Part 26 (1/2)
(256) Louis-Rene-Edouard, Prince de Rohan (1734-1803). In 1760, soon after taking orders, he was nominated coadjutor to his uncle, Constantin de Rohan, Archbishop of Strasburg and Bishop of Canopus; in 1761 elected member of the Academy; in 1772 amba.s.sador to Vienna on the question of the dismemberment of Poland; in 1777 made Grand Almoner of France; in 1778 Abbot of St. Vaast and cardinal; in 1779 succeeded his uncle as Archbishop of Strasburg, and became Abbot of Noirmoutiers and La Chaise. He led a gay, luxurious, and extravagant life rather than performed his clerical duties; he had political ambitions, but he was never able to overcome the predisposition against him with which Marie Antoinette had come to France. He was a dupe of Cagliostro, and of Mme. de Lamotte-Valois, the adventuress who, in 1782, drew him into the intrigue of the diamond necklace, for which he was sent to the Bastille, and which gave him the name of le cardinal Collier; he was acquitted in 1786, and in 1789 elected to the States-General; in 1791 he refused to take the oath to the Const.i.tution, and went to Ettenheim in the German part of his province, where he died on the 17th of February, 1803.
(257) The States-General did not open until May 5, 1789.
(258) The Convocation of the Notables took place the 19th of December.
(259) Armand Charles Emmanuel, Comte de Hautefort, was born in 1741; he bore the t.i.tle of Grand d'Espagne through his marriage in 1761 with the Comtesse de Hochenfels de Bavere Grand d'Espagne de la premiere cla.s.se.
Richmond of to-day, with its villas and streets, a town of houses occupied by professional and business men who spend their life in London, is unlike the gay and lively resort of the last days of the eighteenth century. Then the elite of the fas.h.i.+onable society of England gathered on the hill and by the river as people now do on the Riviera or in Cairo. ”Richmond is in the first request this summer,” so wrote Walpole in the very year at which we have now arrived. ”Mrs. Bouverie is settled there with a large Court. The Sheridans are there too, and the Bunburys. I go once or twice a week to George Selwyn late in the evening when he comes in from walking; about as often to Mrs. Ellis here and to Lady Cecilia at Hampton.”
Once in Richmond men and women stayed there walking, talking, and calling on each other, sometimes driving into London, but enjoying it as a residence, not as a mere resort for an evening's pleasure.
Selwyn communicated the news of Richmond to his country friends as one does in these days when at some German Spa. It may seem to us, to whom so many opportunities of enjoyment of all kinds and in all parts of the world are open, a tame kind of life to spend days and nights strolling about a London suburb, attending a.s.semblies, playing at cards, with now and then a visit to town or a row on the river. But our ancestors were necessarily limited in their pleasures, and to them Richmond was a G.o.d-send, especially to men like Selwyn, or Queensberry, or Walpole, who delighted in social intercourse, and liked to enjoy what they called rustic life with as much comfort as the age provided. Something of this life we have learned from Walpole's and Miss Berry's letters, but no truer picture of it can be found than in the last letters of Selwyn. To the ordinary habitues of Richmond, however, there were in 1789 and 1790 added a throng of French ladies and gentlemen. Driven from their agreeable salons in Paris, they endeavoured to make the best of life among their English friends at Richmond. Exiled among a people whose language few of them could understand, they' received little of the hospitality which had been so freely extended to English visitors in Paris. It was the last and a sad scene in that remarkable intercourse between the most cultivated people of England and France which is one characteristic of the society of both nations in the eighteenth century. This entente was destroyed by the French Revolution. Selwyn, who had figured in this international society more than most men of the age, lived to tell of its last days in the letters which he wrote during the two final years of his life.
(1789, Aug. 21?) Friday night, Richmond.--I did not come hither till to-day, because I was resolved to stay to see the Duke(260) set out, which he did this morning for Newmarket, from whence he goes with his doctor to York. He said that he should not go to Castle Howard, which I looked upon as certain as that the Princes will be there. It would have been in vain to have held out to him the temptation of seeing his G.o.ddaughter, and I know that, if I had suggested it, he would have laughed at me, which would have made me angry, who think Gertrude(261) an object worth going at least sixteen miles to see.
He was in very good spirits when he left London; and in extraordinary good humour with me. But he would not have me depend, he said, upon his going to Scotland, although he has, sent as many servants in different equipages as if he intended to stay there a twelvemonth. It was quite unnecessary to prepare me against any kind of irresolution of his. After all, I hope that he will go to Castle Howard. I believe it is just five and thirty years since we were there together, and all I know is, that I did not think then that I should ever see it so well furnished as I have since, and I will maintain that Gertrude is not the least pretty meuble that is there.
I was so unsettled while I was in London that I did not even send to make enquiries about your brother or Lady Southerland. I could not have made their party if I had been sure of their being in town. Sir R. and Lady Payne are at Lambeth. They propose coming to dine here in a few days.
I dined with Crowle and the younger Mr. Fawkner yesterday at the Duke's, and asked them many questions about poor Delme's affairs, and concerning Lady Betty. I hear that Lady Julia has been much affected with this accident. He had persuaded himself that he should die, although either Dr. Warren saw no immediate danger, or thought proper not to say so. The French, as I said before, have good reason to say that il n'est permis qu'aux medecins de mentir, and Delme certainly justified the deception, if there was any; but he had at last more fort.i.tude or resolution as I hear than was expected. I hope that Lady Betty will be reconciled to her change of life; there must have been one inevitably, and, perhaps, that not less disagreeable.
