Knole and the Sackvilles

by V. Sackville-West

construct a balloon of a certain diameter to carry sixteen persons. The project [the despatch continues] is to carry on a trade between this part and the South of France; Paris and Marseilles are the two places named. The balloon is to be freighted with plate glass, and the return to be made in reams of paper. M. de Calonne has hitherto received the proposal with great coolness, as M. Montgolfier requires an advance of 60,000 livres Tournais. It is, however, under contemplation, as M. Montgolfier has declared his intention of making the offer to our government in case he does not meet with encouragement here. It is said that the Comptroller General rather discourages enterprises of this sort, as any further progress in the art of conducting balloons might tend to prejudice the revenues of the City of Paris, which will shortly be surrounded by a wall, the cost of which is estimated at four or five millions.

The duke naturally thought M. Montgolfier’s plans nonsensical:

I should almost scruple to mention to your Lordship an undertaking so extraordinary [he says] had I not heard from exceedingly good authority that such a plan is seriously in agitation. Great credit is given to M. Montgolfier’s superior skill in these matters, and that gentleman’s friends are sanguine in their expectations of his success. The weight he proposes to carry exceeds that of a waggon-load!

He gives some further details of what M. Montgolfier, who “pretends to have at last discovered means of directing the course of Balloons,” proposes to do:

He has obtained the sanction of M. de Calonne for his first experiment, which is to be made the first day of next May, when he engages to depart from a town in Auvergne, distant from Paris 150 miles, and to descend at or near this City in the space of seven hours.

A month later he writes:

The government has at last accepted M. Montgolfier’s proposal. 30,000 livres are to be granted to him in advance for the experiment, and if it succeeds the whole of his expenses will be paid without any examination of his accounts, a pension granted to him, and every honorary recompense bestowed on him to which he can aspire. He pretends to have discovered the means of guiding his machine, but it was not till after his project to England, in case of refusal here, that it was accepted.

On such topics as the diamond necklace and M. Montgolfier and current affairs Dorset beguiled his leisure and that of the Foreign Office. There is no indication that he detected any signs of the trouble in store. It is true that occasionally he writes in this strain:

Their Majesties, the Dauphin, and the rest of the Royal family, are removed from Fontainebleau to Versailles. The expenses attending these journeys of the Court is incredible. The duc de Polignac told me that he had given orders for 2115 horses for this service.... Besides this, an adequate proportion of horses are ordered for the removal of the heavy baggage.... It is asserted that M. de Calonne will be under the necessity of borrowing at least eight millions of livres next year,

and that after the fall of the Bastille he was moved to write: “I really think it necessary that some public caution be given to put those upon their guard who may propose to visit this part of the continent.” But beyond these occasional comments he does not seem to have been troubled by any thoughts of the future. He did not foresee that his friend “Mrs. B.,” to whom after his return to England he continued to supply English gloves, would lose upon the scaffold that little head which had carried so gaily the butterfly or the frigate, or that within two or three years’ time the English newspapers would be writing: “The Duke of Dorset’s seat at Knole is a place of rendezvous for the banished French noblesse at this time resident in England,” or that he would be entertaining there as a fugitive his friend Champcenetz, a young officer in the Swiss Guards and author of a “Petit traité de l’amour des femmes pour les sots.” Dorset would no doubt have proved a perfectly adequate ambassador in normal times, but that vast situation with its infinite ramifications was beyond an intellect that accepted for granted the existing régime under which dukes were born for pleasure and labourers were not. But with all the foresight in the world it is difficult to see what he could have done, or how the course of history could have been affected, had he sent home grave warnings instead of babbling of the diamond necklace and M. Montgolfier.