Diaries of A Lady of Quality

The Emperor Nicholas

2006-08-25T23:13:00.000+02:00

Extract from a letter to Miss Williams Wynn, dated ‘St Petersburg’ Feb 2, 1826

We are here in the midst of most interesting events. The accounts given in the newspapers respecting the Empress mother heading the troops, or taking any steps to cover the ‘pusillanimous’ Nicholas, are totally without foundation. He showed himself worthy of his situation by the courage and presence of mind he displayed.

At one moment, he was alone conversing with and explaining to the peasants the reasons for their being called on to take a new path, when his aide-de-camp said in his ear, ‘Come away, you might be surrounded by assassins; some of the troops marching up belong to the mutineers.'

The Emperor immediately mounted his horse, and in a loud voice called to his aide-de-camp in Russian, to lead those troops (pointing to the mutineers) to the place du senat (the place to which he saw them marching); to place the Paulofsky here, the 2nd regiment there, the Dragoons here, &c. &c. and added in a low voice in French, 'Ne faites rien; je ne sais pas encore sur lequel des regimens je
dois compter.'

It was a trying moment, and had the attack been made two hours later, we should probably not have seen the end of it so soon.

Touching the King's Evil

2006-08-23T01:12:00.000+02:00

Feb. 1839.—Found at Bodryddan* in the sermons of Bishop Bull, who died 1710, one on St. Paul's Thorn in the flesh; and the following passage :—

'The gift of miracles, and particularly the gift of curing diseases without natural medicine, was so given by Christ to His Apostles as not to be at their absolute disposal, but to be dispensed by them as the driver should think fit. St. Paul, though as great a worker of miracles as any of the Apostles—though he even raised the dead to life, yet could not cure himself of that thorn in the flesh, that painful disease which Satan, by God's permission, had inflicted on him.

Hereby it appears, that this gift of God was so bestowed on the Apostles that they could not exercise it arbitrarily and at their own pleasure, but only when, where, how, and on whom God pleased to direct them to use that power, that so the glory of all the wonderful cures wrought by them might at last redound to God the author, and not to man the instrument.

And perhaps this is the best account that can be given of the relique and remnant of the. primitive gift of healing for some hundreds of years past, visible in our nation, and annexed to the succession of our Christian kings. I mean the cure of that otherwise incurable disease, the King's Evil. That divers persons desperately labouring under it have been cured by the touch of the royal hand, assisted by the prayers of the priests of our Church attending, is unquestionable, unless the faith of all ancient writers and these consentient reports of hundreds of the most credible persons in our own age, attesting the same, be questioned.

And yet, they say, some of the persons return from that sovereign remedy re infecta. How comes that to pass ? God hath not given this gift of healing so absolutely to our royal line, but that He still keeps the reins of it in His own hands, to let them loose or restrain them as He pleaseth.'

In Brady's Clams Calendaria, I find :—

'Edward the Confessor was the first monarch of this country who possessed the privilege, alleged to have been continued to his successors, and to have been practised by them till the accession of the House of Brunswick, of curing that dreadful malady the King's Evil.'

In another part of the same work, from the ' Mercurius Politicus' of June 28,1660, is quoted the account of the ceremony, concluding in this manner: "His Majesty (Charles I.) stroked above 600; and such was his princely patience and tenderness to the poor afflicted creatures, that though it took up a very long time. His Majesty, who is never wearied with well-doing, was pleased to enquire whether there were any more who had not yet been touched."

My brother Charles supposes that in those times it was of great importance to keep up every ceremony which could tend to establish the divine right of the reigning family. Thus he explains the unaccountable credulity of Bishop Bull, asserting the existence of the miracle instead of adopting the line of conduct now so universally practised by the more enlightened of the Roman clergy, who walk in processions, send their mules to be blessed, nay, even crawl up the Scala Santa, professing that they do not believe in the efficacy of any of these mummeries, but are afraid of shocking the weak consciences of the ignorant by omitting them.

Upon the same principle Charles supposes that George I. was unwilling to subject his disputed title to the crown to a test so likely to fail. At the same time, I am inclined to believe that the angel of gold which the King tied round the neck of the patient must in many instances have proved a very efficacious remedy.

Editor's note
* The seat of William Shipley Gonway, Esq. (her nephew), near St. Asaph.

Old-fashioned manners

2006-08-14T22:53:00.000+02:00

Sir William Williams, my great-grandfather, seems to have been addressed by his children, and dependants with much more respect than we have lately seen evinced in writing to the Queen. The tutor of his sons always writes from Oxford of my grandfather as My Master, of his brother as Mr. Robert, and addresses Sir William as 'Your Honour.'

In 1714 my grandfather writes for Sir J. Wynn,

'He has desired me to acquaint you that, if you approve of it, he would be highly glad if you could meet us at St. Albans to conduct us into town, for he is the most apprehensive of danger betwixt that place and London of any; he is by no means for my staying in London any longer than the Mellins are delivered, and if possible, to return to Barnet or Highgate that night, but hope, sir, you will send him word that it is not practicable for me to return sooner than the Monday following, suppose we come in Friday or Saturday night.

The noise of our going is spread all about the country, and somebody has told 'him that Prichard the Highwayman is gone abroad, which makes him under ye greater concern, so would gladly have returns for some parte.
' Dear Sir,
'Your ever dutiful son,
' wat. williams.'

In a letter dated 'Duke Street, January 30, 1729,'
he says—

'Nothing spoken of but ye great acconomy at St. James's, there are so many astonishing instances that it would be too tedious and something dangerous to mention them — the great man is in ye judgement of mankind in a very uneasy situation. Stocks fell very much upon ye publishing ye treaty of peace. Her Majesty is very uneasy at ye English ladies for going so fine ; she says they rivall even majesty itself.

And, forsooth, if waiting women in this country go as fine as German princesses, she would therefore have none but noblemen's ladies wear silk, and none jewells, nor laces—stuffs full good enough for country gentlemen's wives, and every servant maid to wear a badge of her profession on her shoulder. The Queen wears calf-skin shoes, and the eldest princess scour'd deaths, and ye youngest patched coats.

Queen Anne

2006-08-10T00:26:00.000+02:00

Wynnstay: Dec. 1838.—I have been dipping into the ' Political State of England' of the year 1714, at the account of the death of Queen Anne, in which several things have astonished me; but none so much as the statement that, from the suddenness of her seizure, her state during the short time that she survived it, &c. &c., she died without 'being able to receive the holy Viaticum!'

In this publication, which seems evidently the parent of our ' Annual Register,' I am surprised to see how little appearance of regret was shown for a sovereign who, weak and foolish as she was, had a most prosperous and even glorious reign—for a woman to whom all parties, I believe, have given the credit of good intentions.

However, certain it is that the sure thermometer of British public feeling, the Funds, rose upon her first apoplectic seizure, fell the day when there seemed to be a rally and an expectation of prolonged existence, and rose again the following day when she died. A few months before she had written a very harsh letter to the Electress Sophia, which is said to have hastened the death of that princess, who died of apoplexy just three months before Queen Anne.

The orders for the mourning are curious: for six months the order is for the deepest mourning (long cloaks excepted ; query, were the women to wear the close cap of widows ?)—' that no person whatsoever, for the first six months, use any escutcheons of armes or armes painted on their coaches, nor use any varnished or bullion nails to be seen on their coaches or chairs.'

The anniversary of the landing of King William was of course then, as now, kept; but much more is said of that (the l7th Nov.) of the happy inauguration of Queen Elizabeth's glorious memory; houses illuminated, bonfires in the streets, &c.; which, by the bye, three month after the death of Queen Anne, when everybody was in this deepest mourning, must have had a queer effect.

Queen Anne had a larger and more noble household then Queen Victoria. Groom of the Stole and Lady of the Robes, Duchess of Somerset; Lady Privy Purse Mrs. (Lady) Masham. Ten Ladies of the Bed-chamber —three of whom were duchesses, and five countesses.*

Editor’s note
* It appears from Lady Cowper’s Diary that the situation of Lady of the Bedchamber to Caroline, Princess of Wales, was a prize eagerly contested by duchesses.

The Pretender at the Coronation

2006-08-05T16:23:00.000+02:00

Polnitz in his 'Memoirs' (vol. iii. p. 254) gives a contemporary account of the incident at the coronation of George I., which Sir W. Scott has in ' Bed Gauntlet' introduced as taking place at that of George III.; and I remember to have read it also in some of the publications of the former period thus :

Immediately after the champion's challenge, a lady's glove was thrown from the gallery containing a written defiance, and an invitation to the ring in Hyde Park for the following day. At the appointed time a considerable crowd was assembled. No champion appeared, but there was an old woman observed moving round different parts of the circle, supposed to be a noted swordsman in disguise. The following note is by my brother Charles.

'My grandmother often repeated to me the account which she had herself received from Lady Primrose of Charles Edward's visit to London in 1750 (a letter from the historian Hume to Sir J. Pringle, published in "Gentleman's Magazine," May 1788, relating the same incident, assigns to this visit the date 1753).*

She described her consternation when Mr. Browne (the name under which he was to go) was announced to her in the midst of a card party, among whom were many who she felt might have seen him abroad and would very probably recognise him. Her cards almost dropped from her hands, but she recovered herself, and got him out of the room as quickly as she could. He slept at her house that night only, and afterwards went to that of a merchant in the city. The impression he left on the mind of Lady Primrose, a warm and attached partisan, was by no means favourable.

I have read myself among the Stuart papers a minute of the heads of a manifesto in Charles Edward's own handwriting, among which appeared, "My having in the year 1750 conformed to the Church of England in St. James's Church." Some idea may be formed of the extent of the panic felt at the time of his advance to Derby from the account given by an old workman at Wotton, of his having at that period assisted in burying by night all the family plate in the garden.—C. W. W. W.'

The recantation here mentioned is a circumstance quite new to me, and seems to remove the only one redeeming point among the many base ones which marked the character of Charles Edward. I always thought he had, like the rest of his unfortunate race, been a sincere bigot. His weakness and cowardice seemed to be proved beyond a doubt. In the letter above quoted in the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' Hume says that Helvetius assured him that, when Charles Edward embarked at Nantes for the Scotch expedition (1745), he took fright, and would not go on board; and his attendants, ' thinking the matter had gone too far, &c. &c., 'literally carried him into the ship by night
pieds et poings lies.''

It is a singular proof of the forbearance of the reigning family, and also of the fidelity of the adherents of the fallen race, that even now the real character of Charles Edward is so little generally known. The veil thrown over the drunken dissolute close of his career seems never to have been fully withdrawn by any English writer; and even Alfieri attached, probably married, to the woman who had certainly been unhappy and much ill used by Charles while she was his wife, is unwilling to speak of him or his brother, laudare non li potendo, ni li volendo biasimare, but tells enough to prove him an odious and brutal monster.

I do not understand how, among the many Italian tourists who have indulged us with so many histories of bad fare, hard beds thickly inhabited, there has not been one who has enriched his pages with some of the many traditions still extant, still easily authenticated, at Florence and Rome, referring to the two last Stuarts.
They were the last; therefore there could not now be any objection; and though the records could not be very interesting, they would probably sell.**

Editor's notes
* Hurne speaks of a second visit on the authority of Lord Hulderness, and adds, ' You see this story is so near traced from the fountain-head as to wear a great trace of probability. Query, what if the Pretender had taken up Dymock's gauntlet ? ' Miss Strickland, in her Life of Mary II., says, ' This incident has been told as a gossip's tale pertaining to every coronation of the last century which took place while an heir of James II. existed. If it ever took place, it must have been at the coronation of William and Mary. That there was a pause at this part of the ceremony of above two hours, and that when the champion appeared the gauntlet was heard to he thrown, hut nothing that was done could be seen on account of the darkness of the evening, all this rests upon the authority of Lamberty, the historian and diplomatist,'
** Since this was written, the most complete exposure has been made in a book, a thin quarto printed in 1843 for the Roxburgh Club by Earl Stanhope, entitled The Decline of the Last Stuarts -Extracts from the Despatches of British Envoys to the Secretary of State.

From the orders of Charles II for the Household

2006-07-27T14:32:00.000+02:00

(Transcribed from the Stowe MSS.)

Chapel.—When wee are present, no man shall presume to putt on his hatt at Sermon, but those in the stalls on the left hand, which are noblemen or counsellors, or the Deane of the Chapell, when wee are absent. As our expresse pleasure is that our Chappell be all the yeare through kept both morning and evening with solemne musick like a Collegiate Church, unlesse it be at such times in the summer, or other times when
we are pleased to spare it, so wee will have all decent honour and order kept, and therefore when any of the Lords of the Councill be below, our pleasure is so much respect be given to our Councill (being our representative body) as that no man presume to be covered untill they shall require them, and then only the sonnes of noblemen or such as serve us, or our dearest consort the Queene in eminent places.

In all those places, both noblemen and others shall observe great distance and respect to our person, and also civility one towards another. And those that are younge shall not offer to fill up the seates from those which are either elder or
more infirme or counsellors, though perhaps below them in rank.

Macready's Coriolanus

2006-07-21T01:17:00.000+02:00

April 20th.—I went last night to see Macready in Coriolanus, feeling that I should not like him: that in this one part, and in no other, the greatness of Kemble was unapproachable. I am quite sure I was extremely interested to feel that I had gained a new view of the character, but cannot quite decide whether I like it better than the old one. I should say that Kemble was more Roman, more dignified, and Macready more true to universal nature.

The first seemed to be impelled by a feeling of withering contempt, bordering on misanthropy, to scorn the tribunes and the people as creatures of an inferior nature; Macready seemed a man of quick, irritable feelings, whose pride was rather galled than wounded, and I suspect this is the Coriolanus of Shakespeare and of nature.

It hardly seemed in nature that Kemble's Coriolanus, so proud, so unbending, should have been led astray, should yield to the solicitations of his mother, though that mother was Mrs. Siddons.* In Macready it seemed impossible he should resist, though Volumuia was odiously vulgar, and gave me more the idea of a poissarde than of a Roman matron. Nothing could be finer than his acting in this scene; never did I feel so strongly the tenderness and beauty of his affection for Virgilia. She has so little to say or do, that, being rather handsome and very well dressed, the actress (whose name I forgot) could not offend.

I never saw a play so beautifully, so correctly got up. It was not only the costume, the scenery, the numberless accessories that were carefully attended to, but the far more difficult task of regulating the byplay of the inferior actors was also accomplished. The effect given by the number of the mob, by the variety of action which seemed to give Shakespearian individuality to every member of it, is indescribable.

The cowed, degraded appearance of the Volscians in the Triumph was very striking; Coriolanus sitting at the hearth of Aufidius as fine a picture as can be imagined.

Still I was too near the stage to judge of the full effect, or even to see the whole of the fine scenes.

Editor's note
* The late Sir Q. C. Lewis (in his Credibility of the Early Roman History) treats the alleged compliance of Coriolanus with his mother's intercession as an incredible absurdity. How could he with Tullus Aufidius by his side, have led back the Volscians?

Chantrey's Studio

2006-07-18T00:01:00.000+02:00

This morning I have been to Chantrey's to see the equestrian statue of Sir Thomas Munro, which is to be packed up for Madras in a few days. I am much pleased with it, but cannot agree with those (my uncle is one) who calls it the finest equestrian statue in the world. Without going so far as Rome to the unrivalled horse which Michael Angelo bade go on, I am not sure that, in my private opinion, a better may not be found at Charing Cross.

I was at first struck with the thickness of the jowl and set on of the head; this I was told was modelled from a beautiful Arab which had been sent as a present to George IV. The man added that other parts had been copied from other horses, and then I found out what it was that was not pleasing to my eye. These separate beauties do not accord to form a beautiful whole ; the legs seem to me those of a powerful English hunter, quite out of keeping with the small Arab head and tail. Probably this effect is increased by the nearness of the legs to the eye of the spectator, and may, to a certain degree, be removed when the statue gets on its proper pedestal, which is to be very much higher than that on which it is pro tempore fixed.

I was much interested in hearing from an intelligent workman some of the details of the foundry, and in seeing the wonderful effects produced by English machinery. After having seen at Munich every part of comparatively small statues cast separately, so that I suppose they are in about fifty pieces which are afterwards to be riveted together, it did seem very extraordinary that this immense mass was cast in four pieces only. I wanted to see more of the furnace, but there were so many people about that one could not question the workman, comfortably; but he told me that he frequently went into it to see that all was right when the thermometer is at 370°. This seems almost incredible when one considers that this is much more than half as hot again as boiling water; and into this they go without any of the previous preparation of increasing temperature, which in the Eastern baths enables a person to endure heat very far inferior to this, but which would not otherwise be endurable.

Here the workman goes from the atmosphere of a cold room into this, or rather first into a sort of chamber; and there, as he told us, is the great suffering, the first shutting the outward door. In this furnace the metal remains many months, and I fancy always at the same temperature.

Chantrey's Horse was, it seems, originally modeled for a statue of George IV., and he is to ride it. Flatter him as highly as possible, still the difference between his pasty-pudding features and the fine bold line of those of Sir Thomas Munro will be severely felt.

Quiet seems to be the characteristic of Chantrey's sculpture, exactly the reverse of Canova, who always offends by a sort of nutter. I am not sure whether Chantrey is not in the contrary extreme: in looking down his gallery a want of action struck me; perhaps the eternal monumental sculpture does in some degree lead to this, and I should have thought that he would have been glad to gallop away from it. Instead of that his horse stands still. I understand he piques himself upon having executed the first equestrian statue with a horse in repose, and his admirers tell you, ' You see he is just going to move.'

I am perfectly aware of the absurdities that have been committed in the attempt to give motion and action to sculpture, but I own it seems to me that Chantrey has cut the Gordian knot which he was perhaps capable of untying.

Macready's Lear

2006-07-10T21:48:00.000+02:00

Feb. 10th, 1838.— I saw last night Macready in King Lear, and little expected, in the present degraded state of the stage, to see any performance that would give me such pleasure. First of all, it is Shakespeare's Lear: not a word is added to the text; the painfully fine catastrophe is acted; and the play, in the regular theatre phrase, well got up, excepting in the female parts, which were almost as ill dressed as they were acted. I cannot conceive a better model for a painter of Lear than Macready exhibited in face, figure, dress, and apparent age.

The latter seems to me the leading point of his representation of the character, in which he substitutes the imbecility of age for insanity, which I have hitherto considered as the leading feature of Lear. The more I think, the more I am inclined to believe that this was the intention of the poet; at the same time, I must own that it has, as far as dramatic effect is concerned, some objections. The curse, the appeal to the elements, which one has been used to dislike as a rant, appeared tame and ineffective, partly, I believe, because so early in the play I had not entered folly into the conception of the actor; but I still think upon retrospect, that both, especially the curse, might have been made to tell with singular effect if repeated in a tremulous and very solemn manner. I hope to judge of this ere long upon a second view.

I felt almost as if I had never read, certainly never seen, that finest of all scenes, that on the Heath, so much was I delighted with the effect produced by the Fool (now reinstated for the first time for many years). The artless affection, shrewdness, archness displayed by Miss Horton, the sweetness of the snatches of song, seemed like the drop of comfort infused into the bitter cup of the poor old King. They made me feel that the commentators who assert that, when in the last sad scene he says, ' And my poor fool is hanged” he cannot mean to allude to the boy, had never seen it so acted.

Much as I admire the strict adherence to the text, I must say that one omission quite new to me pleased me very much. When poor blind Gloster, fancying himself on the edge of the cliff, says, ' Now, fellow, fare thee well,’ instead of falling down, he is interrupted by the arrival of Lear, and you are spared the absurdity of persuading a man whom you have seen falling from his own height, that he tumbled down over a precipice.

In battle there was one novelty which I think from a greater distance than the box in which we were, might have a great effect. The scene was a distant view of a battle, or rather of heaps of slain; when the challenge is given, a champ clos is immediately formed by a palisade of spear and battle-axes. The last scene is almost too painful; I felt it would have been quite, if Cordelia had not been such a detestable snub-nosed creature. I suppose it would be high treason against Shakespeare to alter the catastrophe, and to give to it what might be called a melodramatic German character; but I could not help wishing the representation to conclude when Lear says-
“She lives! If it be so,
It is a chance that does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt."

Death of William IV - Accession of Queen Victoria

2006-07-05T00:35:00.000+02:00

June, 1837.—The reign is not yet quite a week old, and yet how many strange occurrences and stranger feelings one wishes to recall, that all have passed before the eyes or in the mind in this short space. First, how strange it is that, in thinking of a departed sovereign, one can from the bottom of the heart pray, “May my
latter end be like his.'' Who that can look back some years—say to the period when we saw the Duke of Clarence at Stowe, where he was certainly endured only as an appendage of the Prince of Wales—who would have thought that he would have died more loved, more lamented, than either of his predecessors on the throne? Least of all, who could have thought he would have died the death of a good Christian, deriving comfort and hope from religion, and every alleviation which the most devoted conjugal affection could shed over him ?

Even his sins seem to have poured from their foul source pure streams of comfort in the attentions and affection of his children. The Queen is said to have complained that in the last days, after he well knew his situation, she never was left alone with him. The public, edified by every detail which comes to light, can feel but one regret, which is, that the Princess Victoria was not summoned to receive his blessing.

It is very interesting to compare the appearance of the town now, with that which it wore after the death of George IV.; then few, very few, thought it necessary to assume the mask of grief; now one feeling seems to actuate the nation ; party is forgotten, and all mourn, if not so deeply, quite as unanimously, as they did for Princess Charlotte. After a few days of short unsatisfactory bulletins, a prayer for the King was ordered, and sent with pitiful economy by the two-penny post, so that, though the prayer appeared in every newspaper of Saturday evening, it was received by hardly any of the London clergy in time for morning service on Sunday. In our chapel, prayers were desired for Our Sovereign Lord the King, lying dangerously ill; and these introduced in the Litany just as they would have been for the poorest of his subjects!

To me this simple ancient form was far more impressive than the fancy prayer, though it was a good one of its sort.

On Monday we were listening all day for the tolling of the bells, watching whether the guests were going to the Waterloo dinner at Apsley House. On Tuesday, at 2 a.m., the scene closed, and in a very short time the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham, the Chamberlain, set out to announce the event to their young sovereign. They reached Kensington palace at about five: they knocked, they rang, they thumped for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gates; they were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by everybody.

They rang the bell, desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform H.R.H. that they requested an audience on business of importance; after another delay, and another ringing to enquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated that the Princess 'was in such a sweet sleep she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, ' We are come to the Queen on business of state, and even her sleep must give way to that.'

It did; and to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white night-gown and shawl, her night-cap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected and dignified.

The first act of the reign was of course the summoning the Council, and most of the summonses were not received till after the early hour fixed for its meeting. The Queen was, upon the opening of the doors, found sitting at the head of the table. She received first the homage of the Duke of Cumberland, who, I suppose, was not King of Hanover when he knelt to her*; the Duke of Sussex rose to perform the same ceremony, but the Queen, with admirable grace, stood up, and preventing him from kneeling, kissed him on the forehead.

The crowd was so great, the arrangements were so ill made, that my brothers told me the scene of swearing allegiance to their young sovereign was more like that of the bidding at an auction than anything else.

* He became King of Hanover by the same event which made her Queen of England.

Was the Duke surprised at Waterloo?

2006-07-04T23:50:00.000+02:00

Lord Braybrooke's stories do not abound in names or dates; the following was quite without, but seems little to want, that recommendation. The Duke finding himself near some garrison town in England, received a visit from the commanding officer, who made a speech from the regiment on the subject of their anxiety to show him any possible respect, ending with their regret that their mess dinner could not produce anything worthy of being offered to him, and that it would, be ridiculous to invite him to it.

'Why?' said he. The day was fixed by him ; some of his old friends and 'companions were got to meet him. He came in high spirits and good-humour, and began talking over his campaigns and old stories with his comrades. Growing pleased with the deep attention with which the younger officers listened to him, he became more communicative, and at last said that, as nothing gratified him so much as a spirit of enquiry in young soldiers as to every subject connected with their profession, he begged that any one present would question him as to any point of his military history on which they wished for information, promising that, unless he felt it inconsistent with his duty, he would answer fully and fairly.

Upon this, an officer present ventured to ask whether it was true that Napoleon had surprised him at Waterloo ? He said he was as far surprised as a man can be who knows he is to expect attack; he knew that Napoleon would march towards Brussels; that Blucher was coming to his relief; he had a frontier of many hundred miles to defend ; he could not possibly foresee on what point the attack would be first made; and certainly the speed of the advance of Napoleon exceeded what he could have expected or believed possible.*

Editor's note
* The question of the young officer has been frequently repeated; and perhaps as good an answer, or rather retort, as any was that of the late Professor Wilson on some one asking -whether the French did not surprise Wellington at Waterloo. 'Yea; and didn't he astonish them ? '

Meeting Between the Duke and Blucher at Waterloo

2006-06-30T00:16:00.000+02:00

I hear, that not long ago, one of the many officers who have written memoirs of his campaigns wrote to beg permission to dedicate his book to the Duke. He declined the dedication in a civil kind manner, alleging as his reason the extreme difficulty of ascertaining the real facts in the midst of scenes of such confusion as great battles, and his reluctance to giving the sanction of his name to any inaccurate statement. He gave as an instance of his assertion, the story so frequently told, so universally believed as to have acquired the character of indisputable fact, that he met and conferred with Blucher at La Belle Alliance; the fact being that they did not meet till some hours after, and at another place, the name of which I have forgotten, if I ever heard.

Editor's note
The question, which was the real place of meeting, is one of interest and importance, artistically and historically ; for on it depends, first, whether Mr. Maclise's celebrated fresco is a true record of a memorable event; and secondly, whether the English army had pushed on far enough to take that share in completing the victory which the Duke claimed for it. The seventh volume of Staatengeschichte by M. de Bernard! contains a chapter on the battles of the 16th, 17th, and 18th, composed with admirable skill from Prussian authorities and the Prussian point of view. The main object is to prove that the flank attack of the Prussians decided the day ; that the final advance of the English line was a superfluous movement dictated by political considerations; and that, unless the English had halted at La Belle Alliance, they would have got mixed up with the Prussians.

There, consequently, he fixes the place of meeting, and there (he insists) it was that the Duke gave up the pursuit to the Prussians, on the ground that the English were too exhausted to follow it up.

On the other hand, the Duke says, in his despatch of the 19th June, 'I continued the pursuit, till long after dark, and then discontinued it only on account of the fatigue of our troops, who had been engaged during twelve hours, and because I found myself on the same road with Marshal Blucher, who assured me of his intention to follow the enemy throughout the night.' In a subsequent letter, dated Paris, June 8th, 1816, to Mr. Mudford, he saya: ' It. happens that the meeting took place after ten at night in the village of Genappe, and anybody who attempts to describe with truth the operations of the two armies, will see that it could not be otherwise. The other part is not so material, but, in truth, I was not off my horse till I returned to Waterloo between eleven and twelve at night.'*

Major Percy's account of the ride back by moonlight after the meeting with Bliicher, proves that it could not have taken place at La Belle Alliance, and confirms, if it needs confirmation, the Duke's statement that he continued the pursuit till long after dark. But he clearly did not continue it so far as Bliicher, who did not get farther than Genappe, where he and his staff halted for the night, the French having held it till eleven. ' When Gneisenau,' says M. de Bernardi, ' arrived at daybreak at the Emperor public-house, some thousand paces the other side of Erasnes, two miles and a half (German) from the field of battle, he had only with him about fifty Uhlans of the Brandenburgh Regiment, who also could go no farther for weariness. There ended the immediate pursuit.'

In the 'People's Edition' of Gleig's Life of Wellington, it is stated that the Duke ' pushed on, and drew bridle only when he and Bliicher met at the Maison du Roi;' and that ' he reached his head-quarters at Waterloo about ten o'clock at night.' Both these statements are at variance with the Duke's letter to Mr. Mudford, written when his recollection was fresh, yet both are based on information supplied by the Duke himself to the best and most trusted of his biographers. He also stated in conversation to Earl Stanhope that he arrived at his quarters at ten o'clock. He passed through Genappe when falling back from Quatre Bras, and mentions it in his despatch. Genappe is eight or nine miles from the battle-field, and Maison du Koi (or Maison Rouge) between two and three.

Captain Gronow says in his Recollections, that he witnessed the meeting at La Belle Alliance. Lord Arthur Hill (afterwards Lord Sandys) told Mr. Maclise that the meeting took place farther on, but that the Duke and Bliicher rode back to La Belle Alliance, where he saw them together. The picture was commenced under the fall sanction of the Committee on the Fine Arts, including eminent historians and statesmen and presided over by the Prince Consort, who personally assured the artist that the popular belief in the locality was well-founded.

With regard to the national claims, M. de Bernard will surely admit that the Duke and the British army cannot be mistaken in believing that they continued the pursuit after passing La Belle Alliance; whilst the supposition that our great commander, in the crisis of a great battle, was thinking of anything but the best way of winning it, is one which in England will simply excite a smile. M. de Bernardi's own statement, that the English generals near the Duke objected to the advance as hazardous, is in itself a refutation of his theory.
* Supplementary Despatches, vol. x. p. 608.

Good Sleepers - Mr Pitt - The Duke of Wellington

2006-06-27T12:48:00.000+02:00

At the same time I heard an interesting story upon the authority of Mr. Grenville. He told Lord Braybrooke that at the time, of the mutiny at the Nore, when, of course, the anxiety was intense upon the subject of the fidelity of the troops, a messenger arrived at a late hour of the night to Dundas with a letter from General ——, who had the command at Sheerness, containing the melancholy tidings of the apostacy of the marines. It was stated that, to a man, they had joined the mutineers, and that there was every reason to apprehend that the next day they would march upon London.

Dundas went immediately to Lord Grenville with the news, and together they went to Mr. Pitt. He was in bed and asleep. Of course they roused him, talked over this misfortune, consulted as to the precautionary measures to be taken, few and unavailing as they seemed. After a short time, Mr. Pitt said, 'I think we cannot do anything at this hour of night, and, as far as possible, we have arranged everything for the morning. I am anxious to get some sleep to recruit before the arduous day which awaits us, and shall wish you good night.'

The two others were far too anxious for sleep. I believe they remained together till, in the course of less than one hour, another messenger appeared bearing another letter from Sheerness. This was from the officer second in command, who, after many apologies for assuming an office that did not belong to him, said that, having heard that the commanding officer had just sent. off a messenger with despatches, he felt it his painful duty to inform the Government that the fatigue, the excitation of that eventful day had proved too much for the General, and had produced a sort of delirium; that probably, therefore, he might not have stated very accurately the state of affairs. He had the satisfaction of being able to say that they wore a much better aspect: that the marines were all staunch; so were the officers to a man; and the evil spirit which had existed seemed to be in a great measure quelled, &c. &c.

Lord Grenville and Dundas went once more to Pitt to communicate a change even more unexpected than it was favourable. He was, as they anticipated, in bed; but great was their surprise when they found that, during the short anxious hour that had elapsed since their last visit, he had been fast asleep.*

This is called a proof of greatness of mind. I am more inclined to believe that youth, health, and fatigue produce a sort of absolute necessity for sleep, which no mental excitation can remove; and I am confirmed in this opinion by hearing that, in his after days, and especially in his last illness, poor Pitt never could sleep. The Duke of Wellington is always brought forward as the most extraordinary instance of a person who, under the most violent excitations of his eventful career, could always, and at all hours of the day or night, get sleep during any repose, however short it might be, that circumstances allowed. Perhaps great bodily fatigue enabled him to find ' tired Nature's sweet restorer.' I wonder whether he is a good sleeper now.

Editor’s note
There is much good sense in the concluding observation that what enabled the Duke to sleep was his power of fixing on a course of conduct, doing or ordering to be done all that was necessary, and then dismissing the subject from his mind till the time for action came. It is impossible to he a great commander, or even a truly great man in any line, without this power; for ithout it both mind and body will prove unequal to a strain.

There are two instances of its display by the Duke not generally known, and resting on the best authority. On arriving personally before St. Sebastian, he was informed that the breaching batteries would not open for two hours. ' Then,' said he, turning to his aide-de-camp, ' the best thing we can do, Burghersh, is to go to sleep.' He got off his horse, slipped into a trench, sate down with his back against one side, and was fast asleep in a moment. Lord Burgherah. (the late Earl of Westmoreland) did the same,

The other occasion was, when having endured great fatigue, the Duke had gone to sleep in his tent, after giving strict orders not to be disturbed. An officer came in from the rear-guard —the army was in retreat—to say that the enemy were close at hand. The aide-de-camp on duty thought the contemplated emergency had arrived, and woke the Duke. ' Send the man in.' He entered. ' You have been hotly pursued the whole day.' ' Yes, my lord.' ' Are the troops much tired ?' ' Dead beat, my lord.' ' Then the French must be dead beat, too— they won't attack to-night. That will do.' Before the officer and aide-de-camp were well out of the tent, he was fast asleep again.

On the morning of one of his greatest battles, Napoleon had
to be awakened by his staff.

Lord Macaulay describes Frederick the Great as bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other. Thus provided, he could sleep.

The superhuman energy and activity of Lord Brougham are only explicable on this principle. He can abstract his thoughts from an exciting topic, and he can sleep. During the Queen's trial, he had dined and slept at Holland House. The next morning before breakfast, his bust found him writing in the library. ' Are you polishing off your peroration ? ' ' No, I am drawing a clause of my Education Bill.' One day at Paris, he read a paper on Optics at the Institute, was busilv occupied the whole forenoon with his colleagues of that distinguished body, and at seven was the chief and best talker at a dinner-party, comprising D'Orsay and Alexander Dumas. He told the acquaintance who was with him most of the time, that he had slept soundly for an hour after leaving the Institute, and could do so at will during any interval of rest at any time.

* Earl Stanhope (Life of Pitt) tells the story thus : ' A strong instance of Pitt's calmness at a time when all around him shook was wont to be related by the First Lord of the Admiralty at that period. On a subsequent night, there had come from the fleet tidings of especial urgency. Lord Spencer thought it requisite to go at once to Downing Street and consult the Prime Minister. Pitt being roused, from his slumber, sat up in bed, heard the case, and gave instructions. Lord Spencer took leave arid withdrew. But no sooner had he reached the end of the street than he remembered one more point which he had omitted to state. Accordingly he returned to Pitt's house, and desired to he shown a second time to Pitt's chamber. There, after so brief an interval, he found Pitt, as before, buried in profound repose.' (Vol.
iii. p. 39.)

Authorship of Junius

2006-06-20T01:18:00.000+02:00

Jan. 1837.—I have had a great deal of conversation with Lord Braybrooke on the, old subject of Junius. I see he puts little faith in the promised revelation of the mystery by the Duke of Buckingham,* and I may as well, before I proceed, write all I remember of what the Duke told me some five or six years ago. He said that, examining some papers of our grandfather (George Grenviile), he found a letter which entirely cleared the matter; that he had immediately written this to Lord Grenville, and had offered to exchange his secret information for that which he had always understood was in my uncle's possession.

No answer was returned, and the Duke said that, as it was evident that Lord Grenville did not wish for any communication on the subject, he thought it more delicate towards him not to make it to anyone as long as he lived. Four years have now elapsed since the death of Lord Grenviile, and nothing is made known on the subject of Junius.

Whether the Duke is still restrained by delicacy towards my dear surviving uncle,** whether subsequent discoveries have cast a doubt upon that which he considered so positive, I of course know not. At the time when he told the above to Lady Delamere and me, he was in a very communicative humour, allowed us to question, and promised to refuse to answer unless he could reply truly. He said that Junius was not any one of the persons to whom the Letters have been ascribed ; that, from the situation in which he found the paper in question, he had every reason to believe that his father had never read it.

I know that very soon after my uncle's (Earl Temple's) death, he told Charles that he had found a private letter from Junius to my grandfather. Nugent, I understand, was with him when the paper was found; indeed, I believe was the first to open it,
and, of course, partakes in the secret.

The impression left upon the mind of my sister by this conversation was, that Lord Temple was the man. If so, he must have had an amanuensis in the secret, for the hand of a Secretary of State must have been too well known in all its manner not to have been discovered. The same objection has been made to the supposition of Lord Chatham, and has been removed by a conjecture that the letters were transcribed by Lady Chatham.

From all that I have been used to hear of little Lady Temple—thought so very little by all the younger members of his family—I am inclined to think that the same conjecture could not apply to her; that hers was not the pen of a ready writer, that in her orthography even she was (according to the fashion of that day) very deficient.***

Lord Braybrooke conceives the pretensions of Sir P. Francis as being better supported than those of any other of the candidates for the authorship. In support of this assertion, he told me a singular story. Giles, whom we all remember so well, told him that when his sister, Mrs. King, was a young Bath belle, she received anonymously a copy of love verses; that some years after Sir Philip Francis owned himself to be the author of these. It happened that the mystery long attached to these verses had induced her to preserve the original paper, and upon comparison with the autographs in "Woodfall's edition, it proves that the handwriting is the same as that which Junius feigned, and not his natural hand.

Mr. Giles, to establish this curious fact, had Sir Philip's verses exactly copied in lithograph, and gave one of the copies to Lord Braybrooke. He has inserted it in his 'Junius,' and promised, but afterwards forgot, to show it me.

Lord Braybrooke told me that there was a moment when he expected some very interesting information on this subject. The present king, William IV., gave him a message of apology to Lord Grenville for having driven, by a mistake of the coachman, close to the house at Dropmore, began talking about my uncle's supposed knowledge of the secret of Junius, and added, ' I will tell you what my father said one day to me upon this subject. He was, after every attempt to discover the secret, quite as much in the dark as any of his subjects; but he added: 'I will tell you, my son, now that you are grown up and can understand them, what are my conjectures upon the subject.'

One can imagine the anxious curiosity of Lord Braybrooke at this preface, and his extreme disappointment at the conclusion, 'I am convinced that it cannot be the work of any one person, and that several were concerned.' **** Now, setting aside the evidence of unity of style and purpose, which is strong against this supposition, it would make the mystery even more wonderful than it has appeared—indeed, one may say, impossible.

