My Days of Adventure / The Fall of France, 1870-71

by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

MY DAYS OF ADVENTURE

I

INTRODUCTORY—SOME EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

The Vizetelly Family—My Mother and her Kinsfolk—The Illustrated Times and its Staff—My Unpleasant Disposition—Thackeray and my First Half-Crown—School days at Eastbourne—Queen Alexandra—Garibaldi—A few old Plays and Songs—Nadar and the "Giant" Balloon—My Arrival in France— My Tutor Brossard—Berezowski's Attempt on Alexander II—My Apprenticeship to Journalism—My first Article—I see some French Celebrities—Visits to the Tuileries—At Compiègne—A few Words with Napoleon III—A "Revolutionary" Beard.

This is an age of "Reminiscences," and although I have never played any part in the world's affairs, I have witnessed so many notable things and met so many notable people during the three-score years which I have lately completed, that it is perhaps allowable for me to add yet another volume of personal recollections to the many which have already poured from the press. On starting on an undertaking of this kind it is usual, I perceive by the many examples around me, to say something about one's family and upbringing. There is less reason for me to depart from this practice, as in the course of the present volume it will often be necessary for me to refer to some of my near relations. A few years ago a distinguished Italian philosopher and author, Angelo de Gubernatis, was good enough to include me in a dictionary of writers belonging to the Latin races, and stated, in doing so, that the Vizetellys were of French origin. That was a rather curious mistake on the part of an Italian writer, the truth being that the family originated at Ravenna, where some members of it held various offices in the Middle Ages. Subsequently, after dabbling in a conspiracy, some of the Vizzetelli fled to Venice and took to glass-making there, until at last Jacopo, from whom I am descended, came to England in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth. From that time until my own the men of my family invariably married English women, so that very little Italian blood can flow in my veins.

Matrimonial alliances are sometimes of more than personal interest. One point has particularly struck me in regard to those contracted by members of my own family, this being the diversity of English counties from which the men have derived their wives and the women their husbands. References to Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Berkshire, Bucks, Suffolk, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Devonshire, in addition to Middlesex, otherwise London, appear in my family papers. We have become connected with Johnstons, Burslems, Bartletts, Pitts, Smiths, Wards, Covells, Randalls, Finemores, Radfords, Hindes, Pollards, Lemprières, Wakes, Godbolds, Ansells, Fennells, Vaughans, Edens, Scotts, and Pearces, and I was the very first member of the family (subsequent to its arrival in England) to take a foreigner as wife, she being the daughter of a landowner of Savoy who proceeded from the Tissots of Switzerland. My elder brother Edward subsequently married a Burgundian girl named Clerget, and my stepbrother Frank chose an American one, née Krehbiel, as his wife, these marriages occurring because circumstances led us to live for many years abroad.

Among the first London parishes with which the family was connected was St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, where my forerunner, the first Henry Vizetelly, was buried in 1691, he then being fifty years of age, and where my father, the second Henry of the name, was baptised soon after his birth in 1820. St. Bride's, Fleet Street, was, however, our parish for many years, as its registers testify, though in 1781 my great-grandfather was resident in the parish of St. Ann's, Blackfriars, and was elected constable thereof. At that date the family name, which figures in old English registers under a variety of forms—Vissitaler, Vissitaly, Visataly, Visitelly, Vizetely, etc.—was by him spelt Vizzetelly, as is shown by documents now in the Guildhall Library; but a few years later he dropped the second z, with the idea, perhaps, of giving the name a more English appearance.

This great-grandfather of mine was, like his father before him, a printer and a member of the Stationers' Company. He was twice married, having by his first wife two sons, George and William, neither of whom left posterity. The former, I believe, died in the service of the Honourable East India Company. In June, 1775, however, my great-grandfather married Elizabeth, daughter of James Hinde, stationer, of Little Moorfields, and had by her, first, a daughter Elizabeth, from whom some of the Burslems and Godbolds are descended; and, secondly, twins, a boy and a girl, who were respectively christened James Henry and Mary Mehetabel. The former became my grandfather. In August, 1816, he married, at St. Bride's, Martha Jane Vaughan, daughter of a stage-coach proprietor of Chester, and had by her a daughter, who died unmarried, and four sons—my father, Henry Richard, and my uncles James, Frank, and Frederick Whitehead Vizetelly.

