Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume 1

by George Otto Trevelyan

Events were at hand, which unmistakably showed how different was the England of 1830 from the England of 1790. The King died; Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July; and in the first excitement and bustle of the elections, while the candidates were still on the roads and the writs in the mailbags, came the news that Paris was in arms. The troops fought as well as Frenchmen ever can be got to fight against the tricolour; but by the evening of the 29th it was all over with the Bourbons. The Minister, whose friendship had reflected such unpopularity on our own Premier, succumbed to the detestation of the victorious people, and his sacrifice did not save the dynasty. What was passing among our neighbours for once created sympathy, and not repulsion, on this side the Channel. One French Revolution had condemned English Liberalism to forty years of subjection, and another was to be the signal which launched it on as long a career of supremacy. Most men said, and all felt, that Wellington must follow Polignac; and the public temper was such as made it well for the stability of our throne that it was filled by a monarch who had attracted to himself the hopes and affection of the nation, and who shared its preferences and antipathies with regard to the leading statesmen of the day.

One result of political disturbance in any quarter of the globe is to fill the scene of action with young members of Parliament, who follow Revolutions about Europe as assiduously as Jew brokers attend upon the movements of an invading army. Macaulay, whose re-election for Calne had been a thing of course, posted off to Paris at the end of August, journeying by Dieppe and Rouen, and eagerly enjoying a first taste of continental travel. His letters during the tour were such as, previously to the age of railroads, brothers who had not been abroad before used to write for the edification of sisters who expected never to go abroad at all. He describes in minute detail manners and institutions that to us are no longer novelties, and monuments which an educated Englishman of our time knows as well as Westminster Abbey, and a great deal better than the Tower. Everything that he saw, heard, ate, drank, paid, and suffered, was noted down in his exuberant diction to be read aloud and commented on over the breakfast table in Great Ormond Street.

"At Rouen," he says, "I was struck by the union of venerable antiquity with extreme liveliness and gaiety. We have nothing of the sort in England. Till the time of James the First, I imagine, our houses were almost all of wood, and have in consequence disappeared. In York there are some very old streets; but they are abandoned to the lowest people, and the gay shops are in the newly-built quarter of the town. In London, what with the fire of 1666, and what with the natural progress of demolition and rebuilding, I doubt whether there are fifty houses that date from the Reformation. But in Rouen you have street after street of lofty stern-looking masses of stone, with Gothic carvings. The buildings are so high, and the ways so narrow, that the sun can scarcely reach the pavements. Yet in these streets, monastic in their aspect, you have all the glitter of Regent Street or the Burlington Arcade. Rugged and dark, above, below they are a blaze of ribands, gowns, watches, trinkets, artificial flowers; grapes, melons, and peaches such as Covent Garden does not furnish, filling the windows of the fruiterers; showy women swimming smoothly over the uneasy stones, and stared at by national guards swaggering by in full uniform. It is the Soho Bazaar transplanted into the gloomy cloisters of Oxford."

He writes to a friend just before he started on his tour: "There is much that I am impatient to see, but two things specially,—the Palais Royal, and the man who called me the Aristarchus of Edinburgh." Who this person might be, and whether Macaulay succeeded in meeting him, are questions which his letters leave unsolved; but he must have been a constant visitor at the Palais Royal if the hours that he spent in it bore any relation to the number of pages which it occupies in his correspondence. The place was indeed well worth a careful study; for in 1830 it was not the orderly and decent bazaar of the Second Empire, but was still that compound of Parnassus and Bohemia which is painted in vivid colours in the "Grand Homme de Province" of Balzac,—still the paradise of such ineffable rascals as Diderot has drawn with terrible fidelity in his "Neveu de Rameau."

"If I were to select the spot in all the earth in which the good and evil of civilisation are most strikingly exhibited, in which the arts of life are carried to the highest perfection, and in which all pleasures, high and low, intellectual and sensual, are collected in the smallest space, I should certainly choose the Palais Royal. It is the Covent Garden Piazza, the Paternoster Row, the Vauxhall, the Albion Tavern, the Burlington Arcade, the Crockford's the Finish, the Athenaeum of Paris all in one. Even now, when the first dazzling effect has passed off, I never traverse it without feeling bewildered by its magnificent variety. As a great capital is a country in miniature, so the Palais Royal is a capital in miniature,—an abstract and epitome of a vast community, exhibiting at a glance the politeness which adorns its higher ranks, the coarseness of its populace, and the vices and the misery which lie underneath its brilliant exterior. Everything is there, and everybody. Statesmen, wits, philosophers, beauties, dandies, blacklegs, adventurers, artists, idlers, the king and his court, beggars with matches crying for charity, wretched creatures dying of disease and want in garrets. There is no condition of life which is not to be found in this gorgeous and fantastic Fairyland."

