The memoirs of a man of a singularly adventurous and speculative turn, who, having entered upon the occupations of manhood early, and retained its energies late, has prolonged the active period of his life to upwards of half a century, who has been an eyewitness of not a few of the important events that occurred in Europe and America between the years 1796 and 1850, and himself a sharer in more than one of them, who has been associated or an agent in some of the largest commercial and financial operations that British and Dutch capital and enterprise ever ventured upon, and has been brought into contact and acquaintance—not unfrequently into intimacy—with a number of the remarkable men of his time, can hardly, one would imagine, be otherwise than highly interesting, if the author have but sufficient command of his native tongue plainly to write down what his memory has retained, sufficient discrimination and self-restraint to avoid dwelling upon details of too trifling and egotistical a nature. Generally speaking, we have but little confidence in the interesting qualities of German septuagenarian autobiographers. Garrulity is the privilege of age, and German garrulity is a grievous thing, particularly when it displays itself upon paper. In Germany, where nearly everybody capable of grammar writes a book, even though he have nothing to write about, elderly gentlemen, who really have seen something worth the telling, are apt to imagine they can never make too much of it, and instead of delighting us with the pure spirit, drench us with a feeble dilution. Such was the case, we well remember, with our old acquaintance, Baron von Rahden, whose military experiences during the stirring period of 1813–14–15 we brought before our readers now just seven years since, and who, instead of cutting short the tolerably prolix history of his life and adventures at the date when peace sheathed his sword, elaborated two other ponderous and very wearisome volumes, scarcely relieved by an account of General Chassé’s defence of Antwerp, and by sketches of a campaign in Catalonia, in which the indefatigable and restless old fire-eater, unable to pass his latter days in tranquillity, served under the orders of the Carlist general Cabrera. There is more variety and vivacity in the book now before us than in the baron’s interminable record, of which, however, it has in some respects reminded us. Von Rahden, a soldier by profession and inclination, gave us far too much of his proceedings in times of peace, and dwelt at tedious length on garrison rivalries, his own unrewarded merit, and German provincial topics. Mr Nolte, on the contrary, by profession a man of peace, whose weapon is the pen, his field of battle the Exchange, and his campaigns amongst cotton bales, whose tutelar deity has been Mercury instead of Mars, and whose commanders and allies, instead of the martial-sounding appellations of Blucher, Gneisenau, and Chassé, have borne the pacific but scarcely less famous names of Hope, Labouchere, and Baring, has mingled, in the rather complicated narrative of his mercantile pursuits, triumphs, and disasters, much adventure both by flood and field, in which he himself was personally engaged, and displays, in the telling, not a little of the go-ahead spirit proper to the people amongst whom he has passed a large portion of his life. He has really seen a great deal, and his reminiscences, although here and there his style of narrating them be trivial and in questionable taste—whilst some of his long accounts of financial and commercial operations will more particularly interest bankers and merchants than the general reader—contain much that will attract all. In Germany the first edition of his book has gone off at a gallop,—no small testimony to its merits in a year during which present politics have been the all-absorbing topic. We do not wonder at its popularity; for, besides the mass of anecdote and historical recollections it comprises, the author has contrived to give an interest to his individuality, by the off-hand style in which he tells of his errors and of his triumphs, of his many reverses and disasters, as well as of his rarer moments of prosperity and success.
We should as soon think of attempting, within the compass of an article, a digest of an encyclopædia as of Mr Nolte’s volumes. We should fill half a magazine by merely tracing his itinerary. There never was such a rolling stone. He treats the Atlantic as most men do Dover Straits, and thinks no more of a few hundred leagues of land travel than a modern Cockney of a run to Ramsgate. Whole years of his life must have been passed on board ship, and behind post-horses. His book necessarily partakes of the desultory nature of his career. It better bears dipping into than reading from end to end.
Born at Leghorn, in the year 1779, of a German father, Mr Vincent Nolte’s first reminiscence, of much interest to his readers, is connected with the invasion of Italy by the French under Buonaparte. His father had for some years left Italy, and settled in Hamburg, his native place; but young Vincent, after being educated in Germany, was sent back to Leghorn, to take his place as junior clerk in his uncle’s counting-house, one of the most important in that city. He was in his seventeenth year when, upon the last Saturday in June 1796, a courier from the British minister at Florence brought news to the consul at Leghorn that the French were approaching. There was great bustle amongst the English merchants to get their property shipped, and place it and themselves under the protection of Nelson’s squadron, then cruising off the port. After unremitting labour, and favoured by the wind, the last ships, with English goods on board, left the harbour at noon on Monday. They had been but two hours gone, when it suddenly became known in the city that the French were close at hand, advancing by the Pisa road, and presently a party of cavalry galloped round the fortifications to the Porta Colonella, and rode straight up to the fort, on which the Tuscan flag waved. Suddenly those colours disappeared, and were replaced by the French tricolor, displayed for the first time to the wondering eyes of the Tuscans. Almost at the same moment the cannon of the fort thundered, and sent some shots after those English vessels nearest to the harbour—thus signalling to Nelson the entrance of the French. Young Nolte, who had little love for the desk, whose wish it was to become a painter, and who then, and all his life through, was ardent, impetuous, and a lover of excitement, could sit still no longer, but ran out of the respectable counting-house of Otto Franck & Co., consul for Hamburg, &c., to stare at the invaders. At the head of a body of cavalry, a horseman of remarkable beauty galloped up the street, and alighted at the door of the Genevese banker, Dutremoul. It was Murat. This was between two and three in the afternoon.