Some account of my grandfather is given in my father's "Glances Back through Seventy Years," and I need not add to it here. I will only say that, like his immediate forerunners, James Henry Vizetelly was a printer and freeman of the city. A clever versifier, and so able as an amateur actor that on certain occasions he replaced Edmund Kean on the boards when the latter was hopelessly drunk, he died in 1840, leaving his two elder sons, James and Henry, to carry on the printing business, which was then established in premises occupying the site of the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street.

In 1844 my father married Ellen Elizabeth, only child of John Pollard, M.D., a member of the ancient Yorkshire family of the Pollards of Bierley and Brunton, now chiefly represented, I believe, by the Pollards of Scarr Hall. John Pollard's wife, Charlotte Maria Fennell, belonged to a family which gave officers to the British Navy—one of them serving directly under Nelson—and clergy to the Church of England. The Fennells were related to the Brontë sisters through the latter's mother; and one was closely connected with the Shackle who founded the original John Bull newspaper. Those, then, were my kinsfolk on the maternal side. My mother presented my father with seven children, of whom I was the sixth, being also the fourth son. I was born on November 29, 1853, at a house called Chalfont Lodge in Campden House Road, Kensington, and well do I remember the great conflagration which destroyed the fine old historical mansion built by Baptist Hicks, sometime a mercer in Cheapside and ultimately Viscount Campden. But another scene which has more particularly haunted me all through my life was that of my mother's sudden death in a saloon carriage of an express train on the London and Brighton line. Though she was in failing health, nobody thought her end so near; but in the very midst of a journey to London, whilst the train was rushing on at full speed, and no help could be procured, a sudden weakness came over her, and in a few minutes she passed away. I was very young at the time, barely five years old, yet everything still rises before me with all the vividness of an imperishable memory. Again, too, I see that beautiful intellectual brow and those lustrous eyes, and hear that musical voice, and feel the gentle touch of that loving motherly hand. She was a woman of attainments, fond of setting words to music, speaking perfect French, for she had been partly educated at Evreux in Normandy, and having no little knowledge of Greek and Latin literature, as was shown by her annotations to a copy of Lemprière's "Classical Dictionary" which is now in my possession.

About eighteen months after I was born, that is in the midst of the Crimean War, my father founded, in conjunction with David Bogue, a well-known publisher of the time, a journal called the Illustrated Times, which for several years competed successfully with the Illustrated London News. It was issued at threepence per copy, and an old memorandum of the printers now lying before me shows that in the paper's earlier years the average printings were 130,000 copies weekly—a notable figure for that period, and one which was considerably exceeded when any really important event occurred. My father was the chief editor and manager, his leading coadjutor being Frederick Greenwood, who afterwards founded the Pall Mall Gazette. I do not think that Greenwood's connection with the Illustrated Times and with my father's other journal, the Welcome Guest, is mentioned in any of the accounts of his career. The literary staff included four of the Brothers Mayhew— Henry, Jules, Horace, and Augustus, two of whom, Jules and Horace, became godfathers to my father's first children by his second wife. Then there were also William and Robert Brough, Edmund Yates, George Augustus Sala, Hain Friswell, W.B. Rands, Tom Robertson, Sutherland Edwards, James Hannay, Edward Draper, and Hale White (father of "Mark Rutherford"), and several artists and engravers, such as Birket Foster, "Phiz." Portch, Andrews, Duncan, Skelton, Bennett, McConnell, Linton, London, and Horace Harrall. I saw all those men in my early years, for my father was very hospitably inclined, and they were often guests at Chalfont Lodge.

