smith who in 1813 succeeded to Stone’s printing business.

There were of course teachers of English. They included Robert, of whom Napoleon might have learned the language at the Paris military school, a lost opportunitywhich he regretted; Mrs. Galignani,néeParsons, who had married an Italian ex-priest, ultimately the founder of the newspaper bearing his name; and Samuel Baldwin, employed before the Revolution in the French Foreign Office, who was arrested as a spy in the Terror, and having been inscribed on a long list of prisoners for trial would, but for Robespierre’s fall, have been guillotined. He had taught English to the Royal Family before 1789, and he was accused of associating with priests and receiving frequent letters from Calais. He latterly published English and Spanish lesson books, and died in 1804, aged seventy-nine. There were also Cresswell, Davies, Fox, Hickie, Boswell, Macdermott, who kept a school, Stubbs, who had a reading-room with such English newspapers as were allowed to enter France, and Roche, probably Hamilton Roche, teacher at the military school, whose son Eugenius became a journalist in London. There were also two maiden ladies named Haines, ultimately joined by a Mrs. Poppleton, who carried on a school. She was probably the wife or widow of George Poppleton, who had taught English. There was likewise the daughter of a Scotsman named James Mather Flint, the widow of the clever but unprincipled anti-revolutionary pamphleteer Rivarol. Flint and his wife settled about 1734 in France, where their daughter Louisa in 1768 translated into French one of Shakespeare’s plays with Dr. Johnson’s notes,[135]and Johnson wrote to her in French a letter of thanks, in which he humorously rallied her on detaining in Paris thesister of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Fanny Reynolds had apparently gone to lodge with the Flints, for Northcote is incorrect in stating that Louisa accompanied her to France. Reynolds himself in the following year, when visiting Paris, called on the Flints. On the death of his wife, Flint, who had embraced Catholicism, entered the priesthood and received a small benefice which was supplemented by a pension of 200 francs from the General Assembly of the Clergy. This pension he enjoyed till the Revolution, and he must have died before 1793, for his daughter alone was then arrested as an Englishwoman. She had, it is true, in 1780 married Rivarol and had given birth to a son, but Rivarol had long deserted her, leaving her and her infant in such distress that the Montyon prize, much to his mortification, was awarded in 1788 to a Frenchwoman who had kindly succoured them. Madame Rivarol afterwards tried to maintain herself by translations from the English. Her faithless husband died in Germany as anémigréin 1810, and her son Daniel was now serving till his death in 1810 in the Danish or Russian army. She herself survived till 1821. She is not likely to have been hunted up by any of her fellow-Britons in 1802 or 1814.

Nor were political refugees likely to be sought by them, otherwise they might have made numerous acquaintances. Most of them were Irish, but King mentions two Englishmen, Ashley, an ex-member of the London Corresponding Society, who had a flourishing business in Paris, and ‘Hodgson,’ a hatter, either Richard Hodson, one of the Reformers prosecuted in1794, or William Hodson, who in December 1793 incurred twelve months’ imprisonment and a fine of £200 for saying that the world would not be happy till there were no more kings. There was also one Scot, Robert Watson, who had crossed the Channel in 1798, secretary and biographer of Lord George Gordon, alleged teacher of English (but more probably ‘skimmer’ of English newspapers) to Napoleon, rescuer from rain and rats of the Stuart papers at Rome; his career was full of romance, and it ended in the tragedy of suicide at a London inn at the age of eighty-eight. As for the Irish, some had been long domiciled in France, while others had just been liberated under a secret article, or at least a secret understanding, of the Treaty of Amiens. They would, according to French documents, have been executed in Ireland but for the threat of reprisals against General Sir George Don, who, as will be explained hereafter, had been arrested in France.[136]These ex-prisoners included James Napper Tandy, given up by Hamburg, along with James Blackwell, Hervey Montmorency Morris, and Wm. Corbett, to Sir James Craufurd, but all claimed by Napoleon as French officers.[137]Tandy landed at Bordeaux in March 1802, and died there in the following year, not having been allowed to go to Paris. In December 1802, describing himself as a French general, he sent a challenge to Elliott, an English M.P., who had spoken of him as an ‘arch traitor,’ and on Elliott taking no notice of his letter he denounced him asa coward.[138]Morris, who had fought for Austria against the Turks before fighting for the French Revolution, after a visit to Paris returned to Ireland, but in 1811 rejoined the French army. Corbett had escaped from Kilmainham prison, an episode utilised by Miss Edgeworth in one of her stories. He, too, joined the French army, became a general, and later on helped to liberate Greece. Blackwell, who, a student in the Irish College, had joined in the attack on the Bastille, was penniless on now landing in France, and Napoleon first gave him 6000 francs and then a pension of 3000 francs ‘for his services to liberty,’ Napoleon not having yet ceased to talk of liberty. In 1803 Blackwell commanded Napoleon’s Irish legion, Corbett serving under him, as also John Devereux,[139]who, though a conspirator of 1798, waited on Lord Whitworth with a letter of introduction from Lord Moira. He was permitted in 1819 to enlist recruits for Bolivar at Dublin, the British authorities being doubtless glad thus to get rid of restless spirits. He became a general in the service of Colombia, and in 1825 revisited Paris, where, as a ‘most active and dangerous man,’ his movements were suspiciously watched by detectives.[140]Arthur O’Connor, nephew of Lord Longueville and ex-M.P. for Cork, has been already mentioned. He married Condorcet’s daughter, and latterly devoted himself to agriculture and to his village mayoralty.He just lived to see the French empire restored. Robert Emmet returned to Dublin in October 1802, and was executed for a fresh conspiracy. So also was Thomas Russell, who while a soldier in Ireland became acquainted with Tone and was won over to his views. Thomas Addis Emmet, Robert’s brother, went in 1804 to New York, where he became a barrister. William James Macnevin likewise crossed the Atlantic.

