V TWO RESTORATIONS

The Restoration—Aristocrats and Commoners—Unwelcome Guests—Wellington in Danger—Misgivings—Napoleonic Emblems—Spectacles—Visits to Elba—Egerton’s Siege—St. Helena—Eyewitnesses and Survivors.

While the fall of Napoleon thus enabled numbers of Englishmen to return home, it allowed and tempted a smaller but yet considerable number to make or renew acquaintance with France. According to Wansey, there were four or five hundred of these,[273] scarcely any, however, staying more than a fortnight or three weeks. The through fare from London was now £5. The visitors had the interesting spectacle of the restoration of the Bourbons, while the very few who made a more lengthened stay witnessed also the Hundred Days’ reign of Napoleon, and his second and final fall. Never surely in Europe in modern times were more startling vicissitudes crowded into so brief a period. Even Spain with its pronunciamientos was not destined to present such a kaleidoscope. For a parallel we must go forward to the Central American republics or backward to the time when the pretorians made and unmade Roman emperors.

These visitors, like those who hurried over in 1802, included all sorts and conditions of men. There were statesmen like Castlereagh, anxious to weigh the chances of stability of the reinstated dynasty. He paid two visits, the first in August 1814 on his way to the Vienna Congress, the second in February 1815. It was probably on the first visit that Ney, dining with him and with officers of the allied armies, had the bad taste or want of tact to argue that an invasion of England, which he said he had strenuously urged on Napoleon, would certainly have succeeded. There were subordinate officials like Wellesley Pole, Master of the Mint and brother to Wellington, and Croker who, as we learn from the police bulletins, preferred a complaint that American privateers were still being sheltered at Bordeaux. It was not at this visit but at a subsequent one in July 1815 that Croker inspected the memorable scenes of the Revolution, discovered in the possession of Marat’s old printer Colin a large collection of pamphlets, and was introduced by him to Marat’s sister, whom he found as repulsive-looking as her brother. ‘Colin,’ said Croker, ‘had in some small dark rooms up two or three flights of stairs an immense quantity of brochures of the earlier days of the Revolution. What he had least of were the works of Marat, even those which he himself printed, which he accounted for naturally enough by saying that there were times in which it might be somewhat hazardous to possess them.’ Croker induced the British Museum in 1817 to purchase the collection, and he afterwards formed a collection of his own which ultimately had the same destination. There were politicians like Grey, F. J. Robinson, Fazakerley, Grattan, Whitbread, and Brougham. Brougham attended the sittings of the Institute, of which he was afterwards to be an associate, saw Laplace, and had a long conversation with Carnot. This was his first visit to France, for his step-grandson Sir Edward Malet is mistaken in stating that he once heard Mirabeau speak. ‘I never,’ says Brougham, ‘spent any time by half so delightful. My fortnight passed like a day.’ Are we to attribute to this visit the birth of an infant afterwards known as Madame Blaze de Bury, who died in 1894 at the age of eighty, and who in spite of her alleged birth as a Stewart in Scotland was believed to be Brougham’s daughter by a French mother? She strongly resembled him both physically and mentally. Her husband had an English mother named Bury; her daughter, like herself a writer, died in December 1902.

There was Thelwall, the acquitted Radical of 1794, who had temporarily renounced politics and taken to the cure of stammering. There was Arthur Thistlewood, who, it is said, had visited Paris in 1794, and who soon entered into conspiracies, the last of which, named from Cato Street, resulted in his conviction and execution in 1820. He was decidedly an exception among the visitors, yet the Paris air may have helped to lead him astray, for it was an atmosphere of conspiracy.

There were philosophers and historians such as Sir James Mackintosh, who was anxious to explore the French archives, taking ten copyists with him; but these formidable preparations not unnaturally occasioned obstruction from a suspicious curator, Hauterive,[274] so that Wellington had to urge that no mischief could result from the disclosure of political secrets half a century old. Mackintosh’s son-in-law, Claudius James Rich, the traveller, accompanied him, and the transcripts then made are now in the British Museum. They are limited to the times of the Stuarts.

Archibald Alison, the future historian, accompanied by a fellow Scot and fellow historian, Patrick Fraser Tytler, also went in May 1814, returning by Flanders. It is not clear from their joint narrative whether both or Tytler alone went in the autumn to Aix, staying till the eve of Napoleon’s return.

There were three poets, Rogers, Moore, and Campbell, the last stopping at Rouen to see his brother Daniel, from whom he had parted at Hamburg in 1800. Mrs. Siddons took over her daughter Cecily, who did not continue her mother’s fame, but married a Scottish lawyer, George Combe. Kemble escorted her, with Mrs. Twiss, whose brother-in-law Richard had seen Paris in 1792. There was Mrs. Damer, the artist, of whom we have already heard and shall hear again. There was the more eminent sculptor Chantrey, who made the acquaintance of Canova. There was Curran, who had just resigned his judgeship, and Serjeant Best, not yet a judge. The Duke of Sussex had given Curran an introduction to the future Charles X. Everything he heard intensified his hatred of Napoleon.[275] There were military men like General Ramsay, Bruce, destined to assist in the escape of Lavalette, and Lord Cathcart, who had taken part in the expedition to Copenhagen and was subsequently Ambassador to St. Petersburg. Madame Junot, in whose house Cathcart was quartered, and who speaks highly of his courtesy, had also to receive Lord and Lady Cole, who sent for Eliza Bathurst. She was the handsome daughter of the diplomatist who so mysteriously disappeared. Another military visitor was Colonel William Carmichael Smyth, who had accompanied his father in 1802; but Count Nugent, though born in Ireland, was an Austrian officer. The Navy was represented by Sir Sidney Smith, who was bound for the Congress of Vienna to plead for the reinstatement of Gustavus IV. on the throne of Sweden. He also advocated an international expedition against the piratical Dey of Algiers, of which he would himself have taken the command. Nothing came of either scheme, but he got up a subscription dinner, attended by royal and other celebrities, the proceeds of which were devoted to the redemption of prisoners in Algiers. Science was represented by a Scottish professor, John (afterwards Sir John) Leslie, an Edinburgh Reviewer and eminent mathematician, who formed the habit of paying yearly visits to the Continent. There were philanthropists like Clarkson, who, as on his visit in 1789, was eager to obtain the consent of the new French Government to the abolition of the slave-trade, while Wilberforce and Zachary Macaulay, the historian’s father, were interesting themselves at home in the same cause, the latter sending over, or taking advantage of the presence of, his brother General Macaulay. Clarkson found sympathy from Lafayette, Bishop Grégoire, and Madame de Staël. The antiquary and connoisseur, James Millingen, passed through Paris on his way to or from Florence, as also William Stewart Rose, translator of Ariosto, friend of Ugo Foscolo, Walter Scott, and the Countess of Albany. He was destined to find a wife at Venice. There were painters like Stothard, Wilkie, and Haydon, to the last of whom we are indebted for the liveliest account of Paris, though this, like the rest of his journal, was not published till after his tragical death. He represents Wilkie as constantly exclaiming, ‘What a fool Napoleon was to lose such a country! dear, dear!’ Both Wilkie and Haydon sang ‘God save the King’ in the streets of Rouen, to the amazement or amusement of the townsmen, one of whom said they were English milords. In Paris Wilkie tried to sell his prints, and had frequent disputes at restaurants about change. Another note-taker was Thomas Raikes, brother of the founder of Sunday-schools, but unfortunately his diary does not begin till 1832. A third diarist was Henry Crabb Robinson, to whom street urchins at Dieppe shouted ‘Be off!’ and who in a Rouen theatre heard a line against England applauded. He spent five weeks in Paris without a moment’s ennui, yet left it without a moment’s regret, travelling to Boulogne in company with Copleston, ‘a very sensible, well-informed clergyman,’ just elected Provost of Oriel at Oxford, and destined to be Bishop of Llandaff. Stephen Weston and William Shepherd went doubtless with the intention of again reporting their adventures. William D. Fellowes found material for one of his books, and on another visit in 1817 he visited the old monastery of La Trappe. There were agriculturists like Morris Birkbeck of Wanborough. There were doctors like Hume, chief physician to the army, and Williams the oculist.

