He was well remunerated for his hospitality, and on the weather slightly improving we resumed our journey to Versailles, following the main road by way of Palaiseau and Jouy-en-Josas, and urging the horses to their quickest pace whilst the light declined and the evening shadows gathered around us.
VIII
FROM VERSAILLES TO BRITTANY
War-correspondents at Versailles—Dr. Russell—Lord Adare—David Dunglas
Home and his Extraordinary Career—His Séances at Versallies—An Amusing
Interview with Colonel Beauchamp Walker—Parliament's Grant for British
Refugees—Generals Duff and Hazen, U.S.A.—American Help—Glimpses of
King William and Bismarck—Our Safe-Conducts—From Versailles to Saint
Germain-en-Laye—Trouble at Mantes—The German Devil of Destructiveness—
From the German to the French Lines—A Train at Last—Through Normandy and
Maine—Saint Servan and its English Colony—I resolve to go to the Front.
It was dark when we at last entered Versailles by the Avenue de Choisy. We saw some sentries, but they did not challenge us, and we went on until we struck the Avenue de Paris, where we passed the Prefecture, every one of whose windows was a blaze of light. King, later Emperor, William had his quarters there; Bismarck, however, residing at a house in the Rue de Provence belonging to the French General de Jessé. Winding round the Place d'Armes, we noticed that one wing of Louis XIV's famous palace had its windows lighted, being appropriated to hospital purposes, and that four batteries of artillery were drawn up on the square, perhaps as a hint to the Versaillese to be on their best behaviour. However, we drove on, and a few moments later we pulled up outside the famous Hôtel des Réservoirs.
There was no possibility of obtaining accommodation there. From its ground-floor to its garrets the hotel was packed with German princes, dukes, dukelets, and their suites, together with a certain number of English, American, and other war-correspondents. Close by, however— indeed, if I remember rightly, on the other side of the way—there was a café, whither my father and myself directed our steps. We found it crowded with officers and newspaper men, and through one or other of the latter we succeeded in obtaining comfortable lodgings in a private house. The Illustrated London News artist with the German staff was Landells, son of the engraver of that name, and we speedily discovered his whereabouts. He was sharing rooms with Hilary Skinner, the Daily News representative at Versailles; and they both gave us a cordial greeting.
The chief correspondent at the German headquarters was William Howard Russell of the Times, respecting whom—perhaps because he kept himself somewhat aloof from his colleagues—a variety of scarcely good-natured stories were related; mostly designed to show that he somewhat over-estimated his own importance. One yarn was to the effect that whenever the Doctor mounted his horse, it was customary for the Crown Prince of Prussia—afterwards the Emperor Frederick—to hold his stirrup leather for him. Personally, I can only say that, on my father calling with me on Russell, he received us very cordially indeed (he had previously met my father, and had well known my uncle Frank), and that when we quitted Versailles, as I shall presently relate, he placed his courier and his private omnibus at our disposal, in after years one of my cousins, the late Montague Vizetelly, accompanied Russell to South America. I still have some letters which the latter wrote me respecting Zola's novel "La Débâcle," in which he took a great interest.
Another war-correspondent at Versailles was the present Earl of Dunraven, then not quite thirty years of age, and known by the courtesy title of Lord Adare. He had previously acted as the Daily Telegraph's representative with Napier's expedition against Theodore of Abyssinia, and was now staying at Versailles, on behalf, I think, of the same journal. His rooms at the Hôtel des Réservoirs were shared by Daniel Dunglas Home, the medium, with whom my father and myself speedily became acquainted. Very tall and slim, with blue eyes and an abundance of yellowish hair, Home, at this time about thirty-seven years of age, came of the old stock of the Earls of Home, whose name figures so often in Scottish history. His father was an illegitimate son of the tenth earl, and his mother belonged to a family which claimed to possess the gift of "second sight." Home himself—according to his own account—began to see visions and receive mysterious warnings at the period of his mother's death, and as time elapsed his many visitations from the other world so greatly upset the aunt with whom he was living—a Mrs. McNeill Cook of Greeneville, Connecticut [He had been taken from Scotland to America when he was about nine years old.]—that she ended by turning him out-of-doors. Other people, however, took an unhealthy delight in seeing their furniture move about without human agency, and in receiving more or less ridiculous messages from spirit-land; and in folk of this description Home found some useful friends.
He came to London in the spring of 1855, and on giving a séance at Cox's Hotel, in Jermyn Street, he contrived to deceive Sir David Brewster (then seventy-four years old), but was less successful with another septuagenarian, Lord Brougham. Later, he captured the imaginative Sir Edward Bulwer (subsequently Lord Lytton), who as author of "Zanoni" was perhaps fated to believe in him, and he also impressed Mrs. Browning, but not Browning himself The latter, indeed, depicted Home as "Sludge, the Medium." Going to Italy for a time, the already notorious adventurer gave séances in a haunted villa near Florence, but on becoming converted to the Catholic faith in 1856 he was received in private audience by that handsome, urbane, but by no means satisfactory pontiff, Pio Nono, who, however, eight years later caused him to be summarily expelled from Rome as a sorcerer in league with the Devil.
Meantime, Home had ingratiated himself with a number of crowned heads— Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie, in whose presence he gave séances at the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, and Biarritz; the King of Prussia, by whom he was received at Baden-Baden; and Queen Sophia of Holland, who gave him hospitality at the Hague. On marrying a Russian lady, the daughter of General Count de Kroll, he was favoured with presents by the Czar Alexander II, and after returning to England became one of the "attractions" of Milner-Gibson's drawing-room—Mrs. Gibson, a daughter of the Rev. Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, being one of the early English patronesses of so-called spiritualism, to a faith in which she was "converted" by Home, whom she first met whilst travelling on the Continent. I remember hearing no little talk about him in my younger days. Thackeray's friend, Robert Bell, wrote an article about him in The Cornhill, which was the subject of considerable discussion. Bell, I think, was also mixed up in the affair of the "Davenport Brothers," one of whose performances I remember witnessing. They were afterwards effectively shown up in Paris by Vicomte Alfred de Caston. Home, for his part, was scarcely taken seriously by the Parisians, and when, at a séance given in presence of the Empress Eugénie, he blundered grossly and repeatedly about her father, the Count of Montijo, he received an intimation that his presence at Court could be dispensed with. He then consoled himself by going to Peterhof and exhibiting his powers to the Czar.