After my mother's death, my grandmother, née Vaughan, took charge of the establishment, and I soon became the terror of the house, developing a most violent temper and acquiring the vocabulary of the roughest market porter. My wilfulness was probably innate (nearly all the Vizetellys having had impulsive wills of their own), and my flowery language was picked up by perversely loitering to listen whenever there happened to be a street row in Church Lane, which I had to cross on my way to or from Kensington Gardens, my daily place of resort. At an early age I started bullying my younger brother, I defied my grandmother, insulted the family doctor because he was too fond of prescribing grey powders for my particular benefit, and behaved abominably to the excellent Miss Lindup of Sheffield Terrace, who endeavoured to instruct me in the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic. I frequently astonished or appalled the literary men and artists who were my father's guests. I hated being continually asked what I should like to be when I grew up, and the slightest chaff threw me into a perfect paroxysm of passion. Whilst, however, I was resentful of the authority of others, I was greatly inclined to exercise authority myself—to such a degree, indeed, that my father's servants generally spoke of me as "the young master," regardless of the existence of my elder brothers.

Having already a retentive memory, I was set to learn sundry "recitations," and every now and then was called upon to emerge from behind the dining-room curtains and repeat "My Name is Norval" or "The Spanish Armada," for the delectation of my father's friends whilst they lingered over their wine. Disaster generally ensued, provoked either by some genial chaff or well-meant criticism from such men as Sala and Augustus Mayhew, and I was ultimately carried off—whilst venting incoherent protests—to be soundly castigated and put to bed.

Among the real celebrities who occasionally called at Chalfont Lodge was Thackeray, whom I can still picture sitting on one side of the fireplace, whilst my father sat on the other, I being installed on the hearthrug between them. Provided that I was left to myself, I could behave decently enough, discreetly preserving silence, and, indeed, listening intently to the conversation of my father's friends, and thereby picking up a very odd mixture of knowledge. I was, I believe, a pale little chap with lank fair hair and a wistful face, and no casual observer would have imagined that my nature was largely compounded of such elements as enter into the composition of Italian brigands, Scandinavian pirates, and wild Welshmen. Thackeray, at all events, did not appear to think badly of the little boy who sat so quietly at his feet. One day, indeed, when he came upon me and my younger brother Arthur, with our devoted attendant Selina Horrocks, in Kensington Gardens, he put into practice his own dictum that one could never see a schoolboy without feeling an impulse to dip one's hand in one's pocket. Accordingly he presented me with the first half-crown I ever possessed, for though my father's gifts were frequent they were small. It was understood, I believe, that I was to share the aforesaid half-crown with my brother Arthur, but in spite of the many remonstrances of the faithful Selina—a worthy West-country woman, who had largely taken my mother's place—I appropriated the gift in its entirety, and became extremely ill by reason of my many indiscreet purchases at a tuck-stall which stood, if I remember rightly, at a corner of the then renowned Kensington Flower Walk. This incident must have occurred late in Thackeray's life. My childish recollection of him is that of a very big gentleman with beaming eyes.

My grandmother's reign in my father's house was not of great duration, as in February, 1861, he contracted a second marriage, taking on this occasion as his wife a "fair maid of Kent," [Elizabeth Anne Ansell, of Broadstairs; mother of my step-brother, Dr. Frank H. Vizetelly, editor of the "Standard Dictionary," New York.] to whose entry into our home I was at first violently opposed, but who promptly won me over by her unremitting affection and kindness, eventually becoming the best and truest friend of my youth and early manhood. My circumstances changed, however, soon after that marriage, for as I was now nearly eight years old it was deemed appropriate that I should be sent to a boarding-school, both by way of improving my mind and of having some nonsense knocked out of me, which, indeed, was promptly accomplished by the pugnacious kindness of my schoolfellows. Among the latter was one, my senior by a few years, who became a very distinguished journalist. I refer to the late Horace Voules, so long associated with Labouchere's journal, Truth. My brother Edward was also at the same school, and my brother Arthur came there a little later.

It was situated at Eastbourne, and a good deal has been written about it in recent works on the history of that well-known watering-place, which, when I was first sent there, counted less than 6000 inhabitants. Located in the old town or village, at a distance of a mile or more from the sea, the school occupied a building called "The Gables," and was an offshoot of a former ancient school connected with the famous parish church. In my time this "academy" was carried on as a private venture by a certain James Anthony Bown, a portly old gentleman of considerable attainments.