Among the aristocratic visitors were Viscount Ponsonby, afterwards Ambassador to Constantinople and Vienna, and the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, parents of the present Duke of Rutland, the Duke publishing his fortnight’s journal and receiving many attentions from Count Dillon. There were also the Earl of Charlemont, the Earl of Bradford, Lord Forbes, Lord Lucan, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Kinnaird, Lady Aldborough (who remained till after Waterloo), the Marquis and Marchioness of Lansdowne, the Marquis of Downshire, Lord Ilchester, Lord Hill, the Marquis and Marchioness of Bath, the Earl and Countess of Hardwicke, Lord and Lady Coventry, the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, Lord Binning (afterwards Earl of Haddington), Lord Compton, the Marquis of Exeter, Lord and Lady Ranelagh, the Duke of Portland, Lord Gosford, Lord Trimleston, the Earl and Countess Darnley, the Duke of Devonshire, his stepmother, Lord and Lady Morpeth, Lord Geo. Leveson-Gower, Sir John Sebright, M.P. for Hertfordshire, Lord Sunderland, grandson of the Duke of Marlborough, Sir John and Lady Stepney, Lady Augusta Cotton, Lord and Lady Holland, the Earl of Clare, Lord Carington, Lord Brownlow, Lady Bentinck, the notorious Lady Hamilton, the aged Duchess of Melfort with her son, the Marquis of Aylesbury, Lord Miltown, who, paralysed in his legs from childhood, went about in a chair, William Henry (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, Lord Burghersh (as Earl of Westmorland he became a diplomatist), Lord Apsley, son and heir of Earl Bathurst, the Earl of Essex,[276] Sir John and Lady Knatchbull, Sir W. Clayton, Bagot (afterwards Sir Charles), and the Marquis of Clanricarde, who married Canning’s daughter, was famous for gymnastic feats, and was afterwards Ambassador to Russia, Postmaster-General, and Lord Privy Seal. Edward John Littleton, M.P. for Staffordshire, a classical scholar, was accompanied by his handsome wife, Hyacinth Mary, natural daughter of the Marquis Wellesley, but recognised by the Wellesley family. Lady Priscilla Wellesley, daughter of the Earl of Mornington, another but legitimate niece of Wellington, just of age and destined to be Lady Burghersh and Countess of Westmorland, was in time to see d’Artois enter Paris. She survived till 1879.[277] Lord Fitzroy Somerset, son of the Duke of Beaufort, in 1852 became Lord Raglan and was destined to die before Sebastapol. He married in August 1814 Wellington’s other favourite niece, Lady Emily Wellesley. The Earl of Harrowby was accompanied by Wellesley Pole and Gerald Wellesley, son of Sir Henry and afterwards Prebendary of Durham. Lord Aberdeen, Ambassador at Vienna, who had accompanied the Austrian army in its march into France, was one of the English diplomatists who signed the Treaty of Paris of May 1814. John William Ward, afterwards Viscount and Earl of Dudley, a contributor to the Quarterly and M.P. for Ilchester, was also in Paris on his way to Italy. He rated Napoleon above Alexander and Cæsar. Ward’s travelling companion from Calais was General Montagu Mathew, M.P. for Tipperary, brother of the Earl of Landaff and a strenuous advocate of Catholic Emancipation. Thompson, M.P. for Midhurst—it is not clear whether he was the ex-M.P. for Evesham, a captive in 1803—was second on the 9th February 1815 in a bloodless duel between Colonels Quentin and Palmer, the latter firing in the air after his antagonist had fired and missed.

We should not omit among the visitors Anne Perry, the wife of James Perry of the Morning Chronicle. Perry himself had spent a year in Paris in 1792, sending of course letters to his paper, and he may be regarded as the earliest of Paris correspondents. He had, moreover, for the previous twelve months obtained the services of a French barrister named Sanchamau, the translator of several English works. Sanchamau at first found a seat on sufferance in the Assembly, in the gallery allotted to the suppléants, that is to say, the men destined to fill up vacancies from death or other causes; but he applied on the 22nd January 1792 for a permanent seat in the new journalists’ gallery.[278] To return to Perry’s wife, she was captured by Algerian pirates on her way home from Lisbon, and although soon released, captivity and seventeen weeks of a boisterous sea aggravated her already precarious health. She expired at Bordeaux in February 1815, at the age of thirty-eight. We do not hear whether her husband attended her deathbed.

Even London shopkeepers went over for a week. John Scott, editor of the Champion, encountered one full of anti-French prejudices, ignorant of the language, unprovided even with a passport, and equipped only with Bank of England notes.[279]

To accommodate the visitors, an Anglican service was held in a chapel of the Protestant Oratoire, probably the upper room which was hired from about 1860 to 1885 by the Church of Scotland, and Galignani’s Messenger was started, an edition of which, after Waterloo and during the stay of the British garrison, was published at Cambrai.

‘The English at that time,’ says Madame de Chastenay, ‘almost did us the honours of Paris’; that is to say, they seemed hosts rather than guests, and after the first ball both sexes discarded their eccentric costumes. Yet they did not find themselves altogether welcome. The middle classes feared an English monopoly of trade, returned prisoners told stories of ill-treatment in England, and the populace resented the arrogance of conquerors. Miss Anne Carter must have been strangely mistaken in writing to her sister, ‘It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm with which we are everywhere received as English.’[280] Thomas Campbell, on the other hand, had been hooted at Dieppe, which he found incensed against the English, yet he does not speak of any incivility in Paris, where he danced attendance for nearly two months on Mrs. Siddons.[281]

A confidential police bulletin of the 17th October 1814 says:—

‘The attention of the police has been called to the multitude of English who inundate Paris, and whose obscure station occasions uneasiness as to their destination and intentions. It is remembered on this point that after the Treaty of Amiens the French Government made an official complaint that the London police had vomited (sic) six or seven hundred persons, the scum of England, who secretly influenced trade, public opinion, and police. We see collected here a number of disreputable people who appear to be without means of subsistence, and whose arrival from England seems an enigma.’

Again on the 4th November:—

‘It is positively stated that on Saturday last Lord Wellington complained to the King of the mortification and ill-treatment which various Englishmen have experienced and are daily experiencing in Paris, as well as of the lack of supervision shown by the French authorities in putting an end to these dangerous aggressions. It is a fact that at the Café Tortoni, the Opera, the restaurants, and in other public places, Englishmen are constantly affronted. These disorders are attributed to a troop of half-pay officers or to some turbulent men discharged from the Guard of Honour. It seems certain, moreover, that Lord Wellington has expressly enjoined the English who are in Paris to behave very circumspectly, and not to notice provocations which might disturb the harmony necessary between the two nations.’