Macaulay had excellent opportunities for seeing behind the scenes during the closing acts of the great drama that was being played out through those summer months. The Duc de Broglie, then Prime Minister, treated him with marked attention, both as an Englishman of distinction, and as his father's son. He was much in the Chamber of Deputies, and witnessed that strange and pathetic historical revival when, after an interval of forty such years as mankind had never known before, the aged La Fayette again stood forth, in the character of a disinterested dictator, between the hostile classes of his fellow-countrymen.

"De La Fayette is so overwhelmed with work that I scarcely knew how to deliver even Brougham's letter, which was a letter of business, and should have thought it absurd to send him Mackintosh's, which was a mere letter of introduction, I fell in with an English acquaintance who told me that he had an appointment with La Fayette, and who undertook to deliver them both. I accepted his offer, for, if I had left them with the porter, ten to one they would never have been opened. I hear that hundreds of letters are lying in the lodge of the hotel. Every Wednesday morning, from nine to eleven, La Fayette gives audience to anybody who wishes to speak with him; but about ten thousand people attend on these occasions, and fill, not only the house, but all the courtyard and half the street. La Fayette is Commander in Chief of the National Guard of France. The number of these troops in Paris alone is upwards of forty thousand. The Government find a musket and bayonet; but the uniform, which costs about ten napoleons, the soldiers provide themselves. All the shopkeepers are enrolled, and I cannot sufficiently admire their patriotism. My landlord, Meurice, a man who, I suppose, has realised a million francs or more, is up one night in four with his firelock doing the duty of a common watchman.

"There is, however, something to be said as an explanation of the zeal with which the bourgeoisie give their time and money to the public. The army received so painful a humiliation in the battles of July that it is by no means inclined to serve the new system faithfully. The rabble behaved nobly during the conflict, and have since shown rare humanity and moderation. Yet those who remember the former Revolution feel an extreme dread of the ascendency of mere multitude and there have been signs, trifling in themselves, but such as may naturally alarm people of property. Workmen have struck. Machinery has been attacked. Inflammatory handbills have appeared upon the walls. At present all is quiet; but the thing may happen, particularly if Polignac and Peyronnet should not be put to death. The Peers wish to save them. The lower orders, who have had five or six thousand of their friends and kinsmen butchered by the frantic wickedness of these men, will hardly submit. 'Eh! eh!' said a fierce old soldier of Napoleon to me the other day. 'L'on dit qu'ils seront deportes: mais ne m'en parle pas. Non! non! Coupez-leur le cou. Sacre! Ca ne passera pas comme ca.'"

"This long political digression will explain to you why Monsieur De La Fayette is so busy. He has more to do than all the Ministers together. However, my letters were presented, and he said to my friend that he had a soiree every Tuesday, and should be most happy to see me there. I drove to his house yesterday night. Of the interest which the common Parisians take in politics you may judge by this. I told my driver to wait for me, and asked his number. 'Ah! monsieur, c'est un beau numero. C'est un brave numero. C'est 221.' You may remember that the number of deputies who voted the intrepid address to Charles the Tenth, which irritated him into his absurd coup d'etat, was 221. I walked into the hotel through a crowd of uniforms, and found the reception-rooms as full as they could hold. I was not able to make my way to La Fayette; but I was glad to see him. He looks like the brave, honest, simple, good-natured man that he is."

Besides what is quoted above, there is very little of general interest in these journal letters; and their publication would serve no purpose except that of informing the present leader of the Monarchists what his father had for breakfast and dinner during a week of 1830, and of enabling him to trace changes in the disposition of the furniture of the De Broglie hotel. "I believe," writes Macaulay, "that I have given the inventory of every article in the Duke's salon. You will think that I have some intention of turning upholsterer."