I was unusually precocious in some respects, and though I frequently got into scrapes by playing impish tricks—as, for instance, when I combined with others to secure an obnoxious French master to his chair by means of some cobbler's wax, thereby ruining a beautiful pair of peg-top trousers which he had just purchased—I did not neglect my lessons, but secured a number of "prizes" with considerable facility. When I was barely twelve years old, not one of my schoolfellows—and some were sixteen and seventeen years old—could compete with me in Latin, in which language Bown ended by taking me separately. I also won three or four prizes for "excelling" my successive classes in English grammar as prescribed by the celebrated Lindley Murray.

In spite of my misdeeds (some of which, fortunately, were never brought home to me), I became, I think, somewhat of a favourite with the worthy James Anthony, for he lent me interesting books to read, occasionally had me to supper in his own quarters, and was now and then good enough to overlook the swollen state of my nose or the blackness of one of my eyes when I had been having a bout with a schoolfellow or a young clodhopper of the village. We usually fought with the village lads in Love Lane on Sunday evenings, after getting over the playground wall. I received firstly the nickname of Moses, through falling among some rushes whilst fielding a ball at cricket; and secondly, that of Noses, because my nasal organ, like that of Cyrano de Bergerac, suddenly grew to huge proportions, in such wise that it embodied sufficient material for two noses of ordinary dimensions. Its size was largely responsible for my defeats when fighting, for I found it difficult to keep guard over such a prominent organ and prevent my claret from being tapped.

Having generations of printers' ink mingled with my blood, I could not escape the unkind fate which made me a writer of articles and books. In conjunction with a chum named Clement Ireland I ran a manuscript school journal, which included stories of pirates and highwaymen, illustrated with lurid designs in which red ink was plentifully employed in order to picture the gore which flowed so freely through the various tales. My grandmother Vaughan was an inveterate reader of the London Journal and the Family Herald, and whenever I went home for my holidays I used to pounce upon those journals and devour some of the stories of the author of "Minnegrey," as well as Miss Braddon's "Aurora Floyd" and "Henry Dunbar." The perusal of books by Ainsworth, Scott, Lever, Marryat, James Grant, G. P. R. James, Dumas, and Whyte Melville gave me additional material for storytelling; and so, concocting wonderful blends of all sorts of fiction, I spun many a yarn to my schoolfellows in the dormitory in which I slept—yarns which were sometimes supplied in instalments, being kept up for a week or longer.

My summer holidays were usually spent in the country, but at other times I went to London, and was treated to interesting sights. At Kensington, in my earlier years, I often saw Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort with their children, notably the Princess Royal (Empress Frederick) and the Prince of Wales (Edward VII). When the last-named married the "Sea-King's daughter from over the sea"—since then our admired and gracious Queen Alexandra—and they drove together through the crowded streets of London on their way to Windsor, I came specially from Eastbourne to witness that triumphal progress, and even now I can picture the young prince with his round chubby face and little side-whiskers, and the vision of almost tearfully-smiling beauty, in blue and white, which swept past my eager boyish eyes.

During the Easter holidays of 1864 Garibaldi came to England. My uncle, Frank Vizetelly, was the chief war-artist of that period, the predecessor, in fact, of the late Melton Prior. He knew Garibaldi well, having first met him during the war of 1859, and having subsequently accompanied him during his campaign through Sicily and then on to Naples—afterwards, moreover, staying with him at Caprera. And so my uncle carried me and his son, my cousin Albert, to Stafford House (where he had the entrée), and the grave-looking Liberator patted us on the head, called us his children, and at Frank Vizetelly's request gave us photographs of himself. I then little imagined that I should next see him in France, at the close of the war with Germany, during a part of which my brother Edward acted as one of his orderly officers.

My father, being at the head of a prominent London newspaper, often received tickets for one and another theatre. Thus, during my winter holidays, I saw many of the old pantomimes at Drury Lane and elsewhere. I also well remember Sothern's "Lord Dundreary," and a play called "The Duke's Motto," which was based on Paul Féval's novel, "Le Bossu." I frequently witnessed the entertainments given by the German Reeds, Corney Grain, and Woodin, the clever quick-change artist. I likewise remember Leotard the acrobat at the Alhambra, and sundry performances at the old Pantheon, where I heard such popular songs as "The Captain with the Whiskers" and "The Charming Young Widow I met in the Train." Nigger ditties were often the "rage" during my boyhood, and some of them, like "Dixie-land" and "So Early in the Morning," still linger in my memory. Then, too, there were such songs as "Billy Taylor," "I'm Afloat," "I'll hang my Harp on a Willow Tree," and an inane composition which contained the lines—

"When a lady elopes
Down a ladder of ropes,
She may go, she may go,
She may go to—Hongkong—for me!"

