Alexander Humboldt did not arrive from South America till 1804, but his brother William, statesman and philologist, was spending three years in Paris. Germany also sent the Landgrave of Hesse Rothenburg and Princess Hohenzollern, the latter anxious to purchase the field in which her guillotined brother, Prince Salm Kyrburg, had been buried. Prince Emanuel of Salm, apparently her uncle, accompanied her on her pious mission. Adam Gottlob von Moltke, a cousin of the famous strategist and like him a Dane, was a versifier of the Klopstock school and was intimate with Niebuhr. On the outbreak of the French Revolution he had styled himself Citizen Moltke. He helped to draw up the Schleswig-Holstein constitution. Another Danish visitor was Baggesen, who had witnessed the Revolution, imitated Klopstock and Wieland, and enjoyed a pension from his sovereign. Samson Heine, father of the poet, a Dusseldorf merchant, was a visitor on business, like several of his Jewish co-religionists. His son was too young to accompany him. Another business visitor was Johann Maria Farina, who opened depôts for his ‘veritable eau de Cologne.’ Frederic Jacobi, a friend of Richter, went in vain quest of health. He revived his acquaintance with Count Schlabrendorf, whom he had met in London in 1786. ‘For eight years,’ said Schlabrendorf, reviewing his revolutionary experiences, ‘it was here all a scuffle like a village beershop, everybody pitching into each other. Then came Bonaparte with a “stop that.” The first thing he did was to blow out the candles. He wanted no questions settled, but merely the stoppage of disputes. Liberty or no liberty, religion or no religion, morality or no morality, was all immaterial to him. Liberty and equality remain, and now nobody opens his mouth or strikes another.’ I may here remark that the comparison of Bonaparte to Cromwell, obvious as it now appears to us, was not made by any English observer, though it did not escape German visitors. Jacobi also went to see St. Martin, the disciple of Boehme and Swedenborg, who had known William Law in England in 1787, and regarded the French Revolution as a precursor of the Day of Judgment. St. Martin, who was living in seclusion till his death in October 1803, said to him, ‘Everybody has told you I am mad, but you see that I am at least a happy madman. If, moreover, some madmen should be fettered there are others to be left unfettered, and I think myself one of the latter.’ A disciple of Jacobi, Jacob Frederic Fries, who had been educated by the Moravians and was ultimately a professor at Jena, was also a visitor. His democratic opinions for a time occasioned his suspension from his post. Frederic Schlegel, an intimate friend of Novalis, studied at the Louvre, was taught Sanscrit by Alexander Hamilton, and lectured on German literature and philosophy. He and his Jewish wife, a daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, embraced Catholicism in 1803. Less eminent than his brother Augustus, he was an orientalist and art critic. Living with them at Montmartre was Helmine von Klenke, who had made an unfortunate marriage with Baron Hastfer, and having divorced him was destined to be but little more successful with a second mate, Chézy, to whom Schlegel, his teacher of Persian, introduced her. Helmine was cured of a violent headache by Mesmer, who sat beside her at dinner, and unobserved by the other guests made some passes over her forehead. Mesmer, unlike what happened to him in 1781 and 1785, attracted no curiosity. Helmine also met Hardenberg, the future Prussian statesman, Achim von Arnim, a poet and novelist, and Mademoiselle Rodde, daughter of a Swiss professor, and herself at seventeen adorned with a doctor’s degree.[147] Reichardt, the composer, and Fabricius, the Danish naturalist, should also be mentioned. Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow, who had twice visited America, had there embraced Swedenborgianism, had been ruined by a glass speculation, and was now dependent on his pen, likewise visited Paris. An admirer of Napoleon, this historian and pamphleteer had had adventures, and was destined to have others. Julius von Voss, poet and novelist, was another visitor.
Last but not least among the German visitors comes Schopenhauer. His father, Henry Florian Schopenhauer, a Hamburg merchant, with his wife and son, went to London in July 1802. Leaving Arthur at school with the Rev. Thomas Lancaster at Wimbledon, the parents travelled about England and Scotland. They got back to London in October, and after a six weeks’ stay all three embarked for Rotterdam. Mercier, the prolific writer, showed them the sights of Paris. In January 1803 they proceeded to Bordeaux. Thence father and son returned to Hamburg, while the mother went to Toulouse, Toulon, Hyères, and Switzerland, an account of which trip she published. Pecuniary losses affected the father’s mind, and in 1805, at the age of fifty-nine, he fell or threw himself into a canal. Griesbach denies that he committed suicide, alleging that he slipped through a trap-door in his warehouse into the canal. He was an habitual reader of the Times, a taste inherited by his son.
