Napoleon's British visitors and captives, 1801-1815

by John Goldworth Alger

But few actors had time—they can scarcely have lacked inclination—to visit Paris. John Philip Kemble, however, described in the register as rentier, went to see his old college at Douai, which he found so dilapidated that he had not the heart to inspect his old room. Arriving in Paris in July 1802, he made the acquaintance of Talma, who showed him, with his companions Lords Hollands and Cloncurry, over the Louvre. He then proceeded to Madrid to study Spanish acting. His brother Charles likewise went to Paris on his way to Vienna and St. Petersburg, not reappearing in London till September 1803. Their father Roger, a less accomplished actor, who never played but once in London, and then for the benefit of his son Stephen, is said to have spent from May 1799 to October 1802 in Italy and France; but this seems unlikely at his age, for at his death in December 1802 he was over eighty. Edmond John Eyre, the son of a clergyman, had left Cambridge without a degree in order to take to the stage. He was, however, an indifferent actor at Bath and Bristol. He published his Observations made at Paris.

We may couple with the Kembles and Eyre Mrs. Charlotte Atkyns, though she had long left Drury Lane where she was known as ‘the pretty Miss Walpole.’ She married in 1779, at the age of twenty-five, Edward Atkyns of Ketteringham Hall, Norfolk, who died in 1794. She was in Paris during the Revolution, and was one of those who endeavoured to effect the escape of Marie Antoinette. In 1809 she celebrated George III.’s Jubilee by a feast to the villagers of Ketteringham, at which she herself proposed the loyal toasts. The death of her only son in 1804 had then left her sole mistress of Ketteringham, but she seems ultimately to have lost her property. She was an ardent believer in the sham Dauphin Bruneau, but was nevertheless pensioned after 1815 by Louis XVIII. and died in Paris about 1829.

Let us turn to inventors. Congreve has been already named. James Watt had not seen France since 1786, when his advice was called for on the Marly aqueduct. This time he does not appear to have had any professional purpose, albeit that aqueduct was again out of repair. Thomas Wedgwood, one of the three sons of the great potter, was the future inventor of photography. An invalid in search of health, he required change of scene. He deserves mention for settling an annuity on Coleridge, and as the friend of Sydney Smith. He first went to Brussels, joined Poole in Paris, went on with him to Switzerland, and returned home in August 1803. Greathead, another inventor, doubtless wished to introduce his lifeboat. Robert Salmon, steward to the Duke of Norfolk and clerk of the works at the rebuilding of Carlton House, had invented a chaff-cutting machine, and probably wished to make it known in France, while William Story took out a patent for a blue dye.

There were also men of business and men who went over on business. Sir Elijah Impey, who has been named among the ex-M.P’s, had been chosen as delegate by a meeting in London of claimants for compensation for confiscated property, an article in the treaty having stipulated that such claims should be promptly settled by the tribunals. The article was nominally applicable to both countries, but England, of course, had had no revolution and had confiscated little, if any, French property. No such claims were settled before the renewal of hostilities, for Whitworth, reporting a conversation with Napoleon on the 23rd February 1803, says:—

‘I alleged as a cause of mistrust and jealousy the impossibility of obtaining justice or any kind of redress for any of His Majesty’s subjects. He asked me in what respect. I told him that since the signing of the treaty not one British claimant had been satisfied, though every Frenchman of that description had been so within one month after that period.’

The claims, as we shall see, were revived in 1815, when France gave a lump sum of sixty millions, leaving the English authorities to adjudicate on the separate claims. The claims certainly presented difficulties, for Merry, on the 12th May 1802, speaks of ‘clamorous demands,’ and on the 23rd June of ‘incessant and sometimes intemperate applications’; while on taking his departure in December he expressed mortification at having the claims unredressed.[90] Even private papers were not restored, perhaps because being mostly tradesmen’s bills they were not thought worth reclaiming, but possibly because troublesome formalities were necessary. Merry had been directed to back the claim of the Duke of Richmond to the Aubigny estates conferred by Louis XIV. on his ancestress, Charles II.’s mistress, but in January 1803 Napoleon decreed that no British subject could possess landed property in France, and in 1807 Aubigny was definitely confiscated.

