Englishmen in the French Revolution/Chapter XII
XII.
Paris Re-opened.
Die Zwietracht fliegt, die Donnerstürme schweigen |
XXI.
PARIS RE-OPENED.
Fox—Rogers—Erskine—Mackintosh—Bentham—Romilly—
Kemble—Watt—Aberdeen—High Life—Treasure-seekers.
When Paris was re-opened to British visitors by the signature of preliminaries of peace, it became again, as Horace Walpole had said of it in 1763, "the way of all flesh." Ten years of abstinence had sharpened the appetite, and everybody was anxious to see how much the city had altered since the Revolution. People of fashion were curious to know whether its gaiety had revived. Politicians were eager to behold the young ruler whose career had already been so romantic, and whose star was evidently still in the ascendant. Madame de Stael felt sorely tempted to go and see these English visitors, but prudently refrained, for she had had a hint that her intimacy with Bernadotte on her previous stay in Paris had given offence to the First Consul. Necker, her father, offered, however, to go and smoothe the way for her. Anthony Merry, the English envoy, calculated that in the summer of 1802 there were 5000 of his countrymen in Paris, and that on Lord Whitworth's arrival in the winter there remained 1700. Wordsworth, who went no farther than Calais, was indignant at this worship of Bonaparte.
"Lords, lawyers, statesmen, squires of low degree. |
Whitworth found this throng of visitors politically mischievous. "It is absolutely necessary that we should stick to our text," he wrote to George Hammond on March 24th, 1803, "in order to do away with the impression which some of our rascally countrymen have given. I have for this last fortnight shut my door to Lord Lauderdale and all those of his stamp with which this city swarms." The Duke of Bedford, however, who conferred with Danton at Paris in the winter of 1792, and was again there, "seems perfectly aware," said Whitworth, writing on May 4th, "of the character and projects of the First Consul, and of the necessity (although he exaggerates the danger to ourselves) of imposing some restraint upon him if possible. . . . He conducts himself very properly. I wish I could say as much of many of my countrymen and countrywomen."[1]
Fox was by far the most notable of these visitors. He was accompanied by Mr. (afterwards Lord) St. John, and by his future biographer, Trotter, and he met his brother, General Fox, his nephew. Lord Holland, General Fitzpatrick,[2] and Lord Robert Spencer. (The two last were M.P.s for Tavistock.) He stayed, as already mentioned, at the hotel Richelieu, which had still an air of grandeur, and had a pretty garden. A caricature of the time represented Fox and his wife as prostrate in slavish adoration before Bonaparte. The truth, however, was, that the Consul's character inspired him with distrust, and that he felt much more in his element with Lafayette in his retreat at Lagrange, where Lally Tollendal, another disillusioned revolutionist, and a born orator, recited his French translation of Shakespere. Yet Fox and Lord Holland (as a youth he had seen something of the Revolution) dined with Bonaparte, who was so anxious to make a good impression on his guest that long afterwards at Elba he asked Lord Ebrington what Fox had thought of him, and being told that he was flattered by his reception, replied, "He had reason to be so; he was everywhere received as a god, because he was known to be for peace." Fox, indeed, Trotter assures us, was more applauded at the theatre than Bonaparte himself. He went over the Louvre with Sir Benjamin West and Opie, saw Kosciusko and Sieyes, and took tea with Helen Williams. He was collecting materials in the French archives for his life of James II., but he combined pleasure with business, and Lewis Goldsmith's Paris Argus spoke of him as dancing attendance at ladies' saloons, particularly Madame Recamier's and Madame Tallien's. He met the poet Rogers, and commissioned him, as a better judge of furniture than himself, to buy fire-irons in the Palais Royal arcades, the price not to exceed a couple of louis. Rogers, too, saw Bonaparte, but only at a review, when he thought "his profile very strong, and his face one dead tint of yellow."
Erskine, who was over with his son, visited the Court of Appeal, and was loaded with attentions, but strangely enough was chiefly intimate with Barère, the most contemptible of surviving Jacobins. Barère,—indeed whose future biographer, President Carnot's father, then lying in his cradle, was destined to dwell on his unwavering enmity to England as the redeeming point in his character—seems to have been lionised by British visitors, as unconscious as himself of his cardinal virtue. Sir Francis Burdett called on him, and perhaps learned from him the poverty of Paine, who was enabled by a present of 300 louis from Burdett and Bosville to pay his debts and embark for America. This good deed may be set off against the vanity which led Burdett, applauded at Calais as the friend of Fox, to reply "No, I am the friend of the people." Burdett had seen Paris in 1793, when he sedulously attended the clubs and the Convention. Returning to England, in August of that year he married Miss Coutts, whose two sisters had been educated at Paris in 1787. John Kemble also, introduced probably by Talma, repeatedly met Barère.
