[5] Joseph Bonaparte (I need hardly observe) was not strictly a Frenchman. He was a Corsican, of Corsican or Italian parentage, born before Corsica had become a French possession. He was thus an Italian, naturalized as a Frenchman.—W.
[6] My first volume of poems, printed in Naples in 1807, was dedicated by me to Baron Giovanni Avalloni, who, upon hearing me recite some of the compositions, voluntarily offered to have the whole of them printed. That volume, which was never re-issued, must have become very scarce. [I possess an imperfect copy of it. The poems—some of them poor, and not any exactly good—deal partly with national events, and this naturally in a spirit conformable to the Napoleonic régime. There are some strong animadversions on the Bourbon monarchy.—W.] My dramas, written for the Theatre of San Carlo, were printed at the time; were they collected together, they would make up a volume.
King Joseph and King Joachim have been depicted by grave historians, and I will not add anything regarding their public and private character. But, for truth’s sake, I may say that here in London I was very well acquainted with Joseph Bonaparte, after he had returned from America in 1831, and that I found many personal gifts in him to admire. In his house I saw a good deal not only of him but of his brother Lucian, his nephew Louis (the present President of the French Republic), Lucian’s daughter Lady Dudley Stuart, with whom I became intimately acquainted, and who, at the baptismal font, gave her own name, Christina, to my younger daughter. I might say that I have known all the members of that renowned family, either in Naples or in London, except the great Napoleon, whom I never saw. Joseph was kind-natured and cultivated in mind; but in Naples, spoiled by courtiers, he was a bad king. One evening, while I was improvising in his house, his daughter, Princess Charlotte, made a pencil sketch of me, and she sent it me framed as a present: I still preserve it. [I also have preserved it, and have given it to my youngest daughter.—W.] I could here relate many dialogues which I had with Lucian, his son Pierre, etc., and with the present French President. But I will only say that Lucian was a republican, but with many prejudices, and the present President was and is of a character all puffed up with ambition. Never did I hear from his lips a single word indicating a liberal spirit.
[7] I possess the printed Giulio Sabino, 1809; not the other two libretti.—W.
[8] One may suppose it to have been at first a very subordinate post; for the pay, I find, was only 15 ducats a month, which appears to be £31, 2s. 6d. a year. Later on it was 28 ducats a month.—W.
[9] Of the very many incidents which occurred to me in the Royal Museum, and which might furnish matter for anecdote, I will state in prose the following. In the year 1816 [it must have been in 1819, that being the year in which Charles IV. died.—W.] there came to Naples Charles IV., ex-King of Spain, elder brother of Ferdinand, King of Naples. The latter had also been numbered as fourth; then in Sicily he became third, and finally, on his return, he was declared first; and in his island-kingdom this epigram, almost prophetic, had been neatly made upon him:—
“Fourth thou wast and now art Third:—
By subtraction’s rule I’m taught—
Second—First—may yet be heard,
Till at last remains a nought.”