In those schoolboy days of mine, however, the song of songs, to my thinking, was one which we invariably sang on breaking up for the holidays. Whether it was peculiar to Eastbourne or had been derived from some other school I cannot say. I only know that the last verse ran, approximately, as follows:

"Magistrorum is a borum,
Hic-haec-hoc has made his bow.
Let us cry: 'O cockalorum!'
That's the Latin for us now.
Alpha, beta, gamma, delta,
Off to Greece, for we are free!
Helter, skelter, melter, pelter,
We're the lads for mirth and spree!"

For "cockalorum," be it noted, we frequently substituted the name of some particularly obnoxious master.

To return to the interesting sights of my boyhood, I have some recollection of the Exhibition of 1862, but can recall more vividly a visit to the Crystal Palace towards the end of the following year, when I there saw the strange house-like oar of the "Giant" balloon in which Nadar, the photographer and aeronaut, had lately made, with his wife and others, a memorable and disastrous aerial voyage. Readers of Jules Verne will remember that Nadar figures conspicuously in his "Journey to the Moon." Quite a party of us went to the Palace to see the "Giant's" car, and Nadar, standing over six feet high, with a great tangled mane of frizzy flaxen hair, a ruddy moustache, and a red shirt à la Garibaldi, took us inside it and showed us all the accommodation it contained for eating, sleeping and photographic purposes. I could not follow what he said, for I then knew only a few French words, and I certainly had no idea that I should one day ascend into the air with him in a car of a very different type, that of the captive balloon which, for purposes of military observation, he installed on the Place Saint Pierre at Montmartre, during the German siege of Paris.

A time came when my father disposed of his interest in the Illustrated Times and repaired to Paris to take up the position of Continental representative of the Illustrated London News. My brother Edward, at that time a student at the École des Beaux Arts, then became his assistant, and a little later I was taken across the Channel with my brother Arthur to join the rest of the family. We lived, first, at Auteuil, and then at Passy, where I was placed in a day-school called the Institution Nouissel, where lads were prepared for admission to the State or municipal colleges. There had been some attempt to teach me French at Eastbourne, but it had met with little success, partly, I think, because I was prejudiced against the French generally, regarding them as a mere race of frog-eaters whom we had deservedly whacked at Waterloo. Eventually my prejudices were in a measure overcome by what I heard from our drill-master, a retired non-commissioned officer, who had served in the Crimea, and who told us some rousing anecdotes about the gallantry of "our allies" at the Alma and elsewhere. In the result, the old sergeant's converse gave me "furiously to think" that there might be some good in the French after all.

At Nouissel's I acquired some knowledge of the language rapidly enough, and I was afterwards placed in the charge of a tutor, a clever scamp named Brossard, who prepared me for the Lycée Bonaparte (now Condorcet), where I eventually became a pupil, Brossard still continuing to coach me with a view to my passing various examinations, and ultimately securing the usual baccalauréat, without which nobody could then be anything at all in France. In the same way he coached Evelyn Jerrold, son of Blanchard and grandson of Douglas Jerrold, both of whom were on terms of close friendship with the Vizetellys. But while Brossard was a clever man, he was also an unprincipled one, and although I was afterwards indebted to him for an introduction to old General Changarnier, to whom he was related, it would doubtless have been all the better if he had not introduced me to some other people with whom he was connected. He lived for a while with a woman who was not his wife, and deserted her for a girl of eighteen, whom he also abandoned, in order to devote himself to a creature in fleshings who rode a bare-backed steed at the Cirque de l'Impératrice. When I was first introduced to her "behind the scenes," she was bestriding a chair, and smoking a pink cigarette, and she addressed me as mon petit. Briefly, the moral atmosphere of Brossard's life was not such as befitted him to be a mentor of youth.