Lord Braybrooke told the King an anecdote connected with this, though perhaps not much to the purpose. Lady Holland, in one of her imperious moods, made.Rogers go to Sir P. Francis to pump him upon the question of authorship. Her unwilling angry ambassador returned, and was of course very closely questioned; he was sulky, and to the leading, ' Come, tell me what you have discovered ?' replied, ' I have found out that Francis is Junius—Brutus. Lord Braybrooke said it was quite evident to him that the merit (such as it was) of the reply was quite lost upon King
William, whose acquaintance with Junius Brutus, if it ever existed, was quite lost.*****

This forgetfulness, strange as it is, is perhaps less so than that of Lord Euston. A few days after the publication of Woodfall's ' Junius,' Nugent, seeing it on the table of the Duke of Grafton, turned to Lord Euston and said, ' It is an odd coincidence to see this book for the first time in this house.' Lord Euston stared and asked, ' Why should it not be here ?'

Editor's Notes
* The first Duke, who was made Duke in 1822, and died in 1839.

** The Right Honourable T. Grenviile. The Duke told Mrs. Rowley (his great-niece) that the authorship had become known to him through a paper or papers discovered some time after his father's death, and that he communicated the discovery to Mr. T. Grenville, who said it was no news to him, but that for private (or family) reasons the secret must be kept. He also repeated to Mrs. Rowley what he told Lady Delamere and Miss Wynn, that Juniua was not one of the persons to whom the Letters had been popularly ascribed. Mrs.Rowley was out of England when the first edition was in preparation.

*** The facsimiles given by Mr. W. J. Smith, in the third volume of his edition of The Grenville Papers, are in a good. clear hand, betokening a ready penwom an. In that volume he has printed three private letters from Mr. George Grenville, supposed to he from Junius, prior to his adoption of that signature. These three throw little or no light on the disputed question of the authorship. I have heard the late (the second) Duke of Buckingham make a statement similar to his father's, and leading to a conclusion that he, too, was in the secret. The strongest argument against Francis is, his obvious wish to enjoy at least the posthumous reputation of the authorship, and his inability to leave any proof better than the copy of 'Junius Identified,' bequeathed to his wife. When that work was published, he saw and had some conversation with the publisher, whom he impressed with the conviction that he was by no means offended at the imputed identity. Mere similarity of style in compositions subsequent to the publication of the Letters proves little or nothing.

**** This is hardly reconcilable with a statement attributed to George III., soon after the cessation of the letters, that 'Junius had. been provided for and would write no more.'

***** The evidence touching the Junius Brutus story is curiously
conflicting. Lady Francis, in her letter to Lord Campbell, says: 'He (Sir Philip) affronted poor Sam Rogers, whom he liked so much, to avoid an ensnaring: question.' Mr. Prescott writes from London: 'Perhaps you have heard of a good thing of Rogers, which Lord Lansdowne told me the other day lie heard him say. It was at Lord Holland's table, when Rogers asked Sir Philip Francis (the talkhad some allusion to Junius) if he, Sir Philip, would allow him to ask a certain question. 'Do so at your peril,' was the amiable reply. If he is Junius, said Rogers in an undertone to his neighbour, then he must be Junius Srvtus ' (Ticknor'-f Life of Prescott, p. 314). Moore relates the story with the addition that Lord Brougham was by (Memoirs, vol. vi. p. C6). But Rogers' own version (given in the Table Talk) is: 'I was conversing with Lady Holland in her dressing-room, when Sir Philip Francis was announced. "Now," she said, "I will ask him if he is Junius." I was about to withdraw, but she insisted on my staying. Sir Philip entered, and soon after he was seated, she put the question to him. His answer was “Madam, do you mean to insult me?” and he went on to say, that when he was a younger man people would not have centured to charge gim with being the author of these letters. Scrope Davies (Byron’s friend) who was intimate with Francis, once began: ‘Sir Philip, will you allow me to put a question to you?” “At your peril, sir.” I had this from Davies himself.

Mexican Morals and Manners

2006-06-14T13:56:00.000+02:00

Nov. 1836. — Read yesterday a very entertaining letter from Mrs. Ashburnham, the wife of the newly-appointed consul to Mexico.* Her account of the manners, of the ignorance, profligacy, and devotion of the natives, strongly reminded me of Majorca; the (so-called) ladies living in their bed-rooms, or in their kitchens — every wife with one lover at least, who passes the life-long evening puffing his cigar at her feet — a lady receiving company with six dragoons sitting on the bed in which she was talking of nothing but house-hold affairs—every woman, even those of seventy, coiffee en cheveux, with one flower stuck perhaps in the grey locks, which do not hide the redness of the head; children from their birth for some years with an edifice of satin, gold, &c. &c., erected on their wretched little heads.

She says that they have an opera, much better than could have been expected in such a society; that there the ladies are always dressed with a species of fire-fly in their hair: these fire-flies are certainly more brilliant than any diamonds, but they must be not only living, but lively and kept in a state of agitation to emit this light; then they protrude their six ugly legs. What a horrid tickling, crawling sensation they must give!

The houses are described as built round a court, like all Spanish houses. Cages filled with the beautiful birds of that climate are suspended as lamps are in our rooms; the court and galleries full of flowers, the galleries especially of one plant which the humming-birds particularly affect; but they are described as so shy that they do not perch even for a minute.

Mrs. Ashburnham speaks of her astonishment at receiving from a lady she hardly knew, a message to say, that ‘she kissed my hands and begged to inform me that she had another devoted servant at my disposal, whom I was in all things to command and on all occasions.' This simply meant that she was brought to bed, and was. as well as could be expected. These notices are sent every nine or ten months from every well-regulated family all over the town.

Editor's note
* Now Lady Webster, widow of the late Sir Godfrey V. Webster, Bart.

Baron Osten's Account of His Escape from the Jaws of the Lion in 1827

2006-06-11T22:07:00.000+02:00

(Transcribed from his own MS. extract from his Journal)

May 20th, 1827.—We heard again of some bullocks having been killed in the same jungle where we had killed three lions on the 14th. On the strength of this information we set out immediately, and found a whole family of lions. We killed five, but I had a very narrow escape of being killed by one of them. After having killed four, I had wounded a fifth, and Grant, with five pad-elephants, was beating towards me, when he roused the wounded lion, who immediately attacked and wounded one of the elephants.

He then came straight at me. I bent a little forwards over the howdah to take a steady aim at him, when unfortunately the forepart of the howdah gave way, and I fell, with all my guns, right on the top of the lion, who immediately seized hold of me. I broke my left arm in the fall, and got a severe blow from the lion on the head, which considerably stunned me. I felt and recollect, however, that he was tearing at my right arm, and I never can forget the horrible gnarling noise he made.

Grant's and all the other elephants turned tail and ran away, so that I was left alone helpless in the jaws of the lion. How I got out of them alive is to me a miracle, and I cannot otherwise account for it than by giving credit to my mahout's statement. He says that his elephant backed about fifty yards, but that he succeeded after some time in driving her up close to the lion, when she took hold of a young tree and bent it with great force over the lion's back, when he relinquished his prey, and was soon after killed by one of the chikarees (chasseurs on foot).

When I came to my senses, I found my left arm broken, a severe contusion on my head, and eleven wounds from. teeth and claws in my right arm.

Another similar catastrophe occurred this day. A lioness was actually tearing one of the chikarees to pieces, when a fortunate shot of Grant's killed her, and saved the poor man's life; but he was desperately wounded, his blade quite laid bare, the blood streaming from his head and face.

I underwent three times the painful operation of having my broken arm set, twice by natives in the jungle and a third time at Kurnamaal, where I was removed in the evening, and laid up for three weeks, when I was well enough to be carried to Meerut. Poor Grant accompanied me to his house at Kurnamaal; but after ten days he sallied forth again, as he said, to revenge my fate. He left me in the greatest spirits, and in better health than he had enjoyed for years.

Four days after, he was brought back a corpse, having fallen a sacrifice to cholera- morbus. A more liberal, kind-hearted man, and a better or keener sportsman, I never met with.

* 'Within the memory of many of the existing generation, one of the best known figures in St. James's Street, and an assiduous frequenter of its clubs, was the Baron Oaten, formerly of the German Legion, a gallant officer and. estimable man, hut of a somewhat lean, dry, and bilious complexion. His notability consisted in his having had a miraculous escape from the jaws of a lion, who, after mumbling him for a few minutes, let him drop. The jokers maintained that he owed his life to his bitterness, and Sydney Smith, after expatiating in his peculiar vein on the topic, was wont to make it the basis of a theory for curing cannibals of their taste for human flesh. ' Send them Rogers,' he would say; 'and if that does not spoil their relish, try them with J. W. C.; for even if they manage to get him down, he is sure to disagree with them.'—Edin. Rev. No. 244, p. 335.

Dr Playfair’s Patient

2006-05-28T22:13:00.000+02:00

Dec 30th 1835 ---H C---* told me that Dr Playfair, the shrewd, plain, very straightforward Scotch physician who attended him at Florence, was talking to him of a consumptive patient (he was so diplomatic, he would not even tell the sex), who for some months had been as well aware as his physician that his state was quite desperate.

The patient, who was inclined to skepticism, had held many conversations and disputes with Dr Playfiair on the subject of a future state. The last hour was evidently come, but he did not seem aware that he was worse than usual.

Dr Playfair sate by him (for I can feel no doubt of the sex), watching the ebbing breath, the voice becoming from debility hardly audible, when in a tone strong as clear as that of health, the dying man said, ‘I know.’ Dr Playfair thought he alluded to some trifling thing respecting his medicines; ' Oh no, you don't: I know a great deal better than you.'

His patient said,' You are mistaken ; you do not understand me; you do not know; I did not know ; now I do know;' and so saying expired.**

C———— was so struck with these singular words, that he asked Dr. Playfair's leave to write them down in his presence.

Editor’s notes
*Hugh Cholmondeley, now Lord Delamere
** ‘Those who watch by him see not, but he sees—
Sees and exults. Were ever dreams like these?
Those who watch by him hear not, but her hears;
And earth recedes, and heaven itself appeals.’
Rogers – Human Life

Jerome, King of Westphalia

2006-05-25T10:45:00.000+02:00

Wynnstay, Sept. 1834.—We were talking of the characters of several members of the Buonaparte family. Mrs. Bowles told us a curious anecdote of Jerome. At the period when he was King of Westphalia, Hyde de Neuville — who, I think, was ostensibly French minister, and certainly French spy over him — represented to Napoleon that, in various instances, he was doing wrong; for instance, that his army was ill-disciplined and ill-managed in every respect. Napoleon promised the minister that his representation should be attended to; and that, by the next messenger, a strong remonstrance should be sent to Jerome.

It so happened that the despatches were delivered to him at the table where Hyde de Neuville was dining with him. Of course he, anticipating their contents, watched their effect on the king, he saw a frown gathering on his countenance but very speedily dispersed, and at the same time marked a tall grenadier, who had brought in the despatches, standing behind the chair of the king, and evidently reading over his shoulder.

Hyde de Neuville could bear silence no longer. He hoped his Majesty had received good news from the Emperor, of his health, &c. &c. ' Excellent!' was the reply, ' and towards me his expressions are peculiarly kind and flattering.'

He then read the letter. Compliments on the state of the army, expressions of high approbation, of every point of conduct upon which he anticipated blame, struck Hyde de Neuville dumb with astonishment. He soon after contrived to have a conversation with the tall grenadier on the subject of the Emperor's letter, cautiously expressing surprise at its gracious tenour. In reply, he owned to the having read the letter (this Neuvelle well knew); and said he never had been so astonished as at the readiness with which, in reading it aloud, the king turned all the strong censure which it contained into approbation.

This story was told some years after by Hyde de Neuville to Lord Palmerston, from whom Mrs. Bowles had it.

Eastern Magic

2006-05-19T18:07:00.000+02:00

Heard from Mr. Wilkinson the other day a curious account of the juggler, fortune-teller, or more properly, seer (Qy. is this the origin of the name ?) who has long been established at Cairo. I heard the same report from Mr. Davidson of this trial; and that given by Mr. Yorke (now Lord Hardwicke) of another to Miss Walpole coincides in every material particular. A boy under ten years of age is taken out of the street, selected by the enquirers; he is placed in a circle, magic characters described, magic words repeated, a drop of ink is put into the palm of his hand; he is asked what he sees there, and after a short time he says that he sees a monarch on his throne, attendants, &c., and seven standard-bearers, with flags of different colours. He is then, by permission obtained from the monarch (supposed to be the Devil), empowered to see any person who may be required.

When this English party went, they got an English boy, speaking Arabic; he was kept many days in their house, to prevent communication; all the forms were gone through ; the boy was excessively frightened : Lord Prudhoe was called for by his English name, quite unknown by any person at Cairo; the boy, puzzled, said, ' I see a Frank, but he is in a Turkish dress,' describing that always worn by Lord Prudhoe — his sandy whiskers and beard, a dagger or sword, with a silver scabbard; known to all the party, &c. &c.

They tried experiments, too, with Cairo boys; all began with exactly the same rigmarole about the sultan, the standard-bearers (Mr. Davidson lamented that he had not observed whether the seven colours named were the primitive), and proceeded in the same way. One person evoked was Shakespeare, whose name, they say, could not have been known; the boy described the pointed beard and ruff: in six trials, four descriptions were exact, the others absurdly the reverse.

Mr. Wilkinson spoke very coolly ; said, ' Nobody could be more incredulous than I was; indeed, I regret that I expressed so much incredulity, because they were more cautious, and I had no opportunity of investigating the matter; but I could not discover any trick.' Lord Prudhoe has certainly received some disagreeable impression, and desires his friends not to question him on this subject: he said this to Miss "Walpole. Lord H—— told her he feared that the English boy had never been in his right mind since the scene.

Charlotte * writes (Dec. 1835): 'The only thing in which we have been disappointed is in the Cairo magician. After some trouble we got the right man (Lord Prudhoe's), and picked out our own boy, who was to see the figures in his hand. We had three, who all at first saw the same things in their hands on the ink; it enlarged; figures with different coloured flags appeared, and then a man with a crown; but to none of the boys did the figures we called for come up.

How the first part was contrived, we cannot make out; we had the man in our own room, and the boys certainly did not know anything about the matter; one of them, an Italian, was so frightened by the sight of the flag-bearers, that he burst into tears and would not go on. The magician really seemed astonished at his failure, and of course said that it was the first time,' &c. &c.

Scott, in his ' Egypt and Candia,' gives a more particular and more satisfactory account. He begins by providing his boy. The magician commenced his operations by writing some characters on a long slip of paper, &c. &c.; then, after wiping the boy's forehead (from -which fear already made the perspiration start), he stuck another piece of paper, covered like the former with hieroglyphics, under his skull-cap, so as to throw a shadow upon his eyes, and prevent his looking up.

Taking the boy's hand in his, the magician then described with ink a square figure in the palm, drawing divers figures in a very mysterious manner. Finally pouring a quantity of ink (quite a pool) into the boy's hand, he was desired to keep his eyes steadfastly fixed upon it, and his head was forced down to within a few inches of his hand. The magician began muttering some unintelligible jargon with great rapidity till he was nearly breathless. He sprinkled incense, coriander seeds, &c. into a charcoal fire, then consumed one of the sentences written on the long slip of paper, then asked the boy repeatedly if he saw anything; upon receiving a negative, observed, he feared the lad was very stupid. The boy, half frightened, was spurred into intelligence; with some more efforts he saw a little boy. ' Has he not something in his hand ?' ' Is it not a flag ?'

' Yes, yes; he has a flag.' In this way the boy was persuaded that he saw seven flags, seven tents, the Sultan, and a large army—then comes the jugglery of the naming a person who is to appear to the boy, who is to describe him; he failed most completely in every instance but one.

'A lady of the party afterwards took the lad's part, and though fully convinced of the absurdity of the juggle, fancied she saw a flag and two stars. We tried to persuade her that it was the reflection of her own eyes, and of the slip of paper dangling from her forehead; but she became so much excited, that her friends would not allow her to remain longer under the magic influence. The conjuror refused to try his art upon grown-up males. The delusion is evidently produced by gradually working upon feelings already predisposed by superstition or other causes to the necessary state of excitement; as the diseased system of a dreamer makes the victim believe that he sees anything brought to his imagination. The fumes of the incense, the unearthly sounds, were enough to cause a wandering in the boy's ideas, and the constrained posture of the head, and the fixedness of his eyes upon the shining pool of ink which reflected ad infinitum his own black face and bright eyes, may easily be supposed to have completed his mystification.'**

Editor's notes
* Mrs. Rowley, then travelling in the East with her husband.
and brother.
** Eothen's trial of the Chief of the Magicians at Cairo is one of the most characteristic passages in the book.

More of Mr Davidson's Eastern stories

2006-05-17T18:16:00.000+02:00

July, 1835.—Another visit to Mr. Davidson, to me far more interesting than the last; when the chief topic of discourse and object of investigation were his arms, though curious, beautiful, and even awful, when you come to arrows, of which the slightest scratch will infuse a poison producing inflammation and extensive discoloration, and to a lance which he does not remove from a scabbard, fearing the accidental ill-effects that might arise from handling a point which has been three years in the poison of the Upas-tree. Still all this was not in my way.

Yesterday he showed us the model of the Pyramids, and instead of giving us a lecture upon the subject, entered into a sort of discussion with Mr. (Sir Gardner) Wilkinson, the traveller, and author of a very celebrated work on Thebes. Davidson has a theory of his own on the subject of the Pyramids. He considers them as signs or monuments in commemoration of the Deluge, deriving the present name from Py (the) Aram (ancient).

The most startling fact which he told us was, that in Mexico and on the coast of Coromandel there exist to this day pyramids of still greater magnitude than the Egyptian, but not as high. One of those in India is said to be a mile between each angle, but not as high as the Egyptian. All are of antiquity far beyond any tradition ; all face the cardinal points ; all have the entrance to the north; and this entrance is never in the centre of the side on which it is placed.

These points of coincidence in buildings so very remote, in three different quarters of the globe, are certainly very curious; but I should find it very difficult to believe that, if these edifices had the distinction which Mr. Davidson assigns to them, they would never be mentioned in the Bible. By Mr. Wilkinson's book, I find their existence is proved by hieroglyphic inscriptions to have been as remote as the time of the Pharaoh of Joseph. The cause of the various measurements of the base of the great pyramid of Cheops is that, sand having accumulated round it, it is not easy to ascertain the height from which to measure; of course the least difference makes a very great one in the circumference.

The base is called 728 feet, the perpendicular height 500 feet: it occupies eleven acres, and is equal in extent to the whole of Lincoln's Inn Fields, from house to house. Humboldt's measurement of the great pyramid of Chobula in Mexico: height 172 feet, base 1,355 feet square.*

Editor’s note
* In Ward's Mexico, the height is stated as 177 feet; base, 1,778 feet square.

Mr Davidson's Eastern stories

2006-05-15T16:37:00.000+02:00

July 14th[1835].—How I wish I could fix here one quarter of the amusement and information which I have derived from the conversation of Mr. Davidson, the eastern traveller; he seems to me like a man walked out of the ' Arabian Nights' bodily. When, just after dinner, he began a story in which Oriental salutation formed a feature, he to our great surprise jumped from his chair, repeated a few Arabic words, which he translated, 'I devote myself to you in thought' (he struck his forehead); ' in love' (striking his heart); ' in deed ' (showing his hands); (from the crown of my head to the sole of my foot'—so saying, he prostrated his length (full six feet) on the floor at Charlotte's feet. Then, from under his neckcloth, he pulled a beard full twelve inches long, told us of a Frenchman very recently dead, whose beard showed the ointment flowing from Aaron's beard ' even to the hem of his garment' to be no figure. This man's was so long as to sweep the ground when he sate down, coal black and very fine: it was regularly anointed and incensed, the fumigation passing between the throat and beard held out.

' Little facts (he said) curiously illustrate the unchangeableness of the grandiloquent Eastern character. A very few years ago, a troop of Mamelukes, riding near Constantinople, stopped some shepherds, from whom one of the Mamelukes requested a draught of milk they had just drawn. Having drunk it, he refused the wretched remuneration required, telling the shepherd it was but too much honour for him to furnish milk to a Mameluke, and utterly despising the threats of the outraged shepherd, who declared he would have justice, if he applied to the Sultan himself. He actually made his complaint within the hour, and brought his adversary before the distributor of justice. The Mameluke utterly denied the whole transaction, declaring he had not drunk a drop of milk. The modern Solomon settled the difference between the conflicting testimonies by ordering the defendant to be opened, that it might be ascertained whether his stomach contained milk. Of course the milk was found, and the poor shepherd received some fraction of a farthing, being the lawful price of his commodity.

'Strong murmurs began to rise among the troop of Mamelukes, who thought death rather a severe punishment for such an offence, and seemed a little inclined to avenge their companion. Upon this, the judge (I am not sure whether it was not the Sultan) assured them he should never have thought of putting to death a Mameluke for taking a little milk from a shepherd, who was, in fact, too highly honoured in furnishing him refreshment; but that the soldier had been proved guilty of telling a lie, had disgraced the name of Mameluke, and deserved death for that offence. This explanation, of course, delighted the whole corps.'*

I was asking one day about Lady Hester Stanhope. He did not see her, having arrived just after the death of her only English companion, who having begun as maid, ended as secretary, friend, &c. &c. He describes her, as others have done, turning night into day, and sleeping through the daylight, with very weak eyes and without any decided pursuit but astrology. He says she has lost much of her power, or rather, of her widely extended influence; still possessing the most arbitrary authority over her own small district. This diminution of power may be ascribed partly to her increase of years, which prevents her from riding and showing herself among them, partly to the want of that novelty which dazzles, but chiefly from the want of money, from the weight of debt, which prevents her from spending among them the annual income which she derives from England.

Upon this subject he gave us a story curiously illustrative of Oriental character. About two years ago. Lady Hester went into Persia, with a view of obtaining assistance and protection from the Shah. She provided a present of English goods, which was really very handsome. This was (according to etiquette) offered to the Shah by means of the interpreter, through whom were also sent the thanks with all the grandiloquence of the East; his sense of the magnificence of the present: sun, moon, and stars were all eclipsed : gratitude was described in the same terms : their admiration for the spirit, liberality, greatness of mind, of the English aristocracy: of which he felt the influence so strongly, as to be aware that to the English the true way of showing the sense of favours received was to gratify their noble nature by asking more. Aware not only of this, but that his poor empire did not contain anything worthy of being offered to the great English lady, he would ask of her the favour of a loan. Her project (which the Shah had discovered) was to borrow money from him, which she never could have returned.

Editor’s note
* This story, so far as relates to opening the stomach of the
soldier, is told by Gibbon of one of the barbarian monarchs who
overran the Empire.

Balloons

2006-05-06T14:38:00.000+02:00

July 7th.—Went yesterday to see the aerial ship, as they call the new balloon. It is very interesting, though I cannot believe that it will actually perform the voyage from London to Paris, in about six weeks from the present time (if the wind is perfectly fair), in five hours.

The form of a cylinder with conical ends, and the various contrivances for admitting or excluding the atmospheric air, seem to place it a little less at the mercy of the wind than former balloons. Still the directing power, or rather the stemming power, is quite wanting. They have the power of raising themselves into the higher regions of the atmosphere, where they may expect another current, or may go almost upon the sea, as the buoyancy of the whole machine would prevent it from sinking.

Still it is owned, that if there is a wind against them, even such as would only carry them five miles an hour, they cannot go. Therefore it seems to me utterly impossible that the machine should ever be brought into use as a conveyance; but I suppose that for scientific purposes it might be useful in investigation, and perhaps were navigation still dependent on winds and tides and the power of steam undiscovered, it might have been of real use.

The gallery in which the passengers are to go, seems to me perilously slight, and obviously unequal to the encounter with any severe weather. The ribs or joists of the floor are covered only with basket-work, which seems very insufficient for a number of persons (the crew alone is seventeen) to tread with safety.*

Editor’s note
* It would seem from this description, compared with that of the French monster balloon, that the art of aerial navigation has made little progress in the last 30 years.

Mr Coesvelt's pictures

2006-05-06T14:36:00.000+02:00

June l8th.—Went to see Mr. Coesvelt's pictures, and return convinced that, for my own pleasure, I should prefer that to any collection I know in London; perhaps one reason is that it is so entirely Italian; another is that, among the pictures, there is not one of which the subject is disagreeable; no disgusting nudity, no painful martyrdom, &c. &c.

He has both increased and diminished the collection since I saw it in Brook Street, four or five years ago. He has two or three very fine Raphael's; one that I am inclined to place higher than any one I know in England; that is from the Alva collection. There is an Infant St. John, whose look of pure intense adoration towards the Infant Christ is finer than almost anything I know.

I should say that Parmegiano is here on his throne; that here I have learnt to value him more highly than I have ever done before. Still I do not like his large pictures as well as the smaller ones; there is one large one recently added to the collection, which Mr. Coesvelt values very highly, but which I think a rather French and maniere Parmegiano.

A few days afterwards I went to see the King's pictures, and felt that they lost much by comparison with Mr. Coesvelt's. Perhaps their inferiority in my eyes would be expressed in a very few words—their boast is Flemish Mr. Coesvelt's pictures are all Italian.*

Editor's Note
* This collection has been sold and dispersed.

Charles Kemble

2006-04-26T12:39:00.000+02:00

June 11th, 1835.—Saw last night C. Kemble as Hamlet: he is wondrous stiff and old. I had been reading in the morning his daughter's memoirs, in which there are occasionally passages of genius, of great discrimination, and good sense. I was struck with an observation on the disadvantage of representing tragedy in a small theatre which would be admirably fitted for comedy. It is not only the foil and tinsel which lose on nearer inspection: the expression of the stronger passions becomes coarse, &c. &c.

How I felt the truth of this last night, when I looked at Kemble's wrinkled face, at the coarser Mrs. Glover (the Gertrude): perhaps, too, the quality of Ophelia's voice might have been refined by distance; her tone was harsh, but her acting not bad enough to shock one, which is more than I can say for most of the performers.

The great error of Kemble seems to me, that he substitutes sneering scorn for dignity, and, truth to say, gives great force to some passages of the part, the ' little more than kin and little less than kind,' for instance; the scene with Rosencrantz and Guilderstein; the play scene; but he made a very awkward job of lying at Ophelia's feet; he sate in the midst of the little stage very stiff, and evidently rising with difficulty. The scene of the King at his devotions and Hamlet's speech are omitted, and I for one do not regret these expressions of diabolical revenge. I was surprised at the scene with the Queen; it was so much better, quieter, more son-like than I expected; there was also more of regret for Polonius than seemed to belong to the cold Kemble school.

I never was so much aware of the fault of the bungling catastrophe, especially of the absurdity of Hamlet's stabbing the king in the midst of his court, without one hand being lifted to prevent the outrage.

Louis Philippe

2006-04-20T13:11:00.000+02:00

Rome: Jan. 20th.—I dined yesterday with Sir Coutts Trotter: so happening to talk of Louis Philippe, he told me an anecdote strongly illustrating the more amiable parts of his character. Sir Coutts said he had never lived in intimacy with the Duke of Orleans, but the Duke had had many transactions of business with their house. He then went on to relate, that, passing through Paris a few months ago, he left his name at the Tuileries: the next day, to his great astonishment, he received a message to say that the King was very anxious to see him, and that he must dine with him in private that day.

Sir Coutts of course obeyed, and found himself sitting at table with the King, Queen, Duke of Orleans and one of his brothers, and some of the Marechaux, without more form or ceremony than ' we have at this table,' said he. He was ordered to take the Queen in to dinner, and of course to sit next to her. The conversation turned chiefly on England, on those whom they had known there. The Queen spoke of the wonderful change in her situation since they had met in England, and added, 'Mais j’etais bien mieux, je me trouuais bien plus heureuse quand j’etais de Vautre cote, —meaning in the Palais Royal. Here the King, who was sitting exactly opposite on the other side of the table, interrupted the conversation with 'Mais, Sir Coutts, je vous assure ce n’est pas de ma faute si nous nous trouvons ici.'

He went on to say how often he had remonstrated with Charles X on his measures: how he had foretold exactly that which did happen afterwards; and all this was said in the presence of five or six other persons. I found that Sir Coutts, like myself, believed what they said to be true, that Louis Philippe had not sought the painful pre-eminence in which he finds himself.

There is one thing which must be allowed: of the very many English who were formerly thrown into contact with him, almost all speak highly of him. I have never heard of any one person who found that the Duke of Orleans at the Palais Royal, or Louis Philippe at the Tuileries, had forgotten the kindness or hospitality shown to the exiled son of Egalite. This is much more than can be said for those of the Branche ainee, who one and all ont tout oublie in this sense as well as
in that in which it was originally said.*

* Miss Wynn was probably alluding to the mot attributed to Talleyrand, but really written of the emigrants by Le Chevalier de Pauat to Mallet du Pan, from London, 1796: Personne n'est corrige: personne n'a su ni rien oublier ni rien, appraidre.

Duchesse de Berry

2006-04-17T14:03:00.000+02:00

Rome, Jan. 3rd, 1834.—I have picked up here some more strange particulars about the extraordinary history of the ci-devant Duchesse de Berry. I had been astonished, with many others, at the manner in which she was received here. I had heard that the Pope* had deputed Cardinals to welcome her, had assigned her a guard, and had given a sanction to the sort of Court which she attempted to keep up.

Yesterday, Mr. ——, the brother-in-law of Cardinal Weld, cleared up this mystery. It seems that the present Pope, then a Cardinal, was really the person who first introduced Deutz to her notice. He therefore considered himself as the innocent cause of her ruin, and as bound in conscience to reach out a strong hand to save her from utterly sinking. It seems now the universally received opinion that Deutz is the father of the child which is just dead. Whether Lucchesi Palli has any right to that which is to be born, seems very doubtful.

The infatuation of the unhappy woman seems perfectly incredible; she might in so many ways have averted the open disgrace of the catastrophe. There can be no doubt that the French Government would have been too happy to allow her to escape quietly. One of her own near friends told Miss A-—— (from whom I heard it) that the Queen of the French wrote to her frequently in the kindest manner and strongly urged her to escape.

In one of the Queen's letters was the following striking expression — 'Dans tous vos malheurs, rappelez-vous que vous n’avez pas a porter cette couronne d’epines qui me pese.' Any one of those ladies, so fondly, so firmly devoted to her cause, would have taken upon herself the child of disgrace: it was not the first nor the second even, and all had been quietly managed before.

It seems perfectly clear that, if Deutz was not the father, it must have been a married man, or one who could not be passed off as her husband. Then when they were to buy one, one should think they might have found a better than Lucchesi Palli, who was known never to have left the Hague for twenty-four hours during the fourteen months which preceded the birth of the child.

* Gregory XVI

Manuscripts of Tasso

2006-04-13T02:58:00.000+02:00

Rome: December 1833.—I have just picked up a very interesting account of some late discovered books and manuscripts belonging to Tasso. I copy the memorandum written for me by Mr. Horner, to whom these papers were shown by the Conte Alberti:

‘When Tasso was imprisoned, his manuscripts were all seized and put into the hands of Guarini, the author of the "Pastor Fido," and then minister of state of Alfonzo, Duke of Ferrara, He was shortly afterwards sent on an embassy from Alfonzo to the Court of Florence, and failing in the object of his mission, was subsequently dismissed. Still, either designedly or by accident, he retained the manuscripts which the death of Tasso had rendered comparatively unimportant to Alfonzo, and on the death of Guarini they were inherited by his son Alessandro Guarini, from whom they passed into the hands of Carlo Tomaso Strozzi. They were purchased from him by a person of the name of Foppi or Foppo, and finally came into the possession of the Falconieri family at Borne. With their descendants the MSS. remained till the Conte Alberti, hearing that these books existed and were but lightly appreciated by their owner, became the purchaser of them, at a very small price.

The Conte Alberti being in reduced circumstances, and finding the inconvenience under a despotic government of being the possessor of manuscripts, by which he had been already led into very unpleasant situations, he has offered these for sale to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. After having subjected them to the most rigid scrutiny, which has satisfied him as to the authenticity of these papers, Leopold has made the liberal offer of 1,000l., the bargain, however, has not yet been closed, and I imagine that, were a larger sum offered from any other quarter, Conte Alberti is at liberty to take it.

'I myself saw only three of the books; one of them was a compilation of sonnets all written upon scraps of paper, backs of letters, &c. &c. incorrect, but abounding in beauties, and interesting as portraying the progress of the poet's passion for Leonora, and also clearly establishing the fact of his only feigning madness in obedience to the commands of Alfonso, who wished thus to screen the reputation of his sister. There may be about 100 sonnets. I also saw the "Laborinto d'Amore" given to the poet by Leonora, in a cover embroidered by her own hand in allegorical devices. It is in very good preservation, and in the first leaf is a sonnet written by Tasso, which alludes to this circumstance. The third was a Virgil, full of marginal notes written by him. I believe there are many other books rendered interesting by the annotations of Tasso, which are to be sold with the rest; among them, I know, is a treatise by Aristotle on the " Art of War," from which the poet has evidently derived as much knowledge of military tactics as was necessary for the composition of his " Gerusalemme." There is also either a part or the whole of that poem in the author's handwriting as it was originally composed, not as he afterwards gave it to the public.'

Thus far Mr. Horner wrote for me to send to England, in hopes of procuring a better bargain, not only for Conte Alberti, but for the world. He told me that Leopold is supposed to be so jealous of the reputation of his predecessors, or more probably so deeply imbued with the Austrian fear of giving publicity to invectives against princes, even when so many centuries have covered their ashes, that he has absolutely prohibited the publication of any of these books. Conte Alberti says he should be sorry that they should go out of Italy; but he fears they may be as effectually buried in the private library of the Grand Duke as they have been in that of the Falconieri. If he could but be assured that they will be deposited in the Lawrentian Library, where the public might have access to them, he would be satisfied.*

Editor’s note
*Alberti’s collection eventually turned out to be composed of some of the most curious literary forgeries on record. Only a part of the first volume which he brought out was genuine. All the rest have been declared by competent authority to be spurious. His pretended miniature of the Princess Leonora was fiscovered to be a copy of a miniature of a lady of the noble family of Trotti. The complete detection took place in 1843, in the course of an action brought by a bookseller of Ancona to whom part of the MS. Had been sold.

Party Feeling in France

2006-04-09T00:41:00.000+02:00

July 1833.—I have just heard from Dr. Somerville a strange instance of the virulence of party feeling now raging in France. He had shown some civilities to a Monsieur and Madame de ———: they vowed eternal friendship in a few days. Some time after this, the Somervilles went to Paris : their dear friends, the de ———'s, were absent, and did not return till the Somervilles had been some time settled, indeed not till the Doctor had returned to England.

Great was the joy of meeting, and that of the de ————'s did not evaporate in professions. Parties were immediately made to show those sights to which favour alone could gain admission, a dinner proposed, &c. &c. The day after their first meeting, Madame ———— being in the carriage with Mrs. Somerville, asked her whether she had been to some party or sight past. ' No,' answered Mrs. Somerville, ' it was unfortunately at the time when I was at La Grange,' (the country seat of La Fayette). The genuine Frenchwoman expressed her surprise by a start, a bound from her seat which made Mrs. Somerville tremble for the springs of her carriage: then followed a string of 'Mon Dieu! est il possible!' &c. &c., ' that you, such a woman as you, should visit such a man? There is not a person belonging to the bonne societe who would speak to you, if you were known to have been in such company.'

Mrs. Somerville repeated that she had not only passed a week at La Grange, but considered it as one of the most agreeable she had spent in the whole course of her life, and that she hoped to repeat the visit. Her friend said that she felt under great obligations to Mrs. Somerville, had conceived for her an affection which nothing could shake, ' but I own to you,' she added, ‘had this been our first interview, after what has just passed, it should have been our last. However, I have one favour to ask of your friendship, et je vous la demands a genoux. You are to dine with me on such a day: au nom de Dieu, I entreat, do not mention the name of La Fayette, or in any way allude to this visit. Of the party invited to meet you there is not one individual who would not, after such an avowal, avoid you as if you came from a plague-house, or would ever speak to you.'

Mrs. Somerville replied, that she would never wittingly speak on a topic unpleasant to the master of any house where she found herself a guest: at the same time, as she never did anything she was ashamed of, she would not shrink from her friendship for La Fayette, if, in the course of conversation, she was questioned on the subject.

Dr. Somerville tells me that, even under Napoleon, the police never was so active, nor so expensively organised, as under the Citizen King. When the Duchesse de Berry was wandering about, the strictness about passports was most absurd. Dr. Somerville went with Mr. Hankey to the Passport Office, where every individual was then expected to appear, and all, even children and maids, were obliged to have their separate passports, describing person, age, &c. Dr. Somerville, having seen this ceremony performed on the four elder children, at last said to the official, 'I see you are a gentleman, and I am convinced that a secret entrusted to your honour will, in spite of everything, be in safe keeping. I will, therefore, in strict confidence, tell you an important secret: you see there the Duchesse de Berry in disguise,' and he pointed to the youngest child, a girl of four years old, who, upon being looked at, hid herself under the table.

The officer, laughing, said: 'Que voulez-vous, monsieur? Je sens comme vous tout le ridicule de ce que je fais; mais les ordres nous viennent d'en haut; nous devons obeir a la lettre.'

A few days after this, Dr. Somerville departed by the Malle Paste: being within a few miles of Montreuil, he missed his passport, and consulted the conducteur as to what he was to do; he fully expected to have been lodged in a prison till he could in some way have been identified, and asked whether he had not better tell his tale and surrender himself at once. The conducteur, hearing that he was known to Quilliac, at Calais, promised, if he would only lean back in the cabriolet, he would pass him through the gates without any enquiry. However, he had not an opportunity of proving the total uselessness of the tiresome passport, for a few minutes afterwards it was found in the straw at the bottom of the carriage.

Sir Walter Scott

2006-04-06T23:12:00.000+02:00

My uncle gave me a curious account of the introduction of Mr. Scott to the Princess of Wales. Mrs. Hayman, in sending the invitation to my uncle (Lord Grenville), added a personal request that he would come early to protect the poet (for as such only was he known), who she believed would not know any one other guest. Scott arrived late, was only presented to the Princess just before she went to dinner; at table, his place was of course far removed from hers, and little if any conversation took place between them. Very soon after the gentlemen came up from dinner, the Princess said, ' Mr. Scott, I hear you have a great collection of stories which you tell remarkably well: pray let us hear one.'

Without any disclaiming speeches, without hesitation, almost without delay, Scott began, ' Madam, there was once,' &c. &c. The story was much applauded: another was called for and followed with equal facility.