And on 19th December:—

‘Every day there are fresh occasions of remarking the hatred of the Parisians for the English. Yesterday at the Salon the most violent language was used respecting them, and that to their faces.’

In flat contradiction, however, to the police bulletins, Wansey describes the Parisians as glad to see English visitors once more amongst them.[282] The British milord was good-naturedly burlesqued, as Weston tells us, in a farce called La Route de Paris. A provincial innkeeper welcomes milord and miladi. His bad French and her veil excite amusement. The lord asks for beefsteak for dinner. The lady is enchanted with everything. The lord cries ‘God dem, vive la paix,’ while the lady remarks that French and English have always been near enough to shake hands. The landlord rejoices that the lily after twenty years’ preservation in an English conservatory is as flourishing as ever. Birkbeck, moreover, testifies to the welcome given to Englishmen at Montpellier, which he attributed to the kindness shown to French prisoners in England. Yet Haydon relates that on the performance of Ducis’ Hamlet at the Comédie Française, the whole pit rose and applauded a line against England, shouting ‘Bravo, à bas les Anglais,’ and pointing to the English present.

If the French authorities looked askance on English visitors, it is but fair to say that some of the latter sympathised with Napoleon. Lord and Lady Holland were doubtless among them, for Lord Holland subsequently protested against the transportation to St. Helena, and Lady Holland, as already stated, forwarded books thither to the captive. They were not likely, when in Paris, to parade their anti-Bourbon sentiments, but Hervey Montmorency Morris was less scrupulous. He, on the 19th April 1814, presented his newly born infant at the mairie of the tenth arrondissement, and gave its name as Napoleon.[283] A young Irishman named Charles Honoré Lyster, describing himself as a student, a few months later landed at Toulon from Elba, and the authorities very naturally ordered him to be watched. Lord Oxford’s papers, moreover, were seized, and Wellington acknowledged that this was justified by his conduct and conversation, and by the Bonapartist correspondence of which he had taken charge.

I have spoken of Wellington, but it should be stated that the Embassy was at first filled by Sir Charles Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Rothesay. He presented his credentials to Louis XVIII. on the 22nd June, but was soon transferred to The Hague. Wellington arrived with his troops from Spain on the 7th May, but went back to Madrid to see the Spanish dynasty restored, returned to England to take his seat in the Lords as Duke, and was then appointed ambassador. He presented his credentials on the 24th August, but with much greater pomp than Stuart. Three royal carriages, each drawn by eight horses, escorted from the Embassy his three carriages, each drawn by six horses. He was accompanied by Major Fremantle and Major Percy. On reaching the foot of the throne he made a profound reverence, whereupon the King rose, then sat down again, putting on his hat and motioning to Wellington and the princes of the blood to cover also. The crowd murmured at these honours, though they were also accorded to all the other ambassadors, while the ultra-royalists professed indignation at the Duke’s fixing a ball in honour of Queen Charlotte’s birthday for the 18th January 1814, as being a date too close to the 21st, the anniversary of Louis XVI.’s execution. They were also suspicious of his intimacy with the Duke of Orleans. He paid a visit to the Abbé Sicard’s deaf and dumb boys, who were not, however, dumb, for they articulated ‘Vive notre bon roi Louis XVIII.!’ The Duchess of Wellington was presented by the King with a Sèvres dinner-service. The British Government was very uneasy lest Wellington should be ‘kidnapped’—an euphemism for being murdered—in some military rising. Anxious, therefore, for him to leave, its first idea was to send him to America to command in the short war with the United States. He himself, however, wished to remain in Paris, thinking that his departure would weaken Louis XVIII. A mission to the Vienna Congress he considered a poor pretext, but the Government persisted, though allowing him to choose his own time for departure. General Macaulay meanwhile went back to London with alarming reports. Wellington, writing to Lord Liverpool on the 23rd October, said:—

‘It appears to me that Macaulay considers the danger of a revolt more certain and more likely to occur than I do, that is to say, he believes it certainly will occur within a very short period of time. I think it may occur any night, but I know of no fact to induce me to believe it is near, excepting the general one of great discontent and almost desperation among a very daring class of men.’

Macaulay feared that the royal family would be massacred and Wellington ‘detained.’ Wellington stayed, however, till the 22nd January. Meanwhile he was besieged with all sorts of applications. Hervey Montmorency Morris asked permission to return to Ireland, promising to be a loyal subject. Wellington demurred, suggesting that in spite of his good intentions he would fall back into the company of his old associates through the disinclination of loyalists to associate with him. Morris accordingly remained in the French army, was naturalised in November 1816, and remained in France till his death in 1839.

A man designating himself representative of De Beaune, who in 1790 negotiated a loan for the three English royal dukes, also called on Wellington. He stated that the bondholders were pressing him for payment of the principal and of the twenty years’ arrears of interest. Wellington forwarded his documents to London, but nothing more is heard of the affair. Impey was there again on the same errand as in 1802, and Long, ex-president of the Irish College, went over to seek restitution; but these claims all stood over till after the Hundred Days. The Scottish College, however, was restored to its owners, and on the 13th December Robertson, bishop-coadjutor of Dublin and inventor of a process of embossing books for the blind, solemnised a Te Deum there in the presence of numerous British ecclesiastics. Quintin Craufurd likewise sent in a statement of British claims to compensation, and he obtained the restitution of eighty pictures, engravings, and sculptures confiscated in 1792.

Wellington received directions to prevent Princess Caroline from repairing from Strasburg to Paris, though his own opinion was that she might safely have been permitted to amuse herself. Louis XVIII., out of consideration for the Prince Regent, had resolved not to receive her. She nevertheless in October paid an incognito visit.

But few of the English visitors could have been in time to see the Tsar, with his sons Constantine and Nicholas, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia, with his two sons, one of them the future William I., destined to re-enter Paris as a conqueror in 1871, for their stay was very short. The Russian and Prussian sovereigns went on to England in June, while the Austrian Emperor pleaded Italian affairs as preventing him from also going. The brilliant uniforms of their officers, however, continued to enliven the streets of the capital. Louis had pressed the Prince Regent to come over, telling him that the three monarchs seconded the invitation, but the Prince, ‘fat, fair, and forty,’ or rather, as Leigh Hunt had been imprisoned for describing him, ‘an Adonis of fifty,’ probably shrank from the fatigue of the journey, or possibly he was not too confident of the stability of the restored dynasty. He made the excuse that a Regency Act would be necessary if he left his realm, yet his ancestors had paid visits to Hanover. His subjects were of course eager to be presented at Court. Shepherd speaks of Louis as ‘uncomfortably corpulent and seemed very infirm in his feet, but his countenance is extremely pleasing, and if any reliance is to be placed on physiognomy, he is a man of a very benevolent disposition.’[284] Shepherd went in clerical costume, fancying that this would be sufficient, but Stuart telling him the contrary, he had to hurry off to a tailor to get properly equipped.