Let me now go back a little. At the time of the great Paris Exhibition of 1867 I was in my fourteenth year. The city was then crowded with royalties, many of whom I saw on one or another occasion. I was in the Bois de Boulogne with my father when, after a great review, a shot was fired at the carriage in which Napoleon III and his guest, Alexander II of Russia, were seated side by side. I saw equerry Raimbeaux gallop forward to screen the two monarchs, and I saw the culprit seized by a sergeant of our Royal Engineers, attached to the British section of the Exhibition. Both sovereigns stood up in the carriage to show that they were uninjured, and it was afterwards reported that the Emperor Napoleon said to the Emperor Alexander: "If that shot was fired by an Italian it was meant for me; if by a Pole, it was meant for your Majesty." Whether those words were really spoken, or were afterwards invented, as such things often are, by some clever journalist, I cannot say; but the man proved to be a Pole named Berezowski, who was subsequently sentenced to transportation for life.

It was in connection with this attempt on the Czar that I did my first little bit of journalistic work. By my father's directions, I took a few notes and made a hasty little sketch of the surroundings. This and my explanations enabled M. Jules Pelcoq, an artist of Belgian birth, whom my father largely employed on behalf of the Illustrated London News, to make a drawing which appeared on the first page of that journal's next issue. I do not think that any other paper in the world was able to supply a pictorial representation of Berezowski's attempt.

I have said enough, I think, to show that I was a precocious lad, perhaps, indeed, a great deal too precocious. However, I worked very hard in those days. My hours at Bonaparte were from ten to twelve and from two to four. I had also to prepare home-lessons for the Lycée, take special lessons from Brossard, and again lessons in German from a tutor named With. Then, too, my brother Edward ceasing to act as my father's assistant in order to devote himself to journalism on his own account, I had to take over a part of his duties. One of my cousins, Montague Vizetelly (son of my uncle James, who was the head of our family), came from England, however, to assist my father in the more serious work, such as I, by reason of my youth, could not yet perform. My spare time was spent largely in taking instructions to artists or fetching drawings from them. At one moment I might be at Mont-martre, and at another in the Quartier Latin, calling on Pelcoq, Anastasi, Janet Lange, Gustave Janet, Pauquet, Thorigny, Gaildrau, Deroy, Bocourt, Darjou, Lix, Moulin, Fichot, Blanchard, or other artists who worked for the Illustrated London News. Occasionally a sketch was posted to England, but more frequently I had to despatch some drawing on wood by rail. Though I have never been anything but an amateurish draughtsman myself, I certainly developed a critical faculty, and acquired a knowledge of different artistic methods, during my intercourse with so many of the dessinateurs of the last years of the Second Empire.

By-and-by more serious duties were allotted to me. The "Paris Fashions" design then appearing every month in the Illustrated London News was for a time prepared according to certain dresses which Worth and other famous costumiers made for empresses, queens, princesses, great ladies, and theatrical celebrities; and, accompanying Pelcoq or Janet when they went to sketch those gowns (nowadays one would simply obtain photographs), I took down from la première, or sometimes from Worth himself, full particulars respecting materials and styles, in order that the descriptive letterpress, which was to accompany the illustration, might be correct.

In this wise I served my apprenticeship to journalism. My father naturally revised my work. The first article, all my own, which appeared in print was one on that notorious theatrical institution, the Claque. I sent it to Once a Week, which E. S. Dallas then edited, and knowing that he was well acquainted with my father, and feeling very diffident respecting the merits of what I had written, I assumed a nom de plume ("Charles Ludhurst") for the occasion, Needless to say that I was delighted when I saw the article in print, and yet more so when I received for it a couple of guineas, which I speedily expended on gloves, neckties, and a walking-stick. Here let me say that we were rather swagger young fellows at Bonaparte. We did not have to wear hideous ill-fitting uniforms like other Lycéens, but endeavoured to present a very smart appearance. Thus we made it a practice to wear gloves and to carry walking-sticks or canes on our way to or from the Lycée. I even improved on that by buying "button-holes" at the flower-market beside the Madeleine, and this idea "catching on," as the phrase goes, quite a commotion occurred one morning when virtually half my classmates were found wearing flowers—for it happened to be La Saint Henri, the fête-day of the Count de Chambord, and both our Proviseur and our professor imagined that this was, on our part, a seditious Legitimist demonstration. There were, however, very few Legitimists among us, though Orleanists and Republicans were numerous.