Erskine was presented by Bonaparte with his portrait, and was perhaps accompanied to the Tuileries by Alderman Combe, M.P. and ex-Lord Mayor of London. At any rate a caricaturist depicted the Consul receiving Fox, Erskine, and Combe in a very unceremonious fashion:
"Fox! ha, how old are you? A brewer. Lord Mayor! ha, great pomp. Mr. Brief! ha, a great lawyer, can talk well. There, you may go."[3]
Grotesque as this was, it was hardly more so than what actually happened at the reception of Mackintosh. Bonaparte, with that desire to be thought omniscient which made him "cram" for a visit to the Paris Library by getting up the question of the interpolated passage in Josephus, had made inquiries about his visitors, but forgetting which was which, or the order of presentation being inverted, the compliment prepared for Mackintosh on his "unanswerable answer to Burke" was offered to the friend who preceded him. "I have got your compliment," whispered the friend as he made way for Mackintosh. Perhaps after all this was as well, considering that Mackintosh had altogether changed his opinion of the Revolution, and had two years previously written to George Moore—
"I abhor, abjure, and for ever renounce the French Revolution, with all its sanguinary history, its abominable principles, and for ever execrable leaders. I hope I shall be able [in forthcoming lectures] to wipe off the disgrace of having been once betrayed into an approbation of that conspiracy against God and man, the greatest scourge of the world, and the chief stain upon human annals."[4]
Mackintosh's revulsion of feeling, laudable as it was, had carried him a little too far, by making him forget that the crimes of the Revolution were in part the result of the old régime. Yet his corrected opinion was probably identical with that really held by Bonaparte himself, who, when married to Marie Antoinette's great-niece, would actually speak of poor Louis XVI. as "my uncle." Neither the Consul nor Mackintosh could foresee that a year later Mackintosh would be defending Peltier for libels on Bonaparte, who meanwhile had become life consul. Jeremy Bentham, by the way, exercised the citizenship conferred on him in 1792 by voting for that consulate. The man in whose eyes the English constitution was a mockery and delusion, thus helped to rivet the chains of despotism on France.
Romilly, who had seen Paris in August 1789, and regarded the Jacobins as monsters, and Holcroft, whose daughter married Danton's nephew Merget, were also among the politicians who visited France. So, too, was William Taylor, of Norwich, who, though he had warmly sympathised with the Revolution, became very anti-Bonapartist. He was in Paris from March till the summer of 1802, Southey's brother Henry being his companion. Taylor had an introduction to Lafayette, his cousin John Dyson having taught Lafayette farming, and he there met Madame d'Arblay. He also dined with Holcroft and Paine, and made the acquaintance of Thomas Manning the Orientalist, at whose suggestion Lamb wrote his "Roast Pig." Tierney, too, spent the summer of 1802 at Boulogne, but, doubtful of the continuance of peace, prudently declined to hire his house for another season. John Kemble, who has been already mentioned, is said to have been considered wonderfully like Bonaparte, though his portrait suggests no resemblance. He went on to Madrid to study the Spanish stage.
James Watt revisited Paris for the first time since 1786, when he had been invited to report on the Marly aqueduct. His son, after his experiences of 1792, did not again see France. Then there was Sir Elijah Impey, who had awarded damages to Grand for his wife's intrigue with Sir Philip Francis. He was trying to recover property in the French funds, and was actually welcomed by the lady. His testimony, people supposed, was essential to her marriage with Talleyrand, insisted upon by Bonaparte, but Madame Grand had obtained in 1798 a divorce from Grand, for whom she procured a post at the Cape, where he died, virtually a British subject, in 1821. Lord Whitworth was strangely misinformed when, as a reason for his wife (the Duchess of Dorset) accepting Talleyrand's hospitality he wrote, "The lady who presides in his house bears his name, and is in fact married to him as far as the sanction of the Romish Church can make such a marriage lawful." No religious marriage had been or ever was allowed in Talleyrand's case. It was the civil marriage which was then impending.
