It is now time to ask what was seen and done by the visitors. The rue de Rivoli did not yet exist, and a labyrinth of dingy streets separated the Tuileries from the Louvre, but the Champs Elysées were an agreeable promenade, though of course not yet terminated by the Arc de Triomphe, and the Bois de Boulogne had recovered from the vandalism of the Revolution, while on Sundays, when Napoleon held receptions at St. Cloud, the road thither was as crowded with carriages as that to Versailles before 1789. Lovers of art had the opportunity of inspecting the spoils of Italy, a portion of which had to be restored in 1815, though but for Napoleon’s escape from Elba restitution would not have been demanded. He told Lord Ebrington who, as will be seen, visited him in that island that he felt some remorse at having thus despoiled Italy, but he had then thought only of France. Not only was the Louvre thus enriched with paintings and sculptures,[114] but the bronze lion and horses of Venice had been placed on pedestals outside the Tuileries. The biennial Salon also opened at the Louvre in September 1802, and in another part of the building was the Industrial Exhibition visited, as we have seen, by Fox. This, according to a police report, particularly interested the English. ‘Among them,’ it says, ‘have been noticed artisans, who were never tired of examining and admiring, while others tried to understand the mechanism of the objects exhibited. Some observers conclude that this study may lead to imitation of these productions in England.’ But the visitors might be proud of seeing several of their countrymen among the medallists, viz., Hall, who had a pottery at Montereau, near Fontainebleau, and Christopher Potter, of whom more anon. Engraving on glass, too, had been carried to perfection by Robert May O’Reilly, an Irishman whose factory attracted visitors. He published in 1803 a monthly magazine on arts and manufactures. A member of the British Club at Paris in 1792–1793, he had since served in the French army. He audaciously visited London during the peace, thus risking arrest for high treason.[115] There was also the opportunity of witnessing Fulton’s steamboat experiments on the Seine. Fulton mostly lived in Paris from 1799 to 1804, vainly trying to interest the Government first in torpedoes and then, with a view to the invasion of England, in steam navigation. He lived with Joel Barlow, with whom he speculated in panoramas, then a popular novelty. Both, however, went over to England in the summer of 1802. Merry granted a passport to Barlow, but did so by mistake in ignorance of his relations with English agitators, and he suggested that a list of obnoxious foreigners should be sent him, so that he might in future refuse such applications. Yet Barlow after all used an American passport. In notifying a passport to Fulton, Merry, mindful of his proposal for blowing up English vessels, added the warning, ‘verbum sap.’ Fulton was back in Paris in August in 1803, for in that month his steamboat, in the presence of Carnot and Volney, went up and down the Seine for an hour and a half. Another, but much less important, improvement in locomotion was the first attempt, at the instance of Dillon, a Hiberno-Neapolitan engineer, to introduce foot pavements. Guizot married his daughter as his second wife. Professor Charles, whose future young wife was Lamartine’s innamorata, lectured on chemistry, moreover, to fashionable audiences. His electrifying machine and scientific apparatus at the Louvre were inspected by Carr. Dupuis, who had sat in the Convention, could be heard expounding his cosmical explanation of myths, which had been enthusiastically adopted by his friend Lalande and by the Abbé Barthélémi. Dupuis also claimed to have in 1778 invented semaphore signals.
The Abbé Morellet, last survivor of the Encyclopedists, might be met in society, full of revolutionary and pre-revolutionary experiences; and Roget de l’Isle, the author of the Marseillaise, frequented Frascati gardens. Henri Beyle was also in Paris, having just quitted the army, and was taking lessons in English from Dawtram and an Irish Franciscan whom he calls ‘Jeki,’ but nobody could foresee in him the future Stendhal, who was to illumine French literature; nor did Sutton Sharpe, junior, till long afterwards make his acquaintance. Sénancour was probably in Paris, superintending the publication of Obermann, but he was not likely to be seen in the frivolous or fashionable circles frequented by the English. A few of the visitors, indeed, attended lectures,[116] listening attentively and putting questions to Laplace, Lalande, or Cuvier, but the great majority were bent on pleasure. Frascati, Tivoli, the hotel Richelieu (the roué’s old mansion and grounds, now used not only for a hotel but for balls and concerts), and the so-called Hameau Chantilly were thronged, not to speak of the theatres, which had a very profitable season. Molé, it is true, retired in April 1802, dying in the following December, but there were such tragedians as Talma, Raucourt, Contat, Mars, and George, such dancers as Vestris, who was about, however, to retire, such vocalists as Cherubini, such instrumentalists as Kreutzer. In February 1802 there was the opportunity of witnessing Duval’s Edouard en Écosse, which (though intended only as a glorification of the Young Pretender, who in France was always styled Edward) was so boisterously applauded by royalists as applicable to the Bourbons, that Napoleon, present at the second performance, suppressed it. Blangini taught singing, and among his pupils were Miss Whitworth, Quintin Craufurd’s wife and step-daughter, Lady Conyngham, Lady Annesley, and Lady Liddell. The Journal des Dames of May 10, 1802, speaking of the influx of parents anxious for their children to learn accomplishments, says:—‘In what other European city could a pupil have two musicians like Garat and Plantade for singing, two professors like Staybelt and Puppo for the piano, two virtuosi like Bode and Kreutzer for the violin, two composers like Paesiello and Méhul for music, and a man like Deshayes for dancing?’ Paris, moreover, in spite of the Revolution again set the fashions, and though its transparent dresses, ‘worn with such grace,’ says George Jackson, ‘as to reconcile you to them,’ had never, whether on account of modesty or climate, been adopted in England, the Times in 1801 described the way in which Parisian ladies wore their hair. Lap-dogs were frequently to be seen under the arms of promenaders, or in fine weather running at their heels.[117] Shoe-buckles and knee-breeches, though not wigs, had been revived, and foreign ambassadors were resplendent with decorations and diamonds; yet ‘muddy boots and dirty linen were seen at Madame Fouché’s receptions,’ ‘the roughnesses of the Revolution,’ says Jackson, ‘not being yet polished off.’ Mademoiselle Bertin, Marie Antoinette’s dressmaker, had returned from exile. Bonaparte, too, had imposed costumes on all public functionaries, and Paris had never seen more brilliant uniforms. His two hundred Mamelukes had been sent up to Paris to figure in the review of the 14th July, which was then, as it is now again, the national festival, and in honour of the peace he reviewed 14,000 troops in the Carrousel.