I am unhappy that I have not yet received any account of Caroline.
Mr. Woodhouse has returned my visit. I did not conceive it to be proper that Mie Mie should wait upon Mrs. Bacon till an opportunity had been offered of her being presented to her, but I shall be desirous of bringing about that acquaintance. Mrs. Webb is now with us, which is a piece of furniture here, not without its use, and which I am in a habit of seeing with more satisfaction than perhaps Mie Mie, who begins to think naturally a gouvernante to have a mauvais air. I am not quite of that opinion dans les circonstances actuelles.
No more news as yet from France. I expect to have a great deal of discourse on Tuesday with St. Foy, on the subject of this Revolution, which occupies my mind very much, although I have still a great deal of information to acquire. It may be peu de chose, but, as yet, I know no more than that the House of Bourbon, with the n.o.blesse francoise, their revenues and privileges, are in a manner annihilated by a coup de main, as it were, and after an existence of near a thousand years; and if you are now walking in the streets of Paris, ever so quietly, but suspected or marked as one who will not subscribe to this, you are immediately accroche a la Lanterne: tout cela m'est inconcevable. But we are I am sure at the beginning only of this Roman, instead of seeing the new Const.i.tution so quietly established by the first of September, as I have been confidently a.s.sured that it will be.
Preparations were certainly making here for her Majesty the Queen of France's(262) reception, and I am a.s.sured that if the King had not gone as he did to the Hotel de Ville, the Duke of Orleans(263) would immediately have been declared Regent. There seems some sort of fatality in the scheme of forming (sic) a Regent, who, in neither of the two kingdoms, is destine a ne pas arrive a bon part.
But one word more of Delme. I am told that if Lady Betty and Lady J(ulia) live together, they will not have less than two thousand a year to maintain their establishment, including what the Court of Chancery will allow for the guardians.h.i.+p of the children. That will be more comfortable at least than living in the constant dread of the consequences of a heedless dissipation.
It was conjectured that Lord C(arlisle) would bring Mr. Greenville in for Morpeth, which, if it be so, I shall be very glad to hear.
Crowle says that the cook is one of the best servants of the kind that can be, and would go to Lord C. if he wanted one, for sixty pounds a year, par preference to any other place with larger wages.
I was desired to mention this; it may be to no purpose.
The King, as I hear, is not expected to be at Windsor till Michaelmas. I received a letter to-day in such a hand as you never beheld, from Sir Sampson Gideon, now Sir S. Eardley, a name I never heard of before, to dine with him to-morrow at his house in Kent. I was to call at his house in Arlington Street, and there to be informed of the road, and to be three hours and a half in going it.
It was to meet Mr. Pitt, and to eat a turtle: quelle chere! The turtle I should have liked, but how Mr. Pitt is to be dressed I cannot tell. The temptation is great, I grant it, but I have had so much self-denial as to send my excuses. You will not believe it, perhaps, but a Minister, of any description, although served up in his great sh.e.l.l of power, and all his green fat about him, is to me a dish by no means relis.h.i.+ng, and I never knew but one in my life I could pa.s.s an hour with pleasantly, which was Lord Holland. I am certain that if Lord C(arlisle) had been what he seemed to have had once an ambition for, I should not have endured him, although I might perhaps have supported his measures.
You desired me to write to you often. You see, dear Lady Carlisle, toute l'inclination que j'y porte, et que, vraisem(bla)blement, si vous souhaitez d'avoir de mes lettres, une certaine provision de telles fadaises ne vous manquera pas. But I must hear myself from Caroline, or nothing will satisfy me; as yet I have not her direction, and so bad is my memory now, that this morning I could not even be sure if Stackpoole Court was near Milford Haven, Liverpool, or Milbourn Port. I do not comprehend how I could confound these three places, or be so depaise in regard to the geography of this island.
(260) Of Queensberry.
(261) Third daughter of the Earl of Carlisle, married W. Sloane Stanley, Esq.
(262) Marie Antoinette.
(263) Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc d'Orleans (1747-1793). As the Duc de Chartres he pretended to the philosophical opinions of the eighteenth century, but followed the dissolute customs of the Regency. Marie Antoinette never attempted to overcome or conceal her aversion to him, which helped to divide the Court. On the death of his father in 1785 he came into the t.i.tle of the Duc d'Orleans.
Interpolating the King at the famous royal sitting of the 19th of November, 1787, which he attended as a member of the a.s.sembly of Notables, he was exiled to Villers Cotterets; in four months he returned and bought the good will of the journals by money and of the populace by buying up provisions and feeding them at public tables; he was nominated President of the National a.s.sembly but refused the post; he attempted to corrupt the French guards, and so serious were the charges brought against him that La Fayette demanded of the King that he should be sent from the country. He went accordingly to England on a fict.i.tious mission in October of 1789. He returned in eight months to be received with acclamation by the Jacobins, who were, however, themselves irritated at the coolness by which he voted for the death of his cousin, Louis XVI.
in 1792; he was present at the execution, which he beheld unmoved, driving from the scene in a carriage drawn by six horses to spend the night in revelry at Raincy, but the t.i.tle Egalite, which the Commune of Paris had authorised him to a.s.sume for himself and his descendants, did not save him from the same fate. The Convention ordered the arrest of all the members of the Bourbon family, and he was guillotined the 6th of November, 1793. The Duc de Chartres visited England in 1779 and was intimate with the Prince of Wales; on his return he introduced in France the English race meetings, jockeys, and dress. It was said that the Prince of Wales, on hearing of his conduct at the execution of the King, tore into pieces his portrait which he had left him.