The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume Iii Part 59

(279) Alarm.

(280) Fortresses.

(281) Litters.

(282) Both reports were false. Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon's youngest brother, formerly King of Westphalia, was wounded in the groin at Quatre Bras, two days before the battle of Waterloo.

His wound, however, was not so severe as to prevent him from serving at Waterloo, and, after the flight of the Emperor to Paris, Jerome remained to conduct the retreat and rally the fugitives. General Vandamme was not at Waterloo at all, nor was he wounded. He was attached to the army commanded by Marshal Grouchy, and was engaged in a useless conflict with the Prussian rear-guard at Wavres on the day of the decisive battle.-ED.

(283) Another false rumour. Murat was in France during the whole of the Waterloo campaign. This distinguished soldier had married Caroline Bonaparte, the youngest sister of Napoleon, by whom he was made King of Naples. In December, 1813, Murat was ungrateful enough to join the allied powers against the Emperor, but, after Napoleon's return from Elba, he threw himself into the war with characteristic precipitation. Marching from Naples with an army of 50,000 men, he occupied Rome and Florence, but was soon after totally defeated by the Austrians, and escaped with difficulty to France. The Emperor refused to see him. After the final abdication of Napoleon, Murat made a desperate attempt, with a handful of men, to regain his kingdom of Naples. He was taken prisoner, tried by a military commission, condemned to death, and immediately shot. At St. Helena Napoleon said of him, "It was his fate to ruin us every way; once by declaring against us, and again by unadvisedly taking our part."-ED.

(284) Inn.

(285) "Ah! there it is!"

(286) This was a misapprehension. Madame de Stael died at Paris, July 14, 1817. The above narrative was written at a period some years later than that of the events to which it relates, and hence, in all probability, the mistake arose.-ED.

(287) "M. de Talleyrand has forgotten me; but one does not forget M. de Talleyrand."

Page 384 SECTION 26.

(1815-8)

AT BATH AND ILFRACOMBE: GENERAL D'ARBLAY'S ILLNESS AND DEATH.

ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND.

(Madame d'Arblay to Mrs. Locke and Mrs. Angerstein.) Dover, Oct. 18, 1815.

Last night, my ever dear friends, we arrived once more in old England.

I write this to send the moment I land in London. I cannot boast of our health, our looks, our strength, but I hope we may recover a part of all when our direful fatigues, mental and corporeal, cease to utterly weigh upon and wear us.

We shall winter in Bath. The waters of Plombi?res have been recommended to my poor boiteux,(288) but he has obtained a cong?

that allows this change. Besides his present utter incapacity for military service, he is now unavoidably on the retraite(289 list, and the King of France permits his coming over, not alone without difficulty, but with wishing him a good journey, through the Duc de Luxembourg, his captain in the gardes du corps.

Adieu, dearest both--Almost I embrace you in dating from Dover.

Had you my letter from Tr?ves? I suspect not, for my melancholy new history would have brought your kind condolence: or, otherwise, that missed me. Our letters were almost all intercepted by the Prussians while we were

Page 385

there. Not one answer arrived to us from Paris, save by private hands. . . .

December 24, 1815. My heart has been almost torn asunder, of late, by the dreadful losses which the newspapers have communicated to me, of the two dearest friends(290) of my absent partner ; both sacrificed in the late sanguinary conflicts. It has been with difficulty I have forborne attempting to return to him ; but a winter voyage might risk giving him another loss. The death of one of these so untimely departed favourites, how will Madame de Stael support? Pray tell me if you hear any thing of her, and what. . . .

[With the year 1816 a new section of Madame d'Arblay's correspondence may be said to commence in her letters to her son, the late Rev. A. d'Arblay, who was then pursuing his studies at Caius college, Cambridge. It has been thought advisable to be more sparing in publication from this, than from the earlier portions of Madame d'Arblay's correspondence. Without, however, a few of these letters to her son, "the child of many hopes,"

this picture of her mind, with all its tenderness, playfulness, and sound sense, would scarcely be complete.]

ALEXANDER D'ARBLAY: SOME OLD BATH FRIENDS.

(Madame d'Arblay to Mrs. Locke) Bath, February 15, 1816.

Incredible is the time I have lost without giving in that claim which has never been given in vain for news of my own ,dear friend - but I have been-though not ill, so continually unwell, and though not, as so recently, in disordered and disorganizing difficulties, yet so incessantly occupied with small, but indispensable occupations, that the post hour has always gone by to-day to be waited for to-morrow. Yet my heart has never been satisfied-I don't mean with itself, for with that it can never quarrel on this subject,-but with my pen-my slack, worn, irregular, fugitive, fatigued, yet ever faithful, though never punctual pen. My dearest friend forgives, I know, even that; but her known and unvarying lenity is the very cause I cannot forgive it myself.

We have had our Alexander for six weeks; he left us three Page 386

days ago, and I won't tell my dear friend whether or not we miss him. He is precisely such as he was--as inartificial in his character, as irregular in his studies. He cannot bring himself to conquer his disgust of the routine of labour at Cambridge; and while he energetically argues upon the innocence of a preference to his own early practice,(291) which he vindicates, I believe unanswerably, with regard to its real superiority, he is insensible, at least forgetful, of all that can be urged of the mischiefs to his prospects in life that must result from his not conquering his inclinations,"- I have nearly lost all hope of his taking the high degree A judged to him by general expectation at the University, from the promise of his opening.