My uncle mentioned this as an extraordinary feat of self-possession and ready wit. I am certainly not inclined to doubt the extraordinary talents of Scott, but in this instance many circumstances appear to me to diminish the wonder. The trade of Scott in his character of London and Edinburgh lion was as decidedly at that period that of a teller of stories as it has since been that of a writer of novels. The tales had probably been told a hundred times, and on this occasion his friend Mrs. Hayman, I doubt not, gave him a previous hint of what would, be asked from him.*

To this I cannot help adding a story of the embarkation of poor Sir Walter Scott at Portsmouth, which I heard from Dr. Somerville last June. He was touring with his family in 1831, and learnt at his arrival at the hotel at Portsmouth, that Sir Walter was there waiting the pleasure of the wind for embarkation. They went into his room, and with an exclamation of pleasure made the usual enquiries after his health. Sir Walter rose, and in advancing to meet them tottered, and would have fallen on his face if the strong arm of Dr. Somerville had not supported and borne him back to his chair.

When he was a little recovered, he said,' After what has just passed, it is quite needless to answer your question you see how I am. It is all here,' added he, striking his forehead. ‘Take warning from me, Mr Somerville, and spare your head. I have brought this on myself by taking too much out of me.’ Sair Walter sailed October 27th, 1831.**

Editor’s Notes
Scott mentions this dinner in a letter to Mr. George Ellis, describing his visit to London, dated April 7th, 1806: 'I had also the honour of dining with a fair friend of yours at Blackheath, an honour 'which I shall long remember. She is an enchanting princess, who dwells in an enchanted palace, and I cannot help thinking her prince must lie under some malignant spell when he denies himself her society.' His popularity dates from the publication of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, in 1805. At a later period and after a longer practice in being lionised, in 1809, he made extremely light of his own social accomplishments. ' All this is very flattering,' he would say Sir to Mr. Morritt, ' and very civil. If people are amused with hearing me tell a parcel of old stories, or recite a pack of ballads to lovely young girls and gaping matrons, they are easily pleased, and a man would be very ill-natured who would not give pleasure so cheaply conferred.'
** Beside other reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott by Dr Somerville, these diaries contain a complete copy of Sir William’s Gell’s; but they have all been incorporated into the Life by Lockhart.

Madame D'Arblay

2006-04-03T22:39:00.000+02:00

March 1833.—I have been reading the life of Dr. Burney by his daughter, and am more disappointed than I can express. We were well aware that her style, always affected, grew more so in each successive work; but that the authoress (the unaided authoress, I firmly believe her) of 'Evelina' could write such stuff as I have just read, I should hardly have thought possible.

Her overweening admiration for that very insignificant personage, her father, I can forgive. I can believe it was quite equalled by Miss Edgworth, so very much the superior of Madame d'Arblay in talent. But I cannot endure her excessive personal vanity, her nauseous repetition of all the compliments made to her under the shallow pretence of telling the world how much pleasure the paternal heart of Dr. Burney derived from them.

Then all this absurdity and arrogance is made more disgusting by her frequent allusions to her extreme modesty! Look at the genuine modesty of great talent in Miss Edgeworth's memoirs of her father; admire the good taste with which she speaks of her works, the anxiety with which she allots a share in their production far larger than any reader is inclined to allow to her father. How I wish she would fulfil her promise, and let us see in her long-talked-of work what she can do without him.

From what I heard last year from her nephew, I fear that a distrust of her own powers may chill their energy. He told me that she has not to anyone imparted the title, or even the subject, of the work in which she is engaged; that the dread of producing something inferior to the fame which she has acquired seems to act as a bugbear upon her imagination, and he fears may prove a decided check to it.

After all. Miss Burney's book has been valuable to me, it has proved a hook by which I have caught some very interesting stories; among others, one which strongly exemplifies the ignorance in which Napoleon kept France of everything which he did not wish to publish.

Madame d'Arblay had been with her husband in France for some years, when the events of 1814 restored, with the Bourbons, the communication between England and France. Madame d'Arblay hastened over to see. Her family. Dr. C. Burney told my uncle that his sister was dining with him a day or two after her arrival.

The china or earthenware which he used happened, with the word Trafalgar, to be ornamented with various emblems of that victory. Madame d'Arblay, pointing to her plate, said,' What can this mean, brother ?' ' I think if you look at the word, Trafalgar, you will not need any other explanation,' was the natural answer. ' But what can that mean?' rejoined she; and in short it turned out that it was the first time she had heard of the battle with which all Europe had seemed to us to ring.

Madame d'Arblay in her book speaks of some verses by Canning, which were read to the Princess of Wales by Mrs. A. Hayman; who tells me this is not true: they were promised, but Canning said he had burnt them upon reading 'De Montfort,' dismayed by the example of the Quizzer destroyed.*

Editor's Note
* De Montfort's hate had been exasperated, by the ridicule and
irony of his victim.

The Old Woman of Delamere Forest (Part II)

2006-03-24T02:21:00.000+01:00

Thus far the tale of the old woman, frequently repeated to my sister, goes. What follows is Mr. Wilbraham's account:
The old woman said she had had a violent fever; and had, in a vision, seen all that to my sister she afterwards described as an actual occurrence. Mr. Wilbraham, willing to humour her fancy, sent the overseer with a labourer to dig wherever she directed. This search proved wholly fruitless; but soon after, Mrs. Hollingsworth having heard that the body of a man had been found in a pond at Marbury, near Whitchurch, she went there immediately, and asserted that she knew the corpse to be that of her son, which after having been buried in the forest had been removed and carried for greater security to this distant pond.

She afterwards went to Liverpool, where she said she discovered that a young German exactly answering the description of her son had landed from a Hamburgh ship, and had enquired his way to Delamere Forest, on the very day on which she saw the traveller in conversation with the supposed murderer. Mr. Wilbraham, hearing this, thought further investigation necessary: he wrote to the chief of the police at Liverpool, stating the facts of the case, and requesting him to make every enquiry. In answer to this application, he heard that a young German had certainly landed on the day specified, but that all the rest of the tale was a fabrication.

Soon after, Mr. Wilbraham being in London called upon Mr. Grollermann, who had been employed as an Almoner to Queen Charlotte, to distribute her bounty to the distressed Germans in England. After having told the whole story, Mr. Wilbraham requested him to make some enquiry in Hanover about the young Hollingsworth. The result was, he was reported to be alive and well. Mr. Wilbraham, determined to leave nothing undone that would satisfy the mind of the mother and establish the innocence of him whom she had accused, wrote to the young man, strongly urging him to come over to tranquillise his mother. Some weeks afterwards, he and his sister came to Delamere House.

She fully recognised him, so did the mother, but she did not seem happy; she evidently could not bear that her story, which had made much noise, should be so totally disproved. Hollingsworth went to Manchester, and got employed in his trade of carpenter.

This is the substance of what Mr. Wilbraham wrote down for me. Strange to say, after all this, the old woman always persisted in saying to my sister and me, that, though appearances were so much against her that she could not maintain it, her own conviction must ever be that the young man was an impostor and no son of hers. The daughter more than joined in these assurances, and even went so far one day as to declare to us that the young man had made love to her and wanted to marry her.

I understand the supposed murderer (whose name I have never heard) is now living at Tarporley respectably. In the strange tale of the old woman, I cannot help believing there was much of self-delusion, and that, when that was removed, she had recourse to falsehood to bolster up her fallen credit: but it seems to me quite impossible to say exactly where delusion ended and deception began. I see that my sister and I should not fix the boundary at the same place: she has more faith in the old liar than I can have.

It was not till some time after this strange occurrence that I happened to see the woman for the first time: we went to her hut; she was then (1827-8) living quite alone: her daughter's education being finished, she sent her to London to be confirmed and to seek a service.

The mother's pride seemed highly gratified in reading to us a letter which she had received from her daughter. It was written partly in German, and partly in English; the former was translated to us, and very much was I astonished at the language, sentiments, and intelligence of the writer. She began by describing her wonder in first seeing London: a great deal of very proper feeling not unmixed with cant (as I thought), was expressed as, with respect to her confirmation, she spoke of the kindness with which she had been received by their friends, and of a play at Covent Garden, to which they had taken her, which she seemed to bewail as a sin, and assured her mother it should never be repeated. She then spoke of the family in whose service she had been placed by the clergyman of the Lutheran chapel.

Mrs. Hollingsworth gave me the idea of a very shrewd woman, who in good language, though her pronunciation was decidedly German, expressed strong religious feelings, mingled with such uncharitable opinions of all mankind, that I could not but term her religion cant. It was at this time that she gave my sister an MS. Of about twenty folio sheets, containing a history of her life. I read it aloud, and can only recollect that it did not even reach the period of her marriage; that, with much cant and more long-windedness, it afforded rather an interesting picture of primaeval manners and a long list of suitors whom she had refused.

I felt that, with much curtailment, this might have made an interesting beginning to her strange story. I lament now that I did not write this at the time. At a subsequent visit she told us that she began to find her absolute solitude very dreary, and that as age and infirmities increased she felt it not safe. She added that by the interest of the Lutheran clergyman and of other friends, she had obtained an admission to the Dutch Almshouses in London.

She had just been giving a leave-taking tea drink to two gossips, her neighbours, and had a letter from her daughter; and it was then that, speaking of the man calling himself her son, and some of the evidence against her statement being brought forward, she said,' I know that very well. I know what everybody says and believes, but if the whole world were to tell me that this piece of paper was black, I could not contradict them, but I never could be persuaded that it is not white.'

Before she went away she gave my sister a 'German Prayer-book, for the use of the Lutheran chapel at St. James's. In the first page is ' A. M. Hollingsworth ein geschend' van der Gravien van Munster, door middle van de goede vtow Goltermann. This book was given me by the Countess of Munster through the virtues of Mrs. Goltermann. I desire me Lady Delamere to take it in remembrance of me, Anna Maria Hollingsworth, July 11, 1829.'

At the same time she sent to Vale Royal as a tribute of her gratitude, the last of her family of goats, with the following rude lines:—
THE PETITION OF A KIDD.
A lonesome stranger creves a boon,
To rove within the shade,
In your spacious park allone,
An hopes your frindly ade.
My friendly dame is going to leve,
The place ware I did dwell,
I humlily hegg do me resieve
An use a stranger well.
Then I will in return agien,
Cheer your lonesome walk;
In all my nature still remane,
In innocence with you talk.
In June 1832 we went to Bishopsgate Street, in search of the Dutch Almshouses, which are in a court near there. A low arch with a gate opened into a paved passage or alley. At a little shop next door we enquired whether Mrs. Hollingsworth was still in the Almshouses, and whether she could come and speak to us at the carriage door; a young woman told us that she was her daughter just come (from Pimlico, I think) to see her, and she would go in and fetch her if she was well enough.

The poor soul came coughing and so weak she could hardly reach the carriage, hut she seemed quite delighted when she saw my sister, whom her daughter had not recognised. We got out, found at the end of the alley seven or eight steps, down which we went to a court, round which were built about a dozen small houses. Our old woman had a room about twelve feet square, neat and tidy, full of old rude knick-knacks; amongst others a sort of model of the hut in Delamere
Forest.

As far as one could judge during the short time we remained, the woman seemed contented, but sinking fast. The daughter, a decent-mannered person, with language very superior to her appearance, told us she was in service, and could seldom get leave to come and visit her mother. We enquired about the MS. We had seen, and asked whether she had ever concluded it, which we found she had not, and that she had given what we had seen to a bookseller at Manchester.

Both mother and daughter vehemently repeated their assertions that the traveller was not their relative; and at last the daughter asked how she could acknowledge or consider as a brother a man who had attempted to seduce her and wanted to marry her.

The Old Woman of Delamere Forest

2006-03-23T01:08:00.000+01:00

Vale Royal:* November 1832.—Since I have been here I have been collecting all the particulars respecting ' The old "Woman of the Forest.' Giving her credit for an inventive imagination, there is enough in the facts to interest one. In July 1815 a report had reached this house that a strange woman was come to live in the forest; many fables, reporting her a heroine in disguise, were already afloat among the servants, when, on the 17th of July, the woman came to this house bringing the following letter :—

My Lady Thumley,
' As I have heard that I am at the present at your property, namely the Oakmere; we are latly comen out of Germany ware I lost my husband; as I cam into England I vind rents so high that I do not know to do for myself without charity, as the same way as most of the people live abroad, so I am gone about to seek some waste ground, for there I can live and provide for myself, for I have a little to make a small beginning, but halas I find that all the commons are forbid now I am at hand this place I am able to live if I may be there but I do not mean to make myself a Paris, for I never intend to submit to Paris ceping, for I belong to a faring chappel in London, but I may yet do for myself if I am permitted, therefore I humbly beg my noble Lady you would not deny my this favour to stop here for a few weeks till I write up to London, for I cannot pay for lorging. I humbly beg that your honor may send some of your trusty servants to enquire and to see ware. We can we shall not trouble anybody for anything nor hurt nor destroy anything, rather protect the remanes of the Trees.
' Most Noble Lady, I humbly beg deny my not a little rest at this peaceable place.
' I your most obliging and humble stranger,
'maria hollingswobth.
' Oakmere, July 17,1816.'

The poor woman stated that she was the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman, born at Leuwardin, in West Friesland, in 1765; her appearance bespoke great poverty; but her rags did not conceal the faded remains of beauty, and her manners and language appeared very superior to her situation. She told her little tale with intelligence and simplicity. She said that she had married a British soldier: that she had followed his fate and shared his hardships through many campaigns, till he was killed at Bergen-op-zoom, leaving her with two infant children, a son and a daughter. She came over to England, and through some Hanoverian friends obtained a small pension from Queen Charlotte, and some inferior situation for her son in the Royal kitchen at St. James's. The motives to which she alludes in her letter
were more fully developed to account for her wild scheme of settling on the forest.

She told us how she had procured a small cart, which afforded shelter to herself and her daughter; a donkey to draw it, and two goats, from whose milk they derived a chief part of their nourishment. In many places they had attempted to make some stay, but had always been driven away as vagabonds by parish officers. Beginning to despair of obtaining in England the object of her desire, a solitary abode rent free, she had determined to go to Liverpool, and get a passage to America. Delamere Forest lay on her road; it was at that time quite unenclosed; a dreary waste without any habitation for miles.

Here her hopes revived: she found a sheltered spot near the large pool called Oakmere, where she determined to stop to wash her clothes. Making some enquiries, she found the land adjoining to be extra-parochial, the property of Lord Delamere. Here the dreaded parish officer, dressed up in brief authority, could have no power if she once obtained the sanction of the proprietor. Lord Delamere allowed her to live there, and she soon set to work to make for herself a permanent abode. Upon a rising bank above the mere, sheltered by a few Scotch firs, stood two ribs of whales, which had been placed there by Philip Egerton, Esq., of Oulton, who had rented the land from the Cholmondeley family. Between these ribs Mrs. H. formed a rude kind of dwelling, by turning up her cart and making a wall of sods and a roof of boughs. Though barely sheltered from the storm, in a hut about eight feet by ten and little more than five feet high, did this poor woman and her daughter live many years.

She became an object of great curiosity in the neighbourhood. The most absurd fables were told: it was even said that Napoleon was living in this strange disguise. Visitors began to be attracted by curiosity, and charity induced them all to contribute in some shape or other towards relieving the wants of the poor recluse. As her means increased, she gradually improved her little dwelling. She added to her walls, put in a door and a small casement; and to make her roof a little more weather-proof, she extended over it the skin of her donkey, who had died, probably from starvation. She hired a labourer for a few days, made a fence, which enclosed her dwelling and a little bit of ground, in which she made a potato ground and a little garden, and a small shed to shelter her goats.

From the produce of that bit of garden, cultivated by herself, and from that of a few fowls, which in course of time she procured, she and her daughter contrived to live; the latter going occasionally to Tarporley market to sell eggs and vegetables. She added to her live- stock a dog, and provided further for her protection by the purchase of a pair of pistols.

One of her professed objects in wishing for a solitary abode was the leisure it would afford her to devote herself to the education of her daughter, without the dread of bad society and example to counteract her precepts. The girl was taught to read and write English, French, and German.

Thus passed some eventless years, during which the numbers of her visitors increased, and her means gradually improved; occasional supplies came from those who had formerly known her. The first winter was cheered by a welcome present of warm clothing from Lady Bulkeley. In process of time, Delainere Forest was enclosed; some two or three small cottages sprang up in the neighbourhood of Oakmere, at a distance from anv town or village. Mrs. Hollingsworth finding that the children of these cottagers had neither the means nor the opportunity of learning anything, offered to teach them to read gratuitously. Unfortunately differences arose, and at the end of three or four years she had quarrelled with all her neighbours.

In the year 18— she received a letter from her son, who had been bound as apprentice to a cabinet-maker at Hanover, informing her that he was on the point of embarking for Buenos Ayres. He added, that as the vessel by which he was going was to touch at Liverpool, he hoped to be able to see his mother before he left Europe. The mother was of course delighted with the thoughts of seeing her long-absent son, and continually watched from a neighbouring eminence every person who strayed towards her lonely dwelling.

After many disappointments, one summer evening she saw a man with a satchel of carpenter's tools on his back coming across the forest, evidently seeking some dwelling, and as he drew nearer both mother and daughter felt convinced that they saw him whose arrival they had so anxiously expected. They saw the man stop at a
neighbouring cottage, apparently to enquire the way, and dared not go there to meet him.

The owner of the cottage into which the traveller had entered was unfortunately one with whom Mrs. Hollingsworth was at variance, one of whom she had a very bad opinion she had, therefore, the misery of thinking that her son was in the house of one who was her enemy, of one capable of any atrocious action.

Night came on, the traveller did not appear again, and the poor woman returned to her hut, hoping she had been disappointed, and had again mistaken a stranger for her son. Anxiety prevented her from sleeping: in the dead of the night her watchful ear caught the sound of distant footsteps, which induced her to get up.

Creeping along, concealed by the low fence of her little garden, she saw her neighbour and his son coming towards the mere, bearing between them a heavy sack; the moon was shining bright. She saw them walk into the water, which was very shallow in this part: she heard a heavy splash. Still the men did not return: they seemed to consult, and fearing that there was not depth of water sufficient to conceal their dreadful burthen, they took it up again, and returned with it to their house. The mother, still more wretched, continued to watch; she saw the two men bearing the sack as before, and having provided themselves with spades, come out and walk across the forest. She followed them at a distance, but her strength would not allow her to keep up with them, and she soon lost sight of them. Still she watched, and in about half an hour saw the father and son return to their cottage, carrying the sack empty.

Now, firmly convinced that her murdered son had been buried, she returned to her hut to brood in silence over her misery; she felt that her suspicions rested solely on what she alone bad seen, and dreaded to make them known to anyone. However, she very soon saw that a cart was added to the stock of her neighbour, that he appeared in a good new suit of clothes, and thought these evident signs of wealth, which were not in any way accounted for, a strong confirmation of her suspicions.

She went by night and dug about that part of the forest where she had lost sight of the supposed murderers, but was always interrupted and prevented by other neighbours. She then went to Mr. Wilbraham,** who had before relieved her wants, and implored his assistance, as a magistrate, in her search for the body.

Editor's notes
* The seat of Lord Delamere in Cheshire.
** George Wilbraham, Esq, of Delamere House

TO BE CONTINUED....

Countess Macnamara. The Bourbons.

2006-03-16T23:04:00.000+01:00

Richmond: August 1832.—We have just had Countess Macnamara here: she is as usual full of her Bourbons, very literally "plus Catholique que le Pape, plus Royaliste que le Roi" for she complains of the relaxation of discipline in the former, and says that all the evils of France are to be ascribed to the republican spirit of its late sovereigns. Monsieur Dixhuit—she said to me with the peculiar emphasis which I thought reserved for Philippe, as Satan is not Monsieur- Monsieur Dixhuit was at heart a more thorough republican than any man in his dominions.

All his measures tended that way, and when Charles X. came, poor good man, who never meant anything but what was right, he was too indolent to change the ministry or the measures of his brother. It would have almost exceeded my belief to have been told that any Englishwoman could take up the cudgels for Miguel, but I heard her pitying him as an illused and calumniated man, maintaining to my brother Charles, who might have rather better means of information, that he was not privy to the murder, not cruel, &c. &c.

All this is only curious as furnishing a singular page in the history of human nature, showing how entirely the wise ultra-Bourbon party, whose echo she is, can over-look even the radical sin of illegitimate authority when redeemed by despotism and bigotry. In the midst of all this absurdity, she gave me a singular instance of devotion to her beloved Bourbons, which, being asserted on her personal knowledge, is I suppose in the main true.

A Miss W., who some fifty years ago was an admired singer on the English stage, made a conquest of a Mr. A., a man of large property, who married her. Whether the lady's character was not immaculate, or whether, the march of intellect not having begun, actresses of the best character were not yet reckoned fit society for ladies, does not appear; certain it is that, finding she could not get any society in England, the A.'s went to establish themselves at Versailles, where they took a fine house, gave fetes, &c. &c. His wealth gave splendour; her beauty, her singing, her dancing, gave charm.

The Polignacs came to her fetes, and afterwards introduced her to the little society, to the intimate reunions, of which Marie Antoinette was a constant member. When adversity befell this object of admiration, of almost idolatry, Mrs. A. devoted herself, her talents and (better than all) her purse to her service. It was chiefly during the Queen's melancholy abode in the Temple that Mrs. A. most exerted herself. In bribes, in various means employed for the relief of the poor Queen, she expended between 30,000 and 40,000 sterling.

This of course was taken under the name of a loan, and soon after the Restoration Mrs. A. made a demand upon Louis XVIII.: every item of her account was discussed and most allowed, till they came to a very large bribe given to the minister of police, one to the gaoler, and bribes to various persons, to manage the escape of the Dauphin and the substitution of a dying child in his place.

Louis XVIII. Would not agree to this article, and insisted upon its being erased from the account as the condition upon which he would order the gradual liquidation of the rest of the debt. To this condition Mrs. A. would not accede: Louis XVIII. died: the accounts were again brought forward. Charles X. was just going to give the order for
paying the debt by instalments when the revolution came, and Mrs. A. seems now further than ever from obtaining any part of her money.

It is to me very odd that Mac does not seem to feel that, admitting all her premises, her story tells very much against her beloved Bourbons. She always speaks of the reign of Charles as if it had lasted as many months as it did years, as if he had not had time to execute any of the good purposes that were in his heart. She concludes the history I have just written by saying, 'I had a message for Mrs. A. from Holyrood, which I was desired to deliver in person. I had great difficulty in tracing her; at last I found her a week ago,' (she told me where, but I have forgotten), She represents her as preserving remains of beauty at about seventy, coiffee, en cheveux, with a mask of paint.

I gravely asked whether she was still an enthusiast in the cause; to which she replied, ' No,' in what I fancied a hurried embarrassed manner, which impressed me with the idea that Mrs. A. is naturally enough rather exasperated at their conduct towards her. It seems that they are all convinced, and this Mrs. A. is ready to make any oath, that the Dauphin did not die as was supposed in the Temple. The Duchesse d'Angouleme has always said, ' I have no evidence of his death, and know that it did not take place in the Temple, but I have no evidence of his being alive at any subsequent period.'

The rancour of Mrs A. against Louis-Philippe sounds particularly ill here,: she believes him capable of every crime. In this neighbourhood where he lived so many years, not only there is nothing alleged against him, but everybody mentions him with respect. I hear he is now paying small pensions to some of the poor, whom he was in the habit of relieving. Miss Dundas spoke with tears in her eyes of his invariable kindness to her father, who attended his family as physician, and of the attention shown to her brother and her for his sake, when they were at Paris some years ago.

Insanity of George III - Sir Henry Halford and George IV

2006-03-12T20:53:00.000+01:00

May 1832.—Sir Henry Halford gave us the other day some interesting particulars respecting the malady of George III. He says it is one of the characteristics of that species of insanity, that, about three months after the seizure, there is a great change for the better, which sometimes ends in recovery; in other cases, in a more violent return of malady. He says we shall probably hear of that change in poor Lord Dudley in about two months; whether it will be permanent or not, is more than any mortal can tell.

In the case of the King, this change took place in the month of February; it was not only that hopes were entertained, but many of the Council were of opinion that he was in full possession of his faculties. On one particular day they came out saying that he had spoken so collectedly — 1st, on the necessity of sending troops to America, of the persons to command, of the points to which the troops were to be sent; 2ndly, of the expediency of the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor, of the persons best fitted for the office,* &c. &c.—that they believed him quite restored and able to resume his power.

Lord Ellenborough used the words of Pilate: ' I find no fault at all in that just person.' Sir Henry said, this not being his own opinion, he felt his situation an extremely unpleasant one: well knowing the cunning of all mad persons, he was aware that nothing but extreme vigilance would enable them to detect the delusions if they still existed. One day when the King fancied himself surrounded by servants only, and when a medical attendant was watching unseen, he took a glass of wine and water and drank it to the health conjugis meae dilectissimce Elizabethae, meaning Lady Pembroke. Here was a delusion clearly established and noted down immediately: the use of Latin, which was not to be understood by those whom he supposed only to hear him, affording a singular proof of the odd cunning of insanity.

A few days after, Sir Henry was walking with him on the terrace; he began talking of the Lutheran religion, of its superiority to that of the Church of England, and ended with growing so vehement, that he really ranted forth its praises without mentioning that which Sir Henry believes to have been the real motive of this preference—the left-handed marriages allowed. He was very anxious to see whether traces of this delusion would appear again, and went to the Duke of York to ask for information as to the tenets, practices, &c. &c., of the Lutheran faith. The Duke said, ' Watch him in Passion-week; if he fancies himself a Lutheran, you will see an extraordinary degree of mortification and mourning,' &c. &c.

When Sir Henry returned to the assembled physicians he wrote down the substance of this conversation, and without communicating it to anybody, requested those present to seal the paper and keep it in a chest where their notes and other papers of importance are kept, under locks of which each had a separate key. When the Monday in Passion-week arrived, and Sir Henry had nearly forgotten this conversation, he went into the King's dressing-room while he was at his toilet, and found the attendants in amazement at his having called for and put on black stockings, black waistcoat and breeches, and a grey coat with black buttons.

It was curious to hear that his delusions assumed, like those of other madmen, the character of pride, and that a sovereign even fancied himself in a station more elevated than his own. He would sometimes fancy himself possessed of supernatural power, and when angry with any of the keepers stamp his foot, and say
he would send them down into hell.

It is always evident to me, that among all these royalties, among the three kings whom he has attended, Sir Henry's partiality is to the one who seems to me to deserve it least, to George IV. He gave us the following account of his first introduction to his intimacy. He had never attended the Prince, and barely knew him when the last malady of George III. Declared itself.

Sir Henry was aware that he was surrounded by spies from the Prince; that one whom ' we well knew and would little suspect,' was living at the Christopher, &c. &c. Anxious to stop this. Sir Henry went to the Prince and gave him the most detailed and most accurate statement of the situation of the King. The Prince expressed his gratitude, not unmixed with surprise at his candour. Sir Henry promised that henceforth he might depend upon always having from him the most accurate information, if he would only promise not to seek it from any other source.

The Prince gave the promise and (wonderful to say) kept it. Sir Henry then went to the Queen, and told her what he had done. She, with a tremendous frown, expressed great astonishment. Sir Henry stated the obvious reasons for the step he had taken ; she paused, her brow cleared : ' You are quite right. Sir; it is proper that the Prince of Wales should be informed.' From that moment, as he says, confidence and intimacy were renewed between mother and son.

At the period before mentioned, during the lucid intervals. Sir Henry describes himself as having had a very awkward subject to discuss with the King. The death of Princess Amelia was known to him.* Every day the attendants expected and dreaded questions as to her property, her will, &c.; the bequest of everything to General Fitzroy was a subject so very delicate to touch upon. The Queen dared not: Perceval and the Chancellor successively undertook the disclosure and shrunk from it, imposing it on Sir Henry.

Never, he says, can he forget the feelings with which, having requested some private conversation with the King after the other physicians were gone, he was called into a window with the light falling so full on his countenance that even the poor nearly blind King could see it. He asked whether it would be agreeable to him to hear now how Princess Amelia had disposed of her little property.

'Certainly, certainly, I want to know,' with great eagerness. Sir Henry reminded him at the beginning of his illness he had appointed Fitzroy to ride with her; how he had left him with her at Weymouth; how it was natural and proper that she should leave him some token for these services; that excepting jewels she had nothing to leave, and had bequeathed them all to him; that the Prince of Wales, thinking jewels a very inappropriate bequest for a man, had given Fitzroy a pecuniary compensation for them (his family, by-the-bye, always said it was very inadequate), and had distributed slight tokens to all the attendants and friends of the Princess, giving the bulk of the jewels to Princess Mary, her most constant and kindest of nurses. Upon this the poor King exclaimed, ' Quite right, just like the Prince of Wales;' and no more was said.

Sir Henry is apt to be the hero of his own stories, and to boast a degree of intimacy and confidence which I am sometimes inclined to doubt. The history of the change on the subject of the Catholic question is very curious, but I own I feel it rather difficult to believe that Sir Henry was admitted into a secret so closely kept. Be that as it may, his story is that, at the close of the session, the Duke of Wellington wrote to the King a letter, which he showed to Sir Henry, stating that he felt the time to be now arrived when the boon of emancipation could no longer be refused to Ireland; telling him that, if his objections remained insurmountable, he must abandon the stronghold of his faith. The Coronation Oath, which had been proved not to hold water as an argument, must not be brought forward again.

This letter, Sir Henry says, produced much and very painful cogitation, and agitation enough to have roused the King from his state of indolence to very deep thought. A second letter Sir Henry saw when the King was more inclined to concession, in which the Duke requested leave to impart his intentions to two cabinet ministers and to one or two of the bishops.

* This fixes the date. The first vice-chancellor was appointed early in 1813.
** She died on November 3, 1810. Her illness was the proximate cause of the return of the king's malady.

The Ricketts Ghost Story

2006-03-04T18:35:00.000+01:00

November l5th, 1830.—Mrs. Hughes told me the other day that she was writing the particulars of the Ricketts ghost story, as she had heard it related in her infancy by Mrs. Gwyn,* who had been an eye, or rather ear, witness. The story was alluded to; her aunt stopped the speaker, and begged she would wait till the child was gone to bed. She was not to be so put off, and when the orders for bed were issued she contrived to conceal herself behind the curtain: there she remained undiscovered till the tale had advanced to the hoarse voice, when her terror was so highly excited that it totally overcame her dread of punishment, and she rushed from her place of concealment, falling flat on her face. These circumstances of course strongly impressed all the incidents on her ardent mind, and thus she related them to Sir Walter Scott,** premising that Mr. Strong, who was chaplain to Shipley, Bishop of Saint Asaph, had, when at Twyfbrd and in its neighbourhood, frequently heard the legend told in the same manner.

She likewise says she has heard the story, exactly the same, from the Duchess of Buckingham. The house alluded to is situated between Alton and Alresford. My story says*** that Mr. Legge, related to Lord Stawell, was a very atrocious libertine. He was aided and abetted in all his evil practices by an old butler named Robin, who was distinguished by a remarkably deep-toned hoarse voice. Mrs. Legge was known to be very unhappy and very ill-used, and was seldom seen by the neighbourhood, who were deterred from visiting at that house by the character of its master; but it became known that a younger sister of Mrs. Legge came to visit her, and in process of time a criminal intercourse was suspected between her and her brother-in-law; a child was said to have been born, and destroyed by the agency of the butler.****

So far I am correct in my remembrances, but I am not clear as to the death and dispersion of the guilty trio. I think, however, that old Robin came to an untimely end, and that. Mr. Legge grew disgusted with the house and left it. Be that as it may, the house was to be let, and was hired by Captain Ricketts for the reception of his family during his long absence from England, either on the East or West India Station.

When he sailed, Mrs. Ricketts, with three young children and a very small establishment, removed to her new residence. I do not precisely remember how long it was before her quiet was disturbed; but I think it was only a few days after her arrival that, sitting alone in the evening about nine o'clock, she was startled by the singular terror expressed by her cat; the animal started from her slumbers on the hearth, made a piteous cry, and after running about the room as if wishing to escape, darted to its mistress, and rolling itself up in the train of her gown, lay there panting and exhausted.

Mrs. Ricketts was rising to summon a servant when her ear was struck by a tremendous noise in the room overhead; it had the sound of tearing up the boards of the floor with the utmost violence, and throwing them about. In a moment the servants, alarmed, rushed into the room. Mrs. Ricketts, who was a woman of a resolute spirit, headed the party to explore the room from which the sound appeared to proceed, but on entering nothing was seen, and the operations seemed to have been shifted to another apartment. The whole house was searched without effect, and the noise continued a considerable time, varying its apparent station as it was approached.

The next night the annoyance was renewed, and after the floor-breaking ceased, three voices were heard distinctly—that of a female and two males; one of these so remarkably hoarse and dissonant, that one of the servants, who was from the neighbourhood, exclaimed, ' That is like the voice of wicked old Robin.' The female seemed to plead in agony for some boon; one of the men seemed to answer in a mournful grave tone, and the deep hoarse voice sounded angrily and positively. No distinct words could be made. out, but now and then the voices seemed so close that, as old Mrs. Gwyn described it, 'you would have thought that by putting out your hand you would have touched the speakers;' to this succeeded a strain of soft aerial music, and the whole ended by a series of dreadful piercing shrieks, altogether not occupying less than half an hour.

Next day the whole establishment gave warning, and were reluctantly dismissed by Mrs Ricketts, who took the precaution of making them sign their names as witnesses to a short account which she noted in a book, in which she afterwards kept a regular journal of the transactions of each night, continuing the practice of making every servant she dismissed (and she seldom prevailed on one to remain long with her), as well as the few guests whom compassion for her forlorn state induced to come to her, sign their names for a testimony of what they heard—for nothing was ever seen.

I am not sure whether these horrors were repeated every night, but certainly so frequently as to leave Mrs. Ricketts neither peace nor quiet, and to produce agitation which affected her health. She had been in this state more than a twelvemonth when Mrs. Gwyn came to pay her a visit. She was much shocked at the altered appearance of Mrs. Ricketts. She had flattered herself that the accounts which she had received from her friend were exaggerated. However, when the usual period arrived, the whole routine went on, and Mrs. Gwyn was terrified to a degree which left her only in astonishment that Mrs. Ricketts could have endured so much and so long.

I remember her saying that the first burst of noise was as loud as if three or four carpenters had been employed: the whispering conversation often seemed to be close to her ear; and the soft music she compared to the tones produced by a then celebrated player on the musical glasses (Cartwright); the shrieks which closed the whole so sharp as to rend the ear. I remember the comparison the more distinctly, because I had been taken a few days before to hear the performance of Cartwright on the musical glasses.

Indeed every particular of Mrs. Gwyn's narration is as vividly present to my imagination as if I had only heard it an hour ago; and the frequent repetitions I have since heard of it from my two aunts, who were also her auditors, have engraved every iota on my mind.

Mrs. Gwyn, though very sufficiently scared, would have remained with her friend the few days she had promised, if her maid, a valuable faithful servant, had not been made so ill by terror that she could not in common charity oblige her to remain after the second night, when a repetition ensued. She therefore pursued her journey, after having added her signature to the book, which she described as then containing many pages. I remember that my aunt asked her whether Mrs. Ricketts would publish this book, and she replied that, should her friend survive Sir John Jervis (afterwards Lord St. Vincent) and Colonel Luttrell (afterwards Lord Carhampton), she believed it was her intention to do so. Mrs. Ricketts died some years ago at a very advanced age.

Mrs. Gwyn then went on to relate the substance of a correspondence which she kept up with Mrs. Ricketts, recording a circumstance, which took place not long after she left her. The bedroom which Mrs. Ricketts occupied was separated from the nursery by a wide passage, the doors of the two rooms being exactly opposite. Mrs. Ricketts slept alone, and had a light burning on the hearth. One night, soon after she was in bed, she heard a heavy foot leap (as it seemed to her) from the window seat and walk slowly to the side of her bed, where it stopped.

The curtain was drawn on that side, and she instantly threw herself out of the opposite side next the door, and standing in the doorway to prevent anyone from escaping, called for the nurse. The alarm was instantly given. While the nurse remained with her mistress upon guard, the nursery-maid summoned the rest of the servants; a strict search was then made, but nothing could be found to account for the sound which had roused Mrs. Ricketts.

Next day an old carpenter of the neighbourhood desired to speak to her, and to mention a circumstance which had occurred during the residence of Mrs. Legge. He said he had been employed and well paid by old Robin, the butler, for a job which was done in his presence and after every other person in the house was asleep. It was to take up a plank in one of the bedrooms, and saw away a joist so as to give room for a small deal box about two feet long, which the old butler deposited under the floor, and then the carpenter restored the plank and joined it as well as he could.

He said he had been sworn to secrecy, but as the parties were dead and gone, he thought he might safely mention a circumstance which he could not help believe might have some concern with the disturbances.

Mrs. Ricketts made him lead the way, and he went to her apartment, and lifting up the carpet at the very spot where it appeared to her the heavy step paused, he showed her the joining of the plank: by her desire it was taken up, and the joist, according to his account, was found removed, and an empty space remained sufficient to contain such a box as he had described. If it had been there, it had been removed ; no trace of it remained. You may suppose what the box was suspected to contain.

The only other event I recollect was the return of Sir J. Jervis to England, his visit to his sister Mrs. Ricketts, his grief at finding her in such a state of health and nerves, and his determination to remove her from a place where he was convinced there was some foul play. He took upon himself the risk of the displeasure of Captain Ricketts, who had expended a large sum in settling his family, and whose apprehended censure had deterred his wife from quitting the residence where he had placed her.

Sir John would not even suffer his sister to sleep another night under the roof, but removed her and her children to a farm-house in the neighbourhood, with every servant belonging to them. He determined, with his friend Colonel Luttrell, to watch through the night, and detect the imposture which be was convinced had been carried on.

The ground-floor consisted of a large hall and two parlours, one on either side: in these parlours the friends, well armed and lighted, established themselves, and at the usual hour the noises began. They both rushed into the hall, each angrily accusing the other of an attempt to play a foolish trick; but as soon as they met they were aware the noise proceeded from other quarters; the plank-tearing, the whispering, the soft music, the shrieks went on in the usual succession, and after an active search all over the house they were obliged to acknowledge themselves baffled.

