[9] Baron Breteuil, born in 1733, was employed by Louis XV. in important diplomatic services, in Russia and elsewhere; and at a later day was Minister of Home Affairs. He opposed the calling together of the States-General, and headed for a moment a reactionary ministry after the brief retirement of Neckar. He left France in 1790, and after residing in Hamburg for some years, was allowed to return in 1802. He died at Paris, in 1807.—Ed.
[10] This passage, in inverted commas, is evidently an extract from a letter.—Ed.
[11] Count Münster is well known in England, having been for many years, during the connexion between Hanover and England, the minister for Hanoverian affairs at the Court of London.—Ed.
[12] I extract from some observations by my Mother on the Princess of Bayreuth’s Memoirs, a later portrait, from recollection, of the Dowager Duchess. ‘The Duchess of Brunswick was one of the most accomplished and brilliant women of her time. To a late period of life, beyond her eightieth year, she possessed an incomparable understanding, and the most amiable cheerfulness. Time had respected not only her faculties, but her exterior; and while it had worn her form to a sort of etherial transparency, had left her perfect symmetry, lively eyes, and an expressive delicate countenance. She appeared like a model of agreeable old age turned in ivory, and was said to be a softened resemblance of Frederic the Great, whose agrémens of appearance and manner have been so well described by Mirabeau.’—Ed.
[13] We now know pretty intimately the whole Court of Brunswick, as Lord Malmesbury found it on occasion of his mission to seek there a wife for the Prince of Wales, some five years before the above was written.—(See his Diaries and Correspondence, vol. iii.) I have been interested to observe the almost exact coincidence of his judgment in respect of all the persons who composed that Court with what is written here. It is true that, having actually to transact important business with the Duke, he saw the real weakness and vacillation of his character, as a woman with no such opportunities was not likely to do. But of the Duchess Dowager he writes, ‘Nothing can be so open, so frank, and so unreserved as her manner; nor so perfectly good-natured and unaffected’ (vol. iii. p. 155). In another place, ‘The Hereditary Prince and Princess vastly friendly; she a most admirable character, all sense and judgment; he little of either, but very harmless and good-natured’ (p. 188). The Princess Augusta, Abbess of Gandersheim, he describes as ‘clever in the Beatrix way’ (p. 159), ‘clever, artful, and rather coming’ (p. 165).—Ed.
[14] As Countess Lichtenau. The whole curious story is to be found in Vehse, Gesch. des Preuss. Hofs und Adel, part 5, p. 67 sqq.
[15] The Right Hon. Hugh Elliot, brother to the first Lord Minto. A few years later he proceeded to India as Governor of Madras, and died in London in the year 1822.—Ed.
[16] He and his two brothers, as is well known, strangled with their own hands Peter III., the husband of Catherine, and laid thus the foundations of their fortunes. But his name is branded with a crime of yet deeper dye, and of an almost incredible baseness. A young daughter of the Empress Elizabeth was living in extreme poverty and obscurity in Italy, whom Catherine, jealous of a possible pretender to the throne, desired to get within her power. Alexis Orloff found her out at Rome, married her, lured her away from her safe refuge in Italy, and delivered her to Catherine. She died in a Russian dungeon.—Ed.
[17] Born 1756, died 1823. The Conversations-Lexicon says, ‘Sein. Clavierspiel war glänzend; auch improvisirte er glücklich.’—Ed.
[18] This is certainly a mistake. Field-Marshal Bellegarde was a very distinguished officer, who, whether serving under the Archduke Charles, as at Aspern, or holding independent military commands, which he often did, always acquitted himself excellently well; but there are not, I believe, the slightest grounds for the suggestion in the text.—Ed.