Napoleon took particular note of the British military uniforms at his receptions, and many British officers witnessed a grand review by Moreau on the 8th September 1802. Maurice Dudevant, the future father of George Sand, wrote to his mother:—
‘All these young lords, who are soldiers at home, question me with avidity on our army. I reply by the recital of our immortal exploits (in Italy), which they cannot sufficiently admire.’
As for private and official festivities, visitors were all anxious to see Madame Tallien, ‘our Lady of Thermidor,’ now, as I have said, the mistress of the army contractor Ouvrard. Madame Récamier gave musical parties at Clichy, she herself playing on the piano. Madame de Montesson, morganatic widow of the Duke of Orleans, Madame Lebrun, wife of the consul, and Madame Junot (Duchess d’Abrantès) also gave entertainments. At some of these Garat’s inimitable voice was to be heard, though he no longer sang in public. Madame de Genlis, though not able on her pension of 6600 f. to afford dinners, received callers. Talleyrand had been, or was about to be, forced by Napoleon to marry Madame Grand, as the only alternative to dismissing her, in order that ambassadors’ wives might visit his house, and he was very hospitable to English notabilities, though there is no reason to think that our Government had given him the £16,000 on which, as Francis Jackson wrote to Speaker Abbot, he counted for having concluded peace. Spain, however, had given him a like sum, and Jackson satirically suggested that such presents would serve as a trousseau for the lady on the arrival of the dispensation from Rome. But Talleyrand received a dispensation, not from the vow of celibacy, but merely from the obligation of daily reciting the breviary. Whitworth was therefore mistaken in justifying his wife’s acceptance of Madame Talleyrand’s invitations on the ground that the church had sanctioned her marriage.
The Times of January 13, 1803, says:—
‘Monsieur, or rather Madame, Talleyrand’s dinners, exceed all others in Paris; about 80 persons sat down to the last dinner. On the table was placed every delicacy possible to be had, and a servant in livery, belonging to the house, behind every chair. The second course, put on like magic, more elegant than the first; around the room, in niches made for the purpose, were statues of the finest marble, each supporting a basket on its head, holding a branch of lustres of about ten lights each, altogether making more than four hundred lights in the room; the furniture of velvet and gold, corresponding with the other elegancies; three rooms were fitted up in this manner, forming a most complete suit. A very handsome salary is allowed to this Minister, exclusively for the support of his table.’
Talleyrand doubtless allowed his guests plenty of time to do justice to his sumptuous fare, whereas Napoleon unpleasantly hurried over his dinners in half an hour. He deputed prefects, however, to preside in his place at less expeditious state banquets.
Lechevalier, of the Foreign Office, who had lived in England and had taught French to Sir F. Burdett and his wife and her sisters, also laid himself out to be agreeable to British visitors. There was a rage for dancing, not dancing on a volcano ready to explode, as was said in July 1830, but on the ashes of an extinct one.
Conversation, on the other hand, as we learn from German visitors, languished. The salons of the old monarchy, where brilliant paradox and ruthless scepticism had flourished, found no successors. It was not safe to talk politics, for spies abounded, and even the Institute had to avoid philosophy, legislation, or sociology.[118] Riddles were consequently in vogue. But La Métherie, the mineralogist, and his guests ventured to condemn the tyranny of the Consulate, and Besnard relates how Lord Archibald Hamilton, after hearing one of these outbursts, exclaimed, ‘Too fortunate Frenchmen! You have apricots, peaches, cheap and good wine, and yet you complain,’ while, turning to Besnard, he whispered: ‘A peach with us costs 4/ or 5/ and a bottle of champagne or burgundy a guinea.’ The old nobility, indeed, such of them as had remained or returned, were too impoverished to live in great style, but the nouveaux riches, financiers and contractors, had installed themselves in rural mansions, yet did not succeed in imitating the old aristocracy. They were lavish in some things, parsimonious in others. Stables, gardens, and woods were allowed to become slovenly. ‘There is at present no veritable society,’ says a contemporary, and nobody in the country kept open house.[119] ‘Those people who chose to be presented at Bonaparte’s court,’ says Mrs. Villiers (afterwards Lady Clarendon), ‘were invited to many magnificent dinners and assemblies (balls) given by the ministers, but as ourselves, with a very few other exceptions, did not feel inclined to pay homage to Bonaparte, the theatres and the entertainments given by foreigners were mostly our resources.’[120] Mrs. Villiers was certainly, as she says, an exception, as also were Montagu and Ryder, a future peer who declined to be introduced to Napoleon, for it was not till the renewal of the war that admiration turned to hatred and that Bonaparte became a bogey with which children were frightened. Even then no Englishman would have gone the length of saying, as a French ecclesiastic has done nearly a century afterwards, that ‘Napoleon was the greatest enemy of God and of mankind. Would that his name could be effaced from human memories!’[121] A royalist agent remarks:—