Maria Edgeworth and her father were also in Paris, and had a singular adventure. After a four months' stay, devoted to literary pursuits, they were suddenly ordered to quit Paris in twenty-four hours and France in a fortnight. Edgeworth had been taken for a brother of the Abbé Edgeworth, Louis XVI.'s confessor and chaplain to the future Louis XVIII. On explaining that he was only a distant cousin, and had never seen him, the order was apparently revoked. Then there was Sir John Carr, whose trip to Paris formed the subject of the first of his many books of travel. Another embryo author was Colonel Thomas Thornton, who had a mind to see how French sport had been affected by the Revolution. In 1815 he returned, hired Chambord for two years of the Princesse de Wagram, and lived in thoroughly British style. He ultimately left a will in favour of the daughter of a married Frenchwoman, which at the instance of his legitimate family was set aside by the French tribunals.
Another chiel taking notes and printing them was the Rev. Stephen Weston, grandson of Bishop Weston of Exeter. In 1791 he had witnessed the 14th July celebration. In 1792 he had "run from Paris with fear and trembling, because she was possessed like a demoniac with a spirit of carnage, and reeking in the blood of August and September," but he now found it "swept and garnished, restored to its senses, and in its right mind." It was less altered, too, than he had expected. So fond of Paris was this somewhat flippant and sceptical clergyman, that in 1829, when turned of eighty, he went over again, assiduously frequenting theatres and other amusements, and had he not died the following year he would probably have paid another visit to see France under the new dynasty. A fellow-clergyman, Stephen Shepherd, of Gateacre, Lancashire, a friend of Roscoe's, seems to have been equally fond of the French capital. He had a letter of introduction to Helen Williams, and at her tea-table met Kosciusko, Carnot, a Neapolitan princess, and a Polish countess. He spent a most agreeable evening, but on his returning in 1814 he did not renew acquaintance with his hostess. Perhaps he could not countenance her liaison with the printer Stone, who, however, must have been the gentleman who in 1802 brought him his invitation.
Lord Aberdeen, not yet "the travelled thane, Athenian Aberdeen," but a very agreeable young man of eighteen according to George (afterwards Sir George) Jackson of the Embassy, was introduced to Bonaparte. He was the Prime Minister of 1853–5. Lord Camelford, a second cousin of Pitt's, and the best shot in England, was over in strict incognito.[5] Refused a passport, he went to Boulogne as an American, and thence to Paris as a valet, but afraid of the police discovering him, he went on to Vienna. "It is feared," wrote Jackson, "he should attempt some personal mischief," which implies symptoms of the mental derangement which in 1804 led to his fatal duel with his friend Captain Best.[6] St. George Caulfeild, an Irishman, just of age, with £30,000 a year, kept open house in grand style, and was expecting his future mother-in-law and bride. Lady and Frances Crofton, so that the marriage might take place at Paris.
Miss Berry, with her friend Mrs. Damer, the amateur sculptress, found the north of France more prosperous, the south less so, than before the Revolution. She met at Paris in March 1802 Lord Henry Petty, the statesman who as Marquis of Lansdowne lived till 1863; Sir Charles Blagden, a writer on music and natural philosophy; the Dowager Duchess of Cumberland, and Mrs. Cosway, the artist, who introduced her to Bonaparte's mother. Mrs. Cosway illustrated a work on France by John Griffiths, and she was induced by Cardinal Fesch to open a school in Paris, but it did not succeed. Miss Berry was also presented to Bonaparte and Josephine. In the autumn she was back in Paris, and met Lady Foster, sister to Lord Bristol and future Duchess of Devonshire, concerning whom there were such strange reports. She did not see France again till 1816, but Mrs. Damer, who in 1802 promised Bonaparte a bust of Fox, fulfilled her pledge on May-day 1815, the Emperor presenting her in return with a splendid snuff-box bearing his portrait set in diamonds. Miss Linwood went over to exhibit her art needlework. The Duchess of Gordon gave great entertainments in Paris in 1802, and her daughter, the future Duchess of Bedford, often danced with the young and handsome Eugène Beauharnais, Bonaparte's stepson. The Duchess was a warm admirer of the Consul, and pointing to his likeness, would say to Madame Lebrun, "Voilâ mon zéro" (héros). Lady Cholmondeley, Lady Conyngham, Lady Elizabeth Monck, and Lady Foster, also attended Josephine's receptions, whereas Lady Clarendon was one of the visitors who declined to worship the rising sun. "Those people who chose to be presented at Napoleon's courts," says her diary,[7] "were invited to many magnificent dinners and assemblies given by the ministers, but as ourselves with a very few exceptions did not feel inclined to pay homage to Bonaparte, the theatres and the entertainments given by foreigners were mostly our resources." She, however, saw Josephine at a ball at the Ministry of Marine. Lady Hester Stanhope, whose fathers second marriage had produced domestic friction, accompanied the Egertons in a long trip, which included Paris, but there is no record of her observations.