Dr. Williams presented the King with portraits of George III. and the Prince Regent, ‘two princes to whom,’ Louis said, ‘he had vowed the most faithful remembrance.’ Sir Herbert Croft presented to him verses addressed to the Duchess of Angoulême. Galignani, who, though an Italian ex-priest, may be considered an Englishman by marriage and adoption, presented thirty volumes of his English reprints, his Paris Guide, and his Modern Spectator. Street, editor and part proprietor of the Courier, also had an audience, and was complimented on his journal’s ten years’ advocacy of the cause of the Bourbons.[285]

Those visitors who were not presented at Court had an opportunity of seeing the King on his way to chapel. Haydon, who describes him as ‘keen, fat, and eagle-eyed,’ joined in shouting ‘Vive le roi!’ He remarked that Napoleon’s initials still dotted the vestibule of the chapel. The Duke of Rutland also remarked that the draperies of the Tuileries were dotted with bees, and that ‘N’ or an eagle was visible on all the furniture. This was a perpetual reminder to the Bourbons of the dethroned ruler. But few of these emblems appear to have been at first effaced in Paris, lest this should provoke counter-demonstrations, though provincial authorities displayed more zeal and less tact. Yet Stephen Weston speaks of thousands of workmen being employed in removing them, and Birkbeck observed men busily effacing Napoleon’s name and eagles from public buildings, which he thought very pitiful, while Scott noticed ingenious attempts to turn ‘N’ into ‘L’ or ‘H’ in honour of Louis XVIII. or Henri IV. He also speaks of a sign ‘Café de l’Empereur’ being converted into ‘Café des Empereurs’ in honour of the Russian and Austrian monarchs.

On the 21st January, the anniversary of Louis XVI.’s execution, there was an imposing procession on the transfer of his and his Queen’s remains to St. Denis, and requiem masses were celebrated all over France, the Protestant pastors Monod and Marron also holding services, albeit the latter had flattered Napoleon. These masses were ordered to be annual, but were never repeated. There were other spectacles. There was the proclamation of peace by a herald on the 1st June with all the revived formalities of the old Monarchy. The spoils of Italian art, including the Venetian horses, still embellished Paris, though destined to removal as a punishment for the Hundred Days. Sunday and festival observance was enforced on shops and factories, by a decree of the Prefect of Police on the 7th June. The host, for the first time since the Revolution, was carried through the streets on Corpus Christi day, all houses on the route having to be draped, and bystanders being expected, if not required, to uncover as it passed. The streets, says Haydon, were hung with tapestries, and altars were erected at various points. It was the first Sunday since the Revolution that shops had been shut, yet the gaming-tables were open as usual. Parisians did not fail to remark that these measures were decreed by a notorious sceptic, Beugnot. When Corpus Christi day came round again on the 25th May 1815, Napoleon was once more on the throne. On the 29th August the King paid a State visit to the Hotel de Ville, in honour of which Paris illuminated. The fountains in the Champs Elysées poured forth wine for all comers, and comestibles were also gratuitous.[286]

The London newspapers expressed distrust in the stability of the new government, and doubtless on that account were prohibited admission to France. English officials seem to have shared this sentiment, for in July 1814 Admiral Mackenzie, who had brought over the Duc de Berri, suddenly renounced his intended wintering in the south and recrossed the Channel. Crabb Robinson remarked that when the King reviewed the National Guard the cheers were very faint, and that there were some cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Even the Rev. R. W. Wake, curate of Maidstone, who, having only a week’s holiday, went no further than Calais and Boulogne, was struck by the regret with which Napoleon’s fall was spoken of.[287] Yet some of the visitors descried no troubles ahead. Wansey, who was in Paris in June, going thither by Dieppe and returning by Boulogne, says:—

‘That there are many dissatisfied with the new order of things, particularly among the military, there is no doubt, and we may expect to hear of partial insurrections and commotions among the men returned from the wars.... But a Government that employs men of such talents as those I have mentioned (Talleyrand, Fouché, Louis, and Montesquiou) will not be easily overturned, particularly as the leaders of the army are with the Court; and as to the return of Napoleon, he ran the full length of his tether. You will hear no more of his rule in France.’[288]

John Scott, however, in the diligence between Dieppe and Paris, heard an officer with Napoleon’s portrait on his snuff-box say, in reply to English expressions of satisfaction at the peace, ‘All very well, this tranquillity of Europe is a fine thing, but will it not keep me always a captain?’ Another officer, though originally forced away from the study of medicine into the army, spoke with enthusiasm of Napoleon, and the mass of the people, while admitting Napoleon’s faults, were in Scott’s judgment in his favour. ‘Ah but he was a great man!’ was the common phrase.

Richard Boyle Bernard, M.P., son of the Earl of Bandon, remarked that Louis XVIII., passing on his way to mass, was repeatedly greeted with cries of ‘Vive le roi!’ and he believed the most respectable portion of the nation to be loyal; but the number of discontented spirits would, he thought, necessitate prolonged vigilance. At Calais theatre, moreover, on his way back in the autumn, Bernard heard a passage expressing satisfaction with the peace hissed by the officers present.[289] He was struck, too, by the dislike felt in France for the English, which was in striking contrast to their cordial welcome in Germany.

Ward, who saw Louis XVIII. enter Paris, remarked that the applause was neither long nor vehement, and that the Bourbons were received with cold acquiescence.[290]

Eustace, the Catholic priest, likewise gives no hint of another overturn, yet his visits of 1790 and 1802 should have taught him the instability of French politics. Moreover, a sentry told him that the Emperor had in ten years done more to embellish Paris than the Bourbons in a century, and that had he reigned ten years longer he would have made it the finest city in the world. Jones, chaplain on board the Blenheim at anchor off Marseilles, was more excusable in regarding the fall of Napoleon as definitive, yet the very parallel which he drew in his 29th May sermon between the English and the French Restoration might have reminded him that 1660 was reversed by 1688. Weston, however, was struck not by any feeling in favour of Napoleon, but by the sarcasms heaped on him; and Shepherd, though he doubted the allegiance of the army, thought the mass of the people friendly to the Bourbons. The smallest spark amid so much inflammable matter might, he knew, produce an extensive conflagration. Some of the numerous pamphlets on Napoleon which, pending the institution of a censorship, were freely hawked in the streets, were the work of admirers, and the Grand Duke Constantine heard Louis XVIII. gravely reply, when the rest of the royal family had been disparaging Napoleon, ‘Napoleon has done wonders for the glory and welfare of France, and if I can render her happy it will be by following the documents which he has left. I should like to have as good a head as he whose chair I am occupying and whose table is serving me to write at, for I feel myself inferior to him.’[291] But even pessimists, while apprehending a revolution, had no fear of Napoleon’s return.

Return however he did, and those Englishmen who had visited him at Elba cannot have been among the most startled. As early as the 29th July, less than three months after Napoleon’s arrival in his little realm, General Spallannchi reported from Florence that some Englishmen had gone out of curiosity to Elba but had returned in ill-humour, the fallen monarch having barely allowed them to see him and that only in his garden. It seems from the statement of Vice-Consul Innes that the party numbered seven, including one lady, and that after being kept a long time waiting for an answer the garden interview was assigned them for the next day. A Warwickshire man who had passed through Paris and whose letter, intercepted by the Leghorn police, was signed ‘Richard,’ evidently his Christian name, sailed from Leghorn with his sister on the 24th November, but was told that Napoleon refused to receive curiosity-mongers. Not easily to be foiled, however, he made a second voyage and on alighting at an hotel at Porto Ferrajo on the 2nd December found covers laid for thirty Corsican functionaries in honour of the anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation in 1804. Such a celebration did not argue renunciation of empire. On the following day he was allowed an audience, but nothing having been said about his sister he had to leave her outside. Napoleon, whom he found standing in a small room, advanced with an affable air and asked, ‘Where do you come from?’