I have mentioned that my first article was on the Claque, that organisation established to encourage applause in theatres, it being held that the Parisian spectator required to be roused by some such method. Brossard having introduced me to the sous-chef of the Claque at the Opéra Comique, I often obtained admission to that house as a claqueur. I even went to a few other theatres in the same capacity. Further, Brossard knew sundry authors and journalists, and took me to the Café de Suède and the Café de Madrid, where I saw and heard some of the celebrities of the day. I can still picture the great Dumas, loud of voice and exuberant in gesture whilst holding forth to a band of young "spongers," on whom he was spending his last napoleons. I can also see Gambetta—young, slim, black-haired and bearded, with a full sensual underlip—seated at the same table as Delescluze, whose hair and beard, once red, had become a dingy white, whose figure was emaciated and angular, and whose yellowish, wrinkled face seemed to betoken that he was possessed by some fixed idea. What that idea was, the Commune subsequently showed. Again, I can see Henri Rochefort and Gustave Flourens together: the former straight and sinewy, with a great tuft of very dark curly hair, flashing eyes and high and prominent cheekbones; while the latter, tall and bald, with long moustaches and a flowing beard, gazed at you in an eager imperious way, as if he were about to issue some command.

Other men who helped to overthrow the Empire also became known to me. My father, whilst engaged in some costly litigation respecting a large castellated house which he had leased at Le Vésinet, secured Jules Favre as his advocate, and on various occasions I went with him to Favre's residence. Here let me say that my father, in spite of all his interest in French literature, did not know the language. He could scarcely express himself in it, and thus he always made it a practice to have one of his sons with him, we having inherited our mother's linguistic gifts. Favre's command of language was great, but his eloquence was by no means rousing, and I well remember that when he pleaded for my father, the three judges of the Appeal Court composed themselves to sleep, and did not awaken until the counsel opposed to us started banging his fist and shouting in thunderous tones. Naturally enough, as the judges never heard our side of the case, but only our adversary's, they decided against us.

Some retrenchment then became necessary on my father's part, and he sent my step-mother, her children and my brother Arthur, to Saint Servan in Brittany, where he rented a house which was called "La petite Amélia," after George III's daughter of that name, who, during some interval of peace between France and Great Britain, went to stay at Saint Servan for the benefit of her health. The majority of our family having repaired there and my cousin Monty returning to England some time in 1869, I remained alone with my father in Paris. We resided in what I may call a bachelor's flat at No. 16, Rue de Miromesnil, near the Elysée Palace. The principal part of the house was occupied by the Count and Countess de Chateaubriand and their daughters. The Countess was good enough to take some notice of me, and subsequently, when she departed for Combourg at the approach of the German siege, she gave me full permission to make use, if necessary, of the coals and wood left in the Chateaubriand cellars.

In 1869, the date I have now reached, I was in my sixteenth year, still studying, and at the same time giving more and more assistance to my father in connection with his journalistic work. He has included in his "Glances Back" some account of the facilities which enabled him to secure adequate pictorial delineation of the Court life of the Empire. He has told the story of Moulin, the police-agent, who frequently watched over the Emperor's personal safety, and who also supplied sketches of Court functions for the use of the Illustrated London News. Napoleon III resembled his great-uncle in at least one respect. He fully understood the art of advertisement; and, in his desire to be thought well of in England, he was always ready to favour English journalists. Whilst a certain part of the London Press preserved throughout the reign a very critical attitude towards the Imperial policy, it is certain that some of the Paris correspondents were in close touch with the Emperor's Government, and that some of them were actually subsidized by it.