Titled visitors of the other sex included Lords Douglas (the late Duke of Hamilton), Spencer, Egremont, Pembroke, Cholmondeley, Conyngham, Mount-Edgecumbe, Falkland, Ossulston, Cahir, and Loftus (afterwards Marquis of Ely), and Lord Archibald Hamilton, some of whom must have been the "young lords " who at Lady Higginson's balls eagerly questioned Maurice Dupin, George Sand's father, respecting the French army. They may have been interested in him as the descendant of Marshal Saxe.
Some of the United Irishmen released in 1802 went over to Paris, in the expectation that the peace would be very short, and that French help might be obtained for another rising in Ireland. It would have been well for two of them if they had remained in France,[8] for Robert Emmet and Thomas Russell were executed on their return. Macnevin was more prudent. Despairing of French aid, he quitted the French army, went to America, and resumed the medical profession.
The recovery of property confiscated by the Revolution was the object of several visitors. Philippe d'Auvergne, a native of Jersey, went in quest of the duchy of Bouillon. Not sent to France, as commonly stated, to complete his education, but captured on board the dreaded cruiser Arethusa and taken to Paris, he was introduced to the Duc de Bouillon, the last descendant of Turenne, who recognised him as a kinsman, for the Jersey Auvergnes had been Huguenot refugees. The duke, childless and on ill terms with his next of kin, had a mania for discovering Auvergnes, and was charmed with the young sailor's appearance and manner. He formally, in 1788, adopted him as his son, and he took the title as such of Prince de Bouillon, but the Revolution obliged both to fly, and the estates were confiscated. Philippe d'Auvergne then rejoined the English navy, but on the conclusion of peace, his adoptive father having apparently died, he went over to Paris to claim the restoration of the duchy. He was, however, imprisoned in the Temple as a spy, and was a week in close confinement. On the representations of the British Embassy he was released, but expelled. He had been offered the restoration of the estates if he would betray his royalist correspondents in Western France. He resumed his naval duties, commanded the Jersey squadron, and is said to have superintended the military and forged-assignat expeditions to the Norman coast. The treaty of Paris recognised his claims to the duchy, but the arbitrators appointed by the Congress of Vienna held his adoption to be invalid, and assigned the estates to the Prince de Rohan Montbazon. Philippe d'Auvergne consequently remained a British admiral, and died in 1816, at the age of 81.
Dr. (afterwards Archbishop) Troy, President of Maynooth, went over during the Amiens negotiations to plead for the restitution of the property of the Irish colleges, but Lord Cornwallis could not get for them better terms than for other British claimants. Walter Boyd, the banker who fled from Paris in 1792, was one of these. He had started a bank in London, had helped to float Pitt's loans, was M.P. for Shaftesbury, and in the prospect of restitution by the French Goverment had contracted heavy engagements, when the coup d'état of 1797 shattered his hopes, drove him again from Paris, and ultimately caused his bankruptcy. On the return of peace he hurried over to press his claims, and he was accompanied or followed by his London partner, Paul Benfield, the man held up to odium by Burke for his usurious loans to the Nabob of Arcot. It was natural enough that men on such a quest should be loath to leave without having effected their purpose, and both of them were surprised by the decree for the detention of all British subjects between sixteen and sixty years of age.
- ↑ "England and Napoleon in 1803." By Oscar Browning.
- ↑ Page to Queen Charlotte in 1761, Secretary at War, 1806; died 1813, aged sixty-six.
- ↑ "English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon." By John Aston, 1884.
- ↑ "Life," by his son, ii. 167.
- ↑ It was he who made Home Tooke M.P. for Old Sarum. In 1798 he was arrested on the point of starting for France, but manifestly having no treasonable designs—his object was secretly to examine the French Mediterranean ports—was discharged, but deprived of his naval command. According to Fauche Borel, the royalist spy, he went over to Calais in a fishing boat, was arrested, was confined in the Temple at Paris, and was liberated by bribing a turnkey with 2000 louis to inform Lord Grenville of his whereabouts. But a more probable version is that he went to Switzerland, and made a point of witnessing the engagements between the Russians and the French.
- ↑ His sister, Lady Grenville, lived till 1864, to the age of ninety-one, and attended a flower-show only two days before her death.
- ↑ Lord Westmoreland's MSS. Historical MSS. Commission.
- ↑ As also for Arthur Thistlewood, who paid visits to France between 1799 and 1802, and returned to England in the latter year. He headed the Cato Street conspiracy, and was executed in 1820.