‘Warwickshire.’

‘I do not remember the name.’

‘It is in the very centre of England.’

‘What is your occupation?’

‘General commerce, but chiefly manufactures.’

‘Do you find much custom in Italy?’

‘Tolerable.’

‘None in France, eh?’

‘None at present, for want of a commercial treaty.’

‘A commercial treaty would suit you?’

‘Certainly, but I do not think we shall get it.’

‘I did your commerce much mischief.’

‘Not so much as was supposed. Our trade found outlets out of Europe which were very profitable.’

‘The troubles in Spain will open up their colonies to you?’

‘Yes, but at first they will be jealously closed.’

‘Your licence system was bad. It was semi-robbery.’

‘This kind of conversation’ (says Richard), ‘lasted about an hour, and then turned on France.... He asked me whether I was in Paris during the Peace of Amiens. “Yes.” “You found it now much altered?” “Yes, much larger than in 1802.” “It is a fine city,” he added.... I took the opportunity of reminding him of my sister, but he took no notice. He then conversed for a few minutes, making altogether half an hour. On getting up to leave he asked me to introduce my sister, whom he received with the greatest affability, keeping up a conversation with her till a carriage was heard coming, when he bowed and we retired.... He frequently put his fingers into a small snuff-box, but did not seem to take much notice of its contents. He asked me whether I thought the Bourbons were really popular in France. He told me he had found the heat more trying in Russia in the month of August than in any other part of Europe, and he explained the reason. I remarked evident signs of interest and inquisitiveness when speaking of the Bourbons. He twice asked me whether they were popular in France and what was said of them, and was not satisfied with a vague reply.’[292]

Frederick Douglas, M.P., son of Lord Glenbervie, on his way home from Athens had a courteous reception, which did not however prevent him from speaking and voting in 1815 for the renewal of the war.

‘Why have you come?’ asked Napoleon.

‘To see a great man.’

‘Rather to see a wild beast,’ rejoined Napoleon, who inquired whether Douglas had seen Murat or the Pope. The latter, said Napoleon, ‘is an obstinately resigned old man. I did not treat him properly. I did not go the right way to work with him.’ As to the state of France, Douglas reported that there was much enthusiasm for the Bourbons, though there were a few malcontents. ‘Yes,’ remarked Napoleon, ‘people who belong to whatever party pays them and make much stir in order to get money.’ Napoleon went on to complain of the treachery of his officers, of the pamphleteers who styled him a usurper, of his brothers for not having seconded him, and of the sovereigns who had abandoned him. Douglas reported that he could no longer mount a horse, and that he had fallen into profound apathy. Perhaps Napoleon intentionally gave him this erroneous impression, knowing that he was on his way to Paris, which he reached in January 1815.[293]

Lord William Bentinck, afterwards Viceroy of India, with a friend were sumptuously regaled, but we have no record of the conversation, and an English lady ‘of angelical beauty,’ whom Pons does not name, but who may have been Lady Jersey, for he says she showed the Emperor continued sympathy during the St. Helena captivity, was received with marked favour. When, on her return to London, she saw the Russian and Prussian sovereigns pass by, she said to the fashionable gathering round her, ‘Those men cannot seem imposing to persons who like me have had a close view of the Emperor Napoleon.’ Another visitor in September 1814 was John Barber Scott, of Bungay, Suffolk, ultimately a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but then a graduate twenty-two years of age, who was accompanied by Major (Patrick?) Maxwell, R.A., Colonel (afterwards General) John Lemoine, R. A., Captain Smith, and Colonel Niel Douglas.

They encountered Napoleon as he was out riding, and on their saluting him he stopped for a few minutes to question them. They thought he looked more like a crafty priest than a hero. On being told that Scott was a Cantab he said, ‘What, Cambridge, Cambridge? Oh yes, you are a young man; you will be a lawyer. Eh, eh, you will be Lord Chancellor?’ Being told by Douglas that he belonged to a Highland regiment, Napoleon asked whether they did not wear kilts (jupes). On Douglas replying in the affirmative, Napoleon asked whether he had brought his kilt with him, as he should like to see it, but Douglas was unable to gratify his curiosity.[294]

Equally short, or even shorter, had been the interview of Sir Gilbert Starling and a Mr. Campbell.[295]

One visitor said he was as pleased to have spent nine days at Elba as if he had won £30,000. Napoleon, however, refused audiences to Englishmen whom he suspected of simple curiosity or of exultation at his fall.[296] When he went to Longone, the second town in the island, there were numerous English visitors, and it was remarked to him that they followed him wherever he went. He replied, ‘I am an object of curiosity; let them satisfy themselves. They will go home and amuse the gentlemans (sic) by describing my acts and gestures.’ He added in a sad tone, ‘They have won the game; they hold the dice.’

Yet so far from showing him disrespect, Pons states that these sixty visitors of all classes vied in extolling him. Pons also acknowledges that Colonel Campbell, though deputed by his Government to watch Napoleon, veiled his supervision so carefully that only the closest observation could detect it.[297]

But the principal visitor, and the only one invited to dinner, was Lord Ebrington, afterwards Earl of Fortescue and in 1839–1841 Viceroy of Ireland. He first waited on the Emperor at 8 P.M. on the 6th December, and for three hours walked up and down the room with him. ‘You come from France; tell me frankly,’ said Napoleon, ‘whether the French are satisfied.’ ‘Only so-so,’ replied Ebrington. ‘It cannot be otherwise,’ rejoined Napoleon; ‘they have been too much humiliated by the peace. The appointment of the Duke of Wellington as Ambassador must have seemed an insult to the army, as also the special attentions shown him by the King. If Lord Wellington had come to Paris as a visitor, I should have had pleasure in showing him the attentions due to his great ability, but I should not have liked his being sent to me as Ambassador.’

The justice of this remark is obvious. Napoleon extolled the House of Lords as the bulwark of the English constitution. He denounced the duplicity of the Emperor Alexander, expressed esteem for the Austrian Emperor, and spoke slightingly of the King of Prussia. ‘How should I be treated,’ he asked Ebrington, ‘if I went to England? Should I be stoned?’ Ebrington replied that he would run no risk, and that the irritation formerly existing against him was daily dying out. ‘I think, however,’ rejoined Napoleon, ‘that there would be some danger from your mob’—he used the English word—‘at London.’

‘The grace of his smile and the simplicity of his manner,’ says Ebrington, ‘had put me quite at my ease. He himself appeared to wish me to question him. He replied without the least hesitation, with a promptitude and clearness which I have never seen equalled in any other man.’

Next day, just as Ebrington was preparing to sail, came an invitation to dinner, and this second interview lasted from seven till eleven. Napoleon inquired for the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Whitworth, Erskine, and Holland, and spoke especially of Fox. Informed that Fox felt much flattered at his reception in 1802, Napoleon said, ‘He had reason to be so. He was everywhere received like a divinity because he was known to be in favour of peace.’ ‘Tell Lord Grenville,’ added Napoleon, ‘to come and see me. I wager that you in England thought me a devil, but now that you have seen me and France also you must be somewhat disabused.’ He justified the detentions of 1803. Ebrington, however, maintained that the embargo on French shipping in British ports prior to the formal declaration of war was in accordance with precedent, on which Napoleon replied, ‘Yes, you considered it right because it was to your advantage; other nations who lost by it thought it wrong. I am sure that at heart you in England approved me for showing force of character. Do you not see that I am a bit of a pirate like yourselves?’

