Bonaparte is returned with his staff to Paris. The cause of his return is involved in mystery as yet.[46]
A MIXED PARTY
7th November.—I have just begun La Harpe’s Cours de Littérature; they are lectures upon les belles lettres, delivered at the Lycée. On Friday, 1st Nov., a remarkable pleasant day, Ld. Ossory, Macartney, Morpeth, Calonne, Fish Craufurd, Tierney. The youth of Ld. M., and the Jacobinism of the latter did not promise to accord with the years and gravity of the rest of the party, but the singularity gave a zest, and everybody was delighted. Tierney won so much upon Ld. Macartney, that I am sure he might be made coadjutor to any outlandish embassy Ld. M. may be appointed to: he boasts of being homme à tout plat. Ld. Ossory was very happy, notwithstanding my Lady’s prohibition of his being so within these walls.
The Smiths came in the evening. We were to have taken them next day to my mother’s in Suffolk, that Mrs. S. might visit her father at Newmarket, but during the night Ld. H. was seized with some sharp twinges of the gout, which obliged us to delay our journey, much to my disappointment, as by it I lost the sight of my dear little Harriet. Saturday alone with the Smiths. Sunday Dr. Hager came; Smiths went away. Ld. H. continued ill; not so bad as the fit last autumn. It is curious that the pain seized him almost the day twelvemonth.
10th Nov. Sunday.—The failure of the Dutch expedition has created at the time a great sensation, but the public mind is absorbed in the expectation of another enterprise upon the French coast. All parties disclaim having projected it. Pitt’s friends say it was all Dundas’s scheme; he again lays it to the Queen and Princess of Orange; and they to the map-makers for placing dry land where there ought to be swamps. The only person who uniformly disapproved of the undertaking was the Stadtholder.
Public affairs everywhere have assumed a gloomy aspect. The badness of the season has destroyed the corn in many counties, and the increased price of provisions in the setting in of a threatening winter announces misery to the wretched poor and perhaps no small clamour from them, as certainly the corn sent to Holland must have taken considerably from the stock here, besides that the transports employed to convey the troops were chiefly North-country colliers. Thus the price of coals is at an unknown height, 60 shillings the chauldron. (In December 1799, 6 guineas.)
I have been reading Joseph Andrews. It is, in point of interest, inferior to Tom Jones. There are scenes where the wit is even more excellent, but the nature of his characters are sacrificed to a love of buffoonery. Parson Adams is frequently put into situations so extravagant that the ludicrous is destroyed by the impossibility of the events. Fielding had a model, his tutor, a Dr. Young,[47] who was full of learning and simplicity. There is a story of him whilst he was chaplain to one of the Duke of Marlborough’s regiments. The enemies were encamped near each other expecting to be engaged; the distrait chaplain walked out, and was so absorbed in the perusal of his Æschylus that he passed the lines. A sentinel seized him for a spy, and carried him to the general. During his examination he stated so naturally that without thinking of anything one foot followed the other, and brought him without his knowledge where he was, adding that he assured his Excellence he was no spy. ‘Ah, mon ami, I sincerely believe you. The D. of M. ne vous aurez jamais choisi pour espion, mais vous resterez dîner.’ He was sent off, fully acquitted of the suspicion.
CALONNE
I have endeavoured to persuade Calonne to write his Mémoires. Even those of his own life would be interesting; but the period of his Administration, and his generous sacrifices to the Princes subsequent to their emigration, would fill up a period in the history of the Revolution which can only be well done by him. He set the best machine of revolt in motion. His own story is that when at the head of the Finance he found that for many years the expenditure of the Government had exceeded its receipts, and that Necker’s compte rendu was a false assertion upon false fact: that to remedy this deficit he had persuaded the King to let him propose an equal taxation to the Noblesse and Clergy; that the Queen also was got over, till the night before he was to make his speech to the Notables, when she joined the faction headed by the Archevêque de Sens.[48]
A bon mot of Mirabeau upon him. He was a rash, impetuous man, without conduct or judgment. ‘L’Archevêque de Sens est toujours hors de son diocèse.’