Mrs. Ricketts never returned to the house except for a few mornings, which were devoted to packing, &c. &c. One of these mornings she sat down to rest in the housekeeper's room; her brother sat with her, leaning against a large press which had just been emptied of its contents. They were both startled by a noise close to their ears, which she compared to that of dry bones rattling in a box. Sir John threw open the door of the press, exclaiming,' The Devil is here, and we shall have him:' however, nothing appeared, and this forms the last link of my chain.

A young friend, who saw much of Lord St. Vincent in his latter days, told me he was extremely angry whenever the subject was alluded to; and Mrs. Gwyn said Mrs. Ricketts was ever averse to the discussion, though she never refused to answer any question that was put to her.

And now having told my tale, I must protest my utter disbelief of any supernatural agency. Had I written this during the first fifteen, nay, perhaps twenty, years of my life, I could not have made any such declaration; for this story was the nightmare of my existence, from the age of eleven to that of discretion— if I ever have attained that happy period. I consider it as one of the best planned and executed deceptions I ever heard of, for whatever purpose it might have been wrought. I do not believe the plot has ever been discovered, though the general idea is, I think, that it was to further the purposes of a gang of smugglers.

Editor’s notes
* One of the beautiful Misses Horneck, Goldsmith's friends. She married Colonel Gwyn, and died at a very advanced age in 1840. She was a strong-minded and clear-headed, woman.
** The story is slightingly mentioned as wanting evidence in
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 348. In writing these Letters, Sir Walter evidently laboured under the apprehension of being suspected of undue credulity; and the book has consequently been pretty generally set down as a failure.
*** The speaker is Mrs. Hughes throughout.
**** This imputation is not confirmed by the family annals. The lady died in 1763.

The daughter of Mrs. Ricketts married the seventh Earl of Northesk ; and I learn from her grandson, Vice-Admiral the Honourable Swynfen Carnegie, that the foregoing narrative substantially corresponds with the traditional impressions of the family ; except that a box containing the bones of a child was found in the spot indicated by the carpenter, and that it was Captain Luttrell, R.N., who watched with Lord St. Vincent. Admiral Carnegie says that neither of them would state what passed in their presence or hearing, but that Lord St. Vincent insisted on his sister's quitting the house immediately. The mystery has never been cleared up, and the site of the house is now a cultivated field.

Letters from Bishop Heber

2006-02-26T19:51:00.000+01:00

The first letter, and extract from second letter, from Reginald Heber to a female relative who had recently lost her husband at Hyeres.

Jan. 2nd, 1821.—My dear Charlotte, I have been for some time back desirous of writing to you, but have been deterred by the fear of intruding too soon on a grief which I was well aware must have its course, and which is necessarily proportionate to the love, strong as death and stronger than the most trying worldly misfortunes, which you have uniformly shown to your husband, and which, as was to be expected and as I have always seen reason to believe, was mutual. I could not help feeling, too, that your loss was too severe to admit of the ordinary topics of consolation ; that the possession of the love and confidence of a man like our poor William, could not in the natural course of things be surrendered without a very bitter pang, and that his abilities and his amiable temper and manners must be recollected by you with regret now that for a time you are separated from him.

You have already been long tried in the furnace of affliction, and God has enabled you during many years to endure the bitterness of separation from loved objects, and in sickness and in banishment to find comfort in that divine religion which it is necessary to be a mourner to know the full value of. I trust and believe that He has not forsaken you now, and that from the same source of resignation to His will and confidence in His mercy, you have been supported and strengthened under this last and severest trial.

I need not remind you, you have still much to live for; that you are favoured beyond most mothers in the disposition and promising talents of your children, and that if, as I trust will be the case, your health admits of your return to England, you will have more opportunity of watching over their education and promoting their best interests than, but for this heavy visitation, you were likely to have possessed.
There are other considerations, too, which must have their force in encouraging and enabling you to bear your affliction. That affliction was sooner or later to one or other of you inevitable. You must have mourned for Him, or he for you; and if this last had been the case, recollect how lonely and forlorn his exile must have been, and that your death would have had the effect in a great measure of depriving your children of both their parents.

Even in the circumstances of the fatal accident, there is much to alleviate its heaviness. An instantaneous death without pain, and while engaged in innocent amusement, is what poor William himself would perhaps have chosen above most others. It would have been far more afflicting both to himself and to you if you had had to watch over a long and painful illness, to witness suffering which you could not relieve, and to long for advice and assistance of a better kind than your place of residence could supply: above all, it may be a comfort to reflect that, before he was thus summoned to another state of existence, he had been purified, and that the chastisements of Heaven have thus been not only tempered, but directed in mercy.

There is one source of consolation more, which I cannot help mentioning, though from the difficulty and perplexed nature of the disputes to which it has given rise, and the abuses which have been grounded on it, I mention it with great diffidence even to you, and have never ventured to recommend it generally. Few persons, I believe, have lost a beloved object, more particularly by sudden death, without feeling an earnest desire to recommend them in their prayers to God's mercy, and a sort of instinctive impression that such devotions might still be serviceable to them in that intermediate state which we are taught by Scripture precedes the final judgment.

The Roman Catholics, by their interested doctrines of hired masses for the dead, and by their unwarranted and melancholy notion of a purgatory to which even the good are liable, have prejudiced the greater number of Protestants against this opinion; and it is, I confess, one which is not so clearly revealed or countenanced in Scripture, as to make the practice of praying for the dead obligatory on any Christian. Yet, having been led attentively to consider the question, my own opinion is on the whole favourable to the practice, which indeed is so natural and so comfortable, that this alone is a presumption that it is neither unpleasing to the Almighty nor unavailing with Him.

The Jews, so far back as their opinions and practices can be traced since the time of our Saviour, have uniformly recommended their deceased friends to mercy; and from a passage in the Second Book of Maccabees, it appears that (from whatever source they derived it) they had the same custom before His time. But if this were the case the practice can hardly be unlawful, or either Christ or His Apostles would, one should think, have in some of their writings or discourses condemned it. On the same side it may be observed, that the Greek Church and all the Eastern Churches, though they do not believe in purgatory, pray for the dead and that we know the practice to have been universal, or nearly so, among the Christians little more than 150 years after our Saviour. It is spoken of as the usual custom by Tertullian and Epiphanius. Augustine, in his Confessions, has given a beautiful prayer which he himself used for his deceased mother, Monica; and among Protestants, Luther and Dr. Johnson are eminent instances of the same conduct.

I have accordingly been myself in the habit for some years of recommending on some occasions, as after receiving the Sacrament, &c. &c., my lost friends by name to God's goodness and compassion through His Son, as what can do them no harm, and may, and I hope will, be of service to them. Only this caution I always endeavour to observe—that I beg His forgiveness at the same time for myself if unknowingly I am too presumptuous, and His grace lest I, who am thus solicitous for others, should neglect the appointed means of my own salvation.

But I intended to write a letter of consolation and am got into theological controversy, and I fear I may already have written too much in my small handwriting for your eyes. God bless, God comfort you, my dearest Charlotte! God make your children through their future lives a source of comfort to you in this world, and bring you and them to be with your William in one family in Heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

…. I have long owed you my thanks for your letter, and the kindness with which you received my attempts at consolation under a low which, alas! admits little effectual comfort, except from the secret support and blessing of the same divine Being who only afflicts us for our good, and who, if we place our hopes in Him, will never lay more on us than He at the same time enables us to bear. But I felt myself at the same time bound to answer the very interesting and very difficult question which you had suggested to me concerning the state of the dea, and their acquaintance with what passes on earth, and I have really had no leisure to give a subject the attention which it deserves and requires, nor even to satisfy myself, much more another, with the conjectures (for they deserve no other name) which I have formed.

That the intermediate state between death and judgment is not one of insensibility, or (as the Socinians fancy) a perfect suspension and interruption of existence, is plain I think from very many passages of Scripture. Thus, when Christ uses the argument taken from the Almighty calling himself the God of Abraham &c. to prove the life after death, he uses it in a manner which implies that the life of which he speaks is uninterrupted, since to make it answer his purpose, Abraham must have been alive when God thus spoke, not merely destined to live again at the general resurrection.

In like manner, St Paul speaks of his desire to depart from the world, to be immediately with Christ, which he could not have been if after death he were to sleep perhaps 3,000 years till the day of judgment. But, above all, the penitent thief was proised by our Saviour, that he should that very day be with Him in Paradise, a passage which will not bear any other meaning than that generally assigned to it, and which in that meaning is conclusive.

As to the condition of the dead, it has been always believed by the Christian world that the souls of men are in situations of happiness or misery – the one not so perfect, and other not so intense, as will be their doom at the day of judgment; and it has been even supposed, and seems likely from all that we know of our spiritual nature, that till that time their happiness or misery must rather consist in hope or hear and the approval or disapproval of conscience, than in any actual enjoyment or punishment; and the early Christians most of them believed that, by the prayer of surviving friends, the condition of such persons might be made better, and a milder sentence obtained for their errors and infirmities from their Almighty Judge, when the doom of all creatures shall be finally settled.

This is, as you well know, a disputed point, but it is one which the wisest and most learned divines have always spoken of with doubt, without venturing to blame those who, with becoming humility, recommend the souls of those they have loved to mercy. But the notion of a purgatory fire which all, or almost all, Christians were to pass through as a necessary preparation for heaven, was never dreamt of in the Church till the ninth or tenth centuries; and the Eastern Churches to this day have never received it. It is, in fact, a strange and dismal detraction from the efficacy of Christ's blood, since the Church of Rome does not admit those who die impenitent to any share in its advantages, but sends them to hell immediately; so that it only throws a fresh obstacle in the way to heaven, in the case of those whose sins all sides suppose to be already washed out by the work of redemption.

A more difficult question remains—Whether the dead know anything of what is passing among men. On this point I can arrive at no satisfactory conclusion, any further than that there are some passages in Scripture which seem very like it. As where St. Paul
encourages us, in Heb. xii. 1, to run with patience our race,, from the consideration that we are encompassed with so great a cloud of witnesses, which witnesses, you will see in the former chapter, are the good and great men of former times. But I must defer these deep discussions till I have the pleasure of seeing you. In the meantime accept of my best wishes, my sincere affection, and permit me to add, my prayers.

Extracts from the Works of Francis Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater

2006-02-20T22:42:00.000+01:00

Birkenhead: January 23.—Mr. Nugent has just brought me a bundle of the publications on various subjects by Lord Bridgewater; all excepting one of addenda and corrigenda to an edition of Euripides, and a letter from the Seigneurie de Florence au Pape Sixto 4re, 1478, relate to himself, his family or inland navigation.

A Life of the Chancellor Egerton seems interesting from the variety of documents, relating more to contemporary history than to his hero, which are thrown into notes; especially a letter from, Essex to the Chancellor, who had tried to persuade him to return to the Court and sue for pardon to Elizabeth, after he had received the famous box on the ear. The most singular production is a single sheet beginning—

A report has been generally circulated that I have an intention of writing a life of F. E., third Duke of Bridgewater . . . consequently I am induced on my part to announce to the public that I will not write his life. It is true that for ten or eleven years before his death I and I only lived in the house with him . . . that I prepared materials with a view of writing his life. . . . When I reflected more and more continually every day upon what I saw, first I faltered, and lastly I became assured that I could bring neither the faculties of my mind or body on to the accomplishment of this task. How could I bring my mind to the task, were I impressed with the persuasion that the general system of navigable canals and inland navigation ought to be carried forward upon the enlarged, comprehensive, and elevated view of benefiting the public and the country? How could I bring my mind to the task, should I have seen such an object neglected or overlooked by one of the first and greatest subjects in Great Britain (most certainly in Europe), and all things appertaining to the navigation considered as in a merchant's counting-house, exclusively upon the strictest calculations of profit and loss and individual interest ? How could I bring my mind to the task ? how portray a domestic tyrant, selfish in all things, living for himself alone, regardless of those duties which attach to one who inherits immense estates from a long line of ancestry, unacquainted with even the persons of most of his own family, his own name, his own blood, giving nothing in charity, with no service at home and yet never attending any public worship ? . . . Under all these considerations, and many more, I confess I faltered; I cannot bring myself to the task. Briefly, therefore, &c. &c. [Here follows an account like that for the peerage.] F. H. E. London, 1809

Another singular paper is his petition to Louis XVIII. to be exempted from the Droit d’aubain on the Hotel de Noailles, which he had purchased. The grounds on which he requests this exemption are singular:

Que je suis reste plusieurs annees en France, et que pendant tout ce temps je n'ai pas voulu acheter aucune propriete quelconque. Qu'au commencement de 1815 j'ai change d'avis. . . . Que je n'ai pas voulu profiter des delais que la loi et 1'usage m'accorderaient pour payer les droits d'enregistrement, mais que les circonstances critiques ou V. M. se trouvait alors m'ont determine a solder les droits Ie lendemain, 18 mars 1815, la somme de 30,743 francs. Qu'il est impossible de ne pas reconnaitre dans ces paymens onereux faits par anticipation le vif interet que m'inspirait alors la situation de V. M. Que je n'ai plus tarde a voir de quel osil on regardait ma conduite; car Buonaparte, sous pretexte d'utilite publique qui exigeait que lea bureaux de Secretariat du Gouvernement passent dans mon hotel, a mis sous le sequestre mon hotel, mon mobilier, et m'a ordonne de sortir de mon hotel, sous peine d'expulsion forcee. Que j'ai defendu mon droit contre Buonaparte, a mon risque personnel et a mes frais personnels. J'ai defendu aussi les droits de tous les proprietaires francais. J'ai barricade les portes et mis mon hotel en etat de siege. Je me suis vu force, pour la premiere fois de ma vie que j'ai su un proces, d'entamer un proces .... enfin je me suis vu force de passer par mille tracasseries de toute espece que je crois devoir designer au Gouvernement reparateur de V. M. . . . Que lea circonstances suivantes sont pleinement suffisantes pour empecher que la concession en question ne devienne un exemple general. Que je suis allie a la famille royale d'Angleterre. [Here follows a long descent from Henry VII. and from Robert Comte d'Artois, frere de St. Louis, ]

In the first instance I put away the addenda and corrigenda to his translation of Euripides, saying to myself, That must be totally uninteresting to me; but one word caught my eye which made me look for others, and in the notes I found a mass of heterogeneous knowledge ; some unintelligible to me, being herisse de Grec; some uninteresting; a long and severe criticism on the ' Phedre' of Racine, much on Jewish customs, some music, some philosophy, some piety, an extract from his own will, &c. &c. In this confused mass I find a note on the original invention of arithmetical numerals in large characters, full of ideas which are quite new to me, and certainly very interesting.

He surmises that this mode of numeration was taken from the hand and fingers, and resulted naturally from the necessity under which the most ancient proprietors lay of counting the herds and flocks in which their wealth consisted. Holding up the palm of one of his hands before his eyes, the four fingers furnished him. with a ready mark for each of four units; he coarsely imitated them thus, 1111; at five, the mark which naturally suggested itself "was that which was made by the forefinger and thumb, thus, V ; by adding his units to this he could count to ten; at ten it naturally suggested itself to double the mark already made for five, and thus make twice five; to his first vertical V he added another that was inverted A ; thus he was enabled to count as far as fifty: at fifty he had to seek another mark for the method by which he obtained the mode of numeration required, and enabled him to procure a new mark at each five; which number when doubled makes a decimal, and resulted out of the lines which gave him the figure of his body. He rested the palm of one hand upon one side of the body on the lower ribs, and looking down to the figure presented by his arm, it formed a right angle and presented this figure, L; thus he was enabled to count on to one hundred. To obtain a new mark he observed the same method: he doubled the I— which represented fifty; leaving the first mark vertical, he inverted the next, the second accessory figure, the upright, serving for both; the result is C : at five hundred he wanted another figure, and still proceeding on the same system of doubling, he then produced this figure by adding another, D. He had now obtained his unit, now softened in I; his five, now V; his ten, now X, his fifty, L; his hundred, now softened into C ; his five hundred, now softened and rounded into D: he then doubled the square for a thousand thus, CD ; which is now softened into M, or into the letters 010 ; by which last letters are denoted one hundred minus five hundred, or four hundred, and one hundred plus five hundred, giving ten hundred or a thousand.

It remains to be observed that by this series of operations is obtained the designation of positive and negative quantity; for, upon whatever side shall be begun to be marked the units, whether right or left, the figures placed on the same side denote they are minus that figure, as V minus 1 is IV ; five minus two, 111, &c.; five minus 0 is V positive. Again, the figures marked on the other side of the V, or the decimal, denote that they are plus
that figure; five plus one is VI, &c. &c.*

Editor's note
* This seems to be now the received origin of numerals.—Encyclopaedia Britannia, Art. Arithmetic.

Queen Caroline

2006-02-16T22:57:00.000+01:00

We were talking one day of Queen Caroline: a doubt was expressed whether some of the blame which attaches to her character may not be removed by attributing some of her extraordinary actions to insanity, by which alone they can be accounted for. Mrs. Kemble told me she had known, at Lausanne, a man, now a landamman or magistrate, formerly an officer in the Duke of Brunswick's Guards, who told her that it was the general opinion that in early youth the Princess had shown strong symptoms of insanity, and he gave the following instance to prove his assertion: A great ball was given, to which the Duchess would not allow her daughter, then aged sixteen, to go. The ball was just begun, when a messenger came to the Duke and Duchess to inform them that Princess Caroline was taken violently ill.

Of course, they returned immediately to the palace, all the court following them ; the landamman, then on guard, being one among them. When they reached the antechamber of the apartment of the Princess, they found she was on a bed in the next room, screaming with agony; they were told that she was black in the face, &c. &c. The doors were all open, when the Duke and Duchess went up to the bed and tenderly enquired what was the matter. The doctors were not yet arrived; the Princess said any attempt at dissimulation would be useless and im- possible. ' I am in labour, and entreat you, madam, to send for an accoucheur immediately.'

These words were spoken loud enough to be heard by all those who were waiting in the next room; their astonishment may be conceived. Soon after the accoucheur came: as soon as the Princess saw him, she jumped out of bed, wiped the livid colouring from her face, and with a loud laugh said to the Duchess,' Now, madam, will you keep me another time from a ball ?' At this period, when- ever she did go into public, there were persons appointed to watch that she did not give notes, &c. &c.; but it was supposed that she found means to elude their vigilance.

The idea of the unsoundness of the mind of the unfortunate Caroline is strongly confirmed by the following circumstances, related to me by Lord Redesdale in May 1828. Having been invited to dine with the Duchess of Brunswick at Blackheath, he and Lady Redesdale, coming at the time specified found themselves long before the rest of the company They passed half-an-hour en tiers with the Duchess who, having known him from his earliest youth, began talking very confidentially and imprudently of the misconduct of her daughter, ending with saying,' But the excuse is, that, poor thing, she is not right here.' She struck her forehead, and burst into a violent flood of tears.

By this time some guests were heard entering, and Lord and Lady Redesdale were obliged to support the poor infirm old woman to her room, and make the best story they could.

He told me also, and I forget how he knew it to be true, that when the Princess was at Baden and the Grand Duke made a partie de chasse for her, she appeared on horseback with a half-pumpkin on her head. Upon the Grand Duke's expressing astonishment, and recommending a coiffure rather less extraordinary, she only replied that the weather was hot, and nothing kept the head so cool and comfortable as a pumpkin.

Surely nothing that was said by Brougham or Denman could plead so strongly in extenuation of the nudities of the Muse of History, &c. &c., as the pumpkin.

Revenge

2006-02-13T11:29:00.000+01:00

January, 1828.—Mrs. Kemble told me that at the period of the first appearance of 'De Montfort,'* when everybody was decrying the possibility of the existence of hatred so diabolical, and were calling it quite beyond the bounds of nature, the subject was one day discussed at dinner at Lord Rosslyn's.**

He replied that in real life he had known an instance of hatred still more inveterate, and related the following story:— At a large school in the country a rebellion took place among the boys ; the master, very anxious to know the name of the ringleader, at length, either by threats or bribes, or both, induced one of the boys to disclose the name of a boy named Davison. He was, of course, severely punished and expelled, carrying away with him sentiments of deadly hate instead of the affection he had formerly felt for his schoolfellow. Many years intervened, during which they never had the least intercourse.

The young man who had peached went to the East Indies. He returned, and landed on the coast of Devonshire. Stopping to dine at a small inn, he enquired of the waiter what gentlemen lived in the neighbourhood, and hearing that the squire of the parish was a Mr. Davison, the name struck him; he thought he recollected that his former schoolfellow used to talk of his home in Devonshire, and while his dinner was getting ready he determined to go to the squire's house, A maidservant opened the door, and he sent in his name, saying that if Mr. Davison had been educated at such a school, he would recollect it.

He was introduced, and most cordially received by his schoolfellow, whom he found laid up with a fit of the gout, and was pressed to dine, with many apologies for bad fare, &c. &c.; Mr. Davison having unfortunately given permission to all his servants to go to a neighbouring place, and having kept only the woman who was his nurse.

Mr. Davison appeared so rejoiced in talking over old stories with his friend, and pressed him so strongly to be charitable enough to pass another day with him, that at last he consented. Next morning the unfortunate guest was found with his throat cut from ear to ear. Of course, the maidservant was taken up on suspicion; indeed, as it seemed impossible from its nature that the wound should have been self-inflicted, and as she was the only creature in the house excepting her master, who was unable to move, there did not seem a doubt.

The trial came on: Mr. Davison appeared as prosecutor; Lord Rosslyn was his counsel. In spite of the poor girl's protestations of innocence, the case seemed nearly decided, when Mr. Davison sent a note to his counsel, desiring him to ask the girl whether she had heard any noise in the night. Lord Rosslyn objected; but his
client insisted. This seems to have been one of those strange perversions of intellect by which guilt is ordained to betray itself when all the artifice which had accompanied it is lulled asleep.

What could have been the object of this enquiry does not appear; its effect was fatal. The girl replied that she recollected hearing a noise along the passage, which had awakened her; but that, having been much fatigued during the day, she was too sleepy to get up to enquire the cause. More questions were asked, the noises and various other circumstances described; suspicions arose against Mr. Davison, and the business ended in his avowing himself the murderer.

He said that, from the moment in which he first beheld the face of his old schoolfellow, he had determined upon revenging his ancient quarrel by the death of the offender. He had crawled on hands and knees from his own room to that of his unfortunate guest, and unable to support himself without the use of his hands, had found great difficulty in opening the door; but helping himself by his teeth, had at last achieved it, reached the bed and perpetrated the horrid deed; he had then crawled back, and had contrived to free himself from all blood-stains before he got into his bed. It was the extraordinary noise made by his crawling which had disturbed the maidservant, and at last led to his detection.

Editor’s note
The authenticity of this story has been vehemently impeached, principally by lawyers on technical grounds ; and I have been censured for not altering the details so as to make them agree with the English rules of criminal procedure; in other words, for not falsifying the internal evidence of the narrative. These objectors are especially shocked at the notion of Wedderburne, a Chancery barrister, appearing as counsel for the prosecution, and at his being permitted to cross-examine the prisoner. Till long after Wedderburne's day it was not unusual for barristers intended for the equity bar to go circuit; and it appears to me not at all improbable that the prosecuting counsel whose suspicions were awakened by the language or manner of his client, should endeavour to elicit an explanation from the prisoner, with a view to her acquittal, and be aided, from a humane motive, by the judge. A hint or question with this view is incorrectly described as cross-examination.
But I am disposed to take broader ground. The story is told from memory by one lady, and written down by another; and each in turn was certainly impressed more by the broad circumstances than by the minute details. No reasonable person can well doubt that the trial was related by Lord Rosslyn in Mrs. Kemble's hearing; that he spoke from personal knowledge, whether he was professionally engaged or not; and that the acquittal, of the maidservant was brought about by some self-betraying word or conduct of the murderer.
A letter in Notes and Queries, in which the technical objections are pressed, has hitherto elicited no additional information. As the case involved no law point, it would not be reported or noticed in the law books: Lord Rosslyn's professional experience ranged over a long period, and the most diligent enquirer after truth may be excused for shrinking from the task of examining the scanty journals of the middle of the eighteenth century.
* Miss Joanna Baillie's tragedy to illustrate the passion of
Hate.
** The ex-Chancellor Lord Loughborough.

Louis XVIII and the Fortune-teller

2006-02-07T11:59:00.000+01:00

Wynnstay, 1827.— In the year 1791 Lady Malmesbury heard at Coblentz, from Monsieur (afterwards Louis XVIII.), the following story. He was once tempted to go in disguise, to consult a famous fortune-teller at Paris: after having heard his own fortune told, he asked the woman whether it was true that she could prophesy of those whom she could not see, merely by a view of their portraits.

She answered in the affirmative; and he produced a picture of Louis XVI. in a masquerade dress, without any of the insignia of royalty. She had scarcely seen the picture when she returned it, exclaiming, 'Ah Dieu, le malheureux! il perira sur l’echafaud.' Monsieur left the woman, laughing in his sleeve at the idea of having so completely deceived her and exposed her ignorance; but when he told the story to Lady Malmesbury, he said, 'Depuis que tant d'evenemens se sont passes en France, cela me donne beaucoup a penser.'

At that period (1791) the King had just accepted the Constitution; his popularity was at the greatest height,* and no event appeared less likely than his execution. At the time when the prophecy was made, several years before the Revolution, the event would certainly have been deemed impossible; and it is evident that nothing could have induced the fortune-teller to allude to it if she had known that the picture represented the monarch whose sway was then absolute.

[From Lady Hart, who wrote down the story immediately after hearing it from Lady Malmesbury.']

Editor's note
* He accepted the Constitution (Sept. 18, 1791) three months after the flight to Varennes, and he was under duress at the time. A somewhat similar story is told of Bernini, the sculptor, who was said to have prophesied the unhappy end of Charles I., on seeing his bust.

Christophe, King of Hayti

2006-01-31T22:49:00.000+01:00

December, 1826.—In a MS. journal of Mr. Courtenay's, I find some curious particulars respecting the family and government of that extraordinary man, Christophe. He says* Henry Christophe was born a slave in the Island of St. Eustatia, the property of a Mr, Vittor. At a very early period he manifested a disposition impatient of control, accompanied with strong natural abilities, which, however, were not improved by cultivation.

When he was about seventeen years old, a Frenchman of St. Domingo having, in a casual visit to Mr. Vittor, discovered the talents of Christophe, and purchased him from a master who was very glad to get rid of such a troublesome lad, Henri was removed to Cape Francois and apprenticed to a baker, with whom he remained till the French Revolution emancipated the slaves.

Soon after he became general of a brigade in the Colonial service. In the attempt made by the French to re-establish slavery, he distinguished himself as a patriot, fighting under the banner of Toussaint and Dessalines; and upon the death of the latter (1811) became King of Hayti; and there he now (1818) reigns, probably the most despotic monarch on earth.

At first he manifested a most sanguinary disposition; he has been often known to stab or shoot with his own hands persons in high situations about him, for imaginary offences. Since his authority has been more firmly established, he has relaxed in his severity, and has given his subjects a good code of laws.

Mr. Courtenay describes their arrival at Cape Henri, the capital of the Island of Saint Domingo and of the Haytian Empire, and speaks of the extreme civility with which Sir Home Popham (whom he accompanied) was received. A palace, a guard of honour, a stable of horses appropriated to his use, a splendid table, &c. &c.

Cape Henri, when in possession of France, was considered the richest and most splendid city in the New World. The streets are formed by ranges of palaces, all of which, without exception, were burnt or destroyed during the fervour of revolution. The square, in the centre of which is an enormous iron crown, was the scene of many horrible massacres by both parties during the struggle for independence. The French made a practice of nailing the epaulettes to the shoulders of the black officers who were taken prisoners. In this state, so cruelly incapacitated for further service, they were sent back to deter others from following their example.

The private soldiers were despatched m various ways; the most common was to sew them up, six or eight together, in sacks, and throw them into the sea, or to boil them over slow fires. After so many inhumanities, their present antipathy to the French cannot be wondered at; although at the conclusion of the Revolution the Haytians had it in their power to revenge themselves most amply, they acted with considerable moderation, and permitted the remains of the French colony to embark on board a British squadron.

Not a circumstance, let it be ever so trifling, escapes the knowledge of the King; his spies are everywhere, and are only known to himself; his memory is so good, that it is said he is acquainted with every person in his army, by character as well as by name and person. In the space of ten years this extraordinary man has corrected all the abuses be found existing, and has so completely organised his government that it might stand the test of comparison with any of those in Europe.

Christophe has been very anxious to establish morality in his dominions ; and for that reason, has taken the most severe measures to enforce matrimony. In fact, he obliges every person to marry whom he discovers to be in a single state. All the young girls fly at his approach; for whenever he meets one, he begins a string of interrogatories. If he finds her unmarried, he generally informs her he will send a husband next day. He probably sends a black from his regiment of Guards : the lady being as probably, in all but name, a white person. It is in vain to expostulate, even to plead a prior engagement, unless the marriage can be performed before the King's appointed time.

The punishment for adultery is death to both parties; but I understand there is not any instance known in which this law has been enforced to the letter. On a recent occasion, the Countess Rossiere was sentenced to ride in a state of perfect nudity on the back of a donkey through the streets of San Souci at noonday, and her paramour suffered a punishment still more severe.**

All persons have the right of appeal to the King from the courts of law, whenever they conceive themselves aggrieved. In a recent case of this nature, three judges, who were strongly suspected of corruption, were sent to the citadel of Sans Souci to work as common labourers.

Christophe is absolute in all things; and although he has given his subjects a code of laws, he does not hesitate to break them himself, whenever it suits his convenience or his caprice to do so. He is the sole proprietor of land, the produce of which is sold for the benefit of the state; no other person can be a freeholder; but tracts of land, at a nominal rent, are granted by lease as a reward for services. Cattle and sheep are also a royal monopoly, and the revenue more than trebles the expenditure of the country. The treasure collected in Sans Souci is said to amount to more than forty millions of dollars.

With respect to Christophe's private character, I was assured he is a most excellent husband and father, and has spared no pains in giving his children a finished education. The princesses have had the advantage of English governesses, and the prince has been brought up by the Baron de Vastey, a clever gentlemanly white man, educated in France.***

I became acquainted with him and liked him much, though many of his countrymen assured me he was a perfect savage in disposition. The Queen is a well-disposed and very good woman, quite free from the affectation and presumption which generally accompany a rise so very extraordinary as hers. She was once, like her husband, a slave; she accompanied him during the whole progress of the revolution, with her children on her back, often without any other food but wild fruit, exposed to every change of weather, and often half-clothed.

At ten o'clock Sir Home Popham and all our part repaired to the palace by appointment: we were received with every demonstration of respect; a guard of honour in state uniforms, each man more than six feet high. .... We were conducted through a hall, between two lines of officers, into a large and splendidly furnished room paved with marble and cooled by artificial means. In a few minutes the King and Prince Royal made their appearance; the ease and elegance of the King's deportment not a little surprised me. His dress was a plain green coat, with the Order of St. Henri (his own), white satin pantaloons, and crimson morocco boots.

He took his hat off on entering the room, and desired us to sit down. His wool is perfectly grey, his countenance intelligent, and his whole person well proportioned ; his manners are pleasing and rather prepossessing. He congratulated the Admiral on his arrival, regretted his distance from Cape Henri had prevented his arriving to welcome us sooner, &c. &c. He paid many compliments to Sir Home Popham, saying he was no stranger to his reputation, and conversing upon the code of signals invented by Sir Home and used by the British navy. He concluded with a pressing invitation to his Palace of Sans Souci, which I much regret the Admiral could not accept, being obliged to return to Jamaica. ....

The Prince Royal, only fifteen years old, is the fattest fellow I ever beheld, and I should not imagine him half as clever as his father. His dress was as splendid as gold, silver, and jewels could make it; in his hat he wore a large plume of feathers and a diamond star. In about half an hour we retired and left the Admiral tete-a-tete with the King. Their conference lasted about an hour. .... When they came back into the room where we were, the King began to quiz the Archbishop, and mentioned the stories constantly invented by the French about him; amongst others that of his having, in a fit of rage, thrown the Prince out of a corridor at Sans Souci. The Archbishop laughingly observed that they gave him credit for more strength than he could boast, in supposing him capable of even lifting from the ground such a fat fellow.

The King the same evening left Cape Henri, the heat of which disagrees with him: when he travels he goes at full gallop, and will keep it up the whole day to the great inconvenience of his attendants.

Not two years after this account was written, the singular and glorious career of Christophe closed in misfortune.**** The widow and daughters came over to England, having previously resided some time in America in the vain hope that a second revolution would place the eldest daughter on the throne of the father.

I heard of them passing the winter of 1822-23 at Hastings, and the following spring I saw the daughters frequently. They attended the lectures of Prati, which I also attended. From a Madam e ————, whom I often met, I heard a great deal about them; they were living very quietly in a small house at Islington, I think, but still preserving their chambellan, and some little semblance of royalty. The eldest daughter was described as a woman of superior talents, who had taken great pains in cultivating her mind. She was said to have been the confidante and counselor of her father during his latter years. She spoke French easily but not well, she had a good figure, and, as far as I could judge from under a close black bonnet, an intelligent eye. The other sister was a heavy, stuffy, short, fat person. They were in deep mourning, and very plainly dressed.

At one time I heard that Madame——was thinking of writing a memoir of the life of Christophe, from the information she derived from his daughter. One day I asked her about it; she told me that she had quite given up the plan from finding their ideas so different; that many actions which the Haytian considered as glorious, she felt so disgraceful to the memory of Christophe, that she should have thought herself acting unfairly by his daughter in making them public on her authority ; more especially as she could not consistently with her own character mention them without reprobation.

I proposed that the daughter should write the history herself, and only submit it to some person who would correct the language. My proposal seemed to take ; but very soon after that time the Haytians, only then beginning to give up hopes of restoration, left England.

In the summer of 1824 I heard of them travelling in Germany: at this period the King of Bavaria purchased a part of a set of the ex-Queen's jewels (rubies I believe) for a wedding present to his daughter, who married the Prince Royal of Prussia. In 1826 I saw one of these Haytian Princesses walking in the street at Pisa. My laquais de place called her a Principessa della Morea, spoke of them as living very retired, but knew nothing of the mother, who, I conclude, is dead.

Editor’s Notes
* Mr. Courtenay must be considered as speaking throughout.
** He underwent the fate of Abelard,
*** He was a mulatto, and one of the most remarkable of the race. He is the author of some creditable works; amongst others, of an Essay on the Revolutions &c. of Hayti, published
in 1819.
**** His troops mutinied, his deposition was proclaimed, and he shot himself with a pistol. One proximate cause of his fall was his incapacity, from palsy, to make the requisite exertions for the preservation of his authority. His sons were killed by the troops, his wife and daughters were saved by British protection. The wife was allowed to carry off her jewels, and a moderate income was secured to her. See The Present State of Hayti, by James Franklin; 1828 : and Brief Notices of Hayti, &c., by John Candler, 1842. Christophe's authority only extended over half of the Island of St. Domingo; and his subjects are computed at not more than 200,000. His principal revenue was derived from plantations cultivated by slaves or forced labour.

The Duc de Berri

2006-01-29T23:10:00.000+01:00

Having heard and written down at the time all the accounts I heard of the assassination of the Due de Berri, and of the birth of his posthumous son,—aware that my informants were ultra-royalists, I was not a little amused in hearing yesterday from the E.s, the story of the liberals. In the royalist history, the variations are unimportant; but our friends, I see, are very much inclined to believe that the Duc de Bordeaux is not the child of the Duchess, but the offspring of one of his mistresses, of the mother of les petites anglaises mentioned in the letter of Madame de Grontault.*

True it is that, among the known and undisputed facts, there are many suspicious circumstances; the extraordinary privacy of the birth,—the unaccountable delaissement of the Duchess though all Paris knew that the accouchement was daily, nay hourly, expected—the wonderful strength of the Duchess, whom Henry saw at the window, within the first forty-eight hours, I think—her known partiality for Mademoiselle, and her indifference to the boy—the one, she says, 'est mon enfant, l'autre c'est l'enfant de la France;' the fact of her having escaped a miscarriage after such a shock and such exertions. Another singular circumstance—the extravagant liberality and attention displayed not by the Duchess only but by all the royal family to les petites anglaises (now Comtesses d'Issou-dun) and to their mother, would be thus accounted for.

The most suspicious part of the story is, that the proces-verbal giving the account of the birth of the child, which was proclaimed by authority, was altered: in the first copy, only half-an-hour was said to have elapsed between the time when the ladies took leave of the Duchess and that when they were not only safe in their nests but so fast asleep that they could not hear her bell. In a second, this was made an hour. Still the certainty that the fable (if fable it be) must have been fabricated within the first twenty-four hours after the assassination of the father, and the coincidence with the circumstances which had been brought forward to shake the legitimacy of the young Napoleon, are in my mind strong evidence against this story.

It is singular that, the day after, I heard a report which, admitting both stories to be true, would furnish a striking instance of poetical justice. This child, this pretender, is so little promising in body or mind, that Charles Dix considers himself under the necessity of marrying to provide another heir. It is impossible not to wish that the Duc de Chartres, who has had a good, quiet, unprincely education, and is said to do great credit to it, is not left to take his chance.

They say that while the cannon were firing to announce the birth of the Duc de Bordeaux,—after the twenty-four (I think) which mark the birth of a female, while everybody was listening for the twenty-fifth which was to announce an heir, the Due de Chartres said, ' Now we shall see whether I have a wife or a master.'

* The Duke's English mistress, who attended his death-bed, as related by Madame de Gontault, in a letter (transcribed by Miss Wynn) narrating 'all the circumstances of the assassination and his death. The doubts relating' to the birth of the Due de Bordeaux were not more plausible than those thrown on the birth of the Chevalier St. Georges, which are now rejected as preposterous.

An Archbishop on False Pretences

2006-01-26T21:36:00.000+01:00

Rome: March 25th, 1826.—I have been waiting to write the account of a singular impostor, hoping always to pick up more particulars, but I fear in the midst of the wonders that surround me I may lose the recollection of what I do know.

Some time ago an Egyptian arrived at Rome bearing a letter from the pacha, in which he stated to the pope that, having in his dominions a very large Catholic population, he wished to have a bishop to be at the head of this Church, and sent the bearer, hoping that he might be ordained. The request was most willingly granted. The Egyptian was clothed, fed, lodged, and taught: the teaching was rather a slow process, but the ignorance of an African was not likely to excite suspicion. In short, the Egyptian was named Archbishop of Memphis, and with this title returned to his own country.