Napoleon half in earnest advocated polygamy, especially in the colonies, where a planter might have a wife of each colour, so that the two families might grow up together harmoniously. He inquired for ‘my good friend Ussher’—Captain, afterwards Sir Thomas Ussher—who had conveyed him to Elba.

On surprise being expressed by Ebrington at his calm endurance of adversity, Napoleon said, ‘It is because everybody was more surprised at it than myself. I have not too good an opinion of mankind, and have always distrusted fortune. Moreover, I had little enjoyment. My brothers were much more kings than I was. They tasted the sweets of royalty, while I had only the worries and cares.’[298]

Lord John Russell, the future statesman, then twenty-three years of age, being taken by his father to Florence in the autumn of 1814, embraced the opportunity of visiting Elba. ‘When I saw Napoleon,’ he says, ‘he was in evident anxiety respecting the state of France and his chances of again seizing the crown which he had worn for ten years. I was so struck with his restless inquiry that I expressed in a letter to my brother in England my conviction that he would make some fresh attempts to disturb France and govern Europe.’[299]

But by far the most curious incident of Napoleon’s reign at Elba was his presence at an entertainment in honour of George III.’s birthday, given on the 4th June 1814 by Captain Tower on board the frigate Undaunted. Napoleon, on reaching Fréjus after his abdication in April, had embarked in the Undaunted in preference to a French vessel assigned for his passage to Elba, and had taken a fancy to the captain, Ussher. The Undaunted went to and from Elba and Leghorn, and it might have celebrated the royal birthday at the latter port. Napoleon afterwards thought that Colonel (ultimately Sir Neil) Campbell purposely planned the celebration at Elba. When, however, Towers invited him to come on board, and sent round invitations to the principal inhabitants of Porto Ferrajo, he readily accepted the invitation, and directed his courtiers, if such a phrase can be used, to do likewise. One of these, Pons de l’Hérault, to whom we are indebted for the fullest account of the festival—not published, however, till 1897[300]—was inclined indeed to regard the invitation as an insult and the festival as a bravado; but his master told him that it was the duty of British sailors to observe their sovereign’s birthday wherever they might happen to be. A ‘throne,’ says Pons, had been prepared for the Emperor on the bridge; and he continues:—

‘The Emperor arrived, and the ship’s officers received him at the top of the ladder. Guns could not be fired, as they were not mounted, but the crew, clustered on the rigging, gave him three hearty cheers, and the Emperor looking up at them raised his hat. He then passed to the quarter-deck. There all were ranged in a circle, and the Emperor, as though quite at home, his left hand as usual in his fob, put the trivial questions which he nearly always employed on such occasions, for he did not bother himself with finding remarks appropriate to each particular individual. It was not his moment for parade. When the circle had broken up the Emperor asked for an interpreter and went to talk to the sailors, especially to a mate with whom he had several times conversed during his passage from Fréjus to the isle of Elba. The entire crew seemed eager to see him again. The countenances of these good fellows expressed the very contrary of the perversity of their Government. Captain Tower sincerely admired the Emperor, and watched all his movements with a gaze full of respect and interest. He had one of those open countenances which inspire confidence. The Emperor said to me ... “The English Government will never forgive me for having been the most determined Frenchman in breaking down its supremacy. Not that hatred actuated me, it was duty, it was love of country.[301]

All well-bred Englishmen consequently honour me. If I went to England the English Government would be afraid of my popularity and would pack me off.” ... The same cheers accompanied the Emperor on his departure, and he responded with the same salute.’[302]

Pons, with his wife and children and the other guests, remained to the dinner and ball. Unfortunately, two of the ship’s officers drank a little too much, and so misbehaved themselves as to oblige several of the ladies to withdraw. It is pathetic to think that Napoleon’s next and last acquaintance with British tars was when, thirteen months later, he gave himself up to the Bellerophon, and was conveyed as a captive in the Northumberland to St. Helena.

One Englishman at least was a spectator of Napoleon’s departure from Elba. A Mr. Grattan (probably the father of Thomas Colley Grattan, the traveller and novelist) had landed on the island on the 24th February. On the evening of the 26th he noticed unusual bustle, as though something was about to happen, and at 9 P.M. he saw Napoleon, escorted by General Bertrand, come out in his sister Pauline’s four-horse carriage, enter a boat, and go on board the brig Inconstant. Thereupon the whole flotilla got under way, the soldiers shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Scarcely believing his eyes, Grattan hired a boat to go alongside the brig, and thence he saw Napoleon in his grey overcoat and round hat pacing the quarter-deck. One of the boatmen, however, cried out that there was an Englishman on board, upon which an officer on the poop of the Inconstant demanded who he was and what he wanted. Grattan had to explain that he had merely come to have a look at the Emperor, whereupon he was told to be off, and he complied with alacrity, expecting every instant to be fired at or arrested.[303]

Up to the 20th March the Moniteur had continued publishing loyal addresses to Louis XVIII., but on the 21st it announced, ‘The King and the Princes left last night. His Majesty the Emperor arrived this evening at eight o’clock in his palace of the Tuileries.’ One of Napoleon’s first inquiries to a lady of his court was whether there were many English in Paris. On being told that nearly all had left he exclaimed, ‘Ah, they recollect what I did before, but those times are past. You do not repeat yourself.’ John Cam Hobhouse, Byron’s friend, afterwards Lord Broughton, tells us this, and he adds that the detentions of 1802 were against French feeling and could not have been repeated in 1815 in defiance of such a feeling. Napoleon, moreover, may have thought there was a chance of his recognition by the allies,[304] and the detention of foreigners would have been a virtual declaration of war. Yet the stampede was obviously prudent, and the principal Englishman who remained did not escape molestation. Francis Henry Egerton, as we have seen, had come over to Paris in 1802, and he had apparently continued to reside uninterruptedly, for he published several works there, both in English and French, between 1812 and 1826. He had hired a house till 1814, but on the restoration of the Bourbons he purchased the mansion of the Noailles family in the rue St. Honoré, and to show his sympathy with the new Government he paid up at once, on the 2nd March 1815, in lieu of by instalments, the stamp duty of 30,000 francs. This seems to have marked him out for Napoleon’s resentment. The house with its contents was requisitioned to serve for a Government office. Egerton resisted, stood a kind of siege, and appealed to the tribunals. He could not, it is obvious, have permanently withstood Napoleon, but he seems to have held his ground until Waterloo arrived and put an end to the affair. He lost no time in securing legal domicile and civic rights, for in default of the latter one alien could not bequeath property to another, such property being forfeit to the French Crown. His support of the Bourbons should have shielded him from further annoyance, but in 1818 he had an unpleasant episode. Workmen who were placing flower-pots on the pillars of the Tuileries gardens found it convenient to fasten ropes to the wall of his back garden in the rue de Rivoli. Egerton drove out in his carriage and required them to desist. An altercation ensued, there were cries of ‘Down with the Englishman!’ and he was dragged out of his carriage to the guardhouse. Though promptly released, he was very punctilious in exacting an apology for this indignity, threatening otherwise to quit France. He was very eccentric in his latter years, if we are to believe that cats and dogs dressed up as human beings sat at his dinner-table, and that he kept rabbits and partridges in his garden in order to have shooting on his own premises. He died as Duke of Bridgewater in 1829, aged seventy-nine, and left £8000 for eight prize treatises which were named after him. The Hôtel St. James, into which his house has been converted, contains the original staircase and other relics of the mansion in which Marie Antoinette welcomed Lafayette and Noailles on their return from America.