The Italians include Bartolini, sculptor of a colossal bust of Napoleon, and a daughter of Beccaria, the Italian philosopher, who had inherited his intelligence and love of liberty, and possessed beauty into the bargain. She had divorced her insane husband. Helen Williams in 1794–1795 had found her residing by the lake of Lugano. She seems to have settled in Paris in 1798, and Paine then made acquaintance with her. She presented Redhead Yorke with a portrait of her father, and Holcroft was now struck by her intelligence and affability. At her house he met Melzi, who had presented the keys of Milan to Napoleon on his entering that city, and who had scandalised lovers of liberty by accepting the vice-presidency of the so-called Cisalpine republic, though Napoleon soon superseded him by his step-son Eugène de Beauharnais. Another well-known Italian, though born in Paris, was Caraccioli, the author of Pope Ganganelli’s Letters and many other works; but he was an octogenarian and died in 1803. Then there was Casti, canon and poet, an imitator of Boccaccio. Prince Jerome Moliterno Pignatelli had figured in Neapolitan politics, and was now conspiring to deliver the Neapolitan ports to England. Though Merry granted him a passport he was stopped at Calais and incarcerated in the Temple, along with his English wife or mistress, a Mrs. Dorinda Newnham, an Irishwoman,[148] possibly the wife of a London alderman and ex-M.P. She was again arrested at Rome in 1809, but liberated as being both ill and mad. It was thought, however, that she had been forewarned of arrest and had burnt her papers.[149] Ultimately both of them got to England.
How did the English demean themselves and what was the impression produced on both sides? Francis Jackson, writing on 2nd February 1802 to Speaker Abbot, says:—
‘I only wish you would extend the efforts of your police to keep at home a parcel of disorderly women who come abroad without bringing anything with them that does credit to the national character. There is Lady C. (Cholmondeley), who is one day taken up by the police and carried to the chief lock-up for persisting to drive in the Champs Elysées at forbidden hours and through forbidden roads. Another day she quarrels with people at the masquerade. A third she invites a dozen Frenchmen and women to her house and abuses them all for slaves. Then we have Lady M. (Monck), whose dear friend would welcome H. M. Williams and who gets into all the bad company in Paris. You must suppose it is very bad when here it is reckoned mauvais ton. You really should keep these people at home. As for your swindlers, of whom there has been a nest here for some time, they are not near so troublesome, for there are swindlers in all countries and the police here is very good.’[150]
There is evidently a little exaggeration here, but we have already seen that Lord Whitworth shut his doors against some of his countrymen whose inordinate admiration of Napoleon was not conducive to the maintenance of peace, since it must have given the impression that there was a strong French party in England, so that Napoleon might dictate his own terms. Whitworth acknowledged that the Duke of Bedford, fully alive to Napoleon’s projects, conducted himself very properly, adding, ‘I wish I could say as much of many of my countrymen and countrywomen.’[151] Lady Oxford even considered Napoleon handsome—an opinion, says a royalist spy, not shared by a single Frenchwoman. The Duchess of Gordon, though another of his admirers—pointing to his portrait she would say to the wife of Consul Lebrun, ‘Voilà mon zéro (héros)’—went rather beyond the bounds of politeness when, seated between Berthier and Decrès,[152] Ministers of War and Marine, she said, ‘I am always frightened when I look at you (Berthier), but fortunately you (turning to Decrès) reassure me.’[153] This, however, might pass for one of her usual sallies, intimating that the French army was formidable, but not the navy. Yet Thibaudeau says:—
‘Paris was infatuated with the arrival of these foreigners. It was a scramble among all classes to give them the best reception. It was the height of fashion to dine and amuse them and give them balls; the women especially were enamoured of the English and had a rage for their fashions. In short France seemed to eclipse itself before a few thousands of these proud and unprofitable foreigners, towards whom the attentions of hospitality were carried to a ridiculous excess. Frenchmen of the old school did not share this intoxication, but sighed over this forgetfulness of national dignity.’[154]
And Reichardt speaks of French fops parading English garments, horses, and dogs. Even Napoleon, he says, sent to England for horses and hounds. Frenchmen, with their keen sense of the ludicrous, were amused, he tells us, with the middle-class Englishman, who had never previously visited Paris. Caricaturists depicted him standing open-mouthed in front of public buildings, with the wife in insular toilette or grotesquely aping French fashions. A short play entitled l’Anglais à Paris, which was apparently never printed, doubtless made good-humoured fun of the visitors.
At a theatre two of these were once so unceremonious as to take off their coats on a hot July night, whereupon there was a scene. They were obdurate, alleging that this was allowable in London, until a police inspector arrived and expostulated with them. Their habit of carrying umbrellas and their nankeen or black gaiters were, however, adopted by the French, but their beverages probably found less favour, albeit an English tea-warehouse had been opened, as also a beershop which boasted of its aile (sic) as especially suitable for cool or damp weather.
Vernet drew a caricature of the Duchess of Gordon as a stout woman holding her daughter by the hand. There were other family parties. ‘English women,’ says the Journal des Débats (Sept. 1, 1802), ‘are readily to be distinguished. If their grave and becoming demeanour were not sufficiently marked, the group of children accompanying them would be more than enough to show the difference between them and Parisian ladies.’ Although tradesmen were glad to see English customers, they missed the extravagant milords of old times. The Cholmondeleys, indeed, had astonished Calais by their lavishness, requiring five-and-twenty horses for their coaches to Paris, where they were doubtless equally prodigal, and Lord Aberdeen was also lavish; but most of the visitors haggled about prices, bought only cheap goods, and frequented cheap restaurants. Even rich nabobs seemed bent on spending as little as possible. A royalist agent, while remarking that all Europe was infected with the enthusiasm for Bonaparte and hastened to Paris to behold the great man at least once, says:—