It is here we encounter that considerable lacuna in the Reminiscences to which reference was made in the “Introductory.” An examination of the MS. shows that the large section—of more than a hundred pages—which related to Mrs. Please’s experiences during the terrific period of the Revolution, and afterwards so far as the year ’98, when the narrative is resumed, was at some time bodily removed, whether with a view to separate publication (of which, however, no proof can be found), or through one of those intermittent panics of conscience to which the lady was subject, there is no evidence to show. While this breach is to be regretted—from her editor’s point of view, at least—it must be said that innumerable contemporary references to Madame “Se-Plaire” enable us in some measure not only to follow the career of that redoubtable adventuress (pace M. le Comte de C——), but to supply to ourselves at least one presumptive reason for her shyness, on reflection, of perpetuating certain of its incidents. However, not to confuse matters, we will take our stepping-stones in the order of their placing.
It appears, then, that Mrs. Please and her friends were conveyed safely in the Ambassador’s entourage, to Paris, where Madame the Ambassador’s wife received, during the few days of her stay in the French capital on her way to Italy, some salve to her hurt vanity in the reception accorded her at the Tuileries by the queen, who took the opportunity to intrust her with a letter to her sister of Naples. Whether elated, indirectly, by the royal condescension, or electrified by the state of the national atmosphere, or for whatever reason, Diana, it appears, decided to remain where she was. She even, there is some reason for believing, sought, in the character of a very loyal little moucharde, to ingratiate herself with the queen, going so far as to imply that Lady Hamilton had taken this delicate means of placing in Her Majesty’s hands a counter-buff to Mr. Pitt, whom Miss Diana had often seen in my lord of Herring’s house in Berkeley Square, and whose sinister designs against France she was quite ready to quote—or invent.
However this may be, it seems certain that Her Majesty was inexplicably so far from being prepossessed by her fair visitor’s fair protégée, that (assuming even that she gave her her countenance at the first) she did not hesitate long in turning upon her the coldest of cold shoulders. We know at least that within a month of her arrival in Paris, Diana (which always equals, be it understood, Diana plus her two inseparables) had established herself, far from the precincts of the court, in very good rooms in a house in the Rue St. Jacques; where with characteristic suddenness and thoroughness she announced her complete conversion to the principles of ultra-republicanism. It must have been about this time, moreover, that she found interest to return to the stage; for in addition to the inclusion of her name in the bill of that stirring melodrama, Les Victimes Cloîtrées, which set all fermenting Paris overflowing, there exists that reference to her in the rather spiteful Reminiscences of Adrienne Lavasse, which, I think, is worth transcribing. “Mademoiselle Please,” says the actress, “was for a little our ingénue at the Français. She was imported from England; but, it must be confessed, had a pretty gift [une belle facilité] for our tongue. One night, after a mêlée in the green-room, she lifts her voice in a furious outcry about her having been ravished of a neckerchief which had been given her by a fellow-comédienne in London, and which, she declares, she would not have parted with for a louis-d’or. But I never observed” (adds the little spitfire) “that she took the trouble to replace it with another; from which it is evident that it was not her modesty that she valued at so high a figure.”
How long Mrs. Please continued on the stage at this time (she returned to it again later) is not certain. Probably her engagement was terminated by that famous split in the company, when democratic Talma and Vestris migrated to the Rue de Richelieu, bequeathing the remnant honours of the old house in the Faubourg St. Germain to the royalist Fleury, Dazincourt, and Company. What we do know is that about this critical period a lucky coup in a State lottery established our heroine on her feet, and that thenceforth she flourished. She kept a little salon in those same historic rooms, through which a regular progression of nationalists passed and vanished. There, in their time, were to be seen Brissot, Guadet, Gensonné, the Roman Roland, the handsome Barbaroux, Pétion, Vergniaud, the sweet and indolent, in his ragged coat, Desmoulins, Barrére, Billaud-Varennes, Barras. The order is significant of our lady’s political, or politic, evolution. The life of the State, she came to think, was only to be saved by ruthless amputation; and, unfortunately, the disease was in the head. As the atmosphere thickens, our glimpses of her become rarer and more lurid. She appears once as the proprietress of a sort of Mont de piété, very private and exclusive, in which she amassed good quantity of property, pledged by the proscribed, who never returned to redeem it. Among these, curiously, seems to have been her father, whom, as characteristically as possible, she forgave and attempted to shelter, though without avail, for he was guillotined. It was probably to propitiate the Government for this filial dereliction that she reappeared on the boards, in ’93, in that grotesque monument to the dulness of the Sovereign People, The Last Judgment of Kings; and there, so far as we can trace, ended her connection with the stage.