Englishmen who, like Egerton, remained or arrived during the Hundred Days witnessed curious scenes. Hobhouse in his passport of 1814 had seen the word empire erased and royaume substituted. He now found a contrary change made. He saw Napoleon review the National Guard on the 16th April, and attend the Comédie Française on the 21st, on both which occasions his reception was enthusiastic. He also witnessed the ceremony on the Champ de Mars, when Napoleon closely scrutinised the crowd with his eyeglass during the mass on which he had resolved in order to show that the Empire was not anti-catholic. Hobhouse, though strenuously opposed to the renewal of the war by the allies, acknowledges that Napoleon was not popular in Paris except with the military, and that the cheers were very faint. Yet he courted popularity by visiting public institutions and by walking about almost unattended and conversing with people of all classes. He removed on the 17th April from the Tuileries, where, however, he still held his councils, to the Elysée, close to the Borghese palace which Wellington had purchased for the British Embassy. The latter was of course vacant, for all the ambassadors had followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent, Fitzroy Somerset assuring him previously to his flight that England would stand by him. In the absence of ambassadors foreigners could not of course be formally presented, but Mrs. Damer obtained an interview to give Napoleon the bust of Fox, which she had promised him in 1802. The jewelled snuff-box bearing his own portrait which he gave her in return is now in the British Museum. Up to the 4th May, if not later, the Calais and Dover mail-packets continued to run, and took many French passengers. When Corpus Christi festival arrived the processions, as from the Revolution till 1813 and as ever since, were confined in Paris to the churches or their enclosures.

Napoleon affected liberal views, not only by summoning Benjamin Constant to his councils, but by inviting to return to Paris his friend Madame de Staël, who had not joined in the exultation at his fall, and indeed had sent him warning to Elba, through his brother Joseph, of a plot against his life. She did not accept the invitation, but wrote to Quintin Craufurd a letter intended for transmission to the English Government, in which she affirmed the sincerity of his liberal professions. Yet she might justly have distrusted these.

Among the Frenchmen who fled to England was one whose Irish extraction entitles him to mention. Jean Baptiste Lynch, whose Jacobite ancestors had settled at Bordeaux, was imprisoned during the Revolution. In 1808 Napoleon made him Mayor of Bordeaux, and in 1810 created him a Count. Lynch was lavish in his professions of fidelity to the Empire, but in 1813 he had secret dealings with a royalist emissary, and in 1814, on the approach of Wellington’s army, he proclaimed Louis XVIII. at Bordeaux. He was the first man in France to do this, and he also sent a deputation to Louis in England. On hearing of Napoleon’s return from Elba and unopposed march on Paris, he despatched the Duchess of Angoulême to England to be out of his reach, and he himself followed her. He was at Newcastle on a visit to a relative when news of Waterloo arrived, and he was cheered by the populace.[305] Louis, who in 1814 had awarded him the grand cross of the Legion of Honour, thus giving him a Napoleonic decoration for deserting Napoleon, made him a peer. In a letter written to a Bordeaux editor in 1816 Lynch urged the justice of Catholic emancipation, but deprecated Irish independence, and expressed a wish to go and deliver loyalist speeches in Ireland, that he might render service to his ancestral as he had done to his native country.

No foreigners applied during the Hundred Days for domicile or naturalisation, whereas previously Philip Dormer Stanhope had obtained domicile,[306] as also James George Hartley, a law student, and naturalisation had been accorded to two Irish officers in the French service—Julius Terence O’Reilly and William Corbett.

On the 12th June Napoleon left for the frontier, and a period of suspense followed. Hobhouse started on the following day for Geneva, but found he could not pass through the armies, and accordingly returned to Paris on the 28th. ‘I cannot help wishing,’ he says in his letters to Byron, which the Quarterly characterised as ‘infamous libels on the English name and character,’ ‘that the French may meet with as much success as will not compromise the military character of my own countrymen; but as an Englishman I cannot be witness of their triumph; as a lover of liberty I would not be a spectator of their reverses.’ This was an utterance published after the event. Perhaps Hobhouse at the time, like Byron, was nevertheless sorry to hear of Waterloo. He seems to have quitted Paris before the re-entry of Louis XVIII., but British residents like Helen Williams, Croft, Craufurd, and Egerton, witnessing the first fall of Napoleon, the accession of Louis, his flight, the arrival of Napoleon, his return from Waterloo, and the re-accession of Louis, beheld in the short space of fourteen months a series of vicissitudes unexampled in human annals.

No Englishman who saw Napoleon in Paris after Waterloo, if any such there were, has left any record of it. It is obvious, indeed, that the few Englishmen then in Paris would shun observation during those days of suspense. An Englishwoman, daughter of one of the officers detained in 1803 and herself born in captivity, may, however, have then seen him. In any case her husband, Legouvé, the Academician who died in March 1903, at the age of ninety-four, was in all probability the last survivor of those who had seen Napoleon in Paris, for he was six years of age in 1815. The last survivor who had mixed in his society at St. Helena was Madame Hortense Eugénie Thayer, daughter of General Bertrand by Henrietta, daughter of General Arthur Dillon. This was one of Napoleon’s compulsory marriages, but Bertrand succeeded in gaining his unwilling bride’s affection. Hortense, born at Paris in 1810, was presented by Napoleon at St. Helena with a pair of earrings, and he witnessed the boring of her ears for this purpose, complimenting her on her composure during the operation. She married Amédée Thayer, a French Senator under the Second Empire, of American extraction. Dying in 1890, she bequeathed to Prince Victor Bonaparte a red damask coat presented to her by Napoleon for a spencer to be made out of it, but preserved intact, together with other relics. We do not hear what became of the earrings. Her mother gave Napoleon lessons in English at St. Helena, and I subjoin a short article on this subject published by me in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1895:—

A recent exhibition of Napoleonic relics in Paris comprised, among numerous specimens of handwriting—one of them the draft abdication of Fontainebleau, another the draft ‘Themistocles’ letter to the Prince Regent—a lesson in translating French into English. Pitying Napoleon as we must, though conscious that captivity alone secured France and Europe against another Hundred Days, his attempt to learn English is irresistibly pathetic. We are reminded of Ovid learning to speak, and even to versify, in Dacian, but Napoleon does not seem to have mastered English sufficiently to be able to write in prose without numerous mistakes. He had been acquainted from his youth, by translations, with several English authors. He was fond of Ossian, and a collection of thirty-four books, given him by his sister Pauline to take with him to Egypt, included Bacon’s Essays, in which he marked in pencil two passages: one in the chapter Of Great Place, from the third sentence, ‘It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty,’ to the sentence preceding the lines from Seneca; the other in the chapter Of Kingdoms and Estates, from ‘triumph amongst the Romans’ to the end. Patronised by the younger Robespierre and by Barras, he had already exemplified the saying, ‘By indignities men come to dignities’; and he was destined also, like Bacon himself, to find that ‘the standing is slipping, and the regression is either a downfall or at least an eclipse.’ He never, apparently, saw acted even an adaptation of Shakespeare, yet on the eve of the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens he surprised his Council of State by diverging from a coinage question into a tirade against both Shakespeare and Milton. Too busy, even if inclined, to study English, he would, had he invaded England in 1803 and commissioned Sir Francis Burdett to organise a republic, have taken with him one hundred and seventeen interpreter guides, in red coats and white trousers—a corps which he expected to recruit from Irish and other refugees. One of these refugees, the notorious Lewis Goldsmith, read the London newspapers for him. But Napoleon was not fated to get nearer to English soil than William III.’s landing-place, Torbay.