Among the business men, bankers may be allowed precedence. I do not reckon Rogers among them, for his visit had no more to do with banking than that of his brother-in-law Sutton Sharpe with brewing. But there were Boyd and Benfield, of whom I have already spoken. I have also mentioned Sir Francis Baring and his son Alexander. Hugh Hamersley, son of an Oxfordshire clergyman, and named Hugh on account of descent from Sir Hugh Hamersley, Lord Mayor of London in 1627, was one of the earliest lovers of Théroigne de Méricourt. According to her confessions or interrogatories when a prisoner in Austria, he promised her marriage, and she remained with him till 1785; but on coming into possession of his patrimony he took her to Paris, there indulged in dissipation, and returned without her, but settled 200,000 f. on her. Such a statement of course requires verification, but the tradition at her birthplace is that she eloped with an Englishman in the hope of becoming a public singer in London, for she had a fine voice. (Œlsner states, however, that after bearing a son to Persan de Doublet, who dismissed her with an annuity of 12,000 f., she went to London and lived with the Italian singer Carducci, a eunuch whom she induced to take with him to Italy, but they quarrelled and parted at Genoa.[91] Œlsner is likely to have ascertained the true version of her antecedents. Did Hamersley inquire for the poor lunatic in 1802?[92] He had been agent for the French Government in the maintenance of French prisoners in England until it changed its system and left England to support them. Madame Dubarry, on recovering her stolen jewels in London, deposited them with Hamersley. He subscribed £315 to the patriotic fund of 1803, and in 1812 was M.P. for Helston. On his death in 1840 his bank was wound up and yielded only 10s. in the pound. He had married in 1810 Margaret, daughter of John Bevan, a Quaker banker, and I remember his nephew or cousin as Chairman of Oxfordshire Quarter Sessions. Herries, brother of Sir Charles Herries, probably went to fetch his wife, who had been an eyewitness of the Revolution. Thornton and Power, English bankers at Hamburg and other Continental towns, opened a branch at Paris in 1802, and in 1805 John Power applied for French citizenship; but the police reported unfavourably on the application, alleging that the Hamburg bank acted for the English Government and that the Paris branch had furnished money to the conspirator Georges, though pleading ignorance of his criminal purpose. Thornton, they added, was an illegitimate son of the well-known M.P. and writer on finance.[93] Thornton and Power seem to have amalgamated with Perregaux, who had dealings with London banks. Kensington was another London banker. William Dawes, assistant secretary to the Bank of England, was probably commissioned to report on the newly established Bank of France, and Mollien relates how Napoleon, on being shown an intercepted letter from a Paris to an English banker advising him to subscribe for its shares, exclaimed, ‘Such are merchants! Disputes between governments do not disturb their alliances.’

Speaking of merchants, William Ewart was the eminent Liverpool merchant after whom Gladstone was named on account of his father’s intimacy with him, while Judah, Henry, and Abraham Salomons were doubtless the uncles of Sir David Salomons, the first Jew returned to Parliament. There were also Joseph,[94] Leon, and Moses Montefiore, of Bologna origin, the first of them already the father of Sir Moses Montefiore the philanthropist, then a youth of eighteen. This Moses Montefiore was on his way to Leghorn. James and Thomas Payne, eminent booksellers of the second generation, were doubtless bent on picking up rare volumes. James, succeeding to the business of Elmsley, had already profited by the dispersion of such treasures in the Revolution—the Lamoignon collection for instance. He had secured many prizes for Lord Spencer to enrich the famous Althorp collection, which in 1899 was purchased by Mrs. Rylands and presented to Manchester. He also had dealings with the British Museum and the Bodleian; and had supplied some rare English books to the Paris National Library, and helped in its catalogue.

William Hayes was another bookselling tourist, and there was John Nichols, the printer and publisher, the biographer of Hogarth and for nearly half a century editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine. He had just retired from business, and with his two daughters went to the south of France. Then there was Thomas Poole, the friend of Paine, the friend also of Coleridge and Sir Humphry Davy. He went to hear the Abbé Sicard lecture to the deaf and dumb.

From books to horses is a long jump. Edward Tattersall had been sent over in 1775 on an invitation from M. de Mezières, equerry to Louis XVI., and had much enjoyed himself. His father Richard, who supplied horses for the French royal stud, told the French host not to spoil the boy, but to make him keep his place, as he would have to earn his own livelihood.[95] The mention of Tattersall naturally suggests Philip Astley, who hoped to recover ten years’ rent for his old circus, which had been converted into barracks; but while engaged in securing this, his London circus, in which he had introduced French performances, was burnt down. William Boffin Kennedy was a well-known florist who had Josephine as a customer, for in 1801, in a letter to Otto at London, she sent a list of flowers to be ordered of him. Lastly there was Dorant, proprietor of the York Hotel, Albemarle Street, London, who went over to cash £2000 in assignats, but found them worth just 12 f. He acted as cicerone, familiar as he was with Paris, to young George Jackson of the Embassy.