I am exceedingly obliged to you for your information in re Thiers, whom I should have been delighted to ask to The Grove, but I fear there will be no chance of catching him during his short stay, as previous arrangements will not permit of our inviting him before the 25th. He really flits about Europe like a flash of lightning, and if he means to know anything about this country and its inhabitants he ought not to come only for a week at the deadest time of the year, though to be sure that is only in harmony with his usual system. Don’t you remember his famous note to Ellice when he (E.) was Secretary of the Treasury? ‘Mon cher Ellice, je veux connaître à fond le systême financier de l’Angleterre quand pourrez vous me donner cinq minutes?’ Lord Lansdowne has asked him to come here, and if he does not I shall try and find him on Wednesday on my way through London to join Lady C., whom I left at Gorhambury with her father, who is still very ill. When we are re-established at the Grove I need not say how much pleasure it will give her and me to see you there. We heard from Charles that you were well and prosperous, and had returned more devotedly attached than ever to the Duke of Modena.
Yours, &c., &c.,
Clarendon.”
‘Bowood, Oct. 14, 1845.
“My dear Panizzi,
We were all in great hopes that Thiers would have come here to-day, but as he does not I must stay over tomorrow, for it would really be grief to me that he left England without my seeing him. It is quite a “bonne fortune” for Thiers, and important, moreover, to the relation between the two countries, that he should have fallen into your hands here, for there is no one so capable of properly directing his enquiries and opinions, and I am sure there is no born Englishman from whom he would receive with confidence and belief the sort of facts you will put before him. There is a great deal of avenir in Thiers, and he is still destined to exercise much influence upon the opinions of his countrymen, and if he could make himself personally cognizant of the feelings of the English towards France, and become sure that there is not among us a germ even of hostility or jealousy with respect either to the greatness or the prosperity of France, I think he might do much to allay that spirit of hatred towards us which his own works and a portion of the press under his control have already done much to excite. It would be an undertaking worthy of him, because it would tend to advance the best interests of civilisation, to put Anglophobia out of fashion in France, but for that he should be able to speak with authority and connaissance de cause, and I will defy even his cleverness to know this country, or to carry away any correct perceptions of it in a transitory visit, such as he is making. For my own sake, and being most desirous to show him any civility, I wish he had come a little later.
Yours, &c., &c.,
Clarendon.”
These letters cannot fail to be read with interest, coming from so appreciative a man as Lord Clarendon, pointing distinctly as they do to his intimate friendship with Panizzi, and expressing his hopes that Thiers would be cured of this “Anglo-phobia,” or, to use our own modified term, “Anglo-misos,” with his very true remark: “I’ll defy even his cleverness to know this country, or to carry away any correct perceptions of it in a transitory visit, such as he is making.”
In politics, though Panizzi’s opinions (albeit somewhat modified by lapse of time, and by his intercourse with the greater English statesmen) were probably still of a deeper revolutionary tinge than his friend’s, the two men were in the main of one mind. The prominent question of the day was that tissue of petty chicanery commonly known as The Spanish Marriages—a miserable intrigue—which caused considerable commotion at the time, and in due course produced consequences of a gravity out of all proportion to its intrinsic importance.