LETTER X.
PARIS, September, 1805.
My LORD:—I was lately invited to a tea-party by one of our rich upstarts, who, from a scavenger, is, by the Revolution and by Bonaparte, transformed into a Legislator, Commander of the Legion of Honour, and possessor of wealth amounting to eighteen millions of livres. In this house I saw for the first time the famous Madame Chevalier, the mistress, and the indirect cause of the untimely end, of the unfortunate Paul the First. She is very short, fat, and coarse. I do not know whether prejudice, from what I have heard of her vile, greedy, and immoral character, influenced my feelings, but she appeared to me a most artful, vain, and disagreeable woman. She looked to be about thirty-six years of age; and though she might when younger have been well made, it is impossible that she could ever have been handsome. The features of her face are far from being regular. Her mouth is large, her eyes hollow, and her nose short. Her language is that of brothels, and her manners correspond with her expressions. She is the daughter of a workman at a silk manufactory at Lyons; she ceased to be a maid before she had attained the age of a woman, and lived in a brothel in her native city, kept by a Madame Thibault, where her husband first became acquainted with her. She then had a tolerably good voice, was young and insinuating, and he introduced her on the same stage where he was one of the inferior dancers. Here in a short time she improved so much, that she was engaged as a supernumerary; her salary in France as an actress was, however, never above twelve hundred livres in the year—which was four hundred livres more than her husband received.
He, with several other inferior and unprincipled actors and dancers, quitted the stage in the beginning of the Revolution for the clubs; and instead of diverting his audience, resolved to reform and regenerate his nation. His name is found in the annals of the crimes perpetrated at Lyons, by the side of that of a Fouche, a Collot d'Herbois, and other wicked offsprings of rebellion. With all other terrorists, he was imprisoned for some time after the death of Robespierre; as soon as restored to liberty, he set out with his wife for Hamburg, where some amateurs had constructed a French theatre.
It was in the autumn of 1795 when Madame Chevalier was first heard of in the North of Europe, where her arrival occasioned a kind of theatrical war between the French, American, and Hamburg Jacobins on one side, and the English and emigrant loyalists on the other. Having no money to continue her pretended journey to Sweden, she asked the manager of the French theatre at Hamburg to allow her a benefit, and permission to play on that night. She selected, of course, a part in which she could appear to the most advantage, and was deservedly applauded. The very next evening the Jacobin cabal called the manager upon the stage, and insisted that Madame Chevalier should be given a regular engagement. He replied that no place suitable to her talents was vacant, and that it would be ungenerous to turn away for her sake another actress with whom the public had hitherto declared their satisfaction. The Jacobins continued inflexible, and here, as well as everywhere else, supported injustice by violence. As the patriotism of the husband, more than the charms of the wife, was known to have produced this indecent fracas, which for upwards of a week interrupted the plays, all anti-Jacobins united to restore order. In this they would, perhaps, have finally succeeded, had not the bayonets of the Hamburg soldiers interfered, and forced this precious piece of revolutionary furniture upon the manager and upon the stage.
After displaying her gratitude in her own way to each individual of the Jacobin levy en masse in her favour, she was taken into keeping by a then rich and married Hamburg merchant, who made her a present of a richly and elegantly furnished house, and expended besides ten thousand louis d'or on her, before he had a mortifying conviction that some other had partaken of those favours for which he had so dearly paid. A countryman of yours then showed himself with more noise than honour upon the scene, and made his debut with a phaeton and four, which he presented to his theatrical goddess, together with his own dear portrait, set round with large and valuable diamonds. Madame Chevalier, however, soon afterwards hearing that her English gallant had come over to Germany for economy, and that his credit with his banker was nearly exhausted, had his portrait changed for that of another and richer lover, preserving, however, the diamonds; and she exposed this inconstancy even upon the stage, by suspending, as if in triumph, the new portrait fastened on her bosom. The Englishman, wishing to retrieve his phaeton and horses, which he protested only to have lent his belle, found that she had put the whole equipage into a kind of lottery, or raffle, to which all her numerous friends had subscribed, and that an Altona Jew had won it.
The successor of your countryman was a Russian nobleman, succeeded in his turn by a Polish Jew, who was ruined and discarded within three months. She then became the property of the public, and, by her active industry, during a stay of four years at Hamburg, she was enabled to remit to France, before her departure for Russia, one million two hundred thousand livres. Her popularity was, however, at that period, very much on the decline, as she had stooped to the most indelicate means to collect money, and to extort it from her friends and acquaintances. She had always lists of subscriptions in her pocket; some with proposals to play in her lotteries for trinkets unnecessary to her; others, to procure her, by the assistance of subscribers, some trinkets which she wanted.
I suppose it to be no secret to you that the female agents of Talleyrand's secret diplomacy are frequently more useful than those of the other sex. I am told that Madame Rochechouart was that friend of our Ministers who engaged Madame Chevalier in her Russian expedition, and who instructed her how to act her parts well at St. Petersburg. I need not repeat what is so well known, that, after this artful emissary had ruined the domestic happiness of the Russian Monarch, she degraded him in his political transactions, and became the indirect cause of his untimely end, in procuring, for a bribe of fifty thousand roubles in money and jewels, the recall of one of the principal conspirators against the unfortunate Paul.