“At six in the evening, the news spread that General Buonaparte was at the Pisa gate. No sooner did he learn that the English residents had had time to escape with their property, than he broke into a violent rage. At that moment Count Spannochi, attired in the ordinary uniform, a blue coat, red waistcoat, and white breeches (the full-dress uniform consisted of a white coat and red waistcoat and breeches), and, surrounded by his officers, and by the chief authorities of the city, advanced to welcome the general, who still sat upon his horse. Buonaparte gave him no time to speak, but at once violently assailed him. ‘How dare you,’ he cried, ‘appear before me thus? Do you not know your duty? You are an insolent fellow, a traitor! You have let the English escape; you shall pay for that. A court-martial shall sit immediately. You are my prisoner—give up your sword!’ And Count Spannochi disappeared. Buonaparte’s words were repeated to me that same evening by my fellow-clerk, Giacomini, who had gone with the crowd outside the Pisa gate, and had heard them. Next day we learned that the governor had been sent under arrest to Florence, and that the French general, Vaubois, commanded in his stead. Hardly had Buonaparte and his staff reached the grand-ducal palace, when police-agents went round to all the houses, ordering a general illumination, under heavy penalties in case of disobedience. The only Leghorn newspaper that then existed announced, upon the following day, the arrival of the victor of Lodi and Arcola, adding, that the inhabitants had spontaneously illuminated. I then, for the first time, got a correct idea of a spontaneous illumination, and was never afterwards at a loss to understand the expression. At eleven o’clock the next morning, the foreign consuls waited upon the general, who quickly dismissed them, when suddenly his eye was attracted by my uncle’s red coat. ‘What is that?’ he cried. ‘An English uniform?’ My uncle, taken quite aback, had just enough presence of mind to reply, ‘No, Padrone, questa e l’uniforme di Amburgo!’ and endeavoured, but in vain, to make his escape. Buonaparte burst forth with a violent diatribe against everything that looked English, against all who thought like Englishmen, or had anything to do with England. ‘Those English,’ he said, according to my uncle’s account to me upon his return home, ‘shall get such a lesson as they have never yet had! My road now lies to Vienna, then farther north, to destroy their nests in Hamburg and elsewhere, and then to seek them in their own robbers’ den!’”
Young Nolte was bent upon seeing the hero of the day, who, before attaining his eight-and-twentieth year, had played such havoc amongst Austria’s veteran commanders, and, disregarding his uncle’s commands to keep in-doors, and out of the way of the dense mob upon the Piazza d’Arme, he again played truant, and stationed himself at the corner of the palace, at whose entrance an open carriage awaited the French general. His account of the impression he carried away of Napoleon’s appearance has some originality. The peculiar expression, attributed by him to the eyes, reminds one of the present French Emperor.
“At last there came out, accompanied by a number of officers, a little, youthful-looking man, in a plain uniform, with a pale, almost a yellow complexion, and long, lank, raven-black hair, hanging over his ears, after the fashion of the Florida savages called Talapouches. That was the hero of Arcola! Whilst he took the right-hand place in the carriage, and whilst his aides-de-camp got in, I had a few moments to observe him closely. There was a continued smile round his mouth, with which, however, the man himself had evidently nothing to do, for the fixed indifferent look of his eyes showed that the mind was busy elsewhere. I never again beheld so remarkable an expression. It was the dull gaze of a mummy, barring a certain beam of intelligence betraying the inward life, but only by a faint and glimmering gleam. Macbeth’s words to Banquo’s ghost, ‘There is no speculation in those eyes!’ would almost have fitted here, had not previous and subsequent events sufficiently shown what a spirit lurked behind those impressive orbs. The carriage drove away—seven years elapsed before I again beheld that extraordinary man. He left the town the next day. I must not omit to mention a colossal and well-built officer, who stood, in a respectful attitude, beside the carriage-door. This man, who had just been named town-major of Leghorn, was the grenadier who, seven years previously, on the 14th July 1789, led the storm of the Bastile, and was the first to scale its walls, who afterwards, as General Hullin, was governor of Berlin after the battle of Jena, and presided over the court-martial appointed to try, or rather to shoot, the unfortunate Duke d’Enghien.”
