In London, in the month of April 1822, I was within fifty leagues of Lady Sutton. I strolled in Kensington Gardens with my recent impressions and the early past of my young years: a confusion of times which produces in me a confusion of memories; life which burns out mingles, like the fire of Corinth, the molten brass of the statues of the Muses and Love, of the tripods and the tombs.
The Marquess of Londonderry.
The parliamentary holidays were still proceeding when I alighted at my house in Portland Place. The Under-secretary of State, Mr. Planta[157], invited me, on behalf of the Marquess of Londonderry, to go to dine at North Cray, the noble lord's country-place. This villa, with a large tree before the windows on the garden side, looked out over some meadows; a little underwood growing on hillocks distinguished this site from the ordinary English sites. Lady Londonderry[158] was much in vogue in her quality as a marchioness and as wife of the Prime Minister.
My dispatch of the 12th of April, No. 4, relates my first interview with Lord Londonderry; it touches on the affairs with which I had to occupy myself:
"London, 12 April 1822.
"Monsieur le vicomte[159],
"I went two days ago, on Wednesday the 10th instant, to North Cray. I shall now have the honour of giving you an account of my conversation with the Marquess of Londonderry. It lasted for an hour and a half before dinner, and we resumed it later, but less at our ease, because we were no longer alone.
"Lord Londonderry first asked for news of the King's health, with a persistency which manifestly revealed a political interest; when I had reassured him on this point, he passed to the Ministry:
"'It is consolidating itself,' he said.
"I replied:
"'It has never been shaken and, as it belongs to one opinion, it will remain the master so long as that opinion prevails in the Chambers.'
"This brought us to speak of the elections: he seemed struck by what I said of the advantage of a summer session to restore order in the financial year; he had not till then well understood the state of the question.
"The war between Russia and Turkey next became the subject of conversation. Lord Londonderry, when speaking of soldiers and armies, appeared to me to be of the opinion of our late ministry as to the danger there might be for us in getting together large bodies of troops; I opposed this idea, I maintained that there was nothing to be feared in leading the French soldier into battle; that he would never be unfaithful in the sight of the enemy's flag; that our army has lately been increased; that it could be trebled to-morrow, if that were necessary, without the smallest inconvenience; that, in truth, a few non-commissioned officers might shout, 'Long live the Charter!' in a garrison, but that our grenadiers would always shout, 'Long live the King!' on the battle-field.
"I do not know whether these greater politics made Lord Londonderry forget the treaty of the negroes; he did not say a word about it to me. Changing the subject, he spoke of the message in which the President of the United States invites Congress to recognise the independence of the Spanish Colonies:
"'Commercial interests,' I said to him, 'may derive some advantage from it, but I doubt whether political interests will find the same profit in it; there are already enough political ideas in the world. To increase the mass of those ideas is to compromise more and more the fate of the monarchies in Europe.'
"Lord Londonderry abounded in my sense and spoke these remarkable words to me:
"'As for us (the English), we are not at all disposed to recognise those revolutionary governments.'
"Was he sincere?
"I have had, monsieur le vicomte, to report to you, word for word, an important conversation. However, we must not hide from ourselves the fact that England will sooner or later recognise the independence of the Spanish Colonies; public opinion and the impulse of her trade will drive her to it. She has already, during the last three years, gone to considerable expense to establish secret relations with the revolted provinces north and south of the Isthmus of Panama.
"Upon the whole, monsieur le vicomte, I have found in the Marquess of Londonderry a man of sense, of perhaps somewhat doubtful frankness; a man still steeped in the old ministerial system; a man accustomed to a submissive diplomacy and surprised, without being offended, at language more worthy of France; a man, in short, who could not refrain from a sort of astonishment while talking with one of those Royalists who, since seven years, have been represented to him as madmen or imbeciles.
"I have the honour, etc."
With these general affairs were mingled, as in all embassies, private transactions. I had to occupy myself with the petitions of M. le Duc de Fitz-James[160], with the lawsuit of the ship Eliza Ann, with the depredations of the Jersey fishermen on the Granville oyster-banks, etc., etc. I regretted to be obliged to set aside a little pigeon-hole in my brain for the papers of the claimants. When one ransacks one's memory, it is hard to come across Messieurs Usquin, Coppinger, Deliège and Piffre. But, in a few years, shall we be better known than those gentlemen? A certain M. Bonnet having died in America, all the Bonnets in France wrote to me to claim his succession; those tormentors write to me still! Yet it ought to be time to leave me in peace. It is all very well for me to reply that, the little accident of the fall of the Throne having occurred, I no longer occupy myself with this world: they hold out and want their inheritance at all costs.
The Eastern question.
As to the East, it was in contemplation to recall the different ambassadors from Constantinople. I foresaw that England would not follow the movement of the Continental Alliance, and I informed M. de Montmorency of this. The rupture which had been feared between Russia and the Porte did not happen: Alexander's moderation delayed the event. In this connection, I made a great expenditure of going and coming, of sagacity and argument; I wrote a multitude of dispatches, which have gone to must in our archives with the reports of events that never occurred. I at least have this advantage over my colleagues, that I attach no importance to my labours; I saw them, without a care, swallowed up in oblivion with all the lost ideas of mankind.
Parliament resumed its sittings on the 17th of April; the King returned on the 18th, and I was presented to him on the 19th. I gave an account of this presentation in my dispatch of the 19th; it ended thus: