He met Frederick the Great when he was travelling in Germany in 1769; and Frederick, forgetting his grievance that Grimm would not turn the ‘Correspondence’ into a scandalous society newspaper, fell under the spell of his fellow-countryman’s encyclopædical knowledge and dignified affability. Grimm, said Meister, had the rare talent of living with great people without losing any of the freedom and independence of his character.
When he was nearly fifty years old, in 1771, he resumed an employment of his youth, and, at a very large salary, consented to be tutor to the Hereditary Prince of Hesse, a boy about nineteen. The pair went to England and were well received at its ultra-German Court. Grimm was delighted with ‘the simplicity, the naturalness, and the good sense’ of the English character. The Landgravine, young Hesse’s mother, sold her diamonds that her son might prolong his visit in so delightful a country. And then Grimm brought him back to Paris and formed his mind and manners in the society of d’Holbach and Diderot, of Madame Necker and Madame Geoffrin.
In 1773, tutor and pupil went to St. Petersburg to attend the marriage of Wilhelmina, the Prince of Hesse’s sister, with the Czarevitch Paul. In a very short time the skilful Grimm had gained the great Catherine’s interest and consideration. Even Diderot’s warm heart and glowing genius (he was staying at the Russian Court when Grimm arrived there) did not win her so well as the German’s delicate tact and keen perceptions. Herself before all things a great statesman, how should she not respect the shrewd judgment, the strength, and the determination of a Grimm? It is so rare to be clever and wise! It was most rare in the eighteenth century. Two or three times a week Grimm dined with her Majesty en petit comité—those dinners at which all men were equal, and at which no servants appeared to hamper the conversation. Afterwards she talked alone with him by the hour together. He told Madame Geoffrin how, when he left her, he would pace his room all night with the splendid ideas she had suggested coursing through his sleepless brain: ‘The winter of 1773-74 passed for me,’ he said, ‘en ivresse continuelle.’ But when Catherine would have permanently attached him to her service, his stern good sense helped him to refuse. There is no such dead-weight on genius as a post at Court—be it the Court of a Catherine or a Frederick—and Grimm knew it. ‘I have never seen you hesitate about anything,’ Madame d’Épinay had once written to him; ‘when you have once decided with your just, strong mind, it is for ever.’
His refusal was unalterable, and he returned to Paris. He was sure enough of his firmness to visit his royal friend again, two years later, in 1776. He had been acting tutor once more, to the two Counts Romanzoff this time. He had taken them to Naples to embrace Galiani, to Ferney to see Voltaire, and to Berlin to see Frederick. They arrived in Petersburg in time for the second marriage of the Czarevitch, of whose first marriage, with Wilhelmina of Hesse, Grimm had been the principal promoter. Catherine received him with the same flattering interest and offers, but he was as deaf to them as before. Then she gave him the title of Colonel—to the intense amusement of King Frederick—and appointed him her general agent in Paris at a salary of ten thousand livres.
After his return to the capital this appointment formed a very large occupation in his life.
His frequent absences had naturally not been the best thing in the world for the ‘Literary Correspondence,’ but it would have been a much worse thing if Diderot—Grimm’s ‘patient milch-cow whom he can milk an essay from or a volume from when he lists’—had not been there to do his work. The ‘Correspondence’ rightly appears with Diderot’s name as well as Grimm’s on its title-page. In these latter years, indeed, its readers often had to be content, not with Diderot, but with a mere Meister; and when Grimm did write himself it was sometimes carelessly and in a hurry. Not quite the first, or the last, perhaps, to commit that literary enormity, he occasionally reviewed books he had not taken the trouble to read.
His letters to and from Catherine, after the first few years, were not conveyed through the post, but by special messenger, and are therefore delightfully outspoken. Grimm’s contain indeed a good deal of flattery and exaggeration; but Catherine’s are spontaneous enough. She used to say she was as ‘frankly an original as the most determined Englishman.’ The pair wrote sometimes in French and sometimes in German. They had nicknames for most of the crowned heads in Europe. Of ‘Brother George of England’ Catherine had always spoken with contempt, and considered his loss of the American colonies as ‘a State treason.’ But much of the correspondence was devoted to mere homely details. As her agent, Grimm bought the imperial rouge for the imperial cheeks, pictures, books, and bon-bons. He took long journeys in her interest: he supplied her with architects when she caught a fever for building; and presently, having been discreet matchmaker for the Hesses and the Czarevitch, he was commissioned to play the same delicate part for the Czarevitch’s daughters.
He was living now in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. His love of music was still strong, and on young Mozart’s visits to Paris, Grimm was his kindest and most influential patron. The next few years saw the deaths of many old friends—of Voltaire, of Diderot, of Frederick the Great, of d’Holbach, and of Madame d’Épinay. For ever trying to conciliate all men, poor little volatile, self-deceived deceiver, under Grimm’s masterful influence the best qualities of her nature had come to the fore and the worst receded. She was to the last true to him as she had never been true to anyone else. Grimm adopted her grand-daughter and married her to the Comte de Bueil.
So far, his own life had been singularly happy and successful. If he had loved unwisely, he had taken care that the affection should never be of that inordinate kind which is its own punishment. He had, too, one of the dearest solaces of declining life in seeing young people growing up about him. As to his career, he was not only attached to the royal house of Orleans, but he was by now Catherine’s Councillor of State, Minister Plenipotentiary to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and Baron of the Viennese Empire. He was a rich man, with a fine collection of books, pictures, and vertu. He should have died before 1789.
In that year came the stunning fall of the Bastille. Of liberty, Grimm had talked easily enough, but he had also been shrewd enough to doubt its promises. He had at least nothing of the calm confidence of the fine ladies of the old régime who drove out from modish Paris through the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to look at the ruins of the great prison, as at a sight prepared—for their amusement. To the wary German the destruction of the Bastille spelt the ruin of France. The Revolution sped on—Vengeance rushing through the night with a drawn sword in her hand.