Other Irishmen had been or were now employed in the French civil service. Aherne, an ex-priest, had served under Delacroix or Carnot. Nicholas Madgett was in the Foreign Office under the Directory, as also a nephew, Sullivan, who had been a professor of mathematics at La Flèche and had gone with Hoche’s expedition to Ireland.[141]Edward Joseph Lewins, who had dubbed himself first Luines and then de Luynes, as though related to the French duke of that name, had been educated at the Irish College, Paris. Sent by the United Irishmen to France, he was employed by the Directory in missions and reports, and on the abandonment of French expeditions to Ireland he joined the Duc de Larochefoucault-Liancourt in industrial enterprises, to carry on which he applied for the reimbursement of his secret service expenses. Talleyrand endorsed this application.[142]He was afterwards thesoi-disantThompson who, according to Goldsmith, was employed in opening English letters at the post-office, for he had been originally in theIrish post-office. He subsequently had appointments in the Foreign and Education Offices. He was still living in Paris in 1824, but his son refused, doubtless for cogent reasons, to give any information on him to Madden for his history of the United Irishmen. William Duckett, one of the instigators of the mutiny of the Nore, had been employed by the diplomatic committee of the Convention, but eventually turned pedagogue. Patrick Lattin, so brilliant in conversation, according to Lady Morgan, as to reduce Curran and Sheil to silence, had served in the Franco-Irish brigade till 1791, and was in the carriage when Theobald Dillon was murdered by his troops at Lille in 1792. He had settled near Lyons, but occasionally visited Paris, where he died about 1849. But it is not always easy to distinguish him from another Lattin. John Fitzgerald, also a Franco-Irish officer, had emigrated at the Revolution but returned in 1802, and his dinners from 1823 to 1836 drew the best British and French company.[143]William Putnam M’Cabe, one of Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s bodyguard in 1798, was now starting a cotton mill near Rouen, but sold it in 1806 to Waddington. He had hairbreadth escapes from arrest on repeated visits to England and Ireland, and died in Paris in 1821. He had been intimate with Tone,[144]the funeral of whose daughter Mira in March 1803 drew together all the Irish refugees. Tone’s son had entered the Frencharmy, but after Waterloo went to America with his mother, who then married an old Scottish friend, Hugh Wilson of Bordeaux. In 1803 she took out a patent for clarifying liquids. Wilson, after a roaming life, ended his days at Santa Cruz in 1829.