Captivity afforded him the requisite leisure and also a strong inducement, for he was anxious, not to acquaint himself with English literature, but to see what was said of himself in the English press. Accordingly, on the six weeks’ voyage to St. Helena, he took two lessons from Las Cases, who, when himself an exile, had taught French and learned English in London. It seems likely that he had acquired just a smattering before Waterloo, if not before Elba; for while waiting at Balcombe House till Longwood was ready for him, he occasionally spoke English (desiring her to correct his mistakes) to the lively Betsy Balcombe, that enfant terrible who coolly questioned him not only as to his supposed atheism, but as to the ‘happy dispatch’ of the wounded French at Jaffa and as to the execution of the Duc d’Enghien. He sent, moreover, for some English books, one of them an edition of Æsop, and, pointing to the picture of the ass kicking the sick lion, he remarked in English, ‘It is me (sic) and your governor’ (Sir Hudson Lowe). His accent then, and probably to the last, was very peculiar, and he usually talked and joked with Betsy in French, though her French was not of the best. He got her to translate to him Dr. Warden’s account of the voyage of the Northumberland. Though addicted to teasing, he had so won her affection that she shed many tears on quitting the island, where, according to a recent French visitor, the recollections of Napoleon have been effaced by a wild-beast show, a visitor quite as rare as an imperial captive. When settled at Longwood, Napoleon resolved on seriously renewing the study. Las Cases gave him a daily lesson; sometimes finding him a diligent scholar, at other times so inattentive that Napoleon would himself laughingly ask his teacher whether he did not deserve the rod, regarded by him as an essential adjunct to education. He even wrote several letters in English to Las Cases, but the irregular verbs overtaxed his patience. He managed, however, to read after a fashion, and, according to Las Cases, might at a push have made himself understood in writing; but it does not appear that the lessons went on more than a few weeks. They had probably ceased long before December 1816, when Las Cases had to quit the island. A scrap of paper, presented by him to a friend, and also included in the exhibition, is the only trace of these lessons. We read on it, in his pupil’s handwriting: ‘Gone out, aller dehors, sortir. Opened, ouvert. To see, voire (sic), regarder.’

Napoleon’s next professor, after how long an interval we cannot tell, was Countess Bertrand, daughter of General Arthur Dillon by Anne Laure Girardin, cousin to the Empress Josephine. She had never even visited England, but her father, guillotined when she was eight years of age, had probably taught her his native tongue. Napoleon, disposing of rich heiresses with Oriental despotism, had required her to marry Bertrand, one of his generals; and though the poor girl was at first in despair and refused to see her suitor, she speedily became attached to him, and they lived happily ever after. One of their children, named Arthur, not, as one of the St. Helena narratives states, after the Duke of Wellington, but after the grandfather—was born on the island in January 1817, and archly introduced by the mother to Napoleon as ‘the first Frenchman who had entered Longwood without a pass from Sir Hudson Lowe.’ She was extremely fond of society, and though, with her husband, she had accompanied the Emperor to Elba, she was so averse to St. Helena that she stormed at Napoleon for involving Bertrand and his family in his banishment, and even tried to throw herself overboard. This, unlike some of her other antipathies, she never overcame, and at the time of Napoleon’s death she was arranging for a return to France, on the plea of getting her children educated. One of those children, whose ears were bored in Napoleon’s presence that he might present her with earrings, survived, as Madame Thayer, widow of one of Napoleon III.’s senators, till 1890. Madame Bertrand, apparently, gave a specimen of Napoleon’s lessons to Madame Junot, whose granddaughter, Madame de la Ferrière, lent it to the recent exhibition. A sheet of letter paper, yellow with age, contains alternate lines of French and English; but it will be more convenient to give first the theme, and then the translation, which has never yet been published. The italics in brackets indicate the erasures.

‘Quand serez-vous sage?

‘Quand je ne serai plus dans cette île. Mais je le deviendrai après avoir passé la ligne.

‘Lorsque je débarquerai en france, je serai très content. Ma femme viendra près de moi, mon fils sera grand et fort, il pourra boire sa bouteille de vin à dîner, je trinquerai avec lui. Ma mère sera vieille, mes sœurs seront laides, ce qui ne leur sera pas agréable, elles seront toujours coquettes, car les femmes se croient toujours jolies.’

‘When will you be wise?

‘Never [then that] as long as I [should] could be in this isle, but I shall become vise after [have] having passed the line. When I shall [landed] land in france I shall be very content. Mi [wive] wife shall come [after, bef-] near me. Mi son shall be great and [fort] strong. He [shall get] will be able to take his bottle of wine at dinner. I shall trink with him. Mi mother shall be olde, mi sisters shall ... for the women believe they....’

The pronoun I is uniformly written j. The corrections are mostly inserted above the line, but some are a continuation of the line, showing that the translation was written in Madame Bertrand’s presence. The first sentence, it is evident, had been playfully uttered by her on account of Napoleon’s teasing her for being boisterously gay; for it is the question addressed to obstreperous or fretful children, and Napoleon himself used to say to Betsy Balcombe, ‘Quand seras-tu sage?’ Sage does not here mean wise, but good or well behaved. Madame Bertrand passed over this and some other obvious blunders, either because her own English was defective, or because she would not discourage her pupil by too many corrections. At one corner of the sheet is a rude drawing of a ship, the imaginary ship in which Napoleon was to return to France, and in another corner is a sketch apparently meant for a line of muskets extended for firing. There are also the words, ‘Qui vous a apporté cette lettre? (Who has brought you this letter?) The writing is small and cramped, but fairly legible; much more so than other specimens at the exhibition, such as the audit of Napoleon’s accounts. The allegation that he wrote a scrawl to conceal his bad spelling seems far-fetched. Like many people, he had a hasty scrawl for drafts, which he was sometimes himself unable to decipher, and a plainer hand for his correspondents.

To quote from Manzoni’s famous ode:—

There still survive two English witnesses of Napoleon’s funeral, for Public Opinion of the 28th March 1903 contained a letter from Mr. G. B. Bennett of Cape Town, who states that he was born at St. Helena on the 30th November 1816, that he attended the funeral, and that his sister, three and a half months old, was also present in her nurse’s arms.

The daughter of Sir Hudson Lowe, born at St. Helena in 1818, is also still living, unmarried, at Balham, near London. Considering, however, the strained relations between her father and Napoleon, she is scarcely likely, in her nurse’s arms, to have seen the caged lion.

PS.—Miss Clara Lowe died at Tooting on the 7th May 1904.