The pacha wrote an angry expostulation to the pope for interfering with his subjects, and it was not till then discovered that the first letter was a forgery and the Archbishop of Memphis a daring impostor. He was sent here, and was sentenced to death, which has since been commuted to hard labour as a galley slave for life. I have been told that all this while he is archbishop; for that dignity once conferred cannot, according to the Catholic canon, be taken away. Others tell me he is degraded, and I cannot get at the truth.

Duchesse D'Albany*

2006-01-23T16:22:00.000+01:00

Florence: January 14th, 1826.—I have been dining with the Lawleys in the house formerly inhabited by the Duchesse d'Albany. The conversation turned much on the subject of the late possessor, who, if she be not much belied, must have been a very odious woman.

The only cause I can find for doubting the truth of what has been told me, is that it appears scarcely possible that such a creature as she is represented could be to Alfieri an object of such strong, such constant affection. It is, I am told, quite certain that her marked predilection for Fabre excited in the poor poet a fit of such violent jealous passion as to have produced gout in the stomach, of which he died suddenly. Some are uncharitable enough to suspect Fabre of having poisoned him ; but there is not the slightest evidence to warrant the suspicion of his having ever administered any poison but that of jealousy.

It seems this Fabre was a French picture-dealer, a thorough blackguard, who was introduced to the Duchesse as a secretary by Alfieri himself, during the lifetime of Charles Edward. It was not long before he aspired to the affection of his mistress, and supplanted Alfieri in the position of what is here called il patito.

That there must have been something peculiarly shameless in the woman who chose to record her own shame in marble is evident, and this is what the Duchesse has done by her monument to Alfieri.**

That she must always have been ugly is (as I hear) also proved by a portrait painted by Fabre in 1793, and placed in the French saloon at the Gallery, which I have not yet taken the trouble of seeing. Her table is said to have been the object of her strongest affection through life, and to have overcome her love of money. By a sort of poetical justice, .not often seen in real life, the pangs which she had inflicted upon poor Alfieri were visited on her own head or heart. The latter years of her life were embittered by her excessive jealousy of the attentions paid by Fabre to the very handsome wife of a seal engraver, whose name I have forgotten.

An eye-witness told Sir Robert Lawley that her deathbed (in 1824) afforded the strongest instance of the ruling passions strong in death. She blessed God for a long and happy life, and instanced three peculiar causes of thankfulness: first, that she had always had the best of wines; secondly, that she had always had a good cook and an excellent dinner; thirdly and principally, that she had not outlived the seal engraver, and thus had been spared the misery of seeing Fabre married to her rival.

Sir Robert says that the Florentines, who could not forgive her treatment of Alfieri, had ceased to visit her after his death;*** and were very much astonished when the peace of 1814 brought shoals of English, to see some of our first ladies at the feet of this odious woman, and suffering themselves to be treated as subjects by this mock sovereign. The dirt of her house, when he took it, he says was quite incredible : that and everything else belonging to her, with the exception of a very small legacy to some starving Stolberg relations, she bequeathed to Fabre.

He told Sir Robert that, it was very singular, within a couple of months of her death, she had been furnishing herself with various articles, as if she had expected to live a hundred years. She had ordered a new carpet to be made at Tournay, for one of her rooms. She had bought a dozen pair of cotton stockings, and a dozen petticoats; the first article Sir Robert purchased, and was earnestly requested by Fabre to buy the others too.****

Editor’s notes
* Although popularly called Duchess after her death, she was only known as Countess in her lifetime, and that was her real title. The title of Duchess was conferred by the Pretender on his illegitimate daughter.
** The monument is the simplest record of an attachment which
was not condemned by society : ' Victoria Alfierio Asteiisi Aloisia e Principibus Stolbergis Albania Cumitissa M.P.C. An. MDCC'CX.' There is no ground for the supposition that Alfieri's death was hastened by jealousy, and Fabre was a French painter of unimpeachable respectability.
*** So far was this from being the case that Napoleon sent for her
in 1809, and began thus : ' I know your influence over the society of Florence. I know also that you employ it in a sense adverse to my policy.'
**** See Die Grafin van Albany : Von Alfred von Reumont (2 vols.) Berlin, 1860; and the review of that book in the Edinburgh Review for July 1861. As I wrote that review, I may not be deemed wholly without predilections; but Miss Wynn's informants strike me to have been in every way unjust towards the Duchesse and Fabre, and to have made no allowance for Alfieri's treatment of her. At the same time, it must be admitted that much of her conduct and character sadly militate against romance Another very high authority, Lord Broughton, has taken the unfavourable side.

Deaths of the Emperors Alexander and Paul

2006-01-20T17:40:00.000+01:00

Florence: Dec. 24th, 1825.—We are all here full of speculations upon the subject of the death of Alexander, which this day's post has announced. Many are inclined to believe that his death has been occasioned by the hereditary complaint which proved fatal to his three predecessors. We had much conversation on the subject, and I heard for the first time that it is now universally believed that Catherine was strangled.

There is a species of poetical justice in this, which makes one more inclined to believe than one should otherwise be; it is even added that Marcoff on his death-bed confessed that he was the agent employed on this occasion. Lord
Dillon afterwards gave us the particulars of the death of Paul, derived from a Mrs. Browne and a Miss Kennedy, who were at that time in the nursery of the two younger princes, Nicholas and Michael.

It seems that the day before some rumour of the conspiracy reached the ears of Paul: he sent for Count Pannin, who was at that time his minister, and bitterly reproached him for his want of vigilance. Pannin, undismayed, professed his perfect acquaintance with all the designs of the conspirators; acknowledged himself as one of them, alleging as his motive that all other means of defeating their purpose would have proved vain; and added that now he had all the clue, and had the means of arresting the conspirators as soon as any overt act could be proved against them, which at present was not the case.

Paul burst into tears, embraced Pannin, called him his saviour, the guardian of his country, &c. &c. The Emperor continued oppressed and agitated all the evening, which he passed alone with the Empress; saw all his children, kissed and blessed them, and unable to shake off the agitation produced by the conversation with Pannin, retired at an earlier hour than usual.

Soon after the conspirators rushed into the room: they were Beningsen (the distinguished general); Ouwarow (the man whose tremendous black murderous countenance made such an impression on me when he was in London, as aide-de-camp to Alexander); Subow, a Georgian prince; Pannin, who remained behind a screen.*

Paul resisted stoutly, attempted to conceal himself, &c.; and they seem to have hacked him most cruelly. At last Beningsen and Ouwarow took the sash of one of the sentinels on duty and closed the scene by strangling him, but not till he had received some tremendous blows on the head, and not till one of them (Beningsen, I think) had trampled upon him, and had with his sharp spurs inflicted two wounds in his stomach.

Miss Kennedy with her young charge slept in the room immediately over that of the Emperor : she heard the violent uproar (' row,' Lord Dillon called it), trembled, quaked, got the infant out of its own bed into hers, and with him in her arms lay expecting some horrible event. This dreadful interval lasted more than an hour, when Madame de Lieven (the mother of the Prince Lieven who was ambassador in England, and then grande maitresse of the Empress) rushed half dressed into the room, and desired Miss Kennedy to bring the Grand Duke to his mother instantly, if she wished to save his life and her own.

By the time she reached the apartment of the Empress, all the children and their respective attendants were assembled there, half dressed and frightened out of their wits. Alexander and Constantine, who were both past twenty, were absent at Petersburg. The 'Empress, quite frantic, rushed out of the room, collecting her children round her; and followed by the troop of terrified, half-dressed women, went to the Emperor's room.

The sentinels, gained over or terrified by the conspirators, at first refused her admittance ; but she, partly by her commanding manner, beauty and dignity, and partly by literal strength of arm, overawed them, drove them back, and obtained admission for herself and her terrified train. She threw herself on the mangled body; would not for a long while believe that life was extinct; then poured forth the most bitter execrations against the murderers, and lamentations for her lost husband; who (strange to say) brute as he was to everybody else, was kind and still very dear to her.

At length, wearied out, she sank half exhausted and half choking: one of the ladies got her a glass of water ; the rough sentinel who had opposed her entrance, and who probably, at the orders of the conspirators, would have killed her, stopped her from drinking, and said to the attendant, ' Woman, what have you brought ? I insist upon your drinking half the contents of that glass before the Empress touches it.'

The feelings of the Empress were naturally most excited by her fears for her children, whom she expected to see murdered before her eyes. In vain the conspirators assured her that she and they were safe: then, with unparalleled brutality, in that chamber, in the presence of her murdered husband, told her all was over, and shouted in her ears, ' Long live Alexander.''

That he was privy to the murder there seems but too much reason to fear ; the apology made for him is that he was told by the conspirators that his father must be deposed; that all resistance was vain : that if he and Constantine wished to avoid sharing his fate, they would remain perfectly quiet, and appear ignorant of what was going on. I should have said before that this scene passed at the summer palace, out of Petersburg; and that the first object of the Empress, when she in any degree recovered her senses, was to get her children into the winter palace at Petersburg, where she felt that in the multitude she should find safety and protection. This was at first refused, but with the spirit of a heroine she rushed amongst the Guards, saying, ' Who will dare to stop a mother protecting her infant children?' In short, she once more prevailed, and they allowed her to go: two carriages were brought forward, but she would not hear of being separated from her children, and therefore waited till some old lumbering vehicle was found in which they could all go together.

I had always understood that Constantine was a horrible brute, but had not an idea of the extent of his cruelty till this event brought his character so much into discussion. I am told that a servant of his said, ' This has been a quieter journey than usual: we have killed only two postillions;' and declared that in the last journey Constantine had shot three with his own hand from the carriage.
With this ferocity he unites great cowardice.

An Englishman now here, a Mr. Aubyn, who has served with him, told me that he has seen him betray great personal fear in action. It was said by somebody that his character was softened, and that since he had been in Poland, where he is Viceroy, you did not hear of such horrid acts of barbarity; which was allowed. And yet, said some one, the following fact took place latterly in Poland : An officer married a young Jewess : he was punished for this crime, and Constantine sent for her to receive the punishment of the knout. Her beauty produced such an effect upon him that he doomed her to the severer penance of becoming his mistress. The husband was sent to Siberia: the wretched wife destroyed herself.**

People do not seem to rate the characters of the other brothers higher. Nicholas, they say, is more dangerous, inasmuch as he has the art to conceal his vices; Michael seems to be considered as a mere brute.

After all, horrible as all this is, it is impossible not to own that in the customs of that semi-barbarous nation, some little excuse is to be found. The person who from childhood has been accustomed to see, or at least hear, the knout administered for the most trivial faults, must in time become hardened in human suffering. I understand that the Russians resident in this town have been obliged to adopt some other means of punishment for their wretched servants. It was not unusual, on entering a house, to hear the most dreadful screams, and to be told by the lady of the house not to mind: it was only her maid who, having dressed her ill, was receiving so many strokes of the knout.***

Complaints were made : the police interfered, and the knout was strictly prohibited. The extremes of splendour and of misery seem to be their habitual modes of life. Demidoff, who in a state of representation lives more magnificently than any person I ever saw, keeping a company of French actors at his own expense, filling his rooms with every magnificence which money can buy—from chairs and tables up to diamonds and pearls, which are exhibited in large cases lined with velvet, and covered with plate glass, exactly like those in Rundell's shop— is living himself in dirt and misery, greater than that of any English cottage.

Lord Dillon gave an extraordinary instance of this mixture in Madame Gerebstoff, who passed many years in England. He had some business with her, and went one morning to her house in Harley Street at an hour rather earlier than that of visiting. The servant hesitated about letting him in; he rather insisted on the plea of business, and was taken up to the drawing- room, where he found Madame de G-. lying on the couch in a blue silk gown, her hair dishevelled, and a diamond tiara hanging down on one shoulder, the rouge on her cheeks streaked: her person and dress looked as dirty as possible. Seeing probably his amazement, she said: ' Ah! mon cher, je suis rentree si tard hier, que je me suis couchee a la Russe. Je vais prendre un bain, et puis je m'habillerai.' ****

Editor's Notes
* There were in all thirty conspirators, including' (besides those named above) two named Subow, Prince Jaschwill, Count Pahlen, Tatischen, &c. The circumstances are differently narrated in each of the best authenticated accounts.
** 'Revolting as this reads, the famous Marechal Saxe treated an actor and his wife much in the same fashion with the aid of a lettre de cachet..
*** Most probably of the whip. The knout is reserved for more serious occasions, which, I believe, are defined by law.
**** 'La superficie en tout offrait l'image de la civilisation, mais sous cette ecorce legere, l'observation retrouvait encore facilement cette vieille Muscovie.'—Segur.

The first news of Waterloo

2006-01-17T15:36:00.000+01:00

I did not know till I heard it from Alava the exact circumstances of the first arrival of the news of the battle of Waterloo in London. It seems that one morning a partner of the house of Rothschild came to Lord Liverpool, informed him that he had a few hours before received the glorious news, or at least the bare outline; that, having made all the advantage which this exclusive knowledge could give him on the Stock Market, he now came to impart it to Government.

He would not answer any enquiries as to the means by which he had acquired the intelligence, and could not give any particulars: he only repeated the assurances of truth of the information. Lord Liverpool thought it cruel on such vague foundations to raise hopes or fears. To one of his colleagues (Vansittart, I think), who happened to come in, he told the circumstance, and they agreed to conceal it from every other human being till more was known. There was a cabinet dinner that day at Lord Harrowby's: not one word was said respecting the news; and Lord Liverpool was returning home full of anxiety. In the street his carriage was stopped by an unknown, who, with some apology, said that he was just come from Downing Street; that a carriage with six horses, dressed with laurels, French Eagles and colours hanging out of the windows, had arrived: that the glorious news was instantly spread; and that the messenger was gone to Lord Harrowby's in pursuit of him, through another street from that in which he was met.

This, I think, I heard at the time, but certainly till now never heard the thing accounted for. It seems that the Duke of "Wellington, after writing his despatch home, said to Pozzo di Borgo, ' Will you write to Louis XVIII. at Ghent? tell him only that Napoleon is utterly defeated: that in less than a fortnight I shall be in possession of Paris, and hope very soon after to see him reinstated; say that excessive fatigue prevents me from writing.'*

A messenger was of course immediately sent off to Ghent: when he arrived, Louis and his little Court happened to be assembled at breakfast, in a room whose windows down to the ground were wide open. The embraces, the ejaculations, of course instantly apprised those under the windows of the arrival of good news.

Among these was a spy from the house of Rothschild, who had many days been upon the watch: he no sooner heard the news than he rode post to Ostend: there, happening to find a small vessel just sailing, he embarked, and got one tide before the English messenger, who arrived shortly afterwards.

Editor’s notes
The official intelligence of the victory of Sunday, the 18th, did not arrive in London till late in the evening of Wednesday, the 21st. The result was first announced by the newspapers on the 22nd, but there is a passage in the Times of that day which partially confirms the Rothschild agent story: ' Those who attended to the operations of the Stock Exchange yesterday (21st) were persuaded that the news of the day before would be followed up by something still more brilliant and decisive. Omnium rose in the course of the day to six per cent. premium, and some houses, generally supposed to possess the best information, were among the purchasers.' The popular version of the story was that the agent did not stay to verify his conclusion, but started immediately after witnessing the signs of joy manifested by the royal party.

Some very interesting communications have been made to me on the subject of the arrival of the official intelligence of the victory, brought by the Honourable Major Henry Percy, brother of the present Earl of Beverley.

The Honourable William Bathurst, son of Earl Bathurst, Secretary for the Colonies and War in 1815, states that the despatches were directed to his father, who was not at the Earl of Harrowby's where Lord Liverpool was dining; and that Major Percy was with some difficulty persuaded (in Lord Bathurst's absence) to deliver them to the Earl of Liverpool, the Prime Minister. Mr. Bathurst was dining at the Earl of Jersey's, and, in company with Earl Grey, had gone to Lord Harrowby's on hearing of the arrival of the news.

Communicated by a member of Major Percy's family.
‘A few hours after the battle was over, Major Percy started with the Duke's despatches and the captured eagles, travelling day and night. When he arrived in London, he went, Ibelieve, first to the Horse Guards, where he found none of the authorities; then to Lord Liverpool, who was, I believe, dining at Lord Bathurst's, where Major Percy followed him.
"You must come immediately with me to the Regent," said Lord Liverpool, and they got into the carriage of his Lordship. " But what is to be done with the eagles?" " Let the footman carry them," said Lord Liverpool. Major Percy always told this with some disgust. They proceeded to Mrs. Boehm's house in St. James's Square,** where the Regent and the Duke of York were dining. Lord Liverpool took up Major Percy to the Prince, and said, " I have brought Major Percy, who comes with the news of a great victory for your Royal Highness." " Not Major Percy, but Lieut.-Colonel Percy," said the Prince. Major Percy knelt and kissed his hand. " We have not suffered much loss, I hope," he then said.
"The loss has been very great indeed," was of course the reply, upon which the Regent burst into tears. Major Percy afterwards went to his brother's house in Gloucester Place, and called him up to hear the good news, and then to Portman Square, where he undressed and went to bed for the first time since the battle.
'I well remember the next Monday, when I was taken to see him. I remember the great dark stain on his uniform; the horror I felt, in the midst of all the triumph and joy of the moment, when he told me, in answer to my questions, that it was the blood of an officer killed close to him. Still more when I heard him tell how, in taking off his sash as he undressed, he shook from the folds fragments of the brain which
had lodged there.
'I have often heard him describe the interview between the Duke and Bliicher, at which he was present: and the ride back to the English quarters over the field of battle covered with the dead and the dying. It was a bright moonlight night. The first soldiers they met greeted the Duke with loud cheers, which were taken up and sounded along the whole line of bivouacs; the poor wounded men joined with their feeble voices, and Major Percy said he saw many try to rise as the Duke passed. As the first soldiers who recognised crowded round him, he said, " My poor fellows, you have had a hard day's work.'' There was a general cry in answer, " We don't mind it: all's right as you are safe." Those words were almost the only expressions uttered by the Duke during that memorable ride. He was deeply affected, and even shed tears.'

Extract from Journal***
' Came up from Dover in a chaise and four with three eagles out of the window. They were too long to be shut in it. Went first to the Prince Regent (before he came home) at Mrs. Boehm's in St. James's Square. Prince much affected. All London thrown into agitation—people quitting balls and assemblies as the news was conveyed of the wounds or deaths of relatives. Many ladies fainted. There was a rumour, before the news came, of a great battle and retreat, and even defeat. People were much depressed; therefore the reaction was immense.'
From another member of the Percy family****
'Major Henry Percy, A.D C. to the Duke of Wellington, was sent home with the Waterloo despatches. He came express from Dover, in those days in a chaise and four horses, with the conquered eagles projecting out of each window, amidst the cheers of all the towns and villages he passed. He arrived late in London, called at Lord Bathurst's, who was out, and was told that the Prince Regent and most of the ministers were dining at Mrs. Boehm's in St. James's Square.

He proceeded thither, and was shown into the dining-room, where the gentlemen still were. Lord Bathurst not being present, he hesitated about delivering the despatches, but Lord Liverpool took and read them. The Prince Regent imagining Lord Anglesea to be killed, was much moved. After the dispatches were read, the Prince said, “I congratulate you, Colonel Percy – on which the Duke of York good-naturedly said two ‘Kiss Hands! Kiss hands!’ They kept him there till near two AM when it was arranged he should breakfast with the Duke of York next morning, but he arrived too late, and followed the Duke along the Mall to the Parade, where immense numbers were assembled, and where all the windows and tops of houses were thronged with people, expecting the eagles and colours were there to be presented to the Duke. When Henry Percy alighted, there was a long-continued cheer, and the band changed to “See the Conquering Hero comes”. The Duke immediately took Henry to the Horse Guards, where he remained till late in the afternoon. Though he was no wounded, his uniform was entirely stained with blood.”

* The Duke himself wrote to this effect to Louis XVIII on
the morning of the 19th, but it is highly probable that a brief
announcement of the victory was despatched at once.
** No. 14, now occupied by a club.
*** In the first edition this was erroneously described as an extract from Major .Percy's Journal. The number of the eagles sent home by the Duke is stated in his despatch of June 19th : ' I send with this despatch three eagles, taken by the troops, which Major Percy will have the honour of laying at the feet of His Royal Highness.'

Conversations with General Alava

2006-01-13T18:27:00.000+01:00

Editor’s notes
General Alava, for many years Spanish Minister at the Court of Great Britain, is best known as the friend and companion in arms of the Duke of Wellington; who retained through life a warm esteem for him, although political differences may have caused an occasional coolness. Alava, on his part, never wavered in his attachment.
After expressing his approval of some measure of Lord Grey's Government he suddenly turned round and exclaimed, ' But you must not think I can ever prefer this Government to the Duke of Wellington; it is he whom I love.'

Alava, says Lord Holland in his ' Foreign Reminiscences,' ' was impetuous in temper and heedless in conversation; but yet so honest, so natural, so cheerful, and so affectionate, that the most reserved man could scarcely have given less offence than he, who commanded the respect of the many by his intrepid openness and sincerity.'
Dr. Gleig, after relating the circumstances of the wound or contusion received by the Duke at the battle of Orthes, adds: ' He was on his feet, however, in a moment, and in a condition to laugh at the Spanish General, Alava, who had likewise been wounded almost at the same instant in that fleshy and very sensitive part of the body, any accident to which is apt to excite the mirth rather than the sympathy of the looker-on.'*

No one knew better how to interpret the slightest action of his Chief. The night before one of the Duke's Peninsular victories, an officer came up to Alava and asked in much alarm, ' What will become of us ? We shall have a great battle to-morrow, and Lord Wellington is doing nothing but flirting with Madame de Quintana.' ' I am glad to hear it,' replied Alava, ' if we are to have a great battle to-morrow; for it is quite certain that all his arrangements are made, if he is flirting with Madame Quintana.' Alava died in 1841.

Aix-la-Chapelle: October 9th, 1825.—I am hearing from General Alava a great deal about all those of whom history will one day talk a great deal and tell much that he could contradict on personal knowledge. For instance, he was present when Cambronne was taken,, and when he is said to have made the speech so often commented upon, ' La Garde meurt, et ne se rend pas.' He did not say this or anything else, only screamed for a surgeon to dress his wound, having quietly surrendered.**

Alava saw the famous correspondence which passed between Fouche and Carnot at the period of the Restoration, when the former, as minister of police, was sending all the proscribed into exile. Carnot wrote, 'Ou veux-tu que j’aille, traitre?' Fouche replied, ' Ou tu voudras, imbecille.'

I am still, after all I have heard in Majorca, astonished at the manner in which Madame de Coigny, a professed devote, Alava, and the Prince Pierre d'Aremberg, talk before us heretics of their bishops, cardinals, legates, and even their popes. Alava was telling us of the legate in Spain during the reign of Charles III. He had some discussion with Aranda, then minister, and refused some boon requested for Spain, detailing with great pomp his fears lest the interests of their holy faith might suffer by such concessions.

Aranda, provoked, at last said, 'How can you bring forward such arguments to me who know that you are an atheist as well as myself?' The pious legate quietly replied, ' E vero, ma questo non si dice.''

Alava amused me in telling of the same man, the manner in which he received the often-repeated question of that fool Charles IV., who made all around him observe the striking resemblance between his son Don Francisco de Paula and the Prince of Peace. The sneer with which the legate first looked at the Queen, then at Manuel, and replied, 'E vero, Sire,' was very well described.

They all speak of the present Pope (Leo XII.) as having been fier libertine, and are not shy of letting you see that they consider his present austerity as mere hypocrisy. Of the late Pope (Pius VII.) they speak with the veneration which his character seems to demand from all, but which is certainly not felt by the bigoted Catholics, who cannot endure his liberal ideas.

They were speaking of the time that he passed in confinement at Fontainebleau. Napoleon wanted to force him to consent to measures which his conscience disapproved, and one day, tired out, said to one of his ministers (Fouche,*** I believe), ' Why do not you try what ill-treatment can do, short of torture ? I authorize you to employ every means.' The reply was, ' Mats, Sire, que voulez-vous que fon fasse Sun honime qui laisse geler Veav, dans son benitier sans se plaindre de n'avoir pas du few dans sa chambre ?'

One evening we talked of that extraordinary personage the Prince de Ligne, who for fourscore years had lived with every person of distinction in Europe, and who, to the last moment, preserved not only every useful faculty, but wit and gaiety besides. He preserved also to the last a singular facility of versification, and was particularly fond of writing epitaphs on himself. They say that he must have written above 500, generally impromptus, and of course worthless.****

****

Madame de Coigny told us an anecdote of that famous progress which Catherine la Grande made through the southern part of her empire, and which the Prince de Ligne has so well described. She was attended by the ministers of the three great European Powers. They arrived at Kiow. She first asked the Austrian, Cobentzel, what he thought of the town. He made a set speech on the ruins of the ancient town, contrasting them with the new buildings which she had made, and of course extracting from that part of the subject a long tirade of compliment, &c. &c.

When this oration, was ended Catherine turns to Segur, the French minister, ' Et vous, Monsieur, qu'e.n pensez-vous?’

‘Madame, il me semble que Kiow offrele souvenir d’un grand empire et l’espoir d’un autre.’’*****

Catherine then says, ' A votre tour. Monsieur Fitzherbert (afterwards Lord St. Helens), qu’en dites-vous? '

Ma foi, Madame, je trouve que, c'est le plus vilain trou que nous ayons encore vu, dans touts notre route.’

Madame de Coigny says she has laughed at Lord St. Helens about this speech; he replied that everything that was pretty, everything flattering had been said, so that nothing remained for him but the plain truth. She added, ' C'est si Anglais.'*****

* The Life of Arthur Duke of Wellington, &c., p. 272.
** Siborne says that when the French Guards fell back, General Halkett, who had marked out Cambronne, dashed at him with uplifted sword, and was on the point of cutting him down, when Cambronne cried out to him to hold his hand, and surrendered. Just afterwards Halkett's horse fell, and Cambronne made an attempt to escape, but was overtaken by the General,, who pulled him back by the aiguiltette, and delivered him over to a guard of Osnabruckers. Cambronne himself always denied the historic mot attributed to him, which, according to M. Fournier (L'Esprit dans I'Histoire), was invented by M. Rougemont, the editor of the Independent, in which journal it originally appeared.
*** In his apocryphal Memoires, Fouche is made to say that Napoleon, knowing his repugnance to violent measures against the Pope, never trusted him with the conduct of them.
**** He was always writing about himself in prose as well as in verse. Amongst the heads of chapters in his Memoires et Melanges, we find, 'De Moi pendant Ie jour,' 'De Moi pendant la nuit,' ' De Moi encore,' ' Memoire par mon coeur,' Mes-Ecarts, ou Ma Tete en Liherte.'
***** Kiow was the capital of the ancient empire of Muscovy.
****** Segur's version is: '" Comment trouvez-vous la ville de Kioff? " dit-elle an Cornte de Cohentzel. " Madame," repliqua le comte avec le ton de l'enthousiasme, " c'est la plus belle, la plus imposante et la plus magnifique ville/ C’ue j'aie vue." M. Fitzherhert repondit a la meme question: " En verite, c'est un triste lieu; on n'y voit que des mines et des masures." Luterroge a men tour, je lui dis, " Madame, Kioff vous offre le souvenir et l'espoir d'une grande ville." '

Ballons and Diving-Bells

2006-01-07T18:48:00.000+01:00

Stowe: August, 1825.—Nugent (Lord Nugent) was talking to me on the subject of aerostation, and amused me very much. His sanguine mind still looks, after so many failures, to a degree of progress which may produce some useful result; and when I expressed utter incredulity, and said,' Since the discovery of the science, so little progress has been made, that I can anticipate very little from the future,' he only replied, ' If from the first discovery of navigation you were' to take thirty-five years, you would probably find that, in that period, much less progress was made than has been made in aerostation in the thirty-five years which have elapsed since the discovery.'

In the first place, an argument which necessarily rests on probability only, I think worth very little; but, granting this position, I conceive that the state of science, of knowledge, &c., of that age, will bear so little comparison with that of the present day, that the parallel must fall to the ground. Though he did not convince me, he surprised me, by telling me how much had been done latterly. By observations on the different currents of wind, with the power of ascending by increasing the quantity of gas, of descending by throwing out ballast, they have acquired some little power of directing the balloon.

But the most important discovery is one made by Sadler, which enables them to measure with tolerable accuracy the rate of their flight. A long log-line is thrown out, and by measuring with great accuracy, by means of a quadrant, the angle which this line makes, they can ascertain the velocity of their flight, and from observation of the compass may form a tolerable idea of their situation.

Nugent tells me that a young friend of his ascended with Graham a little time ago ; it was one of the lovely bright calm days which have been so frequent this summer ; still, in the elevated regions of the atmosphere, the cold was intense; but no peculiar sensation accompanied this cold. George (Lord N.) said he asked what was the appearance of the horizon of the earth: ' Cloud,' was the answer ; ' the view was always caught through clouds, which formed an irregular fringe or frame to the picture.'

The descent was very perilous: the young man—almost a boy—having asked Graham how high they were, and being told, I forget what, asked ' whether they could not ascend a little higher before they began their descent ?' Graham said. Certainly they could, but that he was averse to the idea of expending any more gas, because a small quantity in reserve might be essential to the safety of their descent. "When once the ballast is all thrown out and the descent begun, the only means of avoiding any dangerous spot on which the balloon might chance to fall, is by admitting a little more of the inflammable gas, rising, and trusting to the wind to convey the machine out of the dangerous neighbourhood. The young man still pressed for a farther ascent; Graham weakly consented; and the danger he had foreseen actually occurred.

As soon as the earth became visible through their glasses, it was evident that they had their choice of dangers only: they were coming down between the river and some lime-kilns. The kilns were certain destruction ; the moment the balloon approached them. The inflammable gas must have ignited, and they must have been burnt to death. The only alternative was to rise and trust to the wind for conveying them out of this dangerous neighbourhood. They had no gas left, and the only means of lightening the balloon was by cutting away the car—without the power (as George observed) of saying ' heads below'—-and trusting themselves to the ropes of the balloon itself, which of course rose, having a lighter weight, made still lighter by being close to it, instead of being attached at some distance. At last they fell into the river, and being both good swimmers, escaped.

I forgot to say that another of the modern contrivances is a pulley, by means of which the aeronaut can draw the car farther from or nearer to the balloon: by this means the ascent or descent may be checked, and more or less advantage may be taken of the current of wind in which they may happen to find themselves.

London, he says, appeared wonderfully regular at this great elevation: every smaller distinction of height disappeared ; every building appeared of equal height and of dazzling whiteness.

This conversation naturally led us to the diving-bell. I found George had been down in one, in Plymouth Sound. By his account, it must have been precisely similar to that which I saw at Bordeaux. He says, when under the water, you see in the diving-bell about as clearly as you would in a carriage, when the breath has been congealed on the glasses; though you see very little without, within you can see to read the smallest print.

He says, the first thing his companion did, was to direct his attention to the code of signals attached to the side of the bell, and explain them, that George might know what to do in the improbable event of his companion's being seized with a fit. The signals are given by so many strokes of the hammer against the side of the bell: the first, and most important of all, which is ' Hold fast where you are,' is given by one stroke; the second, which is, I should have thought, still more so, is ' Draw up the bell;' the others direct it to be drawn N., 8., E., or W.

His companion said, ' Now, you see that pointed rock: if we go on in our present course, the side of the bell must strike against it; it will be overset, and we shall inevitably be destroyed: but there is no hurry; we will go nearer and examine it.' When they approached he gave the signal to be drawn up higher; then directing the course so as to come immediately over the rock, he desired to be lowered again, and they found themselves with the point of the rock within the bell.

George describes the painful sensation in the ears exactly as the man at Bordeaux did; a buzzing and sense of pressure like that arising from a drop of water in the drum of the ear, only stronger. Cotton to deaden this sensation would be a very dangerous experiment: the compressed air would drive it in so far, it would not be got out again without some instrument.

He says, that altogether the sensation is so little disagreeable, that he conceives one might remain under water for any length of time. In returning to the air, there is a disagreeable sulphureous smell, for which it is not easy to account, but which is always observed. George did not know whether this smell was experienced returning from fresh water as well as from sea water.

Spinetto on the Pastoral Drama

2006-01-03T23:29:00.000+01:00

May 11th.—I went yesterday to hear Spinetto's lecture at the institution, when I found that the pastoral drama was the subject. I expected to be much tired, anticipating only a discussion on the' Aminta' and ' Pastor Fido,' too long and much too full of national partiality for my patience or my estimation of their merits. I was agreeably surprised. Spinetto is fully aware of the faults of these two dramas, and especially of their tremendous long-windedness, and did not dwell upon them very long.

He laughed at the attempts made in France at this species of composition, the absurdity of which must be felt by every person who has the least love of poetry or discrimination of character. The French ideas of shepherds and shepherdesses seem to me to be exactly adapted to the stiff, long-stayed, hoop-petticoated, powdered, full-wigged caricatures of the human form which Watteau, Boucher, &c. call by these names.

When Spinetto came to speak of the pastoral drama in England, he of course began by the ' Faithful Shepherdess ' of Fletcher.* Praise of the occasional beauties of the poetry and emanations of genius throughout the performance, was nearly overbalanced by blame on occasional coarseness and immorality. He then proceeded to the 'Gentle Shepherd,' which he rated higher, adverted to the general diffusion of knowledge in Scotland, and digressing to the eternal never-ceasing topic of additional schools, wished them to prosper, neatly applying a quotation from Petrarch, 'Quando luce it sol, ed ovvunque luce.'

We then came to ' Comus,' which I feared would scarcely be allowed to come under the denomination of a pastoral drama; but the praise bestowed upon it fully satisfied my partial feelings. The morality of Spinetto, which I own myself apt to think puritanical and over-strained, was quite in its place when he admired the skill with which the sainted muse of Milton contrived to describe, or rather represent, the licentious court of Comus without contaminating herself.

Spinetto then startled his audience by telling them that we possessed a drama which might be denominated pastoral by a still greater poet. I was puzzled, and could anticipate only the ' Winter's Tale,' which, after all, I think should have been mentioned, though certainly not quite equal to ' As you Like it,' which he terms the most perfect pastoral drama extant. I have often thought that this beautiful play is not generally rated as highly as it deserves, and was delighted at hearing a foreigner commend it so forcibly. At the same time, I cannot go quite as far as my friend Miss Stables, who places it second to ' Hamlet' only, and above every other play.

Now, in reading, I believe I prefer 'Othello,' 'Lear,' and 'Macbeth.' Upon the stage, I am quite sure that the two plays from which I derive most pleasure are ' Macbeth' and ' As you Like it.'

Editor's note
* Can he have forgotten The Passionate Shepherd of Marlow:
(Come live with me and be my love' ?
The same incongruity may be observed as in the French pastoral:
e.g. the damsel is to have—
Slippers lined choicely for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold,
A belt of straw, and ivy buds,
"With coral clasps and amber studs.'

Cannibalism in Sumatra

2005-12-30T22:35:00.000+01:00

March, 1825.—From Sir Stamford Raffles, I have heard histories of the manners and customs of the Island of Sumatra, so very strange that from any person but one who, having been many years governor of the island, was an eye-witness of some of the scenes he described, and in all had opportunity to ascertain the truth, I could not have believed one word. The first undoubted fact which he told me is, that at this time there is in a part (the north-western part, I think) of that island a population of about a million who are cannibals, and cannibals of a more horrible description than any I ever heard or read of, for they literally eat their victims alive.

This, it seems, is the punishment for three or four great offences; one of which is adultery. An execution for this crime was witnessed by one of the white resident merchants, a person. Sir Stamford says, ‘in whom he had perfect confidence,' and was thus described to him:
The criminal being tied to a stake, the executioner, armed with a very large sharp knife, asked the injured husband, who on this occasion had precedence over every person, what piece he chose: he selected the right ear; which was immediately cut off. An assistant of the executioner placed it on a large silver salver, on which were previously arranged in heaps, salt, pepper of various degrees of heat, lemons, &c. The salver was presented to the husband, who, after having seasoned the disgusting morsel to his taste, proceeded to eat it.
The next in rank happened to select the nose: the ceremony was repeated; and the executioner (being a merciful man), after two or three more slices, ran his sword through the body of the wretched victim, and then divided the body among the surrounding multitude, who crowded with savage ferocity to the feast.

Sir Stamford told me that, finding that some few among the principal persons expressed disgust at this horrible custom, he exerted his influence to abolish it, but he was answered as if he intended to subvert the public morals. They made use of the same arguments to defend their practice, as were used in this country to defend one less barbarous, the interment of suicides in the highway.*

They said death might happen to any man, and was not a sufficient punishment to deter from crime: circumstances to excite horror must be added; and some of those who fed on human flesh seemed to consider themselves as performing a painful duty.

I asked about how many executions might occur in the course of the twelvemonth, and was answered forty or fifty. Among the different villages, besides this, they are in the habit of eating their parents when they become old and useless. These are willing victims. The ceremony begins with music, dancing, and complete intoxication; and the poor old wretches are killed and roasted before they are eaten by their dutiful children.

Latterly, however, some progress was made in civilisation : they began to feel some repugnance at eating their own parents; and neighbouring villages agreed to exchange their old for food. I naturally asked Sir Stamford whether he did not feel the utmost dread and abhorrence of this savage people. He said,' Decidedly not: in the other transactions of life, they are a mild, strictly honourable people.' He gave me a proof of his opinion of them, telling me he had travelled through their district accompanied by Lady Raffles, and with out any guards or means of defence.

They had lodged in their huts, which are very large, and on account of the great moisture of the climate raised on large wooden piles. On one occasion, in one of these huts, above one hundred of these people slept in the same room with the Raffles' party; but this seems to have been an extraordinary occurrence,
occasioned be a very stormy night which prevented many from seeking more distant habitations.

After all this, nothing is to me so wonderful as the plain historical fact, that Sumatra was discovered by the Portuguese in the year 1510, and since that period seems to have been continually the resort of eastward-bound European ships. I conclude that in this large island a remote part has been little visited by Europeans ; still, that little, one should think, must in the course of above 300 years have produced some progress towards civilisation. It seems strange, too, that a district large enough to contain a population of a million should be so cut off from all intercourse with the capital and that part of the island which has been so long inhabited by European merchants of different countries.