The English, of course, found many foreigners in Paris, though except in the aggregate in much smaller numbers than themselves. The Russians were already noted for their prodigality. Swedes were tolerably numerous. The Germans were mostly economical. Among Americans were Rufus King, Livingston, Jay, the Ambassador at London, and the future president, Monroe. There was also Colonel James Swan, a native of Dunfermline, but one of the ‘Boston tea-party,’ whose contracts with the French Government had involved him in litigation with his partner Schweizer, and who, rather than meet what he considered an unjust claim, was to undergo twenty-two years’ imprisonment in a Paris debtors’ prison.[145]Count Rumford, the inventor, now likewise settled in Paris.[146]The visitor of highest rank was the Prince of Orange, afterwards suitor to our Princess Charlotte and ultimately King of Holland. His father had sent him from London to claim an indemnity for the loss of the statthalterate, and he appears to have succeeded in his mission. Charlotte’s eventually successful suitor, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, also visited Paris, but not till 1810, when he offered, it is said, to beaide-de-camp to Napoleon. Higher destinies awaited him. The Russians and Poles included Count Zamoiski, Count Potocki, Prince Troubetski, Prince Galitzin, and Princess Demidoff, an accomplished dancer. Nor should we forget Kosciusko, who had failed to liberate Poland. Shepherd found him in a cottage near the barriers, with a small garden which he cultivated himself. He must have been able to relate Polish imitations of the French Revolution—a massacre of prisoners, a revolutionary tribunal, pillages, and confiscations; but he could claim credit for Stanislas having been honourably treated as a captive, in lieu of having been executed like LouisXVI.Possibly a South American youth, Bolivar, the future Liberator, made his acquaintance. There was also Madame de Krudener, the Delphine of Madame de Staël’s story, now famous for her beauty and her gallantries, not yet for the mysticism which was to captivate the Tsar Alexander and the Queen of Prussia. She was at this time enamoured of the singer Garat, but was shortly to accompany her sick husband who, before reaching Aix, his destination, died of apoplexy. Madame de Staël herself, described in a police note as known for her love of intrigue, was not yet banished from the capital outside which she was miserable, and there was her satellite, Benjamin Constant, not yet much known, though he had been arrested in 1796 for declaring that France needed a king. A fellow Swiss visitor was Pestalozzi, the educationist, noted by the police as having an English pension. Another educationist was the German Campe, who in 1792, along with Cloots, Paine, Priestley, andothers, had received French citizenship. He was surprised to find the Parisians taciturn and apathetic, instead of being lively, talkative, and enthusiastic as in 1792. Science was represented by Oersted, who, however, was as yet merely a youth who had gained a travelling scholarship.

Alexander Humboldt did not arrive from South America till 1804, but his brother William, statesman and philologist, was spending three years in Paris. Germany also sent the Landgrave of Hesse Rothenburg and Princess Hohenzollern, the latter anxious to purchase the field in which her guillotined brother, Prince Salm Kyrburg, had been buried. Prince Emanuel of Salm, apparently her uncle, accompanied her on her pious mission. Adam Gottlob von Moltke, a cousin of the famous strategist and like him a Dane, was a versifier of the Klopstock school and was intimate with Niebuhr. On the outbreak of the French Revolution he had styled himself Citizen Moltke. He helped to draw up the Schleswig-Holstein constitution. Another Danish visitor was Baggesen, who had witnessed the Revolution, imitated Klopstock and Wieland, and enjoyed a pension from his sovereign. Samson Heine, father of the poet, a Dusseldorf merchant, was a visitor on business, like several of his Jewish co-religionists. His son was too young to accompany him. Another business visitor was Johann Maria Farina, who opened depôts for his ‘veritable eau de Cologne.’ Frederic Jacobi, a friend of Richter, went in vain quest of health. He revived his acquaintance with Count Schlabrendorf, whom he hadmet in London in 1786. ‘For eight years,’ said Schlabrendorf, reviewing his revolutionary experiences, ‘it was here all a scuffle like a village beershop, everybody pitching into each other. Then came Bonaparte with a “stop that.” The first thing he did was to blow out the candles. He wanted no questions settled, but merely the stoppage of disputes. Liberty or no liberty, religion or no religion, morality or no morality, was all immaterial to him. Liberty and equality remain, and now nobody opens his mouth or strikes another.’ I may here remark that the comparison of Bonaparte to Cromwell, obvious as it now appears to us, was not made by any English observer, though it did not escape German visitors. Jacobi also went to see St. Martin, the disciple of Boehme and Swedenborg, who had known William Law in England in 1787, and regarded the French Revolution as a precursor of the Day of Judgment. St. Martin, who was living in seclusion till his death in October 1803, said to him, ‘Everybody has told you I am mad, but you see that I am at least a happy madman. If, moreover, some madmen should be fettered there are others to be left unfettered, and I think myself one of the latter.’ A disciple of Jacobi, Jacob Frederic Fries, who had been educated by the Moravians and was ultimately a professor at Jena, was also a visitor. His democratic opinions for a time occasioned his suspension from his post. Frederic Schlegel, an intimate friend of Novalis, studied at the Louvre, was taught Sanscrit by Alexander Hamilton, and lectured on German literature and philosophy. He and his Jewishwife, a daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, embraced Catholicism in 1803. Less eminent than his brother Augustus, he was an orientalist and art critic. Living with them at Montmartre was Helmine von Klenke, who had made an unfortunate marriage with Baron Hastfer, and having divorced him was destined to be but little more successful with a second mate, Chézy, to whom Schlegel, his teacher of Persian, introduced her. Helmine was cured of a violent headache by Mesmer, who sat beside her at dinner, and unobserved by the other guests made some passes over her forehead. Mesmer, unlike what happened to him in 1781 and 1785, attracted no curiosity. Helmine also met Hardenberg, the future Prussian statesman, Achim von Arnim, a poet and novelist, and Mademoiselle Rodde, daughter of a Swiss professor, and herself at seventeen adorned with a doctor’s degree.[147]Reichardt, the composer, and Fabricius, the Danish naturalist, should also be mentioned. Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow, who had twice visited America, had there embraced Swedenborgianism, had been ruined by a glass speculation, and was now dependent on his pen, likewise visited Paris. An admirer of Napoleon, this historian and pamphleteer had had adventures, and was destined to have others. Julius von Voss, poet and novelist, was another visitor.