Of old friends here, I have found stationary, Mrs. Holroyd, and Mrs. Frances. and Harriet Bowdler. Mrs. Holroyd still gives parties, and tempted me to hear a little medley music, as she called it. Mrs. F. Bowdler lives on Lansdowne-crescent, and scarcely ever comes down the hill. Mrs. Harriet I have missed, though we have repeatedly sought a meeting on both sides ; but she left Bath for some excursion soon after my arrival. Another new resident here will excite, I am sure, a more animated interest ' Mrs. Piozzi.

The Bishop of Salisbury, my old friend, found me out, and came to make me a long and most amiable visit, which was preceded by Mrs.

I-, and we all spent an evening with them very sociably and pleasantly.

FRENCH AFFAIRS. GENERAL D'ARBLAY'S HEALTH.

(Madame d'Arblay to her Son.) Bath, Friday, April 2, 1816.

......The Oppositionists, and all their friends, have now a dread of France, and bend their way to Italy. But the example now given at Paris, in the affair of Messrs. Wilson and Co.(292) that Englishmen are as amenable to the laws and customs of the countries which they inhabit, as foreigners while in England are to ours, will make them more careful, both in spirit and conduct, than heretofore they have deemed it necessary to be, all over the globe. It is a general opinion

Page 387 that there will be a great emigration this summer, because John Bull longs to see something beyond the limited circ.u.mference of his birthright - but that foreign nations will be now so watchful of his proceedings, so jealous of his correspondence, and so easily offended by his declamation or epigrams, that he will be glad to return here, where liberty, when not abused, allows a real and free exercise of true independence of mind, speech, and conduct, such as no other part of the world affords.

I am truly happy not to be at Paris at such a juncture ; for opinions must be cruelly divided, and society almost out of the question. Our letters all confess that scarcely one family is d'acord even with itself. The overstraining royalists make moderate men appear jacobins. The good king must be torn to pieces between his own disposition to clemency, and the vehemence of his partisans against risking any more a general amnesty.

All that consoles me for the length of time required for the cure of your padre's leg is the consequence, in its keeping off his purposed visit. A cold has forced him to relinquish the pump till to-day, when he is gone to make another essay. He is so popular in Bath, that he is visited here by everybody that can make any pretext for calling. I have this moment been interrupted by a letter to invite me with my " bewitching husband " to a villa near Prior Park. He is not insensible to the kindness he meets with - au contraire, it adds greatly to his contentment in the steadiness of a certain young sprig that is inducing him here to plant his final choux; and the more, as we find that, as far as that sprig has been seen here, he, also, has left so favourable an impression, that we are continually desired to introduce him, on his next arrival, wherever we go.

Your kind father, upon your last opening of "All here is well,"

instantly ran down stairs, with a hop, skip, and a jump, and agreed to secure our pretty lodgings for a year.

THE ESCAPE OF LAVALETTE. THE STREATHAM PORTRAITS.

(Madame d'Arblay to her Son.) Bath, April 30, 1816.

The three chevaliers have all been condemned as culpable of aiding a state-criminal to escape, but not accused of any conspiracy against the French government. They Page 388 are therefore, sentenced merely to three months'

imprisonment.(293) Certainly, if their logic were irrefutable, and if the treaty of Paris included the royal pardon with the amnesty accorded by the allied generals, then, to save those who ought not to have been tried would have been meritorious rather than illegal; but the king had no share in that treaty, which could only hold good in a military sense, of security from military prosecution or punishment from the Allies. These Allies, however, did not call themselves conquerors, nor take Paris, nor judge the Parisians ; but so far as belonged to a capitulation, meant, on both sides, to save the capital and its inhabitants from pillage and the sword. Once restored to its rightful monarch, all foreign interference was at an end. Having been seated on the throne by the nation, and having never abdicated, though he had been chased by rebellion from his kingdom, he had never forfeited his privilege to judge which of his subjects were still included in his original amnesty, and which had incurred the penalty or chances of being tried by the laws of the land - and by them, not by royal decree, condemned or acquitted.

A false idea seems encouraged by all the king's enemies, that his amnesty ought to have secured pardon to the condemned: the amnesty could only act up to the period when it was granted and accepted; it could have nothing to do with after-offences.

I am grieved to lose my respect and esteem for a character I had considered so heroical as that of Sir R. Wilson: but to find, through his intercepted correspondence, that the persecution

Page 389

of the Protestants was to be a.s.serted, true or false, to blacken the reigning dynasty. . . to find this truly diabolic idea presented to him by a brother of whom he speaks as the partner of all his thoughts, etc., has consumed every spark of favour in which he was held throughout the whole nation, except, perhaps, in those whom party will make deaf and blind for ever to what opposes their own views and schemes. I do not envy Lord Grey for being a third in such an intercourse, an intercourse teeming with inventive plots and wishes for new revolutions !

Your uncle has bought the picture of my dearest father at Streatham.(294) I am truly rejoiced it will come into our family, since the collection for which it was painted is broken up. Your uncle has also bought the Garrick, which was one of the most agreeable and delightful of the set. To what recollections, at once painful and pleasing, does this sale give birth! In the library, in which those pictures were hung, we always breakfasted; and there I have had as many precious conversations with the great and good Dr. Johnson as there are days in the year. Dr. Johnson sold the highest of all! 'tis an honour to our age, that!--360 pounds! My dear father would have been mounted higher, but that his son Charles was there to bid for himself, and, everybody must have seen, was resolved to have it. There was besides, I doubt not, a feeling for his lineal claim and pious desire.

REGARDING HUSBAND AND SON.