The wealth she plundered in the Russian capital, within the short period of twenty months, amounted to much above one million of roubles. For money she procured impunity for crime, and brought upon innocence the punishment merited by guilt. The scaffolds of Russia were bleeding, and the roads to Siberia crowded with the victims of the avarice of this female demon, who often promised what she was unable to perform, and, to silence complaint, added cruelty to fraud, and, after pocketing the bribe, resorted to the executioner to remove those whom she had duped. The shocking anecdote of the Sardinian secretary, whom she swindled out of nearly a hundred thousand roubles, and on whom she afterwards persuaded her Imperial lover to inflict capital punishment, is too recent and too public to be unknown or forgotten. A Russian nobleman has assured me that the number of unfortunate individuals whom her and her husband's intrigues have caused to suffer capitally during 1800 and 1801 was forty-six; and that nearly three hundred persons besides, who could not or would not pay their extortionate demands, were exiled to Siberia during the same period of time.
You may, perhaps, think that a low woman who could produce such great and terrible events, must be mistress of natural charms, as well as of acquired accomplishments. As I have already stated, she can have no pretensions to either, but she is extremely insinuating, sings tolerably well, has a fresh and healthy look, and possesses an unusually good share of cunning, presumption, and duplicity. Her husband, also, everywhere took care to make her fashionable; and the vanity of the first of their dupes increased the number of her admirers and engaged the vanity of others in their turn to sacrifice themselves at her shrine.
The immorality of our age, also, often procured her popularity for what deserved, and in better times would have encountered, the severest reprobation. In 1797, an emigrant lodged at an inn at Hamburg where another traveller was robbed of a large sum in ready money and jewels. The unfortunate is always suspected; and in the visit made to his room by the magistrates was found a key that opened the door of the apartment where the theft had been committed. In vain did he represent that had he been the thief he should not have kept an instrument which was, or might be, construed into an argument of guilt; he was carried to prison, and, though none of the property was discovered in his possession, would have been condemned, had he not produced Madame Chevalier, who avowed that the key opened the door of her bedroom, which the smith who had made it confirmed, and swore that he had fabricated eight keys for the same actress and for the same purpose.
At that time this woman lived in the same house with her husband, but cohabited there with the husband of another woman. She had also places of assignation with other gallants at private apartments, both in Hamburg and at Altona. All these, her scandalous intrigues, were known even to the common porters of these cities. The first time, after the affair of the key had become public, she acted in a play where a key was mentioned, and the audience immediately repeated, "The key! the key!" Far from being ashamed, she appeared every night in pieces selected by her, where there was mention of keys, and thus tired the jokes of the public. This impudence might have been expected from her, but it was little to be supposed that her barefaced vices should, as really was the case, augment the crowd of suitors, and occasion even some duels, which latter she both encouraged and rewarded.
Two brothers, of the name of De S——-, were both in love with her, and the eldest, as the richest, became her choice. Offended at his refusal of too large a sum of money, she wrote to the younger De S——-, and offered to accede to his proposals if, like a gentleman, he would avenge the affront she had experienced from his brother. He consulted a friend, who, to expose her infamy, advised him to send some confidential person to inform her that he had killed his elder brother, and expected the recompense on the same night. He went and was received with open arms, and had just retired with her, when the elder brother, accompanied by his friend, entered the room. Madame Chevalier, instead of upbraiding, laughed, and the next day the public laughed with her, and applauded her more than ever. She knew very well what she was doing. The stories of the key and the duel produced for her more than four thousand louis d'or by the number of new gallants they enticed. It was a kind of emulation among all young men in the North who should be foremost to dishonour and ruin himself with this infamous woman.
Madame Chevalier and her husband now live here in grand style, and have their grand parties, grand teas, grand assemblies, and grand balls. Their hotel, I am assured, is even visited by the Bonapartes and by the members of the foreign diplomatic corps. In the house where I saw her, I observed that Louis Bonaparte and two foreign Ambassadors spoke to her as old acquaintances. Though rich, to the amount of ten millions of livres—she, or rather her husband, keeps a gambling-house, and her superannuated charms are still to be bought for money, at the disposal of those amateurs who are fond of antiques. Both her husband and herself are still members of our secret diplomacy, though she complains loudly that, of the two millions of livres—promised her in 1799 by Bonaparte and Talleyrand if she could succeed in persuading Paul I. to withdraw from his alliance with England and Austria, only six hundred thousand livres—has been paid her.
I cannot finish this letter without telling you that before our military forces had reached the Rhine, our political incendiaries had already taken the field, and were in full march towards the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian capitals. The advanced guard of this dangerous corps consists entirely of females, all gifted with beauty and parts as much superior to those of Madame Chevalier as their instructions are better digested. Bonaparte and Talleyrand have more than once regretted that Madame Chevalier was not ordered to enter into the conspiracy against Paul (whose inconsistency and violence they foresaw would make his reign short), that she might have influenced the conspirators to fix upon a successor more pliable and less scrupulous, and who would have suffered the Cabinet of St. Cloud to dictate to the Cabinet of St. Petersburg.
I dined in company several times this last spring with two ladies who, rumour said, have been destined for your P——- of W—— and D—- of Y—-ever since the Peace of Amiens. Talleyrand is well informed what figures and what talents are requisite to make an impression on these Princes, and has made his choice accordingly. These ladies have lately disappeared, and when inquired after are stated to be in the country, though I do not consider it improbable that they have already arrived at headquarters. They are both rather fair and lusty, above the middle size, and about twenty-five years of age. They speak, besides French, the English and Italian languages. They are good drawers, good musicians, good singers, and, if necessary, even good drinkers.