During all this period, it is only fair to her to say, she seems to have played the inflexible duenna to her little friend and adoratrice, Miss Patty Grant, protecting the child from outside evil and her own kind pliability, and, when she was called away from her side, committing her to the care of that faithful and incorruptible monster, the cripple.
Towards the end of ’93 she appears to have been so far in favour with the powers that she was despatched on a secret propagandist mission to the Neapolitan States—a portentous departure. She was not back in Paris again until the spring of ’95, when she returned to find the Terror overthrown, its “tail” in process of being docked by Sanson, and the jeunesse dorée patrolling the streets.
Not much record of this journey remains, beyond the single weighty fact that it brought her acquainted with the young revolutionary enthusiast, Nicola Pissani, who accompanied her home by way of Tuscany and Piedmont, propagating their gospel of Liberty on the road.
We may perhaps be pardoned for thinking it probable that Mrs. Please, on her return to Paris, would have recanted her extremist views, had it not been for this romantic exalté, to whom, no doubt, she at the time was sincerely attached. It is possible, indeed, that she did persuade him of the necessity of an open recantation, in order that she might consort with him the more safely in those measures which he, and for his sake she, had at heart—the violent establishment of a republic at Naples, to wit. For, for the moment, sanscullotism was out of fashion, and propagandists at a discount. It made no difference to her, apparently, that her former patroness and saviour was heart and soul with the court of Ferdinand. She was of the Roman mettle, and would have sacrificed her own child to Liberty—with Pissani. I swear my heart bleeds for her; for (the truth has to be uttered) that passionate young zealot was no sooner made free of the house in the Rue St. Jacques, than he fell hopelessly entangled in the unconscious meshes of poor blameless, lovable little Patty Grant. And, worse: Miss Grant, without a thought of disloyalty to her friend and sister—who, indeed, persistently, and perhaps justifiably, posed for no more than the Neapolitan’s pious fellow-missionary—yielded her whole sweet soul to him!
Nothing was declared, or came of this at the time. Pissani went back to Naples; the two—he and Diana: not he and another, you may be sure, unless by stealth—corresponded regularly; the march of events proceeded; our heroine managed, no doubt, to console herself, provisionally, for the separation. Perhaps she may have been conscious of an alteration in her friend; a hint of some sad preoccupation; the bright eyes dulling, the white face growing ever a little more white and drawn. If she did, she chose, while biding her time of enlightenment, to attach any but the right reason to the change. She seems to confess, indeed, that she had the suspicion. Like enough, in that case, she indulged it for a perpetual stimulant to her romance, which might have withered without. She was not one to bear tamely her supplanting by another—least of all by the little humble slave of her passions and caprices, of her kisses and disdains. And, in the meantime, the years went over them, while she was studying to ingratiate herself with the Directory, so that presently her house knew again its succession of ministers and deputies—men who came to lighten their leisure with a little interlude of love or wit. And so we reach the crisis.
Naples, about the middle of ’98, was in a last state of ferment. Jacobinism threatened it within and without, the former but awaiting the advance of the French under Championnet to arise and hand over the city to its sympathisers. In September Nelson came sweeping to its sea-gates in his Vanguard; in October General Mack posted from Vienna to take command of its rabble army of resistance; in November its king led another army to Rome, nominally to restore the Pope his kingdom, and, having done some ineffective mischief, returned ingloriously, to find his capital in a state of anarchy. Finally, in December, the whole royal family sneaked on board the Vanguard, and transferred itself pro tempore to Palermo, where it remained until the danger was laid, when it returned to exact a bloody vengeance.