I was astonished to hear that so near the equator a climate so temperate should be found. Sir Stamford said there was hardly a day in the year in which the thermometer did not rise above 80°, and very few in which it was higher than 84°; then, in the night and early morning, it frequently falls to 70°, and this, partly from the extreme moisture and partly from the relaxation of frame which the previous heat has produced, is felt as severe cold.

Sir Stamford says the mermaid is frequently seen on the coasts of Sumatra; but his report of her appearance is far different from, and much less poetic than, the fabulous histories I have been in the habit of hearing.

He describes her appearance as very like that of a cow, and says he cannot conceive how any resemblance to a woman can have been fancied, excepting in the position of the breasts and in the manner of nursing her young. They have very strong affection for their young, and when these are removed, call them with a
loud continual moan, very discordant, and this is the far-famed mermaid's song. This moan is sometimes accompanied by tears, and a strange property is ascribed to those tears by a kind of poetic superstition. It is supposed that the tears which the mother sheds to recall her absent offspring, have the power of attracting towards the person possessing them the one most dear to that
person. The precious drops are, therefore, eagerly purchased by lovers, as a kind of talisman to preserve and retain the affections of the beloved object.

After writing the above, I looked over Marsden's 'Sumatra;' I there find the account given by Sir Stamford of the race of cannibals exactly confirmed**. The part of the island in which they are found is on the N.E. coast, and is called Batta, and cannot be more than 200 miles from Achin—the northern point where an English factory was established early in the reign of James I. Marsden calls the fish which he says has given rise to the idea of there being mermaids in the tropical seas, the Dayong. He describes the head as covered with shaggy hair, and says the tusks are applied to the same purposes as those of the elephant, and, being whiter, are more highly prized.

I was conversing on the subject of Sumatra with Mr Stanley, the Vicar of Alderley, who tells me that it is still more strange that, in this age of discovery, most of the islands in the Indian seas possess unexplored regions in the interior. He instanced Borneo, Ceylon, Madagascar (where there seems much reason to believe that there exists a diminutive race, a nation of dwarfs) and the Philippine Islands. As to the latter, he told me that he had the authority of a captain and of a lieutenant of a merchant vessel, who said that two young men with tails had come to the coast from the interior of the country; that they came on board their vessel, remained some time, and had even consented to come to England with them, but afterwards either repented and returned home or died (I forget which). Mr. Stanley told me he had taken a great deal of pains in examining these men, and never could find any wavering in their testimony, or discover any circumstance which led him to doubt their veracity.***

Editor's Notes
* In 1813 the bill for omitting the embowelling and quartering in the punishment of high treason was thrown out in the House of Commons by 75 against 60; 'so that (wrote Romilly) the ministers have the glory of having preserved the British law, by which it is ordained, that the bowels of a man convicted of treason shall be torn out of his body whilst yet alive.' The judgment against Captain Walcot (concerned in the Rye House plot) was reversed, because it did not direct that the bowels of the prisoner should be taken out and burned, in conspectu cjus et ipso vivente. Lord Russell was one of those who disputed the King's prerogative to remit the hanging and quartering in Lord Stafford's case; and when his own turn camp, the King (Charles II.) said: ' My Lord Russell shall find that I am possessed of that prerogative which., in the case of Lord Stafford, he thought fit to deny me.'

** These (offenders) are tried by the people of the tribe where the offence was committed, but cannot be executed until their own particular raja has been made acquainted with the sentence, who, when he acknowledges the justice of the intended punishment, sends a cloth to cover the head of the delinquent, along with a large dish of salt and lemons.' Amongst the many proofs addressed by Mr. Marsden to the incredulous, is the following :—'When Mr. Giles Holloway was leaving Tappanuli, and settling his accounts with the natives, he expostulated with a Batta man who had been. dilatory in his payments. "I would," said the man, " have been here sooner, but my pangula (superior officer) was detected in familiarity with my wife. He was condemned, and I stayed to eat my share of him : the ceremony took us three days, and it was only last night that we finished him." Mr. Miller was present at this conversation, and the man spoke with perfect seriousness.'—History of Sumatra, p. 394.

*** The Rev. Dr. "Wolff states positively, in the last of his publications, that a noble English family was distinguished by the same appendage as these two young men: and that one of them had the seat of his carriage adapted for the reception of his tail. His nether garments were probably made like Satan's—
His coat it was red, and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole for his tail to come through.'

Dream of the Duchess de Berry

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A few months after the death of the Duke, the Duchess had a dream, or vision as they called it, which made a great noise at the time. Lithographic engravings were made of the scene: verses were published before we arrived at Paris in the month of July. It was about this period that the Nuncio gave to Mme (La Comtesse) Macnamara the paper, of which the following is a copy:—

'Voici le Reve de Mad. la Duchesse de Berry, tel qu'il a ete conte par cette Princesse a Mons1' 1'Eveque d'Amiens, de qui je le tiens:
'Vous connoissez le salon vert de l'Elysee Bourbon. J'y entrais. Je vis centre la cheminee qui est en face de la porte une grande figure blanche qui me fit peur, quoiqu'elle n'eut rien de terrible. Elle etoit enveloppee d'un manteau parseme de fleurs de lys, et je connus que c'etoit St. Louis. Mad. de Gontault etoit aupres de moi, tenant deux enfans qui etoient les miens: l'un etait ma fille agee de cinq ans, et 1'autre etoit un fils un peu plus jeune que sa soeur. Mad. de Gontault les poussoit vers la figure blanche, et moi je faisais au contraire tout ce que je pouvois pour les retenir. Cependant elle l'emporta sur moi, et mes enfans se trouverent tout aupres de St. Louis; qui posa une couronne sur la tete de ma fille. Je pris cette couronne et la mis sur la tete de mon fils, disant que c'etoit lui qui devait etre couronne. St. Louis reprit cette couronne, et la mit sur la tete de ma fille, mats il en mit une seconde sur la tete de mon fils et je m'eveillai.'

This dream produced so strong an effect upon the mind of the Duchess, that the royal family, who at first rejoiced in her deriving consolation from any circumstance, began to grow uneasy at the confidence with which she spoke of all that she would do with her son, just as if he had been actually there.* Monsieur thought it his duty to speak to her most seriously on the subject, and to prepare her for the too probable disappointment of her high-raised expectations.
The only reply he obtained from her was, 'Ah! Papa, St. Louis en salt plus que vous.'
Editor’s note
* The Duc de Berry was born in the September following.

Execution of the Rebel Lords in 1746

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Letter describing the execution of the Rebel Lords in 1746, copied from the original.

'August 20th (1746).—Dear Sir,—As you and Mrs. Grimstone attended the Lords' tryal, I thought it would not be disagreeable to you to have an account of their exit or the last act of their tragedy, especially as I saw part of it, and heard the rest from one who was on the scaffold.

The sheriffs came there between 9 and 10 to see if everything was prepared. The scaffold was nine feet above the ground, -with a rail and black bays hanging from it. On the floor (which was covered with sawdust) was fixed the block, 2ft. 2in. high and 3 inches broad: near it lay red bags to receive the heads, and two white sheets to wrap the bodies in, and on each side were the coffins with coronets and inscriptions, and on the ground two hearses. The executioner was in blew with gold buttons and a red waistcoat (the cloaths of Fletcher executed by him): the ax that of a carpenter.

' At 11 the Lords came; Kilmarnock attended by Foster and a young clergyman. Balmerino was dressed in blew turned up with red (his uniform). Going into the house prepared for them, a spectator asked which was Balmerino; to which he replied, " I am he at your service." Then turning to Kilmarnock, he told him he was sorry he was not the only sacrifice, and asked the sheriffs if they were ready, for he longed to be at home, and said he was asham'd for some of his friends, who shed tears when Lord Kilmarnock came on the scaffold.

The bays was turned up that all might see, and the executioner put on a white waiscoat. My Lord had a long discourse with Foster, who pressed him to own there what he had told him privately,—a detestation of the fact for which he suffered; which he did and which Foster has advertised.

'The executioner was a great while fitting him for the block, my Lord rising several times ; and when down on his knees, it was six minutes before he gave the sign, when his head was nearly severed from his body by one blow: a slight cut finished the execution, and the body fell on its back. . . .

'The scaffold being cleared, and the executioner having put on a clean shirt, Lord Balmerino mounted the stage, and immediately walked to his coffin, and read the inscription, and then called up a warder, and gave him his tye wig, and put on a Scotch plaid cap, and then read a paper denying the Pretender's orders for no quarter, commending him very much: but, being interrupted, he desired (briskly) to go on, and said he should lay down his head with pleasure on that block, pointing to it, and desiring those between him and it to remove. He reflected very much upon General Williamson, but said he had received the Sacrament that morning, and was told it was not proper for a person in his condition to say more of him, but referred for his character to Psalm 109, from verse 5th to 15th.

He said the Pretender gave 'him leave to enter our service, but, as soon as he could be of service to him, he left us. He talked to the executioner, took the ax in his hand, and tried the block, and told and showed him where to strike (near his head), and gave him three guineas (all he had); kneeled down, and presently gave the sign. The first blow did not strike his head off, so that the assistants were forced to lift up his body to receive a second, but the third finished him.

'I own I was a great deal more moved when I called on my friend Mr. Grill in the afternoon, and found him in great pain and given over by his Doctor, than I was with what I saw in the morning.

'The Guards attending were 1,000, and I am sure the spectators were 100 to 1 of the Guards.

' I am yours and Mr. and Mrs. Grimstons
' Most obliged servant,
' R. GRAHAM.'

Napoleon at St Helena

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Hastings, January 1822.—By a singular chance I have met at two consecutive public balls, first, an officer just returned from St. Helena, who was there at the moment of Buonaparte's death ; and secondly, one who was on board the 'Northumberland' when he went to St. Helena. From the first I anticipated much amusement, and expected that the second could only have bored one by repeating a tale which one has so often heard, that one feels possessed of almost all that can be told. In both instances the event proved exactly the reverse of my expectations. The first had never seen Buonapartre, and either could not or would not say anything about him. He told me that when he arrived at St Helena, three or four months before the death of Napoleon, the inhabitants seemed to have entirely forgotten him; and that the man who so few years ago was the one subject of interest, of curiosity, of conversation through the globe, was never mentioned even within the narrow precincts of his insular prison.

As to the other officer, Captain Sweeny of the Marines, he had for ten weeks passed some part of every day with Napoleon, and was quite as ready to tell as I was to hear all that he knew about him. I first asked whether he had ever seen any instance of that violence of temper of which we have heard so much; he said ‘Never’ adding, that appearing there only as a guest and for a few hours in company, there could not occur anything to provoke his passions. Still, as the narrator went on, I thought that, if the ill-temper had been so very near at hand as we have been taught to believe, there must have been occasions more than sufficient to call it forth. From his own people Napoleon continued to exact all the outward tokens of respect which they had shown to the Emperor. One day he was sitting on deck in rain such as I am told can scarcely be conceived by those who have not felt tropical rains: Bertrand, Montholon, and Lascasas were all standing round him bareheaded.

My informant spoke to them, and especially to Lascasas, who has very delicate health, telling them they would make themselves ill if they did not put on their hats: they did not answer, and Buonaparte gave him a very angry look, but said nothing. He then said, ' General, you had better send for a cloak; you'll be wetted to the skin:' he very sternly replied, ' I am not made of sugar or salt.'

Napoleon always spoke in the handsomest manner of his great rival the Duke of Wellington, and did not, like almost all of the officers who fought under his banner, attribute their defeat at Waterloo to chance, to a mistake, &c. He expressed the greatest admiration for the British navy.

It was one of the singular chances belonging to his extraordinary reverse of fortune that on board the ' President' * he found a nephew of Sir Sidney Smith. Napoleon one day in conversation with Captain Usher, after high commendation of his officers and of the treatment which he had met with from them, complained that there was one from whom he never could get anything but the shortest monosyllables in reply to all he could say to him. He added, ' I am the more provoked, as I hear Smith is a young man of great talents, who speaks French as easily as his own language, and yet I cannot draw him into any conversation.'

Captain Usher remonstrated with young Smith; spoke of the respect due to fallen greatness, of the rank which Napoleon had so recently held. Smith replied that he hoped he should never be found deficient in proper respect, but he could not conceive it to be a part of his duty to enter into conversation with Napoleon; adding, that if he had enquired who he was, he thought he could not wonder at his declining any conversation with the person who had so much persecuted his uncle. When Napoleon left the ' President,' he gave a handsome snuff-box to Captain Usher, and rings to every one of his officers but young Smith, who would not accept any present, however trifling, from his hand.

Both the officers with whom I have conversed agree in speaking of Bertrand in the highest terms. They say that the only thing they could say against him is that his devotion to his master was sometimes carried so far as to border on servility; but that conduct which would have been contemptible in the servant of the Emperor became respectable in the follower of the exile.

His fidelity was the more meritorious when one recollects how many feelings of affection as well as interest militated against it. The scene which Madame Bertrand made, and her attempt at throwing herself into the sea, are well known; but I always doubted whether her repugnance might not have been acted, or rather exaggerated, to increase the merit of the sacrifice which Bertrand was making.

By Captain Sweeny's account it was very genuine, and she left no efforts or blandishments untried, by which she could hope to work on his feelings as a father or a husband, to induce Bertrand to relinquish his intention of following his master. That he persisted, we all know; but I did not give him credit for being a very fond husband and father. His son Napoleon is, I hear, now as fine a boy as it is possible to behold.

Soon after they landed at St. Helena, Madame Bertrand incurred the displeasure of the fallen despot: it seems that one of the ships of the convoy was commanded by a Captain Hamilton, who discovered a distant relationship to Madame Bertrand, a Dillon by birth. Of course he showed her more attention on this account, and she received this attention like a Frenchwoman, but with perfect innocence.

However, "Napoleon was angry, and said to Bertrand: ' Your wife must no longer appear at my table; she has chosen to receive all the English officers, and from Captain Hamilton these attentions have been most pointed.' To this Bertrand made no answer, and submitted to the being almost entirely separated from his wife, whom he could only see for a very short period. This continued sixteen days, at the end of which time Napoleon, without another word on the subject, said, ‘Tell you wife to come to dinner next Sunday.’

With all this he treated this devoted servant in a most ungracious manner, and said to him one day before all the English officers: 'As to your fidelity, I value it not; I know that it is not for my sake that you follow me, but for the sake of the credit you will gain from posterity.'

Latterly it is said that Montholon had supplanted Bertrand in bis master's favour, and yet he is thought in every respect his inferior. Captain Sweeny said that when, after a tedious voyage of ten weeks, the shores of St. Helena were discovered, Napoleon seemed at first to feel the joy which animated every other person on board at the idea of leaving the ship; but when on a nearer approach he discovered the barren rocks and desolate shore of his insular prison, the expression of despair, mingled with other feelings, on his countenance was most striking. Napoleon left the deck, went into his cabin, and for many hours would not land. Hopes of escape were not probably at any time entirely extinct, and enabled him to endure his wretched existence longer than could have been expected.

While on board the ' Bellerophon' he said, ' I suppose you, in England, expected me to prove a second Cato, and destroy myself after the battle of Waterloo; but I was determined to show the world I would be a great man in adversity as well as prosperity.'

* The ship in which he was conveyed to Ella.

Literary Gains

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Dropmore: July 29th, 1823 - I heard to-day, from Mr. Rogers, that Constable, the bookseller, told him last May that he had paid to the author of '"Waverley' the sum of 110,000l. To that may now be added the produce of ' Redgauntlet' and ' St. Ronan's Well,' for I fancy ' Quentin Durward ' was at least printed, if not published. I asked whether the 'Tales of my Landlord,' which do not bear the same name, were taken into calculation, and was told they were; but of course the poems were not.

All this has been done in twenty years: in 1803, an. unknown Mr. Scott's name was found as the author of three very good ballads in Lewis's' Tales of Wonder;' this was his first publication. Pope, who had till now been considered as the poet who had made the most by his works, died worth about 800l. a year. Johnson, for his last and best work, his ' Lives of the Poets,' published after the ' Rambler' and the Dictionary had established his fame, got two hundred guineas, to which was afterwards added one hundred more.

Editor’s notes
'Waverley' having been published in 1814, the sum mentioned by Constable was earned in nine years, by eleven novels in three volumes each, and three series of ' Tales of My Landlord ' making nine volumes more; eight novels (twenty-four volumes) being yet to come. Scott's first publication (Translations from the German) was in 1796. During the whole of his literary life, he was profitably engaged in miscellaneous writing and editing ; and whatever the expectations raised by his continuing popularity and great profits, they were surpassed by the sale of the corrected and illustrated edition of the novels commenced under his own revision in 1829.

Altogether, the aggregate amount gained by Scott in his lifetime very far exceeds any sum hitherto named as accruing to any other man by authorship. Pope inherited a fortune, saved, and speculated; and we must come at once to modern times to find plausible subjects of comparison. T. Moore's profits, spread over his life, yield but a moderate income. He got 3,000;. for ' Lalla Rookh.' Byron's did not exceed 25,0002. Talfourd once showed me a calculation by which he made out that Dickens (soon after the commencement of ' Nicholas Nickleby ') ought to have been, during two or three years, in the receipt of 10,000l. a year.

Thackeray (exclusive of Lectures) never got enough to live handsomely and lay by. Sir E. B. Lytton is said to have made at least from 80,000l. to 100,000l. by his writings, and the demand for them has been constantly on the increase.

I have heard that Mr. Routledge gave him 20,000l. for a cheap edition of his novels for ten years, and that ' Rienzi' sells best. We hear of sums of 500,000 fr. (20,000l.) having been given in France for histories—to Thiers and Lamartine, for example—but the largest single payment ever made to an author for a book was the cheque for 20,000l. on account, paid by Messrs. Longman to Lord Macaulay soon after the appearance of the third and fourth volumes of his History; the terms being that he should receive three-fourths of the net profits.

Gibbon and Kobertson were (I believe) the first authors who received large profits. Gibbon got 10,000l for his ' History of the Decline and Fall,' and Robertson was paid at a similar rate after his reputation was established. Since their time, readers have immeasurably increased, and neither the number of copies sold, nor profits, can be taken as comparative tests of popularity, much less of merit. As regards profits, we know merely what has accrued to the author, who may have made a bad bargain ; and circulation is greatly influenced by price.

Byron's poems came out at 3s. or Is. 6d, Scott's at 2l 2s. in quarto. Again, if an author publishes little and rarely, the demand will be proportionally large for the individual work. An admixture of the moral or religious element is a great attraction. Pollok's ' Course of Time ' sells prodigiously; and the circulation of Mr. Martin Tupper's ' Proverbial Philosophy ' counts by tens of thousands. Bundle's 'Cookery ' and Buchan's ' Domestic Medicine ' stand high.

Forty thousand copies of Murray's Handbook for Northern Germany, Belgium and the Rhine, written and published by himself, were sold within the year.
Occasionally a hit is made by a pamphlet, as by Lord Erskine's ' Armata,' which went rapidly through more than twenty editions ; or Sir E. B. Lytton's ' Present Crisis,' (1834) which sold 30,000 copies in a dear form in six weeks and 60,000 more in a cheap form. Very large sums are now gained by novels, which are often paid for twice over, first as magazine articles, and then as completed works. More than 8,000l is said to have accrued to George Elliot from ' Romola.' But the announcement of large prices is a prevalent mode of puffery, both in France and England. Kinglake's History has been more talked of and more read than any book since the day of its publication: it is, moreover, a book which no good library can be without. It arrived rapidly at the fourth edition ; yet it is my full belief (although I have no precise information on the point) that the author's profits have hitherto fallen short of 5,000l.

The establishment of large circulating libraries, like Mudie's, has exercised a marked, although imperfectly understood, influence on literature. On the one hand, a remunerative demand is insured to any book that attracts attention : on the other, the secondhand copies flung upon the market after the first flush have a deteriorating and discouraging tendency.

The foregoing comment is out of all proportion to the text, but the facts and hints may prove useful to future historians of literature.

Improvisatori. Bosetti. Spinetto.

2005-12-16T01:32:00.000+01:00

June, 1824.—I have heard another improvisatore, a man of the name of Rosetti, who, I am told, has published poems of great merit. His improvisazione I consider as decidedly inferior to almost all I have heard of Pistrucci's.

I am inclined to believe that his lines were more harmonious ; but am not quite sure that I may not have been deceived and blinded, or rather deafened, to any harshness of rhythm by the beauty and musicalness of his tones. From what I heard this evening, I am more than ever convinced that with its surprising novelty the talent of improvisazione* has lost its principal charm for me. The numberless expletive expressions which occur so frequently, and seem to fill up each pause as regularly as the accompanying music, become very fatiguing ; and Rosetti very rarely relieved their sameness by any passage of spirit.

The subjects chosen I thought indifferent. The first was the treachery of Csesar Borgia, who invited five friends to sup with him and murdered them. Very little indeed was said or sung to reprobate the treachery, but much on the tame, commonplace, threadbare subject of the lamentations of the wives, children, &c. &c. of the deceased.

The second subject I think much better, and was, therefore, more disappointed in the performance. It ought, however, in fairness, to be remembered that in this Rosetti was, by his own desire, fettered not only by a given measure, the ottava rima, but also by given rhymes for each stanza. The subject was Lorenzo de Medici going in person and alone, with an embassy from the Republic of Florence, to the treacherous Ferdinand King of Naples; no other Florentine daring to trust himself in the power of this cruel traitor, who is represented as quite overcome by this instance of generous confidence.

A short time ago I heard the Marchese Spinetto, in the course of his lectures on modern literature, treat the subject of improvisatores, and was amused at seeing how very much higher he rates the talent than Foscolo, whom I heard lecture upon it last year. I must say that when he enumerated the infinite variety of knowledge, of talent, of feelings, requisite to make a good improvisatore, I thought he required even more than Imlac, in his well-known definition of a poet, and longed to exclaim, like Rasselas,' Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be an improvisatore !'

This Spinetto would have denied ; and if the wonders which he related of the celebrated improvisatrice, Corilla,** are well authenticated, her knowledge must have been fully equal to that of the Admirable Crichton. At one sitting she treated twelve different subjects; these were repeated to us, and certainly —properly filled—would have comprised a vast fund of knowledge; yet I fancied when I thought them over, I could in most discover the loophole by which the improvisatore so often contrives to slip out of the given subject, and glide into the beaten track of commonplace. Spinetto told us he understands that Rosa Taddei, now living at Florence, is supposed to be nearly equal to Corilla.

Talking on the subject of improvisazione with Prati, to whom Italian is nearly as familiar as his own language (German), I said 'After all, it is a talent peculiar to the Italians, and depending, in great measure, upon the facility of versification which their language affords.'

He assured me, not only that he had frequently heard the thing done in German, but that want of voice for singing alone would prevent him from doing it himself. Spinetto, in his lecture, spoke of a French improvisatore, who, in his own language, versified impromptu, with all the fetters of a given subject, measure, &c.

Editor’s notes
The Italians have been the most assiduous and successful professors of this art, but they have by no means enjoyed a monopoly of it. Spain and Portugal have produced many much-admired improvisatori; Germany, a few ; France and Holland, one or two each ; and England one, Theodore Hook, of surprising and surpassing merit in his way. Sheridan listened with wondering admiration ; Coleridge, under the combined influence of wit and punch, placed him on a par with Dante; and Byron spoke of him as the only Englishman ever equal to the feat. His favourite mode of exhibition was a comic song or mock opera, to which he played the accompaniment on the piano. It is worthy of remark that only one of the Italians (Gianni) has submitted his extemporised effusions to the test of print with even moderate success, and that only one (Metastasio) has acquired an independent and permanent celebrity.

* Note by Miss Wynn.—This is a cumbrous, awkward word in English, but I cannot, like a lady (I forget who, but I heard her) say, 'He played an improvisatore on the piano.'
* Crowned in the Capitol in 1776.

God Save the King, and Hyder Ally

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June,1824.—I heard the other day, from Miss Stables, a singular instance of the power of music, which I am anxious to remember because it is so well authenticated.

When her father was a very young man, he followed his regiment to the East Indies. Upon some occasion (I forget what) this regiment gave a dinner to that savage tyrant, Hyder Ally, who a short time after returned the compliment by sending the greater part of those present to the far-famed Black Hole.*

During dinner the regimental band played, and ended by playing God save the King. Hyder Ally appeared much struck, and fainted at last from emotion. Mr. Stables was one of those who assisted in removing him from the dining-room, and who, standing by when he recovered, heard him exclaim, 'Is your King a God, that you adore him with such music as that?'

Editor’s note
* This is an obvious mistake. Miss Wynn was probably thinking of the treatment experienced by the British officers and soldiers after the battle with Hyder Ally of Sept. 10, 1780.

The Queen of Wurtemberg, 'Nee Princess Royal of England - Napoleon at Wurtemberg - George the Third's Insanity

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Stuttgard: Oct. 1823.—In the midst of the incessant gossip of the Queen Dowager, the subject of which is almost always herself and her family, some curious grains may be collected from a quantity of useless chaff. There is no topic on which she seems to me to show such good sense as in speaking of Napoleon. I heard her say, ' It was of course very painful to me to receive him with civility, but I had no choice; the least failure on my part might have been a sufficient pretence for depriving my husband and children of this kingdom. It was one of the occasions on which it was absolutely necessary to faire bonne mine a mauvais jeu. To me, he was always perfectly civil.'

I have since heard that he gave her facilities for correspondence with her own family at the time that the state of Europe would otherwise have made it nearly impossible.

The Queen, who is always trying to puff off the conjugal tenderness of her husband, told my mother that he left it to her option whether she would receive Napoleon. She said, ' I could not hesitate ; it was my duty.'

I do not give her any credit for a determination so perfectly natural; few women would, I think, have hesitated under the same circumstances, even if the option given her was not an order given in a more polite form. I do give her much credit for the honest candour with which she now speaks of the fallen conqueror, though perfectly aware that it is very disagreeable to most of the members of her own family, and especially to the King.

The Queen of Bavaria was not as wise, and upon some occasion
when Napoleon was incensed at some slight from her, he said she should remember what she was but for him, la fille d'un miserable petit Margrave (Baden), and imitate the conduct of the Queen of Wurtemberg, la fille du plus grand Roi de la terre.

The Queen said that the great preparations made in the palaces at Stuttgard Louisbourg for the reception of Napoleon, were not with her approbation, and that she said to the king, ' Mon ami, vous devriez faire le pauvre au lieu d'etaler vos richesses, si vous ne voulez pas avoir des fortes contributions a payer.'

It was ridiculous enough to hear her say how, when Napoleon
admired the Lyons embroidery and said, ' I cannot have such at the Tuileries,' she told him it was her work, adding, ' God forgive me, that was a lie.' When he made the same observation on some other instance of magnificence, she told him it was all done by the ' Duc, mon beaupere,' and in relating this, added the same corrective.

She said the manners of Napoleon were extremely brusque, even when he was making the civil. She had seen both Josephine and Marie Louise with him, and seemed to have been less pleased with the manners of the former than most persons who saw her.

Napoleon used to play at whist in the evening, but not for money, playing ill and inattentively. One evening when the Queen Dowager was playing with him against her husband and his daughter (the Queen of Westphalia, the wife of Jerome) the King stopped Napoleon, who was taking up a trick that belonged to them, saying, ' Sire, on ne joue pas ici en conquerant.’

The Queen spoke much of her father, of his recovery from his first illness: mentioned the story one has often heard of his wish to read 'King Lear,' which the doctors refused him, and which he got in spite of them, by asking for Colman's works, in which he knew he should find the play as altered by Colman for the stage. This I had often heard, but the affecting sequel was quite new to me; and fatiguing as the visits to Louisbourg are, I wished I had been there to have heard it from the Queen's own mouth.

When the three elder princesses went in to the King, he told them what he had been reading. He said, ' It is very beautiful, very affecting,. and very awful;' adding,' I am like poor Lear, but thank: God I have no Regan, no Goneril, but three Cordelias.'

The Queen wept in relating this; and my mother says, she felt as if she could have done the same.

The Rev Edward Irving, Part 2

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July 6th.—I have once more heard Irving, and I know not whether it is because the novelty is over that the impression is weakened, but I feel much less displeased, and at the same time much less pleased, than I was last Sunday. I am quite sure the arrogance, the self-sufficiency, the dictatorial spirit, though still but too evident, were much less striking than in the oration of last Sunday.

The coarseness and vulgarity were also in great measure avoided, but the metaphors were still very superabundant, and also were generally pushed much too far. It appeared to me that this oration was deficient in clearness, but perhaps my understanding, as well as my hearing, was dulled by the various inconveniences of the situation in which I found myself; close to the door, far removed from the preacher, and separated only by the thin partition of the pew from a crowd who squeezed and made incessant noise.

Even when one did not hear some voices crying for mercy and others for silence, the crowd pressed against the pew till they made every board creak, and kept one in continual apprehension that at last they would give way. During the last hour of the oration the people were more quiet; some servants, who I believe came for the fun of pushing about, were turned out, and we heard better.

The general outline of the subject was still to show how inefficacious was mere morality to constitute the happiness of man in this life. He said he had purposely omitted drawing any argument from the future state, as he was anxious to prove his facts from those truths which are admitted even by unbelievers, but he must address one observation to those who, believing in a future state, lived as if they thought of this world only. He said their conduct was like that of a mother who, in bringing up an infant, could fancy that it was always to remain in the same state, was always to be fed as a nursling, to be swathed, to be led like an infant.

This simile, though a happy one, was spun out to a length which destroyed its effect. Soon after followed a beautiful burst of eloquence on that power of Christianity which could bend the rebellious stubbornness of the heart, strengthen the tender heart, prop the weak, and enable it to tear itself from those affections which are dearer far than a right eye. Nature would teach a far different doctrine, an eye for an eye; nature and the world we live in are setting their adverse currents against the proper course of the human heart. Where, but in Christianity, is to be found the electric spark which is to repel them? Where, but in her, is to be found the mighty trident to stem these storms and currents ?

One assertion of Irving's was not a little startling: he told us he considered Hume as one of the most powerful advocates of revealed religion who has ever appeared. That able metaphysician has, he said, proved the inefficacy of mere human reason, &c. &c. I own I could not help thinking while he made this strange assertion that it was not unlikely that some one of my neighbours in the aisle would, upon the recommendation of their pastor, take the first opportunity of edifying themselves by a perusal of the works of this powerful advocate of Christianity. I am sure that from his oration they could never have discovered that this was not a plain matter of fact.

He gave us a beautiful illustration of Jacob's ladder, calling it emblematical of the Christian dispensation which had opened the communication between heaven and earth: the angels ascending he called the human affections drawn up to heaven, and those descending the divine Spirit shedding its consoling influence in return.

An exhortation (which appeared to me very commonplace) to those who were leaving the crowded city for the beautiful scenery of nature, concluded the oration.

The concluding prayer was the best I have heard from Irving, but it is in this part that the want of simplicity is most apparent, and totally destroys all the earnestness which he vainly tries to supply by vehement gesticulation. . Some expressions (and those not the best) were repeated from the prayer of last Sunday; we had again ' ennoble the nobles,' ' dignify the dignitaries,' to which he added, ' with the dignity of religion and virtue.' In the first prayer we had this strange expression, ' Clear our souls from the obscuration of sin.'

The Rev. Edward Irving

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Editor’s note

The familiar instance of the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon may help to convey a notion of the more extended popularity and more durable influence of the Rev. Edward Irving, the founder of a sect which is still in full vigour. His successful career as a London preacher commenced in 1822, and lasted till 1832, when he was displaced by the Presbytery for preaching doctrines which they reasonably enough deemed heterodox.

In July 1823, Lord Eldon writes to Lady M. Bankes: ' All the world here is running on Sundays to the Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Garden, where they hear a Presbyterian orator from Scotland, preaching, as some ladies term it, charming matter, though downright nonsense. To the shame of the King's ministers be it said, many of them have gone to this schism-shop with itching ears. Lauderdale told me that when Lady ——— is there the preacher never speaks of a heavenly mansion, but a heavenly Pavilion. For other ears, mansion is sufficient. This is a sample.' *

The reviewer of an excellent ' Life of Irving,' by Mrs. Oliphant, states that the little church of Hatton Garden was not only crowded, but filled, with the very audience after which he had longed, ' with imaginative men, and political men, and legal men, and scientific men, who bear the world in hand. The Duke of York (continues the reviewer) had been already interested in him at his first outset; "Wilkes soon found out and appreciated his powers; Brougham is reported as one of his early auditors, and to have taken Mackintosh, who repeated to Canning an expression which he had heard Irving use in prayers, of a bereaved family being thrown on the fatherhood of God—an expression that so struck the statesman that he, too, was drawn to hear him, and to allude to his marvellous eloquence in the House of Commons.' **

It was about this time that Miss "Wynn heard him, and her description of his oratory gives a much better impression of it than could be collected from his printed Orations, in which the imagery is chastened and the extravagance toned down. He was a very tall man, with impressive features, and he wore his hair long and parted in the middle, in obvious imitation of the pictures of Christ. Like Balfour of Burley, he ' skellied fearfully with one eye,' if not with both, but lost no favour on that account. When Wilkes's obliquity of vision was objected to him, an enthusiastic partisan vowed that he did not squint more than a gentleman ought to squint; and the' angels' of the Irvingite creed seemed to think that a certain obliquity of vision was becoming in a saint. He died in 1834, in his thirty-ninth year.

The contradictory opinions of the press gave rise to an amusing squib, entitled, ' The Trial of the Rev. Edward Irving;' in which the different editors and critics appeared as witnesses.

June 29th, 1823.—I am just returned from hearing, for the first time, the celebrated Scotch preacher Irving, and highly as my expectations were raised, they are more than satisfied. At first, I own I was very much disappointed: his first extempore prayer, I did not at all like ; his reading of the 19th chapter of John (for he never gave to any of the Apostles the title of Saint) would have been very fine if its effect had not been frequently spoilt by extraordinary Scotch accents. He spoke of the high-sup, of being crucified, scorged, &c. &c.

For twenty minutes, he went on talking of the enemies of our faith as if we had been living in the ages of persecution and of martyrdom, of himself as if he were our only teacher and guide, and of the good fight as though it were real instead of being metaphorical. Indeed, his action might always have led one to suspect that he considered it a pugilistic contest. I thought all this part vulgarly enthusiastic, self-sufficient, dogmatical. Disappointment is not a word strong enough to describe my feelings, which nearly amounted to disgust.

Then he told us that the intention of the following discourse would be to show from the page of history what man had been through all ages, in all countries, without the light of revealed religion. My brother whispered me, 'We have been twenty-three minutes at it, and now the sermon is to begin.' I felt exactly with him, and yet after this expression, I can" fairly and truly say that the hour which followed appeared to me very short, though my attention was on the full stretch during the whole time.

Irving began with comparing the infancy of nations to the infancy of individuals; told us that was generally supposed to be the season of their greatest innocence: took as examples the early ages of Persia, Greece and Rome. He reprobated the false arguments of those who, in speaking of heathens', adduce such men as Solon, Socrates, &c., as general examples; as well might we, said he, take the heaven-inspired Milton as the test of the republicans of his day ; the noble-minded Falkland as a specimen of the cavalier soldiers ; Fenelon as one of the Court of Louis XIV.; D'Alembert as one of the wicked pernicious cotry (as he called it) whose aim was the subversion of all order civil and religious , or Carnot as the model of that hellish crew of republicans -who destroyed all religion and deluged their country with blood.

Then came a splendid burst of eloquence on the vices of the ancients. He appealed to their vases, especially to those intended for the sacred purpose of containing the ashes of the dead; to the sculpture, still adorning the doors of their temples, as records of such vice as is not known the most depraved of modern times. He asserted that if it were possible that social virtue, that self-government, could be attained without the aid of Christianity, Greece, which had discovered perfection in almost every branch of art, and had gone so far in science, would not
have remained without these attainments.

From them he proceeded to the Eastern nations, of whose vices he gave a still more disgusting picture, and especially those of the mild Hindoo, as false sentiment and philosophy have termed them: their language does not even possess words to express many of the virtues most revered among us, chastity, temperance, and honesty.***

Having stigmatised most of the heathen nations of ancient and modern times with the vices uniformly found to degrade all savages, he proceeded 10 speak of those who have been considered as the brightest examples; and first of the Stoics. In the difficult task of self-government, they seem to have made much progress but in steeling the heart against some temptations of passion, &c., they also steeled it against every kindly affection, made its very feeling centre in self. If, he said, stoicism may be said to have enjoyed what he termed the manhood of the soul, it had none of the woman-hood, none of the feelings that adorn, comfort, or endear human nature. He proceeded to draw a beautiful parallel between the state of the Stoic, and that of Adam before it had pleased the Almighty to bestow on him a helpmate. He asserted that, in argument, in reasoning, the modern philosophers were very superior to the ancient, and added, that many very commonplace writers were in this respect, very far superior to the most celebrated ancients, even to Cicero himself.****

This superiority, which by-the bye I am a little inclined to doubt, he ascribed entirely to the influence of Christianity, and spoke of its effect, even on those who deny its truths and exert their talents to write against it. How, he said, can a man who has sucked with his mother's milk the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, whose mind has been nurtured with the sublime poem of Milton, with the Pilgrim's Progress, nay, even with the Plays of Shakespeare— how can this man. be said to be free from the effects which Christianity produces on the mind ?

He told us he conceived the spirit of religion to be even yet quite in its infancy; he trusted that we might see it make the greatest progress. If the rulers of the state would be governed by the plain rule of Christian duty, instead of the rules of worldly policy and expediency— if the more graceful part of the creation who govern the manners of this great city, would add the Christian graces to their other graces, would consider themselves as the spouses of Christ—if the critics who govern its literature would attend as much to the rules of Christianity as to those of human learning — what might not be the effects ?

It was quite impossible to look at Lord Liverpool and Lord Jersey, placed immediately opposite to the preacher, and not fancy that the first and second of these appeals were addressed to them. As to the third, if Mr. Brougham and Sir James Mackintosh were not in the church, the preacher was likely to have prepared for them, as they have been there very frequently of late.

After having written so much about this oration (sermon***** I cannot call it), it is quite unnecessary to say that I admired it extremely, at least in parts. I am conscious that there were great faults, even in the latter part, in which were also transcendent beauties. Want of simplicity is the greatest; even all Irving's energy could not give earnestness to such invariably figurative language. With this was occasionally mixed vulgarity bordering on coarseness in the images, excess of action, and occasional repetitions. Still there is extraordinary power, power which makes roe feel I never knew what eloquence was till I had heard Irving, and at the same time leaves me with the most eager desire to hear him again on Sunday, in spite of all the impediments of crowd, heat, distance, and hour.