The presence and proceedings of the French in Leghorn were alike odious to the inhabitants, who found an important branch of their trade—that with England—completely cut off, and who had to satisfy unceasing demands for money and equipments. Large bodies of ragged, barefooted troops continually entered the town, to quit it well shod and with new uniforms. The republican cockade became an abomination in the eyes of the Leghornese, who christened it il pasticcino—the little pie—and wrote innumerable lampoons upon its wearers. Leghorn was converted into a camp, and on a large altar in the middle of the Piazza d’Arme, a statue of Liberty was erected, at the foot of which the popular representatives, Garat and Salicetti, daily harangued the troops upon parade. Business was at a standstill; Vincent Nolte deserted his desk and roamed about the town, sketching the groups of foreign soldiers. And even when things began to settle down, he would do nothing but ramble in picture-galleries and make love to pretty Florentines, until at last his uncle, despairing of his doing any good, wrote to his father that he was on the high-road to perdition. This alarming piece of information produced an instant summons to Hamburg, where, in the paternal counting-house, the young scamp amended his ways and applied earnestly to business, displaying great energy, industry, and capacity.
The year 1799 was a disastrous one for Hamburg. Within six weeks there occurred upwards of one hundred and thirty failures for a total of thirty-six millions of marks. The panic was universal, and trade was shaken to its foundations. Mr Nolte’s house weathered the storm, but was compelled, three years later, to suspend its payments in consequence of the failure of the Leghorn establishment. The creditors received eighty-five per cent, and the numerous friends of the unfortunate merchant subscribed a capital of one hundred and twenty thousand marks to start him again in business. Upon the list figured the well-known name of Francis Baring, a former schoolfellow of the insolvent’s, for the munificent sum of twenty thousand marks, upon which he positively refused to receive interest. Thus supported, Mr Nolte again applied himself to business. But he was then a man advanced in years and of little enterprise, and his son, bold and ambitious, saw that he was not likely to strike out new paths to wealth, whereas the old and ordinary avenues to commercial profits were then closed, all over the European continent, by the iron hand of Napoleon, that mortal foe to trade, and contemner of its votaries. And as young Nolte could be of no use to his father, who despised his views as the dreams of a stripling, bent upon pleasure and unworthy of attention, he sought employment abroad. This he found in the house of Labouchere and Trotreau at Nantes, where he accepted an engagement for three years, to carry on the German and English correspondence. And so, in his twenty-fifth year, he took leave of his parents, with a heavy heart, he says, but without uneasiness as to the future, and travelled, by way of Bremen, to Paris.
Mr Nolte’s arrival in the French capital coincided with the proclamation of Napoleon as emperor, and with Moreau’s imprisonment on the charge of a plot against the government and life of the First Consul. It was his first visit to Paris—the period was interesting. He was so fortunate as to find a friend who willingly undertook to be his cicerone, and a few weeks flew rapidly by, during which, thanks to his guide’s familiarity with places and persons, he acquired a better knowledge of both than he would in as many months had he been left to himself; for it would have served him little (except, perhaps, in the way of emptying his pockets) that the doors of Frascati’s, then the favourite resort of the Parisian fashionable world, were open to all who could pay for admission, and who chose to roam through its gorgeous saloons and brilliantly illuminated gardens, had he not had with him some one able to inform him that yonder beautiful woman was Madame Recamier—yonder elegant young man, leaning against the pedestal of a statue, the renowned ball-room hero Trénis—and the one beyond him, with a music-book in his hand, the celebrated singer Garat. But of all that Mr Nolte saw and heard, nothing made a deeper impression upon him than the lively and universal interest taken in the fate of Moreau. “Rarely,” he says, “was that name uttered by the middle and lower classes without an expression of love and respect, and without a curse upon his two implacable persecutors, the First Consul, and the governor of Paris, General Murat, whose proclamations exhibited at every street corner the name of Moreau in juxtaposition with the words—‘Traitor to the Republic.’ Men could not and would not credit the guilt of the distinguished general; and the Paris wits, never at a loss, declared that there were but two parties in France, ‘les moraux (Moreaus) et les immoraux’—a saying which one heard everywhere repeated.” Condemned to banishment, the conqueror of Hohenlinden betook himself, by way of Cadiz, to the United States, where Mr Nolte some years afterwards met him, and made his acquaintance.
Mr Nolte was present at the first review passed by the new emperor, on the Place du Carrousel at Paris. He was very desirous to get a near view of the victorious general and successful adventurer, whom he had first seen, seven years before, in the full flush of triumph at Leghorn. Two officers of the Danish life-guards, with whom he had travelled from Bremen, made interest for him with their ambassador, and procured him admission to the gallery of the Louvre, a favour granted to few. “I saw the great man of the day, surrounded by a brilliant staff, and by uniforms of every kind, ride several times up and down through the ranks, then gallop full speed along the front of the lines of cavalry drawn up outside the inner court, amidst cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ when suddenly his horse fell, and Napoleon rolled upon the ground, still grasping the bridle tightly. In a few seconds he had mounted again, and galloped on, before even a part of his staff, who quickly dismounted, could go to his assistance. The newspapers said nothing of this incident, and its ominous character struck me the more by reason of their silence.”