The best-informed man with respect to Court and social events was undoubtedly Mr. Felix Whiteburst of The Daily Telegraph, whom I well remember. He had the entrée at the Tuileries and elsewhere, and there were occasions when very important information was imparted to him with a view to its early publication in London. For the most part, however, Whitehurst confined himself to chronicling events or incidents occurring at Court or in Bonapartist high society. Anxious to avoid giving offence, he usually glossed over any scandal that occurred, or dismissed it airily, with the désinvolture of a roué of the Regency. Withal, he was an extremely amiable man, very condescending towards me when we met, as sometimes happened at the Tuileries itself.

I had to go there on several occasions to meet Moulin, the detective-artist, by appointment, and a few years ago this helped me to write a book which has been more than once reprinted. [Note] I utilized in it many notes made by me in 1869-70, notably with respect to the Emperor and Empress's private apartments, the kitchens, and the arrangements made for balls and banquets. I am not aware at what age a young fellow is usually provided with his first dress-suit, but I know that mine was made about the time I speak of. I was then, I suppose, about five feet five inches in height, and my face led people to suppose that I was eighteen or nineteen years of age.

[Note: The work in question was entitled "The Court of the Tuileries, 1852-1870," by "Le Petit Homme Rouge"—a pseudonym which I have since used when producing other books. "The Court of the Tuileries" was founded in part on previously published works, on a quantity of notes and memoranda made by my father, other relatives, and myself, and on some of the private papers of one of my wife's kinsmen, General Mollard, who after greatly distinguishing himself at the Tchernaya and Magenta, became for a time an aide-de-camp to Napoleon III.]

In the autumn of 1869, I fell rather ill from over-study—I had already begun to read up Roman law—and, on securing a holiday, I accompanied my father to Compiègne, where the Imperial Court was then staying. We were not among the invited guests, but it had been arranged that every facility should be given to the Illustrated London News representatives in order that the Court villegiatura might be fully depicted in that journal. I need not recapitulate my experiences on this occasion. There is an account of our visit in my father's "Glances Back," and I inserted many additional particulars in my "Court of the Tuileries." I may mention, however, that it was at Compiègne that I first exchanged a few words with Napoleon III.

One day, my father being unwell (the weather was intensely cold), I proceeded to the château [We slept at the Hôtel de la Cloche, but had the entrée to the château at virtually any time.] accompanied only by our artist, young M. Montbard, who was currently known as "Apollo" in the Quartier Latin, where he delighted the habitués of the Bal Bullier by a style of choregraphy in comparison with which the achievements subsequently witnessed at the notorious Moulin Rouge would have sunk into insignificance. Montbard had to make a couple of drawings on the day I have mentioned, and it so happened that, whilst we were going about with M. de la Ferrière, the chamberlain on duty, Napoleon III suddenly appeared before us. Directly I was presented to him he spoke to me in English, telling me that he often saw the Illustrated London News, and that the illustrations of French life and Paris improvements (in which he took so keen an interest) were very ably executed. He asked me also how long I had been in France, and where I had learnt the language. Then, remarking that it was near the déjeuner hour, he told M. de la Ferrière to see that Montbard and myself were suitably entertained.

I do not think that I had any particular political opinions at that time. Montbard, however, was a Republican—in fact, a future Communard—and I know that he did not appreciate his virtually enforced introduction to the so-called "Badinguet." Still, he contrived to be fairly polite, and allowed the Emperor to inspect the sketch he was making. There was to be a theatrical performance at the château that evening, and it had already been arranged that Montbard should witness it. On hearing, however, that it had been impossible to provide my father and myself with seats, on account of the great demand for admission on the part of local magnates and the officers of the garrison, the Emperor was good enough to say, after I had explained that my father's indisposition would prevent him from attending: "Voyons, vous pourrez bien trouver une petite place pour ce jeune homme. Il n'est pas si grand, et je suis sûr que cela lui fera plaisir." M. de la Ferrière bowed, and thus it came to pass that I witnessed the performance after all, being seated on a stool behind some extremely beautiful women whose white shoulders repeatedly distracted my attention from the stage. In regard to Montbard there was some little trouble, as M. de la Ferrière did not like the appearance of his "revolutionary-looking beard," the sight of which, said he, might greatly alarm the Empress. Montbard, however, indignantly refused to shave it off, and ten months later the "revolutionary beards" were predominant, the power and the pomp of the Empire having been swept away amidst all the disasters of invasion.