His reading the lesson was very fine, but what delighted me most was the solemn, simple, energetic manner in which he gave the blessing. The prayers did not please me: he prayed for our own ancient simple painstaking Church; then for the Established ****** Church, that her dignitaries may be dignified, and may be enabled to take due care of the widely-extended districts committed to their charge. The plain psalm-singing, in which the whole congregation joined, particularly delighted me; parts of the version seem to me very fine; but what I like most is the custom of reading the whole psalm first from the pulpit; it gives real devotion to a part of the service which, in our Liturgy, is generally the unintelligible squalling of a parcel of charity children, screaming that which nine-tenths of the congregation cannot follow, and of the other tenth a considerable part are disgusted by the absurdity of the version.

Editor’s notes
* ' Twiss's .Life of Eldon, vol. ii. p. 483.
** Edinb. Rev. for Oct. 1862, p. 441.
**** This is a mistake. There are Hindoo words for each of these
virtues, and chastity has been deified. The Hindoo name for the
Goddess of Chastity is Arundadi.
***** The moderns, in this respect, have been compared by an ad- mirer of the ancients to a dwarf standing on a giant's shoulders, and thus seeing farther than the giant.
******* Note by Miss Wynn.—It is singular that I should chance to use the very word by -which Irving himself called these compositions, -when they -were published soon after (in 1823).

Pistrucci, The Improvisatore

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Last night I heard Pistrucci, the improvisatore, for the third time, and my account of him will be far less favourable than if I had written it after the first or second time of hearing him. Even now I cannot believe that it is solely because the charm of novelty is past, and the edge of curiosity blunted, that my feelings are so changed. That this is partly the case I am aware, and feel also, that the more one hears him, the more one becomes aware of the very large proportion of absolute commonplace which pervades his verses. Still, with all this allowance, I cannot but believe that his performance last night was really inferior to what I had heard before.

Last night I liked him best in the return of Coriolanus to Borne: two attempts were downright failures; the one was Sancho, in his government of Barataria, the other the destruction of Pompeii. The first proved to me that he does not possess one particle of humour; but perhaps I may be wrong, if the total ignorance of the story which he professed be genuine, and if he really took his cue only from the little related to him at the moment.

No such excuse can be made for his failure in Pompeii ; the subject was necessarily well known to him, and had he succeeded I should not have given him much credit concerning it—one which must have been so frequently given before. As it was, I own I can even now hardly believe anyone could have been so very tame on a topic so inspiring. There was nothing in this! evening's performance to convince one of the reality of his impromptu talent; at his public performance, he seized so many of the circumstances arising at the moment, that the most incredulous could no longer doubt his power of versifying quite instantaneously; but I should not say that he rises with his subject.

Till I heard him fail in Pompeii, I was inclined to ascribe much of his failure to ignorance of the subject. On one occasion he gave a new view of a threadbare theme, Waterloo: he took the rising of the third sun on a field of blood, described finely the cannon obscuring his brightness, &c. &c.

Kean

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April 14th, 1814 — Saw Kean in Iago, and was less struck than I had been by his performance of Shylock, perhaps because I expected more. The absence of all ranting is in itself a great merit, which in the present state of the stage, degraded as it is, appears even greater.

The quiet colloquial tone in which Kean performs the greatest part of this character, gives an effect almost electric to those passages which he strongly (sometimes, I own, too strongly) points. His emphasis seems to me always well laid, proceeding always from a strong and often from a new view of the sense of this passage; * not like Kemble's, falling sometimes on words where it is so falsely applied that one should almost be tempted to believe that he does not give himself thhe trouble of understanding the common sense of what he is speaking. I once saw him in Lear, and heard the following passage thus accented:—
I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdom, called, you children.
Nothing can be more admirable than the strong expression of continual watchfulness which mark Kean's deep eye in Iago, and I think I can never forget the look of deep villany, of dire diabolical revenge, with which, in leaving the stage, he direct the eye of the miserable Othello to his murdered Desdemona.

May 27th.—I have seen Kean in Othello, and found him in that magnificent part fully equal to my highly raised expectations; the highest dramatic treat I ever experienced. One regret will intrude, the weakness of his voice, and still more the insignificance of his figure, make him a very unfit representation of the rough martial Othello. When he tells what that little arm has done; when he tells you that ' every puny whipster gets my sword'—it requires all his wonderful talent to blind one to the ridicule of such expressions applied to that form.**

In all the earlier part of the play, Kean saves himself, and you get only transient gleams of his genius. In the first act, the passage which struck me most was the burst of tenderness, displaying the whole character of Othello in these few words, ' And I loved her that she did pity them.'

The charm of Kean's Othello seems to me to lie mainly in the intense passion for Desdemona which he seems to be concealing, and which bursts forth as if involuntarily; this seems to form the excuse for Othello, to give nature to the excess of jealousy. In the fine scene in which Othello first conceives suspicion, this was peculiarly evident; and when Iago says, ' I see this hath a little dashed your spirits,' Kean electrified the house by the simple words, 'Not a jot.' The bitter look of deep hatred with which he said, 'I found not Cassio's kisses
Before such merits all objections fly, Pritchard 's genteel, and Garrick 's six feet high on her lips,' seems to prepare one for the catastrophe, and was finely contrasted with the heartfelt dark dejection with which the beautiful farewell to “the pomp and circumstance of glorious war'' was spoken.

Nothing could be finer than the speech about the handkerchief, 'and could almost read the thoughts of people'— his speaking eye seemed fully possessed of that power; or more affecting than the speech, ‘Had it pleased Heaven to try me with affliction,' excepting the last scene, the beauty of which is so fully displayed in the tender heart-broken tones of Kean. I believe it is quite an original idea, certainly one which crowns the effect and seems to give the full view of this magnificent character, when Othello, just before the last speech, after the innocence of Desdemona is established, returns to the bed, to give one last look, one kiss of reconciled love which seems to cast a gleam over his despair. Then, as if it were a thing no longer of the slightest importance, he carelessly says, 'I have done the state some service.'

When at last he stabs himself, the gradual relaxation of the limbs, and the last fall, were as fine as anything could be.

In seeing Othello performed a month ago by Pope, who stormed and mouthed and ranted the part, I felt quite enraged with the pit and galleries, who clapped him, while they rarely and coldly marked any applause of Kean in Iago, which I consider as the most perfect piece of acting I ever witnessed. I could believe only that Pope had a powerful party in the house. Little did I then imagine that in these days it was Shakespeare himself, and his Othello, which had taken possession of the audience, and made them incapable of applauding his wicked tormentor.

I felt it almost strange that those who could admire such acting did not hiss that of Kean. When he appeared in Othello, the applause was deafening, and Pope, who was less offensive to me in Iago, was received in sullen silence; which convinced me that it was the characters, and not the actors of them, who moved the multitude.

Editor’s notes
* “To see Kean act is like reading Shakspeare by flashes of lightning.” (Coleridge.)
** Before such merits all objections fly,
Pritchard’s genteel, and Garrick’s six feet high.” Churchill

The Stage: Miss Farren, Mrs Siddons, Miss O'Neill, Kemble, Talma

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Editor’s note [a very Victorian note]
The transition from princes and statesmen to actors and actresses, was natural enough in the first quarter of the century, whatever it may appear now. The stage was an important part of the intellectual life of the contemporaries of the Kembles, Kean, and Miss O'Neil. A striking illustration is given by Dr. Doran, who states that, on one evening in 1804, when young Betty played Hamlet, ' the House of Commons, on a motion by Pitt, adjourned and went down to the theatre to see him.

Charles Fox read ' Zanga,' to the little actor, and commented on Young's tragedy with such effect that the young gentleman (then in his 14th year) never undertook the principal character.' * The stage divided the attention of the literary world with poetry and romance. The first representation of Joanna Baillie's ' De Montforf,' Milman's * Fazio,' Maturin's ' Bertram,' or Shiel's ' Evadne,' was an event little inferior in interest to the publication of' Marmion' or ' The Corsair.' In assigning so prominent a place to the acting drama, therefore, Miss Wynn simply reflects the opinion of the time.

Nothing appears to me more difficult than even to preserve an idea of the pleasure one has derived from good acting. I am quite convinced no description can give the least idea of that which one has not seen After having heard and read so much as I have Garrick, I have often looked at the picture in James's Square,** and fancied I had some idea of him; but then, when I saw Mr. Angerstein's picture of Garrick
between Tragedy and Comedy, I found it so different that all my ideas were overturned.

I certainly recollect Miss Farren on the stage, and remember very clearly her taking leave of it, but nothing remains upon my mind which would lead me from my own knowledge to say that she was an excellent actress. I know I was told so; but in the part of Lady Teazle, in which I saw her frequently, I could not point out one prominent part which has left on my mind an impression of excellence. Perhaps the absence of prominent parts may, to a certain degree, be considered as the characteristic of that never-failing elegance and ease which marked her performance.

Perhaps, too, it is just the sort of excellence which is the least likely to strike and captivate the imagination of a very young person. I recollect (not the admirable
acting in the famous screen scene but) the circumstance of seeing Lord Derby leaving his private box to creep to her behind the scene; and, of course, we all looked with impatience for the discovery, hoping the screen would fall a little too soon, and show to the audience Lord Derby as well as Lady Teazle.***

Mrs. Siddons in her prime is certainly a bright recollection, but I did not feel for her acting quite the enthusiasm that most people profess. It was too artificial for my taste : her attitudes were fine and graceful, but they always seemed to me the result of study: not like Miss O'Neil, who always was graceful merely because she could not help it, because it was impossible to throw those beautifully formed limbs, and especially that neck, into any position that was not beautiful. At the same time I must say, in Isabella, and in Jane Shore, Miss O'Neil struck me as very inferior indeed to Mrs Siddons. She never excited that deep thrill of horror which made my blood tingle at my fingers' end. I was melancholy, and that was all.

Miss O'Neil had sense enough to refuse the character of Lady Macbeth, conscious that her powers were inadequate to it. I never saw Mrs. Siddons with a good Macbeth; for Kemble I never reckoned tolerable; nor did I feel I knew what the character was till I heard Mrs. Siddons read the play. Certainly, in that reading, some speeches of Macbeth's, and almost the whole of the witches', were the parts that struck me most.

Probably Lady Macbeth, however excellent, had by frequent petition lost some of her power; certainly (I felt) that part Mrs. Siddons could no longer surprise me. Yes, she did though. I looked with impatience for the grand sleep-walking scene, and thought I would take advantage of my position, which was very near her, to watch the fine, fixed, glassy glare which she contrived to give to her eyes. Alas! that was quite gone: whether the diminution of the natural fire of the eye presented this effect, or whether the muscles were grown less flexible from age and want of constant practice, I know not, but I feel quite certain of the fact.

It struck me when I saw her once more, in one of her frequent re-appearances, act Lady Macbeth on the opera stage. Then, my pleasure in seeing her was increased by my delight in watching the effect she produced on the very eloquent though plain countenance of Madame de Stael, who sat in the stage box, literally wrapped up in the performance.

Mr. Greathead, who had been in the habit of hearing Mrs. Siddons read Macbeth even (he said) from the period of her being his mother's maid,**** before she
had appeared on any stage up to the present moment, told me he was struck with a great difference in her manner of reading the witches' scenes after the appearance of ' Guy Mannering.' ****** He said it was quite clear to him that Meg Merrilies had explained to Mrs Siddons, Shakespeare's idea in the witches. This he told me upon my observing with delight upon their totally altered appearance on Drury Lane Theatre, which I ascribed to the same cause. I consider this as one of the most singular and at the same time the most glorious triumphs of the genius of the Great Unknown, as it is now the fashion to call him.

I can hardly conceive anything finer than the expression which Mrs. Siddon
to the gave simple reply, 'A deed without a name.’****** It seemed full of all the guilty dread belonging to witchcraft; and it is just this idea of guilt which seems to be so difficult to convey to our minds, which are engrossed with the folly of the whole thing that we not recollect it was a sin.

My delight, my astonishment, when I first saw Kean in most of his great parts, I recorded at the time and therefore do not mention here. Miss O'Neil gave me great pleasure, but it was altogether a lighter sensation than that excited by Mrs. Siddons or Kean. There was none of that thrill which more exactly answers the idea of pleasing pain than anything I ever felt, and I can hardly attach any other meaning to the words. She was sometimes very affecting, always graceful, pleasing, but I think never great, and certainly never offensive. I am, upon recollection, inclined to doubt whether her scene with Lord Hastings in ' Jane Shore' might not deserve the epithet of great; in the last scene she fell very far short of Mrs. Siddons.

I could imagine a person looking at those features, which, though handsome, are certainly very deficient in expression, and asking how could that face succeed on the stage ? She must have painted her eyebrows, for how could there be any expression in a face so entirely without brow as hers ? I should be puzzled to answer these enquiries, but I believe both Miss O'Neil and Kean (in a lesser
degree) may be adduced as instances of expression without features, and may show how much feeling may be betrayed by the human frame, independent of the
face.

Still there certainly was a powerful charm in the evanescent hue of Miss O'Neil's delicate complexion. I saw her once in Mrs. Haller give interest to the dull
scene in which Old Tobias pours forth his tedious gratitude ; her rosy blushes showed how unmerited she felt every commendation bestowed on a creature so guilty. In the whole of this part she appeared to me absolute perfection; one trait of nature enchanted me. In the last scene, after having been pleased by her appearance of deep contrition, her painful consciousness of degradation, I anticipated with pain the sort of disgust. which I had always experienced at the return of jewels. The whole incident seems to me too trifling, becomes ludicrous when Mrs. Haller, looking to see whether they are all right, makes an oration on each article.********

With these feelings what was my delight when Miss O'Neil, who had kept her eyes steadily fixed on the ground ,and appeared really sinking into it, in taking the box from the stranger looked at him for the first time, and by that look told us more than by words how he was altered, her fears, her love, &c. &c, In short, I looked at her face and quite forgot the jewels, which, even the first time the play was ever acted nearly made me disgrace myself by laughing in the midst of the tears and screams which Mrs. Siddons called forth.

Talma has extremely delighted me. I never go to a French tragedy expecting that close and sober imitation of nature which one looks for on the English stage: one might as well look for it in the midst of opera recitative as in the jingle of rhyme. Still it is pleasure, and great pleasure too, though of a different nature.

I think Talma superior to every performer I ever saw in the expression of bitter scorn, especially when it is mixed with irony. Still, I think he never gave me as much pleasure on the stage, as he did in Lady Charleville's drawing-room, where I heard him talk over English and French acting, express his wish to unite the merits of both, and deprecate the horrible accuracy with which the last mortal throes are often represented on our stage.

He spoke of Kemble's Macbeth, wondered at his tameness — especially immediately after the commission of the murder, and said that his whole frame ought to have spoken of the horrid deed. Thus far everybody must have agreed with him ; but when the very natural question, Qu'auriez vous fait ? was put to him, and he
proceeded to act his feelings, I, for one, thought it most absurd, because then my ideas were screwed to the pitch of Macbeth and nature. Probably I might have admired if I had been screwed up to the pitch of Oreste and French rant. Much ought to be allowed for the super-abundance of action which the French bestow on the relation of the common events of life, and in ordinary conversation.

What would I give to have been present at a scene related to me that evening by Sir J. B. Burgess. had, a few days before, introduced Talma to Lady
Charleville.******** After a little commonplace. Talma was drawn on, as if electrified by finding in her a kindred admiration of his hero. Napoleon ; and related all that passed on the last memorable day of departure from Fontainebleau. He gave the speeches of Talleyrand, of Napoleon, of a physician who acted a conspicuous part, with such an accurate imitation of their several manners, that Sir James told me he felt as if he too had been present at the scene.

This evening Talma recited to us Hamlet's soliloquy, in English; he has been for so large a portion of his early life in England, that the thing was upon the whole much less absurd than might have been expected; then was no very striking gallicism, excepting the word consumation.

Editor’s notes
* Their Majesty's Servants: Annals of the 'English, Stage, vol. ii, p. 416.
** No. 18, the town house of Sir Wattkin Williams Wynn.
*** Dr. Doran states that Miss Farren took her final leave of the stage in Lady Teazle on the 8th April, 1797, and was married to Lord Derby on the May-day following, his countess having died on the 14th of the preceding March. In allusion to the earl's attachment to the actress, Horace Walpole writes to Miss Berry in 1791;
‘I have had no letter from you these ten days, though the east wind has been as constant as Lord Derby.
**** When Mrs. Siddons, then Sarah Kemble, was very young, she left her parents in a pet, 'because they would not let her marry Mr. Siddona, and entered the service of Mr. and Mrs. Greathead, of Guy's Cliff; whether as reader, nursery maid, or lady's maid, has been disputed, and matters little. Mr. Campbell says that her principal employment was to read. to Mrs. Greathead (Life of Mrs. Siddons).
***** Guy Mannering was published in 1816.
****** Macbeth. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
What is 't you do ?
All. A deed without a name.
******* Stranger. And now I may at least desire you to take back what is your own—your jewels. (Gives her the casket)
Mrs. Holier (opens it in violent agitation, and her tears burst upon it). How well I recollect the sweet evening when you gave me these! That evening, my father—joined our hands; and joyful; I pronounced the oath of eternal fidelity. It is broken. Tin', locket you gave me on my birthday. This bracelet I received after William was born. No! take them—take them! I cannot keep these, unless you wish that the sight of them should be an incessant reproach to my almost broken heart. (Gives them back,)
******** Catherine, Countess of Charleville, wife of the first earl, a woman of many and varied accomplishments, and of masculine strength of understanding. She died at an advanced age in 1849. The translation of Voltaire's Pucelle, still frequently ascribed to her in book catalogues, was always indignantly denied by her. It was executed, and printed, for private circulation by her second husband, the Earl of Charleville, prior to their marriage, and was not at all in her style. She delighted in refined wit, and detested coarse humour.

Imperial and Royal Visitors in 1814 - Visit to Oxford*

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Of the mob of kings, and princes, and foreign generals whom the events of 1814 brought to London, I believe I did not miss seeing one, nor had I ever an opportunity of doing more than staring at them.

Upon the whole, though the appearance of the theatre at Oxford was most striking, still, the scene which made the deepest impression upon my mind, was the entrance of Louis XVIII. into London. We stood on Lord Dudley's balcony; there were few there, and those few not inclined to talk: so one had time to muse over all the strange occurrences of the day, and of all the historical recollections it naturally suggested.

I cannot say that I quite liked to see the British Guards decorated with the white cockade. I was amused at seeing the Prince Regent sitting backwards in the landau. He had, of course, given the front seat to Louis and the Duchesse d'Angouleme. I wondered how a position so unusual would agree with him; since the days of absolute childhood, when he might have gone with the king and queen, he never could have found himself in such a one, and I thought of the possibility of an interruption most undignified to the procession.

The reception of James II. by Louis XIV. was certainly far more splendid; but I am inclined to doubt whether, to a feeling heart, the magnificence of St. Germains — which, by-the-bye, I believe from what remains could have existed only in the imagination of Frenchmen—could be nearly as gratifying as the popular feeling so powerfully excited and so freely expressed on this occasion. I was then, or rather soon after, very much astonished to hear from Lord Arthur Hill, who was in the balcony with us, and afterwards at Paris, how much more tranquil, more tame, had been the entrance of Louis into his own capital. I had then taught myself to believe the French a very demonstrative race, and did not know how much more difficult it is to excite popular feeling among the mercurial Frenchmen than among the phlegmatic English.**

I was not well enough to go to the drawing-room which Louis held at Trillion's Hotel, but I went one evening to the Duchesse d'Angouleme's, in Monsieur's dark two-roomed house in South Audley Street.*** It was literally hardly possible to see across the room, and the whole thing was, if one could have entertained such a feeling, a burlesque upon royalty. The sour, ill-tempered, vulgar countenance of the blear-eyed Duchess was a great damp to the interest one was prepared to feel in one whose fate had been more melancholy than that of any heroine of romance.

The little crumpled Duchess de Sirent might easily be fancied the good fairy whose wand had produced the wondrous change; but she had not, like the godmother of Cinderella, changed the dusty dirty abode into a palace, or even converted into cloth of gold the dingy brown dress of her protege. 'Waverley' was not yet published**** but when I read there the account of Charles Edward’s drawing-room at Edinburgh, I could think of nothing but the dark rooms in South Audley Street.

At Oxford it seemed to me that there was a great want of dignity of manner among the assembled grandees. Even the dandy Alexander seemed to want it; though he was much better than any of his compeers, excepting, perhaps, our own king when he happened to be in good humour, which was not always the case during his visit to Oxford. As to the King of Prussia, he looked as stupid and as vulgar as I believe be really is. When complimented, he never could look otherwise than embarrasse de sa personne, bored to death, and could not even make a tolerably gentleman-like bow.

His two sons looked fine animated boys; the eldest was said to have accompanied the army, and, it was added, had scarcely been prevented by those around him from exposing himself most gallantly. They seemed to look at everything with the genuine happy feelings of their age, and are said to have expressed great delight when the measles seemed likely to prove an impediment to their quitting this country, but they got well much sooner than they wished.

It did not at that time occur to me as possible that these sovereigns might not understand one syllable of the elegant classical orations made in compliment to them. I have since heard from Dr. Crichton—a Scotch physician belonging to the household of the Empress dowager, who accompanied one of her grandsons, the brother of Alexander—that neither this young prince nor any one of a numerous suite, excepting one man, understood a word of Latin or Greek.

I think the illumination of the High Street of Oxford was by far the finest sight of the kind I ever beheld. From the difficulty of getting a sufficient number of coloured lamps, they were obliged to put candles in every window and on every part of every building which would bear them. By this means, the light, instead of intersecting and twisting through all the ornamental part of the architecture, followed the fine broad line to gave a magnificent contrast of light and shadow, and made that which is naturally so beautiful, much more so.

One church was illuminated. It seems very difficult to find an inscription short enough to be read in lamps; if it is long, the beginning is burnt out before the end is lighted. The difficulty was much increased by this necessity of making this appropriate to a church. I never heard who had the merit of suggesting the beautifully simple ' Our prayers are heard.'

The night was beautiful, uncommonly calm and warm. From my window, which looked down upon the High Street, it seemed as if one could really have walked upon the moving mass of heads. In one moment, almost without any previous notice, at least without any that could call the attention of the mob which was so fully occupied, a tremendous storm of thunder and rain came on. The effect was really more like the dissolving of the enchanted spell and the changes of scene in a pantomime, than anything I ever did see or ever expect to see again in real life.

The High Street, which was one blaze of light, and one unceasing hum of happiness, became in the course of five. minutes quite dark and quite deserted: nothing was heard but the thunder and the torrents of rain. Where all the multitude could find shelter, I never discovered. I heard afterwards that many who had walked miles from their abodes to see the show, slept upon chairs and tables in the small houses in the suburbs of Oxford.

Amidst that crowd in the High Street were, I am told, Alexander and the Grand Duchess*****, who, as soon as they could get away from the great dinner in the Radcliffe library, went out to walk incog.

This was on the 14th of June. It is curious to remember that the Season was so backward that on this day there was the greatest difficulty in procuring one small dish of strawberries to deck the royal banquet, the forced strawberries being all over and the natural not ripe.

Editor's Notes
* To bring together her reminiscences of historic personages, Miss Wynn passes on at once to 1814, when London was crowded with them. It will be remembered that the exiled royal family in France had frequently partaken of the splendid hospitality of Stowe, and that she went to Oxford in the suite of her uncle Lord Grenville, the Lord High Chancellor of the University.
** Miss Wynn has here lost sight of the fact that the popular feeling was far from favourable to the restored dynasty.
*** No. 72. Madame d'Arblay gives a curious account of the confusion that prevailed both there and at Grillion's during the royal receptions. (Diary, vol. 7, p. 22-39.) In a letter of July 9th, 1814, Sir Walter Scott writes : ‘The Duke of Buccleugh told me yesterday of a very good reply of Louis to some of his attendants, who proposed shutting the doors of his apartments to keep out the throng of people. "Open the door," he said, "to John Bull; he has suffered a good deal in keeping the door open to me." '
**** Waverley was published in 1814.
***** The Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, who attracted great attention by her showy person and dress. The Oldenburg bonnet (described in ' The Fudge Family') speedily became the rage—
A charming new bonnet, set high up and poking,
Like a pot that is set to keep chimneys from smoking.

By way of caricaturing it in the pantomime, Grimaldi appeared with one of the old-fashioned coalscuttles on his head and a chimney-pot on the top. When the restored princes re-entered Paris in 1814, the Duchess of Augouleme gave offence by her quiet style of dress and flat bonnet, supposed to be a servile adoption of English fashions.

Early Impressions of Celebrated Men - Pitt, Fox, Lord Wellesley and Windham

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I have often thought, in reading Lord Orford's 'Reminiscences,' that almost anybody might make, by writing down theirs, a book which would at least be sure of giving entertainment to the writer when the recollections it records becomes less vivid. Upon that hint I write, and first I mean to record those sights which are gone and past, and which never can greet my eyes again.

Without ever having read Lavater or any one else who has written on physiognomy, I have, as most people probably have, delight in tracing character in countenance, and therefore there are few recollections I love better than those of the faces of the great men whom I have seen at various periods. I can now laugh at the recollection of my excessive disappointment in the first great man I remember seeing—in society at least. I was about sixteen or seventeen when, at Dropmore where I was with Lord and Lady Grenville only — Mr.Pitt arrived for a visit of two days.

First, I was disappointed in that turned-up nose, and in that countenance, in which it was so impossible to find any indication of the mind, and in that person which was so deficient in dignity that he had hardly the air of a gentleman. After this first disappointment my every faculty seemed to me to be absorbed in listening.

If not tropes, I fully expected the dictums of wisdom each time that he opened his mouth. From what I then heard and saw, I should say that mouth was made for eating; as to speaking, there was very little, and that little was totally uninteresting to me, and I believe would have been so to everybody.

I was certainly not capable of a very accurate judgment, but I was as certainly in a mood very much to overrate instead of underrating what fell from the great man, and to be quite sure that what I did not understand must be mighty fine.

On the second day arrived Lord Wellesley,* whom I thought very agreeable ; partly, I fancy, from his high-bred manners, and still more from his occasionally saying a few words to me, and thus making me feel treated as a reasonable creature.

After we had retired for the night, I heard from the library, which was under my room, the most extraordinary noises — barking, mewing, hissing, howling, interspersed with violent shouts of laughter. I settled that the servants had come into the room, and had got drunk and riotous; and I turned to sleep when the noise had ceased. Never can I forget my dismay (it was more than astonishment) when next day at breakfast I heard that my wise uncle and his two wise guests, whom we had left talking, as I supposed, of the fate of Europe, had spyed in the room a little bird; they did not wish it to be shut up there all night: therefore, after having opened every window, these great wise men tried every variety of noise they could make to frighten out the poor bird.

At a later period, in the year 1805, I found myself for nearly a week at Stowe, with Mr. Fox; but as there were above fifty others in the house, with the Prince Regent ** at their head, the whole thing was a formal crowd, and I could only gaze at the countenance of the one whom I should most have liked to hear talk. Certainly in this mixed society he hardly ever was heard to speak, but occasionally with some one individual one saw him entering into an animated whispered conversation; and it was curious to watch the sudden illumination of a countenance which, when silent, had to my fancy a heavy, sullen look.

How far it might even then have been altered by malady, I cannot judge; but I know that the next time I beheld Mr. Fox, not six months after, at Lord Melville's trial, I thought I never had seen the ravages of illness so strongly marked in any human countenance. All its animation had disappeared, the leaden eyes were almost lost under the heavy eyebrow, even that appeared to partake in the extraordinary change which all the colouring seemed to have undergone, the pallid or rather livid hue of the complexion deepened the sable line of the dark brow, and the whole countenance assumed a lethargic expression. He lived scarcely three months after the time I mention.***

In my recollection, no person appears to have possessed the power of making conversation delightful as much as Mr. Windham. His peculiar charm seems to me to have been that sort of gay openness which I should call the very reverse of what the French term morgue. To all, this must be agreeable, and it is peculiarly delightful to a young person who is conscious of her own inferiority to the person who condescends to put her perfectly at ease. During the party at
Stowe to which I have alluded, I found myself embarked for the morning's or rather day's amusement, in a carriage with Lady King, Lord Braybrooke, and
Mr. Windham. My mother was in some other carriage, my two sisters in a third.

When we all met in our own rooms, they with one accord voted they were a little tired and very much bored. I, though much more liable to both these complaints than any of the party, could only say I had been highly amused the whole day.
The fact was, they had no Mr. Windham to listen to, and I had; and yet, truth to say, when I was asked how he had contrived to amuse me so much, I had very little to tell even then; and now after so many years that little has passed away.

I do recollect, however, one singular circumstance. Junius happened to be mentioned, and on that old subject Mr. Windham ventured what was to me at least a quite new guess. Gibbon was the person he mentioned as the only man of high talents living at that period in obscurity which might effectually have concealed him. Soon afterwards I mentioned this conjecture to Charles (the late Eight Hon. Charles Wynn), whose accurate memory immediately produced a proof of its fallacy.

He said, 'I cannot help thinking that, at the period of the publication of Junius, Gibbon was not in England.' Upon referring to the letters of Gibbon, it proved that he was in Switzerland during the greater part, if not the whole, of the appearance of Junius. It seems most singular that Mr. Windham should even mention a conjecture which he had not brought to this obvious test.****

Editor's Notes
* It appears from Lord Wellesley's Correspondence, that the then Earl of Mornington) spent some days at Dropmore in the spring of 1797, and this must have been the visit in question. He left England for India in the November of that year, and did not return till January 1806, when Pitt was dying.
**Not Regent till 1811
***This account of Fox's appearance in his latter years is confirmed, by contemporaries. But, according to Sir William Napier, Pitt retained till within a year and a half of his death a boyish love.
* Miss Wynn and her brother must have been under a mistaken impression as to the period during which the Letters of Junius appeared. The letters under that signature began in January 1769, and ended in January 1772. Gibbon returned to England in 1765, and did not leave it again to reside acroad till 1783; but his habits and turn of mind, as developed in his autobiography, to say nothing of his political opinions or his style, completely preclude the notion of his being the author of Junius. He had been often stated as a candidate.

Anecdotes of Denon

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Mr Bankes told me that, one morning while he was breakfasting tete-a-tete with Denon, a servant brought in a packet from the mint containing a medal just struck. Denon laid it flat on his hand, considered the reverse, then exclaimed: Nous sommes seuls, mon ami: parlons a coeur ouvert: voila le comble de la flatterie;' then he read "Mouse oum resta uratoum - et puis (turning the medal and showing the head of Louis XVIII.) Voila cet homme que a tout fait pour le detruire."

When one recollects what Denon and his old master had done for the Museum; when one remembers how soon under the new regime he was turned out; when, besides, one looks not only at the Louvre, which the fate of war has stripped of its finest ornaments, but at the various collections, at the Jardin des Plantes, which from neglect and want of encouragement have suffered nearly as much; when, most of all, one looks at what was the Musee des Monumens, now totally destroyed and dispersed by bigotry - when one thinks of all these circumstances, one wonders that, speaking a couer ouvert, Denon could express himself so moderately on the subject.

One day Mr Bankes said he expressed to Denon a strong wish to see Roustan, the Mameluke, who is now keeping a small shop. Denon's reply did him honour. "You will certainly do as you please, but you must allow me to say that, from the moment you condescend to seek such a wretch as that man, I shall considered our acquaintance ended, and you must not wonder if my doors are closed against you."

Mt Bankes said he certainly would not incur such a penalty, but remonstrate, alleging he was far from admiring the character of Roustan, very far from defending his ingratitude towards Napoleon, but that he should have much pleasure in learning from his mouth some of the lesser particulars of the domestic life of his master, which have been so variously represented.

Denon allowed the truth of all this, but said that if any Englishman of name was known to go to Roustan's house, he would soon be followed by several of his countrymen; money would flow in, and the wretch would soon be raised from the state of well-deserved contempt and degradation which was the natural consequence of his ingratitude.

It seems he was given to Napoleon by one of the pashas, as a thing of much less value than an Englishman would consider a dog. Napoleon took a fancy to him, loaded him with favours, kept him always about his person, gave him the means of marrying, and in the most trying moment of his life, when he considered himself going into the greatest dangers, his last thought always seems to have been that of making an additional provision for Roustan. Even on the eve of leaving Paris in the campaign which terminated his career of glory, he thought of Roustan. After having thus fattened on Napoleon's prosperity, after having so closely attended on him as always to sleep across the door of his tent or his room, be forsook him in adversity and refused to follow him to St Helena.

* Denon was the most celebrated of the savans who accompanied Napoleon in the Egyptian expedition of which he published a scientific and illustrated account in 1802. He was Directeur General des Musees under the Emperor, and was displaced on the Restoration. Lady Morgan speaks highly of his conversational powers in her France.

The Pretend Archduke

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I have heard this evening a strange wild romantic story from Mr. Bankes,* almost too improbable for a novel, and yet the leading facts seem established beyond a doubt.

A stranger, with one attendant only (I think), arrived some years ago at the house of a man of the name of Contessini, then British Consul at Jaffa, who
was obliged, on seeing some passports and papers, to bestow a bed and a dinner. The latter was bad enough, but the stranger gave the servants of the consul a gratuity three or four times as large as any they had ever received before.

Old Contessini, according to the custom of the East, took this fee from his servants; being an honest man, and being impressed with a strong idea that the liberality of the stranger bespoke a person of consequence, he very much improved his fare on the second day. On the third, the stranger began to open a little; he asked Contessini whether he was not consul for Austria as well as England, and received a reply in the affirmative.

'Well,' says he, ' you need not hoist the Austrian flag, but I will confide to you a secret of the greatest importance, under the seal of the most inviolable secrecy. I am travelling in the strictest -incog., but I am the Archduke John, the brother of the Emperor of Austria.'

The poor consul was overwhelmed with confusion: he got up from the dinner-table at which they were sitting, insisting upon serving behind the chair of his illustrious guest, who had great difficulty in. persuading him, partly by the force of arguments drawn from the necessity of concealment from the servants and partly by that of his arms, to resume his chair.

In this state things remained some days: the old consul was delighted to see that the archduke took great notice of his son, a fine lad. One day the boy, coming into the stranger's room, found him occupied in taking some things out of a trunk in which were fine uniform embroidered most richly and covered with stars and orders. The boy told his father of the fine things he had beheld, and, not being under any promise of secrecy, repeated his story to every person he met.

Suspicions began to be excited as to the rank of the stranger; the old consul looked mysterious, and began to whisper his secret.

This made the residence of Jaffa very unpleasant to the prince: he talked of prosecuting his journey through the Holy Land, and asked Contessini whether there was any person in Jaffa from whom he could procure money.

'I fear,' replied the old man, 'there may not be a sum sufficient to supply the occasions of your Imperial Highness; but if such a sum (naming something about 100L) is sufficient, I can easily find it.' The money was produced: the archduke gave his note, disguised himself as a monk, and proceeded on his journey to Nazareth, where there was a. large convent; and Contessini, after much importunity, obtained leave to acquaint the prior by letter of the real name and rank of the stranger.

He took up his abode for some time in the convent: every respect was shown to him; the prior kept the secret for some time; but much curiosity and many suspicions were excited by the uncommon liberality of the stranger. He evinced this chiefly by giving at the mass, which lie attended with the most exemplary regularity, a contribution for the wants of the convent, which, though it was nearly ten times as much as they were in the habit of receiving from the most liberal of their contributors, was in fact very small.

By this and various other means he so established his character without betraying his rank, that the prior made not the funds of the convent on his word only, and on promise of obtaining various immunities and advantages for the convent from the Emperor of Austria. He returned to his old friend the consul at Jaffa: expressed a wish to fit out a vessel to convey him to the coast of Italy, for the purpose of performing a pilgrimage to Loretto.

The attendant or cameriere suggested to the consul that he was mad not to try to take advantage of the partiality which the archduke expressed for his son to try to obtain for him a situation in his household. The permission was given for young Contessini to attend the archduke, and many very vague promises of future protection were made.

In return for this the consul could do no less than take upon himself all the trouble of the purchase of the vessel, and of course he made himself responsible for all the expenses. He was also persuaded by the cameriere to embark several bales of cotton, which the young man, his son, "would sell to great advantage.

One of the next adventures of this great personage was at one of the Turkish ports. He was lodged in the house of the Austrian consul, to whom he carried a letter from old Contessini declaring his rank, but still with injunctions of the greatest secrecy.

A few days after his arrival the Turkish fleet, with the Captain Pasha (the third man in the empire) on board, anchored in the port. The consul with great difficulty obtained from his guest permission to declare his rank to this great personage ; an invitation ensued to visit the fleet; every royal honour and observance were paid; and very large presents of jewels, &c., offered, and of course accepted, by the prince.

He then went (I forget where) to another Eastern convent, where he was received with still greater distinction by the archbishop. Here, however, his career seemed very near a close; the notes or bills had all been protested, and a rumour of the fraud spread very soon after his arrival.

He was the first to tell the story to the old archbishop, to inveigh against the tricks of swindlers, and at the ingenuity of one who, having discovered him to be travelling incog. & the East, had ventured to personate him; then. followed a dozen stories of exactly similar personations, &c., but he ended in stating that, though loaded with passports, letters of credit, &c., from the emperor, which were all in his vessel, he should be very averse to appearing publicly in his own character.

He said his journey, or rather his pilgrimage, had been undertaken from motives of religion only, very much against the consent of the emperor, who would be still more incensed when he discovered the fraud which had ensued from the circumstance of his travelling incog.

It became, therefore, his duty to guard his secret more strictly than ever. Upon this pretence he once more obtained a large sum to enable him to perform his
pilgrimage to Loretto, and once more he resumed his travels.

When he reached the Continent he professed himself surprised to find the emperor more incensed than ever: the cameriere was dismissed, and young Contessini, who was enthusiastically devoted to him, was persuaded that the life of his illustrious master depended upon his secrecy. After various adventures, hair-breadth escapes, daring frauds, &c., he reached Hamburgh.