Last but not least among the German visitors comes Schopenhauer. His father, Henry Florian Schopenhauer, a Hamburg merchant, with his wife and son, went to London in July 1802. Leaving Arthur atschool with the Rev. Thomas Lancaster at Wimbledon, the parents travelled about England and Scotland. They got back to London in October, and after a six weeks’ stay all three embarked for Rotterdam. Mercier, the prolific writer, showed them the sights of Paris. In January 1803 they proceeded to Bordeaux. Thence father and son returned to Hamburg, while the mother went to Toulouse, Toulon, Hyères, and Switzerland, an account of which trip she published. Pecuniary losses affected the father’s mind, and in 1805, at the age of fifty-nine, he fell or threw himself into a canal. Griesbach denies that he committed suicide, alleging that he slipped through a trap-door in his warehouse into the canal. He was an habitual reader of theTimes, a taste inherited by his son.

The Italians include Bartolini, sculptor of a colossal bust of Napoleon, and a daughter of Beccaria, the Italian philosopher, who had inherited his intelligence and love of liberty, and possessed beauty into the bargain. She had divorced her insane husband. Helen Williams in 1794–1795 had found her residing by the lake of Lugano. She seems to have settled in Paris in 1798, and Paine then made acquaintance with her. She presented Redhead Yorke with a portrait of her father, and Holcroft was now struck by her intelligence and affability. At her house he met Melzi, who had presented the keys of Milan to Napoleon on his entering that city, and who had scandalised lovers of liberty by accepting the vice-presidency of the so-called Cisalpine republic, though Napoleon soon superseded him by his step-son Eugène de Beauharnais. Another well-knownItalian, though born in Paris, was Caraccioli, the author ofPope Ganganelli’s Lettersand many other works; but he was an octogenarian and died in 1803. Then there was Casti, canon and poet, an imitator of Boccaccio. Prince Jerome Moliterno Pignatelli had figured in Neapolitan politics, and was now conspiring to deliver the Neapolitan ports to England. Though Merry granted him a passport he was stopped at Calais and incarcerated in the Temple, along with his English wife or mistress, a Mrs. Dorinda Newnham, an Irishwoman,[148]possibly the wife of a London alderman and ex-M.P. She was again arrested at Rome in 1809, but liberated as being both ill and mad. It was thought, however, that she had been forewarned of arrest and had burnt her papers.[149]Ultimately both of them got to England.

How did the English demean themselves and what was the impression produced on both sides? Francis Jackson, writing on 2nd February 1802 to Speaker Abbot, says:—

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