There he contrived by various forgeries to raise a sum of money, on credit, to charter a vessel for America. This was wrecked somewhere on the British coast. The adventurer and his faithful Contessini arrived in London.

The latter, from whom Mr. Bankes had the whole detail, described with the most beautiful simplicity, in his bad Italian, the effect produced in his mind by all
that he saw, and especially by the grande bellissimo superbo hotel where they were lodged, and which, with some difficulty, he at last explained to be the Saracen's Head.

Among its various merits, he did not enumerate that of its being a peaceful abode. Englishmen were not so easily to be taken in as consuls, pashas, and
archbishops in the East. The various frauds and forgeries of the adventurer were soon brought to light, and the bellissimo hotel full of officers of justice' in pursuit of him.

However, he contrived once more to escape them by getting out of a garret window upon the roofs of the neighbouring houses. Such was the extraordinary simplicity and credulity of his faithful attendant that even at this moment, after all that he had witnessed, he described himself as perfectly convinced that his master was going straight to St. James's, meaning at last to avow his rank and resume his native splendour. Judge, then, what must have been his dismay when he found himself safely lodged with the archduke in Newgate.

From the extreme ignorance of the narrator it was impossible, Mr. Bankes said, to gain a clear idea of this part of his adventures. By some means they got out of Newgate, and very soon after were sent to a lock-up house.

Here the story of the impostor closes, not, as might be expected, by his obtaining the due reward of all his iniquities, but by his seducing the wife of the keeper of the lock-up house, carrying off with her every valuable in the house, and contriving to elude every pursuit.

Poor Contessini was now left alone to stand his trial, and Mr. Bankes said nothing could be more curious than his admiration, his simple gratitude for his extraordinary good fortune in having been taken before the most upright, the most humane, the greatest of judges, the only one man in the whole world who would not have hanged him because he had been imposed upon by a rascal, never having
had any share in the transactions which made him amenable to justice. A subscription was collected to enable this poor creature to return to his own country, which he did not reach without having been once more wrecked.

When Mr, Bankes was at Jaffa, he heard repeatedly of the adventurer, who had imposed himself upon so many persons, and raised large sums of money, as the Archduke John. He was one day questioning the British Consul on the subject, who, from common report, related many of the leading particulars, especially the reception by the Captain Pasha. He added, 'As you seem very curious, if you wish it, I will send for the son of my predecessor Contessini, who for some time followed the fortunes of this adventurer.' He came.

Mr. Bankes was so pleased with his extraordinary story, and with his mode of relating it, that he took the man as his servant, though he had little else to recommend him.**

Editor's notes
* William Bankes, .Esq., of Corfe Castle, and Kingston Hall, Dorsetshire
** Mr. Bankes's story is substantially confirmed by Sir William Gell, who says in his Memoirs, ' We had. been told that one of the Austrian archdukes was passing through Greece at this time, and that he was now (1804) at Modon, giving out that he had quitted Vienna on account of some disagreement with the Austrian imperial family, and was travelling incog. . . .
' A few mouths after, we heard of an unpleasant accident which happened quite unexpectedly to his Imperial Highness. After he had resided some time at the house of the poor consul, a Polish nobleman, Prince Sapieha, landed at Modon. As he was well acquainted with the Austrian imperial family, he flew to the house of the consul, as soon as he heard the archduke was there. He entered hastily tile room where the consul and his guest "were dining, eagerly enquiring for his friend the archduke. The consul, distressed at the arrival of a person whom he doubted not was despatched from the court to reclaim the wandering prince, and hoping that the messenger was not personally acquainted with his imperial guest, thought it better to hesitate, and gave no answer till Prince Sapieha demanded with more eagerness to be shown to the room of the archduke. During this time, the adventurer said not a word, and the consul was at length induced to confess that his Imperial Highness was present. Of course Prince Sapielia needed no further explanation, left the room, and soon quitted Modon, not without having had the charity to advise the owner of the house where he lodged to inform the Austrian consul that he was ruining himself for an impostor. The adventurer was not, however, routed by the unfortunate visit of the prince, for he succeeded in persuading the consul, who was alarmed, and began to expostulate, that he knew Sapieha well, but was so disgusted at the impertinence of his abrupt entrance during dinner, instead of sending in due form to know when his company would be agreeable, that he did not condescend to acknowledge him.'

Napoleon and his Brothers

2005-11-10T02:56:00.000+01:00

Lady H. has been telling us of some of the conversation which passed at Walcot* while Lucien Buonaparte was there. He was very communicative on the adventures of his own and his brother's life, and anecdotes so authenticated are worth remembering.

When Lucien was living at his villa on the Lago Bracciano, near Rome, he was requested hy his brother Joseph, then king of Naples, to come to him on business of great importance. Joseph told him he wished to consult him on a letter he had just received from Napoleon, offering him the crown of Spain, and desiring him to come and receive it at his hands.

Joseph professed himself very much inclined to decline the new honours offered him, This resolution Lucien did his utmost to confirm; he reminded Joseph of all the difficulties he had found in establishing himself on the throne of Naples. Those were overcome, and the Neapolitans were now perfectly tranquil under his government.

In Spain, he would have the whole to go over again, and would probably find the Spaniards much more disinclined towards him than the Neapolitans had ever been. Joseph accordingly wrote to Napoleon, respectfully declining the crown offered him, and expressing his gratitude for that he already possessed, and his perfect satisfaction. Unfortunately for himself (much against the advice of Lucien) he added, that ' il se rendrait aux ordres de sa Majeste,' and set out to meet Napoleon. He, to use the words of Lucien, 'prepara un de ces grands coups qu'il aimait tant et qui lui ont si souvent reussi.'

Bayonne was the appointed place of meeting, but Napoleon went farther, met Joseph on the road, and got out of his carriage to be the first to congratulate the King of Spain. In one moment Joseph found himself surrounded by the numerous suite of his brother, and had received their homage almost before he knew where he was. This public ceremony having taken place, it was no longer possible to retract.

In those days, when crowns were literally going a-begging, Lucien (by his own account at least) seems to have shown great firmness in rejecting them, not only for himself, but for his family.

At one time, Napoleon sent for one of Lucien's daughters, offering to marry her to the Prince of Spain (Ferdinand), or to the Prince of Wirtemberg (Paul). Lucien determined to refuse both: ' L'un,' he said, 'etait pire que fou; mais il fallait obeir aux ordres supremes de mon frere; et j'envoyai Charlotte a Paris, suivie de ses femmes seulement, et de I'abbe B.'

I have forgot the name, but he was the nephew of Lucien's first wife, and was present when the story was told. When the poor victim arrived at St. Cloud, where the Emperor was, she was immediately presented to him; and as she knelt to pay her obeisance, he said, ' Levez-vi princesse.'

She had the courage to reply, 'Non, sire, je ne suis pas princesse; je ne suis que Charlotte Buonaparte: permittez-moi, sire, de retourner mon pere.''

This permission was granted, and ntended Queen of Spain (afterwards Princess Gabriella) was, when this story was related, living with her parents at Ludlow.

On the day of Napoleon's coronation, Garnerin sent up a balloon to make the news fly. This balloon landed near Lucien's Roman villa, in twenty-six hours exactly from the period at which it was launched from Paris.

Yet, speedy as this communication appears, it might have been still more so; for, at its first setting out balloon was impelled quite in another direction. How soon it took its south-eastern course, cannot, of course, be known.**

Editor’s notes
* Walcot, Salop ; a seat of the Earl of Powia.
** In the journal of De las Casas this circumstance is mentioned as related by Napoleon, who speaks of the time as 'en peu d’heures’.

Napoleon on Board the ‘Northumberland'

2005-11-07T03:28:00.000+01:00

Extracts from letters from an officer of the Marines
H.M.S. Northumberland Aug. 5, 1815
It is my guard, and I have to sit in the antechamber of Napoleon, to prevent communication between him and the ship’s company, and also to be a check on his own domestics; it is now one and I must keep awake to six … Napoleon gets very sulky if he is not treated with that deference and respect to which he is accustomed: his own followers treat him with the same respect as if he was still emperor.

Beattie, my captain, was at Acre: Napoleon learnt this in conversation; seemed quite pleased, caught hold of his ear and gave it a good pinch (which is his custom when pleased), and seems to have taken a great liking to him.

He is sometimes very communicative: to-day he mentioned the project he had formed for invading England in 1805, declared it had been his intention to lead the expedition himself; and said it might have succeeded.

The plan was this: he sent his fleet to the West Indies for the purpose of drawing our fleets there, which it did, Lord Nelson and Sir Robert Calder both following Villeneuve there; he -was to return immediately to the Channel, and Napoleon said he calculated that Villenueve would be in the Channel at least a fortnight before our fleets could get back.

His army was embarked (200,000 he says), but the plan was disconcerted by Villeneuve's going into Cadiz instead of coming to the Channel. His words were, ' He might as well have been in the East Indies as at Cadiz;' and he then declared that if Villenueve had obeyed his orders, he should certainly have invaded England, be the result what it might.*

Bertrand is the only one that seems to feel his situation ; he speaks of Napoleon often with tears, and is extremely agitated when conversing on the state of France. He says Napoleon did not calculate upon fighting the English and Prussians at Waterloo. The Prussians were beaten on the 16th, and it was not supposed they could have been up to take part in the battle of the 18th. He thinks the French would have been victorious if the Prussians had not come up ; but circumstances were not favourable. The French soldiers fought very well; the officers did not.

I asked him what became of the French army after the battle, why they did not retreat in some sort of order? He said, with a shrug, they were annihilated, there were none left; yet, notwithstanding these admissions, they break out gasconading about their victories. ....

Napoleon's spirits are better; he enters into conversation very freely on different parts of his life. The other day he was speaking of Waterloo: he said he had not the least idea of fighting on the 18th: he did not suppose Wellington would have given him battle; he so fully expected Wellington to retreat, that he had not even made preparations for battle, and was a little taken by surprise.

' But,' said he, ' I never was so pleased as when I saw he intended to fight. I had not a doubt of annihilating his army; it was the only thing I could have wished. I expected him to abandon Flanders, and fall back on the Russians ; but when I found he gave me battle singly, I was confident of his destruction. My soldiers behaved well; my generals did not.'

He says it was dusk when his army was thrown into confusion ; that if he could have shown himself, they would have rallied and been victorious ; but that the rout was so great, he was carried away in the throng. He went to Paris to try to save the honour of France, but found he could not.

He positively asserts that previously to the battle of Waterloo, and after his return to France, Austria proposed to him to abdicate in favour of Napoleon II., and promised to support him. His followers, too, have mentioned so many particulars respecting this, that I do not doubt the fact. This proposition had nothing to do with the forged letter of the Duke of Bassano, which they also speak of as a falsehood : none such was shown to him by Murat.

He has been talking this evening about his turning Mahometan: he said it was a long time before he could persuade them that he was a true Mussulman ; but at last I persuaded them that Mahomet was wrong in some things, and I was right; and they acknowledged me to be the greater man.' He says that in his retreat from Acre he lost nearly half his army.

Yesterday he remarked that Madame Bertrand was in much better spirits than when she attempted to drown herself, and added, ' A man of true courage will bear up against misfortunes, and finally surmount them, while common minds will sink under them.' He converses sometimes on the subject of his making away with himself, and calmly reprobates the idea of his being supposed capable of it.**

I believe the object of the guard is to prevent communication with the crew. Napoleon told the admiral that he did not doubt he could get many to join him if he tried; and, indeed, they are a set of as mutinous rascals as I ever heard of; though I don't think they would assist him to escape. What I am going to state
must, for the credit of the country, be a secret: they mutinied, and refused to get anchor up at Portsmouth; the Artillery company, the 53rd, and ourselves, were under arms for three hours—that is to say, till we had sailed.

About twenty of the principal seamen were seized and confined, but sent away from the ship; and the conduct and language of the sailors now is beyond everything; they think nothing of striking the midshipman.* . . .

St. Helena.—We arrived at this barren horrid island yesterday, after a passage of ten weeks. In my former travels in these latitudes everything seemed animated; the sea swarming with fish, water brilliant and phosphoric, sky without a cloud. Now everything has been the reverse: since we left Madeira, the sun has been constantly obscured with clouds; the weather, even on the equator, as cold as you can have had it in England; scarcely a fish to be seen; and, what is still more extra-ordinary, the trade-winds, which in the tropics are calculated upon as certain, have blown almost from the opposite quarter to what they were expected, and thereby opposed our progress.

We crossed the equator on the 23rd September, the same day as the sun; the greatest height of the thermometer was then only 75°, with a vertical sun; since it has been as low as 66°: today it is only 70°. Napoleon has been in pretty good health and spirits all the voyage, conversing on every subject without the least hesitation.

Editor’s note [Here follows the well-known justification of the poisoning of the sick at Jaffa ; execution of the Due d'Enghien, &c. &c.]

I have dined three times with Napoleon. I cannot say I think his manners have much of that elegance which might have been expected from a person of his ci-devant rank. He has a particularly disagreeable grunt when he does not understand what you say, and desires a repetition. He converses freely, but not at table, with the Frenchmen, and takes no more notice of the ladies than if they were a hundred miles off. I have not heard him speak once to Madame Bertrand at table, and seldom elsewhere.

Napoleon landed on the 17th of October: he appeared a good deal affected at leaving the ship, and spoke so.

Did I tell you that the band, who used to play every day, struck up of their own accord, a few days after we left England, Vive Henri Quatre, upon Buonaparte coming after dinner ? Thinking it might hurt his feelings, we stopped them immediately; but he had heard enough to know what it was, and requested they would play that or any other French tune, as he liked it much ; and afterwards they played the loyal and revolutionary airs indiscriminately.

Of the Due d'Enghien's business he said, not a fortnight ago (December 1815) — and you may rely upon he did say, though I did not hear it — it was in dictating to his secretary, Las Casas—two days after the Due was executed, he received proofs of his innocence, and that the Due even solicited employment in his service, stating his poverty; but that the application was not received till after his death.

This Buonaparte certainly said; for I do not think his secretary would say so if it was not true: and he said he had it from Napoleon's mouth, as part of papers which he was dictating the I day before I had it.****

Editors’ Notes
* His plan, as described by M. Thiers, was much more complicated, and required a concurrence of events on which it was preposterous to rely.
** He must have forgotten his own attempt to poison himself at Fontainehleau, clearly proved by M. Thiers.

*** This state of things appears to have been carefully concealed
from the public.
**** Mr. Warren stated, in his printed, letters that he had seen a copy of the alleged letter from the Due d'Enghien in the possession of Las Casas.

Account of a Hurricane in Jamaica

2005-11-05T02:31:00.000+01:00

Extract from a letter dated Chester Coffee Estate, three-quarter way up the Blue Mountains (Jamaica), from the side of a large wood fire ; thermometer 58°, the mountain winds blowing almost a hurricane, and the rain descending in Equinoctial torrents.—16th October 1815, 10 a.m.

As soon as I was sufficiently recovered from the effects of the yellow fever to bear the journey, I was brought to this invigorating climate, and wonderful its effects have been in eleven days.

This is a higher situation than any I have yet visited, higher even than Mount Atlas. The house is superb, with fireplaces in every room, and the climate that of the South of France. There is a large and beautiful garden, where grow side by side, in the utmost luxuriance and full of fruit, the mangan, cinnamon, and nutmeg trees of the East; the apple, pear, and nectarine of England ; and the pine-apple, orange, cocoatree, guava, &c. of the West.

In no other part of the world, perhaps could you see assembled the productions of so many countries; and this is from the unvarying temperatures of the climate, being neither influenced by the season nor ever getting too warm for European plants, or too cold for those of the tropics.

Kingston, Nov. 5, 1815.—Little did I expect, when I sat down so comfortably at Chester Hill to write to you by my snug fireside, what danger and misery were awaiting me. It was then, as you may see by my date, blowing very strong, but we expected nothing further.

I was interrupted at twelve o'clock by a summons to luncheon; in the midst of it we were suddenly alarmed by seeing the fine mangan tree in our garden torn up by the roots, whisked into the air, and carried out of sight; this made us apprehend what soon succeeded—a violent hurricane. After this first gust of wind, fresh ones attacked us, each with increased violence: not one of the beautiful trees was left standing; cedar, orange, apple, and all the large trees being torn up, and the cocoas, cabbages, &c., snapped in the middle.

The wind continued raging with tremendous force; and next, we were terrified beyond description by the whole wing of that part of the house we had just quitted, walls and all, giving way, though a most substantial stone building ; the roof entire, without loss of a shingle or beam, being carried up into the air, the walls falling in with a tremendous crash; and the beams, boards, &c. of the two floorings were seen flying with amazing velocity through the air, knocking down all that came in contact with them. It was with the utmost difficulty that, on hearing the walls shaking and cracking, we saved ourselves, and got into the farther end, or rather division, of a double house.

Here, however, we had not been ten minutes before the wind getting under the remaining part of the roof (since the fall of the wing, totally unprotected) tore it up too, throwing down on us the ceilings and some of the beams, by one of which I was
knocked down and hurt.

However, we contrived to rush out, expecting that the walls, now unroofed, must follow; and being unable to stand upright from the fear of being taken off our legs, we crawled into the kitchen—an outhouse which, being very low and nearly circular, we hoped might stand. We were disappointed; for after our seeing the coffee-store, coffee-works, overseer's house, all the negro houses, and every possible place of shelter, blown down; not a tree standing; beams, trees, branches, and wooden shingles with large nails in them flying about in every direction, with certain death to every living thing they encountered; night coming on and the gale increasing the kitchen gave way, injuring us all more or less, and, I fear, maiming one negro for life. I only received another hard blow.

As a last resource and almost forlorn hope, we betook ourselves to a cellar under the ruins of the house, trying to hope that, if the walls fell in (and we heard stones dropping from them every instant), they might not beat in the floor of the dining-room over our heads and crush us with their fall. That they would fall, we had no doubt; and a very, very slender hope that the flooring would withstand them, and no possibility of escape.

This was about eight in the evening, when the night was just setting in. Our cellar was about nine feet square: up to our knees in water from the torrents of rain falling through the unroofed ruin above us, under a constant shower-bath in that cold climate that very cold night, in the instant expectation of being crushed to death or horribly mangled, we remained the whole of that dreadful night.

Our party consisted, besides myself, of Mr. A., Dr. M., the overseer, the bookkeeper, four black men, and four black women with their six children.

What I suffered from cold, and the bruises I had received, exceeded in mere bodily suffering anything I have ever felt or expect to feel—far worse than the surgeon's knife searching the bullet; and I certainly never felt the passion of fear before —at least nothing resembling my sensations that night.

At about two in the morning one of the walls fell in; luckily, so that the wind blew the stones &c. from, instead of on us: still, a great part fell over our heads on the flooring, of course on boards, with a tremendous crash. "We conceived it was the whole house, and the screams of the poor women and children, the (as they supposed) dying prayer of the men, were horrible beyond anything I can conceive.

I rose up from sitting on an empty barrel, hoping the beams might strike my head first, and end my sense of suffering for myself and my companions. For that the beams were falling, and that death seemed inevitable, was evident; but, after many alarms of this sort and constant dread, the gale abated at sunrise, after the longest night I ever passed.

At 6 a.m. the rain and wind had entirely ceased and we were able to walk out of our dungeon and witness the scene of destruction. Not a house, a tree, a negro hut or shed, left standing; large trees thrown down or torn away; small snapped off close to the roots; all the beautiful garden destroyed; one of the four walls of the house levelled, a wing entirely down, the remainder unroofed: and we had no means of communication with our neighbours, as every rivulet was swelled to an impassable river.

At the end of three days, however, we got to the nearest neighbour's house, which had not suffered so much; and a week after, the roads and rivers admitted of my return here safe and sound.

Kingston has suffered much less than the mountains. . . . The hurricane has cooled the air, and now the temperature of Kingston is tolerable even after leaving the Blue Mountains.

Lord North

2005-11-02T15:10:00.000+01:00

Among the many anonymous letters which daily poured in upon the late Lord North, he received one announcing to him the arrival of a box which was exactly described. He was warned not to open this box, as it was so contrived that, upon opening the lock, a loaded pistol which the box contained should be discharged. On the following day (which I forgot to say was the time specified) Lord North received a box exactly answering to the description. Without mentioning the circumstance, he took the portentous box, and, concealing it under his great-coat, went immediately and threw it unopened into the Thames.*

*This story was related by Mr T. Grenville

Account by a Lady of a Visit to Princess Dashkaw

2005-11-01T15:00:00.000+01:00

Editor's introduction
The Princess was the third daughter of Count Woronzow, and was married at sixteen under characteristic circumstances. The Prince Dashkaw having made a compromising proposal to her, not pour le bon motif, she affected to treat it as a proposal of marriage, and communicated it as such to her family.

The prince married her, as the only or best way of getting out of the scrape. He owned her first child, but demurred to the second. She played a leading part in the intrigues and conspiracies which made Catherine the Second Autocrat of all the Russias; but the gratitude of her imperial friend and mistress did not keep pace with her expectations, and a coolness grew up between them which estranged her from the court,

The first reward she claimed was the colonelcy of a crack regiment. This Catherine refused, but made her Director of the Academy, and she is said to have proved fully equal to the post. She was popularly supposed to have been entrusted with the momentous duty of subjecting the empress’s male favourites to a kind of competitive examination or qualifying test; whence her name of l’eprouveuse, which was also given to another lady who succeeded her.

These particulars are principally based on French authorities. But the memoirs of the Princess, written by herself, were edited in English ' from the originals' by Mrs. W, Bradford in 1840; forming, with the correspondence, two volumes octavo. This lady, whose maiden name was Wilmot, was the younger sister of the writer of the following account, parts of which are comprised in Mrs. W. Bradford's work. I need hardly add that the Princess might say of her autobiography what a lively Frenchwoman said of her own: ' Je ne me suis peinte qv’en buste.'

In her ' letter dedicatory ' to her editor and friend, she complains that 'a life strictly moral and passed for the most part in privacy should be blackened by way of confirmatory supplement to' the falsehoods and vile imputations which some French writers had been pleased to fabricate and propagate against the great Catherine.

The sisters were of a good Irish family, who had made the acquaintance of the Princess during her residence in Ireland. They knew nothing personally of her before 1803, when she was near sixty.

Since cold is the order of the day, you may make this passing remark, that habit has no power of reconciling one to the inclemency of the climate: at least my sister says that she felt the second winter like the evaporation of saltpetre on the skin compared to the first which she scarcely minded, and now she is covered with wadded cloaks, when I need no additional clothing and the Princess is utterly unconscious it is not a summer's day. . . .

Russia is yet barbarous enough to be distinguished by her hospitality. She has many other nationalities, no doubt, but my experience has not been able to distinguish any except among the lower orders of the people: for, with respect to the higher, I am sorry to say they imitate the French in everything: and though the manners of the French are appropriate to themselves, I cannot endure the singerie of Bruin when he frolics like the monkey on his back. Instead, therefore, of the dignified salutation of former days (namely, of bowing seriously to one another till their crowns met together), you are kissed on both the cheeks with an appearance of transport, and are told mechanically how enchanted they are to make your acquaintance, &c.

The dress, too, is an imitation of the French, and they have universally adopted their language. ... In the midst of all this adoption of manners, customs, and language there is something childishly silly in their reprobating Buonaparte, when they cannot eat their dinner without a French cook to dress it, when they cannot educate their children without an unprincipled adventuress from Paris to act as governess, when every house of consequence (that I have seen at least) has an outcast Frenchman to instruct the heir apparent; in one word, when every association of fashion, luxury, elegance, and fascination is drawn from France, and, in the midst of this obliteration of themselves, a dying squeak against Buonaparte redeems them in their own eyes from this social and political suicide …

How I abhor these general observations arising from such circumscribed experience as mine, and I don’t know what induces me to depart from the detail of gossip. Strange to say, this same gossip would lead me to talk of Princess Dashkaw’s character (as I know more of her than of anyone else’s), which is diametrically opposite to all singerie; for if ever there was an original upon the face of the earth, it is herself.

Though she uniformly behaves to us with the greatest kindness and attention, she exacts (from imperial habits I suppose) a sort of deference, that surprised one excessively at first sight, from her own country people. For example, no man, though covered with stars, attempts to sit down in her presence without being desired, and not always even when requested. I have seen a dozen Princes stand out a whole visit. Once I saw them bowed out of the room (when she got deadly tired of them); and after she had given them her hand to kiss, they departed.*

It never enters into her head or heart to disguise any sentiment, and therefore you may guess what a privileged sort of being she is: and lucky it is that she has sensibility, and gentleness of nature; otherwise she would be a pest or scourge. She is the first by right, rank, sense, and habit in every company, and prerogative becomes such a matter of course that nothing appears extraordinary that she does. . . .

I believe I never mentioned a fine place the Princess has made herself, situated in the midst of sixteen villages belonging to her. Three thousand peasants ('my subjects' as she calls them) live most happily under her absolute power; and of all the blessed-hearted beings that ever existed she is the most blessed, excepting Mrs. C. There are 200 servants (taking in all denominations, inside and outside) belonging to the establishment; more than 100 horses, 200 cows, and everything else in proportion.

The house is enormous, and has wings at either side which are only connected by balconies raised on iron railings to the second story. Twenty bearded men are now busily employed in making a temporary wooden passage, as in winter (strange to say) they had provided for no internal communication: so much was sacrificed to the beauty of the outside.

There are a hundred whimsical and most ridiculous peculiarities of custom such as, letting you provide your own bedclothes in a palace even. We have our own sheets, blankets, quilts; and they would think one as extraordinary expecting that the house was to provide for these things as you would if, in your house, I laid myself up, and sent for your gown to use as a matter of right.

In fact, system of each person having a separate little establishment, is observed in more ways than that; for saucepans, candles, candlesticks, tea and coffee equipage, a hundred etceteras, are regularly found in the care of the femmes de chamber. I might lock my castle door, or my sister's, or Anna's, and we have provisions to keep the citadel a week in flourishing health.

The system of hoards is therefore without bounds, and presents appropriate to this comical system are perfectly the fashion. The Princess sent us a pair of silver candlesticks and a store of wax candles on our arrival here. I expected a spit or a gridiron next; but though not exactly so, we got presents of iron pans the following day. . . .

In the midst of this immense establishment, and in the centre of riches and honour, I wish you could see the Princess go out to take a walk, or rather to look over her 'subjects.' An old worn-out great-coat, and a silk pocket-handkerchief worn to rags about her neck, form her dress; and well may it be in rags, for she has worn it eighteen years, and will continue to wear it as long as she lives, because it belonged to Mrs. Hamilton.

Her originality, her appearance, her manner of speaking, her doing every description of thing, altogether give me the idea of her being a fairy; for she helps the masons to build walls, she assists with her own hands in making the roads, she feeds the cows, she composes music, she sings and plays, she writes for the press, she shells the corn, she talks out loud in church and corrects the preacher if he is not devout, she talks out loud at her little theatre here and puts in the performers if they are out in their parts.

She is a doctor, an apothecary, a surgeon, a farrier, a carpenter, a magistrate, a lawyer; in short, she hourly practises every sort of incongruity, corresponds with her brother who holds the first place in the empire on his trade, with authors, with philosophers, with Jews, with poets, with her son, with all her relations, and yet appears as if she had her time a burden on her hands.

She is unconscious whether she speaks English, French, or Russ, and mingles them in every sentence. She speaks German and Italian equally well; but her pronunciation is not clear, which takes from the pleasure I should otherwise receive from her conversation. I have just finished reading Voltaire's, Diderot's, Garrick's, and the Abbe Raynal's letters to her.

She has promised me the Empress Catherine's: and it is highly necessary to qualify oneself with the knowledge of public affairs and characters in Russia since the time of Catherine, for she alludes to them perpetually; and her mind wanders back so naturally to the court, study, toilette, and boudoir of Catherine, that I am beginning to fancy I recollect her habits of life and conversation, and that I was a party concerned in the Revolution.

By-the-bye, the principal reception-room at Troitskoe is ornamented with an immense picture of Catherine on horseback in uniform, taken the very day of her husband’s destruction, and, (the Princess says) a perfect resemblance.

Besides this there are portraits of her in every room. . . . Don't irritate me by saying, you suppose I am beginning to speak the language. No, let that satisfy you for ever. I feel my powers of duncishness increase daily, my powers of idleness, and of helplessness in everything that is good.
So adieu, &c.
W. WllMOT.
Troitskoe, Sept. 1805.

* The late Sir Robert Adair used to relate that, during his mission to St Petersburgh, he and the French ambassador were sitting with Potemkin when an aide-de-camp, a young nobleman, brought him a disagreeable note or missive of some sort. Potemkin started up, and actually kicked the innocent messenger out of the room. The Princess Dashkaw was once equally high in the Empress's favour, and might have indulged her passions or caprices with equal impunity.

The Gunnings

2005-10-29T20:02:00.000+02:00

Some anecdotes were mentioned a few days before of a person who, in a very different way, could boast of a superiority as prominent as the Duke of Marlborough's, I mean the celebrated Countess of Coventry.

From old Sheridan (the father of Richard Brinsley) Lord Braybrooke heard some curious anecdotes of her early life.

Mrs. Gunning (her mother) consulted Sheridan as to what she should do with her two beautiful but penniless daughters. He recommended that they should be presented at the Castle. Here a great difficulty occurred: by what possible means where they to procure court dresses?

This Sheridan obviated: he was at that time manager of the Dublin Theatre, and offered them a loan of the stage dresses of Lady Macbeth and Juliet. In these they appeared most lovely; and Sheridan, after having attended the toilet, claimed a salute from each as his reward.

Very soon after this, a most diabolical scheme was formed by some unprincipled young men; they invited Mrs. Gunning and her two daughters to dinner, and infused strong narcotics in the wine, intending to take advantage of the intoxication which must ensue to carry off the two young women.

Fortunately, Sheridan discovered their base designs, and arrived just in time to rescue the ladies. He lived to see one of these girls Duchess of Argyle, and the other Countess of Coventry; and, it is melancholy to add, lived to see his application for admission to their parties rejected.

Lady Coventry enjoyed one very singular triumph. Having one day casually mentioned to the king, that she could not walk in the Mall because the crowd who came to gaze at her pressed round her in a way that was quite alarming, his Majesty gallantly exclaimed that the finest woman in England should not be prevented from gracing the Mall. He desired that whenever she wished to walk she would send notice to the
captain upon guard, and at the same time ordered that she should be attended by a sergeant's guard.

She walked several times with this train: of course, the crowd increased; but they were prevented from pressing upon her, and her vanity, which was excessive, must have received the highest gratification in this singular distinction.*

Editor's Notes
** * These stories of the Gunnings might be amply confirmed from contemporary accounts of them. Walpole states that they borrowed court dresses to attend a drawing-room at the Castle, Dublin, from Peg Woffington, and writes thus of them in 1751:
'There are two Irish girls of no fortune, who are declared the handsomest women alive. I think their being two so handsome, and both such perfect figures, is their chief excellence, for, singly, I have seen much handsomer figures than either: however, they can't walk in the park, or go to Vauxhall, but such mobs follow them that they are therefore driven away.'

Lady Coventry died in September 1760, in her twenty-seventh year, of a consumption. Till within a few days of her death, she lay on a couch with a looking-glass in her hand. When she found her beauty, which she idolized, was quite gone, she took to her bed and would be seen by nobody—not even by her nurse, suffering only the light of a lamp in her room. She then took leave of her husband, who had forgiven her errore, and died with the utmost resignation.'— (Walpole).

The Duke of Marlborough - Admiral Barrington

2005-10-27T01:28:00.000+02:00

April 1810.—Looking at the fine full-length portrait of John, Duke of Marlborough; Lord Braybrooke told us some interesting and curious anecdotes of him.

When this great man, at a very advanced age, was called to attend a council on the best mode of defence from a threatened invasion, he gave his opinion with his usual firmness and penetration. Afterwards he said that for above fifty years he had served his country and should be happy to do so still, but that he was aware his faculties were impaired.

At present, he added, he was fully conscious of his deficiency, but he feared the time might soon come when he should be no longer aware of it. He, therefore, made it his earnest request that he might never more be summoned to council, and that it elsewhere, on any occasion, he expressed an opinion, no importance should be attached or deference paid to it.

It is melancholy to reflect how low became the degradation of that mind, whose decaying powers were equal to such an act of magnanimity. After having had everything to gratify—first, as the finest, gayest man in Europe, then as its greatest general, and afterwards as its greatest negotiator and statesman—after all this, in a state of complete imbecility, an absolute driveller, he was actually exhibited by his servants to all who chose to give an additional fee after having stared at all the magnificence of Blenheim. In this manner my grandfather (then a lad just entered at Oxford) beheld the wreck of this great man, and has often described the melancholy spectacle to Lord Braybrooke.*

A similar instance of conscious decay and of magnanimity, perhaps even superior to the Duke of Marlborough, was at the same time mentioned. The late Admiral Barringtou, being called upon by the Admiralty to take the command of the Channel fleet, refused it, saying that his mental powers were so weakened that he was no longer equal to a situation of such importance, but that he thought himself still very well able to act under another, though not to command; he therefore requested to be second.*

In the course of the following year his weakness had so increased, that he quarrelled with the Admiralty for not placing him in that very situation for which he had himself told them he was unfit.

Editor's Notes
* "In life's last scene what prodigies surprize,
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise !
From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driv'ler and a show."The Vanity of Human Wishes

It was the sagacious remark of Mr. Cobden to myself that great men should rarely be consulted or listened to in advanced age, because their authority increases whilst their mental powers decay.

** Admiral Barrington, a highly distinguished officer, was the brother of the Honourable Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, and great-uncle of the present Lord Barrington. The account which a surviving member of the family heard from the Bishop wag that, when the offer of the command of the Channel fleet was made to the Admiral, he asked whether it had been offered to Lord Howe, for he was the man who ought to have it.

The Tyrone Ghost Story (Part 2)

2005-10-24T15:39:00.000+02:00

Real particulars of the preceding story dictated to me by Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby (the ladies of Llangollen), who had frequently heard them from many of Lady Beresford's and of Mr. Gorges' descendants, with some of whom they are intimately connected and related.

Miss Hamilton, a rich and beautiful heiress, was early married to Sir Martin Beresford: it was supposed that both before and after her marriage she had been too intimately connected with Lord Tyrone. Some time after her marriage, in the year 1704, it was agreed that Lord Tyrone, Sir Martin and Lady Beresford, should pass one Christmas at Colonel Gorges' house, called Kilbrew, in the county of Meath.

One night, after the family were all retired. Lady Beresford was surprised to see the door of her chamber open, and Lord Tyrone walked in, dressed in his robe de chamber. She exclaimed ' Good God, what brings you here at this time
of night?'

He walked up to the bedside and replied, ' I left Corraughmore with an intention of coming here. I was taken ill on the road, and have just expired. I am come to you for the ring which I gave you.'

Lady Beresford, horror-struck, pushed Sir Martin to wake him. ‘He cannot wake while I am here,' said Lord Tyrone; ' He will die; you will marry the gentleman of this house: you will die in childbed of your second son, but you shall see me again; give me the ring.'

Lady Beresford, extremely agitated, could not immediately get it off her finger; he seized her hand, and the ring appeared to her to roll off upon the floor. The next morning Lady Beresford tried to persuade herself that the whole of this scene was the effect of imagination, but on her wrist she found the mark of Lord Tyrone's hand; each finger left a black mark as if it had been burnt. On a desk which stood near the bed, and on which Lord Tyrone had leant, the same trace of five fingers was found.

That on Lady Beresford's wrist never was effaced, and to her dying day she wore a black ribbon bracelet to conceal it. The ring was likewise missing; nor could it after the most diligent search be ever found, though every board of the floor was taken up the next day.

In the course of time Sir Martin died, and Lady Beresford did marry Colonel Gorges. By Sir Martin she had one son, born in 1694; by Colonel Gorges, three daughters, one of whom married Lord Howth, and another Lord Desart. After these she had a son.

Colonel Gorges, fearing that his birth might prey upon her mind, still strongly affected with the recollection of the vision, persuaded her that her child was
a girl. She was got so well after her confinement, that the carriage was ordered for her to take the air.

Meanwhile, she unfortunately enquired of a housemaid who came into the room, how her child was; the maid replied, ' He is very well.' 'He!’ said Lady B,' it is then a son,' and she burst into tears. Her husband and friend at length succeeded in persuading her that, after having been. so long brought to bed, all danger must be over, and she proceeded to take the air as she had intended,

As she was going down stairs, she exclaimed, 'There is Lord Tyrone; I see him on the landing place!' She fainted, was carried to her bed, and died a few days after.

Some years after, in 1717, her son. Sir M. Beresford, married Lady C. de la Poer, the daughter and heiress of Lord Tyrone, and was the grandfather of the present Lord Waterford.

Editor’s note
It is amusing to compare these two versions, each professing to rest on the same quality of information, and with equal pretensions to the title of ' real particulars.' The internal evidence, however, is in favour of that furnished by the ladies of Llangollen. The story is not mentioned by Dr. Ferrier, Dr. Hibbert, or Sir Walter Scott. Mrs. Crow ('Nightside of Nature') merely alludes to it as well known and well authenticated.

According to Lodge's 'Irish Peerage' (confirmed by Burke), Sir Tristram (not Sir Martin) Beresford, third baronet, born 1669, married, 1687, Nicola Sophia, youngest daughter and coheir of Hugh Hamilton, Baron of Glenawly; and by her (who remarried with Lieut.-General Eichard Gorges, of Kilbrew, county of Meath) had issue one son, Sir Marcus, created Earl of Tyrone in 1746, having in 1717 married the Lady Catherine Poer, daughter and heir to James Earl of Tyrone, who died in 1704. Sir Tristram died in 1701, three years before Lord Tyrone.

I am indebted to my friend, Mr. F. Pollock, for the following extract from a letter to himself:—
'I first heard the story of the Beresford ghost from Mr. Cumberland. He told it finely. I was about twelve years old at the time . . . (this would be sixty years ago). Long afterwards I met with the ghost in print, in a magazine which my father took in regularly. A discussion on tales of mystery produced a letter from one of the Beresford family, containing an account of the real circumstances of the story. The lady of the velvet bracelet, when about to be married for the second time, really had a dream warning her of the unhappiness likely to result from the contemplated union. It was well known to all the family of the intended bride that she had been subject to a disorder which had left a deep scar on her wrist — long before the visitation of the burning spirit; and she had covered this scar with a velvet bracelet most carefully ever since it had been formed.'